TechEd Bloggers Virtualization

Hyper-V on a Laptop Running 11 VMs

Dave Northey — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:11:30 GMT

Dave Northey writes, "I can comfortably run eleven VMs on the one laptop, including a two node Hyper-V cluster, App-V and the four main System Center products including a two node Hyper-V cluster, App-V and the four main System Center products..." more

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:11:30 GMT

How To Fix a Corrupted Virtual Hard Disk

Ben Armstrong — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:06:27 GMT

Ben Armstrong writes, "The short answer is: "Run data recovery tools inside the virtual machine." For the long answer we need to look at how the virtual hard disk is structured. Reading from the Virtual Hard Disk specification (available here) you can see that virtual hard disks have the following structure..." more

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:06:27 GMT

Tips on Manually Adding a Virtual Machine Configuration File to Hyper-V

Ben Armstrong — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:31:27 GMT

Ben Armstrong writes, "People have been asking for a while for a way to add a virtual machine configuration file (.XML) directly to an instance of Hyper-V without first needing to export and import it. Some key things that I want to point out about this approach:" more

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:31:27 GMT

Importing Physical Machines to Hyper-V

Dan Griffin — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:03:30 GMT

Dan Griffin writes, "I migrated a physical 64-bit Windows Server 2003 file server over to Hyper-V...A few additional notes about that procedure: first, while the VMware tool ran fine on 64-bit Windows Server 2008, Vmdk2Vhd did not. Instead, I ran the latter on a 32-bit Vista workstation and just converted the files..." more

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:03:30 GMT

New VSTS Virtual Machines

Stuart Celarier — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:37:05 GMT

Stuart Celarier writes, "The previous VSTS VMs are set to expire at the end of 2008; the new ones expire at the end of 2009. Additionally, all the components have been updated to recent versions. There are four VM images to choose from. You can select" more

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:37:05 GMT

Hyper-V Resolving Event ID 4096

John Howard — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:20:01 GMT

John Howard writes, "...the Event ID 4096 which indicated there was a problem with V:\VMs, the original location I was using when moving virtual machines across from Virtual Server...So it’s a simple case of very carefully deleting that or those links...which refer to the old directory, and cycling the VMMS..." more

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:20:01 GMT

Connecting to a VMware Server with the VI Toolkit

Hal Rottenberg — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:37:25 GMT

Hal Rottenberg writes, "...how to connect to a VMware Server (version 2 required) with the VI Toolkit. As Server uses a different default port than VirtualCenter (which uses 443), you must specify it to the Connect-VIServer cmdlet..." more

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:37:25 GMT

Tip Creating a Fxed Size Virtual Hard Disk

Ben Armstrong — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:38:20 GMT

Ben Armstrong writes, "If you have ever created a fixed-size virtual hard disk that was larger than, oh - 2GB, you probably noticed that it takes quite a while to create...data is never actually deleted from a disk when a file is moved or deleted (it is just dereferenced) so to avoid the above scenario..." more

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:38:20 GMT

Tip on Hyper-V Host Clustering via ISCSI

Ryan Femling — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:18:37 GMT

Ryan Femling writes, "The main issue I ran into was with creating new physical disk resources. When you create a cluster and add nodes to it, you may end up adding a disk resource from a machine that does not own the cluster group....If you're in a situation where you need to add physical disk resources and the GUI won't see them, here's what you do:" more

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:18:37 GMT

Hyper-V Scripts to Send Data From Parent to Virtual Machine via KVP

Ben Armstrong — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:52:38 GMT

Ben Armstrong writes, "...In Hyper-V what you manipulate is a collection of key-value pairs that are stored in the parent for each virtual machine...here are the scripts to add a new KVP to send from the parent to the virtual machine:" more

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:52:38 GMT

Managing Virtual Infrastructure Requires an Application Centric Approach

Lori MacVittie — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:25:04 GMT

Lori MacVittie writes, "This is such a simple statement that gets right to the heart of the problem: when applications are decoupled from the servers on which they are deployed and the network infrastructure that supports and delivers them, they cannot be effectively managed unless they are recognized as individual components themselves..." more

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:25:04 GMT

VMware ESX 3.5 and SAN LUNID Allocation Issue and Resolution

Simon Seagrave — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:15:39 GMT

Simon Seagrave writes, "I had 2 ESX servers connected to the same SAN storage. All LUNs had been presented to both ESX servers though they both had different LUN ID’s allocated to each LUN within VMware ESX. As a result vMotioning of VM’s with Raw Device Mappings (RDMs) was not possible..." more

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:15:39 GMT

Handling the Domain Controller Dilemma

Ben Armstrong — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:27:27 GMT

Ben Armstrong writes, "The basic problem is this: if you decide to virtualize all of your servers, how do you handle the domain controllers which control the domain used by your Hyper-V servers? There are a couple of options that you can consider here:" more

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:27:27 GMT

Warning on Hyper-V hosts under SCVMM

Ben Armstrong — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:13:48 GMT

Ben Armstrong writes, "When you first add a Hyper-V host to SCVMM 2008 you may see a warning icon displayed with the message "Needs Attention" and "Virtualization service version status is not up-to-date". To get rid of this alert there are three updates that need to be applied to the Hyper-V server:" more

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:13:48 GMT

Code for KVP GuestIntrinsicExchangeItems with HyperV

Ben Armstrong — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:50:15 GMT

Ben Armstrong writes, "...This is the component that enables the exchange of basic string data between the parent and child environments...I want to show you how to get the information from the last category and display it in the parent partition. The biggest challenge with doing this is handling the fact that this data is returned as an XML blob..." more

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:50:15 GMT

App-V to Support Streaming of 64-bit Apps by 2010

Mary Jo Foley — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:07:27 GMT

Mary Jo Foley writes, "Microsoft will add 64-bit support to all of the existing App-V offerings — App-V for desktops, App-V for Terminal Services and App-V for hosters (an option the company just added to its line-up in September 2008)..." more

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:07:27 GMT

How to Set Up Your Laptop to Run SCVMM 2008

Keith Combs — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:24:22 GMT

Keith Combs writes, "First and foremost you’ll need a machine capable of running the x64 version of Windows Server 2008. I’ll assume you are most interested in running Hyper-V. With that in mind, you’ll need a decent CPU, ample memory, and hard disk space...Next, you need to make some decisions about your security model...." more

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:24:22 GMT

Virtualization hands-on Labs in 8 US Cities

Keith Combs — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:29:36 GMT

Keith Combs writes, "Get Hands-on with Virtualization – 8 US Cities Left To Go...Free Microsoft evaluation software for all event attendees! You’ll take home an evaluation kit with versions of the latest virtualization products..." more

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:29:36 GMT

The great virtualization experiment

Paul Thurrott — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 07:30:53 GMT

Paul Thurrott writes, "...I loaded up Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 first and have to say, it’s a bit of a mess. It does nothing out of the box, and you have to manage it remotely...once you get things configured correctly, you can of course start installing virtual machines on Hyper-V Server, and remotely. And it works as advertised..." more

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 07:30:53 GMT

Fundamental Question on Virtualization

Todd Biske — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:58:45 GMT

Todd Biske writes, "In contrast, if the current state has nothing to do with the operating systems capabilities, and more about how we choose to allocate systems to those resources, then will virtualization make things any better? Put another way, how much of the potential value in applying virtualization is dependent on our ability to properly configure the VMs? If that number is significant, we may be in trouble..." more

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:58:45 GMT