Learning Hyper-V Lesson 6

Installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) has been a challenge for me as you know I have background of VMWare and Citrix. So as a Citrix person if you have to install SCVMM and make its database highly available, it may poses challenge. This post will help you to deal with those challenge. Here I am trying to install SCVMM 2012 and mirrored it database on SQL server 2008R2.

Here I am using single service account for both SCVMM and SQL.

To install SCVMM we must know some of the prerequisite or else like me you may have to do during the course of install. Here I am installing as it is asked for :)

To start the installation pop-in System center CD and start installation. It will prompt for pre-requisite to be installed which is .NET. This is something I like when it does install of prerequisite without asking you to do so. 

At this point it will make you wait for little longer time. Now sure what is trying to do with License.rtf file.

Choose component which is required

Supply all require info like product key

Choose location

Now here is one more pre-requisite which it will check and will not allow you to pass till you install this. But this time it will not install it for you. You need to install AKI by downloading (incase you don't have ISO) it.

Next warning is amount of memory SCVMM server require. But this is just warning and it will allow to move on with installation

Next it will ask for DB option. When using DB mirroring make sure you use C-NAME /Alias (Create one ). Now this will provide HA when DB fail. Changing C-NAME will ensure that you do not need to make changes at application level. I have tried pointing to existing DB but installation failed. So option I choose is to allow SCVMM to create DB. But this may not liked by many SQL-DBA so I strongly recommend MS to look at this option and allow installer to generate script (Like we have with XD 5.x installation ). So if you want to use pre- created DB then make sure it has following option set  "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS"  for collation.

Now this is very important step where you need to provide service account. Please note that this service account cannot be used to add Hyper-V host into SCVMM. Hence this need to be dedicate for service account. Secondly choose the link "What type of account should I use?" .  Choose option Distributed Key Management if required or it is not necessary. Looks like something equivalent to link mode which is available with Virtual Center?

Following ports will be required by SCVMM.

The Virtual Machine Manager library is a catalog that gives access to file-based resources stored on your library servers (such as Sysprep scripts, ISO images, and virtual hard disks) and to virtual machine templates, guest operating system profiles, and hardware profiles—database objects that you configure in Virtual Machine Manager. You can also store virtual machines in the library when they are not in use. This can be reconfigured at latter stage as well.

This will start installation of SCVMM

Once installed it will be give installation summery with error/warning if any.

Since this has became long post we will continue mirroring with Lesson7.

Learning Hyper-V Lesson 5

When we have VMWare Virtual Center updated with latest version and ESX host with some lower version we use to install VC agent on ESX host to manage via VC. In similar way there is something called Virtual Machine manager agent which need to be installed on Hyper -V host. To get that we need SCVMM ISO

Incase we require perimeter network then we need to define it here.

Following ports 5985 and 443 is used to communicate between VMM and Hyper-V host.

After agent is installed service is started on the host

That's all to install.

Learning Hyper-V Lesson 4

Continuing my series with regard to Hyper-V learning . We got to change IP for Hyper-V host as well Hyper-V fail over cluster. Well there are no GUI way to change IP address and it need to be changed via PS CLI. There are many blogs which provide insight into changing IP for in same VLAN but when VLAN changes it result in subnet change as well.

And then change IP address via following command

Learning Hyper-V Lesson-3

I use to do lots of disk expansion way back in ESX 2.0 era . Today first time I have tried on Hyper-V and found it quite impressive compare to what we use to do, especially C: drive expansion. Few steps and within few minute C: drive will be expanded.

First identify hard disk under virtual machine settings and then select "Edit"

Now this will bring GUI which will walk through expansion steps. Here choose expand.

Then specify the size which needed.

Once machine booted it will show old size. We need to run diskpart to expand. Select the volume and then extend. Final result will show when you run list vol

Learning Hyper-V Lesson-2

When we design any hypervsior we separate management traffic from VM traffic. With linux based (VMWare/XenServer) is quite easy but with Hyper-V concept are little different. With this blog we are going to discuss how to configure VM traffic network on Hyper-V with HP Blade Virtual Connect manager (VCM 3.70) is used. Now I am not going to discuss how to create Shared Uplink set because I have discussed this twice.

Here I am assuming that two shared uplink set has been setup and then we are binding new VLAN.  Here you can see for VM traffic we have create VLAN with the name CitrixInfra_VLAN(X)_1 and CitrixInfra_VLAN(X)_2 which is mapped to Shared Uplink Set_1/2. (VLAN ID has been masked)

Now these VLAN's should be mapped to each of the Hyper-V profile under  "Multiple Networks".  Each NIC has to be mapped to individual SUS.

Now login to Hyper-V host and launch HP Network Configuration Utility. In this case we have define teamed interface as "VM traffic" and will be used for VM related traffic. Now select VLAN(802.1Q)

Here you add the VLAN ID and name.  Once that is done symbol of teamed network will change will have "V" on TOP

Now select virtual network manager from Hyper-V manager and select "Virtual Network Manager"  and choose External Network

Now choose the name for this new virtual network and select the connection type as teamed nic which we have created above. Make sure VLAN ID is populated with VLAN number which we have define above.

 

Once all the above is done you can view this network on virtual machine settings  and yes you need to tag it here as well. This is bit complicated compared to what we do on XenServer and ESX host.