Hi,

Hi i have Server 2012 based virtualization Host wit few VMs.

One of the VHDX grew quite large ~ 220 GB. So i went to VM and deleted some logs and windows update files. The disk size inside VM is now 160 GB but VHDX did not reclaimed free space and remained the same ~ 220 GB.

I tried to solve this using these commands using Powershell in VM

Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter C -ReTrim -Verbose

 After this i saw that the additional space was trimmed. I restarted VM but VHDX size did not change.

Afther this i turned off VM and tried command in powershell of virtualization host.

Optimize-VHD –Path C:\Temp\MyVHD.VHDX –Mode Full

The process lasted for about 15 minutes, but after this VHDX size did not change. I also tried to use Compact disk option from the Hyper-V console but this also does not help.

Any ideas how to reclaim free space ?

Invested in a Ubiquiti 5 ports POE router yesterday, for home usage. I'm far from a network design/security expert. I wonder if below design is something that would work, if not, what can I do better? I have no Firewall rules yet, I'm curious about the design itself. 

The The Hyper-V host/cluster is placed in the INFRA network. Only reason I have a separated wifi network is that I power it via POE, might plug it into the LAN switch instead to save a port and get them on the same broadcast domain. 

I am looking for the proper way to configure ISCSI on a Windows 2012R2 server with a Hyper-V role. This is for a home-based lab environment. I am hoping someone with experience with both Vmware and Hyper-V might have some insight on this.

I have my own domain and a few virtual servers. My background is in Vmware so I have a few virtual machines hosted on VMWare ESXi 5.5 and a few virtual machines hosted on a Hyper-V server. I already have it set up and it has been working OK for about a year now. All of my virtual machines (Vmware or Hyper-V) are configured via ISCSI connections to a Synology DS412+ NAS.

As I have observed this environment over the past year or so, I have noticed one big difference in the way that Vmware and Hyper-V handle virtual machines on ISCSI connections. If I am performing maintenance on my Synology NAS, I usually try to shut down all my virtual machines before rebooting my Synology NAS. However, there have been sometimes that I have forgotten to shut down the virtual machines first. What I have noticed is that if my NAS reboots, My VMware storage shows that it can no longer connect to the ISCSI storage but my virtual machines stay running. When my NAS comes back up, my Vmware ISCSI storage automatically refreshes and all seems to be well although I usually go back and reboot the virtual machines that were on ISCSI storage just to be on the safe side. However, my Hyper-V virtual machines hosted on ISCSI storage on the same Synology NAS do not fare as well. When my NAS reboots, on my Hyper-V host, the drive letter associated with my ISCSI storage vanishes and the virtual machine goes away and is shown to be in a critical state. The drive letter that was mapped to the ISCSI storage never reconnects. The only way I know how to fix this is to reboot my Hyper-V host and everything seems to come back up OK although I do not like those virtual machines crashing as they did.

On my Hyper-V host, I have a drive letter mapped to my ISCSI target and a couple of virtual machines configured with their virtual drives using the drive letter mapped for the ISCSI connection.

Eventually, I would like to play with clustering but I need to get past this potentially incorrect ISCSI configuration first.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Rod

Rod Miller

I'm running into trouble understanding the normalized I/O QoS settings in Hyper-V after I've done some testing.

I would like my VM to be able to use at least around the equivalent of 2 disks in RAID-0, so I set the limit to 500 IOPS in Hyper-V. I know this is a bit on the positive side, but that's not exactly the problem. The problem is this... When measuring performance of the disks, I see, on synthetic tests and the underlying hardware (3par storage), the VM indeed consumes around 500 IOPS max. The problem is, the disk also only gets around 4 MB/s total througput when copying files. While I would like a max of 500 IOPS for the disk I also want the server to have a throughput of around 100 MB/s. But you can understand, giving the server 12500 IOPS max isn't an option. How can I solve this?

So at the end of last week, the users in one of the office said one of the network drives was not working.

I log onto the server and look, sure enough one of the drives is completely missing. So I shut the virtual machine down.  Check the settings, yes the missing drive is still configured and pointing to the VHD file.  So I run ChkDsk on the vhd file, no problems found.  I restart the virtual machine, still missing.  So I turn off the virtual machine, expand the size of the missing VHD which completes successfully according to the messaging.  Restart the virtual machine, drive is still missing. So now I head to the event viewer to find the error messages.  I can not find any ( any tips on what to search for? ) I looked through admin logs, system logs, any log I could think of, with no luck on any events about not being able to load the VHD file.

