Recently the ASKCORE Team wrote an excellent article about the most common problems that they receive from their clients regarding to Hyper-V R2 Live Migration.
According to them, the most common problems are related with some bad habits and bad decisions regarding to network configurations. The article also explain some techniques to increase the speed of the process (they’ve called it – Bonus Material :)).
Read more at “The devil may be in the networking details.”
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool V2.1
Microsoft released their new Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool; the new version of this tool includes support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2.
What this tool can do for you?
Basically allows you to perform updates in your offline VM's that are in your VMM library. A scheduled job runs, deploys the VM, updates it and stores it back in the library during this process.
Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1 now supports the following products:
What this tool can do for you?
Basically allows you to perform updates in your offline VM's that are in your VMM library. A scheduled job runs, deploys the VM, updates it and stores it back in the library during this process.
Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1 now supports the following products:
- Hyper-V-R2
- VMM 2008 R2
- SCCM 2007 SP2
- WSUS 3.0 SP2
- Updates to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machines.
Download it Here
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Disk2vhd v1.4 available for download
New update for Disk2vhd, now we can use the 1.4 version of the product.
Back In October SysInternals gave us the Disk2vhd v1.1 the announcement was made here at ENIACK, the v1.3 was released in November, now SysInternals is back with the new version of the same tool “v1.4”.
To download, click HERE
Read more about the new version at Sysinternals
Back In October SysInternals gave us the Disk2vhd v1.1 the announcement was made here at ENIACK, the v1.3 was released in November, now SysInternals is back with the new version of the same tool “v1.4”.
To download, click HERE
Read more about the new version at Sysinternals
Core Configurator 2.0 available for download
Core Configurator 2.0 is now available for download at CODEPLEX.
It is completely open source so it can be ammended and change to fit your requirements, this version has been a year in the making and has been written in powershell with a reference to Winforms so that a GUI format is displayed.
The primary focus of this project is to try and get feedback and contributions back from the community to make this a tool the best/ free tool everyone will want in there toolkit, so if you have some code or features that you might want included then please leave a comment and we will get in touch.
Core Configuration tasks include:
-Product Licencing
-Networking Features
-DCPromo Tool
-ISCSI Settings
-Server Roles and Features
-User and Group Permissions
-Share Creation and Deletion
-Dynamic Firewall settings
-Display
-Screensaver Settings
-Add & Remove Drivers
-Proxy settings
-Windows Updates (Including WSUS)
-Multipath I/O
-Hyper-V including virtual machine thumbnails
-JoinDomain and Computer rename
-Add/remove programs
-Services
-WinRM
-Complete logging of all commands executed
It is completely open source so it can be ammended and change to fit your requirements, this version has been a year in the making and has been written in powershell with a reference to Winforms so that a GUI format is displayed.
The primary focus of this project is to try and get feedback and contributions back from the community to make this a tool the best/ free tool everyone will want in there toolkit, so if you have some code or features that you might want included then please leave a comment and we will get in touch.
Core Configuration tasks include:
-Product Licencing
-Networking Features
-DCPromo Tool
-ISCSI Settings
-Server Roles and Features
-User and Group Permissions
-Share Creation and Deletion
-Dynamic Firewall settings
-Display
-Screensaver Settings
-Add & Remove Drivers
-Proxy settings
-Windows Updates (Including WSUS)
-Multipath I/O
-Hyper-V including virtual machine thumbnails
-JoinDomain and Computer rename
-Add/remove programs
-Services
-WinRM
-Complete logging of all commands executed
Monday, November 23, 2009
Windows 7 Application Compatibility Tool
In this webcast, Chris Jackson, demonstrates how you can use the Windows 7 Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 to get your application portfolio ready to migrate from a Windows XP to a Windows 7 environment. He shows how to gather an application inventory and mitigate application compatibility issues.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Hyper-V: How to Shrink and change the partition Size for a vhd file
Recently Tonyso posted an interesting article about how to shrink and change a partition size for a vhd file.
There’re a lot of reasons why should be interested in doing something like this, for instance, you may need to reduce the size of a vhd file that was created during a P2V migration, or you may need to reduce the maximum size of a given partition for an old miss configured vhd file with extra unused space, or perhaps you need to consolidate your available storage and for that you need to readjust the existing vhd files to the correct size…
Check it out how to do it with ISO Linux distro that includes NTFSRESIZE and FDISK
PS:
In the future posts, I’ll show you different ways to do the same thing with different tools.
There’re a lot of reasons why should be interested in doing something like this, for instance, you may need to reduce the size of a vhd file that was created during a P2V migration, or you may need to reduce the maximum size of a given partition for an old miss configured vhd file with extra unused space, or perhaps you need to consolidate your available storage and for that you need to readjust the existing vhd files to the correct size…
Check it out how to do it with ISO Linux distro that includes NTFSRESIZE and FDISK
PS:
In the future posts, I’ll show you different ways to do the same thing with different tools.
Office 2010 Beta available for download
Try the new Office 2010 you can get it at
OFFICE BETA
Also available at TechNet and MSDN for subscribers
OFFICE BETA
Also available at TechNet and MSDN for subscribers
Hyper-V Cluster Error: An error occurred while creating the cluster. An error occurred creating cluster 'clustername'. The service has not been started.
