Michael Phillips Blog » SCVMM

SCVMM and P2V Adventures

Michael — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:11:08 +0000

Where I work, we have been using Microsoft Virtualization since Virtual Server was in Beta. Of course, we don’t necessarily use all of the functions and features of all the software we have, but one feature that I have used a good bit is the “Convert physical server” action in System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Until recently, I have used this with great success. We run IBM xSeries servers and I have converted something like 50 of them to virtual machines running on Hyper-V over the past several years.

In late 2007, we bought our first IBM Blade Center (which I am very happy with) and with that move we also decided to do “boot from SAN” for all of our blades. Just seemed to make sense that we wouldn’t put moving parts in a device that was designed to run so well without moving parts.

At the time, we were implementing a new ERP system and several “hanger on” type applications, and Hyper-V (virtualization in general) wasn’t something that was supported by a lot of the software we were deploying. So we have a lot of powerful blade servers, running a lot of low use applications. I have managed to eradicate several of those wasteful installations, but there are a set that I am only now getting buy-in to virtualize.

And today’s adventure begins with a Windows Server 2003 SP2 machine installed Boot from SAN on an IBM HS21-XM Blade server.

First attempt:

1. Convert physical server

2. Virtual machine name

3. Scan System

Looks good..

4. Conversion options

we can try the defaults..

5. Specify the processor and memory…

6. Select the host, path, network, start options, etc..

7. The job starts, the machine gets copied over, and …

That try resulted in a blue screen loop..

Ok… time to try the Offline conversion:

1. Proceed as above but select the Offline conversion option at step 4.

2. hmm.. conversion warnings… must correct to proceed..

Warning (13246)
No compatible drivers were identified for the device: Broadcom BCM5708S NetXtreme II GigE (NDIS VBD Client). The offline physical-to-virtual conversion requires a driver for this device.

Device Type: network adapter
Device Description: Broadcom BCM5708S NetXtreme II GigE (NDIS VBD Client)
Device Manufacturer: Broadcom Corporation
Hardware IDs (listed in order of preference):
B06BDRV\L2ND&PCI_16AC14E4&SUBSYS_03271014&REV_12

Compatible IDs (listed in order of preference):
B06BDRV\L2ND&PCI_16AC14E4&SUBSYS_03271014
B06BDRV\L2ND&PCI_16AC14E4
B06BDRV\L2ND

Recommended Action
Create a new folder under C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2\Driver Import on the Virtual Machine Manager server and then copy the necessary 32-bit Windows Vista driver package files for this device to the new folder. The driver package files include the driver (.sys) and installation (.inf and .cat) files. Check the device manufacturer’s website for the necessary drivers.

We don’t really need to do that right…

Had some trouble with that part… finally figured out that the drivers that need to be placed in that folder are the “RIS” drivers.

Try number 3 (or 30, I lost count)…

1. Proceed as try number 2, ignore warning because we did put the driver in there, and

Blue screen loop…

Hmm… maybe this is just not meant to be. Did some more searching and found this article:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/robertvi/archive/2009/10/07/after-installing-hyper-v-integration-services-on-the-next-reboot-the-vm-displays-bsod-0x0000007b.aspx

Basically, there are some people seeing the exact same blue screen that I was seeing, except this was after the install of updated integration components. But I wasn’t installing integration components yet… or was I?

Ok so maybe it was getting that far and just “blowing up” after the install of the components. Good thing about this being a P2V, I can go back to the source machine pretty easy and check the registry:

Looks like we may have an answer here. Change the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Wdf01000\Group entry to be WdfLoadGroup instead of base.

It is my guess, that this would have worked even with the online conversion option.

P2V fails at Copy Hard Disk

Michael — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:20:35 +0000

I have been trying to get a P2V of a production system to use in our DR plan. I have limited opportunity to do this, because I am not allowed to impact performance during production hours for this system, and the definition of production hours is fairly broad. I have been trying for a couple of months to get this figured out.

We have our regularly scheduled maintenance once a month on the third Thursday of the month. This is pretty awesome in that we are at liberty (most months) to take everything down from 6PM until 6AM. I look at it as giving the company an evening off.

So, that being tonight, I had it in my mind that I was going to beat the OAS boxes. (Oracle Application Servers, part of our new JD Edwards ERP system.) They are an interesting setup, because they are using Apache, which as great as it may be, isn’t something I have much experience with. They have a loopback adapter for use with the load balancing setup that they are in. The load balancing is performed using our Cisco switches, which as great as they are, I don’t know very much about. All in all, they are pretty complicated to troubleshoot in this case, because there are so many pieces that I am not completely familiar with.

