Category Archives: Hypervisor

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Using WSUS To Update Hyper-V Cluster Hosts & Other Fabric Servers

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One very neat feature in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (SCVMM2012), which is currently in Béta, is the integration with WSUS to automate the patching of Hyper-V cluster hosts (+ the Library servers, SCVMM servers and the update servers, i.e the fabric). The fact that SCVMM 2012 will give you the complete toolset to take care of this is yet a great addition to the functionality available in Virtual Machine Manager 2012. More and more I’m looking forward to using it in production as it has so many improvements and new features. Combine that with what’s being delivered in System Center Operations Manager (SCOM2012) and the other member of the System Center family and I’m quite happy with what is coming.

But let’s get back to the main subject of this blog. Using WSUS and SCVMM2012 to auto-update the Hyper-V cluster hosts without interruption to the virtual machines that are running on it. Up until now, we needed to script such a process out with PowerShell even tough having SCVMM2008R2 makes it easier since we have Maintenance Mode in that product which will evacuate all VMs from that particular host, one by one. The workflow of this script looks like this:

  • Place the Host Node in Maintenance Mode in SCOM 2007 R2 (So we don’t get pesky alerts)
  • Place the Host Node in Maintenance Mode in SCVMM2008R2 (this evacuates the VMs from the host via Live Migration to the other nodes in the cluster)
  • Patch the Host and restart it
  • Stop Maintenance Mode on the host node in SCVMM2008R2 (So it can be used to run VMs again)
  • Stop Maintenance Mode on the host node in SCOM 2007 (We want it to be monitored again)
  • Rinse & Repeat until all Host nodes are done. Depending on the size of the cluster you can do this with multiple nodes at the same time. Just remember that there can be only one Live Migration action taking place per node. That means you need at least 4 nodes to do something like Live migrate from Node A to Node B and Live Migrate from Node C to node D. So you need to work out what’s optimal for your cluster depending on load and number of nodes you have to work with.
  • Have the virtual machines redistributed so that the last host also gets its share or virtual machines

Now with SCVMM2012 we can do this out of the box using WSUS and all of this is achieved without ever interrupting any services provided by the guests as all virtual machines are kept running and are live migrated away from the host that will be patched. If you’re a shop that isn’t running System Center Configuration Manager you can still do this thanks to the use of WSUS and that’s great news.  There is an entire sub-section on the subject of Managing Fabric Updates in VMM 2012 already available on TechNet. But it goes beyond the Hyper-V host. It’s also the SCVMM server, the library server, and the Update Server that get patched. But don’t go wild now, that’s the entire scope of this. That means you still need regular WSUS or SCCM for patching the virtual machine guests and other physical servers. The aim of this solution is to patch your virtualization solution’s infrastructure as a separate entity, not your entire environment.

So how do we get this up and running? Well, it isn’t hard. Depending on your needs and environment you can choose to run WSUS and SCVMM on the same server or not. If you choose the latter please make sure you install the SWSUS Administration Console on the SCVMM server. This is achieved by downloading  WSUS 3.0 SP2 and installing it. Otherwise, just use the WSUS role from the roles available on Windows 2008 R2. This handles the prerequisites for you as well. It is also advisable to install the WSUS role on a separate server when your SCVMM 2012 Infrastructure is a highly available clustered one. For more information see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg675099.aspx . Time-saving tip: create a separate domain account for the WSUS server integration, it can not be the SCVMM 2012 service domain account.

Make sure you pay attention to the details in the documentation, don’t forget to install the WSUS 3.0 SP2 Administration Console on the SCVMM 2012 server or servers and to restart the SCVMM service when asked to. That will safe you some trouble. Also, realize that this WSUS Server will only be used for updating the SCVMM 2012 fabric and nothing else. So we do not configure anything except the operating system (W2K8R2) , and the languages needed. All other options & products that are not related to virtualization are unchecked as we don’t need them. Combine this with dynamic optimization to distribute the VM’s for you and you’re golden. A good thing to note here is that you’re completely in control. You as the virtualization infrastructure / SCVMM 2012 Fabric administrator control what happens regarding updates, service packs, …

You do need to get used to the GUI a bit when playing around with SCVMM2012 for the first time to make sure you’re in the right spot, but once you get the hang of it you’ll do fine. I’ll leave you with some screenshots of my lab cluster being scanned to check the compliance status and then being remediated. It works pretty neatly.

Here are the hosts being scanned.

You can right-click and select remediate per baseline or select the host and select remediate form context menu or the ribbon bar.

The crusader host is being remediated. I could see it being restarted in the lab.

New KB Article 2494016 Related to Windows Server 2008 SP1 Hyper-V: Stop error 0x0000007a When Using CVS in Redirected Access

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Well not a day after my blog post Extra Info on Clustering & Hyper-V with Dynamic Memory When You Start With Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1on important hotfixes for Hyper-V clustering with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Microsoft releases a new hot fix for issue below. I’ll add it to the post to keep up to date.

