Dugie’s Pensieve

My USB Key goes everywhere with me, mostly because it stays in my wallet.  There is a piccy over there (US readers can substitute a dime for the 5c piece), The usb key is the blue Sony MicroVault in the middle — and yes it is really a USB key

My USB key has wealth of life saving utilities and programs on it.  With everything that has happened in the last few days, I thought I’d post my Top 10 VHD virtualization utilities:

1. VHD Expand - simple no nonsense tool to make VHD files bigger
2. VMDK2VHD - again, a simple no nonense way to convert a Vmware VMDK to a Microsoft VHD
3. Whitney Defrag - a portable an beautiful solution  to defrag, speed up and make smaller any 2003 or XP Virtualmachine or host
4. PageDefrag - same as above, but for your Pagefile.  Works great both in a Virtualmachine and on the host.
5. Angry IPScan - brilliant for quickly scanning a subnet and looking for the the default OUI (”00-03-ff”) of Virtualmachines
6. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 - VHDMount = good ’nuff said!
7. VMRCplus - Manage Virtual Server without IIS
8. Robocopy - Copy big files over bad networks and not worry about it failing.
9. vXCopy -   Multithreaded copy tool , copy big files fast
10. Process Explorer - Task manager on steroids, know exactly what your host (or virtual machines) are doing.
11. UPDATE:  WinImage - Just too good not to mention, perfect for making ISOs from CDs and disk images and stuff. 

I didn’t want to list all the stuff on my USB key today, and there is a mix of scripts, utilities and programs (VirtualPC 2007 for instance).  But this will do for starters. 

How about you guys?  Any tools you can’t live without?

Awww Man!  I was busily downloading the June CTP of Windows 2008, Yeah I know a couple of days late.  But I’ve been busy testing other super coolness.

Anyway, I was going to write a blog post, Installing Virtual Server 2005 on Windows Server 2008 core, and using VMRCplus.  But Nooooo. Ben Armstrong has beaten me to it.  So looks like you will have to read his post instead.  :)

Checkout Ben’s post “Running Virtual Server 2005 on Windows Server 2008 core installations“, and a snippet is below:

…Virtual Server 2005 installs and works just fine on Windows Server 2008 core installations.  All you need to do is to select to do a custom installation, uncheck the option for the Virtual Server Web Application and complete the installation.  You will then get an installation of Virtual Server that you can manage using the COM interface or using a remote installation of the Virtual Server Web Application:

Pretty cool - but just a reminder for people that as Windows Server 2008 is still a prerelease platform - this is not an officially supported configuration.

This is some very, very, cool and sexy news!  Microsoft’s very own Matthijs ten Seldam, has made available VMRCPlus.

So why is this cool?!  Well VMRCPlus was an internal Microsoft stand alone tool for on-the-fly-stuff  with Virtual Server and Virtual Machine guests (..like the VMRC, but with a ‘Plus’ of extra sugary goodness).  Now VMRCplus is available for download.  There is no official support for VMRC, but that’s never stopped me before!

TechNet Blogger Keith Comb’s has all the juicy details, and a snippet from his post “VMRCPlus goes public - download now” is below:

…as with most if not all of our resource kit type tools, there is no support for the tool.  Here’s a list of the goodies in the tool:

• Direct control of local or remote instances of the Virtual Server service. IIS and IE browser are no longer required!
• Tabbed interface to quickly jump between Virtual Server hosts and guest VMRC sessions.
• Reusable saved states: this feature allows users to preserve a particular saved state and return to that state at any time.
• Multiple guest selection supported for startup/shutdown/save/display.
• Browse button navigation for media, hard disk images, ISO images, .VMC files, etc.
• Drag and Drop support for .VMC files, ISOs images, VHD and VFD files.
• Resizable desktop support for guests running Virtual Machine Additions (maximize VMRC window supported).
• Limited cut and paste of text from host to guest (only).
• A built-in utility to take JPG screenshots of running guests. Useful when filing bugs.
• Built-in error notification with Virtual Server eventlog viewer.
• A Virtual Networks Manager and Virtual Disks Manager that cover all features.
• Keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl-S to save state a guest).
• Create multiple guests at once.
• Create guest from parent (or multiple guests)!
• Automatic reconnect to a designated Virtual Server host.
• Toolbars in both Guest and Console Manager for quick access.
• Unlimited number of guests.
• Maximum of 32 Virtual Server hosts.
• Sorting on columns of guests so you can sort based on status and multi-select.
• Automatic detection of Virtual Machine Additions and notification.
• Detection of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

