Archive for the ‘MS Windows server’ Category

Hyper-V in Hyper-V?!? :)

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

For testing and presentation puropuses I have installed inside my full Windows server 2008 64 BIT installation with Hyper-V another standalone Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 - everything works - you can even manage it using Hyper-V manager from other server but you can not (obviously! :)) run virtual machines. You get an error saying unable to create partition. You should be a wirdo to even think about souch stuff but I had a chance and I just could not resist pressing the START button. :) So you know now… Hyper-V inside Hyper-V does not work! :)

Hyper-V disaster recovery - virtual machine import even if not exported

Saturday, October 11th, 2008

First of all I would like to thank Dusan Kosaric to keep my moral up during this operation and for his help when I was trying to restore my virtual machine …  

I was very sad when I was not able to make it work… You know something happened to my Hyper-V server and needed to reinstall it. I made a clean installation and after it was set up I tried to import / run existing virtual machine back in… But then I read the articles about import and export of virtual machines… And I already saw myself reinstalling my virtual machine again. :( But NO! You can put it back to life folowing this steps:

Let’s assume that:

I have a VM folder located on D: so D:\VM and in it my virtual machine called machine01 with vhd called machine01.vhd (I had also a snapshot but it was lost during this procedure becouse I did not copied it… So I did not tested if it also restore snapshots… I only wanted my machine back to work…).

When you establish Hyper-V system again rename your current machine folder to let say machine01old - after that create a new virtual machine with the same hardware configuration as it was the machine before (and also with same location so d:\vm\machine01). When machine is created use Export to export it (not only configuration files but everything). It will create let say d:\Export and in this folder there will be three other folders.  Move or copy your original VHD to the location in Export\Virtual harddisk and you are ready… Your machine will start without problems.

 As I said this test was made a hour ago and I lost my snapshots but I did not care to restore them I just wanted my virtual machine to get back to life…

So as a conclusion… Hyper-V can be restored even if you are a bad administrator :) like I was in this case. :)

Hyper-V Server and FreeBSD hand in hand… :)

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Finaly we have a true solution for FreeBSD hanging when you want to reboot or stop it in Hyper-V server…
Today I recieved a comment on my article FreeBSD in Hyper-V - WORKS!!!. You can now patch FreeBSD kernel to shut down correctly…

 Check this blog too: http://shell.peach.ne.jp/aoyama/

Aoyama Says:

I made an easy patch for the kernel.
As a result, a virtual machine comes never to stop.
I expect someone to make the patch by a smarter method.

My patch can be downloaded from the following blogs.
http://shell.peach.ne.jp/aoyama/archives/40

This patched kernel confirmed the operation with
Server 2008 Enterprise w/Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server.

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 basic configuration

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

http://picasaweb.google.com/manojlovicluka/HyperVServer2008BasicConfiguration

In this photo-slide-show you can see some basic configuration of Hyper-V server. In the last picture there is shown a remote connection with Hyper-V management tool from one of my servers to Hyper-V server. 

First of all you will see that Hyper-V server is very similar to Core version of Windows server 2008. To help you with basic configuration Hyper-V server does include somekind of “menu” to do some basic tasks.

:) First problem that I see here is… What happens if I close this menu? How I get to it once again? Well… I did not find the answer on the internet as Hyper-V server is just to “fresh”. But I searched the registry and I found where this menu is located:

c:\Windows\System32\hvconfig.cmd

So if you accidentally close the menu you can find and run it from this location.

Next is… Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 needs to be managed from other machine with Hyper-V tools installed. But out-of-the-box Hyper-V Server has firewall enabled. Now you have two options. Or to disable firewall or to add ports to remotely manage Hyper-V service using Hyper-V tools (you can manage Hyper-V server from another Windows server 2008 with Hyper-V tools (even on 32-bit edition) or from Windows Vista workstation with Hyper-V tools installed).

To open firwall to allow remote management of HyperV service type folowing line in your Hyper-V Server command prompt:

netsh firewall set portopening ALL 137 “Hyper-V Management”

This allows remote connections from other machines using Hyper-V Manager.

