Dugie’s Pensieve

Aarrrgggh!  I’m trying to write a “set and forget” script that increases the size of a VHD under Virtual Server. I’m so close. 

I run, cscript BumpVHD.vbs myvirtualmachine 10000 and it takes care of all the little details:

• Save State on the Virtual Machine, “myvirtualmachine”
• Find the [first] VHD within the VM
• VhdExpand the VHD to the new larger size adding 10000 Megabytes
• Mount the new VHD with VHDmount
• Diskpart, select disk n, select volume 1, extend
• Unmount the new VHD
• Delete the original VHD
• Rename the larger VHD to the same name as the original
• Restore the VM from Saved State

Now I need to confess, it doesn’t completely work.  The additional drive space isn’t recognised until the VM is rebooted.  Strange part is, new files seem to write ok inside the VHD.  I need to test this a little more

Looks like I need to should reboot the VM instead of suspend, didn’t really want to do that.  I should probably enumerate all the VHD disks as well, but I wont.   Then there is the need to disable autoplay and maybe automatically assigning drive letter.  Bahhh, now we’re talking details.  :)

Anyway I don’t have anything polished to download just yet, but I’d thought I share my experiences so far.  Keep you posted.

Britten Martin has just posted about a Virtual Server 2005 R2 Management Pack Refresh (not an update), a snippet is below:

The Virtual Server 2005 R2  Management pack is due to be refreshed (not an update) very shortly. The Release and Update History on the download page http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bf21f798-9b10-40dc-bcdd-4a8358cce94d&DisplayLang=en will show the most recent date (I’ll guess at 2/19/2007).

 Why the refrsh?  A problem existed, documented in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919598/en-us where the report.xml will fail to import against SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 (SSRS) . The refreshed version contains an updated report XML file which will successfully import on SSRS 2000 & 2005.

A secondary issue has also been fixed where the report datasources were not in tact after the import.

The version of the MP remains the same 05.0.4000.0000 and there are no updates to the Management Pack AKM file itself.

One Management pack report discussed in KB919598 does remain outstanding. This is the Exchange 2003 MP report.  An updated Exchange 2003 MP is expected to be released shortly. I will blog the details here when the release is imminent

Oh Dear, this is as funny as it is unfortunate.  Here is a rough chain of events

1. Kain visits Harvery Norman
2. Kain sees that some poor sod has used an Xbox 360 to prop up a Sony Playstation 3 display
3. Kain thinks this is funny and takes a photo, and posts it to flickr
4. The internet find’s it, it get’s on digg,
5. World goes stupid for a few hours
6. Harvey Norman also goes stupid for a few hours
7. Sony and Harvey Norman take down the offending display
8. World goes back to it’s normal self

Sydney Morning Herald has all the details :)

*grins*  Seems like I’m not the only one having fun with on-the-sly P2Vs.

I’ve been experimenting with using VMware Converter to P2V into Microsoft Virtual Server.  I know the tool was never designed to do this.  It is something that appeals to me as I know there are lots of people out there that maintain both VMware Server and Microsoft Virtual Server environments — yes, at the same time and have a genuine need to migrate BOTH ways.  I’ve been having my own mixed results/successes/failures (actually I’ll blog it tomorrow) and looks the guys at VMtoolkit have come to the rescue *again*.

Dave over at VMtoolkit has got VMWare Converter and Vmdk2Vhd playing nicely, a snippet from his post is below:

As a few folks on our forums have noted, there was a problem getting VMDK’s produced via VMWare Converter to be read into our Vmdk2Vhd tool. Well, I’m happy to report that we found the issue and Vmdk2Vhd is now converting those now without issue. The download has been updated to version 1.0.13, so grab an updated copy and give it a try.

The big holdup in getting through this problem was actually getting VMWare Converter to just do it’s job so we’d have something to test against. After spending what seemed to be like forever testing a number of different machines we finally came across one laptop that would actually P2V correctly. I guess there are a number of users having problems and the strange thing is that these problems seemed to crop up somewhere between beta and release. Regardless, we made it through and got Vmdk2Vhd updated and all is well on the playground once again.. for a few seconds at least.

I’ll give an update tomorrow, thanks again to the guys at VMtoolkit.com

I mentioned the Virtualization Summit late last year.  Thanks to Nick and Jeffa, I thought I’d post a reminder :)

The Microsoft Virtualization Executive Summit is coming to Sydney on Monday 5th March 2007
Mike and Volker have already blogged it, but I thought I’d give it a more local flavour :)

A snippit from the Virtualization Summit Registration website is below:

1-Day Virtualization Summit
Technical decisions are as far reaching as business decisions.
This 1-Day Summit specifically for Technical Decision makers is designed to provide you the necessary knowledge and technical details of Microsoft Virtual Server R2 and related technologies to support you in determining and planning your Virtualization roadmap.

Topics of discussion will include:
 ? Microsoft Virtualization Roadmap
 ? Impact of Microsoft Virtualization technologies for your business.
 ? New Licensing models with Virtual Server 2005 R2 and implications
 ? Microsoft Virtualization Products
 ? Virtualization Platform demo
 ? VHD Re-Distribution Program
 ? Virtual Server 2005 R2 Redistribution program
 ? Go To Market Business opportunities enabled by Microsoft 2006 initiatives.
 ? Collaborative Discussions + Networking

I’m flying down to Sydney for the day to attend.  So If you’re there come and say g’day. 

