Dugie’s Pensieve

This popped up in conversation, so I thought it was worth mentioning again.

The mighty fine tool WinImage converts VHDs to VMDK and visa versa (VMDK to VHD) 

WinImage will also let you do a file level restore from your CompletePC (VHD) backup in Vista.  Some people prefer the familiary of a  one-stop-shop explorer style GUI to the commandline VHDMount.

…and of course WinImage will also covert a physical CD/DVD to an ISO so that you can mount it with a VM.

Quite a nifty little tool.

Yesterday, a sad thing happened, AutoPatcher.com was requested by Microsoft to remove the download page for AutoPatcher.

AutoPatcher is was a nifty tool for patching Windows without the need to connect to Windows Update or use a WSUS server.  I found this tool invaluable for patching test VMs [off the wire].

Sadly, I must say this decision has left me scratching my head.  I admit AutoPatcher wasn’t an Enterprise solution — but it was an excellent and portable tool for environments where there was no other alternative.

With that, I’ll end my commentary there.

A few weeks ago I blogged about Devin Murray and the [virtualized] server lifecycle management in Microsoft IT (see my post 7% of Microsoft’s production servers are virtualized)

Anyway Devin was interviewed by TechNet shortly after, and the postcast is available for download.  The interview is 22 minutes in length and covers some interesting operational trivia on how to provision and bill back to business units.  A snippet of what I found interesting is below:

• The ‘Virtual Server Utility service’ is designed to insulate business users from he “hardware refresh”
• the average VM consolidation ration is 8:1 in prod and 18:1 in dev
• The offering is a zero profit/loss service where any profits returned back to the business
• Some of the pains implementing this service was the perception of what they were trying to do
• The virtual Server host must be as secure/locked down as the most ’sensitive’ VM’
• VMs are being offered at half the cost of physical hardware, but there is still a monthly operational cost
• With WSV Microsoft will be able to Virtualize ~80% of their production workloads

Check it out for yourself - WMA | MP3 High | MP3 Low

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it) but ‘That’s funny…’ Isaac Asimov …

Jonathan from the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) has some more info on MS07-049 which addresses a vulnerability in Virtual PC and Virtual Server.  It’s interesting reading and an edited snippet is below:

We stated in the bulletin that malicious code that runs inside a virtual machine can take complete control of the host system and that’s true. However, there are different degrees of “complete control.” For example, “Virtual Server” is the affected service in the case of a Virtual Server 2005 compromise. This service runs in the security context NetworkService. Anytime malicious code runs on your system, it is bad news, but it is pretty hard to escalate from NetworkService to LocalSystem when you’re running with fully-updated Windows Server 2003.

Unlike Virtual Server, Virtual PC runs as whichever user launches Virtual PC. It does work fine when run as a non-admin, so if you’re running malicious code inside the virtualization environment, we’d highly encourage you to run [virtual pc/server] as a non-admin user [on the host] to reduce the impact of this class of vulnerability.

The premier VMware event, VMworld is only a couple of weeks away, and as per last year Microsoft is a Gold Sponsor at VMworld 2007.

You can see a full list of sponsors on the VMWorld sponsors page, and a snippet is below:

At Microsoft, we look at virtualization as key technology to help customers achieve self-managing dynamic systems. Across the platform, operating system, applications and management layers we’re delivering functionality and capabilities that enable our customers to significantly reduce operating costs, drive up server utilization and achieve better ROI through full featured virtualization solutions. Learn more at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization

All the cool kids are going to be there, but unfortunately I won’t be.  (I’m already starting to regret it again)

Citrix has signed a definitive agreement to acquire XenSource.  XenSource and Microsoft announced 12 months to provide interoperability between Xen and Viridian (aka: Windows Server Virtualization).

Now I don’t necessarily see the problem here, Citrix have extended core Microsoft functionality for quite some time now — bringing out the best/worst competitive nature in both sides.  …but this post isn’t about me, it’s about Microsoft and interoperability with Xen/Linux.

