Windows Server Team

Outlook cached mode is not available on a server with Terminal Services enabled

markwilson — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:36:00 GMT

I was putting together a demo environment earlier today and needed to publish a Terminal Services RemoteApp, so I installed Terminal Services (and IIS) on my Windows Server 2008 notebook. Later on, I noticed that Outlook was not working in cached mode and I found that offline store (.OST) files and features that rely on them are disabled when running Outlook on a computer with Terminal Services enabled.

I can see why cached mode on a terminal server would be a little odd (it’s fair enough caching data on a remote client but it’s also resonable to expect that the terminal server would be in the data centre - i.e. close to the Exchange Server) - even so, why totally disable it - surely administrators can be given the choice to enable it if circumstances dictate it to be an appropriate course of action?

Oh well… I’ve since removed the Terminal Services role and Outlook is working well again.

Core Configurator - download it whist you can…

markwilson — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:45:00 GMT

A few months ago, I wrote a post on customising Windows Server 2008 Server Core and Michael Armstrong tipped me off about a cool utility, written by former MVP Guy Teverovsky, called Core Configurator. I say former MVP, because Guy has given up that award to join Microsoft in Israel - and I’m not surprised, after his employer claimed it was their intellectual property (even though he developed it in his spare time) and asked him to remove it from the web.

Anyway, Core Configurator is intended to provide a GUI (strange as it may seem on server core) to aid in the initial setup tasks for a server core machine including:

Product activation.
Display configuration.
Date and time configuration.
Remote Desktop configuration.
Local user account management.
Firewall configuration
WinRM configuration
Networking.
Computer name and domain/workgroup membership.
Installation of server core features/roles.
Shutdown.
Reboot.

Because the tool has been removed from the web, it’s now pretty hard to get hold of, so download it while you can (there is another download location but this version has a slightly different filename and I cannot vouch for the file contents - i.e. I have not tested it). Once it’s gone, it’s gone - so don’t ask me where to get it if these links stop working.

Incorrect side-by-side configuration caused by missing runtime libraries

markwilson — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Just before the weekend, I was trying to run an application on a 64-bit installation of Windows Server 2008 and was presented with a strange error:

This application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more details.

I know that side-by-side is something to do with avoiding DLL hell (by not dumping all the DLLs in the same folder with the consequences of one application overwriting another’s libraries) but I didn’t have a clue how to fix it and the application event log didn’t help much:

Log Name: Application
Source: SideBySide
Date: 15/08/2008 18:00:10
Event ID: 33
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: computername.domainname.tld
Description:
Activation context generation failed for “C:\foldername\applicationname.exe”. Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC90.CRT,processorArchitecture=”x86″,publicKeyToken=”1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b”,type=”win32″,version=”9.0.21022.8″ could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.

Thankfully, Junfeng Zhang wrote a comprehensive blog post about diagnosing side by side failures. It’s a bit too developery for me but I did at least manage to follow the instructions to produce myself a sxstrace:

=================
Begin Activation Context Generation.
Input Parameter:
        Flags = 0
        ProcessorArchitecture = AMD64
        CultureFallBacks = en-US;en
        ManifestPath = C:\foldername\applicationname.exe
        AssemblyDirectory = C:\foldername\
        Application Config File =
—————–
INFO: Parsing Manifest File C:\foldername\applicationname.exe.
        INFO: Manifest Definition Identity is (null).
        INFO: Reference: Microsoft.VC90.CRT,processorArchitecture=”x86″,publicKeyToken=”1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b”,type=”win32″,version=”9.0.21022.8″
INFO: Resolving reference Microsoft.VC90.CRT,processorArchitecture=”x86″,publicKeyToken=”1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b”,type=”win32″,version=”9.0.21022.8″.
        INFO: Resolving reference for ProcessorArchitecture x86.
                INFO: Resolving reference for culture Neutral.
                        INFO: Applying Binding Policy.
                                INFO: No publisher policy found.
                                INFO: No binding policy redirect found.
                        INFO: Begin assembly probing.
                                INFO: Did not find the assembly in WinSxS.
                                INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_32\Microsoft.VC90.CRT\9.0.21022.8__1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.DLL.
                                INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\foldername\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.DLL.
                                INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\foldername\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.MANIFEST.
                                INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\foldername\Microsoft.VC90.CRT\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.DLL.
                                INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\foldername\Microsoft.VC90.CRT\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.MANIFEST.
                                INFO: Did not find manifest for culture Neutral.
                        INFO: End assembly probing.
        ERROR: Cannot resolve reference Microsoft.VC90.CRT,processorArchitecture=”x86″,publicKeyToken=”1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b”,type=”win32″,version=”9.0.21022.8″.
ERROR: Activation Context generation failed.
End Activation Context Generation.

