Microsoft removes limit on virtual machines migration

In the last two years Microsoft worked to release more virtualization-friendly license agreements.
The process has been slow but the results are remarkable: unlimited virtual servers paying one Windows 2008 Datacenter Edition, unlimited virtual databases paying one SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, up to unlimited virtual desktops paying a Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop license.

Now the company is taking further steps as its new hypervisor Hyper-V is out.

As anticipated last week, Microsoft has just announced that its licensing policy will change on September 1, 2008 to simplify the movement of virtual machines between physical hosts:

…

Microsoft is updating its software licensing terms for 41 server applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products. With the new terms, the company is waiving its previous 90-day reassignment rule, allowing customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed…

The Application Licensing Mobility Brief is now available for download from the Volume Licensing Briefs page of Microsoft.com. The Licensing Microsoft Server Products in Virtual Environments brief is also available from the Volume Licensing page. Understanding the combination of the 2 briefs is required in order to make sure companies have adequate Microsoft licensing coverage for virtual environments.

Bron: vm/etc enz.

Hyper-V for the ESX Engineer

Aaron Delp over at BladeVault.info recently published a good article on Hyper-V for the ESX Engineer.

Read it below.

I just attended a great session on Microsoft Hyper-V.  Before I go into my notes, let me give you my background to better frame this post.  I used to be an MCSE (NT4!) but I really haven’t touched Microsoft products in a number of years.  My focus has been on hardware architecture and eventually this has led me into the virtual architecture as it has gained acceptance into the market place.  If some of my highlights seem a little different than most posts out there, it is because I am making the ESX to Hyper-V mapping in my head.  I know ESX, I don’t know Windows Server 2008 (or 2003 for that matter).

With that out of the way, here are my points of interest in no particular order.

• Hyper-V is paravirtualized – paravirtualized means the virtual machine is “aware” (Microsoft uses the term enlightened) that it is virtualized.  If the machine isn’t enlightened, it will run in emulation mode.  Emulation mode requires a lot of context switching between user mode and kernel mode.  This will understandably slow down performance.
• The Hyper-V “Service Console” is referred to as the Management Partition.  This is a Windows VM with privileges into the kernel that other VMs do not have.  This (at least on the surface) is similar to ESX’s Service Console.
• It is recommended to run Hyper-V on Windows Core (stripped down version with no GUI).  The core version will consume less resources, require less patches, etc.
• Server 2008 has “roles” that determine the functions on the server.  Hyper-V is recommended to be the only role on the server for production
• Hyper-V does not share memory pages
• Hyper-V has quick migration instead of VMotion.  Instead of a live migration, the machine is suspend and resumed on another host.  The amount of memory will have a direct impact on the amount of time required because the memory contents will written to the disk and then read from the disk on the new host.
• Hyper-V relies on Microsoft Clustering Services right now to provide multiple host functionality for SAN connected virtual machines.  This means that Enterprise Edition is the minimum required OS level for the host to perform Quick Migrations
• It is recommended that each LUN contain only one VM.  Space needed will be disk space required + virtual RAM assigned to the machine (for quick migrations) + room for snapshots of the virtual machine
• Live Backups of a VM are supported through VSS if the guest OS is VSS aware
• Virtual Hard Disk files are .vhd files instead .vmdk files for ESX
• Raw Device Mapping (RDM) in ESX is called Pass Through Disks in Hyper-V

At the end of the session we briefly covered the Microsoft Enterprise Management Product (think Virtual Center).  It is part of Microsoft System Center and is called SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager).  Here are some points for this product.

• Since Distributed Resource Scheduling doesn’t exist today for Hyper-V, they support the idea of Intelligent Placement of a VM onto the farm.  This data is configurable but the SCVMM basically tracks performance of the hosts over a recent time period in an attempt to recommend the best placement of the new virtual machine on a host.
• The entire product is driven by Windows Power Shell and is completely customizable, exportable, etc.
• Upcoming version of the product will support ESX and well as Hyper-V.  In order to support ESX, an existing Virtual Center will be required for SCVMM to interface.  (Think single pane of glass for management).  I have my doubts on this one but I’m curious.
• Self Service Portal – End Users will be able to provision their own machines.  Again, I’d have to see this one.

bron: http://www.bladevault.info

Release: Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0

After over three years of development (the product was originally announced at WinHEC 2005 conference) Microsoft finally releases today its first bare-metal virtualization platform: Hyper-V.
During this very long process the product was delayed, changed name, and lost some planned key features.