Linux at Microsoft isn’t new.  There are hundreds of physical and virtual servers running multiple distributions of Linux, at Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab.  Sam Ramji (Director for the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft) presented at OSCON, the Open Source Conference recently in San Francisco.  His session was on the work that Microsoft  is doing with Novell, XenSource, and others on Linux and Windows interoperability; focusing on the next-generation datacenter: virtualization, systems management, and identity.

So be sure to check out his slide deck from his session, “Linux and Windows Interoperability On the Metal and On the Wire” — and the comments at the end of his post.  A snippet is below:

Q: How does the acquisition of Xensource by Citrix fall into Microsoft’s virtualization plans?

A: This is a positive event for Microsoft’s virtualization work and our partnerships with both XenSource and Citrix.  I’ve already been in contact with XenSource who have confirmed that this just takes a pair of existing strong technology relationships and adds Citrix’s sales and marketing engine to XenSource’s products.  We’ll continue with the joint engineering that we’ve been working on - establishing interoperability of Linux on Windows, promoting a common virtual hard disk format (VHD) and driving standards for management in this area.

It also demonstrates both how early the virtualization market is - there are many millions of servers still not virtualized, and that the demand for heterogenous virtualization management is very strong.  Overall I see this as very positive.

Anyway, where am I going with this?  What happens now?  Well this is where I sign off with a small rant, umm I mean wish.  I’m not sure what happens, but I am certain that Crazy Roller Coaster Ride, is still getting started.  So bring on that interoperability, give me management, give me the tools, give me sinfully easy backups. …Most importantly give me a community, channel, partnership and resources that I need to build a solution I can manage.  Not a solution that just breeds more problems, gives me back more than the 80% value for the 20% of resources I put in to maintain it!

Now that the IE App Compat VHD has been upgraded to version 2.0 , I’ve tidied the Downloads page on my blog.  There are now ~25 assorted VHDs you download from Microsoft.com and a couple of additional VHDs from other vendors.

If anyone know of other VHDs for download, drop me a comment and I’ll update the list.

 Microsoft have released “5 Cookbooks” for Virtual Server R2.  Cookbooks are a step-by-step guide (with screen shots) on how to “make and bake” a solution.

Thanks to Matt McSpirit for the early heads up!

Each of the cookbooks are about ~100 pages in length and you can download them directly below:

• Hosted Backup.pdf - data backup and recovery to customers as a hosted solution with Virtual Server and DPM
• Offsite Backup.pdf - backing up and restoring virtual machines running in an offsite location with Virtual Server and DPM.
• Onsite Backup.pdf - backing up and restoring running virtual machines with Virtual Server and DPM
• Host Clustering.pdf - high availability of server workloads using Windows Server 2003 Server Clustering and Virtual Server using Intel-based hardware.
• Branch Office.pdf - isolating and operating applications on separate virtual machines in branch offices using SCVMM and Intel-based hardware environment for regulatory compliance and improved legacy workload performance.

I’ve downloaded each of them and will post a review in a couple of days when I’ve had a chance to run through them

I imagine most people have heard that Microsoft Virtual Server has Host Clustering (now called quick migration) which is free and allows you to “bump” virtual machines between hosts.

Well the lads over at HowToForge.com have a tutorial on achieve a similar result with VMware Server and Debian. 

The tutorial covers how to create a cluster available on multiple systems with failover/failback capabilities for Virtual Machines.  Check out all the details in their post:  Virtual Machine Replication & Failover with VMware Server & Debian Etch (4.0)

I’ve seen a few scripts and examples over the last 12 months (and I’ve always wanted to try to build this with MSCS under windows), but this looks like the best guide so far.  

 I love their last line of the tutorial:  Ok, if you are feeling lucky and have followed this tutorial with some common sense, then it is now time to yank out that power cord, hold on to your cup of coffee and watch the Virtual Machine go online on your second server.