What are next steps for trouble shooting this issue?  Should I try removing and adding using a different SCSI number?

Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Curt Winter
Certified Microsoft Professional
Note: Posts are provided “AS IS” without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. If you found my post helpful, please mark it as the answer.

I'm running Hyper-V on 2008R2 hosts. If I try to export a VM from one host to a share on the other host I get error 0x80070005 access denied. There is adocumented fix here, but I think this fix is only for hosts joined to a domain. My hosts are stand alone. Is there a way to give the system account of the Hyper-V host access to shares on the other hosts without joining each host to a domain?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2008849

I'm trying to configure our Hyper-V server so that a user on our domain has administrative control.  Our Hyper-V server is on the domain running 2008 R2 (named SERVER85 below), and the client is on Win 7 Ent x64 (named DEV03 below, username accuraty\jkessel).

In the output below you can see that it appears we might have a problem with this user's access to the WMI path root\CIMv2, but if I pull up the advanced security settings for that node in WMI, I see:

Name: Justin Kessel (jkessel@accuraty.local)
Apply to: This namespace and subnamespaces
Permissions allowed: "Enable Account" and "Remote Enable" (no others, no denies).

IMHO, the server, the desktop, and user are all fairly "vanilla" with nothing unusual going on.  Maybe one thing worth noting: our Small Business Server 2008 (i.e. domain controller) is running as a VPS on SERVER85, so SERVER85 never boots with the domain controller on.  This hasn't ever caused problems except that the machine always thinks it's firewall should be in the "work" configuration instead of the "domain" configuration.  I tested running the HVRemote script while the SERVER85 firewall was turned off, and I get exactly the same results below.

One more note: this user currently can logon through RDP to SERVER85 and administer Hyper-V just fine.  This user is *not* a domain admin or an admin on that server - I've simply provided him with the right permissions to be able to RDP and admin Hyper-V only.

We used HVRemote and it output this info when run on the client:

Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Hyper-V Remote Management Configuration & Checkup Utility

John Howard, Hyper-V Team, Microsoft Corporation.

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward

Version 0.7 7th August 2009

INFO: Computername is DEV03

INFO: Computer is in domain accuraty.local

INFO: Current user is ACCURATY\JKessel

INFO: Assuming /mode:client as the Hyper-V role is not installed

INFO: Build 7600.16617.amd64fre.win7_gdr.100618-1621

INFO: Detected Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 OS

INFO: Remote Server Administration Tools are installed

INFO: Hyper-V Tools Windows feature is enabled

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DACL for COM Security Access Permissions

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

\Everyone    (S-1-1-0)

     Allow: LocalLaunch RemoteLaunch (7)

NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON    (S-1-5-7)

     Allow: LocalLaunch (3)

BUILTIN\Distributed COM Users    (S-1-5-32-562)

     Allow: LocalLaunch RemoteLaunch (7)

BUILTIN\Performance Log Users    (S-1-5-32-559)

     Allow: LocalLaunch RemoteLaunch (7)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANONYMOUS LOGON Machine DCOM Access

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANONYMOUS LOGON does not have remote access

  This setting should only be enabled if required as security on this

  machine will be lowered. This computer is in a domain. It is not

  required if the server(s) being managed are in the same or trusted

  domains.

  Use hvremote /mode:client /anondcom:enable to turn on

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Firewall Settings for Hyper-V Management Clients

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Domain Firewall Profile is active

   Enabled:  Hyper-V Management Clients - WMI (Async-In)

   Enabled:  Hyper-V Management Clients - WMI (TCP-Out)

   Enabled:  Hyper-V Management Clients - WMI (TCP-In)

   Enabled:  Hyper-V Management Clients - WMI (DCOM-In)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows Firewall exception rule(s) for mmc.exe

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Domain Firewall Profile is active

   Enabled:  Microsoft Management Console (UDP)

   Enabled:  Microsoft Management Console (TCP)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional configuration may be necessary

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  This computer is in a domain. If the target server is in a workgroup,

  you may need to set credentials for the server for Hyper-V Remote

  Management to operate correctly. This step should not be necssary if

  the target server is in the same or trusted domain as this computer.

