Here’s some brief information about this episode, titled TechNet Radio Community Corner: Virtualization with Microsoft MVP Anil Desai:

In today’s Community Corner, Sr. IT Pro Evangelist John Weston interviews Microsoft Virtualization MVP, Anil Desai to the show. Tune in as they discuss cloud computing’s impact to IT, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, as well as the relationship between Virtualization and Private Cloud solutions.

Special thanks to Chris Caldwell and John Weston for inviting me and for a fun conversation!  For more shows and episodes of related shows, visit the TechNet Edge web site.

VMware Workstation internal monitor error

vcpu-O:NOT_IMPLEMENTED vmcore/vmm/intr/apic.c:1903

Unfortunately, it looks like VMware Workstation 7.x platform (and, reportedly, VirtualPC, though I haven’t tested it myself), does not yet support Windows 8.  Perhaps I should have realized that a lot of the undercover boot and CPU optimizations would require an architectural shift to support the required CPU commands.

Options That Should Work

Though this might not be ideal for all users, there are several options to get the Developer Preview of Windows 8 running in a virtual machine:

• Use Microsoft’s Hyper-V: If you have a Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 installation (or the stand-alone Hyper-V Server), you should be able to spin up a new Windows 8 VM quickly and easily.  It’s not desktop virtualization, but if you have a spare machine that supports Hyper-V’s CPU requirements, you should be all set.
• Wait for the release of VMware Workstation 8.  While I haven’t yet tried it myself, there are reports of people having success with the beta of the upcoming release of VMware’s Workstation production.  A beta virtualization stack with a Developer Preview OS – How’s that for living on the edge?  It looks like the product is officially available from VMware now and you can request a VMware Workstation 8 Evaluation online (registration required).
  • Update: I downloaded a 30-day evaluation version of VMware Workstation 8, and the Windows 8 Developer Preview installed without one minor catch: Don’t use the VMware "Easy Install" option, as it’s based on the automatic install procedures for Windows 7.  Other than that, I’m up and running!
• VirtualBox apparently supports the WIndows 8 Developer Preview (again, I haven’t yet tried it myself).  The application is available for free download.  The Windows 7 Hacker site has a walkthrough titled Install Windows 8 Developer Preview on VirtualBox.

Dual-Boot / Clean Install

Of course, you could skip virtualization altogether and install Windows 8 directly on your hardware.  That would give the best overall performance and the best experience with the new Metro UI.  You could install The Windows 8 Dev Preview alongside your current OS (though you might need to repartition), or you can just pop a spare hard drive in your computer to avoid any messy boot complications.  In general, this approach has worked great for me in the past.

Another option is to Boot to VHD.  That’s a significantly more complicated process, but the blog post Installing Windows 8 on Bare Metal with VHD-Boot should help.

A Note About the Developer Preview

While we’re all itching to try the new UI and functionality in Windows 8, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.  First, this version is not yet a “beta”.  It’s an earlier release that is designed to get developers up and running.  The official build number is Build 8102 M3.  Even if you’re like me and you’re willing to live on the bleeding edge with software, you probably don’t want to install this build as your primary OS.  Furthermore, Microsoft has mentioned that several features are not included in this build (though I haven’t yet run into anything that’s a showstopper for me).

On the brighter side, this build does not require product activation.  Coupled with the easy accessibility of the download from the Windows 8 Developer Preview site, that effectively means everyone will have easy access to this preview release.  Downloads are also available for MSDN Subscribers.

For More Information…

In case you missed it, Microsoft’s BUILD Conference keynotes are available at the BUILD Conference Web Site.  The Day 1 Keynote covered dozens of really exciting features, presented by Steven Sinofsky and several other Microsoft Program Managers.  I’m just getting started with my testing/development, and I’ll try to post more here once I have something of value.

Update (09/19/2011)

Based on the numbers of hits to this article, I thought this would be a fairly important topic.  On the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft has recently published a post titled, Running Windows 8 Developer Preview in a virtual environment.  It includes more details on the pros and cons of running Windows 8 using virtualization and provides the following summary:

Functional:

• Hyper-V in Windows 8 Developer Preview
• Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2
• VMware Workstation 8.0 for Windows
• VirtualBox 4.1.2 for Windows

Non-functional:

• Microsoft Virtual PC (all versions)
• Microsoft Virtual Server (all versions)
• Windows 7 XP Mode
• VMWare Workstation 7.x or older

For now, I’m happily running Windows 8 test VMs on an evaluation version of VMware Workstation 8.0 and in Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.  Next stop: Running on some fairly recent hardware.

