We're creating an entirely new Hyper-V virtualized environment on Server 2012 R2.  My question is:  Can we accomplish high availability WITHOUT using failover clustering?

So, I don't really have anything AGAINST failover clustering, and we will happily use it if it's the right solution for us, but to be honest, we really don't want ANYTHING to happen automatically when it comes to failover.  Here's what I mean:

In this new environment, we have architected 2 identical, very capable Hyper-V physical hosts, each of which will run several VMs comprising the equivalent of a scaled-back version of our entire environment.  In other words, there is at least a domain controller, multiple web servers, and a (mirrored/HA/AlwaysOn) SQL Server 2012 VM running on each host, along with a few other miscellaneous one-off worker-bee VMs doing things like system monitoring.  The SQL Server VM on each host has about 75% of the physical memory resources dedicated to it (for performance reasons).  We need pretty much the full horsepower of both machines up and going at all times under normal conditions.

So now, to high availability.  The standard approach is to use failover clustering, but I am concerned that if these hosts are clustered, we'll have the equivalent of just 50% hardware capacity going at all times, with full failover in place of course (we are using an iSCSI SAN for storage).

BUT, if these hosts are NOT clustered, and one of them is suddenly switched off, experiences some kind of catastrophic failure, or simply needs to be rebooted while applying WSUS patches, the SQL Server HA will fail over (so all databases will remain up and going on the surviving VM), and the environment would continue functioning at somewhat reduced capacity until the failed host is restarted.  With this approach, it seems to me that we would be running at 100% for the most part, and running at 50% or so only in the event of a major failure, rather than running at 50% ALL the time.

Of course, in the event of a catastrophic failure, I'm also thinking that the one-off worker-bee VMs could be replicated to the alternate host so they could be started on the surviving host if needed during a long-term outage.

So basically, I am very interested in the thoughts of others with experience regarding taking this approach to Hyper-V architecture, as it seems as if failover clustering is almost a given when it comes to best practices and high availability.  I guess I'm looking for validation on my thinking.

So what do you think?  What am I missing or forgetting?  What will we LOSE if we go with a NON-clustered high-availability environment as I've described it?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

hi guys, how to remove virtual network adapter that was  created by Hyper-V?

Thanks.

Every second counts..make use of it. Disclaimer: This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties or guarantees and confers no rights.

Hi,

I've win 2012 std with hyperv role on it.

i've setup a virtual machine with 1 IDE disk and 1 SCSI disk all VHD on local disk.

when i monitor the server with veeam one it report that the Virtual Storage Error Count in large (9) on the SCSI driver even if this drive is not loaded at all.

why is that?

I have 2012 R2 Datacenter up and running. It is NOT a DC.

I would like to use Hyper-V . Is there an installation and planning guide out there for me to review?

THX

John Lenz

Hi

We have a Hyper-V 2012 3 node cluster, the VMs are stored on a Server 2012 based 2 node Scale Out File Server.

We created this setup from new in October 2013 and it has generally worked OK since but we do get the occasional "General Access Denied Error (0x80070005)" when we try to live migrate a virtual machine.  The instructions in the below TechNet article do not work for us - the result indicates success but when we try the Live Migration again we get the same error message.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2249906/en-gb

I have in the past resolved this by removing the virtual machine from Failover Cluster Manager, migrating it via Hyper-V Manager, logging on to the destination Hyper-V host and re-importing it to Failover Cluster Manager from there.

However last night I was doing some system maintenance and went to drain a host via Failover Cluster Manager.  The host had around 20 VMs on it and only two VMs successfully migrated - the other VMs did not migrate and now I cannot move them from that host for love nor money!

The Event Log for FCM indicates they have the "General Access Denied" error.

I have tried the following:

• Use instructions in above mentioned TechNet article (shows success, but same error happens when I try to Live Migrate)
• Tried the method I have mentioned above (removing from FCM etc.).  Get the Access Denied message
• Checking the folder permissions on the "Virtual Machines" folder where XMLs are stored.  Permissions appear OK for all Hyper-V hosts (also checked the VMs VHD permissions)
• Trying the Live Migration directly on Hyper-V host rather than via a Constrained Delegation scenario
• Checking Constrained Delegation in AD (seems fine as per when I set it up in October)
• Checking permissions on the Scale Out File Server

With regards to the Scale Out File Server I have noticed in the past some odd permissions things going on.  I have seen the permissions for the Hyper-V hosts going from (for example) "Full Access" on "This Folder, Subfolders & Files" to random things like " Read/Modify" on "This Folder Only".  Manually changing the permissions back to Full Control resolves the issue, but does not stop it recurring again.

So I'm a bit confused really!  It looks like a mixed basket of permissions issues going on!  Some of our most critical machines are on that host at the moment and they cannot be moved.  Any suggestions appreciated.

Many thanks

This may be extremely basic HyperV cluster 101, but I need a quick double check on my understanding here...

We've got three identical hosts connected to a SAN, the plan being to create a cluster and doll out no more VMs than can comfortably fit on two hosts so that in case of all out failure of one of them, the VMs in question fail over to the third.

