leedesmond’s blog

A popular question (answered) - here is a non exhaustive list of knowledge base articles that describes the official support position of Microsoft with regards to running enterprise applications on Microsoft’s own virtualization platform (namely Virtual Server 2005) and other third party offerings. Bottom line is that you must be confident and feel comfortable that your IT partner and/or virtualization vendor of choice (Microsoft, VMware, Virtuozzo, Xen, etc.) are able to support you all the way in a production environment.

Microsoft Virtual Server support policy
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897613

Windows Server System software not supported within a Microsoft Virtual Server environment
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897614/

Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615

Support policy for Microsoft programs that are running in a third-party application or software redirection program or in a third-party application or software virtualization environment
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924287

Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environments
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794

Support policy for Exchange Server 2003 running on hardware virtualization software
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320220

Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 do not support Virtual PC and Virtual Server for production environments
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909840

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The paths of the virtual hard disk (.vhd) and undo file (.vud) are always saved in the same virtual machine configuration file (.vmc) regardless of whether you are using Virtual Server 2005 R2 or Virtual PC 2004 SP1.

If an IDE bus adapter is used, the setting is located under ide_controller id=”n” and this is supported on the two platforms. You will find it under scsi_controller id=”n” if the .vhd is attached to the SCSI bus adapter (Virtual Server 2005 R2 only).

I demonstrated this at my lightning demo session in Tech.Ed IT Forum 2006 recently. You should remove the .vhd attached to the adapter type that is no longer used if the virtual machine has been ported to Virtual PC and back into Virtual Server. This is because the .vhd path settings are saved under both adapters types and will cause a conflict when the virtual machine starts.

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The source and target ESX servers participating in VMotion must have compatible CPU types. This means that the processor manufacturers, families, stepping level as well as the optional SSE3 instruction set* must match. This guideline applies to both ESX Server 2.5.x and 3.0.x, and VirtualCenter 1.3.x or 2.0 is needed to run VMotion.

This is a very common question heard being raised again in a recent “VI3 What’s New” seminar in Zürich. The last was during a Windows Virtualization Core breakout session at Tech.Ed IT Forum 2006 in Barcelona.

* Group A (Intel)/C (AMD) = without SSE3, Group B (Intel)/D (AMD)= with SSE3

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A recent article entitled Virtualization dangers and how to avoid them discussed the risks of virtualization broken down into 4 main categories: Server failure, Over-provisioning, Operational process and Service levels. The authors singled out a few main areas covering Configuration Management, Capacity Management and Skills, and how the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) fits into the picture to help manage such risks in order to work towards a solid foundation for successful virtualization strategy.

Worth reading from a different, non-technical and business perspective.

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I am very pleased to announce that installation and initial setup of my new blog based on the excellent WordPress engine is successfully complete today Sat 25 Nov 2006. I am still working on trying to port the old bblog database over as lots of great stuff still reside there. It will remain accessible at the old blog address if you need to check out any of the archives.

Several IT Forum 2006 delegates and attendees at my lightning demo asked me for recommendations on blog software. As you can see, I have tested and settled down on WordPress as it is very flexible, easy to use, powerful, extensible with plug-ins, up-to-date, open-source (free) and comes with lots of nice templates. It runs on various flavours of Unix as well as Windows, which is the case for my hosted ISP as long as PHP version 4.1 or higher and MySQL version 3.23.23 or higher are supported. Apache or LiteSpeed web servers are recommended but IIS works without problems. You do need some means, by remote console or GUI, to modify and execute some of the PHP scripts and configure MySQL to get it running though.

As always, you are welcome to submit comments online to let me know what you think about this new site. Pardon for any mess while renovation continues. Thank you for your continual support and feedback!

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