Hyper-V Linux Integration Services

During the summer of 2009 Microsoft released the hyper-v integration services, (VM Additions or VMware tool equivalents if you are new to the term), to the open source community. This placed the integration service drivers into the Linux device driver tree. What does this mean and what has happened 6 months down the line?

By making the hyper-v drivers openly available it means operating systems will be capable of using the enhanced device drivers for networking and storage. This provides improved performance and device support (synthetic network adapters and scsi disk support) within virtual machines.

One of the interesting terms here is the word support. Often when I am teaching hyper-v I am often asked what operating systems does Microsoft supports within Hyper-V. Microsoft’s use of the term ‘support’ actually means they will handle support issues with the operating system even if the operating system is not theirs. Therefore if a customer has an issue with Red Hat Linux within a Hyper-V VM and it turns out the problem is a Red Hat issue Microsoft will raise this with Red Hat rather than redirect the customer to Red Hat to source their own support. This means when we talk about operating systems that are ‘supported’ within Hyper-V there are effectively 3 levels of support:

1) Fully Supported by Microsoft
Windows 2000 SP4 , Windows XP SP2+, Windows Server 2003 SP1+, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (R2), Suse Linux 10 & 11, Red Hat Linux

2) Integration Service Support
Any Linux with Kernel version 2.6.32 (e.g. Ubuntu 10.04)

3) Everything else.

From this list it means that if the OS is in category 1 MS will full support the operating system in Hyper-v including problems with the OS running in Hyper-V, even if the problem is with the OS itself (unique to Microsoft). Category 2 and 3 would be to support Hyper-V and its components, but not the OS itself, therefore if the problem was within the OS, Microsoft would refer you back to the OS vendor much the same as all virtualization vendors.

So how have things changed since the summer of 09. Well as already hinted at the Kernel with the drivers is available today (Dec 2009) and some vendors have alpha/beta OSes already built on it. So you could download the alpha of Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) or a Debian Linux and try it today. The kernel could also be downloaded and installed on a current Linux build too. So today support is growing and possibly the end of 2010 most Linux variants will have the Hyper-V integration services built into them

How to enable integration services in Kernel Version 2.6.32 next

Beta Microsoft® Enterprise Desktop Virtualization V1

Microsoft® Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V, formerly known as Kidaro) enhances deployment, management and user experience for Virtual PC images on a Windows® Desktop, independent of the local desktop configuration and operating system (OS). MED-V leverages Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to provide an enterprise solution for desktop virtualization streamlining OS upgrades, and increasing IT control and user flexibility in enterprise environments. 

MED-V solution for Application-to-OS incompatibility accelerates the upgrade path to Windows Vista®. Applications that cannot be installed on Windows Vista® or have not been fully tested on Windows Vista® may be installed by the administrator in a virtual machine that runs a previous version of the OS (e.g., Windows XP or Windows 2000) and operate in their native, supported environment. 

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization is an integral tool in the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, a dynamic solution available to Software Assurance customers that helps reduce application deployment costs, enable delivery of applications as services, and better manage and control enterprise desktop

environments.

To learn more about MDOP visit www.windowsvista.com/optimizeddesktop

MED-V is currently accepting applications Technology Adapoters and Beta testers at the Microsoft Connect Website.

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Released to Manufacturing

The title says it all really, but SCVMM 2008 has finally been released.  Many industry experts feel Virtual Machine Management is going to be a very key market and MS have moved down a strange road for them.  This release not only manages Virtual Server on Windows Server 2003 and Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 it also provides full management of VMWare ESX Server V35i through intergration with Virtual Centre.  Soon through an update (service pack I would imagine) it will also provide support for XEN based solutions.  From a systems management point of view this makes life really easy, one console, one command line environment to manage different platforms.

The new management console also takes many tasks that can be implemented without SCVMM and make them very easy to implement (as simple a selecting a single tick box) to improving the functionality greatly (providing dynamic data center functionality). Integration with System Centre Operations Manager to provide in depth performance monitoring for intelligent placement and distribution of Virtual Machines.

Microsoft Hyper-V Server is NOW Available

Microsoft have now released their Hyper-V Server platform (not to be confused with Hyper-V running on Windows Server 2008). This product has been on the horizon for a little while but Microsoft have been fairly quite about it until the recent Technet Edge announcement.

The Good News

Microsoft Hyper-V Server (notice the Microsoft branding not Windows) is the smallest OS footprint product today. The best way to look at this product is Windows 2008 Server Core with a single pre-installed role, this role being Hyper-V. The product is free of charge and can be downloaded today from Microsoft (about 930MB). It can then be installed and used as a virtualization platform leveraging Hyper-V as the underlying architecture. The product does not have a GUI so it will need to be managed from a computer that has the Hyper-V manager installed (either Windows Server 2008 or Vista SP1 with the Remote Server Administration Tools, RSAT installed). Microsoft have supplied a Hyper-V configuration applet (HVConfig.vbs, see picture above) that allows the basic configuration settings to be adjusted rather than having to get to grips with NETSH, NETDOM and all the other tools.

The Not So Good News

The product comes with a number of restrictions which might limit some of the deployment options that it might be used in. The main restrictions are:-

• No High Availability Support
  
• No Quick Migration Support
  
• Host limited to 4CPU's and 32GB Memory
  
• No Guest Virtualization Rights (all OS's require a license)

Conclusion

This product is designed to be used in a number of areas but it has been designed to be the most basic version of the Hyper-V platform from Microsoft. The Virtual Disk format is the standard VHD format from Microsoft and therefore means these files can easily be move to the full Hyper-V platforms to provide the advance features that might be required.

Hyper-V Live Migration

Microsoft have let small pieces of information about Windows 7 Server (Windows Server 2008 R2) slip. The latest has been a demonstration of the Hyper-V Live Migration technology.

Background - Quick Migration

When Microsoft started work on Hyper-V they approached the product with a few simple philosophies, the main one being 'make it good enough'. What this means is provide the features that all companies really need. This approach gave us Quick Migration (QM). QM enables Virtual Machines to be moved from one physical computer to another quickly. This process is not transparent to the users. Depending on a number of factors (memory, disk speed, etc) this could be less than 2seconds and to up to 1minute. For most companies being able to move machines quickly is good enough as companies would not be moving Virtual Machines from one physical host to another with hundreds of users connected, the risks are too great. So as these moves are planned and the fact a move takes a small amount of time is 'Good Enough', especially when compared to VMWare who do provide high quality Live Migration capability at a significant cost and QM is free and in the box with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter Editions.

Live Migration

Microsoft always new they would be providing Live Migration (LM) capability in time. LM allows Virtual Machines to be moved from one physical computer to another without any perceived user interruption as part of a planned migration. This feature will be provided in the next release of Hyper-V that will be in Windows Server 2008 R2. Follow the link above for a video demonstration of the technology. Again this feature will be free of charge in the Enterprise and Datacenter editions.

Paul.

Hyper-V Server

Microsoft have recently announced Microsoft Hyper-V Server. This product is a dedicated operating system for running Hyper-V. The best way to describe this product is a Windows Server Core system dedicated to Hyper-V. But unlike Windows Server Core the only component is Hyper-V, no AD, DNS, DHCP etc.

This product provides all the base functionality of Hyper-V from the other Windows 2008 platforms. The product still leverages the Windows driver model so all your device drivers will work. The product will be available for download from Microsoft during the second week of October 2008 and is completely free of charge. The main restriction to be aware of is this product does not support the Windows/Hyper-V high availability features but if you need those you can just purchase Windows Server 2008 Enterprise or Datacenter edition and copy over your Virtual Hard Disk files.

Paul.