Then we realized that a cluster needs an AD Controller.  Now we could add a simple physical server, but that would create a serious single point of failure would it not?  IE, if it goes down the whole cluster is shot.  I suppose we could add TWO small physical servers, one primary controller and one secondary, but that would add considerable expense considering the austere nature of this layout.

Only alternative I see is to create the AD Controller as a VM on one of the hosts and a secondary controller as a VM on another, such that in an all out host failure, there is still a domain controller for the cluster to function.

Do I have that right?

I have a new machine with 2 Westmere CPUs and 4 SAS disks in 2 Raid pairs.

WS 2012 r2 is installed and I have set up a Hyper-v Role, and rebooted, etc

I have set up Gen 2 VM which starts fine

I have an iso image downloaded from MS and mounted that as a DVD in the VM Manager and have put that first in the boot order.

When I start the machine I get

Boot Failed. EFI SCSI Device

(Same happens when I create a new machine with the Wizard and specify the OS installation iso image right at the start.)

I have followed all the instructions to the letter. Why do MS supply a product which falls at the very important stage of installing an OS in a VM?

Notes

I am new to the technical depths of Windows.

This is a single machine, not part of cluster. It is in a workgroup, not a domain - if that matters.

I have tried to read couple of other threads that mention the same error, but the are not quite the same situation and also I cannot follow the suggested fixes at all.

Please could someone tell me what to do via simple, point and click, step by step instructions, without assuming any knowledge on my part?

Thank you very much indeed.

Just installed Hyper-V 2012 server on a HP ML360 G8. Also installed Corefig 1.1.1. It seems after about 10 minutes if idle time the monitor goes black and the unit goes into sleep or hibernation.  I have used powercfg to set it to the High Performance power scheme and set screensaver to none in Corefig. 

When the monitor goes black, if I move the mouse the sconfig screen, corefig, etc windows do not show until I run the mouse over them. Even then the windows do not 'repaint' until I run the mouse over the whole window or make some kind of key stroke in each window.

Worried what this will do to my VMs once I start building them and would like to see the screen at all times.  This is the first 2012 box and I have never had this issue with any of the Core 2008 products.

Thanks

Hi

i have two host , each one based on hyper-v core server2012

i would like to configure a failover between those 2 hyper-v so if a VM on one host fail the second host can take over.

please can anyone help

thanks

I am designing a new Hyper v network with 3 nodes. Each node has 8 NICs and I want to team 2 NICs per network.

Team 1 will be the Management Network. A team will be created at the OS layer and a virtual switch will be created for the Network.

• OS Management
• Live migration
• Heart Beat

These services will be added as interfaces on the network adaptor and will be VLAN'd.  QoS will then be added to the virtual switch for the Management and Heart beat network interfaces to ensure that these services are not compromised.

The CSV network communication will managed by the virtual machine network but I may enable cluster communications on the Management network Team 1 instead.

Please advise.

After converting a VM running Windows 2008 r2 from VMware to Hyper-V, we receive event ID 1000 and 7031 as listed below.

Log Name:      System

Source:        Service Control Manager

Date:          3/7/2014 2:24:58 PM

Event ID:      7031

Task Category: None

Level:         Error

Keywords:      Classic

User:          N/A

Description:

The VMware Tools Service service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 806 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 300000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Log Name:      System

Source:        Service Control Manager

Date:          3/7/2014 2:24:58 PM

Event ID:      7031

Task Category: None

Level:         Error

Keywords:      Classic

User:          N/A

Description:

The VMware Tools Service service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 806 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 300000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Then I disabled the all Vmware services such as VMware tools service and VMwrae Upgrade helper. Now, I receive Event ID: 

Log Name:      Application

Source:        vmStatsProvider

Date:          3/11/2014 12:15:40 AM

Event ID:      257

Task Category: General

Level:         Error

Keywords:      Classic

User:          N/A

Description:

The "vmStatsProvider" can not be initialized. "vmGuestLib" returns error "VMware Guest API is not running in a Virtual Machine" (2).

Log Name:      Application

Source:        vmStatsProvider

Date:          3/11/2014 12:15:40 AM

Event ID:      259

Task Category: Guest Library API

Level:         Error

Keywords:      Classic

User:          N/A

Description:

Unable to start "vmGuestLibrary". Error: "VMware Guest API is not running in a Virtual Machine" (2).

If I try to uninstall VMwrae tools, I can’t remove it with this message: “setup failed to determine which VMware product this virtual machine is running on”

How can I fix the problem?

Bob Lin, MCSE & CNE Networking, Internet, Routing, VPN Networking, Internet, Routing, VPN Troubleshooting on http://www.ChicagoTech.net How to Install and Configure Windows, VMware, Virtualization and Cisco on http://www.HowToNetworking.com

Hello!

My basic setup atm consists of 2 Windows Server 2012 R2 nodes, network configuration was basicly done as discribed in this video: http://www.it-cast.de/hyperv/hyper-v-unter-windows-server-2012-r2-preview-teil-4-die-livemigration/

So the 2 nodes have 4 port 1Gbit adapters and i configured ports 1 and 2 to be on different subnets and directly attached between the nodes. Here's the thing now, if i move data (shared folders) between the nodes i get fully pumped up 230MB/sec and both links are used by SMB3.0.

