Month: September 2011

Virtualization Career Training with Microsoft Learning

davebermLeave a comment

Guest announcement from my friend and Microsoft Technical Evangelist, Symon Perriman….

Please check out these two exciting virtualization career training opportunities: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=270.

Virtualization Career Training

On Tuesday, October 4th Technical Evangelists Symon Perriman and Rick Claus are hosting an online conference on Virtualization Career Training with Microsoft Learning.  This half day virtual event (8am – 11am PST) will offer a Level
100
to 200 introduction for anyone who wants to learn more about Microsoft Virtualization and how it can help their career.  It is free and public so sign up for this warm-up for the Jump Start event on October 6th.

        Module 1 – Technology: Learn about Microsoft’s virtualization technologies, how they work, and the future roadmap to the Cloud!

        Module 2 – Career: Understand the importance of virtualization and Private Cloud, and how it can make or break an IT Professional’s career!

        Module 3 – Certification: Get prepared for your next steps towards a virtualization career by understanding and preparing for the Microsoft 70-659 Technical Specialist exam, Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization.

Learn More: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=270

Register: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=288

Instructor Bios:  http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=287


Virtualization Exam 70-659 Training

On Thursday October 6th Technical Evangelist Symon Perriman and Technical Instructor Philip Helsel will host an online 8-hour deep dive training event for the Microsoft 70-659 Technical Specialist exam, Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization.  This virtual event runs from 8am to 5pm PST and will include presentations, demos and live Q&A with the attendees.   It costs $99 to attend, but includes a free exam voucher worth $150!  It is public so sign up for some great training to help improve your career here: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=272.  Register early to make the most of a weekly virtualization coaching newsletter!

        Module 1 – Installing and Configuring Host and Parent Settings

        Module 2 – Configuring Child Settings

        Module 3 – Managing and Monitoring Virtual Environments

        Module 4 – Ensuring High Availability and Recoverability

        Module 5 – Performing Migration

        Module 6 – Configuring Remote Desktop (RD) Role Services Infrastructure

Technologies that we will cover include: Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr), System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM), Windows Server Backup, Failover Clustering, Remote Desktop Services, Active Directory, Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit (MAP), Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (VMST), Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) & more!
Learn More: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=274

Register: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=272

Exam Information: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exam.aspx?ID=70-659

Thanks!
Symon Perriman
Technical Evangelist
Private Cloud Technologies
Microsoft

See videos on TechNet

Follow announcements @SymonPerriman

Virtualization Career Training with Microsoft Learning

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview will not support the Hyper-V Role while running on VMware Workstation…at least on my laptop

daveberm6 Comments

Unless someone knows a trick that I don’t, it doesn’t appear as if I will be able to test out some of the Hyper-V clustering features unless I identify some actual hardware for Windows 8. I had hoped that just maybe VMware Workstation 8 would be able to fool Windows 8 into thinking it was actually a physical server, but so far no dice. This article appears to indicate it will work if you have an Intel Nehalem or Intel Core i7 processor, but my two year old Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 doesn’t seem to be able to do the trick.

I added the hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = “FALSE” to the config file and I changed the CPU settings to use Intel VT –x/EPT as shown below.

But this is what I get when I try to enable the Hyper-V role.

Maybe it is time to invest in a new laptop?

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview will not support the Hyper-V Role while running on VMware Workstation…at least on my laptop

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Running on VMware Workstation 8

daveberm7 Comments

I’m pretty excited that I was able to get Windows Server 8 up and running on my laptop today. I wasn’t really looking forward to having to boot from VHD just to check out some of the features. I really wanted to run multiple copies of Windows Server 8 at the same time so I could check out some of the cool new clustering features, so once again, booting my laptop from a VHD really wasn’t going to give me the experience I needed. I do have some servers running Hyper-V that would have been fine, but I really like having something quick and easy on my laptop that I can fire up anywhere at any time. VMware Workstation has been my go to virtualization platform for my Windows 7 laptop for quite some time due to the lack of a real client based hypervisor alternative from Microsoft.

When I downloaded the Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Edition from MSDN earlier this week I was assuming I was getting an installation ISO. What I discovered was that I actually downloaded a pre-installed VHD. I haven’t gone back yet to check to see if there is an ISO, but from reading the blogs it appears there is an ISO available somewhere, so I probably just grabbed the wrong file. Without a Hyper-V player available for Windows 7 (well, maybe VirtualBox?), I decided to get really crazy and try out the free Starwind V2V Converter and turn it into a bootable VMDK file so I could launch it in VMware Workstation.

I found the Starwind V2V Converter to be very straight forward and soon enough I had a VMDK file ready to launch in VMware Workstation. What I soon found out was that you cannot run Windows Server 8 Developer Preview in VMware Workstation 7; you need the newly released Workstation 8. In VMware Workstation you get a message that begins as follows…

*** VMware Workstation internal monitor error ***
vcpu-0:NOT_IMPLEMENTED vmcore/vmm/intr/apic.c:1903

So, I went ahead and upgrade to Workstation 8 and tried to turn on the converted VMDK file. At first I got a message about hardware being changed and the VM would not start, but after I adjusted the processor so that it match the processor that I have (1 CPU, 2 Core) the VM launched! One other setting you need to make sure to set right is the operating system version. Since Windows 8 is not an option yet, choose Windows 7. Windows 7 x64 doesn’t work – make sure you choose Windows 7!

I tried to install the VMware tools, but that didn’t work out so well for me as I simply got a black screen with a pointer after the tools were installed. Until they come out with VMware tools specific for Windows 8 I would avoid installing the VMware tools for the time being.

Here is my first view of Windows 8. I’ll be writing more about the HA features and Hyper-V next week once I start poking around J

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Running on VMware Workstation 8