Virtual PC Guy's WebLog

VDI / RDP / Hyper-V / Laptop Challenge

I was reading Brian Madden the other day, and saw his post about trying out RDP 7 for his main desktop system.  After giving it some thought – this inspired me to take a similar challenge myself.

We have spent a lot of time working with the Remote Desktop Services team to enable the use of Remote Desktop Virtualization Hosts for centralized computing environments. 

But what is it really like to use a virtual machine through Remote Desktop for your daily computing needs?

Unfortunately I move around a lot – so if I tried to use a remote virtual machine, I would be forced to use another system a lot of the time as I cannot guarantee constant network access to any location where I can put up a test server.

So instead I am going to try this:

I will install Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop, enable Hyper-V, and create a Windows 7 virtual machine.  I will then use remote desktop on my laptop to connect to this virtual machine – and try to do all of my work there.

I will also run some other virtual machines on the system to simulate a decent workload of other users on a server.

I am genuinely interested to see how useable this will be for me, and what sort of problems and observations I will have through this process.  I am going to try and blog about any problems I encounter – and how I work around them, as well as blogging on my general observations.  I am expecting that some of the issues I will hit will be purely caused by using Hyper-V on a laptop – while others will be around using a virtual machine as my primary desktop environment.  This should be fun!

For those who are curious – my laptop is not a very powerful system for this sort of thing.  It is a Toshiba m400 with a dual core 2.0 ghz processor and 3.3GB of ram.

I will tag any future posts about this with [HDoaLC] – which stands for “Hosted Desktop on a Laptop Challenge”.  Stay tuned for more information!

Cheers,
Ben

Hyper-V Management Tools update for Windows Vista Service Pack 2

If you have installed Windows Vista Service Pack 2 on the system that you are using to manage Hyper-V – you should grab this update:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970203

Note that this is an “update” which means that you need to have the original version of the Hyper-V Management Tools installed first (you can get them from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952627/).

For those of you who are curious as to why you have to do this as a separate download than the whole Windows Vista Service Pack 2 process – the reason is that as Hyper-V RTM’d after Windows Server 2008, we had to release the Vista management tools as an optional separate component on Windows Vista.  The result is that we also have to service it separately – as we cannot assume that all users have it installed prior to installing Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

Cheers,
Ben

Fixing a missing “Create Virtual Machine” option [Windows Virtual PC]

Some people are finding that when they install Windows Virtual PC, their Virtual Machines folder does not have the option to Create Virtual Machine.  If this happens to you – there are three options that you can try:

1. When in the Virtual Machines folder, press “Alt” to open the menu.  Select Tools and then Folder options…. On the dialog that is opened click Restore Defaults.  Once you have done this, log out and log back in to see if the Create Virtual Machine option is now present.
   
   
2. If this doesn’t work – try running the registry file that is attached to this blog post, and restarting the computer.  This registry file deletes any custom settings for your folder views – and sets things back to their clean state.
   
   
3. If neither of these options works – you can manually start the new virtual machine wizard by going to your system drive and running:

“\Windows\System32\VPCWizard.exe”

Cheers,
Ben

Creating Virtual Hard Disks with Windows Virtual PC

Existing Virtual PC 2007 users who start using Windows Virtual PC may be startled by the lack of an obvious “Virtual Hard Disk wizard”.  But do not fear, the virtual hard disk wizard is still there – it is just hidden.  Or more accurately – it has been placed into more appropriate workflows.

The first place where the virtual hard disk wizard appears is when you are creating a new virtual machine.  If you select to Create a virtual hard disk using advanced options in the new virtual machine wizard you will seamlessly transition into the new virtual hard disk wizard:

The second place where the virtual hard disk wizard appears is from the virtual hard disk settings page, if you click on the Create… button:

Now, you may be wondering what to do if you want to create a virtual hard disk that is not associated with a virtual machine?  The answer is that you do not use Windows Virtual PC!  With Windows 7 virtual hard disk management is now part of the core operating system.  You can create virtual hard disks using either Disk Management or DiskPart:

Cheers,
Ben

Virtualizing Windows Essential Business Server

Thanks to Dugie for bringing this to my attention.  We have just published a document that outlines approaches and best practices for running Windows Essential Business Server in a virtual machine.  You can grab it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=933b2eb6-f3bb-47c1-a227-13bb2ccc0a94

