Hyper-V - test if a machine can be virtualized 1

[xedgex]

We are about to purchase a DellR710 in order to virtualize a few Windows 2000 machines. These machines are either Dell or HP with hardware issues. Our DC is Win 2000.

Before we make the hardware expense, is there a tool I can use to try to virtualize these machines for he hyper-v platform? I've used vmware's converter before and wanted to know if MS offers something similar.

I do not have an available machine nor a 2008 server to install hyper-v for this purpose.

Please advise, thank you!

 

[pagy]

If you look a few threads down in this forum you'll find

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1580328&page=1

Paul
VCP4

https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/PaulP/profile

RFC 2795 - The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2795.html

Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week

 

[xedgex]

Thank you.

 

[dailyatom]

xedgex,

I just bought a new X3440 Xeon based server and planned to use it with Hyper-V virtualization under Server 2008 R2. Initially my server was fine, but after installing the Hyper role the server hung and occasionally blue screened whenever I ran a virtual machine.

After spending time troubleshooting, I found that the blue screen error (0x00000101 CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT) was caused by a known bug with Hyper-V running under Nehalem based Xeon CPUs. In short, while running a virtual machine, spurious interrupts are generated by the CPU which can lead to a CPU core hanging under certain power saving states.

There are reports online that the Dell R710 is affected by the bug running Server 2008 so please be sure that your chosen system is not affected before buying your new server to run Hyper-V. I don't know if all Nehalem Xeons are affected or just the X3440 and 5500 series.

There is a Microsoft hotfix avaialble for the bug. After I applied the patch to mine it did help, but didn't fully stabilize the system. I managed at best about 24 hours uptime with the patch versus 5-20 mins uptime without. In the end I removed Hyper-V and I'm testing VMWare Server V2 so far with with much more success *fingers crossed*.

There is more information on Microsoft's MSDN blogs site at

http://bit.ly/8FuJh6

A hotfix is available for the bug at Microsoft Support -

http://bit.ly/8OmkF8

Several items reporting the bug on R710 servers can be found at:

http://bit.ly/8MPviv

- Experts Exchange

http://bit.ly/5QuVqk

- Microsoft Technet Forums

A handy article on Wikipedia at

http://bit.ly/11NZa9

lists all Xeon processors. Towards the bottom of the page, all the Nehalem CPUs are listed if you need further reference.

Robert

Daily Atom IT Services

http://www.dailyatom.com

 

[xedgex]

Paul,
I tried sysinternal's tool but it won't work for Windows 2000, it is 2k3 SP1+.

Without getting Hyper-V up and running what other tools could I use w/o taking the server offline. Please advise.

 

[xedgex]

I know this is for VS2005, but would it do what I need?

VSMT:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualserver/bb676674.aspx

 

[biglebowski]

Have you considered ESX4/vSphere (purchase) or esxi4 (free) both products in my view are much better than Hyper-v

"Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

 

[kmcferrin]

Have you considered ESX4/vSphere (purchase) or esxi4 (free) both products in my view are much better than Hyper-v

I love it when people make unqualified statements like that. Better for what? In the case of ESX/vSphere, I'm assuming that you mean better for spending $2500 per CPU to get the functionality that Hyper-V provides for free. Or in the case of ESXi, better for getting the price of Hyper-V with a lower level of functionality.

Don't get me wrong, I sell and support both solutions, but I have yet to see a company that couldn't meet their virtualization requirements for the overwhelming majority of systems with Hyper-V.

Yes, vSphere/ESX has more features, but the majority of that feature gap are required by a small minority of circumstances.

At any rate, the OP clearly has already looked at VMware solutions and ruled it out for this exercise, as indicated by his previous use of VMware Converter.

Back to the point of the post, if you only want to do a "test conversion" to see if this app will work virtualized AND you don't want to go the SCVMM AND the Disk2VHD tool won't work AND you absolutely have to keep the machine up you can try using a disk cloning/imaging tool to make an image of the server, then restore that image to a Hyper-V VM. You will still have to do some cleanup, but it should work without any issues assuming that the tool you select allows you to clone a live machine.

Once you have verified that the server can be virtualized I would still recommend that when you do the final P2V conversion in an offline fashion OR use SCVMM.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

 

[xedgex]

KMC; thanks for you feedback! Disk2VHD looks great but won't run on the windows 2000 operating system. I figured my next step was to image the server while hot, I typically use Acronis. Once I have a .tib (acronis) of the server, will Hyper-V allow me to convert it over to its VHD format? When you say 'clean up' I assume you mean some unnecessary server hardware (video drivers, etc)? Or am I missing something.

Also, the server that I am going to virtualize is an old Domain Controller, does Hyper-V suffer the same clock issue as ESXi does/did? OR am I pretty safe in this case?

Again, thanks for all the helpful feedback.

 

[xedgex]

Besides Acronis, what other software can I use to image the server while hot? I haven't use Ghost in a long time, is it still a viable option? Please remember this needs to be for Win2000, I've tried some options that won't work with win2k.

Thanks!

 

[kmcferrin]

Older versions of Ghost would work, but if you already use Acronis then I'd go that route. There won't be a direct conversion from .TIB to .VHD though. You would have to create a new VM with the specs that you want and then go through the Acronis restore process onto that blank VM.

I'm not sure what specific clock/time issue you are referring to. A lot of my customers have had issues with clock synchronization on ESX because the clock isn't ticking when the VM isn't getting cycles. The fix to that was always to have the ESX hosts synchronize with an NTP server (and internal physical server or external source), then configure VMTools on the guest VMs to sync their clocks with ESX host that they are running on, then edit the registry of the guest VM to disable NTDS time synchronization. Is that what you were referring to?

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

 

[xedgex]

Good info on .tib to .vhd, although I won't be looking forward to it. I wish there was another way to make a VHD of these win2k servers before I actually purchase get a new server for Hyper-V.

As for the clock issue, yes I believe it is exactly what you posted above, thanks! I wish I had a way to contact you via PM...