The Remote Server Administration Tools have just been updated for Windows 7 SP1.  You can grab them from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d

This means that now you can manage dynamic memory and RemoteFX from the comfort of your desktop computer.

Cheers,
Ben

I know I am late getting this up – but I have been quite busy lately

Earlier this month we released MED-V 2.0 and it is now available for everyone who has access to MDOP.

There are a large number of changes in the MED-V 2.0 release.  The first obvious one is that it is build to utilize Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 (as opposed to previous versions of MED-V that used Virtual PC 2007).  But – arguably – bigger than that is some of the architectural changes in the 2.0 release.  MED-V 1.0 used a central dedicated “MED-V Server” for managing your environment, but this is gone in the 2.0 release.

This has some advantages and some disadvantages.  The biggest draw back with this change is that there are some cool features that are no longer supported (like the “trim transfer” feature), but this trade off is worth it for the benefits.  The first obvious one is that you do not need to maintain “yet another server”.  But beyond that it means that you can distribute and managed the MED-V packages using any standard processes that are used in your environment.  It also makes it a lot easier to get up and running with MED-V.

If you want to check this out – there is a very useful trial guide here: MED-V 2.0 Trial Guide

As well as some walk-through videos here: MED-V 2.0 video series

Finally – one of our MVPs, Leandro Carvalho, has posted a set of very useful wiki posts on using MED-V 2.0 to the TechNet Wiki: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=MED-V+2.0

Cheers,
Ben

I missed this one when it came out – but on Valentines day we released an updated installer for Windows Virtual PC.  It can be downloaded here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2b6d5c18-1441-47ea-8309-2545b08e11dd

If you already have Windows Virtual PC installed – you do not need to update.  But if you are installing Windows Virtual PC today – this is the best package to use, for two reasons:

• This installer has been updated to work correctly with Windows 7 Service Pack 1
• This installer includes the update for running Windows Virtual PC on systems without hardware virtualization support – so if you are running on one of these systems you only need to run one installer instead of two.

Cheers,
Ben

I missed this one when it came out – but on Valentines day we released an updated installer for Windows Virtual PC.  It can be downloaded here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2b6d5c18-1441-47ea-8309-2545b08e11dd

If you already have Windows Virtual PC installed – you do not need to update.  But if you are installing Windows Virtual PC today – this is the best package to use, for two reasons:

• This installer has been updated to work correctly with Windows 7 Service Pack 1
• This installer includes the update for running Windows Virtual PC on systems without hardware virtualization support – so if you are running on one of these systems you only need to run one installer instead of two.

Cheers,
Ben

A couple of people have asked me how to automate attaching a USB device to a Windows Virtual PC virtual machine, so here is a PowerShell script to do just that:

# Connect to Virtual PC

$vpc = new-object -com VirtualPC.Application

# Get VM name

$vmName = Read-host "Specify the name of the virtual machine that you want to use"

# List available USB devices

write-host "The following USB devices are available:"

$vpc.USBDeviceCollection | select -ExpandProperty DeviceString

# Get the USB device name

$usb = Read-host "Enter the name of the USB device that you want to connect to the virtual machine"

# Get the VM object

$vm = $vpc.findVirtualMachine($vmName)

# Get the USB object

$usbDevice = $vpc.USBDeviceCollection | ? {$_.DeviceString -eq $usb} | select -first 1

# Attach the device - this will fail if the VM is not running

$vm.AttachUSBDevice($usbDevice)

Note that I am using the “DeviceString” of the USB device – which is not guaranteed to be unique.  So what I do is just grab the first one that matches.

Cheers,
Ben

I have received a number of questions about how to go about setting up remote management of our free Hyper-V server (not the one that is part of Windows).  So I thought I would sit down and write up a set of blog posts to talk about how to do this.  Today I am going to talk about how to remotely manage a Hyper-V server from a Windows 7 desktop when in a workgroup environment.

I am going to assume that you have already installed Hyper-V server and have configured the server name, workgroup name and networking appropriately (in my case – the server name is “Server1” and the workgroup name is “WORKGROUP” – not very original, I know).  Also, I am not going to be talking about the other aspects of setting up a Hyper-V server (e.g. configuring automatic updates, enabling remote desktop, etc…).  I am just focusing on how to get remote management working.

