Yusuf Ozturk

Last post, I configured quorum configuration of Hyper-V Cluster. Now it’s time to enable Cluster Shared Volumes for Cluster. I created a 1 TB disk from SAN. Then I add it from Storage section.

Now we see it under the Available Storage.

Then enable Cluster Shared Volumes for Cluster.

Then add your disk to CSV with Add Storage.

Choose your 1 TB disk for Cluster Shared Volumes.

Done. Now your disk is available in Cluster Shared Volumes.

Now you can see your disk at C:\ClusterStorage.

You need a quorum disk for Hyper-V Cluster. I’ll show you how to configure best quorum settings for Hyper-V Server R2. First of all, create a volume from your SAN for quorum disk. Microsoft recommends 500 mb of space for quorum disk for best ntfs performance. I give 600 mb for my quorum, then I attached same disk to all cluster nodes. Then you need to add that disk to available storage group in cluster.

You don’t have to give any letter for your quorum disk. Just initialize and format your disk as a NTFS partition. Be careful, leave your disk as a Basic disk.

To configure your disk as a quorum disk, use “Configure Cluster Quorum Settings” under the “More Actions” menu.

Choose Node and Disk Majority for the recommended Quorum configuration.

Choose your Quorum disk to assign it as a witness disk.

Done. Now you have a quorum disk for Hyper-V Cluster.

After this operation, you need to add a disk for Cluster Shared Volume.

We use SCVMM 2008 R2 for a long time to manage our virtual machines. We have exactly 180 active virtual machines on Hyper-V Cluster with 6 nodes and 13 standalone Hyper-V servers. SCVMM 2008 R2 is a real hero to manage and monitor our virtual machines. But a few days ago, we got some issues with SCVMM. We couldn’t add user roles for SSP, even couldn’t change owner of the vms. I checked the event logs, because SQL wasn’t responding to SCVMM.

Another one:

At the same time SCVMM gave:

After that, I installed MSSQL Management Studio and checked the size of the database “VirtualManagerDB”. That was 4 GB. SCVMM installs MSSQL 2005 Express Edition and because of express edition license, you are limited to 4 gb for a database. Then I decided to upgrade database to MSSQL 2008 R2 Standard Edition.

First of all, I installed MSSQL 2008 R2 Standard Edition on the same machine. After installation, you need to move your mssql 2005 database to mssql 2008. It was really easy, just you need to detach from old SQL and then attach to new SQL server.

You can detach as here:

And you can attach to new SQL server as here:

You can find SCVMM database under this path:

I used this simple nice article to move my database, you can also see the steps from here:

After moving your database, you need to set your SCVMM to use new SQL server.
Now you need to edit some registry keys to do that. In the registry, navigate to following subkey:

I used default instance name of MSSQL 2008 R2. Modify your registry key like here:

My connection string:

After modifying connection string, you should change DependOnService configuration. Navigate to here:

Modify your registry key like here:

Now, our SCVMM 2008 R2 works on MSSQL 2008 R2 Standard Edition. Wohoo! Time to eat Whooper Menu :)

I installed Linux IC v2.1 on a fresh Centos 5.2 to make a benchmark test.

You can see detailed benchmark results from here:

I used unixbench-5.1.2 for benchmark tests. Also I tried this stress tool for cpu stress test:

Results are impressive. I upgraded our Centos vms to IC v2.1 successfully.

İşte uzun bir zamandır beklediğimiz sonuçlar gerçekleşmeye başladı. Artık Linux Integration Components v2.1 ile birlikte Hyper-V Centos 5.2 destekler durumda. Her ne kadar IC2 ile birlikte Centos desteklenmeye başlansa da başarılı sonuçlar elde edememiştik. Özellikle işlemci kullanımına yönelik bir gelişme söz konusu değildi. Fakat v2.1 ile birlikte Microsoft’tan Centos’a başarılı bir destek gelmiş durumda. Şuanki IC ile birlikte 4 CPU ve Shutdown desteğinin gelmesi önemli gelişmeler arasında. Aşağıda Centos’tan almış olduğum test sonuçlarını ve ekran görüntülerini paylaşıyorum.

Test sonuçlarının ayrıntılı çıktısına aşağıdaki bağlantıdan erişebilirsiniz:

Benchmark testleri için unixbench-5.1.2 kullandım. Ayrıca Cpu Stress için de aşağıdaki yazılımı kurdum.

Cpu Stress’de 4 işlemcinin de kullanıldığını görmek çok güzel. Eskiden işlemciler arasında yük dağılımı düzgün yapılamıyordu. Fakat yeni IC ile birlikte bu problem de giderilmiş gibi görünüyor.

Kişisel görüşüm, Hyper-V’nin Linux desteği konusunda çok yol aldığı. Fakat hala Linux üzerinde çalışan önemli bir projeniz olacaksa, vmware kullanmanızı tavsiye ediyorum. Hyper-V IC v2.1, henüz çok yeni çıkmış ve hala Beta olan bir IC. Ciddi projeler için henüz kullanılmaması gerektiğini düşünüyorum. Yalnız Microsoft’tan destek gelmeye devam ederse, Linux için daha iyi IC’ler çıkabilir ve biz de artık Hyper-V içersinde Linux kullanmaya başlayabiliriz.

