Windows Server 2012 R2 installation media issues (OEM)

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 2 Comments

Here’s an easy one – you may have encountered and solved it already, but let this be here… as a reminder. Smile

If you ever tried to install the Windows Server 2012 R2 into a Hyper-V virtual machine by using the provided OEM installation media (in my case, from IBM), your installation may fail even before it started because the hardware you’re using (i.e. “virtual” hardware) is not the one the installation expects (which is “imprinted in the media itself”).

So, you get an error like this:

image

Solution here is kind of simple – IBM provided the little utility (just 5 KB) called Hyper-V-OEM-BIOS-V2.exe, which makes the virtual machine “produced by IBM” (actually, virtual machine BIOS gets updated to contain the IBM specific information, that the Windows installation is looking for, and which is the cause of this error).

After you run the utility (on your Hyper-V host), Windows installation using the OEM media proceeds as it should.

image

Other solution (actually a workaround) is to use the retail media for the virtual machine installation. In this case, you won’t get the error, and installation proceeds as it should right from the beginning.

IBM published a document explaining this issue, and the possible resolution/workaround, you can view it here.

As I’ve said – quick & easy (hope it helps)! Smile

Cheers!

Just released – Veeam Management Pack v7

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Guys at Veeam have released a new version of their management pack for System Center – Veeam® Management Pack™ v7 (now with Hyper-V support, which is kind of a big deal for those running Hyper-V & Veeam)!

As they say on their website – “This new version is the most comprehensive, intuitive and intelligent extension for app-to-metal management of Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere and Veeam Backup & Replication™.”

One interesting thing about the product is that it now offers the same features for monitoring, reporting and capacity planning for both hypervisors. You’ll get:

  • Interactive topology views of compute, storage and network
  • Real-time Hyper-V performance monitoring
  • In-context dashboards and heat maps

More detailed info is available here.

mp_7_scheme

They also have a very cool offer – here you can request a free product license (Enterprise edition) including one year of free Standard maintenance for Hyper-V environments up to 100 sockets (offer available until December 31, 2014).

So… grab your license and start exploring! Smile

Need a Book for the Beach?

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

I’m happy to announce that our MVP colleague, Alessandro Cardoso got published again. His book, System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager Cookbook, got an update to the latest System Center version and much more!

I’m also happy that I was selected as a Technical Reviewer of this book and, in a (small) way, helped in creating this awesome resource. My final copy arrived just this morning, and I can’t wait to read it (again). Smile

6848EN_System Cookbook

You can find more info about it (as well as order your copy) here.

Cheers!

Windows Server 2012 R2: Hyper-V – What’s new (at first glance)?

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Well, the new version (R2) of the best server operating system is on it’s way! Windows Server 2012 R2 brings many new & upgraded features as announced at TechEd: North America 2013 conference last week.

Although I like Windows Server 2012, I’m specially excited about the news coming in the next Hyper-V upgrade. Some of them are:

  • Gen2 VMs – imagine VMs that don’t have anything emulated – no emulated devices such as IDE disk controllers and NIC cards. Well, that’s coming in R2 – we will have the new virtual machines that will be capable of booting from SCSI disks, machines that can use Secure Boot feature introduced in Windows 8, etc. This will have one downside however – to use it, you will need to run Windows 8 (x64) or Windows Server 2012 as guest OS.
  • VM Direct Connect – the new feature that allows you remote desktop connection into the virtual machine, without using network and channels you usually use – this time, you are going into the machine from the “inside”, through VM bus.
  • Hyper-V Replica to a third site – now you can have two replicas of you VMs – pretty cool and veeeery useful, if I may say so!
  • Replica frequency – now you can control the replication frequency (no more fixed 5 minutes replication intervals which allows you to “fine tune” the replication intervals to your networking infrastructure).
  • Compression – allowing from 2x to 10x faster live migrations (depending on hardware used)… do I need to say more?
  • Dynamic Memory for Linux – finally we have support for Dynamic Memory on Linux virtual machines also.
  • Online VM exporting and cloning, VHDX resizing
  • and much, much more!

This is just a list of some features and improvements that caught my attention. More is available in Ben’s talk at TechEd – http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013/MDC-B330.

See you soon!