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VMWare ESX: Hyper-V and memory overcommit? forget it!

Ivan Versluis — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:23:15 +0000

Hyper-V Manager error when trying to start my 4th virtual machine:

An error occurred while attempting to change the state of virtual machine. Unable to allocate MB of RAM. Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service. etc…

Before I reinstall my test Dell PowerEdge 2900 Quad core server I wanted to share this with you. Hyper-V does not support memory overcommitment and I don’t like that. The virtual host has 8GB or RAM and I want to run more VMs than just 6 of those; the OS uses almost 1GB and less than 7GB is available for VMs.

Some weeks ago I read about memory overcommitment feature which is available for VMWare’s ESX/ESXi servers.

What is Memory Overcommitment?

Memory overcommitment is not a feature in itself, but a collection of technologies out of which “transparent page sharing” is the most interesting in my opinion. The usefulness of transparent page sharing will spring to mind immediately if you consider VDI environments. There, host machines typically run large numbers of identical client operating systems with the same applications installed on them. Since all the clients/guests run the same application set, most of the code pages they need to keep in memory are identical. Each guest keeps separate copies of all system and application EXEs and DLLs in memory – what a waste!

Now consider the following: in memory program code is organized in units of pages. If you had a component that identified all those identical pages in each guest’s virtual memory and map them to one set of pages in the host’s physical memory, you could reduce the code memory footprint of n virtual machines to that of one single virtual machine. And that is in a nutshell what VMware’s “transparent page sharing” does.

I only want to run different VMs of Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 and install additional components to test them with each other. With Hyper-V server I can only commit the physical memory available and additional VMs.

Hyper-V and DC as virtual machine

Ivan Versluis — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:32:55 +0000

When I try to open the “Active Directly Sites and Services” MMC console I got the following error message.

Naming information cannot be located because: The clocks on the client and server machines are skewed. Contact your system administrator to verify that your domain is properly configured and is currently online.

My Hyper-V host is running in a workgroup and not being member of a AD DS domain. Therefore it is not syncing the time with a managed NTP time service. One of my remote domain controllers is running on this host and I am having issues to authenticate myself on the AD DS running as virtual machine. The best option in this case is to disable the time synchronization within the virtual machine options. Another option is to fix the host time, but if you are selling the Hyper-V as a service to customers than you won’t be member of their domain

Right click the virtual machine; choose settings within the Hyper-V management console. Go to Integration Services and uncheck “Time synchronization”.

After the reboot the domain controller synced the time with the correct values.

Apply KB949219 to virtual machines after upgrading to Hyper-V RC0

Ivan Versluis — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:28:46 +0000

After I installed Hyper-V RC0 on the physical host server I than start upgrading vm additions on my Windows Server 2008 virtual machine. I uninstalled the old Integration Services tools from my virtual machine, reboot and than reinstalled the Integrations tools again.

I reboot the virtual machine and checked the network configuration, but no network adapters were shown. I shutdown the machine and added a legacy adapter; now I had network connectivity on my virtual machine, but still I could not figure out why the integration services did not work. I opened Server Manager and checked the Device Manager. As shown below there were three warnings for Microsoft VMBus Video Device, Microsoft VMBUS HDD Miniport and Microsoft VMBus Network Adapter.

I went back to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949219 article and I read I also should apply this update on the virtual machines. I installed KB949219 and reboot and my problems were fixed.

Update for Windows Server 2008 (KB949219)
This package includes the following items:

- The updated version of the Hyper-V Manager console and of the Virtual Machine Connection remote connection tool for x86-based versions of Windows Server 2008
-The updated version of the Integration Services for x86-based versions of Windows Server 2008
-To install the latest version of the Integration Services for x86-based versions of Windows Server 2008, you must install this package in the virtual machine and on computers that are running the x86-based version of Windows Server 2008.

Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB949219)
This package includes the following items:

- The updated version of the Hyper-V role
-The updated version of the Hyper-V Manager console and of the Virtual Machine Connection remote connection tool for x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008
-The updated version of the Integration Services for the following operating systems: • Windows Server 2008, x64-based versions only
- Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2), x86-based versions and x64-based versions
- Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), x86-based versions only
- Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), x86-based versions only

Hyper-V Remote Management console Windows Vista permissions

Ivan Versluis — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:23:08 +0000

After you have installed Hyper-V Remote Management mmc console on your Windows Vista SP1 client and you connect to your Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC0 host servers which are sitting in a workgroup you will hit same problem as I did and many others.

You do not have the requested permission to complete this task. Contact the administrator of the authorization policy for the computer ‘COMPUTERNAME’

Basically what happens here is that Windows Firewalls on the client and server side are not configured to allow remote WMI management communication and the WMI and DCOM components will have to be manually configured. John Howard Senior Program Manager at Microsoft took 2,5 hours of his time and described in details how to fix this problem. Thanks to John I was able to get my communication up and running with my Hyper-V RC0 host server in less than 15 minutes. The netsh scripts didn’t work for me and I enabled the rules manually.