  If necessary, from a *NON* elevated command prompt, enter:

     cmdkey /add:ServerComputerName /user:ServerComputerName\UserName /pass

  Note that you MUST enter ServerComputerName to BOTH parameters.

  You will be prompted for a password after entering the command.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IP Configuration

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : DEV03

   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . : accuraty.local

   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid

   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

   DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : accuraty.local

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : accuraty.local

   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection

   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-19-D1-05-57-01

   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::4406:b48c:dea3:de50%11(Preferred)

   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 172.16.48.185(Preferred)

   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

   Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Wednesday, November 10, 2010 3:19:23 AM

   Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, December 20, 2010 9:39:25 AM

   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 172.16.48.1

   DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 172.16.48.210

   DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 234887633

   DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-13-62-35-81-00-19-D1-05-57-01

   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 172.16.48.210

                                       66.209.192.5

                                       8.8.8.8

                                       66.209.192.15

                                       8.8.4.4

                                       4.2.2.1

   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Tunnel adapter isatap.accuraty.local:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :

   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter

   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0

   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No

   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :

   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface

   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0

   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No

   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stored Credentials

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Currently stored credentials:

    Target: WindowsLive:name=jkessel@accuraty.com

    Type: Generic

    User: jkessel@accuraty.com

    Local machine persistence

    Target: LegacyGeneric:target=WindowsLive:(token):name=jkessel@accuraty.com;serviceuri=contacts.msn.com

    Type: Generic

    User: jkessel@accuraty.com

    Local machine persistence

    Target: Domain:target=TERMSRV/server85

    Type: Domain Password

    User: ACCURATY\jkessel

    Local machine persistence

    Target: WindowsLive:target=virtualapp/didlogical

    Type: Generic

    User: 02mybhosqazs

    Local machine persistence

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Testing connectivity to server:server85

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1: - nslookup for DNS verification.

     Note that failure is OK if you don't have a DNS infrastructure

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

Server:  sbs01.accuraty.local

Address:  172.16.48.210

Name:    server85.accuraty.local

Address:  172.16.48.201

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

2: - ping attempt (ping -4 -n -1 server85)

     Note the ping may timeout - that is OK. However, if you get an

     error that server85 could not be found, you need to fix DNS

     or add an entry to the hosts file. Test 3 will fail and provide more

     guidance.

     This may take a second or two...

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

Pinging server85.accuraty.local [172.16.48.201] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 172.16.48.201: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for 172.16.48.201:

    Packets: Sent = 1, Received = 1, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

3: - Connect to root\cimv2 WMI namespace

***** Failed to connect to root\cimv2

***** Error:     -2147024891 Access is denied.

***** Namespace: root\cimv2

     FAIL - Was unable to connect. Diagnosis steps:

     - Have you run hvremote /add:user or hvremote /add:domain\user

       on server85 to grant access?

     - Are you sure the server name 'server85' is correct?

     - Did you use cmdkey if needed? More information higher up.

     - Did you restart server85 after running hvremote /add for

       the very first time? (Subsequent adds, no restart needed.)

     - Is DNS operating correctly and was server85 found?

       Look at the output of tests 1 and 2 above to verify that the

       IPv4 address matches the output of 'ipconfig /all' when run on

       server85. If you do not have a DNS infrastructure,

       edit \windows\system32\drivers\etc on DEV03

       to add an entry for server85.

INFO: Are running the latest version

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 warning(s) or error(s) were found in the configuration. Review the

detailed output above to determine whether you need to take further action.

Summary is below.

1: Anonymous Logon does not have remote access (may be ok)

2: You *may* need to set credentials for access to the server

3: Cannot connect to root\cimv2 on server85

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd greatly appreciate some help!

Thanks!

Hi.  I'm seeing some weird disk performance issues in a bunch of VMs hosted in a cluster.  Didn't notice this until troubleshooting some general "it's slow" comments from users.

Setup:
2*2012 R2 hosts in a cluster
Each host has dual 10gig NICs used only for iSCSI traffic
iSCSI LUNs live on a 3Par 7200
MPIO
Jumbo frames and flow control on iSCSI network
Cluster comms over teamed 1gbit adapters
Hyper-V and host connectivity via other 1 gbit adapters
VHDX files for the VMs live in separate LUNS, all in CSV
VMs are all 2012 R2 as well

Testing by copying a ~15GB file...