Download x86 version @ http://keithcombs.members.winisp.net/vmrcplus/VMRCplus-1.5.0-x86.zip

Download x64 version @ http://keithcombs.members.winisp.net/vmrcplus/VMRCplus-1.5.0-x64.zip

…oh happy days, Oh yeah, sing it, sing it, sing it, yeah, yeah, Oh happy day…..   Ummm never mind.

I’ve keep [wrongly] assuming that this is common knowledge.  But then again, I never new that Ctrl+C copies the text from a message box.  (Really I didn’t, one of the most handiest things on earth, and I never knew until last year)

I digress, More importantly: patching, firewalling or anti-virus on the host does not protect any of the virtual machine guests!  In fact, if you experiment (not on live servers), you can remove TCPIP from the host, and the guests will still work and talk over the wire.  You can read more about this craziness over here.

Anyway, the reason I got starting on this topic, is the ISA Server Product Team have a post on their blog this morning, “ISA on a Virtual Server host does not protect the guest machines” - so I thought I’d repost it over here and share some more of the Virtual machine Lovin’.  An edited snippet is below:

You may think that installing ISA on the host machine would protect the guest machines. But it doesn’t! You can verify it easily - run some traffic between the guest machine and the Internet (say, browse to some public web site), and see that the traffic passes even though there’s no rule that would allow it. Also, the traffic does not appear in the ISA log at all.

The reason for this is that Virtual Server uses an NDIS driver to route traffic to its guest machines, according to their MAC addresses. Since NDIS drivers are located below ISA’s driver (fweng.sys), the traffic is routed before ISA even sees it

One way you can accomplish this idea is to have another NIC (call it Internal), connect the guest machines only to that NIC, and have ISA route/NAT traffic between that NIC and the “real” (External) NIC:

I just noticed KB 842301 “BizTalk 2006 and BizTalk 2004 supportability on a virtual machine“. 

BizTalk Server is fully supported when installed in a virtual machine (VM) running on Virtual Server. A snippet from the KB is below:

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 and BizTalk Server 2004 are fully supported when they are installed on a supported operating system that is running on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. Neither BizTalk Server 2006 nor BizTalk Server 2004 may perform as expected if you have installed it on a supported operating system that is running on a virtual machine (VM) other than Virtual Server 2005. BizTalk Server 2006 and BizTalk Server 2004 have not been tested on operating systems that are running on VMs other than Virtual Server 2005.Product support for BizTalk Server 2006 and for BizTalk Server 2004 on a VM other than Virtual Server 2005 is provided as commercially reasonable support. Commercially reasonable support is defined as all reasonable support efforts by Microsoft Customer Support Services that do not require BizTalk Server 2006 or BizTalk Server 2004 code fixes.

If you experience a problem in BizTalk Server 2006 or in BizTalk Server 2004 on a VM other than Virtual Server 2005, and the problem cannot be resolved through commercially reasonable support, the problem must be reproducible in a non-VM environment or on Virtual Server 2005 for the problem to be escalated to the BizTalk Server Product group as a bug.

It’s great to see [more] Virtualization commitment from Microsoft, and formally supporting their software in VMs.  Sure there is a long way to go, but any torrential downpour has to start with a drop of water :)

Rougly 6 months into the VHD Testdrive Program, Citrix have made Presentation Server PS 4,5 available as a VHD.