When trying to connect to one of my virtual machines I am prompt to enter my credentials. Use cmdkey /add servername /user:servername\user /pass to store the credentials. I tried this but my Lenovo Fingerprint software has some bugs and I get a lot of error messages; something to report to Lenovo… Anyway I am able to use the the Hyper-V mmc console from my Windows Vista client and I love it.

Remote management console Hyper-V RC0 role Vista SP1

Ivan Versluis — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:33:48 +0000

KB949758 allows you to install the remote management console of a Windows Server 2008 computer running the Hyper-V RC0 role. Download the update here for x86 or x64 if you are running Windows Vista SP1. I already hit couple of times issues when managing my virtual machines remotely with RDP console session.

I am not able to control mouse session when using rdp console session Hyper-V Manager Virtual Machine Connections and only keyboard is working. “Mouse not captured in Remote Desktop Session”.

The update for my x86 machine only requires 1.52MB of space and 5 minutes of installing.

After the update has been installed go to Administrative Tools and start the Hyper-V Manager mmc console for your Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC0 host servers.

Hyper-V RC0 Upgrade KB949219

Ivan Versluis — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:37:51 +0000

After Windows Server 2008 RTM was released I download and made a DVD. I installed the Hyper-V beta release and start testing the Microsoft’s hypervisor.

The Release Candidate 0 (RC0) update to the Hyper-V role provides improvements to security, stability, performance, user experience, forward compatibility of configurations, and the programming model. All users of the Hyper-V role are encouraged to apply this upgrade. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. So I download the Hyper-V RC0 from here.

I uninstalled the current installed Hyper-V role and reboot. After the reboot I applied Windows6.0-KB949219-x64.msu and reboot the server to finish the update. After installing and rebooting the server I upgraded the hypervisor in 15 minutes.

New Screencasts of Hyper-V and VirtualPC2007

Ivan Versluis — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:57:37 +0000

Check out my screencasts here. No tutorials or additional information but enough to get a feeling and maybe check out the features yourself.

Hyper-V Role Installation
Hyper-V New Virtual Machine
Hyper-V Virtual Network Switch VLAN
Hyper-V Virtual Machine Connection and Copy Paste fun with Windows Server serial number
VirtualPC 2007 Installation
VirtualPC 2007 CactiEZ.v0.3 Installation

Hyper-V error when installing integration components id 61658

Ivan Versluis — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:16:12 +0000

If you installed wrong version of Hyper-V RC1 you may get the error below. I have experienced this with the binaries which I have download from MSDN subscriber website.

After you insert the integration components additions of Hyper-V the installations stops with this error.

An error has occurred: One of the update processes returned error code 61658.

The error has to do with the certificates being used by the setup procedure. The certificates have expired November 2007 and you are still using the Hyper-V CTP version, Hyper-V RC1 has no more MSU installation after the server has been installed. For more info go to this link at MSDN blogs.

Go to this link and download the correct version named 6001.17119.071210-1916_amd64fre_Server_en-us-KR1SXFRE_EN_DVD.iso.

Hyper-V and Cisco VLAN config

Ivan Versluis — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:59:59 +0000

Configure the Cisco switch port with the allowed vlans. In my example I installed the Hyper-V box in the default 1 vlan and I have separated vlan 2200 for my lab environment.

Login into the Cisco Switch, go into privileged mode and open the configuration terminal. Enter or paste the configuration below.

interface GigabitEthernet0/1
description ** Uplink to Hyper-V windows box **
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,2200
switchport mode trunk
spanning-tree portfast
!

In the Virtualization Management console I configured and installed new guest partition with Windows Server 2003. There seems to be an issue with the current vm additions and my setup so the nic controller is not working. I removed current nic controller and added legacy network adapter.

In the legacy network adapter, check enable virtual LAN identification and enter the VLAN ID. Click ok or Apply the configuration.

This is really cool feature now integrated with Hyper-V. ESX supported VLAN’s for while and Microsoft is catching up now in the upcoming release of their hyper visor product.

Hyper-V and my new Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 6072-A5G

Ivan Versluis — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:30:29 +0000

The Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V hypervisor from Microsoft has couple of important CPU requirements before you will be able to get the Hyper-V role installed.

Hyper-v requires specific hardware. You will need the following:

• An x64-based processor. Hyper-V will be available only in the x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008-specifically, the x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter.

• Hardware-assisted virtualization. This is available in processors that include a virtualization option; specifically, Intel VT or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V, formerly code-named “Pacifica”).

• Hardware Data Execution Protection (DEP) must be available and be enabled. Specifically, you must enable Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit).

Before you download and install the Windows Server 2008 x64 RC candidate builds I would suggest to download this CrystalCPUID tool and verify your CPU extensions available.

I run the tool on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 6072-A5G system based on a Intel Core 2 Duo system.

VT, Intel 64 and NX/XD extensions are marked.

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise RC0 Hypervisor

Ivan Versluis — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:12:05 +0000

For 6 weeks I have been struggling with my emails on my new Q6600 server. Today I cleaned up my mailbox and organized all emails from last month.

I also found a screenshot which I forwarded to my work email. This was my first experience with Microsoft preview of Hypervisor technology. Before the guest booted to Windows Server I created the image below.

Wow, but very slow as I will post my next screenshot in a minute.