SBSC & MSP Buzz

My Migration to Hyper-V - Who stole my mouse?

So I spent the better part of 11 hours last night migrating my production SBS virtual machine from VMware Server on Server 2003 to Hyper-V.  Why?  Because I can of course!  Actually I’ve heard much about the Hyper-V performance gains (as I would with ESX) but needed to experience it first hand in a production environment and who’s better than mine right?  I started at 5 PM last night and finally left the office just after 4 AM.  50% of that time was spent running backups I may never need but it’s always nice to have a plan B, C, D, etc.  The remainder was spent attempting to get access to my recovery files via Ethernet than by adding an additional storage controller and drive.  I ultimately learned a very simple yet important thing needed to be done as you will see when I add the NIC to the virtual machine below.  The other biggest time killer and pain in the you bottom was not having mouse control in the Hyper-V virtual machine.  You can’t install the extensions needed for mouse control until you have a working instance of Server 2003 SP2 running.  What a pain!!! 

Many thanks to Wayne Small for moral support and especially to Chris Rue whom was up at 3 AM and helped by solving some simple, yet VERY important little riddles like hitting the space bar to make the browse button function in a Recovery Environment.  Doh!  In hind site, this could have taken me less than 5 hours had I known what I know now but hey, I learned some good lessons and got to watch some YouTube between reboots. 

Now there are arguably faster (and slicker) ways to accomplish this migration such as using SCVMM to perform a V2V migration but most the other methods have not proved as successful to me and often require additional hardware or complexity.  This is simple and effective.  Good luck and kids, don’t try this at home! 

Migration of your SBS 2003 x86 virtual machine from VMware to Hyper-V on the same box (AKA: Virtual Forklift)

Things needed:

• StorageCraft ShadowProtect or other Imaging software with good Hardware Independent Restore (HIR abilities)
• Lots of storage - Either NAS or USB (or both).
• UltraVNC (free download)
• Latest Build of Hyper-V and it’s management console snap-in.  I loaded the Hyper-V Manager on my Vista SP2 box but never could get it to connect so I just worked via RDC on the Server 2008 since I chose to install the base 2008 OS and not just the Hyper-V core (glad I did).
• Confidence that you can fail back if you decide that after 10 hours it’s just not worth the hassle (I almost did).
• And here is a link to a rather worthless TechNet guide to installing Hyper-V. 

These instructions do not take into consideration things I assume have already considered like hardware and network requirements and things like partitioning of your base OS.  If you going to do this I assume you have thought thru this a little…

Ready?

1. Backup Host system partition.

2. Backup SBS using native SBS backup (always nice to have a good AD and Exchange backup)

3. Backup SBS using StorageCraft ShadowProtect to a NAS (or drive you can share from the host).

4. I suggest you backup your current virtual machine files too by copying them to a NAS (this is in case you decide to bail and roll back.  You will then be able to recover your host OS and drop the VM files back in place (assuming you had them on a separate partition from your system).

5. Say a prayer and do a clean install of Server 2008

6. Be sure you have enabled virtualization settings for the CPU in the bios. As you see below, I missed that one.

7. Assign an IP to your NIC (suggest you enable Remote Access at this point too so you can sit somewhere comfortable).

8. Install Updates (and reboot).

9. Install the Hyper-V Role (reboot).

10. Install the Windows Update for Hyper-V RTM if you installed your Hyper-V Role from original media (then reboot again).

11. Run Hyper-V Manager from Administrative Tools

12. Create an external Virtual Network with the Virtual Network manager. I suggest you use a second NIC without a gateway assigned.  Call it LAN1

13. Run the New Virtual Machine wizard to create a new VM called “SBS” (or whatever you like).  At this time you should also create a primary and secondary virtual hard drive as needed. Do not install your VM OS during creation and do not start the machine upon completion.

14. Go to the SBS VM settings and delete the existing Network Adapter.

15. Add a new Legacy Network Adapter from Add New and assign it to the LAN1 network (very important).

16. Go to your IDE Controller 1 (DVD/CD Drive) and assign it to an Image file (ISO) of ShadowProtect shared on your LAN (or to the CD but I find an ISO is much faster).  Save your settings if all looks right.

17. Connect to your SBS VM and start it.   Once in the Recovery Environment you will have NO mouse control so it’s time to use that keyboard.

18.  Your VM should boot into the StorageCraft Recovery Environment where you want to choose Vista Recovery Environment (faster) and allow the network drivers to install. 

19. Alt+T to enter the Tools Menu and Enter when you have highlighted the Network Configuration.

20. Using Tab and your up and down arrows to add an IP address and Subnet address that matches your LAN. Apply and Close.

21. Alt+T to get to the Tools Menu again where you will select UltraVNC Service. Assign a simple password and save.

22. Run UltraVNC Viewer on your computer to connect to the Recovery Environment where you will now have mouse control.

23. Access the Network Configuration again and map a drive to the location of your backup image.

24. Enter Recovery and follow the instructions to recover from your backup image to your new virtual hard drive (for some reason I had to reboot StorageCraft after formatting my system partition during recovery so you may want to try that first in the Disk Map tab. Be sure to check the box for a Hardware Independent Restore. You shouldn’t need to add any additional drivers.

25. After recovery exit StorageCraft and boot into Window. If you get a Login you have made it 99% of the way home. It will take a long time to get to the login prompt as it tries to load networking (or you can boot faster into safe mode to make NIC repairs.

26. You will now want to go in a reassign your IP to the new NIC you will discover and run the famous CEICW Wizard to ensure everything is configured correctly.  Give it one last reboot to check for driver or service failures and you should be good to go. 

Hope this helps.  I’ll do a P2V soon using SCVMM 2008 Beta and let you know how that one goes.  First I need to get some rest so I can be ready for WPC next week.  See you in Houston!