Unlike Virtual Server and Virtual PC, Hyper-V is a type-1 virtual machine monitor (aka hypervisor) which features an architecture very similar to the one used by Xen and its commercial derivates.
This allows a direct comparison with platforms like Citrix XenServer, Virtual Iron, the upcoming Sun xVM Server and obviously with VMware ESX.

Unlike the latter, Hyper-V adopts a microkernel developed from scratch (so it’s not the Windows kernel) which is less than 1MB in size and delegates most of the tasks to a so called Parent Partition.
Depending on the configuration you adopted, the parent partition automatically loads a full copy of Windows Server 2008 or the new Windows Server 2008 Core.

Being a first generation product, Hyper-V cannot really compete with the above in features, but it clearly offers a performance boost (up to +107% in case of disk I/O activity) and some much deserved improvements over Virtual Server 2005 R2:

• Support for 32bit and 64bit virtual machines
• Support for up to 4 virtual CPU per VM (the actual number depends on the guest OS)
• Support for up to 64GB RAM per VM
• Support for the Windows 2008/2003/2000, Windows XP/Vista and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux guest operating systems
• Quick Migration (the capability to suspend, migrate and resume a VM from one host to another)
• Automatic patching through Windows Update and WSUS

Like for Virtual Server 2005, Microsoft supports most of its applications inside virtual machines, but one of the products still unsupported (on any hypervisor) is Exchange 2007.
Now Microsoft reveals that the Exchange team will release a support statement within 60 days from today, finally giving the OK for the much awaited mail servers consolidation projects.

The company also supports 3rd party applications through an optional certification program. At the launch date three companies are already qualified to run their products on Hyper-V: Diskeeper, IBM (with DB2) and Symantec.

With Hyper-V Microsoft will also compete on the embedded hypervisor front against VMware (with ESXi) and Citrix (with XenServer Express): OEMs like HP, Dell, IBM, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC and Unisys are already preparing to ship their hardware with the integrated hypervisor.
As already announced the price of Hyper-V in these configurations will be $28.

The new hypervisor doesn’t change the licensing scheme already introduced for Virtual Server: Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition license includes one virtual machine, the Enterprise Edition includes up to four VMs, and the Datacenter Edition allows unlimited VMs.

Microsoft Hyper-V is fully integrated with Windows Server 2008 64bit so any download of the OS includes it. Download a trial here.
For those customers already using the beta or the release candidate of Hyper-V, the product will be updated through the Windows Update service beginning July 8.

To demonstrate how much the company bets on this new product, Microsoft is internally adopting Hyper-V since a while and already migrated inside its virtual machines all the web front-ends that serve TechNet and MSDN websites.

Now the customers wait for the upcoming System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, currently in beta, to centrally manage Hyper-V (along with Virtual Server and VMware ESX), and MAP 3.1, in beta as well, to perform accurate capacity planning.

Hyper-V RTM’ed !

Hyper-V has RTM’ed ! That is way earlier than the initial 180 days after Windows Server 2008 release. Expect more information and official press release later today.

Source: Bink.nu

Exchange Server 2007 and Hyper-V

While at TechEd IT Pro North America 2008, I also had the opportunity to attend Brent Alinger’s session on Exchange Server 2007 and Hyper-V.  Brent is a Senior Test Lead on the Exchange Team at Microsoft, and he’s leading our testing efforts around Hyper-V.

Brent described a number of terms, such as the Hyper-V root (which is the parent or the host machine), Hyper-V guest (which is the child or virtual machine), virtual hard disks (VHD), passthrough disks, fixed and dynamic disks, and virtual machine state files.  Some of the more noteworthy bits of info from the session are:

• Within 60 days of Hyper-V’s RTM, the Exchange team will publish a detailed support statement for Hyper-V, and a TechNet article with best practices. I’m part of the Exchange Virtualization Working Group and will be helping to deliver some of this content.
• Customers should not deploy Exchange on Hyper-V until our support guidance is available.
• Early results show that performance of Exchange 2007 on Hyper-V is quite good, and that it scales very well from 1-4 processors per VM.