================= Begin Activation Context Generation. Input Parameter: Flags = 0 ProcessorArchitecture = Wow32 CultureFallBacks = en-US;en ManifestPath = C:\foldername\applicationname.exe AssemblyDirectory = C:\foldername\ Application Config File = —————– INFO: Parsing Manifest File C:\foldername\applicationname.exe. INFO: Manifest Definition Identity is (null). INFO: Reference: Microsoft.VC90.CRT,processorArchitecture=”x86″,publicKeyToken=”1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b”,type=”win32″,version=”9.0.21022.8″ INFO: Resolving reference Microsoft.VC90.CRT,processorArchitecture=”x86″,publicKeyToken=”1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b”,type=”win32″,version=”9.0.21022.8″. INFO: Resolving reference for ProcessorArchitecture WOW64. INFO: Resolving reference for culture Neutral. INFO: Applying Binding Policy. INFO: No publisher policy found. INFO: No binding policy redirect found. INFO: Begin assembly probing. INFO: Did not find the assembly in WinSxS. INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_32\Microsoft.VC90.CRT\9.0.21022.8__1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.DLL. INFO: Did not find manifest for culture Neutral. INFO: End assembly probing. INFO: Resolving reference for ProcessorArchitecture x86. INFO: Resolving reference for culture Neutral. INFO: Applying Binding Policy. INFO: No publisher policy found. INFO: No binding policy redirect found. INFO: Begin assembly probing. INFO: Did not find the assembly in WinSxS. INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_32\Microsoft.VC90.CRT\9.0.21022.8__1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.DLL. INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\foldername\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.DLL. INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\foldername\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.MANIFEST. INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\foldername\Microsoft.VC90.CRT\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.DLL. INFO: Attempt to probe manifest at C:\foldername\Microsoft.VC90.CRT\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.MANIFEST. INFO: Did not find manifest for culture Neutral. INFO: End assembly probing. ERROR: Cannot resolve reference Microsoft.VC90.CRT,processorArchitecture=”x86″,publicKeyToken=”1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b”,type=”win32″,version=”9.0.21022.8″. ERROR: Activation Context generation failed. End Activation Context Generation.

I don’t understand most of that trace but I can see that it’s trying to find a bunch of resources named Microsoft.VC90.CRT.* and a search of my system suggests they are missing. Microsoft VC sounds like Visual C++ and v9 would be Visual Studio 2008. Checking back at the original developer’s website, I saw that he suggested to someone else experiencing problems that they might need the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 redistributable package. I thought that the whole point of having the Microsoft .NET Framework on my PC was so that .NET applications would run, regardless of the language they were developed in (if there are any developers reading this, please feel free to leave a comment on this because I’m out of my depth at this point) but I downloaded the latest x64 version and installed it on my system.

No change (same error).

I realised that I was using the latest (SP1) version (v9.0.30729.17) and perhaps I needed the original one (v9.0.21022) as that’s the version number in the systrace log. So I removed the SP1 version and installed the original redistributable package instead.

Still no change.

I had the C++ source code, so I considered recompiling the application but I found that there was no compiler on my system (unlike for C#) and so I needed to install one of the Visual Studio Express Editions and would take a while. So I thought about other options.

It turned out that, even though I was running on 64-bit Windows, I needed to install a 32-bit redistributable. Don’t ask me why (that’s another developer question - the references to GAC_32 and Win32 in the sxstrace probably provide a clue) but it worked - and it didn’t matter whether I used the original or the SP1 version of the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 redistributable package (so I used SP1).

Now the application runs as expected. It’s got me thinking though… I really should learn something about .NET development!

Windows 7 blog launched

markwilson — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:51:00 GMT

After a year of speculation about what will, or won’t, be included in the next version of Windows, it looks like Microsoft might be getting ready to tell us a bit more. Yesterday they launched a new blog called Engineering Windows 7 (thanks to Dave Saxon for alerting me). As the title suggests, it’s all about putting together the next version of Windows and is probably worth keeping an eye on.

Installing PHP 5 on IIS 6

markwilson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

I’ve run PHP with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) before (running on a Windows XP laptop) and I seem to remember the installation being quite straightforward. Even so, tonight I was installing PHP 5.2.6 with IIS 6 (on Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition) and I ran across a few issues. This post describes what was involved:

Firstly, PHP can be installed in CGI, FastCGI or ISAPI mode. I used ISAPI.
Secondly, there is anecdotal evidence that the Windows Installer version is problematic - for that reason you may prefer to use the ZIP file and perform a manual installation (as I did), following the instructions on the IIS Admin blog, which were:
- Extract the files to a location of your choice (I used C:\PHP to keep it simple but C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP would be better).
- Rename php.ini-recommended to php.ini.
- Edit the extension_dir line in php.ini to read extension_dir = C:\phpinstallationfolder\ext.
- Add the PHP installation folder to the %path% system variable (e.g. append ;C:\PHP to the existing path).
- Create a web service extension for PHP using cscript iisext.vbs /AddFile c:\phpinstallationfolder\php5isapi.dll 1 PHPISAPI 1 “PHP ISAPI”. The new extension should show in IIS Manager with a status of Allowed.
- Create an application extension mapping for .php files. Following the advice on the IIS Admin blog article that I referenced previously will remove all other mappings so I used the IIS Manager MMC instead (Default Web Site Properties, Home Directory, Configuration to add a mapping to the executable at c:\phpinstallationfolder\php5isapi.dll using extension .php for all verbs).
- Create a test file called phpinfo.php containing <?php phpinfo(); ?>.
- Use a web browser to navigate to http://servername/phpinfo.php and the PHP information page should be displayed.
- If you are running on 64-bit Windows there are some extra steps in order to avoid an HTTP 500 Internal server error or the message %1 is not a valid Win32 application. It seems that this is caused by trying to load a 32-bit application (in this case PHP) inside a 64-bit worker process (as described in Microsoft knowledge base article 895976). To resolve this issue, enter cscript adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 1. adsutil.vbs is one of the scripts installed into the wwwroot\AdminScripts folder but if you have removed it to secure the server (as I had), then it may be temporarily copied back to the server from another IIS installation.
- To ensure that PHPinfo reflects the correct location of the php.ini file, create an environment variable called PHPRC referring to c:\phpinstallationfolder and restart the server or, alternatively, set the appropriate registry keys (although neither option seemed to have any effect for me).

