Category: Virtual Server

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Microsoft’s Keith Combs Releases "VMRCPlus" VM Client Display & Management Tool

 

VMRCPlus: Matthijs ten Seldam, a Principal Microsoft Consultant in the Netherlands has developed a VM client display and management tool.

VMRCPlus Features:

 

• Direct control of local or remote instances of the Virtual Server service. IIS and IE browser are no longer required!
• Tabbed interface to quickly jump between Virtual Server hosts and guest VMRC sessions.
• Reusable saved states: this feature allows users to preserve a particular saved state and return to that state at any time.
• Multiple guest selection supported for startup/shutdown/save/display.
• Browse button navigation for media, hard disk images, ISO images, .VMC files, etc.
• Drag and Drop support for .VMC files, ISOs images, VHD and VFD files.
• Resizable desktop support for guests running Virtual Machine Additions (maximize VMRC window supported).
• Limited cut and paste of text from host to guest (only).
• A built-in utility to take JPG screenshots of running guests. Useful when filing bugs.
• Built-in error notification with Virtual Server eventlog viewer.
• A Virtual Networks Manager and Virtual Disks Manager that cover all features.
• Keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl-S to save state a guest).
• Create multiple guests at once.
• Create guest from parent (or multiple guests)!
• Automatic reconnect to a designated Virtual Server host.
• Toolbars in both Guest and Console Manager for quick access.
• Unlimited number of guests.
• Maximum of 32 Virtual Server hosts.
• Sorting on columns of guests so you can sort based on status and multi-select.
• Automatic detection of Virtual Machine Additions and notification.
• Detection of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

 

–> Download VMRCPlus x86 Version

 

–> Download VMRCPlus x64 Version

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HOWTO: Convert from VMWare (.VMDK) to Microsoft’s Virtualization format (.VHD)

There’s an interesting set of tools available at http://vmtoolkit.com/.  Here’s a brief description of each of them:

1. VMDK to VHD Converter
   This is a tool that will convert the virtualized hard drives from VMWare’s format (VMDK) to Microsoft’s Virtual disk format (VHD) so that you can run virtual machines originally created for use with VMWare to run in Virtual Server 2005/R2, Virtual PC 2004/2007, and assumedly Microsoft Virtualization Hypervisor (the virtualization layer to be used with Windows Server Longhorn), which has been touted as using the exact same format as existing Microsoft virtual machine technology.

   One VERY interesting use of this tool has been to leverage VMWare’s Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) tools to virtualize existing servers, then convert the virtualized hard disks to .VHD format for use in Virtual Server R2.  Why would you want to do that?  Well, simply because there’s no cost associated with using Virtual Server:  Virtual Server has no licensing fees associated with it, unlike VMWare ESX, which makes it the perfect environment for infrastructure testing labs, software development environments, and web application farms.

   And of course, it positions an organization very well to take advantage of the highly performant Microsoft Hypervisor, coming with Windows Server Longhorn.

   DOWNLOAD:  http://vmtoolkit.com/blogs/announcements/archive/2006/11/20/vmdk-to-vhd-converter-available.aspx
   (Requires .NET Framework 2.0)

2. VHD Resizer
   This tool will resize your virtual machine hard drive files (VHD) and also allow you to convert them between Fixed and Dynamic file types by essentially doing a sector-by-sector copy from one type to another. 

   They originally called the tool the "VHD Expander" but soon discovered that they could actually shrink the size of the .VHD file if the partition size of your .VHD didn’t actually take up the entire disk, so they renamed it to the "VHD Resizer" to fit it’s ability to both expand and contract the size of the file.

   DOWNLOAD:  http://vmtoolkit.com/blogs/announcements/archive/2007/02/28/vhd-expander-is-now-vhd-resizer.aspx
   (Requires .NET Framework 2.0)

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INFO: Tips & Tricks on using Virtual PC 2007

Are you a user of Virtual PC 2007?  There’s a dozen reasons why Virtual PC 2007 should be the virtual machine environment you use, not the least of which being that Virtual PC’s .VHD virtual machine format is rapidly becoming the standard for virtual machines in both the Windows ecosystem as well as the Linux/Xen ecosystem.  Also, it should be noted that Virtual PC 2007 is not only free to use and univerally available for anyone to use but all Microsoft training is done in .VHDs making it a great tool to learn with.

So if you’re using Virtual PC, here are a set of tricks I’ve learned along the way. 

