How to install System Center 2012 SP1 Update Rollup 2 for VMM

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

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Microsoft last week released the Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 SP1 – Virtual Machine Manager which includes a lot of fixes and improvements. If you want to update you can do this by using the Windows Update scenario or install it manually.

You have to uninstall the Update Rollup 1 for SCVMM (you can find more on the reason on Carmen Summers blog post). Windows Update will not show you the Update Rollup to before you have uninstalled UR1.

If you have downloaded the Update Rollup 2 via the Windows Update Catalog and have installed it manually, it’s recommended that you uninstall UR2 first, after that uninstall UR1 and finally install UR2 on a System Center 2012 SP1 installation without any Update Rollups installed.

After you have installed the Update Rollup 2 for Virtual Machine Manager, make sure you also update the Agents on the Hyper-V hosts.

VMM Agent Versions:

Update Rollup 1: 3.1.6011.0
Update Rollup 2: 3.1.6020.0

Btw. Remember to do this not only for the VMM management server, don’t forget the hosts where the VMM console is installed, like System Center App Controller.

Hyper-V Converged Fabric with System Center 2012 SP1 – Virtual Machine Manager

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

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This blog post is a part of a series of blog posts about System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, I am writing together with Michel Luescher (Consultant from Microsoft Switzerland).

Hyper-V Converged Fabric

Last year I already wrote a blog post about Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Converged Fabric or Converged Networking. Hyper-V Converged Fabric in a simple way allows you to use network adapters for different type of traffic. In Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V we didn’t really had this capabilities because the network teaming relied on 3rd party software and Hyper-V itself didn’t offered a mature QoS solution. In other words, we had to go with what I now would call a traditional Hyper-V host design.

Traditional Design

Each dedicated Hyper-V network such as CSV communication or the Live Migration network used an own dedicated physical network interface. These different network interfaces could also be teamed with third party software, example with the software from HP, Broadcom or Intel. This design is still a good design in Windows Server 2012 but there are other configurations which are a lot more flexible.

In Windows Server 2012 you can get much more out of your network configuration. First of all NIC Teaming is now integrated and therefor out-of-the-box supported in Windows Server 2012. Another cool feature is the use of virtual network adapters in the Management OS (a.k.a. Parent Partition). This allows you to create a Hyper-V Hosts with all the necessary networks (Management, Live Migration, Cluster,…) by teaming just two or more physical adapters for a virtual switch and then create the additional virtual network adapters (vNICs) for the Hyper-V Management OS.

Continue reading →

Add Cisco UCS drivers to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V ISO Image

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

I already did a post how you can add the Cisco UCS drivers to a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Image using dism and imagex. With Windows Server 2012 you cannot use the command line tool imagex anymore but you have a new Windows PowerShell module for dism which allows you basically the same with. In this tutorial I will add the Cisco UCS drivers to a Windows Server 2012 ISO image or a Microsoft Hyper-V Server Image.

First I created three new folders:

Drivers – which includes all the extracted drivers for Windows Server 2012 (I removed all the drivers which are not related to Windows Server 2012)
ISO – This includes the extracted Windows Server 2012 ISO image
Mount – This is a empty folder which will be used to mount the WIM files

First we have to check in which Windows edition we want to add drivers. We can do this by using the Get-WindowsImage cmdlet:

 Get-WindowsImage -ImagePath .\ISO\sources\install.wim

This will show you all the Images which are included in this WIM file.

After we have seen the Index numbers we can now mount the Windows Image our Mount folder. In my example I use Image Index 3 which is the Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Core Edition

 Mount-WindowsImage -Path .\Mount -ImagePath .\ISO\sources\install.wim -Index 3

After the image is mounted we can now add the drivers from the Drivers folder.

 Add-WindowsDriver -Path .\Mount -Driver .\Drivers -Recurse

When all drivers are added to the Image you can dismount the image and save it.

 Dismount-WindowsImage -Path .\Mount -Save

We have now added the drivers to the Install image, you should also added the drivers to your boot image. To do this just do the same steps to the .\ISO\sources\boot.wim.

After that you can create a ISO file


oscdimg -n -m -bc:\temp\ISO\boot\etfsboot.com C:\temp\ISO C:\temp\mynew.iso

Add drivers to Windows Server 2012 ISO Image

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

I already did a post how you can add drivers to a Windows Server 2008 R2 installation image with the command line tools dism and imagex. With Windows Server 2012 you cannot use the command line tool imagex anymore but you have a new Windows PowerShell module for dism which allows you basically the same with. In this tutorial I will add drivers to a Windows Server 2012 ISO image or a Microsoft Hyper-V Server Image.