Microsoft virtualisation news

markwilson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:05:00 GMT

Some time back, there was talk of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (then called SCVMM vNext) shipping within 90 days of Hyper-V. This link was later denied, or at least downplayed (depending upon who you spoke to at Microsoft) but it seems that SCVMM 2008 is expected to ship in September… that’s ooh… about 90 days after Hyper-V. Of course, speculating on product release dates is always a risky business, but Rakesh Malhotra should know (he runs the SCVMM program management team).

On a related note, he also explains why SCVMM requires virtual center in order to integrate with VMware ESX (a question I asked a few days back after the release of the VMware Infrastructure Toolkit for Windows v1.0 (PowerShell cmdlets for VI).

Last, but not least, the Microsoft Virtualisation User Group UK has been formed and have an inaugural meeting planned at Microsoft’s London (Victoria) offices on 24 September. Clearly there is a cross-over between MVUG and the Windows Server Team's content, so I'm sure I'll be in touch with Patrick and Matthew to see how best we can work together.

Using BITS to manage file distribution

markwilson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:37:00 GMT

Microsoft’s Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) has been around since Windows 2000 SP3 and provides a “firewall-friendly” means of transferring files across the network which also allows for restarts. It’s also the file transfer mechanism used for Windows updates (but is not exclusively used for Microsoft products) and is now at version 3.0 (included with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008).

A few weeks back, I was discussing the problem of rebuilding remote servers with some colleagues. We considered that it may be advantageous to keep a copy of the build image locally (e.g. on a branch office server) but image management (making sure that the locally cached image is the latest version) is an important concern. One of my colleagues asked if BITS could be used to control the distribution of the image files (which could be expected to be around 2GB) so I decided to dig a little further. The short answer is “yes”, but there are some things to be aware of:

Whilst recent versions of BITS can transfer files from either a web server (using HTTP/HTTPS) or a UNC shares (using SMB) but BITS 1.5 and earlier does not support the SMB protocol for the remote server.
Uploads require Microsoft IIS (5.0, 6.0 or 7.0, but not 5.1) with BITS IIS extensions configured. This means that pushing updates to a folder on a client is not possible (unless running IIS on all the clients); however it is possible to “pull” a file, if another method of initiating the transfer exists (e.g. a process which polls a central location for changes; by running a remote script from RDP, telnet; or instantiating a job using another method). If running IIS for uploads is appropriate, then check out the article on using BITS to upload files with .NET by Phil Wilson (no relation!).
IIS 5.0/BITS 1.2 or earlier each have a maximum file size for download of 4GB.
BITS 2.0 and earlier only uses the network interface card to measure network traffic and is not aware of network conditions further out on the network (i.e. the client’s Gigabit Ethernet NIC may be barely used but the WAN link may be significantly slower and could possibly be running at full capacity). For this reason, group policies may be applied to control the behaviour of BITS. BITS 3.0 can also use an Internet gateway device to determine network usage, as well as supporting peer caching - for peer-to-peer distribution of files using BITS.
BITS guarantees that the version of the file it transfers is consistent based on the file size and time stamp, not content (BITS does not protect against man-in-the-middle attacks but implementing IPSec would).

Microsoft provides a command line tool called BITSAdmin (bitsadmin.exe) for monitoring the progress of BITS jobs. BITSAdmin is available as a support tool for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 but is included with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. James Finnigan has a good post introducing the concept of transferring files using BITS; Aaron Czechowski has another BITSAdmin script; Frank-Peter Schultze has a good post on scripting downloads with BITS; or refer to the full BITSAdmin syntax and examples for further details.

Various third party wrappers also exist, including:

I haven’t seen a PowerShell wrapper for BITS yet but I have used Alexander Sukhovey’s BGet command (batch) file to initiate and manage BITS file transfers.

If BITS is not appropriate, those with plenty of bandwidth might consider RoboCopy (I have used it in the past to synchronise folders across the network) but, for me, Mads Klinkby’s BITSync looks perfect - unfortunately the download link was unavailable at the time of writing this post.

Upgrading Hyper-V (pre-release to RTM)

markwilson — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

A few nights ago, I finally got around to upgrading my own Hyper-V installation from release candidate 1 to the RTM version. I’d already updated the notebook PC that I use for work but I’d forgotten about the server at home - it was working well (and if it ain’t broke…). What follows explains the process for upgrading a server that is already running a pre-release version of Hyper-V to the RTM code:

On the parent partition, run the 64-bit version of Microsoft update 950050. This will update the Hyper-V components and will require a restart. After the restart, the version of Hyper-V Manager should be 6.0.6001.18016.
On each virtual machine, upgrade the integration components ICs - also known as integration services). To do this:
- Connect to a VM using the Virtual Machine Connection (VMC) tool and log on.
- Cancel the Found New Hardware Wizard and select Insert Integration Services Setup Disk from the Action menu in the VMC tool.
- A previous version of the Hyper-V integration services should be detected. Click OK to upgrade.
- When the integration services have been upgraded, restart the virtual machine.
- Following the restart, there should be no new hardware detected and all synthetic devices (e.g. the Microsoft Virtual Machine Bus Network Adapter) should be at version 6.0.6001.18016.

The process is time consuming and it does involve restarting every computer in the virtualised infrastructure, which should not be surprising as it also involves some pretty deep changes in the operating system (this upgrade is also from a pre-release version of Hyper-V, which implies it’s not running a production workload).