File copies from the hosts' disks to the CSV folders are fast.
E.g. c:\path\file --> c:\clustersharedvolume\someLUN\path\file

File copies from host to VMs' disks are fast
E.g. on vm, \\host\c$\path\file --> c:\path\file

File copies between the CSV folders, done on the hosts, are fast.
E.g. c:\clustersharedvolume\LUN1\path\file --> c:\clustersharedvolume\LUN2\path\file

File copies in the VMs between disks... not so good.
E.g. c:\path\file --> e:\path\file, which would be LUN1\vhdx1 --> LUN2\vhdx2

The in-vm file copies start out fast, run fast for maybe the first quarter of the file, and then speed drops and starts varying wildly.  Once the variability kicks in, the best I'm seeing is up to around 190MByte/sec, with dips as low as 8MByte/sec, or even momentary pauses.

Anyone have any ideas how I can get the VMs to play nicer?

I want to reduce the size of a VM hard drive.  I’ve successfully converted it from VHD to VHDX,restarted the VM and ensured the vhdx is active and showing in the Hyper-V settings as the file & location of the VM.    

There are no snapshops or shadow copies. I've defragged the disk which shows 300 gig of the 450 gig is free and 0% fragmentation.   I’ve turned off the VM.  From the Win 2012 R2 Hyper-V host, when I open edit the settings of the vhdx disk file, I don’t get the option to shrink the file.  Only options are Compact, Convert or Expand.   Is it because the drive to be shrink has the system on it? 

Thanks for any help

Hi,

how can I grant persmisions to non administrative users to VMconnect console for certain vm's?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn741279.aspx

A Hyper-V administrator can grant a non-administrative user access to any virtual machines interactive console

I found this guide: https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/windows-server-2012r2-grant-access-to-hyper-v-vms-hyper-v-ws2012r2-winserv-msftprivatecloud/

but it those not let the user group via VMConnect 

Dears,

i am having a a cluster with 6 nodes, all are Windows 2012 R2 Core. the cluster is managed using SCVMM 2012 R2.

i am trying to remove the cluster from VMM but i am getting error 2606 "Unable to perform the job because one or more of the selected objects are locked by another job."

i went through the MS article https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2795040 but finally it shows the all tasks that locks objects.

if i deleted these entries what would happen?, or what is the best practice for removing the cluster from VMM?

assistance is highly appreciated.

Samer F. Mustafa Microsoft Technical Team Leader. sf_mustafa@hotmail.com

Situation: 2 servers as standalone Hyper-V hosts (workgroup, not domain joined). One is Windows Server 2012, the other Windows Server 2012 R2. Both Datacenter edition. Successfully established Hyper-V Replication using Certificate authentication on Port 443. Had to build a PKI infrastructure, itself a useful learning process. Replication works fine for existing VMs.

Problem: Whenever I tried to enable replication for a new VM, I continually got the dreaded 0x00002EFE error: "Hyper-V failed to enable replication for virtual machine ' VM Name': The connection with the server was terminated abnormally (0x00002EFE)." Was using the GUI most of the time.

Existing machines continue to replicate just fine. Failover test worked on one of them. Just couldn't replicate the new VM, which was the last one to do before upgrading the old 2012 server to R2.

Diagnosis: Read all articles so far. Double check all settings, certificates, CRL distribution points, Event Logs. Nothing found. Capture network traffic with Network Monitor 3.4. Found one packet where the 2012 R2 replica server was sending a TCP RESET in response to SSL Client Hello for SSL handshake for new replica request.

Analysis: Started to get suspicious about the server certificates when I noticed the GUI was always converting the server hostname to a FQDN by adding a domain name. Both servers were registered in an internal AD based DNS server even though they are not domain joined. Checked the certificates again and confirmed they both only had single level names (I thought I had generated SAN certificates, but not so). The GUI would not let me use a single level name any more, although it used it to set the earlier replicas up.

