Archive for March, 2012

Dual boot Windows 7 / Windows 8

Mar 22nd

Posted by Jaap Wesselius in Jaap Wesselius

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Hans Vredevoort already blogged about how to boot from VHD with Windows 8 Developer Preview. While this is certainly worth a try I installed Windows 8 (Consumer Edition) on another partition.

This is relatively simple. Suppose your Windows 7 is running from partition1 and you want Windows 8 to be installed on partition2. Boot the computer from the DVD and install Windows 8 on partition 2. When done you’ll notice that it only boots into Windows 7 and there’s no option to select another Operating System.

In Windows 8, request the properties of the computer object, select Advanced System Settings, select Settings under Startup and Recovery and select the default Operating System (Windows 7 or Windows 8 Consumer Preview)

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Please note that the OS selection will be shown during the boot process, so don’t panic if you miss the text screen.

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Windows Server “8” Beta Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster

Mar 16th

Posted by Jaap Wesselius in Jaap Wesselius

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This poster provides a visual reference for understanding key Hyper-V technologies in Windows Server “8” Beta and focuses on Hyper-V Replica, networking, virtual machine mobility (live migration), storage, failover clustering, and scalability.

 

poster

You can download the poster from the Microsoft download site.

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Hyper-V Replica PowerShell CMDLETS

Mar 11th

Posted by Peter Noorderijk in Hyper-v

2 comments

We all know that PowerShell is a very important component of Windows Server 8. You’ll need PowerShell to build, administer and troubleshoot your environment. This is also the case for Hyper-V features.

Microsoft published a list of PowerShell CMDLETS for managing Hyper-V Replicas. This list may not be wanting on Hyper-V.nu so here it is:

More >

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Early test version available for System Center 2012 SP1 and Windows Server ‘8’ Beta

Mar 10th

Posted by Hans Vredevoort in Hans Vredevoort

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I expect many of you have tried out the new version of VMM 2012 that will be generally available before long. It is an incredible piece of software that I have blogged about several times just after the first general beta since it arrived about one year ago. But there is one thing it cannot do: manage Windows Server ‘8’.

Now that the bits of Windows Server 8 are available to everyone, it is very good news that Microsoft has released the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of System Center 2012 for Windows Server ‘8’ Beta support. The focus of this CTP is on VMM and DPM in combination with Hyper-V and is therefore not aimed to work with all the other System Center 2012 modules. It essentially focuses on managing the fabric of your private cloud including Windows Server ‘8’.

These are the capabilities you can try out:

  • Hyper-V Network virtualization
  • Hyper-V VM’s on an SMB2.2 file share (on a Windows 8 file server or scale out file cluster)
  • VHDX format
  • Live Storage Migration
  • Live Migration without shared storage
  • VM protection on CSV 2.0 volumes
  • VM protection on remote SMB2.2 file shares
  • Protection of de-dup enabled file share volumes

System Center 2012 CTP for Windows Server ‘8’ Beta Support can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=29099

Documentation:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=29094&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MicrosoftDownloadCenter+%28Microsoft+Download+Center%29#tm

Remember that this CTP is not even beta so only run this in a test environment!

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Testing Hyper-V Server 8 Beta

Mar 4th

Posted by adminHans in Hans Vredevoort

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Less than a week after availability of Windows 8 Customer Preview (client and server) we now have access to Hyper-V Server 8 Beta which is a single role version of Windows 8 Core with just Hyper-V enabled

You have probably read about the huge amount of improvements to Hyper-V in Windows 8 and it may sound odd that this same functionality is also available for free. As Aidan Finn pointed out in his blog, the cost is in the licensing of the guest operating system.

Some of the main features:

  • No processor/core limit on the Hyper-V host
  • 160 Logical processors
  • 2TB memory on the host
  • 1TB memory per VM (without memory tax)
  • 1024 VM’s per Hyper-V host
  • 32 virtual processors per VM
  • Failover Cluster Support
  • Live Migration
  • Live Storage Migration
  • Shared Nothing Live Migration (without requiring shared storage)
  • RemoteFX with more monitors and resolutions
  • Storage Spaces
  • VMs on File Based Storage (SMB 2.2 Share on a Scale Out File Server)
  • Vendor independent NIC Teaming
  • Hyper-V Replica

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Just to get a quick idea about the new version of Hyper-V Server 8, I installed it in a virtual machine on my Windows 8 Customer Preview client which also runs a full version of Hyper-V. Of course this is not a supported configuration but can serve well for limited testing purposes as I have done while writing my chapters for Microsoft Private Cloud Computing. Although the installation experience was much like its predecessor Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1, it installed mighty fast!

If you have a server with plenty of memory, you could easily simulate a 64-node cluster. But remember that although you are able to create VM’s, you CANNOT start these VM’s.

Here is how you enable the Failover Clustering feature in PowerShell:

Add-WindowsFeature “Failover-Clustering”

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If you want to read more about how to install Hyper-V Server 8 beta on real hardware and how to tap its power through PowerShell, read this blog by Matthijs van Seldam:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/matthts/archive/2012/03/02/installing-configuring-and-managing-hyper-v-server-8-beta.aspx

Download location Hyper-V Server 8 beta:
http://t.co/FDWDmODQ

Download location Windows Server 8 beta:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh670538.aspx

 

Happy testing!

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Some interesting Test Lab Guides

Mar 2nd

Posted by Peter Noorderijk in Hyper-v

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Yesterday Microsoft released the first consumer beta of Windows Server 8. Here on Hyper-V.nu we have discussed allready some nice features of this new rocking Operating System. Now Microsoft also published more information about the new features of Windows Server 8. Two virtualization related innovations are described in a so called ‘Test Lab Guide’:

These guides will help you to implement and test the described features. Be aware that this is still a beta version of Windows Server 8!

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