Password lockouts and disconnected remote connections

markwilson — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:06:00 GMT

For the last week or so, my colleagues have suffered an increasing amount of profanity as I’ve struggled with account lockouts on our Active Directory. I honestly nearly threw my notebook PC across the room last Wednesday.

I’d had my password reset twice and the account lockout flag removed about 7 or 8 times but I didn’t really get the answer that I needed when I asked our (offshored) IT helpdesk what might be causing the problem (for example, were there any AD synchronisation issues that they were aware of). After giving up on the helpdesk, I circumvented the proper support channels and dropped an e-mail to one of the administrators, who helpfully pointed me in the direction of another support team with the tools to diagnose the source of my lockouts and said it tends to be a disconnected terminal session or a software update program (e.g.from Adobe) using old credentials (e.g. to access the Internet via our proxy servers) that causes the lockout.

Sure enough, the problem was traced to a terminal server - and I did have a disconnected session there. Since resetting that session, the account lockouts have gone away and my access to e-mail, intranet, internal websites, Internet proxy servers, etc. has been restored.

My first inclination was to blame the infrastructure - and in this case it turned out to be a user error (or “a layer 8 problem”, as I like to refer to such things)… even so, I thought the experience might be useful for someone else who is getting frustrated by near-continuous account lockouts.

Hyper-V! Which Version?

markwilson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:00:00 GMT

I've written a lot about Hyper-V on this blog (some would say too much) but I'm going to carry on regardless. What I'll try to do is steer clear of the arguments about how it competes with alternative technologies and stick to technical details. After all, this blog's not really about news and comment - it's supposed to be technical.

John Howard published a detailed blog post when Hyper-V RTMed but I've spent a fair amount of time recently clearing up confusion about the various versions of Hyper-V, so I'll try and clarify things here:

Windows Server 2008 (with Service Pack 1 - i.e. the version that was released to manufacturing on 4 February 2008 - build number 6001.18000.080118.1840) includes the beta for Hyper-V. After that, there were two public release candidates (RC0 and RC1) before the final product was released on 26 June 2006.
Between the beta and the various RCs there were restrictions on the ability to upgrade virtual machines; but this did improve with later releases and I have successfully upgraded my release candidate VMs to RTM (depending on the version from which the upgrade is taking place, there may still be some limitations - see Microsoft knowledge base article 949222). The RTM version of Hyper-V can not be installed on pre-release versions of Windows Server 2008.
John Howard has written a blog post explaining the process of updating the Windows Server 2008 RTM images to include the RTM version of Hyper-V.
If you install a 32-bit version Windows Server, there is no Hyper-V (it's a 64-bit only product); however there is a 32-bit update for Hyper-V. Microsoft knowledge base article 950050 explains that the 32-bit update contains the Hyper-V Manager console and the Virtual Machine Connection tool for x86-based systems.
There are also versions of Windows Server 2008 available without Hyper-V, sold for a $28 discount. I believe that the $28 is a token value to appeal those who would cry foul if Microsoft bundled "free" middleware with their operating system. These do not contain any components from the Hyper-V role (which may be stating the obvious but you never know...). Functionally, there is no difference between the Windows Server 2008 SKUs with and without Hyper-V up to the point when the Hyper-V role is enabled (at which point the hypervisor slides under the existing OS and it becomes the parent partition).
Microsoft has also announced a product called Microsoft Hyper-V Server (which should not be confused with the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008) - this will be a standalone hypervisor product and will retail for $28 but Microsoft has not yet disclosed full details of Hyper-V Server.
Other Hyper-V related updates/downloads include:
- Language Pack (Microsoft knowledge base article 951636).
- Management tools for Windows Vista SP1 (Microsoft knowledge base article 952627).
- Release Notes.

Hopefully, that explains the various software products that include the Hyper-V branding or are in some way related to Hyper-V.

Windows Server 2008 Workstation conversion tool

markwilson — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:10:00 GMT

I've written previously about running Windows Server 2008 as a workstation (I do it on the notebook PC I use for work) but now it's even easier. Steven Bink has published details of a Windows Server 2008 Workstation conversion tool (via Garry Martin).

Windows Server User Group UK on LinkedIn

markwilson — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:04:00 GMT

The Windows Server Team was the creation of Scotty McLeod - and Scotty continues to be our group leader.

Unfortunately though, Scotty had a serious accident several months back and, although he continues to make a steady recovery, no-one else knows how to administer this website (and I'm not going to bother him for the credentials as I want him to concentrate on getting better!)...

...that means that we have no way of finding out who our members are and no way to contact you should we do what we talked about at the community day in April (was that really 3 months back?) - namely to start to organise some events.

So, with that in mind, I've created a LinkedIn group to supplement this website. Many of you will know LinkedIn - a professional networking site - and I'd ask you all to join the Windows Server User Group UK on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn's terms of service for the group do require me to provide LinkedIn with a list of the names of our group members, if required; however we should have no worries about privacy as they also state that:

"LinkedIn participates in the EU Safe Harbor Privacy Framework and is certified to meet the strict privacy guidelines of the European Union. All relationships on LinkedIn are mutually confirmed, and no one appears in the LinkedIn Network without knowledge and explicit consent."

I look forward to seeing you over at LinkedIn and hopefully this will be the first step towards organising some user group events. In the meantime, Austin and I will keep on blogging over here and one day we should be able to get this website back to being the focal point for our community that Scotty originally intended it to be.

