Microsoft Virtual Academy is Launch!

Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) is a new training and learning resource site to help train IT Pros on Cloud Services. Check it out!! MVA

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 is available now

SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 was released today.
Check it out here.

New features includes.
Dynamic Memory:

• Better utilization of memory resources on a Hyper-V host.
• Allows administrators to create and deploy Virtual Machines and report on the "currently in use" memory.
• More efficient utilization of memory, consistent performance and higher consolidation ratios.

Microsoft RemoteFX:

• Allows administrators to create and deploy Virtual Machines with RemoteFX enabled to qualified Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts.
• New set of end user experience enhancements.
• Rich, local-like desktop enivronment over the network.

Virtual Machine Folder ACL access denied

I upgraded a Windows 2008 Hyper-V server to R2 and one of the virtual machine failed to start with error “Account does not have sufficient priviledge to open attachment “<Virtual machine file>” (0x80070005). (Virtual machine ID <GUID>)”.

Hyper-V could not read the virtual machine files due to ACL issues. Added SYSTEM account, etc does not work as Hyper-V has it’s own Service SID “NT VIRTUAL MACHINE”

To resolve this, try the follow:

Open the directory that stores your virtual machine

Open the “Virtual Machines” subdirectory under your virtual machine directory

Record the GUID as per the file name of the .xml file in this directory

Run icacls “<virtualmachinefolder>” /grant “NT VIRTUAL MACHINE\<virtualmachineguid>”:F /T

Hosting Windows 7 VHD on Virtual PC

Follow up to my earlier post to convert your Windows 7 physical computer to virtual. Let’s create a Virtual Machine on Virtual PC to run your Windows 7 VHD.

First, you need to have your Windows Virtual PC installed. And get ready your Windows 7 DVD or ISO image.

1. Open Windows Virtual PC and click on Create Virtual Machine.

2. Give your Virtual Machine a meaningful name and specify the location to save the virtual machine file.

3. Specify the memory to allocate to this VM and specify whether you want to enable network connectivity to this VM.

4. Attached the Windows 7 VHD that you create from Disk2VHD earlier. Specify if you want to enable Undo Disk. Undo disk allows you to delete any changes you made to the VHD and recover it to its initial state.

5. Open your new VM.

6. You will encounter boot error. Attach your Windows 7 DVD or ISO to your VM and configure your VM BIOS to first boot to CDROM.

7. Reboot your VM to Windows 7 DVD and select to Repair your computer.

8. On System Recovery Options, select Repair and restart.

9. You should be able to login to your system after restart. The final step is to install Integration Components.

10. You are done after installing Integration Components!!

Converting your Windows 7 computer to VHD

Here I am working on a project to convert my Windows 7 laptop to a VHD. With this VHD I can keep my workspace regardless of hardware as long as I am able to boot from a VPC.

It also proves to be a good way to backup your computer while keeping your programs and files the way they are. You can always use a cloning tool to restore the VHD to your hard disk.

There are a few tools we need:

1. Disk2vhd – Windows Sysinternals tools http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

2. VHD Resizer – VMToolKit http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry87.aspx

3. Windows Virtual PC http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx

Let’s start to convert your Windows 7 computer to VHD.

1. Run Disk2vhd, select the disk to convert to VHD. Then enter a VHD file name. Once done, click on Create to start the conversion.

2. One of the limitations of Windows Virtual PC is IDE hard disk and disk size limit of 127 GB. For those of you who’s hard disk are bigger than 127GB, you have to shrink it. To shrink the VHD, open Computer Management Console and Attach VHD.

3. Right click and bring the VHD Online.

4. Shrink the OS volume.

5. Now shrink the VHD volume to less than 127GB. Detach the VHD when shrinking completes.

6. Open VHD Resizer to resize the VHD to less than 127GB.

This completes how to convert your physical Windows 7 computer to a VHD. I will be posting an article on running this Windows 7 VHD on a Windows Virtual PC soon.

vSphere vs XenServer vs Hyper-V

For those of you trying to compare the different hypervisors, this is one good link to help you.

http://www.projectvrc.com/ Project VRC released an interesting whitepaper analyzing Terminal Services workloads running on the latest generation hardware and hypervisors in the market.

Happy reading!!

Windows XP Mode no longer requires Hardware Virtualization Technology

This must be a great piece of news for users who’s computer does not supports Hardware Virtualization Technology. This is also good news for small and medium enterprise. Now you can migrate to Windows 7 and still able to support Windows XP-based applications in Windows XP Mode.

You have to install this update package KB977206 to enable Windows XP mode on non HAV machines.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977206