Category: Virtualization

Free “Enterprise Virtual Machine Discovery Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 R2 and 2012 (SCOM)” by Infront

Infront Consulting is providing free MP to the community. This MP is very useful if you have virtualization infrastructure with Hyper-V, VmWare or Citrix XenServer. Read the full capabilities of the MP and find download link on this article.

System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager Component Add-ons and Extensions

Another set of add-ons and extensions this time for Virtual Machine Manager 2012. Here is what this download set consists of:

VM Recovery Tool
The stand-alone Virtual Machine Recovery Tool works with System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) to temporarily remove a host, cluster, virtual machine, or service from VMM when that object is in a failed or persistent warning state due to environmental conditions, third-party applications, or other causes. After resetting the state of the object, once VMM refreshes, the object will appear as healthy in VMM. This tool does not repair a damaged or incorrectly created virtual machine or corrupt .vhd file. It deals with state information stored in the VMM database. For additional details about the tool, see Using the Virtual Machine Recovery Tool for System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).

Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA)
The VMMCA is your first line of defense in troubleshooting an issue in the System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager environment. VMMCA is a diagnostic tool you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that are either running VMM server roles or are acting as virtual machine hosts. The VMMCA scans the hardware and software configurations of the computers you specify, evaluates them against a set of predefined rules, and then provides you with error messages and warnings for any configurations that are not optimal.

Microsoft Product Support Reporting Tool (MPSRPT)
You can use the Virtual Machine Manager MPS Reporting Tool for System Center 2012 to gather detailed system status and configuration information from the VMM management server as well as all managed virtual machine hosts and VMM server roles.
The tool offers the ability to select the particular scenarios for which system configuration data will be gathered.
The Virtual Machine Manager MPS Reporting Tool for System Center 2012 gathers the following diagnostic data for the VMM management server, the virtual machine hosts and library servers that the VMM management server manages, and physical to virtual conversion (P2V) source computers:

  • Virtual Machine Manager traces
  • Virtual Machine Manager database
  • Windows event logs and virtual server event logs
  • IP address
  • Virtual Machine Manager setup logs
  • SQL Server setup logs
  • Registry information
  • Open ports information
  • System Information (msinfo)

OVF Import/Export
The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is a packaging standard from Distributed Management Task Force, Inc., for portability and deployment of virtual appliances. The OVF Import/Export tool consists of cmdlets that enable VMM users to import and export single virtual machines that are packaged in an OVF 1.1 complaint format. You can use the OVF Import/Export tool to import a virtual machine from other virtualization platforms (currently VMware vCenter and Citrix XenServer) or to export a virtual machine from VMM for use on another platform.

Download them all from one link 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.

Tracking Resource Utilization Across Multiple Private Clouds with System Center 2012

Second post by Pete Zerger about VMM reports in SCOM. In this one is described how  Virtual Machine Allocation report can be used. Read here.

Chargeback Reporting for MS Private Cloud with Operations Manager 2012

Learn how you can take benefit of Chargeback report in SCOM from VMM 2012 MP in this article by Pete Zerger.