Tag Archives: VM

CentOS 5.5 Installing Hyper-V Linux Integration Components v2.1

Centos, Hyper-V, Linux, Virtualization, , ,

The first thing I recommend doing on your Linux VM server is running yum update. If you run ‘yum update’ after the installation you could see:
Kernel Panic after Yum Update – CentOS with Hyper-V Linux Integration Components, which would probably just add a few extra headaches.

Next, go to Microsoft, download and extract the Linux Integration Services package.

Next, install the Linux Integration Components:
Load the Linux Integration Components v2.1 iso into your VM.
When logged in as root, run:

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Run Rackspace Cloud Server locally on Hyper-V

Centos, Hyper-V, Linux, Server 2008 R2, Virtualization, Windows, , , , ,

Here is how I ran a copy of my Rackspace cloud server locally on my Hyper-V 2008 R2 Server. Why would you want to do that you ask? Well, there are many reasons. For example, I want to run all my applications in a test/staging environment before I push them live. I want to test all updates to my servers before I push them out live, testing large processes out without wasting money on CPU/bandwidth before running them live, etc. It is very nice to have a near exact copy of what you are running on rackspace cloud servers locally.

Part of the problem was I didn’t have any spare servers laying around that I could install linux and Xen on but I already had a Hyper-V server. This would allow me to run a linux VM, but how do you get a Rackspace cloud server backup running in Hyper-V.

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Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V / Intel I7 – Blue Screen of Death

Hyper-V, Server 2008 R2, Virtualization, Windows, ,

I was building out a new demonstration laptop. The laptop would be running VMs on Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. Since the VMs we needed to run were rather large, we picked up a rather powerful laptop to support them.

  • Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
  • Intel i7-720 QM
  • 8GB RAM
  • 640 GB HD

The build went fine. It was simple, enabling Virtualization in the BIOS, installing the OS, adding Hyper-V role, importing a few VMs. Everything went smoothly.

I started a Virtual Machine to make a few tweaks before going home for the weekend. When I came in on Monday morning. I found a wonderful screen telling me there was an unexpected shutdown. Awesome. Thanks Monday…

I checked the Event Viewer and found out that it had been restarting every few hours all weekend.

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Disable / Enable NICs via Powershell

Hyper-V, Powershell, Server 2008 R2, Virtualization, Windows, , , ,

A client I was working with was having an issue with their Virtual Machine (VM) running on Hyper-V. It was an odd one that I have never seen before. The VM was running Server 2008 R2 and had a single synthetic Virtual NIC attached with a static IP. The problem was that when the VM was restored from a saved state, occasionally, the network would not work. This obviously caused issues for users that needed to connect to the VM via RDP. Luckily, this VM did not completely rely on the Internet, so minor downtime when the VM was restored from a saved state wasn’t a major issue. Disconnecting and reconnecting the NIC in Hyper-V did not fix the issue, and ipconfig /renew wouldn’t fix anything since the IP address was static. The only thing the admin was able to do to temporarily fix the issue (until the next saved state restore) was to log into the VM via Hyper-V console and disable and then enable the NIC that was having issues. Unfortunately, time was a factor in finding a solution, and I was unable to physically see the hardware or VM in action. This made it very difficult to figure out what was causing the issue in the first place. A workaround seemed to be a much better use of time than spending hours trying to deduce the problem via E-mail.

The restore action for the saved state was done by via script. So it would be very easy to tie in another script to essentially disable and enable the NIC after the VM was restored. From what I can tell, this can’t be done using the Hyper-V Powershell APIs from the host. Also, since the network was the problem, I couldn’t run a remote script from the host to fix the NIC. Anything that could be done would have to be done within the VM. Granted this is not a solution to the original problem, but a workaround, and given more time we would have looked into what the actual cause was. So, here is the workaround to the problem.

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Full Sound Through RDP From a Hyper-V Windows 7 VM

Hyper-V, Powershell, Server 2008 R2, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 7, , , , ,

Windows 7 is a nice operating system and it has some pretty cool features. One of which, and one of my favorites, is that it comes with the newest version of Remote Desktop (RDP). This version is capable of letting you watch HD video through it (assuming your network connection is fast enough…). RDPing from one physical computer to another physical computer is easy and sound between the two works just fine. This is because both machines (most likely) have physical sound cards.

Sometime during my travels, I loaded Windows 7 onto a Virtual Machine (VM) running on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Virtual Machines in Hyper-V don’t have physical or even virtual sound cards like VPC. When RDPing to a Windows 7 VM the sound card is listed as Remote Audio. This is fine and will actually push through a decent amount of sound. While testing, it seemed to work fine for WMV files and a few other formats. For some reason, I was unable to get it to work with AVI files, and flash websites like youtube.com. I wanted full sound capabilities. So here is what I was able to get working.

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