Solution: Used PowerShell and specified a single level server name that was on the certificate. Sequence is:

cd cert:\localmachine\my
dir | FL
<manually copy Thumbrint data 97531ABCDEF2468DE7434767DDEEFF22567C521E

Enable-VMReplication <VMName> -ReplicaServerName ReplicaR2 -AuthenticationType Certificate -CertificateThumbprint 97531ABCDEF2468DE7434767DDEEFF22567C521E -ReplicaServerPort 443
Start-VMInitialReplication <VMName>

TIPS:

1: Hyper-V Certificate Replication REQUIRES access to a CDP for any internally generated certificates. Simply omitting one in the certificate generation process is not enough, you have to supply a reachable CDP.

2: Include all names that your servers can have in the certificates you generate, both single level and fqdn. I was using http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2012/07/02/requesting-certificates-for-hyper-v-replica-from-cas.aspx as a guide and trying to modify it to generate a SAN certificate using a dedicated Microsoft CA machine. Still got to get that bit right.

Hyper-V replication sometimes causes problems. What I'm usually doing in this case is to remove and re-enable replication for a VM, and that solves the problem.

Have customers with Hyper-V Clusters. VM replicas are performed to the replica broker role on a target clusters. When a VM has replication errors, I remove replication from the VM and remove the replicated VM on the target cluster. But since some time, re-enabling replication fails with errors "file in use" or "vm is not in the current state to accept replication". 

Despite we have disabled replication and deleted the replicated VM on the target cluster, the XML file from the replicated VM is still in c:\clusterstorage\volume1\Hyper-V Replica\virtual machines\<vm-guid>.xml. It's not possible to delete this file, even when stopping the "Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management" Service on the cluster node that owns the CSV. The only "drastic solution" that works is to put the CSV into maintenance mode, add then a drive letter to the disk, and then delete the <vm-guid>.xml file. Then, after taking the CSV out of maintenance mode, replication of the problem VM can be re-enabled successfully.

What is the right way to completely remove a VM replication? How can this problem beeing solved without taking the CSV offline? Thank you in advance for any help.

Franz

Good afternoon,

I am starting the process of converting a 3-stack of Dell R415 Servers from running VMWare / vSphere 5.1 to Hyper-V.  The three servers are running linux based esxi, but my plan is to install new SSDs that will run Server 2012 R2 as the Host on each server. 

My concern, the drive pools for our current virtual environment that currently resides on this 3-server cluster is allocated in our EMC Unisphere SAN as "VMWare" 

My question is, what's the best route to get Hyper-V on these Servers, convert the current VMs from VMware to Hyper-V, and make sure all the drive space is allocated correctly?

I've been given the following links about MVMM and I'm installing it now, but wanted to ask the community for any pointers / info you'd be willing to provide:

Any help is appreciated, I want to get all my ducks in a row before even considering starting with this.  

Thanks!

Hi,

Would it be possible to set the Primary Hyper -V Server 2012 R2so that the *.HRL files are deposited on a different drive ?

Best regards

Hello, we have a Dell compellent san with 55 disks (7k) and another 55 disks for 15k.  It auto tiers the data based on load (higher IO loads will move to the faster disks).

Our Hyper-V VM's greatly struggle.  I've tried IO benchmarks on many Hyper-V VMs, and the IO score is terrible, even much worse than my single disk desktop computer with 1 5.4k drive.  On the same SAN, speed tests and access times are OK on physically attached servers (non-VM).  We also have 100+ms disk access time at times on VMs.  We are within the limits of our san, according to Dell, we are not overworking it.   Also, we did not have these issues with VMware virtual machines.

This leads me to believe that they Hyper-V layer is greatly slowing down IO.  We have a 10 server 2012 cluster 2012 (non-r2).

Has anyone ever had decent IO benchmarks running 200+ Hyper-V VMs?

I am posting one of my horrendous benchmarks below.  Please do not mention Azure, I do not really want to pay more money to have servers way out on the internet right now (I've heard a little too much sales BS recently) :)

Looking for people with a local hyper-v cluster and san.

Environment:

Server 2012 R2 Datacenter

Hyper-V hosting one VM that is a pfSense firewall/router/gateway "appliance"

Question:

How do I configure this VM (or Hyper-V in general, since this is the only VM) to run ASAP following a host machine reboot without anyone logging in to Windows?

Currently the VM does not appear to run until the physical machine has a user logged in.  I have the VM setting enabled to start immediately with 0 sec delay, but this still seems to be contingent on an initial user login to the server.