Virtual Varia : Miscellaneous V

New Physical to Virtual (P2V) tool from Sysinternals

mikekol — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:34:29 GMT

Looks like Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell are up to their old tricks again, with an awesome new tool called Disk2VHD.

From the web site:

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

Disk2VHD can run on Windows XP SP2 and higher, as well as Windows Server 2003 and higher.

Awesome work, Mark and Bryce!

The Virtualization Nation Podcast – Episode 3: Want to boot a physical computer from a VHD?

mikekol — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:00:41 GMT

Of course you do. And in this episode of the Virtualization Nation Podcast, I’ll show you how.

But first, a little background.

Earlier today, I posted a description of the new Native VHD integration in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 on the Windows Virtualization Team blog, along with a link to a nifty little Powershell script called Install-WindowsImage.ps1 which I’ll talk about some other time. The main point of that post was to start getting the word out about Native VHD Boot.

So, what’s so special about this?

Well, put yourself in the shoes of a corporate network administrator (though, when I was a network admin, I didn’t wear shoes all that often). It’s really very common for a company to have a “base” Operating System image that they can apply to a server or workstation. This image is usually tweaked with some software and/or patches installed, or is specially configured in some other way.

If that’s the case, it’s possible that you would need to maintain two (or more) images: one for virtual machines (probably a VHD), and one for physical machines (maybe a WIM or a Ghost file).

With Native VHD Boot, you can finally have one, single base image that works everywhere. Your VHD can be booted in virtual machines, just like it always did, and it can also be used to boot your physical servers.

Ok, let’s get right to the heart of this thing.

To boot from a VHD, you need the following things:

A physical machine with the Windows 7 boot loader on it.
A VHD with a SKU of Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 (Enterprise and Ultimate only – sorry), or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.

Now, you’ve got those things ready, right? You’re all set? You’ve read the VHD FAQ? Cool.

Ok. You can find instructions on how to configure your computer on various web pages and videos, but they all seem pretty lengthy.

Want something simple? Something easy to remember?

Of course you do.

You can watch me run through the steps in the video below, or download it here.

For those of you who don’t want to download a video for a “simple” command, here are the Cliff’s Notes:

Get to an elevated or WinPE command prompt.
Use your favorite VHD-creation method to install Windows in a VHD.
Use DiskPart or DiskMgmt.msc to attach your VHD as a drive on your computer, and give it a drive letter (V:\ for example).
Run BCDBOOT.EXE V:\Windows
Sit back, relax, and reboot your computer to start booting into your new OS.

Important Notes:

If you’re booting to a Dynamically Expanding VHD, make sure that you have enough room on your physical disk to hold the VHD as if it were fully expanded to its maximum size. If you don’t have enough space, you’ll get a bugcheck during boot.
Hibernation is disabled when booted to a VHD.
You can’t boot to a VHD that lives on a network share or a removable storage device.

The Virtualization Nation Podcast - Episode 2. Wait, what?

mikekol — Wed, 06 May 2009 06:28:00 GMT

Some of you may remember that, a long while ago, I asked what sort of things you'd like to see in a Virtualization-themed podcast. Though it's been over a year since that post, I've still been thinking about starting a podcast and talking with other people on my team about getting one together. The reaction has been positive so far. There are quite a few folks who seem interested in putting something together.

However, we haven't gotten down to planning any of the solid details quite yet, so a regular podcast is still aways off. But there's really no reason why I have to wait for everyone else... and so, I give you the first episode of The Virtualization Nation Podcast. Episode 2.

Wait, what?

Well, since I promised all of you some more WIM2VHD videos, and since I'm nearly gotten the whole process down (I wound up buying Sony's Vegas Movie Studio Platinum, or whatever it's called... and it crashes a lot. Like, really a lot.), I deciced to start releasing them as video podcasts. As such, we're just going to call the first WIM2VHD video I made 'Episode 1', and go from there.

So there you have it: We're not ready to start doing this regularly yet, and the format is likely to change around a lot, and we don't have the whole XML feed thing set up quite yet... but the next episode is ready!

Click here to download the .WMV file.