Such is life…

Anyway, after a lot of hunting and a lot of posting in forums, I found an event that actually led to a solution. I probably should have found this before, and maybe I did, but didn’t pay enough attention…

This is the exact symptoms that I had, and the errors in the event log were there, but the machine that I am trying to convert is a Windows 2003 Server, not Windows XP:

The P2V process fails at 40% when you try to run the P2V process by using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 on a source computer that is running Windows XP

You use Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to run the Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) process on a source computer that is running Windows XP. However, the process fails at 40% complete, and the following error is logged in the event log on the computer that has System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 installed:
Type:		Warning
Date:		
Time:		
Event:		1706
Source:		Virtual Machine Manager
Category:	None
Computer:	
Event Msg:	Job 7bfcd14a-884e-4a71-9984-3274622adeb7 (Physical-to-virtual conversion) failed to complete. 7bfcd14a-884e-4a71-9984-3274622adeb7 Physical-to-virtual conversion TaskFailed    
Additionally, you will find the following error logged in the event log on the source computer:
Type:		Error
Date:		
Time:		
Event:		15005
Source:		HTTP
Category:	None
Computer:	
Event Msg:	Unable to bind to the underlying transport for 0.0.0.0:443. The IP Listen-Only list may contain a reference to an interface which may not exist on this machine.  The data field contains the error number.
Data:
 00 00 04 00 02 00 52 00 00 00 00 00 9D 3A 00 C0		 . . . . . . R . . . . . . . . À
 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00		 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 43 00 00 C0				 . . . . . . . . C . . À

The P2V process fails at 40% when you try to run the P2V process by using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 on a source computer that is running Windows XP

New Features in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

Michael — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:20:49 +0000

Of the new features coming in the R2 versions of Windows Server 2008 and SCVMM, I think these two are the obvious winners:

Support for Live Migration: With Windows 2008 R2 adding support for Live migration, it’s now added as a new migration option in VMM R2. Live migration requires the source and destination host to be part of a failover cluster and that the VM is on a shared storage. Live migration means that there is no user perceived downtime; since the VM’s memory pages are being transferred, the hosts’ processors need to be the same (manufacturer and processor architecture). Our competition claims that Vmotion doesn’t require clustering but this only works for planned downtime and not for unplanned downtime. By combining Live migration and clustering, Hyper-V addresses both planned and unplanned downtime.

Multiple VMs per LUN: VMM 2008 didn’t allow placing multiple VMs per LUN even though Hyper-V allowed it and the reason was that the LUN ownership was on a per host basis. This meant that migrating any VM on that shared LUN would result in all other VMs being migrated as well which can result in a confusing user experience (I’ve blogged about this at length). With CSV (Clustered Shared Volumes) in Windows 2008 R2, a single LUN is accessible by all hosts within a cluster. This enables a VM that’s on a shared LUN to be migrated without affecting other VMs on that LUN. As a result, with VMM R2, we’ll allow multiple VMs to be placed on the same LUN if CSV is enabled on the cluster.

http://blogs.technet.com/rakeshm/archive/2009/03/16/scvmm-2008-r2-beta-is-available-now.aspx

That is from the beta release announcement for SCVMM. I have downloaded the beta, but haven’t had time lately to get it setup. I am hoping to work on that this coming week…

Dumb… or maybe not?

Michael — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:40:29 +0000

So I posted that I feel dumb some days, but when I wrote that, it was related to how frustrated I was trying to figure out System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta. I thought that I had be shown the light by someone in the product team posting detailed instructions on how to do what I was trying to accomplish. I would just like to set the record straight and say that IT STILL DIDN’T WORK!

Now I am running Hyper-V RC1 so SCVMM 2008 Beta doesn’t work with that yet anyway… Ah, the joys of life on the bleeding edge….

Some days I feel really dumb…

Michael — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:48:54 +0000

And some days, I just am dumb…

I have been working with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (before that I had been working with Hyper-V Beta, and RC-0) and trying to configure the SCVMM and System Center Operations Manager connection. It would help if I were fluent with the SCOM (or OpsMgr if you prefer) environment and how it all works…

Anyway, I have been posting in the TechNet Forums for a few days now and I think someone may have figured out how to educate me… The Virtual Machine Manager team has posted the instructions on their Blog.

Thanks to Brian Ehlert for alerting me to the post.