My good friend Adam Clark just blogged about why “Building Community Hurts” — and it’s true.  There are days (and sometimes it’s many days, continued one after the other) where you have to scratch your head and wonder if it’s all worth while? 

You organise user group events, people show up, consume a lot of pizza, and they leave.  Regardless of the emails, surveys or feedback forms go round, it seems like all you’re left with a bottomless black hole and a lot of empty pizza boxes.  You pour your heart and soul out hoping to make a difference - and you hear nothing, not even the [comical] sounds of crickets chirping.

…and it hurts.  I mean it really hurts.  The cruel reality is the more you put your body on the line, the more it hurts.   ….and the strangest part?  Deep down you knew it would go down this way.  ….and the stupid part?  You wouldn’t have it any other way.

Why?  Because one day you’ll be nursing you bruised, battered, sorry assed ego and you’ll get a phonecall or an e-mail out of nowhere.  It usually goes something like “Hey dude, you probably don’t remember me, but I was at your user group a few months ago.  I went back to work and tried doing some of the stuff that was mentioned in the session.  It was awesome.  It worked and I felt like a superstar.  Thankyou!“

You smile.  You chuckle to yourself.  Then it hits you.  It’s kind of like that feeling you get after you ace that exam you studied weeks for.  Except there’s no certificates, no exam report — just this stupid “ear to ear grin” knowing that you do make a difference. 

Now if you’re still reading this, don’t be sending me any soppy e-mails telling me how wonderful I am.  This isn’t an ego trip.  I have the cutest six month old son for that, he’s just about crawling by the way!  I am so screwed  :)

Anyway.  If I have compelled you somehow into a guilt trip, I need you to be mindful of two things:  (A) Give feedback. Take a moment over a cup of coffee to send something through  (B) Offer to present your experiences, even it’s 30 minutes.  Hindsight is a beautiful gift to share.  Give someone else an opportunity to feel like a superstar.

Yeah, Community hurts.  But for me personally, I believe community is a beautiful thing.  Adam, hang in there mate.  My hat goes off in respect to all the people, who make it their thing to kickstart communities wherever they are.

Hmmm, this is very interesting.  Microsoft has released another ‘Virtual Machine Appliance’ (much like the previously released IE7 readiness VPC). 

I say “very interesting”, because if I was an Exchange administrator this would really appeal to me.  Download and run the tools I need to fix the problem — no messing about with ‘flatpack install guides‘ putting tools together. 

Anyway, more details on Microsoft Downloads : ‘Virtual Machine for Microsoft Exchange Calendar Update Tool’, a snippet is below:

Microsoft® Office Outlook must be installed prior to installing this tool.
Download the three files:
ExchangeDSTTool.part1.exe
ExchangeDSTTool.part2.rar
ExchangeDSTTool.part3.rar

Unzip the files with WINZIP. Then add the VMC file to Virtual PC or Virtual server. Verify that the network configuration for the Virtual Machine is correct for your environment and add the Virtual Machine to your domain.
The local administrator password is pass@word1.
The Exchange tools are installed and should be launched from c:\DST

I’m bandwidth challenged at the moment, so I haven’t had a chance to download it and check it out.

NOTE:  This is for fixing the US DST update, not the WADST.

I saw this in H0bbel’s post, and I must say I really like this idea from VMcasting.org:

VMcasting is an automatic virtual machine deployment mechanism based on RSS2.0 whereby virtual machine images are transferred from a server to a client securely delivering files containing a technical specification and virtual disk image.

Vmcasting is perfectly suited to a variety of virtual machine package formats including Amazon’s EC2 AMI, Xen, Vmware, Parallels, Windows VHD, and Qemu allowing for a standard mechanism for delivery of virtual appliances.

Vmcasting is perfectly suited to a variety of virtual machine package formats including Amazon’s EC2 AMI, Xen, Vmware, Parallels, Windows VHD, and Qemu allowing for a standard mechanism for delivery of virtual appliances.

I’ll post back as I find out more.

Here’s a few more item that have caught my attention recently:

• Bill Gates talks about the importantance the Virtualization stack within Longhorn at Microsoft Tech Ready - I haven’t found a transcript yet
• The Microsoft Virtualization blog has posted a case study of Leuime card  -  They are now running 220 virtual servers hosted on 22 physical servers.
• Clive posted about the Clusprep tool - I’m keen to check this out the next time I build a cluster in a VM
• If you building Vista Templates in Virtual Machines please read “Windows Welcome May Not Prompt for End User to Input Product Key” - On a side note there seems be a huge awareness gap for the need to sysprep VMs?
• Security Glitch with Virtual Server - Interesting post, using solitaire to expose a security glitch

The support policy for “Support policy for Exchange Server 2003 running on hardware virtualization software” was also refreshed to a few days ago (Jan 30) to version 12.3.

I haven’t been able to figure out the changes, and KB 320220 only applies to Exchange 2003, there is no mention of Exchange 2007.