VirtualizationAdmin.com Monthly Newsletter of October 2009 Sponsored by: UniPrint

Welcome to the VirtualizationAdmin.com newsletter by David Davis, vExpert, VCP, CCIE. Each month we will bring you interesting and helpful information on the world of Virtualization. We want to know what all *you* are interested in hearing about. Please send your suggestions for future newsletter content to: ddavis@VirtualizationAdmin.com

1. Will Virtualization features in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 make a difference?

Thank you for reading issue #17 of our VirtualizationAdmin.com newsletter! Last month, we covered what VMworld 2009 offered those who attended and those who are watching sessions over the Internet as well as the big new announcements that were made at the conference.

This month, let us change gears and look at Microsoft's big announcements - Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Before you can ponder how these are related to virtualization, let me tell you that they are, and I will explain how.

First off, let us take a minute to look at Windows 7. VMware actually states that the release of Windows 7 was a good thing as it will drive virtual desktop adoption. That is a surprising statement from VMware, but, whether VMware likes Windows 7 or not, I do see the compatibility features making it easier to move to a corporate environment. I personally like the look and feel of Windows 7, it is very user-friendly.

More specifically related to virtualization is Widows 7 XPM. With Windows 7 XPM, Windows 7 can run Windows XP software without any problems. In other words, Windows 7 is much more compatible with Windows XP than Windows Vista is. This is all thanks to virtualization. Windows 7 actually uses virtualization for "XPM or XP Mode" to allow you to run XP-compatible applications in Windows 7 (see how to install XPM in Windows 7).

Second, let us cover what Windows 2008 R2. It was released at the same time as Windows 7. 2008 R2 offers the following virtualization features:

• Live Migration Support through Cluster Shared Volumes
• Improved Cluster Node Connectivity Fault Tolerance
• Enhanced Cluster Validation Tool
• New MMC enhancements
• Enhanced command line for Hyper-V PowerShell cmdlets
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager enhancements for managing multiple datacenters
• Increased performance for up to 64 logical processors in the host processor pool.
• Processor compatibility features allow you to move a VM up and down processor generations by the same vendor
• Improved virtual networking features including VM Chimney (aka TCP Offload) and Jumbo Frames
• Increased performance and hardware support for Hyper-V VMs through Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)

Besides desktop and server virtualization, Windows Server 2008 R2 also offers presentation virtualization features (aka virtual desktop). Terminal Services has been renamed Remote Desktop Services (RDP) and a there are many new enhancements.

We have been talking about many of these features for sometime while R2 has been in beta. Still, I am glad to see that these features are now "GA" and ready to use to improve Microsoft's virtualization offering (still, I do not understand why they do not have memory-over-commitment and ballooning but I will leave that to another day)

Now, to answer the question, "will these new features make a difference?" In my opinion, YES, both pieces of software are easier to use and more helpful for enterprises (who are going to make the biggest impact in the adoption rate for either). R2 offers some very compelling Hyper-V / virtualization features that, I believe, will make people want to try out as a server virtualization platform.

You can read more about what's new in Windows Server 2008 R2 related to virtualization at Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 R2 Enabling Server and Desktop Virtualization website.

And you can download the 180-day Windows Server 2008 R2 evaluation at the Windows Server 2008 R2 trial software site.

To learn how to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2, just visit Upgrading to Server 2008 R2 in 8 Easy Steps.

And finally, for an awesome article on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, checkout Janique Carbone's article; What's new in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V?

Note to my readers: Besides reading our newsletter, I encourage you to stay up to date on the latest in Virtualization news by subscribing to the VirtualizationAdmin.com RSS Feed so make sure you have the VirtualizationAdmin.com RSS feeds configured in your RSS reader. 

As always, if you have Virtualization questions, ideas for articles, or issues to cover in the newsletter, please feel free to write to me at ddavis@VirtualizationAdmin.com

Thank you,
David Davis, VCP, CCIE

2. Train Signal VMware vSphere Video Training

3. VirtualizationAdmin.com Articles of Interest

• VMware Data Recovery - Backup and Recovery of a Virtual Machine (Part 2)
  
• Installing Microsoft Application Virtualization (Part 2)
  
• Cloning Hyper-V Virtual Machines the Right Way (Part 1)
  
• Using Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 SP1 with Hyper-V
  
• VIDEO: Performance Charting in VMware ESX Server
  
• Chapter 8: Moving from Virtual Server 2005 R2 to Hyper-V
  
• VMware ESX - Voted VirtualizationAdmin.com Readers' Choice Award Winner - Hypervisors
  

4. KB Articles of the Month

• VIDEO: VMware ESX - Recreating a missing virtual disk (VMDK) header/descriptor file
  
• VIDEO: VMware ESX & ESXi - Restrating the Management agents on an ESX Server
  
• VIDEO: VMware ESX - Increasing the amount of RAM assigned to the ESX Server service console
  
• VIDEO: VMware ESX: Committing snapshots from within the service console
  
• Hyper-V: Using Live Migration with Cluster Shared Volumes in Windows Server 2008 R2
  
• Migrating Settings to a Failover Cluster Running Windows Server 2008 R2
  
• Hyper-V: Using Hyper-V and Failover Clustering
  
• Overview of Failover Clusters
  
• Migrating Settings to a Failover Cluster Running Windows Server 2008 R2
  

5. Virtualization Admin Tip of the Month

Have a VMware vSphere infrastructure or are planning one? What do you plan to do about backing up those virtual machines? Do not try to just migrate servers and use their traditional backup clients, managing ESX service console backup clients is a pain. I encourage you to get a virtualization-specific backup application. There are a number to choose from. The major players are Vizioncore and Veeam but, with the release of vSphere, now VMware has their own virtualization backup application. It has a lot of features like data-duplication and file level restore (with a GUI coming soon).

VMware Data Recovery (or vDR as it is called) is included in vSphere Essentials Plus, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus (or you can purchase it separately).

To learn more about vDR, what it does, and how you backup and restore a VM with vDR, checkout my new articles on it at:

• VMware Data Recovery Overview (Part 1)
• VMware Data Recovery - Backup and Recovery of a Virtual Machine (part 2)

6. Helpful Links

• VMworld 2010
• VMware's Planet V12n Virtualization Blog Aggregator
• VMwareVideos.com - videos only related to VMware
• VMware Free Virtualization Webcasts
• Petri IT Knowledgebase - Virtualization Articles
• Virtual PC Guy's Weblog covering Hyper-V Virtualization
• Scott Lowe's Virtualization, Storage, and Server Blog
• Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog

7. Ask David Davis, VCP, vExpert

Question

How do you reset a lost root VMware ESX 4 server password?

Answer

The procedure to reset a lost VMware ESX server password is the same in vSphere and ESX4 as it was in VI3 and ESX 3.x. That procedure is:

• Go to the console and reboot your ESX host (of course, making sure that all VMs are powered off or migrated off)
• When the ESX server reboots, press "A" when you see the ESX GRUB boot loader to modify the kernel arguments.
• The default kernel options will appear. Add the word "single" after those options.
• ESX will boot into single user mode and you will get a # prompt.
• From here, just use the passwd command to change the root user password
• Finally, reboot the server