How To: Install Ubuntu 9.04 in a Hyper-V VM

mikekol — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:17:00 GMT

The webbernetz are abuzz with news that a new version of Ubuntu has been released today. As such, I figured that I should post instructions on how to get it going under Hyper-V.

Now, I know that these steps are pretty complex, so I'll try to use as much detail as I can when writing them out.

Step 1. Download the ISO for Ubuntu.
Step 2. Create a VM and attach the ISO to it. Use a Legacy Network Adapter if you need network access.
Step 3. Turn the VM on.
Step 4. Follow the on-screen instructions.

That's it. It works right "out of the box", so to speak.

Enjoy!

WIM2VHD: 1000 downloads and counting!

mikekol — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:17:51 GMT

Every now and then, I like to visit the WIM2VHD website and see how many people have downloaded it. Aside from the ego boost, it’s a nice little figure to pass on to my management so they can see that this project was worth the time that I’ve spent on it. But yeah, it’s mostly the ego boost :)

Last night, I decided to check the download count before I went to bed, and I saw something that made me very, very happy: at around 10:30 PM PDT last night, there were about 1030 downloads.

That’s right – over 1000 downloads in about 45 days. Now, when compared to other projects – like Hyper-V – 1000 downloads in a month and a half is not earth shattering. But Hyper-V had marketing behind it. People knew that Hyper-V was coming – it was demoed at conferences and by news outlets. WIM2VHD was a surprise (and I hope it was a pleasant one).

It’s very humbling to know that something I’ve been working on is useful to you, and is (hopefully) helping you use Windows and virtualization more efficiently.

So, to all of the people out there who have downloaded and used WIM2VHD; to all of the people who have blogged about it; tweeted about it, or told co-workers about it; and to everyone who joined the “Fans of WIM2VHD” group on Facebook:

Thank you!

So, seeing how many people have downloaded WIM2VHD – How are you guys using it? Are you just playing around with it, or has it actually helped you be more productive? I’d love to know, so if you don’t mind sharing your stories and experiences please leave a comment letting me know.

Again, thank you all very, very much.

Does restoring a snapshot break domain connectivity? Here’s why.

mikekol — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:55:09 GMT

This is a pretty common question on our internal mailing lists, and I’d imagine that it’s common outside of Microsoft as well, so I thought it would make a nice blog post (since I’m way behind on blogging…).

So, you have a VM that’s joined to a domain and working perfectly. You take a snapshot so you can restore to this magical point of workingness at any time, and life is good.

One day, you need to fire up this VM and test something, so you revert to your snapshot and start the VM. That’s when you’re told that the domain doesn’t trust your (virtual) workstation anymore. What the heck just happened? No changes were made to the snapshot! That’s why it’s called a snapshot! Why did this break?

Well, you’re right. No changes were made to snapshot, and that’s part of the problem.

It’s part of the default Active Directory domain policies for a domain member to change the password for it’s account every now and then. You’ve no doubt had to change the password for your User Account occasionally, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. What may be a surprise is that the same thing happens for Computer Accounts. That’s right – computers have accounts, too.

Every now and then (by default, it’s 30 days, but the value is configurable via domain policy), the workstation will negotiate a new password with the domain. It all happens behind the scenes, so you’d never know it. It just works.

Unless you, you know, have a domain-joined VM with snapshots.

The problem comes about because the workstation – at some point – negotiated a new password with the domain and recorded it for future use. Then the snapshot was applied, and you turned your VM into a time traveler. This VM from the past was brought into the future, and has no knowledge of anything that happened in the interim. So, it thinks that it’s old password is still good. And it tries to use that password. And the domain says “um, no”.

Well that’s stupid. Why does Hyper-V let this happen?

It’s not just Hyper-V. Many years ago, in my previous life as a network admin, this happened all the time to my VMWare images. The same thing will happen in any situation where you convince Windows that the computer account password is something that it’s not (like restoring a snapshot or any other kind of backup).

Fine. What can I do about this?

There are three possibilities that I’m aware of. If anyone has any other suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

If you can, change the default domain policy, or get an exception created for your computer account(s).
This is not the best option because it opens up a security hole (small as it may be).
Log into a local administrator account on the system and leave the domain. Then rejoin it. The computer account will get updated with a new password that your workstation knows. Alternately, you could use NETDOM.EXE to reset the computer account password.
You could even automate this if you need to.
Sysprep the VM and create an unattend file that will configure it to your liking, and that will automatically join the domain for you. Once the machine is sysprep’d, make a snapshot and restore to that one from now on.