• SHUTDOWN AFTER TURNING ON HARDWARE VIRTUALIZATION
  Sometimes you have to completely shutdown your computer for CPU/hardware-based virtualization acceleration to take affect; i.e. rebooting is not enough.
• SLEEP MAY KILL HARDWARE VIRTUALIZATION
  Sometimes sleep will disable hardware virtualization on PCs, so be careful if you sleep your machine.  You may find your Virtual PC machines grinding at a slower pace.
• SOUND ADAPTERS FOR WINDOWS VISTA
  Getting sound in Windows Vista virtual machines require that a special synthetic sound card be in place when setting up the virtual machine.  This can only be done in the VM wizard by selecting "Windows Vista" as the OS type to be used.  Every other OS type will use a synthetic sound blaster 16 ISA adapter which will NOT work with Windows Vista, seeing that Windows Vista no longer supports ISA adapters.
• VIRTUAL SERVER SCSI WILL SWITCH TO IDE ON VIRTUAL PC
  Virtual Server 2005 .VHDs that are using synthetic SCSI adapters to improve performance, if moved to Virtual PC 2007 environments, will shift over silently to using IDE adapters slowing down performance.  Virtual PC does not support SCSI.
• FULLY UTILIZE CPU FOR VIRTUAL PC ALL THE TIME
  Some laptops will shuttle down performance of their CPUs and putting them into low power modes resulting in environments not friendly (nor performant) for Virtual PC.  Here are instructions on how to maximize CPU utilization to ensure that the laptop doesn’t go into low power mode.
  – Stop running Virtual PC
  – Open notepad
  – Open %appdata%\Microsoft\Virtual PC\options.xml
  – Locate the section of the file and add this key:
    true
  – Save the file and exit notepad
  – Start Virtual PC
  Virtual PC will fully utilize the processor in order to stop the laptop from entering a low power state.  The upside of this is that you should see no performance issues.  The downside is that it will drain your battery power much faster than normal.  As such – you should only use this option after you have tried all other possible solutions.
• FINISH BACKGROUND PROCESSES BEFORE WORKING ON HOST OR GUESTS
  By running this script on both the Virtual PC host & the guests then letting them settle, you will find that your machine’s UI’s will run much smoother.
          C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe AdvAPI32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
  All that this command does is have the background services complete at a high priority instead of splitting time with the UI.  This allows them to "finish loading" quicker.

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HOWTO: Compress Virtual PC virtual hard disks (.VHDs)

If you use Virtual PC 2007 you know that the virtual hard drive files (.VHDs) can grow to extremely large sizes.  Part of this is because the .VHD files dynamically expand when software is installed in the .VHD however after the installation, the original setup files are deleted and no longer take up space in the .VHD, however the .VHD does not correspondingly dynamically shrink in size.  Once a .VHD file expands – it doesn’t shrink. 

EXAMPLE:  If the installation of a product like Microsoft Office uses 500MB to expand it’s setup files and consumes 340MB in the \Program Files directory the .VHD file expands accordingly.  When the 500MB of setup files are subsequently deleted after the installation has completed, the .VHD file doesn’t shrink accordingly.

Normally, people don’t care about file size bloat that much however when you’re using Virtual PC .VHDs you may be talking about 3-4GB of wasted storage or more.  So the question is, "How do I shrink the size of a .VHD when I know it’s inflated unnecessarily?" 

Here’s how to do it:

1. Clear out the machine of filler
   I recommend installing CCLEANER.EXE from http://ccleaner.com which deletes all temporary files from the Windows installation, Internet Explorer cache, the Recycle Bin, and any number of other "garbage"/"temp" directories in the VPC.
2. Disable hibernation
   If you have hiberation turned on, there’s a colossal sized file called hiberfil.sys in the root of the .VHD.  Go into Power options in Control Panel and disable hiberation to get rid of this file.
3. Capture the Virtual Disk Precompactor .ISO
   In the menu of Virtual PC windows for your machine, capture the Virtual Disk Precompactor .ISO file which is located at:
   c:\program files\microsoft virtual pc\virtual machine additions\virtual disk precompactor.iso
4. Run the Precompactor
   Go to My Computer and double click on the mounted disk.  It will begin to run the precompactor software which will essentially zero out all the free space on the disk, making it available for elimination from the file by the Virtual Disk Wizard, which we will use later.  This process may take upwards of 15 minutes
5. Shutdown the Virtual PC
6. Run the VPC2007 Virtual Disk Wizard
   From the Virtual PC console, click File-Virtual Disk Wizard and "Edit an existing virtual disk".  It will ask you to identify the .VHD file to reduce in size – select it.
7. Compact the .VHD
   Select the "Compact" option then select "Replacing the original file".  This will take a few minutes.

When this process finishes, you should have a .VHD file with a much smaller size.