In terms of best practices and requirements, Brent shared the following:

• We’re only supporting guests running Exchange Server 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008.
• We’re only supporting fixed disks, and not dynamic disks.
• Storage should be on spindles that are separate from the Guest operating system VHD physical storage.
• Storage must be SCSI passthrough or iSCSI (with a preference of SCSI passthrough for queues, databases and log files).
• All Exchange server roles, except for the Unified Messaging server role, will be supported.
• For backup, hardware VSS should be used.
• There’s a limit on VHD size of 2040 GB.

Brent also mentioned that Hyper-V is a good fit when Exchange servers in branch offices cannot be consolidated to a central datacenter (for example, because of bandwidth or connectivity issues).

In terms of workload, not every workload is a candidate for virtualization.  For example, server roles such as Client Access and Hub Transport can be good candidates, but a more heavy hitter like the Mailbox role (which often uses all available resources on a physical server) might not be the best candidate for virtualizing.

It was a great session, and you can expect to hear a lot more about Exchange 2007 and Hyper-V over the coming months.

Source: Scott Schnoll

Clustering VirtualCenter 2.5 Using Microsoft Cluster Services

Chris Skinner, a Technical Trainer over at VMware created a document for clustering VirtualCenter 2.5 with MSCS. Feel free to distribute to clients and colleagues. A special thanks to Seva and Charu for challenging Chris to do this based on their VC2.0 document. This paper documents the steps to successfully implement a high availability solution for VirtualCenter 2.5 using Microsoft’s cluster services. There are some basic requirements to start the process. Microsoft requires Active Directory for cluster services. Additionally, Windows 2003 Enterprise server or higher will be necessary. This document was compiled from several sources. It demonstrates creating a VC cluster on the same ESX host (cluster-in-a-box) with a SAN-based quorum disk. The hyperlinks at the end of the document has more detailed information for other types of configurations, such as, cluster-across-boxes and physical-to-virtual.

SCVMM 2008 beta (Update for Hyper-V RC1)

If you go to https://connect.microsoft.com the update that allows SCVMM to work with Hyper-V RC1 is now available

Update for SCVMM 2008 Beta - (You can access this from the downloads page).

Install this update to enable Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta (VMM) to function with Release Candidate 1 (RC1) to the Hyper-V role. After you install this update, you may have to restart your computer. Once you have installed this update, it cannot be removed.

Before You Install the Update

The VMM server and all of the hosts in your environment must be running Hyper-V RC1. After you install the update, you will not be able to add hosts running Hyper-V RC0 to your VMM environment. For information about the Hyper-V RC1 download, see Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB950049).

Exporting and Importing virtual machines

Exporting virtual machine

Unlike VS 2005, when you want to move a virtual machine from one host to another, you cannot simply copy the configuration file (.VMC) and the VHD file and “make it “appear on the destination host with Hyper-V. To perform the same operation, you need to export the VM from the source host system, copy all the export files to the destination host and then import it into Hyper-V.

When exporting a VM, you can either export only configuration files (that contains all settings for this VM) or include all save state files (.vsv files), snapshot files (.AVHD files) and VM binary (.VHD file).

After you specify a root folder to store export files, the export operation will create a folder structure for you under the root folder as follow: ( assuming that the root folder is called C:\Export)

C:\Export

|———- <VM_Name>

| —————-  Virtual Machines

| —————- Virtual Hard Disks

The Virtual Machines sub-folder contains an export file (.EXP) that Hyper-V creates for export and eventually VSV files and AVHD files if you specify the option to export save state files for export. The EXP file will be read by the import operation to re-create settings for virtual machine at destination.

The Virtual Hard Disks sub-folder is the location where VHD file will reside.

To script the export operation with Hyper-V WMI, you simply call the method of the Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService Class and specify a reference to the VM to be exported, a flag that indicates whether you want to export system state files or not and an export folder. The call returns either 0 or 4096. All other values indicate an error in the parameters passed to the call.
If it returns 0, it means that the method is executed synchronously, If it returns 4096, the method is executed asynchronously and the Job output parameter can be used to track progress of the operation.