Comparison between Hyper-V and the Xen hypervisor in RHEL

markwilson — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:18:00 GMT

Even though choosing a hypervisor is only a small part of implementing a virtualisation strategy, much has been written about how Microsoft Hyper-V compares to VMware ESX - and there are some fundamental differences between those two products. Architecturally, Hyper-V has a lot more in common with the Xen hypervisor (although they are not identical) and indeed XenSource worked with Microsoft to provide Linux support for Hyper-V and I've recently been alerted to the presence of a short white paper which compares Hyper-V and the Xen technology implemented in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the leading Linux distribution, which is not currently on the list of supported guest operating systems for Hyper-V). Despite being published by Microsoft, it seems to me to give a balanced view between the two products, although it should also be noted that Red Hat has announced it will be switching from Xen to KVM for future virtualisation support.

Microsoft's Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool has been released

markwilson — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:08:00 GMT

One of the problems associated with virtualisation is "virtual sprawl" - the proliferation of virtual machines (which can totally negate the idea of "server consolidation" if not carefully controlled. Management becomes critical - and a key part of that management is patching virtual machines to keep the operating system and applications up to date.

But what about the virtual machines that exist as offline images (templates, test and development machines, etc.)?

I've written previously about the beta of Microsoft's offline servicing tool for virtual machine images and last week it was completed and released to the web.

The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool works with System Center Virtual Machine Manager and, according to Microsoft, it "combines the Windows Workflow programming model with the Windows PowerShell interface to bring groups of virtual machines online just long enough for them to receive updates from either System Center Configuration Manager 2007 or Windows Server Update Services. As soon as the virtual machines are up-to-date, the tool returns them to the offline state in the Virtual Machine Manager library".

There's an executive overview on the Microsoft TechNet site and the tool can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.

Tracking down the Control Panel applet for Mail in 64-bit Windows

markwilson — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:16:00 GMT

At long last (and not before time), my corporate mail account has just been moved across to an Exchange Server 2007 system with Outlook Anywhere enabled. Unfortunately, I sold my Apple iPhone (which now has Exchange ActiveSync support) last week but I will be getting a new one at some time soon and there are many other benefits too - like that I no longer have to run a 32-bit VM to VPN into the corporate network and access my e-mail; and that the 2007 version of of Outlook Web Access is a huge step forward (even the "light" version for non-Microsoft and legacy browsers).

So, now that I can access Exchange from my 64-bit Windows Server 2008 workstation, I needed to configure an appropriate Outlook profile. Except that I couldn't find the mail applet in Control Panel, and Outlook 2007 only seemed to present the account settings for the currently loaded profile.

Then I noticed an innocuous icon in Control Panel, labelled View 32-bit Control Panel Items. Clicking on this exposed the Mail applet that is necessary in order to configure Outlook profiles.

Virtualised hardware hotel

markwilson — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:20:00 GMT

I was at a VMware event yesterday where they proudly played this video...

...it's a bit of fun (and the music is really catchy - even if the lip sync is a bit out!) and was apparently first shown at VMworld a few months back.

It's not just VMware that can offer this type of solution though - I did use VMware Virtual Infrastructure (VI) in the design I produced for a server consolidation exercise with a "big four" accountancy firm a couple of years back but it was very expensive and required a huge leap of faith on the part of both the customer and the datacentre managed service provider. Now we're in the second half of 2008, I'm not sure if I would be using VMware products in my "virtualised hardware hotel". For a lot less money I could do the same thing with Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V, together with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Some people will argue that the VMware products have maturity on their side and I'll concede that it's true - VMware did create the x86 virtualisation market - but a hypervisor (or virtualisation layer, in VMware-speak) is a commodity now and the simple fact is that I really can't justify advising my clients to spend the extra money on ESX and Virtual Center, especially as the Microsoft offerings under the System Center banner can be used to manage my virtual and physical infrastructure as one.

If only Microsoft produced viral videos like this, I could share one with you... so come on Redmond... give me something to play back at the VMware boys (and girls).

Setting up printers in Windows Server 2008

markwilson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:54:00 GMT

For the last few months, I've been running Windows Server 2008 as my desktop operating system. It's been rock solid, despite not being designed for laptop hardware and even if I can't hibernate (because I have Hyper-V enabled).

Earlier today I needed to set up a network printer but I was getting an access denied message when I tried to create the TCP/IP port using the standard Printers applet in Control Panel (even though my domain account is a member of the local Administrators group). The workaround that I found was to use the Print Management snap-in to add the port and then add the printer. This does require the Print Services role to be enabled (or remote server administration tools to be present) but it also provides a much better interface for the task.

Useful Hyper-V links

markwilson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:00:00 GMT

In the week or so since Hyper-V RTMed there has been a huge amount of coverage on various websites. Here's a roundup of some of the more useful articles that I've come across recently:

Sean Earp has taken a look at running various Linux distributions on Hyper-V (although without integration components they will be running in emulation mode - which will negatively impact performance).
As for the aforementioned Linux integration components (ICs), it seems that they are still under development but release candidate 2 Linux ICs are available.
Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) is not on the list of supported operating systems either but, being a Windows-derivative, ICs can be added to WinPE (and Mike Sterling has provided an updated script for the RTM Hyper-V ICs).
Earlier this year, John Howard wrote about how to turn on hardware assisted virtualisation but Michael Pietroforte has written about free tools from AMD and Intel which allow administrators to check whether (or not) a computer has the required hardware virtualisation capabilities.
Michael has also written about a Vista Sidebar gadget that allows monitoring of Hyper-V hosts.
Matthijs ten Seldam (The author of VMRCplus) is working on a virtual machine import tool for Hyper-V.
John Howard has written a script for locating Hyper-V hosts in a domain (showing the dramatic growth in Hyper-V usage at Microsoft) and Ben Armstrong has a script for compacting virtual hard disks (if only they had written them in PowerShell - James O'Neill has reworked John's script in PowerShell - as well as posting his PowerShell management Library for Hyper-V on CodePlex).
Finally, if you're not sure which version of Hyper-V you have running on a host (or in a VM), Sander Berkouwer has a post on determining your Hyper-V version and upgrade method.