Server Configuration

The first thing you will need to do is to go to the Hyper-V server and run SConfig.cmd (this is configured to run automatically when you log into a Hyper-V server – if you have changed this you can start it manually.  It is in the Windows\System32 folder on the server).  Once you are in SConfig.cmd you will need to:

1. Select option 4 on the SConfig menu (labeled Configure Remote Management)
2. Then select options 1 (Allow MMC Remote Management) and 2 (Enable Windows PowerShell)
   
   
   
3. After you enabled Windows PowerShell you will be asked to reboot.
4. After the reboot – go back into SConfig and select option 4 again
5. Select option 3 (Allow Server Manager Remote Management)
   1. Note that Server Manager Remote Management requires that you have PowerShell enabled first – so you cannot shuffle this ordering around to try and avoid the reboot.
6. Select option 5 to Return to main menu

Next, I am going to assume that you are not logged into your Windows 7 computer with the “Administrator” account (which is disabled by default) so you will need to create a second account on the Hyper-V Server.  To do this you will need to go into SConfig and:

1. Select option 3 (Add Local Administrator)
2. When prompted for an account name – enter the user name that you are using on the Windows 7 desktop (in my case – “Benjamin”).
3. You will then be asked for a password – and again you should use the same password as you are using on the Windows 7 desktop (no – I am not going to tell you my password)
   
   

Next – to enable remote (but read-only) access with device manager – run this command from the command prompt as well: reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceInstall\Settings /v AllowRemoteRPC /t reg_dword /d 1 (once again that is a single command).

Finally you will need to restart the server one last time (you can use option 13 on the Sconfig menu).

Desktop Configuration

Now it is time to go and configure the desktop computer. 

The first thing to do is to download and install the Remote Server Administration Toolkit.  You can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d and install it by just running it and following the prompts.

After you have done this you will need to enable the correct remote management tools.  To do this:

1. Open the Start menu
2. Open Control Panel
3. Select Programs and Features (or just Programs depending on the Control Panel view that you are using)
4. Select Turn Windows features on or off
5. Find Remote Server Administration Tools and Check Hyper-V Tools (under Role Administration Tools) and Server Manager under the top level list
6. Click OK

In most workgroup configurations you will not have reliable name resolution for remote computers (i.e. you need to use the IP address).  However – many of the server management tools require that name resolution be working reliably.  If you are using a fixed IP address on the Hyper-V server – you can make this work by editing the “hosts” on the desktop computer (note – you can skip this step if you can ping the Hyper-V server using its name and have it resolve to an IP address correctly):

1. Open the Start menu
2. Click on All Programs and then on Accessories
3. Right click on Notepad and select Run as administrator
4. Once Notepad has opened, use the File menu to Open… a file
5. Navigate to the “Windows\System32\Drivers\etc” folder on the system drive
6. Change the file name option from Text Documents (*.txt) to All Files
7. Open the “hosts” file
8. At the end of this file – add an entry for your server.  The format is basically the IP address of the server followed by the name of the server.
9. Save the file and exit Notepad.

(Here is the hosts file from my desktop – after I have modified it for my server)

You will need to enable the use of WinRM to connect to your Hyper-V server.  To do this you will need to:

1. Open the Start menu
2. Click on All Programs and then on Accessories
3. Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator
4. Type in winrm quickconfig and hit enter.  You will then need to say ‘y’ (yes) to a couple of prompts
5. Type in winrm set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="RemoteComputerName"} and hit enter
   1. Substitute “RemoteComputerName” with the name or IP address of your Hyper-V server.  In my test environment my desktop computer could not resolve the name of my server – so I just opted to use the IP address.  I could also have edited the hosts file on my desktop and used the server name.
6. While we are here – we should also open the firewall on the client side to allow us to remotely manage the servers storage by running this command: netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Remote Volume Management" new enable=yes

Now you will need to use HVRemote to enable remote management of Hyper-V on the desktop computer.

1. Download HVRemote from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/HVRemote/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx
2. Open the Start menu
3. Click on All Programs and then on Accessories
4. Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator
5. Change to the directory where you saved HVRemote
6. Type in cscript hvremote.wsf /mode:client /anondcom:grant /firewallhypervclient:enable /mmc:enable and hit enter.

You can now open Server Manager on the desktop computer.  To do this:

1. Open the Start menu
2. Click on All Programs and then on Administrative Tools
3. Click on Server Manager
4. You will be automatically prompted for the name of the server that you want to connect to.

After you enter your server name – you should have full access to manage your Hyper-V server:

The only caveat here is that Performance monitor still connects to the local computer.  You can, however, add individual counters from the remote server one at a time.  One thing that tripped me up on this issue is that after entering the server name you need to select the Select counters from computer: drop down and hit enter:

Cheers,
Ben

If you have the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 installed so you can manage a Hyper-V server – and you then install the service pack 1 beta on the Hyper-V server – how can you manage dynamic memory remotely?

The first thing to know is that by default – everything will continue to function correctly – but the Hyper-V management tools on Windows 7 will just not know about dynamic memory and will instead report that your virtual machines are all configured with static memory.  This will not cause any problems and you can still do everything you need to do – except configure dynamic memory.

Updating the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 is actually surprisingly easy.  All you need to do is to install the Windows 7 service pack 1 beta release on your management computer – and the Hyper-V management tools will be magically updated.

Note that if you install Windows 7 service pack 1 first, you will not be able to install the Remote Server Administration Tools – so you should be careful to get the order of installation correct.

Cheers,
Ben

For a while now I have been seeing random people complaining about the fact that they cannot install Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 Home Editions (Basic or Premium).  This always struck me as odd – as I was sure that this was a supported configuration – but I did not reply as I did not have the time to try this configuration myself and confirm that it did in fact work.