TechNet Webcast: Talk TechNet with Keith Combs and Matt Hester – Episode 36: Virtualization with Anil Desai (Level 200)

Here’s a brief overview of the topic description:

Want to talk about Virtualization?  This is the show for you.  Anil Desai is a Microsoft Windows Server Virtualization MVP so bring your Hyper-V questions. I’m sure Anil will be happy to takes questions on some of the other products like System Center Virtual Machine manager.  Tune in and listen, call in, or send us questions on the web via Live Meeting.  Take advantage of this great opportunity to get your questions answered.

Presenters: Keith Combs, Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation, Matt Hester, Sr. IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation, and Anil Desai, Independent Consultant, Microsoft Windows Server Virtualization MVP

I look forward to answering questions from attendees!

In this podcast, virtualization expert Anil Desai talks with WhatIs.com’s Alex Howard about Microsoft’s Hyper-V, a new virtualization platform from the Redmond-based software giant. Listen to this podcast and learn:

• Exactly what Hyper-V is, how it works, how it fits in with other virtualization products and how you can use it.
• The advantages and limitations of Hyper-V, its system requirements and an overview of the installation process.
• How to create virtual machines (VMs) and use Hyper-V’s integrated features to address VM sprawl.

The podcast was sponsored by Dell and is available for free (registration is required).

We techies tend to look forward to new technology with good reason. In most cases, new products and services improve upon old technology. But migration in production environments can be slow. So what about existing technology? A good case in point is Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 (MSVS). MSVS is available for free and is a perfectly viable option for many environments. In this tip, I’ll look at when, where and why you might want to use MSVS rather than its newer replacement, Hyper-V.

You can read the entire article for free: See Microsoft Virtual Server still viable management option.

My recently SearchServerVirtualization.com article, Managing Hyper-V’s Security Permissions, describes the details.  From the introduction:

The burdens of managing security permissions are rarely seen as exciting, but they’re an essential duty to which we systems administrators are sworn to carry out. In this tip, I’ll talk about how you can configure and manage permissions for your Hyper-V host servers.

We all rely on a variety of different security methods to ensure that only authorized users can access data center resources. Specific components of overall security range from physical access limitations to network authentication and permissions management. Virtualization brings with it some new requirements, namely the ability to specify which types of actions users can take on host systems.

It’s certainly possible for administrators to manage virtual machines when they don’t have access to the guest OSes themselves. The ability to granularly define authorization rules is essential for production servers. Fortunately, Hyper-V provides methods for defining and maintaining these permissions. But, as you’ll soon see, it’s not an entirely intuitive approach.

The article provides details, steps, and screenshots that help describe the use of the powerful (but unfortunately nick-named) AzMan.

My recent SearchServerVirtualization.com article, Assessing Hyper-V’s Benefits, limitations looks at some of the details.  From the article’s introduction:

Earlier this year, the letters "ESX" were synonymous with server virtualization and VMware seemed to be the only practical game in town. It has now been a few months since a stealthy little software behemoth from the Pacific Northwest released its serious virtualization contender. And in that time, things have changed. In this tip, I’ll highlight some of the post-release considerations for Hyper-V.

Hyper-V’s strengths and weaknesses
Hyper-V’s primary strength is probably its ready availability in the data center. If you’re running Windows Server 2008 on 64-bit hardware, you’re just minutes away from enabling an industrial-strength Hypervisor. Hyper-V’s management tools should be familiar to anyone who manages Windows systems, and the last few months have shown that it is a stable and reliable option for the data center.

Of course, Hyper-V is not without its limitations. Virtualization experts are quick to point out that it doesn’t support live migration of VMs between servers and doesn’t allow administrators to over-commit memory (VMware provides both features). But, Hyper-V provides numerous options based on clustering, so building highly-available Hyper-V deployments is possible and supported. Users of this new product on the enterprise virtualization scene will need some time before completely trusting this candidate over the incumbents.

The full article is available for free and provides details related to support policies, and technical pros and cons of Microsoft’s latest virtualization product.