Here is the abstract from the document:

This document provides guidance for virtualizing Windows® Essential Business Server (EBS) 2008 by using the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V™ technology. Server virtualization allows you to install Windows EBS software on a single physical server reducing hardware, energy, and management costs. Virtualizing Windows EBS consists of the following steps:

• Choose a virtualization configuration
• Install and enable Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008
• Create and configure the virtual machines for Windows EBS
• Install Windows EBS on the virtual machines

This document covers virtualizing Windows EBS Standard

Cheers,
Ben

Multiple Seamless Applications with Windows Virtual PC

We have spent a lot of time telling people how Windows Virtual PC and Virtual XP mode will allow them to run incompatible legacy applications on Windows 7.  Unfortunately a number of people have come away with the impression that you can only do this with Virtual XP mode and that you can only run a single application at a time.

This is simply not true.

Using Windows Virtual PC you can access seamless applications from Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 virtual machines.  You can have multiple applications running seamlessly in a single virtual machine, and you can have seamless applications running under different virtual machines at the same time.

If you look at this screenshot:

You can see that I have Internet Explorer and a command prompt running under the same (Windows XP) virtual machine.  I then have Windows Live Photo Gallery running under a separate (Windows 7) virtual machine.  All three of these applications have been launched directly from my start menu in Windows 7.

Cheers,
Ben

SCOM 2007 Management Pack for Hyper-V now available

The Windows Server Hyper-V Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 is now available for download here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=502e7a26-2fea-4052-89fd-8f75142de4f2

This management pack allows System Center Operations Manager to manage the health of Hyper-V and of virtual machines.

Cheers,
Ben

Disabling Integrated Mode in Windows Virtual PC

Earlier this week I talked about integrated mode in Windows Virtual PC.  And there I mentioned that there are times that you may want to disable integrated mode.  You can do this on a running virtual machine by using the tools menu:

You can also permanently disable integrated mode by disabling integration features under the virtual machine settings:

But what if you need to disable integrated mode while a virtual machine is booting?  Normally when a virtual machine with integration components installed is booting on Windows Virtual PC you will see the following display:

But what if you need to boot into safe mode?  Or are trying to reinstall the operating system? 

Well, you can do this by hitting “SHIFT + ESC” on this dialog.  You will then get access to the virtual machine session with integration features disabled.  This can be very handy at times.

Cheers,
Ben

Changes to virtual machine snapshots in Windows Server 2008 R2

In Windows Server 2008 R2 we have made some surgical changes to the way virtual machine snapshots work and how they are exposed in the system in order to address some key customer pain points.  Changes include:

• You can now export a single snapshot from a virtual machine.  This works by selecting the snapshot in question and then selecting Export… from the Action pane.  We will merge all the snapshot disk data into a single new virtual hard disk – and the resulting exported virtual machine will look like a virtual machine with no snapshots that is identical to the snapshot you selected.  Note that the virtual machine needs to be turned off in order to perform this operation.
• Snapshot AVHD files are now created in the same directory as their parent VHD files.  Their names have also been updated to include the name of the parent virtual hard disk.  Both of these changes make it easier to identify and group snapshot files.
• When you open the settings for a virtual machine snapshot and look at the hard disk settings – you will see the name of the AVHD that is associated with that snapshot.  This helps you to map AVHD files to specific snapshots.
• You can now edit AVHD files in the edit VHD wizard.  This means that if you want to manually merge AVHD files to a new VHD to give to someone else – you can (note: be careful as you can cause problems if you merge back into the parent in this case).
• You can now directly attach an AVHD file to a virtual machine.  This is very handy if you have lost your virtual machine configuration and need to get data off of a snapshot file.

There is more work we need to do here, but hopefully this will help make snapshots more flexible and usable.

Cheers,
Ben

What is Integrated Mode in Windows Virtual PC?

If you use Windows Virtual PC you will see “integration features” being mentioned.  These are enabled once you have the latest integration components installed, and can be enabled or disabled at will – but what are they?

