Category: Update

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 CTP2

The second community technology preview of SP1 for System Center 2012 is out. Actually this is not an ordinary Service Pack, Microsoft is actually adding more and more features to System Center 2012:

  • Virtual Machine Manager
    • Improved Support for Network Virtualization
    • Extend the VMM console with Add-ins
    • Support for Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service, thin provisioning of logical units and discovery of SAS storage
    • Ability to convert VHD to VHDX, use VHDX as base Operating System image
  • Configuration Manager
    • Support for Windows 8
    • Support for Mac OS clients
    • Support for Linux and Unix servers
  • Data Protection Manager
    • Improved backup performance of Hyper-V over CSV 2.0
    • Protection for Hyper-V over remote SMB share
    • Protection for Windows Server 2012 de-duplicated volumes
    • Uninterrupted protection for VM live migration
  • App Controller
    • Service Provider Foundation API to create and operate Virtual Machines
    • Support for Azure VM; migrate VHDs from VMM to Windows Azure, manage from on-premise System Center
  • Operations Manager
    • Support for IIS 8
    • Monitoring of WCF, MVC and .NET NT services
    • Azure SDK support
  • Orchestrator
    • Additional support for Integration Packs, including 3rd party
    • Manage VMM self-service User Roles
    • Manage multiple VMM ‘stamps’ (scale units), aggregate results from multiple stamps
    • Integration with App Controller to consume Hosted clouds
  • Service Manager
    • Apply price sheets to VMM clouds
    • Create chargeback reports
    • Pivot by cost center, VMM clouds, Pricesheets
  • Server App-V
    • Support for applications that create scheduled tasks during packaging
    • Create virtual application packages from applications installed remotely on native server

If you want to try CTP 2 in test environment download it from here.

Linux Integration Services Version v3.3 for Hyper-V

A new version of Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V is released. Here are the changes:

  • To mount an ISO file in the virtual machine, the following command must be run before executing the mount command:
    # insmod /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/ata/ata_piix.ko
    Alternatively, copy the ISO file into the virtual machine and mount it using the -o loop option.
  • Windows 8 Release Preview/Windows Server 2012 and VHDX block size: Using the ext4 file system is recommended for production deployments of Linux on Hyper-V.
  • To ensure all disks connected to the virtual machine are seen, all disks connected to a SCSI controller must start with location “0”.
  • If a disk was hot-removed from the system, the connected disks will not be rescanned until a new disk is added.
  • To use kdump functionality, configure kdump before installing the Linux Integration Services.
  • You might see entries in /var/log/messages similar to the following:
    [ 44.870261] STORVSC: WARNING! cmd 0x12 scsi status 0x2 srb status 0x4
    These messages can be safely ignored.
  • Virtual machines configured to use more than 7 virtual processors should add “numa=off” to the GRUB boot.cfg to work around a known issue in the Linux kernel.
  • Virtual machines configured to use more than 30 GB RAM should add “numa=off” to the GRUB boot.cfg.
  • If the Linux Integration Services are removed from a virtual machine configured to use more than one virtual processor, then the irqbalance service should be disabled to allow successful shutdown of the virtual machine.
  • PS 278: by-id vs by-uuid (will be creating a KB article).
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  • The ISO file also contains a .src.rpm (Source RPM) and debugging RPM. The debugging information should not be used unless instructed by Microsoft Support.
  • This version of Linux Integration Services no longer includes the Hypercall adapter that was present in earlier versions.
  • Verifying the digital signature of the RPM packages under Red Hat Enterprise Linux (by executing the rpm -K command) will return a “KEYS ARE NOT OK” message.
  • Support for this version of Linux Integration Services is provided through the Microsoft TechNet forums at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=193443&clcid=0x409, or by contacting the appropriate support channels for Microsoft or Red Hat.
  • Event log entries: You might see event log entries similar to the following. These messages can be safely ignored:

    • – Networking driver on ‘Virtual Machine’ loaded but has a different version from the server. Server version 3.2 Client version 0.2 (Virtual machine ID DC1CCF5C-0C1A-4825-B32C-9A4F8F85AA9D). The device will work, but this is an unsupported configuration. This means that technical support will not be provided until this problem is resolved. To fix this problem, upgrade the integration services. To upgrade, connect to the virtual machine and select Insert Integration Services Setup Disk from the Action menu.

    – A storage device in ‘Virtual Machine’ loaded but has a different version from the server. Server version 4.2 Client version 2.0 (Virtual machine ID DC1CCF5C-0C1A-4825-B32C-9A4F8F85AA9D). The device will work, but this is an unsupported configuration. This means that technical support will not be provided until this problem is resolved. To fix this problem, upgrade the integration services. To upgrade, connect to the virtual machine and select Insert Integration Services Setup Disk from the Action menu.

 

Download them from here.

KB: Description of the Update Rollup 2 for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Service Pack 1

If you have one of the issues below is time update your VMM 2008 R2 SP1:

Virtual Machine Manager server update (KB2691812)

The VMM service leaks memory when you manage a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V cluster that has HP Cluster Extension Software (CLX) installed.

Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal update (KB2701207)

The Self-Service Portal may not always display all virtual machines if the self-service user has more than 50 virtual machines assigned to them.

Remember before updating to plan your change carefully.

You can download the files from the article.

Get ready for Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012

Even though System Center 2012 is still not released officially Microsoft is starting to provide updates for fixing some issue (what a support Smile). The update includes fixing issues on VMM and App controller.

Read the full KB article from here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2686249/

You can download the update also from the article.