I have recently written two articles for SearchServerVirtualization.com that cover the  topic of monitoring and optimizing your VMs that are hosted on Microsoft Hyper-V.  Some might be obvious, but others are somewhat cleverly-disguised.  The first article, Optimizing Hyper-V performance: Monitoring tips focuses on ways in which you can make sure your host servers and VMs are running smoothly.  From the introduction:

How can you be sure whether your Hyper-V host servers and virtual machines (VMs) have been optimally configured? Installing and enabling Microsoft Hyper-V and creating VMs is a fairly straightforward process; but the techie tendencies in all of us seems to nag the question "Isn’t there something more I should do to improve performance?" This tip targets system administrators who have deployed Hyper-V and want to ensure that they’ve made the most of host servers and VMs.

The second article, Optimizing Hyper-V performance: Advanced fine-tuning provides details on Integration Services, synthetic vs. emulated drivers, and ways in which you can improve overall performance of storage and network resources.

I hope these articles will serve as a useful checklist for Hyper-V management.  If you have any further suggestions, feel free to leave them as comments here or on SearchServerVirtualization.com.

Birds have the right idea: Why not move to where the weather’s better? Sure, it takes a lot of time, effort and energy to cross entire continents, but the trip is often worth it. The same can be said of platform migrations, as technical advantages may come with potential difficulties. Now that Microsoft’s Hyper-V is finally available as an official, fully-supported platform on Windows Server 2008, many IT managers might be thinking about migration.

If you’ve been standing on the sidelines waiting for the official release of Hyper-V, you no longer have any excuses for waiting to at least deploy it in a test environment. If you’ve been working with the beta and release candidate versions, you’re probably ready to deploy some production virtual machines (VMs) with Microsoft’s latest virtualization product. If your data center environment has an existing investment in Microsoft Virtual Server (MSVS) 2005, this article will help you decide why and how you might want to migrate.

Assuming to decide to make the move, the general process is fairly painless (even if you choose to do it completely manually).  Such is the price of keeping up with technology, and I think most administrators will find that they’re much happier after the move to Hyper-V.

Hyper-V is the latest virtualization product from Microsoft. The new hypervisor platform works with Windows Server 2008 to create and manage a virtual infrastructure. As with any virtualization platform, Hyper-V makes for a more efficient data center, maximizing resources and reducing costs.

Hyper-V consists of a 64-bit hypervisor that can run 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines concurrently. Hyper-V virtualization works with single and multi-processor virtual machines and includes tools such as snapshots, which capture the state of a running virtual machine.

Hypervisor-based virtualization with Microsoft’s newest offering promises more efficient virtual machine hosting as well, with new "synthetic" drivers.

For more information on Hyper-V, consult the resources in this introductory guide.

Also, keep a look out for many other articles by me and other writers on the site!  A good way to keep up is to sign up for the site’s newsletter.

It’s a little earlier than expected, but the final, release to manufacturing (RTM) version of Microsoft’s long-awaited Hyper-V is now available.  There are several available download packages, listed below.  Links for the main download package (for the server side) is listed below.  For most of us, this should be a "clean" update (no special considerations) except for one: You will need to commit or discard saved state files for any VMs that are currently defined on existing Hyper-V servers.  On to the details and links (courtesy of Microsoft)….

Hyper-V RTM Packages: Windows Server 2008 x64 Hyper-V Parent Partition

This is the complete Hyper-V RTM package for Windows Server 2008 x64. This package must be installed on the Hyper-V Parent Partition. It includes the Hyper-V Server components for Full and Core installations. In addition, is contains the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Management components for Full installations. Note This package is permanent.  Once installed, it cannot be uninstalled.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F3AB3D4B-63C8-4424-A738-BADED34D24ED

Hyper-V Management

This is the Windows Vista SP1 x64 Management package. This package provides the management tools for Windows Vista SP1 x64.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=88208468-0AD6-47DE-8580-085CBA42C0C2

This is the Windows Vista SP1 x86 Management package. This package provides the management tools for Windows Vista SP1 x86.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BF909242-2125-4D06-A968-C8A3D75FF2AA

This is the Windows Server 2008 x86 Management package. This package provides the management tools for Windows Server 2008 x86.  Note This package is permanent.  Once installed, it cannot be uninstalled. 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6F69D661-5B91-4E5E-A6C0-210E629E1C42

UPGRADE CONSIDERATIONS

If upgrading from Hyper-V RC0, RC1 Escrow, RC1 or RTM Escrow, you will not need to recreate your virtual machines or network settings.  All virtual machine information will simply persist once the upgrade is complete. However, the following upgrade considerations need to be followed to ensure a successful upgrade to Hyper-V RTM.

