New Hyper V Home Server Build

I have a business venture I am involved in now that requires some more horsepower at home.  I had a Hyper V server (Core 2 Duo E6600 with 8 gigs of Ram) that was sufficient.  Now I need to run multiple database servers so I decided to invest in a new server (tax deductible of course) that wasn’t equivalent in price to another mortgage payment.   I decided to go with a higher end desktop class system that can server as a virtual server.

New Server Specs

AMD Phenom II  1055 6 Core Processor (2.8 Gig)

Asus Motherboard

16 gigs of matched DDR 3 Ram

Hard Drives (Raid 1)

• 2 x 250 – C: (System)
• 2 x 320 – D: (VM OS Host Drives)
• 2 x 1500 – E: (VM Data Drives)

The Host Operating System is Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper V.

I setup the VM’s on dynamic expanding drives on the D: array.  Each VM gets a Fixed Size Data Drive setup on the E: array.  This proves more than sufficient since each of the VM’s are normally being used sequentially as they are database servers.

The setup is not complete – but when finished will have the following

Hyper V Server 1 (Existing Server)

• Domain / DNS Controler
• TFS Source Control Server / TeamCity Continuous Integration Server
• Web Server (internal facing only) – OnTime project management software
• Web Server (external facing)

Hyper V Server 2 (New Server)

• SQL 2008 R2 (2 GB)
• SQL 2008 (2 GB)
• SQL 2005 SP3 (1 GB)
• Oracle 11g2 (2 GB)
• Oracle 11g1 (2 GB)
• Oracle 10g2 (1.5 GB)
• MySQL 5.5 (1.5 GB)
• XAMP Server with MySql  5.1 (1.5 GB)
• Secondary Domain Controller (512 MB)

I use Hyper-V Monitor to watch the status of the machines

Download here

I use Hyper V Management Console to manage / administer the servers.

With this setup I can now work effectively on my main desktop (Quad Core – 8 Gigs of Ram) or my laptop (Dell with an I Core) and have a fully virtualized network at my disposal.

Backups

For backups I have jobs / agents / batch files that copy critical components (configuration files, database backups, etc) to my Windows Home Server.  I use I-Drive  to monitor these folders for changes and upload any changes immediately to on-line storage.  With this plus having my code spread across multiple machines I am in no danger of losing more than a single day’s worth of work since I check in code ritually at least twice a day.

Hyper V Virtual Machine will not start after moving VHD

I had an issue today where my Hyper V virtual machines would not start after moving the virtual hard disks to another physical drive.  The error received was similar to below.

Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID {<MACHINE GUID GOES HERE>}): Failed to Power on with Error ‘General access denied error’

IDE/ATAPI Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment ‘D:\Virtual Server\Virtual Machines\server\system.vhd’. Error: ‘General access denied error’

Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment ‘D:\Virtual Server\Virtual Machines\server\system.vhd’. Error: ‘General access denied error’

I knew the issues was account permissions but wasn’t sure how.  After some research and finding the post linked below it appears the virtual machine itself (GUID) is given permission directly to the folder.

Thanks to this post for helping my find the solution.

After applying the fix above it worked as expected.

Hyper V – Windows Home Server Update

Well the setup I have with Windows Home Server in a Hyper VM is going better than I could have imagined (please knock on wood as you read this).  It has currently been running for almost a month with no glitches.

I have installed ORB and Verizon Media Manager on the Home Server so I can stream items to my home DVR’s and my Mobile Phone.  The quality has been great with it.  Between this and the addition of Verizon FIOS Internet (25/15) and TV (HD is awesome) my media quality has improved greatly. 

Slowness with Windows 2008 R2 and Virtual Machines

In my last post I walked through my network setup.  I added an additional VM to the host machine for a web server (Windows 2008 x86 SP2).  After adding this I was getting extremely slow download speeds ( 1- 10 KB per second) and I have FIOS.  I was even getting the problem from a machine inside the network.  After a while of searching I found the solution.

 

Disable TCP Offload on both the HOST and the Virtual Machine.

1. Open the NIC Card Properties
2. Click on configure
3. Under the advanced tab – turn of CheckSum Offloading

Problem Resolved.

Setting up Windows Home Server in a VM on Win 2008 R2

I have been running Windows 2008 and Hyper V since the day it was released.  It has been very solid and worked well for my needs.  I have now decided to use Windows Home Server for the media and family capabilities it provides. I had some decisions to make and hardware played a factor.  The server I am running is a custom built PC with plenty of power.  It used to run 5 virtual machines (Servers) so I am looking forward to the speed it should provide.

Server Specifications (Hardware)

• Antec P180 Case with 5 120 MM fans (yes it’s quiet too)
• ThermalTake 600W PS
• Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 Processor
• Asus P5B Premium Motherboard with Dual OnBoard Gigabit NIC’s
• 8 Gigs of DDR 800 RAM
• 2 x 320 gig SATA 2 Seagate Hard Drives (Raid 1 for System Partition)
• 4 x 640 gig SATA2 WD Hard Drives
• 2 x 500 gig USB Seagate External Hard Drives

Whew – that’s almost 4 TB of storage space.  This should be sufficient.

