System Center Guide

Tomorrow I’ll be presenting at the Irish Computer Society on the topic of Managing the Virtual Environment. As you know, the introduction of Virtual Machine Manager into the System Center family has broadened the suite to the highly volatile realm of virtualisation. This topic will cover the following high-level areas:

• Microsoft’s Virtualisation Commitment
• Harnessing Virtualisation to Meet Dynamic Business Demands
• Effective Virtualisation: Creating the Foundation for Dynamic IT
• Business Solutions That Span Both Virtual and Physical Resources

If interested in attending, please visit the ICS website.

Just another of my personal experiences with VMM. I just completed a P2V of a Windows Server 2003 Domain Controller. Actually, it was a V2V as I was using my virtual environment. Anyhow, one of the things to be aware of is that after doing the conversion and bringing the other system online it prompted to reactivate Windows due to the "significant hardware changes".

It also required a system restart due to the same newly detected hardware. Not a big deal, so to speak, but certainly a concern for production environments.

Lastly, I have to admit that the conversion process was not seamless. Because you’re transferring a live server to a virtualised version of the same, there are additional concerns that you have to tend to. Probably the most important of these is the need to properly reconfigure your network settings on the VM. While I updated my virtual machine settings to include the proper IP configuration settings, it actually took yet another restart for those settings to take effect. While I thought this odd, I was too tired and frustrated to try to figure it out.

Regardless of all this, I have to say that the P2V (or V2V as it actually was) is a painless experience. The real issues of the conversion process were updating the converted system to the newly appropriated virtual environment. And, that is the intent of this post. To alert you that the conversion process is not as cut-n-dry as the marketing material may lead you to believe. Conduct your own testing before you are forced to rely on the process.

Good luck and should you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them to the best of my abilities. You can contact me using the link above.

Take care,

Duncan

P.S. If you’re actually reading this blog, I’d really appreciate hearing from you. I realise I blog a lot of content for my selfish purposes of keeping a single-point-of-reference for my own self-serving purposes. But, if you’re reading this as well, I could use the encouragement to keep on keeping on.

Thanks!

Ran into this one as well this even, but I’ve seen it with other web applications as well when IIS is installed after you’ve updated your .NET framework. The IIS installation isn’t aware of the various .NET frameworks you have installed. So you must manually register them with IIS.

Navigate the C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 directory from the command shell and run the following command:

aspnet_regiis.exe -i

This will register the .NET 2.0 framework components with IIS and you’ll be laughing with your new Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal.

Like several others I’ve just ran into an issue with the Virtual Machine Manager installation. It would pass all prerequisite and then fail during the VMM portion of the setup with the following error message:

vmm ID: 205. Details: Fatal error during installation

Now, not being one to accept the 15-character limit description that TechNet refers to, I began searching some of the online forums and while they described doing things like renaming the box or – worse – removing a child domain from the FQDN, that didn’t make much sense to me either. While I could agree that DNS was a problem – especially when I noticed the degradation of my login time – I didn’t think changing the naming/domain structure would do it.

Sure, enough… after I had upgraded the server to Windows Server R2, SP2 it had changed the TCP/IP properties of my network adapter to DHCP-based settings. That’d be fine and good if my DHCP server was a real DHCP server. Instead, I’m using the DHCP servlet in my wireless router. Cheesy, I know. But it works and allows me to connect to my personal systems as well. So, after I changed my adapter properties to the correct TCP/IP settings… including a proper DNS server… I could once again access Active Directory properly and successfully complete the VMM installation.

So, if you’re still pulling your hair out with this one, try going back to the basics and keeping things simple.

This topic provides links to a variety of resources that provide useful information for performing daily operations in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (VMM). You will find links to conceptual explanations of key features, planning information, configuration information, procedures, and targeted troubleshooting.

Topics include:

• Using the VMM Administrator Console
• Using Windows PowerShell – Virtual Machine Manager command shell
• Managing hosts
• Configuring the Virtual Machine Manager library
• Creating virtual machines
• Creating templates, hardware profiles, and guest operating system profiles
• Deploying and migrating virtual machines
• Managing virtual machines
• Setting up virtual machine self-service
• Setting up reporting
• VMM administration
• Community resources

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ie/library/bb963711(en-us).aspx

I posted a while back that I thought the VMM virtual hard disk had disappeared from the VHD website. But in Rod’s post today, he found the direct download link.