· Saved-state files are not supported during the upgrade.  All virtual machine saved-states should be discarded before upgrading to Hyper-V RTM (or prior to resuming virtual machines after upgrading to Hyper-V RTM).

· Online snapshots contain virtual machine save-states and thus online snapshots are not supported when upgrading to Hyper-V RTM. Either apply any online snapshots and shut down the VM or discard the virtual machine save-state associated with the snapshot before or after the update to Hyper-V RTM.

· New Integration Components (ICs) must be installed for your supported guest operating systems. Integration Components are specific to the build of Hyper-V. Hyper-V RTM Integration Components for all supported Windows Operating Systems are provided using the ‘Action’ à ‘Insert Integration Services Setup Disk’ action.

o Hyper-V RTM Integration Components for ALL supported Windows Operating Systems are now part of the IC Setup Disk. This includes all of the new guest support being added at RTM such as Windows XP (x86), XP (x64), Vista (x64), Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Simply install the Hyper-V RTM Integration Components and you’re set. (‘Action’ à ‘Insert Integration Services Setup Disk’).
Note You need to close the found new hardware wizard before setup will begin on all Windows Operating Systems.

Jose Barreto has recently posted a very well-written and comprehensive article called Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Failover Custering Options.  The article outlines (and illustrates) several different approaches.  From the introduction:

There are many ways to implement Windows Server Failover Clustering with Hyper-V. I could actually find five unique methods to do it. Some of them will actually not give you a fully fault-tolerant solution, but most of them actually make sense in specific scenarios (even if only for demonstrations). In any case, just trying to understand and differentiate them will probably be a good exercise.

And here are the titles for your clustering options:

• Parent-based Failover Clustering with two physical servers
• Child-based Failover Clustering with two physical servers
• Mixed Physical/Virtual Failover Clustering
• Failover Clustering with two child partitions on one physical server
• Standalone demo laptop with Virtual iSCSI SAN

Jose has done a great job documenting them, and I think this post will serve as a good reference.

Have you ever wished you could go back in time and remember how your virtual machines (VMs) used to look? You know, like before you installed that pre-production beta patch on a mission-critical application? Or before you accidentally overwrote the passwords in a login table by leaving off the WHERE clause of an SQL UPDATE statement?

As the father of more VMs than I can count, I often feel the same way. Fortunately, Microsoft’s Hyper-V provides a useful method of creating and applying point-in-time views of the status of your VMs: the aptly-titled snapshots feature. This easy-to-use tool can create VM snapshots from the Hyper-V Management Console.

See the full article for an in-depth discussion of the benefits of snapshots and how you can use them to help manage your VMs.

To get more details on what is new and what has changed, see the Release Notes for the RC1 Release of Hyper-V document.  The associated Knowledge Base Article 950049 also describes issues for updating, including the incompatibility of snapshots made in previous beta/RC releases of the product.  You also want to upgrade VMs to the latest version of Integration Services (included with the update). 

It’s not always easy to defend an underdog, especially when they’re going up against the might of a large corporation that dominates its marketplace. And it’s not often that Microsoft is considered the underdog. Microsoft’s upcoming Hyper-V and associated management tools will take on VMware and the rest of the market and in doing so will very likely change users’ expectations for virtualization products.

Of course, this is bound to be a heated topic.  Feel free to voice your questions and comments here.

As is the case with many other technologies, the virtualization space is filled with a mystifying array of terminology. Familiar definitions, such as guest, host, physical and virtual, interact within constellations of other, more product-specific terms. Microsoft’s Hyper-V has its own language that includes terms such as synthetic and emulated drivers; root, parent, and child partitions; and a smattering of others necessary for understanding and working with Microsoft’s upcoming virtualization platform. In this tip, I’ll explain the terms that are relevant to how device drivers work in Hyper-V, which should help with installation of the product, managing performance and troubleshooting any issues that might arise.

Be sure to check out the full article for all of the details.