Hope that helps.

More PowerShell in R2 tricks

mikekol — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:30:31 GMT

The other day, Ben Armstrong posted the steps for installing Windows PowerShell on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. How awesome is that? A real, modern, powerful shell on Hyper-V Server!

It should be noted that this also works on Windows Server 2008 R2 Core SKUs, so if you’re running Hyper-V on one of those, you can also use this trick.

So why is this cool?

Well, first of all, if you install PowerShell on a Server Core SKU, you can use a new and more powerful tool for installing and configuring server roles and features.

To do this, you need to load the Server Manager module into your shell with the following command:

Import-Module ServerManager

You can get a list of the new cmdlets that this module provides by running:

Get-Module ServerManager

So, if you’re on a Windows Server SKU, you can install all of your roles or features this way. To install Hyper-V, you would use this command:

Add-WindowsFeature Hyper-V

Ok, that’s cool and all, but it’s not that spectacular. So how about being able to actually interact with Hyper-V from this shell? Even on Server Core or Hyper-V Server 2008 R2?

Check out James O’Neill’s PSHyperV project over on CodePlex. If you download this library, you can interact with Hyper-V directly from your Core console.

The first thing to remember is that you need to dot-source the HyperV.ps1 script so that all of the functions remain in memory, like so:

. .\hyperv.ps1

After you do that, you’ll get a list of all of the new functions and filters that this library provides. Just as an example, you can create and configure a VM with these commands:

$vm = New-VM -name “MyVM”
Set-VMMemory -vm $vm -memory 2GB
Set-VMCPUCount -vm $vm -CPUCount 2
# some other logic to create a hard drive, or attach an existing one.
Start-VM -vm $vm -wait

Announcing the Windows® Image to Virtual Hard Disk Converter (WIM2VHD)

mikekol — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:29:00 GMT

It was my New Years Resolution that I’d do an average of 2 blog posts per week this year. So far, I haven’t been doing a very good job of that, but I think I have a good excuse. I’ve been very busy with preparing to release a new tool, and now, I can finally announce it.

Fine citizens of the Virtualization Nation: I present to you the Windows® Image to Virtual Hard Disk Converter, or WIM2VHD as I like to call it.

WIM2VHD is a tool that will create a bootable VHD from a specified Windows 7 or 2008 R2 WIM image (like the INSTALL.WIM file that ships on the installation DVDs) without having to run Windows Setup. That means that you can a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine up and running much, much faster.

You can use these VHDs in Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Hyper-V, and … some other things, too. We’ll talk more about that later.

You can get WIM2VHD here.
(The release candidate has been released, too...)

I’ve done my best at creating some good documentation for WIM2VHD, which is available from the link above. Please make sure that you read the docs. If you have any questions, feel free to start a discussion thread at the WIM2VHD site.

Here’s a video I made introducing WIM2VHD, and showing it in action. More are one the way.

Please be aware, however, that while the underlying process of creating the VHDs is supported by Microsoft, WIM2VHD is not.

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Problems with QueryPerformanceCounter on Windows Server 2003 Multi-Processor Hyper-V guests? Here’s why.

mikekol — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:03:00 GMT

A friend of mine from another group came to me with a problem he’s been having on some Windows Server 2003 guests.

They’re doing some nifty stuff with the .NET Stopwatch() class, and some WPF animations, which uses the QueryPerformanceCounter Win32 API to figure out the timing during the animations. Apparently, when they run their code in Hyper-V, the animations look sort of… not good.

They’re using Windows Server 2003 SP2 x86, which has been allocated two virtual processors.

It turns out that our performance guru, Tony Voellm, has already encountered something like this. From Tony’s blog post:

The root issue comes about from the Win32 QueryPerformanceCounter function. By default it uses a time source called the TSC. This is a CPU time source that essentially counts CPU cycles. The TSC for each (virtual) processor can be different so there is no guarantee that reading TSC on one processor has anything to do with reading TSC on another processor. This means back to back reads of TSC on different VP's can actually go backwards. Hyper-V guarantees that TSC will not go backwards on a single VP.