You can download the “Citrix Evaluation Virtual Appliance“, it is a 14 part download, totalling 9.5 Gb - you will also need a MyCitrix login (takes 10 minutes)

A snippet from the Citrix website is below:

The Citrix Evaluation Virtual Appliance (EVA) is a new pre-configured, ready-to-go, virtual machine system for evaluating Citrix Presentation Server Platinum Edition. Based on a Microsoft .VHD Test Drive base image of Windows 2003 Server R2 [ready to go] within as little as 10 minutes after completing the download.

The Microsoft .VHD Test Drive base image evaluation period will end 30 days from the initial startup of the operating system.

Thanks to Michael Roth over at ThinComputing for the news

Yup, I’ve moved.  If you’re reading this, feedburner has “done it’s thang” and VirtualServer.tv is now WindowsVirtualization.com

I’ve a few more things to do before the move is complete.  So I’ll post back soon!

There is a very interesting article doing the rounds at the moment, “Q&A Microsoft’s utility computing guru talks about his in-house support challenges“.  I blogged it a couple a weeks ago, and found the article fascinating.

The article is all about some of the challenges of Microsoft Internal IT and Virtualization and they used an internal process called “RightSizing” to find good virtualization candidates.  [Personally this type of approach appeals to me in a big warm fuzzy kind of way, but that is another post for another time]

A quick snippet to refresh your memory before I go on:

“Devin Murray is in charge of server purchases for about 40,000 of Microsoft’s end users. His group handles internal computer usage, helping to shepherd the company’s 17,000 servers that provide computing power to 550 buildings in 98 countries“.

Anyway, here is what I thought was a cool bit of statistics, I remember reading somewhere, Microsoft now has over 1200 production virtual machines.  So if we take 1200 and divide it by 17000 we get ~ 7.05%.  Now there may be more machines in other departments and areas, that Devin doesn’t manage, but I thought this was interesting.

So there we go, a bit of unofficial trivia/statistics for you: 7% of Microsoft’s production servers are virtualized. 

First of all:  the username and password for the Sharepoint VHD virtual machine is “Administrator / pass@word1“.  It’s in the readme in red, so I guess they were expecting that question a lot. :)

Anyway, after blogging this morning, it was bugging me about the whole Sharepoint Virtual Server thing.  So I made time to test it under virtual PC.  The good news is, it works.  Some quick snippets from my testing:

• As expected I got the error “The hardware standard (Virtual Server 2005) for virtual machine “WIN03_MOSS” is not recognized.“
• So I clicked ok, re opened the virtual machine and ‘voila’ it boots.
• Just for kicks, I also created a new VMC, pointed to the existing VHD, and it worked too
• It’s using Windows 2003 Enterprise edition with SP2
• the Virtual Machine Additions ver 13.552 installed - so dynamic screen resize works
• Microsoft Office 2007 is installed
• Sharepoint/MOSS took a couple of seconds to load initially, but afterwards everything worked fine and as expected.

So I experimented for a bit, and everything looked ok.  But I might come back and tinker a little more over the next 30 days before the image expires.

James Senior has posted a FAQ of all those tricking licensing questions for Vista Enterprise (So this does not include Windows Server).  I’m not sure how “up to the minute” the information is, as portions of the post refer to Virtual PC 2004.

If desktop virtualization is part of what you do, I believe the post is recommended reading.  So grab a coffee and check out James’s post “Views on Windows Vista Vista Enterprise Licensing FAQ for Virtualization” and a small snippet is below:

Q. What are the requirements for using the licensing rights to 4 virtual operating systems benefit?

A. Requirements are as follows:

• Customers may run any prior version of Vista Business (XP Pro, 2KPro, or Win98) or even WinFLP on the same PC at the same time
• The licensed device may only be used by 1 user at a time; the guest virtual machines may not be accessed remotely by another user.
• You may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services or use BitLocker in a virtualized environment.
• Additionally, Microsoft advises against playing or accessing content or using applications protected by other digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other rights management services or using full volume disk drive encryption in a virtualized environment.
• You may use Vista Business, Vista Enterprise, Vista Ultimate or any prior version in any of the 4 virtualized environments
• Only Vista Enterprise, Ultimate, or third-party product may be used to run the hardware virtualization software and to service the virtual hardware systems