As is the case with many other technologies, the virtualization space is filled with a mystifying array of terminology. Familiar definitions, such as guest, host, physical and virtual, interact within constellations of other, more product-specific terms. Microsoft’s Hyper-V has its own language that includes terms such as synthetic and emulated drivers; root, parent, and child partitions; and a smattering of others necessary for understanding and working with Microsoft’s upcoming virtualization platform. In this tip, I’ll explain the terms that are relevant to how device drivers work in Hyper-V, which should help with installation of the product, managing performance and troubleshooting any issues that might arise.

You can find the entire article at SearchServerVirtualization.com: Understanding Hyper-V partitions and device drivers.

One of the best ways to learn about any product is by using it and/or watching it in action.  For those of that are curious about Hyper-V, but don’t necessarily have the time or hardware to setup a test environment, a couple of free screencasts might be the next best thing.  Here are links to a couple of videos based on the pre-release versions of Hyper-V (each is around 10 minutes long).

Installing Hyper-V

The following screencast will talk you through the steps required to get up and running with Microsoft’s virtualization services in Hyper-V. The demonstration will use the release version of Windows Server 2008, which includes a beta of Hyper-V. You’ll learn about prerequisites, system requirements and using Server Manager to install and verify the Hyper-V server role.

You can view the screencast on SearchServerVirtualization.com: Installing Microsoft Hyper-V: A screencast

Creating and Managing VMs with Hyper-V

Once you have installed Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008, you’ll need to perform several steps to create, configure, and start your virtual machines. This screencast will walk through those steps, including Hyper-V server settings, virtual machine virtual hardware configuration settings and basic virtualization operations.

You can view the screencast on SearchServerVirtualization.com: Creating and managing virtual machines with Microsoft Hyper-V: Screencast. 

Evaluating Virtualization Tools and Technologies

There’s far more than one way to implement virtualization. For example, Microsoft has several different products which are designed to help solve organizations’ largest IT challenges. This presentation will cover information about presentation virtualization (Citrix and Windows Terminal Services), application virtualization (Virtuzzo and Microsoft SoftGrid), and server virtualization (including products from VMware, Microsoft, and other vendors). The goal is to help IT professionals determine the best solution(s) for implementing virtualization in their environments.

Windows Server 2008’s Hyper-V: Inside and Out

One of the most compelling features of Windows Server 2008 is its completely new virtualization feature. This presentation will provide details related to the architecture of Hyper-V and what it means to IT departments. Details related to deploying and managing VMs will be presented, with a focus on virtual hard disk and virtual network management. Attendees will also learn how to automate virtualization using WMI and Windows PowerShell.

SQL Server Data Protection and High Availability

SQL Server includes numerous features for protecting important data and ensuring high-availability. This presentation will provide live demonstrations of implementing backup and recovery plans, log-shipping, database mirroring, Fail-Over clusters and database snapshots. The presentation includes recommendations for choosing the best approach given a set of requirements. Presentation scripts and sample code will also be made available.

You can also find more details on the dozens of other presentation topics on the DevTeach Sessions page.

Can you think of a better past time than to start working (or playing) with some upcoming beta software? OK, I can too, but it still beats most aspects of getting back to the daily grind. If you have already installed Hyper-V on a compatible machine, you can get started with creating and configuring new virtual machines (VMs). I’ll present the steps required to configure the server and to create and import VMs.

Also, check out my upcoming screencasts on the same topics.

While the naming and terminology of the Hyper-V feature uses some outdated terms, all of the major technical information should still be accurate.  This is a good place to start with Microsoft’s E-Learning and to lean about Microsoft’s upcoming virtualization products.  Thanks’s to virtualization.info for the link.

Hyper-V is currently available in beta form and will be supported on Windows Server 2008 later this year, but it’s never too early to start learning about its architecture.  You can expect more information to become available as the product gets closer to its final stages.

• Installation instructions, which also includes information on migrating VMs from the CTP version.  There’s no upgrade path for previous versions of WSv, however.
• Hyper-V Overview White Paper
• An updated Hyper-V FAQ.
• An updated web page: Hyper-V: A Key Feature of Windows Server 2008.
• The Windows Virtualization Team Blog, which includes some brief videos that walk you through the management UI and some new features.
• Microsoft Virtualization Webcast Series

Overall, you can expect to see a lot more information on the product (some from me) in the near future.