Category Archives: Hyper-V

2014 Kicks Offs With A Microsoft MVP Award Renewal!

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I can start of the new year at the office tomorrow by whishing everyone a great 2014 and talking to the CEO about making sure we schedule/budget for the MVP Summit in 2014 as I just got this e-mail in:

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This is great news. Somewhere this month, a box will arrive at my house with a new ring for the award trophy and a new MVP Certificate. The trophy itself stands proudly on a cupboard in my parents living room. I might have earned the award, but they made sure I was given the little backpack with the values & the education to make that possible. And while they don’t really understand the technicalities of what I do, they think the world of it when I fly of to the USA because Microsoft likes to talk to me Smile.

While you get the MVP award for contributions over the past year to the community you must realize that being active in the community is a very rewarding endeavor in itself. No, it’s not like you can put a hard dollar amount on it, nor want to. The value is that you help out a lot of people and in return effectively crowd source your IT issues to a global community. It help other and yourself learn and grow. We constantly need to figure out a lot of things in our line of business. Studying, thinking, analyzing, designing, implementing & supporting a wide ever changing IT stack is not a one person or one team job. Sharing insights & experiences (both good and bad) with your peers helps a lot. You grow a global network of highly motivated, experienced & skilled people. A network you can leverage & consult when you need it. A network that you contribute to when you can, where you can. That’s what it’s about. The cost of participating is dwarfed by the return as many hand help make hard work easier. Good bosses & smart organizations have figured this out. During a panel discussion at Dell World Jonathan Copeland used the metaphor that it take a village to raise a kid. I added to it that one day that kid needs to leave the village and go out into the world. Being active in communities helps with both. I’ve also talked about this here.

I’m very happy with my 2014 MVP Award. I cherish the interaction with my fellow MVPs and Microsoft. The 2014 MVP Global Summit is already on my agenda. I’m grateful for the opportunities it brings and the continuous privilege of learning & sharing. See you all on line, at conferences, think tanks & community events & in Bellevue/Redmond.

DELL World 2013 – Tour Of the Acoustic & Storage Testing Labs & Presenting at the Dell TechCenter User Group

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While at Dell World 2013, a group of us had the opportunity to visit the Dell offices as part of the Trends in Data Center Technology Think Tank. We saw advancements in fresh air cooling, a hot house,

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the storage lab and, new to me, the acoustic labs. Below is a picture of Chris Peterson, the acoustic Architect (he was involved in the design of the DELL VRTX, which is a unique solution and achievement in the industry). Like wise the also have thermal engineers and both of these expertises are closely related.

I will never look at acoustic / thermal engineering for servers & storage in the same way I used to and I have way more respect for the effort and a better understanding of what efforts go in to this research and why.

For some more information on the acoustic lab read this white paper Dell Enterprise Acoustics and watch these videos:

Dell thermal & acoustic engineers discussing the VRTX
Chris Peterson on Dell PowerEdge Generation 12 Server acoustics

Next to all that I attended briefings, had one to one conversations with network, storage & server managers & engineers. I had a lot of information, questions & request to share from our Microsoft MVP Community in regards to our needs & wishes for the best possible support for Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V, ODX, UNMAP, SMB Direct, SOFS, Management & cloud. I even jumped into an open source breakfast discussion on * cloud computing. Last but not least we joined fellow Rock Stars Jonathan Copeland (@VirtSecurity), Rasmus Haslund (@haslund) & Dell Tech Center’s community manager Jeff Sullivan (@JeffSullivan) to discuss what community & social media means to us.

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I also shared our experiences with Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V, DVMQ, vRSS & ODX at the Dell Tech Center User Group during Dell World 2013.

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Want to talk and demo DVMQ & vRSS? Start with the basics: RSS Smile 

To all my community buddies a very festive end of the year and a great 2014! If you want to know even more about how rewarding being part of a community can be, check out this blog Mindset of the community by Marc van Eijk (@_marcvaneijk)

Linux Integration Services Version 3.5 for Hyper-V Available For Download

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Yesterday, December 19th 2013, Microsoft made the Linux Integration Services Version 3.5 for Hyper-V available for download.

The Linux Integration Services (LIS) package downloaded from Microsoft  is meant to deliver support older Linux distros. In the most recent Linux distros the KVP component is to be included, as are the other Hyper-V related drivers. In these distros these drivers and components are to be part of the upstream Linux kernel, and as such are included in Linux distros releases. So you should not need this download if you run these newer distros that has the LIS built-in. The list of supported distros is slowly growing.

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If you are running (or need to run) older versions of Linux in your VMs and leverage the 100% fully featured Hyper-v Server 2012 R2 that is also 100% free of charge this is your way to leverage all those features. The aim is that you’re never a left behind when running Hyper-V (within the limits of supportability, DOS 6.0, NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 is not an acceptable OS today).