Options

I have narrowed down my choices to the following two options.

1. Install Windows Home Server directly on the Hardware
2. Install Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 with Hyper V on the hardware and run Windows Home Server in a VM

I decided to go with option 2 for since WHS is 32 bit only and has a 4 gig Memory limit, is based on Windows 2003, and may limit the future expansion of the server with other virtualization needs.

Setup

Below are the main steps I took to implement the above mentioned scenario.

Install Base Operating System

1. Installed Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition
2. Setup all of the network and machine name information (no domain) – turn off TCP Offload
3. Updated the drivers on the system to the latest
4. Updated the system to the latest
5. Setup Hard Drive Configuration
   1. System Drive (80 gig partition on the 320 Raid Set)
   2. VM Host Drive(220 gig partition on the 320 Raid Set)
   3. 4 600 gig partitions for each of the 4 data drives (labeled Storage 1, 2, 3, 4)
   4. The 2 USB drives will be used as backup drives only
6. Added the Hyper V Role to the server (dedicated one of the NIC’s to Hyper V)
7. Made other personalized configurations

Drive Letter	Size	Name	Usage
c	80	System	Host OS Drive
d	220	VM	VM OS Location
e	600	Storage1	VHD Storage Location
f	600	Storage2	VHD Storage Location
g	600	Storage3	VHD Storage Location
h	600	Storage4	VHD Storage Location
m	500	USBStorage1	External USB Storage (backup)
n	500	USBStorage2	External USB Storage (backup)

Note:  Have to say I am pleased to see R2 has a newer interface similar to Win 7.  Pretty nice.

Additional:  Anti Virus for Windows 2008 R2 was hard to find.  I didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for a server grade license.  I use NOD32 4.0 Personal edition so that didn’t work either.  After a while of searching I found ClamWin.  This is an open source AV project that does work with 2008 R2.  The link is here: ClamWin Free Antivirus

Setup Windows Home Server in a Virtual Machine

Note: During the initial setup the UI response was slow in the VM.

1. Launch the Hyper V Management Console
2. Create a new virtual machine with the following configuration
   1. 3072 MB ram
   2. 100 Gig VHD on the D: drive
   3. Virtual Processors – 2
   4. Automatic Start Action – Always start this virtual machine automatically
   5. Automatic Stop Action – Save the virtual machine state (this should provide for quicker restarts, start ups)
3. Install WHS in the VM (from ISO if possible – faster install) – I have a folder on the D drive with OS images in it for any virtual machine I am using.  This makes for easier maintenance down the road.
4. After about an hour and a quite a few reboots we finally have a desktop
5. Turn off TCP Offload for the VM network adapter
6. Update time.  It appears there are close to a 100 updates (including the 3.5 sp1 framework).
7. Install Antivirus.  Going with ClamWin here too.
8. Shutdown the VM and added (2) 590 gig virtual drives and (2) 500 gig virtual drives to the Virtual Machine (Storing 1 on each of the physical drives listed above (e-h).
9. Started VM up and added the 4 drives to the server storage using the Windows Home Server Console
10. Once this was completed I was showing 2.2 TB free storage space
11. I setup some user accounts and the shared folders (setting the duplication option for critical files
12. I copied the original data from external drives back to the server
13. I then installed the connector server on my home pc’s.

I have the 2 500 gig USB externals.  I am not sure how I am going to implement those at the time of this writing.  They will be used for backup – just not sure if it will be connected directly to the VM or to the host system.

** Update

For the external USB drives I added them to the host OS (500 gigs each) and created a 300 gig virtual drive on each one.  I set these up in Windows Home Server as drives to backup WHS to.  Now I have a backup that backups up the main shares from the main disk array to the USB drives.

I also installed IDrive online backup in WHS via the desktop and have it backing up the main shares (accessible directly through windows explorer) that I need offsite.

All in all I am pleased with the quality and thought put into this product (WHS).  It seems very user friendly and most of all – functional.

How to install Ubuntu Server 9.04 on Windows 2008 and Hyper-V

One of the drawbacks for Hyper V versus VMWare was the lack of support for non-MS operating systems.  Through some searching and testing I was able to get Ubuntu installed and functioning stable on Hyper V.  Below are the steps I took to complete this task.

1. Create Virtual Machine as you normally would for a windows Operating System
2. Once the virtual machine starts – power it off
3. Remove the existing Network Adapter
4. Add a legacy network adapter
5. Start Machine again
6. Walk through the normal installation of setting up Ubuntu
7. Install Webmin to save time (no UI in server version) – thanks to Andrei Daneasa’s blog for quick help on this one.

http://www.webxpert.ro/andrei/2009/05/30/install-webmin-on-ubuntu-server-904-jaunty-jackalope/