Here’s an interesting one that I already run a couple of times. You try to create a cluster at Hyper-V, the cluster pass all validation tests, then, at the final phase of the cluster creation, the process fails with the following error:
An error occurred while creating the cluster. An error occurred creating cluster 'clustername'. The service has not been started.
After this, the cluster computer account is removed from Active Directory!!!
After a closest check, I notice that the problem is related with the “Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter” - “This device cannot start. (Code 10)”.
Hum…
After a reboot I saw the following errors at the event log:
EventID 4872:
The failover cluster virtual adapter failed to generate a unique MAC address. Either it was unable to find a physical Ethernet adapter from which to generate a unique address or the generated address conflicts with another adapter on this machine. Please run the Validate a Configuration wizard to check your network configuration.
and
EventID 4871:
The cluster service failed to start. This was because the failover cluster virtual adapter failed to initialize the miniport adapter. The error code was '2147483674'. Verify that other network adapters are functioning properly and check the device manager for errors. If the configuration was changed, it may be necessary to reinstall the failover clustering feature on this computer.
Okay, something is wrong with the MAC Address creation for the Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter. What can we do about that?
Solution:
(Before proceeding, make sure that you backup of your registry)
- Open registry, and navigate to the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
- Under this subkey, find the subkey that holds a DriverDesc string value entry whose value is "Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter." (NOTE: 007 was the key designated were the Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter was in my server, but this number may vary on different servers.)
- Under the subkey (in my scenario "007"), add the following string value registry entry:
Name: DatalinkAddress
Value data: 02-AA-BB-CC-DD-01
String Value (REG_SZ)
Restart the computer.
DONE!!!
Repeat these steps for computers were you're having this problem. When you do this on other computers, replace the value data of the registry with different values in order to set a unique value for each node. For example, set the value on the second node to 02-AA-BB-CC-DD-02, and set value on the third node to 02-AA-BB-CC-DD-03. If you notice this behavior on distinct clusters, make sure that you use an address for each node that is unique across all clusters.
Recently, Microsoft has released the KB973838 that describes the same issue.
Have Fun!!!
An error occurred while creating the cluster. An error occurred creating cluster 'clustername'. The service has not been started.
After this, the cluster computer account is removed from Active Directory!!!
After a closest check, I notice that the problem is related with the “Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter” - “This device cannot start. (Code 10)”.
After a reboot I saw the following errors at the event log:
EventID 4872:
The failover cluster virtual adapter failed to generate a unique MAC address. Either it was unable to find a physical Ethernet adapter from which to generate a unique address or the generated address conflicts with another adapter on this machine. Please run the Validate a Configuration wizard to check your network configuration.
and
EventID 4871:
The cluster service failed to start. This was because the failover cluster virtual adapter failed to initialize the miniport adapter. The error code was '2147483674'. Verify that other network adapters are functioning properly and check the device manager for errors. If the configuration was changed, it may be necessary to reinstall the failover clustering feature on this computer.
Okay, something is wrong with the MAC Address creation for the Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter. What can we do about that?
Solution:
(Before proceeding, make sure that you backup of your registry)
- Open registry, and navigate to the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
- Under this subkey, find the subkey that holds a DriverDesc string value entry whose value is "Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter." (NOTE: 007 was the key designated were the Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter was in my server, but this number may vary on different servers.)
- Under the subkey (in my scenario "007"), add the following string value registry entry:
Name: DatalinkAddress
Value data: 02-AA-BB-CC-DD-01
String Value (REG_SZ)
Restart the computer.
DONE!!!
Repeat these steps for computers were you're having this problem. When you do this on other computers, replace the value data of the registry with different values in order to set a unique value for each node. For example, set the value on the second node to 02-AA-BB-CC-DD-02, and set value on the third node to 02-AA-BB-CC-DD-03. If you notice this behavior on distinct clusters, make sure that you use an address for each node that is unique across all clusters.
Recently, Microsoft has released the KB973838 that describes the same issue.
Have Fun!!!
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 available for Download
Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 allows employees to safely and productively use the Internet without worrying about malware and other threats. It provides multiple protection capabilities including URL filtering*, antimalware inspection*, intrusion prevention, application- and network-layer firewall, and HTTP/HTTPS inspection – that are integrated into a unified, easy to manage gateway, reducing the cost and complexity of Web security. Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 is available for download in both Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition.
Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008
Minimum system requirements:
Have Fun!!!
Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008
Minimum system requirements:
- Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2
- A computer with 2 core (1 CPU x dual core) 64-bit processor
- 2 gigabytes (GB) or more of memory
- 2.5 GB of available hard disk space. This is exclusive of hard disk space that you want to use for caching or for temporarily storing files during malware inspection
- One local hard disk partition that is formatted with the NTFS file system
- One network adapter that is compatible with the computer's operating system, for communication with the Internal network
- An additional network adapter for each network connected to the Forefront TMG server
- Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2
- A computer with 4 core (2 CPU x dual core or 1 CPU x quad core) 64-bit processor
- 4 gigabytes (GB) or more of memory
- 2.5 GB of available hard disk space. This is exclusive of hard disk space that you want to use for caching or for temporarily storing files during malware inspection
- Two disk for system and TMG logging, and one for caching and malware inspection
- One network adapter that is compatible with the computer's operating system, for communication with the Internal network
- An additional network adapter for each network connected to the Forefront TMG server
Have Fun!!!
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