If you’re not familiar with the VHD programme, it’s Microsoft’s attempt to replicate the success of Linux’s LiveCD distributions that allow you to have immediate access to the platforms/applications. In the case of Microsoft VHDs, these files are used in conjunction with Virtual PC or Virtual Server 2005 to save you the effort of building out the virtual environment for the purposes of evaluating the software. It’s a great first look, but most commonly you’ll still find yourself wanting to build from scratch yourself – that or I’m just a masochists in need of therapy. Anyhow, download to your heart’s content.

Get the VMM VHD

Get other VHDs

I came across a great, 98-page white paper today on Virtual Machine Manager for Virtual Server 2005 SP1 in the branch office scenario. Here’s a few excepts from the Introduction:

If you have a branch office with a limited number of servers, you may be faced with unique challenges. It may be necessary for you to isolate workloads – for example, your customer data may have to be isolated from your system data for regulatory compliance. It may be expensive or impractical to add physical machines to separate your workloads.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 gives your branch office the ability to isolate server functionality on a single server. Migrating workloads to Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 can also offer the increased performance and efficiency of newer servers to your legacy applications and workloads, and can allow you to consolidate your workloads onto fewer, more fully-utilized machines. Consolidation can dramatically reduce server sprawl, increase your operational efficiency, and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) for your branch office.

This cookbook serves two purposes. First, you can follow the step-by-step instructions in a test environment to get a basic understanding of the concepts, techniques, and applications used in this scenario. Second, you can refer back to this cookbook as a how-to guide to performing specific tasks in a production environment.

To cover the bases, this cookbook probably contains more information than you need. In addition to the Table of Contents at the beginning of this guide, each section also includes its own table of contents so that you can easily find the steps that you need most. If you already have a component installed or a step completed, move on to the next step or section.

Download the Cookbook

Am I losing my mind (again) or has the TechNet VHD website removed the System Center Virtual Machine Manager virtual hard disk?

I firmly believe that this year will host more acquisitions in the virtualisation market than all the other IT markets combined! To start us off, VMWare, the current market leader, has just announced its plans to acquire Thinstall, Inc. and Foedus.

Here’s what the company had to say about the acquisitions:

Today VMware announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Thinstall, a privately-held application virtualization software company headquartered in San Francisco. VMware is acquiring Thinstall to expand its desktop virtualization capabilities which help customers better provision, deploy and update desktop environments. The terms of the acquisition, which is expected to be completed in the current fiscal quarter, subject to customary closing conditions, were not disclosed.

VMware also disclosed its acquisition of services-related assets from Foedus, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based provider of virtualization technologies and services and a former North America Premier Partner. The goal of this acquisition is to accelerate the services intellectual property

(IP) development release to our VIP and VAC partner community.

With the acquisition of Foedus, we intend to work with our VMware partners to further expand their virtualization services expertise to help them expand their own virtualization services businesses by equipping them with best practices and IP. VMware will develop services and sales IP to directly benefit our partner community in new solution areas around VDI, Compliance, and ROBO (Remote Office Branch Office). In 2008, VMware is committed to increasing the mix of services revenue that is delivered by our partners. We are evolving our go-to-market customer coverage model to drive more services through our partner community.

The five principals of Foedus have joined VMware and Mike Reilly, the former CEO, has joined the Americas Partner Management Team and will be focused on Partner Services Enablement and Development.

Both of these acquisitions further expand the desktop virtualization opportunity for the VMware channel. Please read the press release for the full story on these acquisitions. We will post materials to Partner Central as more information becomes available.

 

Looks like the must-have toy this year is Virtualisation. And, the Christmas goodies just keep coming. Microsoft has recently made available for download the Server Virtualization Management Pack guides for MOM 2005 and OpsMgr 2007. These Management Pack Guides describes the features and requirements of the Server Virtualization Management Pack, and provides deployment instructions for the management pack.

Download the OpsMgr 2007 VMM MP Guide

Download the MOM 2005 VMM MP Guide