The fix for this is to modify the guest’s BOOT.INI file by adding the /USEPMTIMER switch to your operating system’s boot entry. This tells the system to use a different timer for QueryPerformanceCounter-related tasks, and should alleviate the problem.

Update: It looks like some people are seeing this as an error in their event logs. The event number is 1054, and the event source is UserEnv. This is the same problem with the same solution, it's just a different way of showing up.

-mk

Making Ubuntu 7.04 Work Under Virtual PC 2007

mikekol — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 04:40:00 GMT

This isn't exactly on topic for this blog, since up to this point I've really only talked about getting Windows Vista running in a VM, but sometimes it's nice to talk about something else for a change.

One of the things that I like most about Virtual Machines is that they let me play with other operating systems besides Windows without having to have a dedicated computer risk its well-being for the task. If something doesn't work in a VM, then a quick click of a button and it's gone.

One of the other operating systems I've been playing around with lately is Ubuntu Linux.

There have been a good number of blog posts about getting Ubuntu working under VPC, but I haven't found any of them to be totally comprehensive, so I wanted to do one that encompases all of the issues that I've had getting it running. Please keep in mind that I am certainly not an expert in Linux - I really only know enough to get myself into trouble, but not necessarily back out. Also, I didn't come up with most of the tips here myself - thanks to ArcaneCode for a series of posts about the mouse issues, culminating with indianabeck's tip about the boot parameter. And thanks to my friend Marc Teale who helped me figure out how to fix the video problem, and taught me the fundamentals of actually using Linux and editing the configuration files. And also to Microsoft's own Ben Armstrong, who pointed me to ArcaneCode in the first place.

So, the first step, obviously, is to get a Windows PC with Virtual PC 2007 installed. I'm running the x64 version on Windows Vista Ultimate. Download the ISO for Ubuntu in whatever fashion you choose - just remember that Virtual PC only supports 32-bit guests, so make sure you grab the i386 version. Also, you don't need the alternate installer version. Just grab the regular one.
Start Virtual PC, create a VM with the specifications you want, and boot it. During POST, click the CD menu, and capture the Ubuntu ISO you just downloaded. You may need to reset the VM to get it to boot properly.
On the Ubuntu boot menu, select Start or install Ubuntu and hit F6. Add i8042.noloop to the end of the line, and press Enter. This will make the mouse work in recent versions of the kernel.
When Ubuntu boots to the Live CD and XWindows loads, the graphics will be... not good. You're going to need to change the color depth to make it display correctly. To do that:
- Hit CTRL-ALT-F1 to drop to a console.
- Type sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf and press Enter.
- Press CTRL W, type depth and press Enter. You should see a line that says "DefaultDepth 24". Delete 24 and type 16.
- Press CTRL O, and press Enter to save the file.
- Press CTRL X to exit the nano editor.
- Press CTRL-ALT-F7 to switch back to XWindows - that graphics will still not be right.
- Press CTRL-ALT-Backspace to reload XWindows. The graphics should be good to go now.
Run the installation like you normally would. When installation is complete, Ubuntu will boot, and the video should be correct (it was for me - if it's not, repeat the step listed above), but the mouse won't work. To fix the mouse in a more permenant manner, we'll need to add a kernel parameter to the GRUB loader. Here's how:
- Boot into Ubuntu on the hard drive.
- Hit CTRL-ALT-F1 to drop to a console and log in.
- Type sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst.
- Press CTRL W and type end default options, then press Enter.
- The first entry in the list below is the entry containing the information to boot Ubuntu in regular mode. Find the line that starts with kernel and go all the way to the end of it. At the end, type i8042.noloop, press CTRL O, and press Enter to save.
- At this point, you can do the same with the other entries, like the recovery mode one if you care enough to bother. If not, just hit CTRL X to exit nano.
- Type sudo reboot to reboot the VM.
- The next time you boot into XWindows, your mouse should work without issue. (You should also note that if you happen to upgrade your kernel version, you'll need to make this change *again*.)
And you're good to go do whatever it is you want to do.