Here is an example:

## Get reference to a VM to be exported
PS C:\> $Core = get-wmiobject -namespace root\virtualization -class Msvm_ComputerSystem -filter ” ElementName = ‘IIS-CORE’ “

## Connect to the Virtual machine Management Service
PS C:\> $VM_Service = get-wmiobject –namespace root\virtualization –class Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService

## call the Export method
PS C:\> $status = $VM_Service.ExportVirtualSystem($Core.__PATH, $True, “C:\Export”)
PS C:\> If ($Status.ReturnValue -eq 0) { write-host “Operation Sucessful”; exit}
PS C:\> if ( $status.ReturnValue -eq 4096) { $JobStatus = $Status.Job.JobState; while ($JobStatus -ne 0) { sleep(1) } }

Importing virtual machines

The next step is to copy the folder structure under C:\Export to the destination host. It is not recommended to import a VM directly from the export folder and the import operation does not support network drive or network share folder so you can’t simply point the import operation to a network share like \\Server\C$\Export.

Here is an example of scripting the import operation:

## Connect to the Virtual machine Management Service
PS C:\> $VM_Service = get-wmiobject –namespace root\virtualization –class Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService

## call the Import method
PS C:\> $FlagGenerateNewID = $True # To ensure that the new imported VM will always get a new ID (GUID)
PS C:\> $status = $VM_Service.ImportVirtualSystem(“C:\VMs\IIS-CORE”, $FlagGenerateNewID)
PS C:\> If ($Status.ReturnValue -eq 0) { write-host “Operation Sucessful”; exit}
PS C:\> if ( $status.ReturnValue -eq 4096) { $JobStatus = $Status.Job.JobState; while ($JobStatus -ne 0) { sleep(1) } }

Bulk Export and Import

If you have a set of virtual machines to be exported from one machine and then to be imported on a different host, you can automate the operation as follow:

On the Source Server

$VM_Service = get-wmiobject -computer $SourceServer –namespace root\virtualization –class Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService

$ListofVMs = get-wmiobject -computer $SourceServer -namespace root\virtualization -class Msvm_ComputerSystem -filter ” ElementName <>Name”

foreach ($VM in $ListofVMs)
{

$status = $VM_Service.ExportVirtualSystem($VM.__PATH, $True, “C:\Export”)
If ($Status.ReturnValue -eq 0) { write-host “Operation Sucessful”; exit}
if ( $status.ReturnValue -eq 4096) { $JobStatus = $Status.Job.JobState; while ($JobStatus -ne 0) { sleep(1) } }

}

robocopy /z /s C:\Export \\$DestServer\C$\VMs

On the Destination Server

$VM_Service = get-wmiobject -computer $DestServer –namespace root\virtualization –class Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService

$ListOfFolders =  dir “C:\VMs” | where { $_.PSIsContainer} | select FullName
foreach ($f in $ListOfFolders)
{
$Folder = $f.FullName
$Status  = $VM_Service.ImportVirtualSystem($Folder,$True)
If ($Status.ReturnValue -eq 0) { write-host “Operation Sucessful”; exit}
if ( $status.ReturnValue -eq 4096) { $JobStatus = $Status.Job.JobState; while ($JobStatus -ne 0) { sleep(1) } }

}

Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Release Candidate is Now Available!!

The Microsoft Application Virtualization team is very excited to announce that our version 4.5 Release Candidate is now available! We’ve been working incredibly hard since the Beta release to bring you the best version of the product to date and we think we’ve achieved that goal! Since the Beta release, we have added several new features, fixed bugs and made sure the product was ready to scale for enterprise deployments. Our TAP customers (selected customers who work closely with us to deploy the product into production prior to its final release) will be expanding their deployments to thousands of production users with this release in order to help us validate the product’s full feature set, as well as performance and scalability.

Focus Areas

In case you are not familiar with our focus areas for App-V 4.5, this is what we chose to focus on for the release as a whole:

· Dynamic Virtualization allows the flexibility to control virtual application interaction. Administrators wanting to consolidate virtual environments, and enable faster, easier administration, can use the product’s Dynamic Suite Composition, which sequences and manages middleware and plug-in applications separately from the main application.

· Extended Scalability through new deployment options, including deployments that leverage MSI-based package deployment, our new Streaming Server component, file streaming and HTTP streaming.

· Internationalization, including support for packaging non-English language applications (except for complex script languages), using the product on non-English language operating systems and the localization of the product into several additional languages.

· Support for Microsoft Security Standards following the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle. This includes support for secure internet-facing scenarios and provides Secure by Default configuration out of the box.