I also get full link usage when i move a VM in status "Shutdown". BUT if i try to move the VM in status "Running" both links get used as well, but this time there is a magic 800mbit (or maybe 1 gigabit, i dont get gigabit speed with a single link either, while live migration) barrier which i cannot overcome. (The 800mbit simply get split up evenly over the number of links)

I searched for nearly 5 days until now and i cant find the error in this setup.

(For the curious, RSS is enabled with 8 queues and as far as SMB 3.0 goes, this setup seems to be well working)

Thanks for your help in advance, i really dont know how to get any further with this problem.

Kind Regards

Rico

I was reading this post:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2013/03/10/windows-server-2012-hyper-v-best-practices-in-easy-checklist-form.aspx

and I saw two things, one where it says fiber channel is not support and one where is says loopback is not support?

so my question is for a best practice, would local storage (say a local attached raid 10) be considered best practice? or a shared
san lun? and if a san, would virtual stuff like IBMs SVC be supported?

Hello,

i am having a working environment for storage-migration Hyperv-2012R2-machines to a windows SMB-server.

Now i am also try to do a storage-migration to QNAP-NAS.

This NAS is joined to the windows-domain. I have created a Domain-Security-Group with my 2 HYPER-v-hosts in it. This Group is has Full Control to the Hyper-v folder where the storage-migration goes to.

I receive the following error when doing a storge migration to the QNAP:

What is the difference here with SMB-file share on the windows-machine and is there an option to fix this issue?

Thx

Noticed that our hyper-V host logs the below event log error every time it is rebooted.  Any ideas why this service did not shut down properly?

EventId: 7043, System, Service Control Manager - The Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service did not shut down properly after receiving a preshutdown control.

The hosted virtual server does pause/restart and shutdown/startup correctly from hyper-v manager manually.

Anyone else seeing this error message?

Hello,

i am trying to import a Hyperv-VM on another host (not clustered) from central storage.

When doing this i receive the following error :

CIFS is delegated to both host from central storage (smb).

What is the problem here?

Thx

Hi there,

I have an issue with TMG 2010 on Hyper-V 2012 - the Setup:

- Windows 2012 Hyper-V

- TMG 2010 SP2 Rollup 4 running on W2K8 R2

TMG 2010 (Array Node1) Network
Internal Interface: 10.0.0.10/24 (Route to 192.168.11.0/24 over 10.0.0.1)
IntraArray: 192.168.10.10/24
Perimeter: 10.0.60.10/24 GW 10.0.60.100

TMG 2010 (Array Node2) Network
Internal Interface: 10.0.0.11/24 (Route to 192.168.11.0/24 over 10.0.0.1)
IntraArray: 192.168.10.11/24
Perimeter: 10.0.60.11/24 GW 10.0.60.100

Domain Controllers:
192.168.11.10
192.168.11.11

The NICs of the TMG VMs are configured with the correct VLANs and on the Perimeter Interface as well as on the Internal Interface I activate MAC Address Spoofing.

Once I activate NLB on the Perimeter Interface all works fine. But NLB on the internal Interface does not work - I see that NLB got configured on Array Node 1 but the second one does not get the config nor is able to sync it´s configuration with Array Node 1. ALso the Servers are not able to communicate with the Domain Controllers anymore. Once I deactivate MAC Address Spoofing on the internal Interface and remove NLB the Server are able to speak to the Domain Controllers...

Any suggestions?

Hi, hope someone can explain this to me

Can I overprovisioning CPU usage in Hyper-V 2012 R2 as described in this article below? When I previously used ESX I hade the problem and reduced the number of vCPU in the VM's.
Does it work the same way in Hyper-V?

I have a server with 12 cores, 24 logical processors. Should the total amount of vCPU on all VM's not exceed 24 for best performance?

http://www.zdnet.com/virtual-cpus-the-overprovisioning-penalty-of-vcpu-to-pcpu-ratios-4010025185/

"To explain this further let’s take an example of a four pCPU host that has four VMs, three with 1 vCPU and one with 4 vCPUs. At best only the three single vCPU VMs can be scheduled concurrently. In such an instance the 4 vCPU VM would have to wait for all four pCPUs to be idle. In this example the excess vCPUs actually impose scheduling constraints and consequently degrade the VM’s overall performance, typically indicated by low CPU utilization but a high CPU Ready figure. With the ESX server scheduling and prioritising workloads according to what it deems most efficient to run, the consequence is that smaller VMs will tend to run on the pCPUs more frequently than the larger overprovisioned ones. So in this instance overprovisioning was in fact proving to be detrimental to performance as opposed to beneficial. Now in more recent versions of vSphere the scheduling of different vCPUs and de-scheduling of idle vCPUs is not as contentious as it used to be. Despite this, the VMKernel still has to manage every vCPU, a complete waste if the VM’s application doesn’t use them!"