Providing audio playback from a Hyper-V VM

markwilson — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:40:00 GMT

A few months back, I wrote about using the Microsoft Remote Desktop protocol to access USB devices from within a Hyper-V virtual machine. At the time, I mentioned that this approach will also work for other local resources and James O'Neill recently highlighted that, as long as the Windows Audio service is running, the Remote Desktop client can be used to bring sound from a virtual machine back to the device that is providing access (it's all part of a series James is writing on how to get the server he wants... perhaps he should read my post from a few months back on running Windows Server 2008 as a client operating system).

How Hyper-V works: product team videos

markwilson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:31:00 GMT

I've posted quite a bit of information about Hyper-V on this blog - including the Hyper-V presentation I gave at Microsoft UK in April 2008 but TechNet Edge has some videos from the Windows Server Virtualization product team that go into a lot of the detail - and where better to learn about this than from the guys who created the product?

Interview with Mike Neil (Microsoft General Manager, Virtualization) about Hyper-V RTM, including:

Why Microsoft decided to get into the server virtualization environment.
Changes between the various release candidates and RTM.
Challenges encountered along the way.
Where Hyper-V is heading.
IT Pro challenges for deploying Hyper-V.

Architectural overview:

Virtual service provider (VSP) virtual service client (VSC) and VMBus.
Disk operations within the Hyper-V architecture.
Comparison of fixed, dynamic, and differencing VHD disks.

Snapshots:

How virtual machine snapshots work.
How to properly export a specific VHD/snapshot.
Limitations with multiple branches of snapshots.

Backing up Hyper-V virtual machines:

Virtual machine snapshots and Volume Shadow copy Service snapshots (VSS).
How VSS snapshots function.
What happens with a backup for VSS and a non-VS aware operating system (e.g. Linux or Windows 2000 Server).

Disks and iSCSI:

Determine when to use a pass-through disk.
How iSCSI works and how to use it with Hyper-V.
Learn some best practices for using iSCSI.

High availability:

Guest operating system clustering.
Virtualization platform clustering.

How Microsoft uses server virtualisation for it's own IT.

Exchange Server support in a Hyper-V virtual machine

markwilson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:55:00 GMT

Virtualisation is great but it's not a "one size fits all" solution - some workloads just don't make sense for virtualisation.

For many organisations, Exchange Server is one such workload but there are scenarios when it might be appropriate - at least for part of the messaging infrastructure. Up until now it's been unsupported (in any case, Exchange Server 2007 requires a 64-bit platform, and that wasn't available on a Microsoft virtualisation platform before the advent of Hyper-V) but Microsoft is running some of its Exchange Servers on Hyper-V and, as Andrew "Dugie" Dugdell commented a few days back, Exchange Server support for Hyper-V is on its way.

In a Hyper-V briefing last week, I asked Bryon Surace, a Senior Product Manager for Microsoft’s Windows Server Virtualization group, to clarify the situation with regards to Exchange Server support on Hyper-V and he explained that support for virtualisation is part of Microsoft's common engineering criteria for 2008:

"Windows Server virtualization Support Each server product must be capable of running within a Virtual Machine (VM) as provided by [Hyper-V] on Windows Server [2008]. Each server product must handle escalation and support running in a VM at the same level as was the product running directly on Windows Server."

Some of the product teams are still testing their products on Hyper-V but, according to Surace, Exchange is supported but recommendations are to follow on implementation (the Exchange Server product team committed to an announcement within 60 days of Hyper-V's RTM including a detailed support statement for Hyper-V, and a TechNet article with best practices).

Bill Gates' last day at Microsoft

markwilson — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:19:00 GMT

So, after a 2 year transition, today is the day that Bill Gates steps down from his full-time job at Microsoft (although he will remain Microsoft’s chairman and will be involved in select projects based on direction from CEO Steve Ballmer and the rest of Microsoft's leadership team).

I commented on Gates' departure a couple of years back and more recently wrote about Mary-Jo Foley's concept of Microsoft 2.0. It's 33 years since Microsoft was formed and 30 years since the famous photo with most of the founding employees was taken in Albequrque. 30 years is a long time in IT.

Come to think of it, 30 years is most of my life (I'm 36) and I was interested to read about how the famous photo had been recreated for 2008.

Meanwhile, Stephen Levy has written an article for Newsweek entitled "Microsoft After Gates. (And Bill After Microsoft.)".

There's a Microsoft video looking back at Gates' life - and forward to the future but I prefer the version from the 2008 CES keynote:

Some people love to hate Microsoft. Some people can't stand other people being successful - and it's difficult to deny that Gates has been successful. For 14 years now, I've followed a career in IT, during which I've worked largely with Microsoft products, so I'd like to say "thank you and good luck" to the world's most famous geek as he does what all of the world's richest people should do at some stage in their life and changes his focus to work with helping those who are less fortunate.