I also like to be able to copy ISO images to Hyper-V server and for this reason you need to open another two ports or enable sharing. I did it in this way:

netsh firewall set portopening ALL 139 “Sharing 01″

netsh firewall set portopening ALL 445 “Sharing 02″

This two ports allow SMB over TCP you can read more on this on:

http://www.petri.co.il/what’s_port_445_in_w2k_xp_2003.htm

Installing Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

Here you can get a step-by-step install of Hyper-V server 2008

 http://picasaweb.google.com/manojlovicluka/InstallingMicrosoftHyperVServer2008

In this first post we only install our Hyper-V server 2008 in next post you can see some basic configuration you should do after installation.

In this article I assume that you have already enabled virtualization on your hardware. I used HP ML 380 as a server for this demo and in my previous Hyper-V articles you can see how hardware virtualization (do not forget to completly TURN FF your server after enabling virtualization - reboot is not enough!!!) is enabled on this kind of server.

 I believe in Hyper-V! :)

Microsoft Hyper-V server 2008 is here!!!

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

I welcome you to join virtualisation experience with this fantastic product… At the moment of writing I am testing Microsoft Hyper-V server 2008 and it works great… In next days I will post some screenshots on how to install, configure and manage Microsoft Hyper-V server 2008…

http://www.microsoft.com/servers/hyper-v-server/default.mspx

Windows Server 2008 Core configurator…

Friday, September 26th, 2008

As it is quite difficult to configure Windows Server 2008 Core - speciali if you are not used to use command prompt as your main configuration utility … :) There is a tool available online that helps you configure some basic tasks…

It is quite similar to Windows Hyper-V server 2008 configuration menu…

http://www.codeplex.com/CoreConfig

Happy core configuring… :)

Hyper-V FreeBSD shutdown problem workaround

Friday, July 18th, 2008

Thanks to Mike … 

Mike wrote: 

“I’ve found an even easier way to do this.  I found a PowerShell Hyper-V script at:

http://www.codeplex.com/PSHyperv

It has a lot of functions already, and I added a “Kill-VM” function that automates the kill process:

Kill-VM <VM name>

My modified script is attached to this message.

To use it, you need to install PowerShell (Under Server Manager -> Features in Win2008).  Once installed, run PowerShell from Start -> Search, find the script, and type:

. .\hyperv.ps1

Once loaded into memory, type:

Kill-VM <VM Name>

Enjoy”

Click here to download script - hyperv-script.zip

FreeBSD on Hyper-V - shutdown hangs…

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

If I try to reboot my working FreeBSD machine in HyperV it does not work… FreeBSD somehow hangs the reboot procedure and I need to reboot my Windows server 2008 with Hyper-V - it can not be turned off even by clicking on “Turn off…” in a virtual machine context menu…

For now the only solution I found is to use command:

shutdown -p now

and when it turns off I turn it back on with Hyper-V console…

 :) hope it helps

FreeBSD in Hyper-V - WORKS!!!

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

I am so happy - I managed to make it work…
What we need to make FreeBSD run on Hyper-V:

- download FreeBSD ISO image from:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/200806
Download this ISO image:
7.0-STABLE-200806-i386-disc1.iso

- create new Virtual Machine using Hyper-V
- remove default network card that is added by wizard
- add hardware and chose Legacy network adapter
- start the machine and “mount” ISO image to start booting FreeBSD…
- install it with parameters you want…

- **** NETWORK PROBLEMS **** Even if you are runing DHCP server on your network your FreeBSD machine will not get IP from your DHCP server (my machine did not) so I used ifconfig to add IP and gateway this way:

ifconfig de0 10.70.60.201 - this is IP in my subnet you should use one of your free IP’s
ifconfig de0 down
ifconfig de0 up

You can now chec status of your IP with:
ifconfig

Ok, now we need a gateway to get to the internet:
route add 0.0.0.0 10.70.60.1 This will add your default gateway (for example my gateway is 10.70.60.1)…

try to ping an public IP address to see it is working… As you can see in my screenshots it works for me. :)

FreeBSD on Hyper-V [docx]
FreeBSD on Hyper-V [pdf]

*** There is still one problem unsolved for now… If you try to reboot Free BSD, Hyper-V does not Turn off the machine … I am trying to solve that with some Nejc tricks :)