We came across an issue recently where we had an issue with our Hyper-V 2008 R2 server. The BOOTMGR file went missing on a reboot , all this was repaired by running Bootrec commands.

After the above the Hyper-V server would boot up however none of the VM’s would start and came up with the following error

“The virtual machine could not be started because the hypervisor is not running. The following actions may help you resolve the problem:

1) Verify that the processor of the physical computer has a supported version of hardware-assisted virtualization.

2) Verify that hardware-assisted virtualization and hardware-assisted data execution protection are enabled in the BIOS of the physical computer. (If you edit the BIOS to enable either setting, you must turn off the power to the physical computer and then turn it back on. Resetting the physical computer is not sufficient.)

3) If you have made changes to the Boot Configuration Data store, review these changes to ensure that the hypervisor is configured to launch automatically.”

The issue was that when we recreated the BCD store in did not set the Hypervisor to launch automatically.

We resolved this by running the following command “bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto” after a reboot all worked fine

I am currently studying toward gaining the MCITP Virtualization Administrator certification of which the 70-699 is a required exam. Below are a couple of links that will give you some good preparation material for studying toward the certification:

Administration Video Series:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=1f0d3e54-25d1-4ec1-a844-3b508bd63ffa

Free eBook: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions (Second Edition) in PDF format:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/4/5B46A838-67BB-4F7C-92CB-EABCA285DFDD/693821ebook.pdf

Hands on testing is always the best way of learning but this will at least give you a good start point if you are new to the technology. Also worth remembering that virtualisation is a big part of cloud solutions.

Paul

Just to let you know the update KB2230887 that is required to allow dynamic memory to work on Virtual machines on the below operating system has been removed from the MS download site.

• Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition Server Core SP2
• Windows Web Server 2008 SP2
• Windows Web Server 2008 Server Core SP2

If you attempt to download the Hotfix on the MS website you will get the below error “The KB article has no public hotfixes. Please contact support if you need immediate assistance.
http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support”

Microsoft will re-releasing the update however they have gave no indication on when this will be.

Just a few simple steps on how you can export a ‘Virtual Machine’ via Hyper-V Manager. Exporting A VM is pretty useful way of creating an exact copy of a VM, this can be handy if you want to make a copy of the VM and put it in a test lab and can even come in handy is DR Scenario.

1. Open Hyper-V Manager
2. Find VM and Right Click and Press Export
3. Select Location and Hit Ok
4. The Status of your VM should then turn to exporting

Once VM export has complete you can then re-import VM wherever you wish

The above error message can be seen when trying to connect to a virtual machine from the Hyper-V console on the Hyper-V host.

The reason for this is that the self signed Hyper-V machine management service certificate has expired, this is the certificate issued to itself for authentication when Hyper-V role is installed on the server.

The workaround for this is to: Shut down all VM’s, restart the Hyper-V VMMS, start the virtual machines again. This renews the self signed certificate for another year. However a better resolution is to install the following handy-dandy, super duper Microsoft KB! By doing so this will in the future auto-magically update the Hyper-V VMMS certificate………

KB967902

Hope this helps!

So you’ve created your VM and know you would like to create a template so this VM can be distributed onto multiple VM’s.

SCVMM will take care of this for you, so there is no need to sysprep your machine as the template procedure does all this for you.

Please Beware that creating a template destroys the VM !!!

Creating a Template

1, Press the Virtual Machine Tab and go to your VM.

2, Turn off the VM and then single click the VM

3, Now the New Template option on the right hand window should be accessible, so press this.

4, If you then complete the wizard and hit create this should then start creating your template.

5, The Job pane will then pop up on your screen and start completing the steps that are shown below, once this has completed you’ve successfully made a template.

You may have an issue where you are struggling to remove a hyper-v host for a reason such as you, re-installed the OS on the machine and not removing the SCVMM agent first and when you go to remove it from the SCVMM console it just fails as it can’t communicate with the hyper-v host.

To Forcefully remove the Hyper-V Host you first have to open SCVMM’s Powershell.

Then run the following command “Get-vmhost changetoservername | remove-vmhost –force” .

The Hyper-V host will now be gone.

Daniel Davies

You may see this issue if you are running Hyper-V hosts, this issue occurs when you have set your VHD to dynamically expand, and over time the VHD has actually increased to the size of the drive it is held on. When this occurs the offending machine will be stuck in a paused-critical state.

A way to fix this issue is to compact the VHD and in my experience it tends to get back quite a lot of space. Compacting the VHD basically claws back any space that isn’t being used by the VHD. To do this there must actually be Free Space on the drives inside the VM otherwise this will have no effect.

To look at a way of clearing up some space to compact the VHD as temporary measure is to have a look at my previous article”http://support.risualblogs.com/blog/2009/10/14/running-low-on-disk-space-on-a-drive/”.

Fixing this should probably be only a temporary measure as you are having this issue because the drive that hold’s the effected VM’s VHD is stored on does not have to space. And the real solution is to move the vhd to a bigger disk. That said if you must get the VM back up quick read on!!

To Compact a VHD 

First of all if we connect to the Virtual server host, that holds problematic VM.

Now we  need to shut down the effected VM, as the VM is in a paused-critical it can be quite a pain, you can keep hitting resume on the VM and try shutting it down through the Guest OS. Or You can just right click and turn off the machine, which is basically the same as just pulling the plug out of the server.

Now we need to compact the VHD , so if we right click the VM again and choose settings

Now you will see all the VM’s Settings, but what we are after is the VHD which is causing the issue, so if you look at the left hand side of the Settings windows and you’ll be able to see the VHD. So if you Just single click on the VHD in question.

Now you will see and Edit option, if you just press that and then a “edit virtual hard disk wizard” will appear and if we simply choose the compact option and follow the wizard through and then we are done.

The Process should take 10-15 minutes and then you can just turn the VM back on and it will run successfully.

Daniel Davies