First I created three new folders:

Drivers – which includes all the extracted drivers for Windows Server 2012 (I removed all the drivers which are not related to Windows Server 2012)
ISO – This includes the extracted Windows Server 2012 ISO image
Mount – This is a empty folder which will be used to mount the WIM files

First we have to check in which Windows edition we want to add drivers. We can do this by using the Get-WindowsImage cmdlet:

 Get-WindowsImage -ImagePath .\ISO\sources\install.wim

This will show you all the Images which are included in this WIM file.

After we have seen the Index numbers we can now mount the Windows Image our Mount folder. In my example I use Image Index 3 which is the Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Core Edition

 Mount-WindowsImage -Path .\Mount -ImagePath .\ISO\sources\install.wim -Index 3

After the image is mounted we can now add the drivers from the Drivers folder.

 Add-WindowsDriver -Path .\Mount -Driver .\Drivers -Recurse

When all drivers are added to the Image you can dismount the image and save it.

 Dismount-WindowsImage -Path .\Mount -Save

We have now added the drivers to the Install image, you should also added the drivers to your boot image. To do this just do the same steps to the .\ISO\sources\boot.wim.

After that you can create a ISO file


oscdimg -n -m -bc:\temp\ISO\boot\etfsboot.com C:\temp\ISO C:\temp\mynew.iso

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V – Welcome to the Post-VMware Era!

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Today is the day Microsoft official releases Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft is doing a virtual launch event. Windows Server 2012 is a huge step forward for Microsoft virtualization technology Hyper-V.

I the past year I wrote a lot of blog post about the new features in Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V. I also did some comparing between VMware vSphere 5 and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

First to get an overview about the new feature in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V you should check out my blog post: Hyper-V 2012 – Hey I Just Met You And This Is Crazy

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Features

You can find some advanced blog posts about new technologies, which cover for example Hyper-V Replica, Converged Fabric and Cluster-Aware Updating here:

Hyper-V vs. VMware

If you are a VMware vSphere user at the moment, you should checkout my blog post series about Hyper-V vs. VMware.

Hyper-V and Windows PowerShell

If you are deploying Windows Server 2012 in your environment have a look at PowerShell. Windows PowerShell v3 which is included in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 is also a great release. I recommend reading the following posts:

Hyper-V and System Center

To manage Hyper-V Microsoft offers System Center 2012 and with the release of Service Pack 1 Microsoft will support the new features in Windows Server 2012.

Interview about the new feature in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

In July I met with Carsten Rachfahl who is a MVP for Virtual Machine and the owner of hyper-v-server.de. Carsten was visiting Switzerland and he also took the time to do some interviews and I had the chance to speak with him.

In the interview (in german) we talked about the new release of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V which is included in Windows Server 2012:

Next Events

Downloads

Credits for the blog post title go to Michael Faden from Microsoft Switzerland.

Windows Server 2012: Install Hyper-V Role for beginners

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 RC Logo

Still a lot of people haven’t tired Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. Now this blog post should help them doing the first step with Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

If you install you want to install the Hyper-V role on a Windows Server 2012 you have basically two choices. First you can install the role with the Server Manager.

Here you can choose if you want also the management tools for Hyper-V. The management include the Hyper-V Manager Console and the Hyper-V PowerShell module.

If you want to install the Hyper-V role via command line or you are using the Windows Server 2012 core installation. There is the following PowerShell cmdlets available.

  Add-WindowsFeature Hyper-V -Restart -IncludeManagementTools

The parameters -restart and -includeManagementTools are optional.

Hyper-V vs. VMware vSphere – Host Deployment

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 RC Logo

VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus offers a solution for centralized deployment of VMware Hypervisor hosts on physical hardware.

How does the deployment of Microsoft Hyper-V Server work? Microsoft Hyper-V can be deployed as Windows Server role or as Microsoft Hyper-V Server. Both setups are based on the normal Windows setups and you can use the same deployment processes.

DVD
USB
Windows Deployment Services (WDS)
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)
System Center Configurations Manager

or my favorite deployment method: Bare-Metal Deployment with System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Blogger and Microsoft Consultant Michel Lüscher wrote a great blog post about how you can use the bare-metal deployment feature in SCVMM.