What’s New

A lot has happened since our Beta release and we’re excited to share it with you! Here’s some new features that we’d like to highlight:

· HTTP streaming. We now support streaming virtual applications from an IIS server (version 6 or 7). This will provide dramatic performance and scalability improvements for customers with large App-V deployments. In addition, the use of a more familiar protocol will make some deployments easier and more straight forward.

· New Sequencer UI. We have greatly simplified the use of the Sequencer. There is now a single wizard for creating a new package and advanced settings have been put into an optional screen. In addition, enhancements have been made that will make editing packages even easier.

· Dynamic Suite Composition (DSC) for MSI packages. We introduced two great features with our Beta release – Dynamic Suite Composition and the ability to create MSI packages directly from the Sequencer. DSC allows the flexibility to control virtual application interaction. Creating MSI packages directly from the sequencer eliminates the need for a server environment when deploying virtual applications. But, it was a little difficult to use both DSC and MSI together with the Beta release. With the RC release, you can now dynamically suite two MSI packages together by following a few simple steps.

· Improved integration with SCCM 2007 R2. With the upcoming release of the Release Candidate version of SCCM 2007 R2, the ability to deploy virtual applications via SCCM will be seamless for SCCM administrators. Virtual applications can now be streamed via HTTP so that deployments can scale. Also, a new wizard will make the process of sending out package upgrades to users simple and straightforward.

· Reporting. Application usage information is now recorded locally on each client and then sent to a App-V Management Server during Publishing Refresh. This means that offline usage of applications or usage of applications when streaming from different sources is now all accounted for properly in the App-V database. We are also providing new guidance so that customers can run their own customized reports.

· New Manageability tools. We’ve added a OpsMgr 2007 Management Pack to improve the monitoring capabilities of your App-V servers. We’ve added a ADM template to make it simpler to manage common client configurations via group policy. Finally, we’ve created a VSS Writer so that backups of the App-V server can leverage the latest technology.

· Client cache improvements. The maximum size of the client cache has been increased to 1 TB. We also introduced a feature that allows for least recently used applications to be removed from cache should it become full and a user is trying to add a new application. Also, we’re created some perfmon counters to make it easier to monitor the state of the cache.

· New MSI package capability. As mentioned above, the ability to create MSI packages directly from the Sequencer was introduced in our Beta release. However, the application was required to be used in an “offline” way, such that no connectivity to servers was needed. Customers told us they like the ability to do just the publishing of application shortcuts, icons and file type associations via the MSI, but they wanted the ability to still stream applications to their clients and to deliver package updates this way, too. With the RC release, this is now possible via a new command line parameter that does just this publishing activity.

· Accessibility. The product is now Section 508 compliant, bringing App-V in line with other Microsoft products.

· Documentation. As part of the RC, we have updated the online help that is included with the product. In addition, we are releasing a Planning and Deployment Guide and a FAQ for Upgrading to Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5.

How to download the RC

Anyone may download the RC via the Microsoft Connect site (http://connect.microsoft.com). If you are not already signed in with your Windows Live ID once you are at the site’s homepage, click Sign In. If you have previously visited the Microsoft Connect site for the “Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Public Beta”, look in the Activity in All Connections Since Your Last Login section under Your Dashboard and then click Microsoft Application Virtualization. If you have not previously visited the Microsoft Connect site for the “Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Public Beta”, click Connection Directory and then click Apply Now next to the Application Virtualization 4.5 Public Beta listing. In the left navigation bar, click Downloads and then look for the link to the RC release download. Please make sure to read the Release Notes and Known Issues documents before installing the product.

Support for the RC

The RC release is intended for lab use only by non-TAP customers and it is not supported by the typical Microsoft Product Support Services team. However, there is a forum on the TechNet site where you can ask questions and a members of the App-V community can help. Here’s the link to the forum: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1971&SiteID=17

To Learn More

Monitor this blog for future posts that will go into more depth on these product enhancements. In addition, to learn more about Microsoft Application Virtualization in general, please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/default.mspx

All of us here on the product team are very happy to make this RC release available to you! Thanks for your interest and feedback! Please remember to post any issues you are seeing to the TechNet forum mentioned above!

Power and Hyper-V are now part of the Windows Server 2008 Tuning Guide!

The guide has been updated with sections on Power and Hyper-V guidelines and best practices.  Check out the updated Tuning Guide and tell us what you think by following the feedback link at the top of the Tuning Guide.  We look forward to hearing from you!