Hyper-V Host Patching – Cluster Aware Updading vs. Virtual Machine Manager Fabric Patching

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

In the past weeks I was giving a Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V workshop to customers and as we went to the Hyper-V host management I talked about how you can update your Hyper-V infrastructure and how you can automatically update your Hyper-V cluster.

If we do not think about System Center Orchestrator we have basically two solutions to fully upgrade our Hyper-V clusters first is the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Fabric Patching which is available since System Center 2012. The second one is a new one called Cluster Aware Updating which is included in Windows Server 2012.

Both solutions do basically the same thing and using the same concept:

Scanning the Hyper-V host for updates
Putting the first node in maintenance mode and pause the node in the cluster
Moving all virtual machines to other nodes of the cluster
Installing the patches
rebooting the server
checking if all services are up again
stop the maintenance mode
start doing the same with the next node

This is basically what both solutions are doing, but there are small differences between them and both have advantages and disadvantages.

Cluster Aware Updating (CAU)

Moving not only virtual machines to other nodes, it does also move other cluster roles and cluster disks to other nodes
Cluster Aware Updating can use different update sources (Windows Update, Microsoft Update, WSUS, SCCM,…)
You can apply hotfixes via CAU
Cluster Aware Updating has APIs for third party vendors
You can do driver or firmware updates via CAU
You can schedule it via Self-Updating mode
Run pre- and post-scripts
Update Approval process over WSUS or SCCM
Only supporting Windows Server 2012
Coordination via cluster role

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Does only move virtual machines to other nodes
Needs a WSUS server where the updates come from
Only updates which can be installed via WSUS
Virtualization (Fabric) Administrator will create update baselines and approve updates
Not third-party integration
Log – logs which administrator approved the updates
Integration in System Center Operations Manager, sets host in maintenance mode on SCOM so no alerts are generated.
Role based update management
Supports Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.
Coordination via Virtual Machine Manager

Both solution do a great job and can of course be extended by using Windows PowerShell, System Center Orchestrator or third-party products.

The two main differences are Windows Server 2012 Cluster Aware Updating is definitely the newer solution with extensibility for third-party solutions with support for other cluster roles not just Hyper-V. Where System Center Virtual Machine is the clear winner, is where you have security roles in place and you need logs and other security features. And System Center Virtual Machine Manager has also a connection to System Center Operations Manager which lets you set Hyper-V nodes to maintenance mode.

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.

Cannot remove Hyper-V Host from SCVMM

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

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Today I run in to the problem where I could not remove a Hyper-V Hosts from System Center Virtual Machine Manager. The Hyper-V host was reinstalled before he was removed from SCVMM and the host was showing has HOSTNAME (pending) in the SCVMM Management Console. If you did a right click to remove the host, the Remove option was greyed out.

But don’t worry Windows PowerShell came to the rescue, with the following command you can remove the Hyper-V host from Virtual Machine Manager.


Get-SCVMHost <HOSTNAME> | Remove-SCVMHost -force

Migrate Hyper-V Cluster to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V via Cluster Migration Wizard

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

If you have already an existing Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V cluster and you want to upgrade to Windows Server 2012 you have two options. The first one is by moving all virtual machines via System Center Virtual Machine Manager from the old Cluster into a new cluster. The second way to do it, is to use the Cluster Migration Wizard which is part of Windows Server 2012.

In my case I have two clusters one “old” Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V cluster and my new Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V cluster. Both Clusters are fully configured and both have access to the same disks/LUNs. The disk and all the VMs are running on the old cluster.

On the new cluster you can start the Cluster Migration Wizard.

This will bring up the Cluster Migration Wizard. The wizard will ask you about the old cluster.

The Cluster Migration Wizard will scan the old cluster for CSVs and Cluster roles. You have to select the Cluster Shared Volume you want to migrate to the new cluster. Note: you can only migrate CSVs including all virtual machines running on this CSV and not just single virtual machines. If you want to migrate single virtual machines you could do a Hyper-V Export/Import or using System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Since the Cluster Migration Wizard detects the roles as Hyper-V virtual machines he also asks for the new Hyper-V Virtual Switch.

You get a quick summary with all the information what the Migration Wizard will do, and you can migrate all roles. This means the Migration Wizard will create all cluster roles on the new cluster but will not take the existing VMs offline the VMs at this point are still running on the old cluster. You also get a Failover Cluster Migration Report at the end.

This report also shows you what’s next:

All the clustered services and applications selected for migration were migrated successfully. You may now take the clustered services and applications offline in your old cluster. Also take offline Cluster Shared Volumes used by any migrated roles, as well as storage pools for virtual disks used by any migrated roles. Then these disks, Cluster Shared Volumes, and clustered services and applications can be brought online in your new cluster.

In the new cluster you can now see the roles which are all turned of because there are still running on the old cluster. And you can also see the CSV which is offline on the new cluster and online on the old cluster.

As already mentioned we had no downtime until now. Now you can go and shutdown all the virtual machines running on your old cluster and take the migrated CSV offline.

Take the CSV offline

On the new cluster bring the CSV online

Bring the virtual machines on the new cluster back online.

And this is more how you can migrate a cluster. Remember there are still some tasks left.

Upgrade the Integration Components of all the virtual machines to the newest version.
Convert all VHDs to the new VHDX format to dynamic disks.
I also recommend that you use CSV Block Cache

There is also a great video from Symon Perriman and Rob Hindman, a Program Manager on the Windows Server Clustering & High-Availability team, in which they explain how you can upgrade to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

System Center 2012 SP1 – Virtual Machine Manager support for VMware vSphere ESX Hosts

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

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As System Center 2012 SP1 was released, it officially supported VMware vSphere 4.1 and 5.1, there was no support for vSphere 5.0 in SCVMM 2012 SP1. Now since a lot of customer have requested this feature, Microsoft added VMware vSphere 5.0 to the supported list of vSphere versions. For those who didn’t know that, to manage VMware ESX Hosts you need a version of vCenter. Some months ago I made a blog post about how you can add your VMware infrastructure to Virtual Machine Manager.

Virtual Machine Manager now supports the following versions of VMware vSphere:

vCenter Server:

For System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager:

VMware vCenter Server 4.1

For VMM in System Center 2012 SP1:

VMware vCenter Server 4.1
VMware vCenter Server 5.0
VMware vCenter Server 5.1

Virtual machine hosts and host clusters that run any of the following versions of VMware:

For System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager:

ESXi 4.1
ESX 4.1
ESXi 3.5
ESX 3.5

For VMM in System Center 2012 SP1:

ESXi 5.0
ESXi 5.1
ESXi 4.1
ESX 4.1

Get more information here: System Requirements: VMware ESX Hosts and here: System Requirements for System Center 2012 SP1.

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 →

Microsoft TechDays 2012 Switzerland – SCVMM 2012 SP1 and Hyper-V 2012 Session Online

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

techdays 2012

Some months ago I had the chance to present at the Swiss Microsoft TechDays 2012 in Basel. I had a session together with Michel Luecher from Microsoft Switzerland about the new features in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and how you can manage your new Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V environment.

Now you can watch the session online (German):