You may get this error when you want to migrate a virtual machine with Live Migrate.

Check available memory (ram) on host Y. Maybe you have enough ram to pass SCVMM pre-checks but you don’t have enough to use Cluster service. Save state another virtual machine on host Y and retry migrate.

Dell Blade is a trusted virtualization solution for hosting companies. I did some benchmark tests on our Blade server (Dell PowerEdge M1000E). I used two different pyhsical servers, Dell PowerEdge M600 and Dell PowerEdge M610. Also I used two virtual machines to compare results. Server configurations:

DELL M600:
OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)
CPU: Intel Xeon L5430 @ 2.66GHz
Ram: 32766 MB RAM
Disk: 136GB HDD

DELL M600 VM:
OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)
VM CPU: Intel Xeon L5430 @ 2.66GHz
VM Ram: 4095 MB RAM
VM Disk: 40 GB, DELL EqualLogic

DELL M610:
OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)
CPU: Intel Xeon E5530 @ 2.40GHz
Ram: 49142 MB RAM
Disk: 136GB HDD

DELL M610 VM:
OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)
VM CPU: Intel Xeon E5530 @ 2.40GHz
VM Ram: 4095 MB RAM
VM Disk: 40 GB, Dell EqualLogic

Results:

I used Passmark PerformanceTest 7.0 for all benchmark tests. (http://www.passmark.com)

I got a question about ISO feature on Technet forums today.

Jan Marek:

Really good question I think. Because as I know, you can’t find it with SCVMM console. Also checking all virtual machines one by one is a way but it could be a nightmare, if you have so many virtual machines.

I wrote a Powershell script for Jan. I want to share:

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$all = Get-VM *
foreach ($i in $all)
{
$iso = $i | Get-VirtualDVDDrive | Select-Object ISO
if ($iso -like "*test*")
{
write-host VM: $i
}
}

If your ISO name is “debian.iso”, just replace “test” with “debian”.

Also if you use just “Get-ISO”, you can see all iso images on all virtual machines.

You can reach that post from here:

If we can see them with SCVMM console, please let me know.

You may get warning (13921) after migration of a virtual machine from a host to cluster:

Let’s check virtual network adapters of the virtual machine:

As you see, I have 5 network tags. But the “Internal Network” exist in the Cluster? Let’s check it.

Right click to Cluster and click to Properties. Click “Networks” tab.

Now I see only 4 network cards. So where is the “Internal Network”?

That means I don’t have any network called “Internal Network”. So I have to create Internal Network in all Clustered Hosts or I have to choose another network. I simply choose Backup Network for my virtual machine.

Tadaaaa! We fixed it :) Remember, in order to assign a virtual network to virtual machine in a cluster environment, you need to create that virtual network in all hyper-v hosts. Good luck.

You need to add secondary ip to external host? You only need to Powershell and Psexec. Psexec is a small and free program. You can download Psexec from Microsoft Technet. It works great!

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# VM Config Tool
# Created By Yusuf Ozturk
# In God We Trust, All Others We Use Powershell
 
# PsTools: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx
 
$VMName = Get-VM VDS*
 
foreach ($VM in $VMName)
{
    $IP = ($VM.Name).TrimStart('VDS00')
 
    $Server = "10.10.10." + $IP
 
    $IP1 = "10.10.11." + $IP
    $IP2 = "10.10.12." + $IP
    $IP3 = "10.10.13." + $IP
 
    $PSExecPath = "\\10.10.10.2\yusufozturk$\PsTools\psexec.exe"
 
    $Command1 = "netsh interface ipv4 add address ""Local Area Connection"" $IP1 255.255.255.0"
    $Command2 = "netsh interface ipv4 add address ""Local Area Connection"" $IP2 255.255.255.0"
    $Command3 = "netsh interface ipv4 add address ""Local Area Connection"" $IP3 255.255.255.0"
    $Command4 = "xcopy \\10.10.10.2\yusufozturk$\IIS\default.asp C:\inetpub\wwwroot\"
 
    $Shell1 = $PSExecPath + " \\" + $Server + " -u Administrator -p Password123 " + $Command1
    $Shell2 = $PSExecPath + " \\" + $Server + " -u Administrator -p Password123 " + $Command2
    $Shell3 = $PSExecPath + " \\" + $Server + " -u Administrator -p Password123 " + $Command3
    $Shell4 = $PSExecPath + " \\" + $Server + " -u Administrator -p Password123 " + $Command4
 
    cmd.exe /c $Shell1
    cmd.exe /c $Shell2
    cmd.exe /c $Shell3
    cmd.exe /c $Shell4
 
}

You need to add /c switch for cmd.exe to execute scripts in a script. You need to accept Eula of Psexec first.