Why Hyper-V does not mean the end of VMware - but at last it provides some competition for ESX

markwilson — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:20:00 GMT

Microsoft has been very careful in its statements about comparing Hyper-V with ESX. Jason Perlow's Hyper-V review is a little more forthright and the graphics are great!

I don't think that VMware is the new Netscape (although it seems IDC might think so) - they will be back with bigger and better things, and then Microsoft will push forward again in the next release of Hyper-V. Even so, all of a sudden, this is a two horse race, and VMware will start to see their market share decline.

And to all those who are comparing Hyper-V with VMware Virtual Infrastructure - get real - that's not comparing apples with apples. More realistic comparisons are:

Hyper-V and ESX.
Hyper-V Server (not yet released) and ESXi.
Virtual Infrastucture and Hyper-V plus various System Center components.

As for the argument that it's all about TCO, I'll leave that to the vendors and analysts to go into the detail but, from a simplistic view, Hyper-V and System Center are much less expensive to purchase than Virtual Infrastructure 3, the technical skills required for support are less specialised (read less expensive) and I find it hard to see how a broad management suite like Microsoft System Center is more expensive to run than a virtualisation-only management product like VMware Virtual Center together with the other products that will be required to manage the workload itself.

Critics say that virtualisation is about more than just the hypervisor and that management is important (it certainly is), then they deride Hyper-V (which is really just a hypervisor and basic management tools) by comparing it to virtual infrastructure's management features. Their next argument is typically that Hyper-V won't support desktop virtualisation and, from what I've seen, Microsoft is pretty much there on a credible solution for that too - as well as profile, presentation and application virtualisation, with partners like Citrix, Quest and AppSense filling in the gaps.

It's not all over for VMware but they do need to find a new business model. Quickly.

Resources for deploying Hyper-V

markwilson — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:27:00 GMT

Further to yesterday's post announcing that Hyper-V has shipped, I thought I'd highlight that John Howard has blogged extensively on obtaining Hyper-V, changes at RTM, upgrade considerations and more.

Microsoft releases Hyper-V to manufacturing

markwilson — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:30:00 GMT

When Windows Server 2008 shipped with only a beta version of the new "Hyper-V" virtualisation role in the box Microsoft undertook to release a final version within 180 days. I've commented before that, based on my impressions of the product, I didn't think it would take that long and, as Microsoft ran at least two virtualisation briefings this week in the UK, I figured that something was just about to happen (on the other hand I guess they could just have been squeezing the events into the 2007/8 marketing budget before year-end on 30 June).

The big news is that Microsoft has released Hyper-V to manufacturing today.

[Update: New customers and partners can download Hyper-V. Customers who have deployed Windows Server 2008 can receive Hyper-V from Windows Update starting from 8 July 2008.]

Why choose Hyper-V?

I've made no secret of the fact that I think Hyper-V is one of the most significant developments in Windows Server 2008 (even though the hypervisor itself is a very small piece of code), and, whilst many customers and colleagues have indicated that VMware has a competitive advantage through product maturity, Microsoft really are breaking down the barriers that, until now, have set VMware ESX apart from anything coming out of Redmond.

When I asked Byron Surace, a Senior Product Manager for Microsoft's Windows Server Virtualization group, why he believes that customers will adopt Hyper-V in the face of more established products, like ESX, he put it down to two main factors:

Customers now see server virtualisation as a commodity feature (so they expect it to be part of the operating system).
The issue of management (which I believe is the real issue for organisations adopting a virtualisation strategy) - and this is where Microsoft System Center has a real competitive advantage with the ability to manage both the physical and virtual servers (and the running workload) within the same toolset, rather than treating the virtual machine as a "container".

When asked to comment on Hyper-V being a version 1 product (which means it will be seen by many as immature), Surace made the distinction between a "typical" v1 product and something "special". After all, why ship a product a month before your self-imposed deadline is up? Because customer evidence (based on over 1.3 million beta testers, 120 TAP participants and 140 RDP customers) and analyst feedback to date is positive (expect to see many head to head comparisons between ESX and Hyper-V over the coming months). Quoting Surace:

"Virtualisation is here to stay, not a fad. [... it is a] major initiative [and a] pillar in Windows Server 2008."

I do not doubt Microsoft's commitment to virtualisation. Research from as recently as October 2007 indicates only 7% of servers are currently virtualised but expect that to grow to 17% over the next 2 years. Whilst there are other products to consider (e.g. Citrix XenServer), VMware products currently account for 70% of the x86 virtualisation market (4.9% overall) and are looking to protect their dominant position. One strategy appears to be pushing out plenty of FUD - for example highlighting an article that compares Hyper-V to VMware Server (which is ridiculous as VMware Server is a hosted platform - more analogous to the legacy Microsoft Virtual Server product, albeit more fully-featured with SMP and 64-bit support) and commenting that live migration has been dropped (even though quick migration is still present). The simple fact is that VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V are like chalk and cheese:

ESX has a monolithic hypervisor whilst Hyper-V takes the same approach as the rest of the industry (including Citrix/Xen and Sun) with its microkernelised architecture which Microsoft consider to be more secure (Hyper-V includes no third party code whilst VMware integrates device drivers into its hypervisor).
VMware use a proprietary virtual disk format whilst Microsoft's virtual hard disk (.VHD) specification has long since been offered up as an open standard (and is used by competing products like Citrix XenServer).
Hyper-V is included within the price of most Windows Server 2008 SKUs, whilst ESX is an expensive layer of middleware.
ESX doesn't yet support 64-bit Windows Server 2008 (although that is expected in the next update).