When the integration features are enabled we are actually using Remote Desktop to connect to the operating system running inside the virtual machine.  This allows us to take advantages of many of the technologies built into remote desktop:

• The ability to display seamless Windows from the virtual machine
• The ability to redirect smart cards and printers to the virtual machine
• The ability to share folders to the virtual machine

We have worked hard to do this while maintaining a level of performance similar to that of Virtual PC 2007, and in many cases the performance is better.

However there are still times when you might need to disable integration features.  The most common is if you are running a program that needs to use DirectX or needs to change the resolution of the display – as neither of these are possible to do when using remote desktop.

Note that if you disable integration features you lose access to shared resources (smart cards, printers, folders, etc…).

Cheers,
Ben

Microsoft Mediaroom uses Hyper-V to virtualize IPTV

This is a bit old – but if you have not seen this already go check out:

http://www.microsoft.com/Mediaroom/PR/VirtualizationPR.aspx

The summary is that we have launched Microsoft Mediaroom with virtualization to enable IPTV providers to reduce their costs by consolidating hardware and increasing utilization with Hyper-V.

The neat thing about this – from my point of view – is that it demonstrates that Hyper-V is fully capable of handling such a demanding work load.  I also have heard from customers who are running their corporate VoIP servers in Hyper-V quite happily.

Cheers,
Ben

Creating virtual machines with Windows Virtual PC

If you have read about Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP mode, you may mistakenly think that Windows Virtual PC can only be used for running applications in Windows XP mode.  While this is one of the major features, Windows Virtual PC allows you to create multiple virtual machines and use them for multiple operating systems.

The process of creating virtual machines has been improved a bit since Virtual PC 2007, so I thought I would go over the process:

1. From the start menu, open the Windows Virtual PC folder and select Virtual Machines.
2. From the Virtual Machines folder, click on Create virtual machine.
3. On the first page of the Create a virtual machine wizard you can specify the Name and Location for the virtual machine.
4. Next you can configure the amount of Memory for the virtual machine, and whether Networking will be enabled or not.
5. Finally you can choose to create a new virtual hard disk or to use an existing one.

After completing this 5 step the virtual machine will be created, and you can install the operating system you want to run.  On the virtual hard disk configuration page of the create a virtual machine wizard you also have the option of selecting to create a virtual hard disk using advanced options.  If you select this option you will then see a number of extra pages that allow you to create a dynamically expanding, fixed-size or differencing virtual hard disk of any size that you want.

Cheers,
Ben

Hyper-V Import / Export in Windows Server 2008 R2

Soumya has published a great series of posts over on the virtualization team blog talking about a number of the changes that have gone into import / export in Windows Server 2008 R2.  Here is a quick set of links to gather them all together:

• Import / Export – Part 1: The case for new import / export functionality
• Import / Export – Part 2: The new import / export APIs
• Import / Export – Part 3: The UI
• Import / Export – Part 4: Export code sample
• Import / Export – Part 5: Import code sample
• Import / Export – Part 6: So what happened to configuration only export

Cheers,
Ben

Using Windows Virtual PC to run 16-bit applications on 64-bit Windows

I have had some people ask me whether you can use Windows Virtual PC – with its integrated Windows XP Mode – to run older 16-bit Windows programs on a 64-bit platform.  The answer is “Yes!”.  Here you can see a screen shot of SkiFree running on my laptop:

In the foreground you can see the error message that I receive if I try to run SkiFree directly on my laptop (which is running the 64-bit version of Windows 7).  In the background you can see SkiFree running under Windows XP mode.

This can be very useful if you have legacy 16-bit applications that you need to use, but want to take advantage of 64-bit computing.

Cheers,
Ben

Problem with Hyper-V Beta Components on Windows Server 2008 SP2

We recently published KB2000048 which outlines that if you try to run a Windows Server 2008 virtual machine, with beta integration components, on a Windows Server 2008 SP2 system – the virtual machine will fail to boot.

Ordinarily this would not be a big issue, but the real concern is that any virtual machine created with Windows Server 2008 RTM install media will automatically have the problematic beta integration components.

The best way to avoid this problem is to ensure that you install the RTM version of the Hyper-V integration components in all virtual machines prior to installing SP2 on the physical computer, and after installing SP2 you should use installation media with SP2 integrated into it to create new virtual machines.

If you cannot do this the article above provides you with a list of possible workarounds.

Cheers,
Ben