In Microsoft speak:

Hyper-V supports both emulated (“legacy”) and Hyper-V-specific (“synthetic”) devices for Linux virtual machines. When a Linux virtual machine is running with emulated devices, no additional software is required to be installed. However, emulated devices do not provide high performance and cannot leverage the rich virtual machine management infrastructure that the Hyper-V technology offers.

To make full use of all benefits that Hyper-V provides, it is best to use Hyper-V-
specific devices for Linux. The collection of drivers that are required to run Hyper-V-specific devices is known as Linux Integration Services (LIS).
 
For certain older Linux distributions, Microsoft provides an ISO file containing installable LIS drivers for Linux virtual machines. For newer Linux distributions, LIS is built into the Linux operating system, and no separate download or installation is required. This guide discusses the installation and functionality of LIS drivers on older Linux distributions.

For some extra info an tips see Enabling Linux Support on Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V

Failed Live Migrations with Event ID 21502 Planned virtual machine creation failed for virtual machine ‘VM Name’: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. (0x80072746) Caused By Wrong Jumbo Frame Settings

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OK so Live Migration fails and you get the following error in the System even log with event id 21502:

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Planned virtual machine creation failed for virtual machine ‘DidierTest01’: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. (0x80072746). (Virtual Machine ID 41EF2DB-0C0A-12FE-25CB-C3330D937F27).

Failed to receive data for a Virtual Machine migration: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. (0x80072746).

There are some threads on the TechNet forums on this like here http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/805466e8-f874-4851-953f-59cdbd4f3d9f/windows-2012-hyperv-live-migration-failed-with-an-existing-connection-was-forcibly-closed-by-the and some blog post pointing to TCP/IP Chimney settings causing this but those causes stem back to the Windows Server 2003 / 2008 era.

In the Hyper-V event log Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS-Admin you also see a series of entries related to the failed live migration point to the same issue: image

  
Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS-Admin
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS
Date:          10/8/2013 10:06:15 AM
Event ID:      20413
Task Category: None
Level:         Information
Keywords:     
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      SRV1.BLOG.COM
Description:
The Virtual Machine Management service initiated the live migration of virtual machine  ‘DidierTest01’ to destination host ‘SRV2’ (VMID 41EF2DB-0C0A-12FE-25CB-C3330D937F27).
 
Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS-Admin
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS
Date:          10/8/2013 10:06:26 AM
Event ID:      22038
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:     
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      SRV1.BLOG.COM
Description:
Failed to send data for a Virtual Machine migration: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. (0x80072746).
 
Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS-Admin
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS
Date:          10/8/2013 10:06:26 AM
Event ID:      21018
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:     
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      SRV1.BLOG.COM
Description:
Planned virtual machine creation failed for virtual machine ‘DidierTest01’: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. (0x80072746). (Virtual Machine ID 41EF2DB-0C0A-12FE-25CB-C3330D937F27).
 
Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS-Admin
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS
Date:          10/8/2013 10:06:26 AM
Event ID:      22040
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:     
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      SRV1.BLOG.COM
Description:
Failed to receive data for a Virtual Machine migration: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. (0x80072746).
Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS-Admin
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS
Date:          10/8/2013 10:06:26 AM
Event ID:      21024
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:     
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      srv1.blog.com
Description:
Virtual machine migration operation for ‘DidierTest01’ failed at migration source ‘SRV1’. (Virtual machine ID 41EF2DB-0C0A-12FE-25CB-C3330D937F27)

There is something wrong with the network and if all checks out on your cluster & hosts it’s time to look beyond that. Well as it turns out it was the Jumbo Frame setting on the CSV and LM NICs.

Those servers had been connected to a couple of DELL Force10  S4810 switches. These can handle an MTU size up to 12000. And that’s how they are configured. The Mellanox NICs allow for MTU Sizes up to 9614 in their Jumbo Frame property.  Now super sized jumbo frames are all cool until you attach the network cables to another switch like a PowerConnect 8132 that has a max MTU size of 9216. That moment your network won’t do what it’s supposed to and you see errors like those above. If you test via an SMB share things seem OK & standard pings don’t show the issue. But some ping tests with different mtu sizes & the –f (do no fragment) switch will unmask the issue soon. Setting the Jumbo Frame size on the CSV & LM NICs to 9014 resolved the issue.

Now if on the server side everything matches up but not on the switches you’ll also get an event id 21502 but with a different error message:

Event ID: 21502 The Virtual Machine Management Service failed to establish a connection for a Virtual machine migration with host XXXX. A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or the established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond (0X8007274C)

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This is the same message you’ll get for a known cause of shared nothing live migration failing as described in this blog post by Microsoft Shared Nothing Migration fails (0x8007274C).

So there you go. Keep an eye on those Jumbo Frame setting especially in a mixed switch environment. They all have their own capabilities, rules & peculiarities. Make sure to test end to end and you’ll be just fine.