October 2008 Archives

Let's say you're trying to configure Hyper-V Guest storage and you have so many volumes that you run out of letters in the alphabet (there are only 26 letters you know). What is one to do?

It's a question posed to the Microsoft Enterprise Support Windows Server Core Team quote often. So often, in fact, that Chuck Timon, senior support escalation engineer, wrote a blog post about how storage in a Hyper-V Guest can be referenced using a Volume Globally Unique Identifier. 

Chuck included step-by-step instructions and screenshots to walk you through the process. Happy Virtualizing.

Nirmal Sharma is publishing a regular series of Windows Server 2008 Tips on Serverwatch.com. There are five tips so far, and they focus mainly on changes to Windows Server 2008 from previous versions of Windows Server.

'GlobalNames' Zone, A DNS Feature in Windows Server 2008
Microsoft developers have designed GlobalNames Zone (also called GNZ) to provide the same functionality as WINS. This is a step taken by Microsoft to retire WINS completely from the customer's networks.

DFS Offers New Functionality in Windows Server 2008
DFS in Windows Server 2008 has been improved. The DFSR, a service running in Windows Server 2008, can now be used to replicate SYSVOL contents. Previously, we had to use FRS for SYSVOL.

Command Line Tips, Windows Server 2008 Server Core
There is no GUI included in the Server Core. You must perform all the commands by using the command-line tools supplied with the Server Core. Here are few important ones.

Background Zone Loading, New Functionality in Win Server 2008 DNS
Microsoft has changed the behavior of DNS server in Windows Server 2008. Now, DNS server running on Windows Server 2008 loads the zone data from Active Directory while it restarts so that it can respond to the client requests coming to DNS server for other zones.

Remote Control in Windows Server 2008
RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools) is available with Windows Server 2008 and enables remote management of Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 computers from a computer running Windows Server 2008.

As we mentioned earlier in the week when discussing IDC's take on the virtualization market, management of all of the virtual machines being deployed is quickly becoming an interesting and growing area to watch. System Center Virtual Machine Manager was released to manufacturing this week. It goes on sale Nov. 1.

You can get an online demo or download an evaluation copy at the System Center VMM home page.

Richard Adhikari's story on InternetNews takes a look at the new product from Microsoft as well as competitive offerings from VMware and a look at how Microsoft's overall virtualization strategy is starting to fall into place.

IDC, known far and wide for tracking all things tech, released its first look at the virtualization market in the form of the Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker this week. It should come as no surprise that it found virtualization license shipments for the second quarter of 2008 increased 53 percent over the prior quarter but were up 72 percent over the same quarter last year.

As for how IDC does this, Brett Waldman, research analyst for system software, says the survey tracks usage not deployments. He adds: "Since all mainframes and virtually all x86 and RISC servers are shipping with a hypervisor, it's not right to track the installed base of the software."

Once again we see the attention starting to turn beyond virtualization itself and on to the management of all the virtual servers popping up all over the place:

Waldman said one pattern demonstrates the rapid commoditization of hypervisors, a trend that became obvious following Microsoft's entry into the market with Hyper-V, which it distributes for free with Windows Server 2008. The impact of Microsoft's joining the fray with its free offering resulted in software revenue relating to server virtualization increasing only 15 percent increase during Q2, as compared to 32 percent growth in Q1.

"Things are starting to become very competitive, with the hypervisor itself becoming very low to almost no-cost," he said. "The real interesting areas are going to be in the management of virtualization and how companies can manage their physical and virtual servers together."

David Strom took a look at the evolving virtualization market in Datamation six months ago. Microsoft has come on strong since then.

You've probably noticed the increased emphasis on Hyper-V around the Windows Server 2008 Innovation Center and here on the blog. As part of the big Hyper-V push, Microsoft has created all sorts of new materials designed to promote virtualization with Hyper-V (we call them "assets"), including a list of the "Top 10 Reasons to Move to Server Virtualization with Hyper-V."

You can get the entire document with more detailed explanations behind each of the reasons by downloading it from Microsoft's site. We'll give you the list itself right here:

1. Reduce Infrastructure Costs Through Consolidation
2. Virtualize the Most Demanding Workloads
   
3. Virtualize for High Availability
4. Improve Security and Reliability with Microkernelized Hypervisor
5. Protect Important Data Using Live Backup
6. Minimize Downtime with Quick Migration
   
7. Delegate Virtual Machine Management
8. Reduce Support Time with Integrated Management
9. Save Time and Money with a More Flexible Test Environment
10. Take Advantage of Broad Compatibility

Microsoft blogger Dan Woodman returned from a brief vacation with a singular goal in mind: installing Hyper-V Server. He chronicled his experience on his blog, warts and all.

There are four basic sections to the post:

• Installation
• Configuration
• Building a domain controller
• Using Hyper-V as it was intended

Dan ran into a firewall issue, as well as a problem around security authentication, so it's a good read if you're preparing to install Hyper-V Server and want to see what to expect. Once he got those issues resolved, Dan was a happy man:

Once I had everything working and could actually create virtual machines, WOW!  The interface from within Windows Vista was every bit as robust and functional as the actual Hyper-V management tool built into Server 2008.  I get a snapshot of my machines, have access to all the settings, networking options, etc.

If you're one of the many people who are experimenting with virtualization using Hyper-V (and we know you're doing it in a lab environment after taking all the necessary precautions and creating backups, right?) Microsoft blogger Tony Soper is providing an interesting opportunity for you to share what you've learned.

If you have some Hyper-V knowledge you'd like to share, you can send it to Tony by following the instructions on his blog.

The first reader to take Tony up on his offer was Jeremy Hagan, who wrote about how to shrink a VHD file. Jeremy's basic dilemma went something like this:

One problem I have had when trying to do my first round of P2Vs for my Hyper-V implementation that I didn’t notice in testing is that you can’t size the VHD of the VM smaller than the corresponding physical disk of the original machine.  Since it is best practice to have one LUN per VM and it is also best practice to have fixed VHDs, this can cause a lot of wasted SAN space.

And his solution revolves around this:

What I decided I needed to do was to P2V each machine to a sufficiently large scratch LUN, then shrink down the VHDs to be the size I wanted then migrate the VM off the scratch LUN to the desired LUN.  Easy right?  Well maybe not.  After much searching I have managed to come up with a recipe for doing this.