March, 2009

People are always asking me for simple (and cheap) ways to backup Hyper-V virtual machines.  Hyper-V provides VSS support that allows you to take a “zero downtime” backup of a virtual machine running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008, however...

A while ago I talked about why it takes so long to create a virtual hard disk , and a lot of people came back and said that in controlled environments they were willing to take the security risks / implications involved in order to have quick creation...

A little while ago our support team put together this KB article in response to a problem that a lot of people have been reporting. Basically, what is happening is that users are having problems starting virtual machines after they install antivirus software...

There have been a lot of questions about how Hyper-V virtual machine snapshots work, and what considerations you need to take when using them. Frankly this is an area where I need to do more blogging – and we need to work to make the technology easier...

This is a bit of an old one – but I still see a lot of people hitting this so I wanted to get the answer out there.  The problem is as follows: You have a large system with lots of memory, but when you try to start a virtual machine you get an error...

A while ago I posted an original guide to Hyper-V Terminology . Well, there have been a couple of new terms that have come on to the scene that I would like to clarify for people: Microsoft Hyper-V Server When you see people talk about “Microsoft...

Those of you out there using Linux on Hyper-V will be happy to hear that you can now get mouse drivers for Linux virtual machines that provide integrated mouse support.  You can go here: http://www.xen.org/download/satori.html to download the drivers...

Almost two weeks ago I posted a script for creating an internal virtual network , and today I would like to revisit it and extend it.  As I prefer to use core installations of Windows Server whenever possible – but this can make it a pain to configure...

There have been a bunch of new evaluation virtual hard disks coming out in the last week or two: An Office Communications Server 2007 R2 evaluation set of virtual machines can be downloaded from here: Office Communications Server 2007 R2 VHD Hyper-V based...

I would like to take a moment to talk about some “scripting technique” for how to get the best results out of your code.  With our WMI interfaces there are often multiple ways to get results, but some are more efficient than others.  Let’s say...

Dugie just pointed this out .  There are two new trial VHDs available: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 These trials are built for Virtual Server, but can be used with Virtual PC.  Dugie is also...

Hot on the heals of the Windows Server 2008 R2 beta – you can now download the SCVMM 2008 R2 beta. As well as adding the ability to manage installations of Windows Server 2008 R2 beta – this release of SCVMM adds the following features: Support...

The System Center Operations Manager Pack for Hyper-V is now in beta.  This management pack allows System Center Operations Manager 2007 and 2007 R2 to provide detailed information about the health of Hyper-V in the management operating system, of...

The Hyper-V Planning and Deployment guide is available online ( here ) and is constantly being updated with more and more information.  On top of this we periodically roll up this information into standalone documentation that is easier to take,...

There is a new Hyper-V Security Guide available for download now.  This is a great read that goes over the practical steps that Hyper-V administrators can take in order to ensure that their servers are securely configured. You can download it here...