I finally had the chance to try this out – and while I can confirm that running Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 Home Editions is supported and does work – I also stumbled upon the probable cause of peoples confusion.

If you go to the official Virtual PC website (http://www.microsoft.com/virtualpc) and indicate that you are running Windows 7 Home – you will be (correctly) informed that you are not eligible to run Windows XP Mode:

Unfortunately this page does not explain that you are eligible to run Windows Virtual PC.

To clarify – “Windows Virtual PC” is the virtualization program that allows you to create and run virtual machines on Windows 7.  “Windows XP Mode” is a free pre-configured Windows XP virtual machine.  “Windows XP Mode” is not available for people running Windows 7 Home editions; but these users can download Windows Virtual PC and use a separate (fully licensed) copy of Windows XP to create their own Windows XP virtual machines and get all the functionality of Windows XP Mode.

You can download Windows Virtual PC directly from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2B6D5C18-1441-47EA-8309-2545B08E11DD

And as you can see – on this page it does state that Windows 7 Home editions are supported:

Hopefully the main webpage can be updated to make this less confusing in the future.

Cheers,
Ben

My post on how to configure the default virtual machine location for Windows Virtual PC has raised a number of questions.  One of which is: what is the default default virtual machine location for Windows Virtual PC?  This question is almost always then followed by the question – why is it that?

Before getting into the answers to these questions – I would like to start by stating that this has been a surprisingly contentious issue; both with our users and inside the development team itself.  With that acknowledged – I am not trying to argue that one choice is better than an other – but rather to explain the logic behind our current choice.

Now – on to the answers:

What is the default default virtual machine location for Windows Virtual PC?

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\

Why is that the default default location?

Virtual PC 2004 / 2007 defaulted to storing virtual machines in the users “My Documents” folder – and there are many people who like to have their virtual machines stored there.  There were a couple of reasons that drove us to change this default in Windows Virtual PC:

• Many users now have their “Documents” folder redirected to a network location.  It is preferable to run virtual machines off of local storage – so we wanted to find a location that was guaranteed to be local where we could also guarantee that the current user would have the ability to read / write.  %LocalAppData% is pretty much the only location that provides these guarantees.
• Many users who are using Windows Virtual PC just for Windows XP mode do not want to see the virtual machine – and do not care where the files for it are.  For these users the Windows XP virtual hard disk is truly more like application data than one of their documents.

Of course – if you want to store your virtual machines in a different location – the original blog post that sparked this discussion (linked at the top of this post) tells you everything you need to know about changing the default virtual machine location for Windows Virtual PC.

Cheers,
Ben

Whether you are running Virtual Server on Windows 7, or just trying to manage Virtual Server from a Windows 7 computer – you will need to use the Virtual Server Administrative Web Site under Internet Explorer 8.  This is possible – but there are a number of things that you need to do:

1. Enable compatibility mode
   
   If you do not use compatibility mode with Internet Explorer 8 – none of the drop down menus will work, which renders the website unusable.  Under Internet Explorer you should open the Tools menu and select Compatibility View Settings.  Here you can add the URL for your Virtual Server server.
   
2. Turn on the Internet Explorer menu bar
   
   The Virtual Server host key (right ALT) causes the Internet Explorer menu bar to pop into existence every time you try to release the mouse from a virtual machine.  This causes a lot of annoying jittering around on the screen.  You can get around this by just configuring the Internet Explorer menu bar to be permanently displayed.  To do this open the View menu under Internet Explorer, select Toolbars and then select Menu Bar.
   
3. Get rid of annoying credential prompts whenever connecting to a virtual machine
   
   There are two possible ways to do this:

1. Put the Virtual Server website in your trusted websites, and enable

1. Open the Internet Explorer Tools menu
2. Select Internet Options
3. Change to the Security tab
4. Select the Trusted sites zone
5. Click on the Sites button
6. Type in the URL for your Virtual Server site and click Add
   (You may need to uncheck the option to Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone)
7. Click Close
8. Click Custom level…
9. Scroll to the bottom and find the User Authentication section.
10. Select Automatic logon with current user name and password.
11. Click OK and OK.
    
    

1. Open the Internet Explorer Tools menu
2. Select Internet Options
3. Change to the Security tab
4. Select the Local intranet zone
5. Click on the Sites button
6. Click on the Advanced button
7. Type in the URL for your Virtual Server site and click Add
8. Click Close and OK and OK.
   
   Note: If you are doing this on a Windows 7 computer that is running Virtual Server you will be greeted by an endless loop of dialogs that say The site you specified already exists in the Trusted sites zone. Would you like to move it to the Local intranet zone?  Hitting Yes on this dialog will just cause the same dialog to come up again – and checking under the trusted sites does not display the Virtual Server site.  The solution here is to run Internet Explorer as administrator and then follow these steps.

You should now be able to use Virtual Server from Internet Explorer 8 happily.

Cheers,
Ben