Stop error 0x0000007a occurs on a virtual machine that is running on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based failover cluster with a cluster shared volume, and the state of the CSV is switched to redirected access

The KB article with instructions on how to get the hot fix is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2494016/en-us?sd=rss&spid=14134

The scenario is detailed as follows:

Consider the following scenario:

  • You enable the cluster shared volume (CSV) feature on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based failover cluster.
  • You create a virtual machine on the CSV on a cluster node.
  • You start the virtual machine on the cluster node.
  • You move the CSV owner to another cluster node, and you change the state of CSV to redirected access.
  • The connection that is used for redirected access is switched to another connection when one of the following scenarios occurs:
    • The cable for local area network (LAN) is disconnected.
    • The related network adapter is disabled.
    • The connection is switched by using Failover Cluster Manager.

In this scenario, you receive a Stop error message that resembles the following in the virtual machine:

STOP 0x0000007a ( parameter1 , parameter2 , parameter3 , parameter4 )
KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR

Note

  • The parameters in this Stop error message vary, depending on the configuration of the computer.
  • Not all "0x0000007a" Stop error messages are caused by this issue.
  • You may also receive other Stop error messages when this issue occurs. For example, you may receive a "0x0000004F" Stop error message.

Windows Hyper-V Server R2 SP1 is available for download

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Ever since Windows 2008 R2 SP1 became available people have been waiting for Windows Hyper-V Server R2 to catch up. The wait is over as last week Microsoft made it available on their website http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd776191.aspx. That’s a nice package to have when it serves your needs and there ‘s little to argue about. Guidance on how to configure it and how to get remote management set up has been out for a while and is quite complete so that barrier shouldn’t stop you from using it where appropriate. If you’re staring out head over to José Barreto’s blog to get a head start and here’s some more information on the subject http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794756(WS.10).aspx and naturally there are some tools around to help out if needed and the Microsoft provided tools are not to you liking http://coreconfig.codeplex.com/. So there you go, now you have a free and very capable hypervisor available to the public that gives you high availability, Live Migration, Dynamic Memory, Remote FX and they even threw in their software iSCSI target 3.3 into the free package so you can build a free iSCSI SAN supported by Microsoft. Live is good.

Déjà vu Bug: The network connection of a running Hyper-V virtual machine may be lost under heavy outgoing network traffic on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

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Anyone who’s been doing virtualization with Hyper-V on Windows 2008 R2 has a good change of having seen the issue described in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974909/en-us

You install the Hyper-V role on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2.

  • You run a virtual machine on the computer.
  • You use a network adapter on the virtual machine to access a network.
  • You establish many concurrent network connections, or there is heavy outgoing network traffic.

In this scenario, the network connection on the virtual machine may be lost. Additionally, the network adapter is disabled.
Note You have to restart the virtual machine to recover from this issue.

We’ve seen this one on VM’s that have indeed a lot of outgoing traffic.  In our environment the situation looks like this:

  • You can access the VM with Hyper-V Manager or SCVMM but not via RDP as all Network connectivity is lost.  The status the  guest NIS is always “Enabled” but there is no traffic/connectivity
  • You can try to disable the NIC but this tales a  very long time and when you try to enable it again this never succeeds. Disconnecting the NIC form the virtual network and connecting it again doesn’t help either.
  • You need to shut down the host but this takes an extremely long time, so long you really can’t afford to wait if it ever succeeds. It seems to hang at shutting down with a “non whirling whirly”.  So finally you’ll power off the VM and start it up again. Apart from entries related to having not connectivity the event logs are “clean” and there is no indication as to what happened.

Well this exact same issue is back with Windows 2008 R2 SP1. That’s the bad news. The good news is there is a hotfix for it already so you can fix it. You can read up on this issue in Knowledge Base article 2263829  and request the hotfix here. Instructions to get the hotfix are in there as well as a reference to the previous fixes for Windows 2008 R2 RTM.

Consider the following scenario:

  • You install the Hyper-V role on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
  • You run a virtual machine on the computer.
  • You use a network adapter on the virtual machine to access a network.
  • You establish many concurrent network connections. Or, there is heavy outgoing network traffic.

In this scenario, the network connection on the virtual machine may be lost. Additionally, the network adapter may be disabled.
Notes

  • You must restart the virtual machine to recover from this issue.
  • This issue can also occur on versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 that do not have SP1 installed. To resolve the issue, apply the hotfix that is described in one of the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:

    974909 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974909/ ) The network connection of a running Hyper-V virtual machine is lost under heavy outgoing network traffic on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer
    2264080 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2264080/ ) An update rollup package for the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 R2: August 24, 2010

Oh yeah, people often seem confused  as to where to install the hotfix. Does it go on the Hyper-V hosts or and/or on the guest?  It’s a hyper visor bug in Hyper-V so it goes on the hosts. Have a nice weekend.