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Posts tagged CentOS
FreeBSD now supported on Hyper-V
Aug 13th
Last week (August 9th) Microsoft officially announced the availability of FreeBSD 8.2 Support for Hyper-V. Microsoft has been partnering with both NetApp and Citrix to get this up-and-running and performing well. This release of FreeBSD contains 8,500 lines of code submitted under the BSD Lincense. Microsoft is currenlty analysing customer demand to extend this to FreeBSD 9.0.
The source code can be found on Github as well as instructions for building from this source and running the drivers, which can be found here. If you have any feedback do not hesitate to give it through the mailing list.
The FreeBSD integration components provide support for:
- Network controller
- IDE/SCSI storage controller
- Timesync
- Integrated shutdown
- Heartbeat
This is not the first Linux support on Hyper-V. In May 2011 Microsoft already started to support CentOS running on Hyper-V: http://virtualization.info/en/news/2011/05/microsoft-announces-support-for-centos-in-hyper-v.html
Updated Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V Version 3.2
Dec 2nd
[Update: from Mike Sterling’s mail detailing the changes since version 3.1]
Microsoft released an updated version of Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V v3.2 and can be found here: http://207.46.154.156/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=216de3c4-f598-4dff-8a4e-257d4b7a1c12
When installed on a virtual machine that is running a supported Linux operating system, Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V provides the following functionality:
- Driver support: Linux Integration Services supports the network controller and the IDE and SCSI storage controllers that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.
- Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices now take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.
- Time sync: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the virtualization server with the help of the pluggable time source device.
- Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager by using the “Shut Down” command.
- Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine. SMP support is not available for 32-bit Linux guest operating systems running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.
- Heartbeat: Allows the virtualization server to detect whether the virtual machine is running and responsive.
KVP (Key Value Pair) Exchange: Information about the running Linux virtual machine can be obtained by using the Key Value Pair exchange functionality on the Windows Server 2008 virtualization server. - Integrated Mouse Support: The cursor is no longer bound to the VMConnect window when used with the Linux Graphical User Interface.
These are the changes since version 3.1:
- Synthetic Mouse Support: The virtualized mouse device is no longer bound to the VMConnect window, and can now be used with a RDP session.
- Merged Device Drivers: We now present a single device driver for both IDE and SCSI devices (hv_storvsc).
- Windows 8 Fix: The synthetic network device (hv_netvsc) can now be used with a Windows 8 host, eliminating the hang on boot that was previously seen.
- SCVMM Fix: This release fixes the issue as described in KB2586286.
- Improved Setup Experience: Users now only need to run install.sh (as root) to automatically detect the correct architecture and install the appropriate drivers.
Installation of Data ONTAP Simulator in a Hyper-V guest (CentOS) and using an SMI-S provider to connect to SCVMM 2012
Aug 19th
Introduction
If you are a NetApp Customer or if you are an Advantage Partner (or if you have good friends among them) you can get access to the NetApp Data ONTAP Simulator. The reason why I wanted to try this out is to have an SMI-S compliant storage device which I could use in my System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 lab. As you may know Microsoft decided to use the SMI-S provider (SNIA Standard) to enable deep integration of storage arrays for Virtual Machine Manager 2012. I wrote a detailed blog about it here.
Getting the simulator was one thing, installing a Linux VM with Hyper-V Integration Components was another. Fortunately it was easy to find some good step-by step guidance by Yusuf Ozturk (1 and 2) and Michel Lücher (3)
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Installing Hyper-V v2.1 IC’s Setting up a CentOS 5.6 Desktop installation on Hyper-V and mouse support – Part 2
Because I don’t expect everyone to be able to read German, I will translate the instructions here and blog about my findings.
By the way, I have a third challenge … I don’t know anything about NetApp either, so this blog really describes my first steps into the Linux and NetApp world. At least the Hyper-V and System Center world is familiar territory.
I will not go through steps 1 and 2 because if you exactly follow Yusuf’s steps, you will end up with a Hyper-V aware CentOS guest. I downloaded the DVD ISO for CentOS 5.6 here.
The Netapp Data ONTAP simulator can be downloaded here.
Updated list of supported operating systems with Hyper-V
Aug 18th
When you look at the Hyper-V marketing page, you’ll notice that the list of supported operating systems is incomplete. If you want to know the whole support story including the recent CentOS Linux distribution that was added please go to the TechNet page, which also states end-of-support for some older Microsoft operating systems such as Windows Server 2000 with SP4 and Windows XP with SP2.
Here is the list for Linux distributions and as you can see they all have multi processor support up to the current maximum of Hyper-V R2.
For more details go to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794868(WS.10).aspx
Hyper-V R2 more proficient in Linux
May 16th
Today at TechEd 2011 in Atlanta we learnt that Microsoft now officially supports CentOS. CentOS is a popular free Linux distribution and is among the top three most popular ones.
CentOS has been added to the list of formally supported Linux Distributions. The others are SUSE Linux Enterprise (v10 and v11) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and up. With the added support for CentOS, Windows Virtualization becomes even a better candidate for mixed Windows-Linux environments.
Many other Linux distributions can be easily integrated into a Hyper-V R2 environment since Microsoft submitted the code for the Hyper-V integration components. These additions enable native Hyper-V support for synthetic devices (video, network, mouse), multi-processor support and graceful shutdown of Linux VM’s.
In this blogpost Ben Armstrong explains how to install Ubuntu Server 10.10 on Hyper-V.
Another nice announcement was made by Yusuf Öztürk from Istanbul who developed a PowerShell based new functionality for Linux virtual machines on Hyper-V: Set-LinuxVM
What you can do with Set-LinuxVM?
- Unattended IP, Hostname and DNS configuration for Linux VMs
- Automatic Linux integration components installation
- Multi Distro Support: Debian, Ubuntu, Centos, Fedora, Redhat and Suse
- Automatic CPanel installation for Redhat and Centos
- Linux VM Template support (Use Skip for EnableLIC switch
- Hyper-V support! You don’t need SCVMM to use this script.
- Multiple Hyper-V and SCVMM host support.
- Automatic Emulated NIC to Synthetic NIC support
- No need to internet connection (SSH access etc.) or additional changes on VM.
- Custom Answer File support! You can execute your own scripts.
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