None of this means that ESX, together with the rest of VMware's Virtual Infrastructure (VI), are not good products but for many organisations Hyper-V offers everything that they need without the hefty ESX/VI price tag. Is the extra 10% really that important? And when you consider management, is VMware Virtual Infrastructure as fully-featured as the Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center combination? Then consider that server virtualisation is just one part of Microsoft's overall virtualisation strategy, which includes server, desktop, application, presentation and profile virtualisation, within an overarching management framework.

Guest operating system support

At RTM the supported guest operating systems have been expanded to include:

Windows Server 2008 32- or 64-bit (1, 2 or 4-way SMP).
Windows Server 2003 32- or 64-bit (1, or 2 way SMP).
Windows Vista with SP1 32- or 64-bit (1, or 2 way SMP).
Windows XP with SP3 64-bit (1, or 2 way SMP), with SP2 64-bit (1, or 2 way SMP) or with SP2 32-bit (1 vCPU only).
Windows Server 2000 with SP4 (1 vCPU only).
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with SP1 or 2, 32- or 64-bit.

Whilst this is a list of supported systems (i.e. those with integration components to make full use of Hyper-V's synthetic device driver model), others may work (in emulation mode) but my experience of installing the Linux integration components is that it is not always straightforward. Meanwhile, for many, the main omissions from that list will be Red Hat and Debian-based Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu). Microsoft isn't yet making an official statement on support for other flavours of Linux (and the Microsoft-Novell partnership makes SUSE an obvious choice) but they are pushing the concept of a virtualisation ecosystem where customers don't need to run one virtualisation technology for Linux/Unix operating systems and another for Windows and its logical to assume that this ecosystem should also include the leading Linux distribution (I've seen at least one Microsoft slide listing RHEL as a supported guest operating system for Hyper-V), although Red Hat's recent announcement that they will switch their allegiance from Xen to KVM could raise some questions (it seems that Red Hat has never been fully on-board with the Xen hypervisor).

Performance and scalability

Microsoft are claiming that Hyper-V disk throughput is 150% that of VMware ESX Server - largely down to the synthetic device driver model (with virtualisation service clients in child partitions communicating with virtualisation service providers in the parent partition over a high-speed VMBus to access disk and network resources using native Windows drivers). The virtualisation overhead appears minimal - in Microsoft and QLogic's testing of three workloads with two identical servers (one running Hyper-V and the other running direct on hardware) the virtualised system maintained between 88 and 97% of the number of IOPS that the native system could sustain and when switching to iSCSI there was less than a single percentage point difference (although the overall throughput was much lower). Intel's vConsolidate testing suggests that moving from 2-core to 4-core CPUs can yield a 47% performance improvement with both disk and network IO scaling in a linear fashion.

Hardware requirements are modest too (Hyper-V requires a 64-bit processor with standard enhancements such as NX/XD and the Intel VT/AMD-V hardware virtualisation assistance) and a wide range of commodity servers are listed for Hyper-V in the Windows Server Catalog. According to Microsoft, when comparing Hyper-V with Microsoft Virtual Server (both running Windows Server 2003, with 16 single vCPU VMs on an 8-core server), disk-intensive operations saw a 178% improvement, CPU-intensive operations returned a 21% improvement and network-intensive operations saw a 107% improvement (in addition to the network improvements that the Hyper-V virtual switch presents over Virtual Server's network hub arrangements).

Ready for action

As for whether Hyper-V is ready for production workloads, Microsoft's experience would indicate that it is - they have moved key workloads such as Active Directory, File Services, Web Services (IIS), some line of business applications and even Exchange Server onto Hyper-V. By the end of the month (just a few days away) they aim to have 25% of their infrastructure virtualised on Hyper-V - key websites such as MSDN and TechNet have been on the new platform for several weeks now (combined, these two sites account for over 4 million hits each day).

It's not just Microsoft that thinks Hyper-V is ready for action - around 120 customers have committed to Microsoft's Rapid Deployment Programme (RDP) and, here in the UK, Paul Smith (the retail fashion and luxury goods designer and manufacturer) will shortly be running Active Directory, File Services, Print Services, Exchange Server, Terminal Services, Certificate Services, Web Services and Management servers on a 6-node Hyper-V cluster stretched between two data centres. A single 6-node cluster may not sound like much to many enterprises, but when 30 of your 53 servers are running on that infrastructure it's pretty much business-critical.

Looking to the future

So, what does that future hold for Hyper-V? Well, Microsoft already announced a standalone version of Hyper-V (without the rest of Windows) and are not yet ready to be drawn on when that might ship.

In the meantime, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 will ship later this year, including suppoort for managing Virtual Server, Hyper-V and VMware ESX hosts.

In addition, whilst Microsoft are keeping tight-lipped about what to expect in future Windows versions, Hyper-V is a key role for Windows Server and so the next release (expected in 2010) will almost certainly include additional functionality in support of virtualisation. I'd expect to see new features include those that were demonstrated and then removed from Hyper-V earlier in its lifecycle (live migration and the ability to hot-add virtual hardware) and a file system designed for clustered disks would be a major step forward too.

In conclusion...

Hyper-V may be a version 1 product but I really do think it is an outstanding achievement and a major step forward for Microsoft. As I've written before, expect Microsoft to make a serious dent in VMware’s x86 [and x64] virtualisation market dominance over the next couple of years.