Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Configure VM Processor Compatibility for Legacy Operating Systems

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

In Windows Server 2008 R2 you had a setting in the Hyper-V Manager GUI to enable Processor Compatibility for legacy operating systems such as Windows NT 4.0 Server or Windows Server 2000. In Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V this setting is gone from the GUI, but you can still change it via Windows PowerShell.

By using the Get-VMProcessor cmdlet you can list the virtual CPU information of your Hyper-V virtual machines.

As you can see you can find a property called CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled which is set to “False” by default and this is okay in 99% of all cases. But even if Windows NT 4.0 Server or Windows Server 2000 is not officially supported by Microsoft anymore there are some customers which have to run some VMs with legacy operating systems and by changing this setting via Windows PowerShell and the Set-VMProcessor cmdlet you can allow VMs to run old operating systems.


Set-VMProcessor NT4VM -CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled 1

And of course you can also change it back


Set-VMProcessor NT4VM -CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled 0

Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery: Five Critical Decisions

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Together with Symantec, Mahmoud Magdy (Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server) and Mikko Nykyri (VMware vExpert) we produced a whitepaper called “Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery: Five Critical Decisions”. This whitepaper covers an overview about virtualization and the challenges which come with the new workloads in terms of backup and recovery.

Because of the outstanding economy, flexibility, and service levels it offers, virtualization is transforming data centers at breakneck speed: by 2016, an estimated 80 percent of the world’s x86 servers will be virtual machines (VMs).1 But the speed of this transformation, along with the high resource utilization, ease of cloning, moving workloads, and other ways virtualization works its magic, raise challenges for “traditional” IT services and the teams that deliver them. Nowhere is the complexity that virtualization creates for traditional IT services more apparent than in backup and recovery, which participants in a recent Symantec survey ranked among their least-successful IT initiatives. This paper addresses five critical decisions organizations must make when building a backup and recovery plan to:

Maintain protection, visibility, and control of applications and data.

Maximize utilization of established infrastructure, processes, staff, and budget.

Use virtualization to improve backup and recovery processes.

Create an efficient, scalable, future-prepared backup and recovery environment.

Each issue is presented first in general terms that apply across IT environments, and then add comments for specific platforms, applications, or industries based on our individual experience as VMware® vExperts and Microsoft® MVPs.

You can download the whitepaper here: Symantec Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery: Five Critical Decisions

Make also sure you checkout the Google Hangout event on Fri, May 10, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM.

Join a panel of virtualization experts including Microsoft MVPs Mahmoud Magdy & Thomas Mauer and VMware vExpert Mikko Nykyri as they discuss the white paper they co-authored and offer their thoughts on the most important things to consider for a virtualized server environment.

Cannot remove Hyper-V Host from SCVMM

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

System Center Logo

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

Windows Azure: General Availability of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Today Microsoft announced the General Availability of the Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service offering. This includes the new Virtual Machine and Virtual Network capabilities. This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production apps.

Today’s IaaS release also includes new enhancements:

VM Image Templates (including SQL Server, BizTalk Server, and SharePoint images)
VM Sizes (including Larger Memory Machines)
VM Prices (reduced prices 21%-33% for IaaS and PaaS VMs)

Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service allows you to create Virtual Machine and Virtual Networks hosted by the Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud. I already created a blog post how you can create new Virtual Machines in Windows Azure and how you can connect System Center App Controller to manage your Private Cloud as well as your Public Cloud hosted in Windows Azure.

New Windows Azure Virtual Machine Compute Pricing

Below are the new hourly on-demand rates for Windows Azure Virtual Machines:

Size Name	# of CPU Cores	Memory	Windows VM Pricing	Linux VM Pricing
ExtraSmall	Shared	768 MB	$0.02 per hour	$0.02 per hour
Small	1	1.75 GB	$0.09 per hour	$0.06 per hour
Medium	2	3.5 GB	$0.18 per hour	$0.12 per hour
Large	4	7 GB	$0.36 per hour	$0.24 per hour
ExtraLarge	8	14 GB	$0.72 per hour	$0.48 per hour
A6	4	28 GB	$1.02 per hour	$0.82 per hour
A7	8	56 GB	$2.04 per hour	$1.64 per hour

Note that the above prices are for hourly on-demand usage (meaning there is no commitment to use them for more than an hour and you pay only for what you consume). Complete pricing details for Windows Azure Virtual Machines can be found here.

Commitment Pricing Discounts

You can also optionally take advantage of our 6 Month and 12 Month commitment plans to obtain significant discounts on the standard pay as you go rates. With a commitment plan you commit to spend a certain amount of money each month and in return we give you a discount on any Windows Azure resource you use that money on (and the more money you commit to use the bigger the discount we give).

You can get more information on the blog post from Scott Guthrie or the Windows Azure homepage.

Iron Networks Announces Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Network Virtualization Gateway Appliance

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

Finally some months after the launch of Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1, Iron Networks announces Windows Server 2012 Network Virtualization (NVGRE) Gateway Appliance for System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual machine Manager at the Microsoft Management Summit 2013. The Network Virtualization Gateway Appliance allows you to connect your Software Defended Networks (SDN) which you have created with Windows Server 2012 Network Virtualization to physical hardware or other networks.

Windows Server2012 Hyper-V Network Virtualization provides virtual networks to virtual machines, similarly to how server virtualization (hypervisor) provides virtual machines to the operating system. Network virtualization decouples and isolates virtual networks from the physical network infrastructure and removes the constraints of VLAN and hierarchical IP address assignment from virtual machine provisioning. This flexibility makes it easy for customers to move workloads to IaaS clouds and adds efficiency for hosters and datacenter administrators to manage their infrastructure, while maintaining the necessary multi-tenant isolation, security requirements, and supporting overlapping virtual machine IP addresses.

“Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Network Virtualization provides greater freedom for workload placements,” said Brian Hillger, director, Server and Tools Marketing, Microsoft. “Virtual machine workload placement is no longer limited by the IP address assignment or VLAN isolation requirements of the physical network because it is enforced within Hyper-V hosts, based on software-defined, multitenant virtualization policies.”

You can get more information about the Iron Networks Announcement here: Iron Networks Announces Windows Server 2012 Network Virtualization Gateway Appliance

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 →

5th grader creating Hyper-V virtual machine and installing Windows Server 2012

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

I just saw the blog post from Yung Chou (Technology Evangelist in Microsoft US Developer and Platform Evangelism team) where he posted a video from a 5th grader installing Hyper-V, creating a virtual machine and install a Windows Server 2012 VM.

Kid Installing Hyper-V