Windows 7 Windows Management

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Around the office, most of us are used to using UltraMon to manage our windows on the beautiful 23″ monitors we have.  Unfortunately, for the time being, UltraMon doesn’t provide support for 7, so some of us are left manually wrangling windows around.

In a rare moment of helpfulness, I managed to find some keyboard shortcuts to help.  One of the plus sides here, is that when using the shortcuts below, a window can be docked to the inside of your dual monitor setup (since you can’t do it with the mouse).

Win + Up Arrow Maximizes the window.
Win + Down Arrow Minimizes a restored window.  Restores a maximized window.
Win + Left Arrow Docks the window to the left side of the screen.  If the window is already docked, restores.  If the window is docked to the right side of the screen, re-docks to the left side.
Win + Right Arrow Docks the window to the right side of the screen.  If the window is already docked, restores.  If the window is docked to the left side of the screen, re-docks to the right side.
Win + Shift + Left Arrow Moves the window to the left monitor, assuming dual monitors.
Win + Shift + Right Arrow Moves the window to the right monitor, assuming dual monitors.
Win + Home Minimizes all windows except the one currently in focus.
Win + Space Shows the desktop (the “peek” feature).
Win + Plus Sign Activates the magnifier and zooms in.
Win + Minus Sign Activates the magnifier and zooms out.

Oh, and for those of you that I see using “Ctrl+Alt+Del” and pressing “Enter” to lock your computer, try Win + L.

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Release Candidate

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For future reference, here are the remote administration tools for Windows 7:

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC)

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows® 7 RC enables IT administrators to manage roles and features that are installed on computers that are running Windows Server® 2008 R2, Windows Server® 2008, or Windows Server® 2003, from a remote computer that is running Windows 7 RC.

Unsupported Cluster Configuration

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Maybe Michael should go away more often.  I seem to get a lot more done when he’s out.

Today, I added the third node to the Hyper-V R2 cluster we’re currently testing.  When I did, VMM freaked out and all of the guests on the other two nodes went into a warning state.  The error they displayed:

Warning (13921)

Highly available virtual machine <INSERT NAME> is not supported by VMM because one or more of its network adapters is not configured correctly.

Recommended Action

Ensure that all of the virtual network adapters are either disconnected or connected to highly available virtual networks.

So, how do we fix this issue?  You use Google, of course.  A quick Google-ing gave the following information (edited for grammar):

For a VN [Virtual Network] to be marked as HA, the location and tag of the VN in all nodes must be the same.  For each VN in the cluster[, be sure that]:

  • The NICs to which the VN is attached in each node have the same location.
  • The Tag in the VN in each node is the same.
  • The VN Name is the same.
  • After you commit changes, refresh the cluster so ensure that the VN is detected as HA.

Our problem, specifically, was related to the network tagging.  To fix the tag, do the following:

  1. Open VMM, and navigate to the “Hosts” view.
  2. Right click on one of the hosts and select “Properties.”
  3. Navigate to the “Networking” tab.
    VMM Network Tab
  4. Once, there, you’ll need to click each network (in this case, we have two) and add text to the “Network tag:” field.  Keep in mind that these tags will need to be the same across all your hosts in order to make them highly available.
    VMM Network Tag
  5. Rinse and repeat for the rest of your hosts.
  6. Once you finish tagging, you’ll need to refresh the cluster node in VMM.
    vmmrefresh

That fixed our problem.  Maybe it will help you.

More information here in the “Troubleshoot ‘Unsupported Cluster Configuration’ Status for a Highly Available Virtual Machine” section.

The subsystem needed…

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So, I’m bee-bopping along setting up a new Server 2008 R2 virtual host, when I get to our SAN software’s install.  When I tried to run the executable, the following error was thrown:

The subsystem needed to support the image type is not present.

A quick Googling led me to this Technet post.  The relevate parts of the post:

WOW64 is not present in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.  This change was made because Microsoft Hyper-V Server is supposed to be a single purpose OS, and users have asked for it to be as small as possible.  So, whenever possible, we will not include general Windows components that are not needed by Hyper-V.

And the resolution:

Issue this command to install WOW64 support:

start /w ocsetup ServerCore-WOW64

And of course: reboot.

2008 R2 High Availability

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Michael and I are probably the only two people in the world that would find this even remotely amusing, but…

We’re testing 2008 R2′s Failover Clustering.  In particular, we’re going to test Hyper-V and highly available machines.  So, in Michael’s infinite wisdom, he asked me what to name the first test cluster.  I suggested the following:

clusterf

Installation Results

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When you run the script mentioned here (to updated a Server Core 2008 install), you’ll see a part of the output called “Installation Results.”  In the infinite wisdom of Microsoft, they don’t seem to feel the need to plainly document these results.  They have instead included a number (1-3) to indicate the results of the installation.  Here are these codes in case you’re looking:

Exit Codes:
0 = scripting failure
1 = error obtaining or installing updates
2 = installation successful, no further updates to install
3 = reboot needed; rerun script after reboot

More here.

How Google Routes Around Outages

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No, that’s not my title.  The folks over at Data Center Knowledge have an interview with Urs Holzle, Google’s Datacenter Operations Manager:

Making changes to Google’s search infrastructure is akin to “changing the tires on a car while you’re going at 60 down the freeway,” according Urs Holzle, who oversees the company’s massive data center operations. Google updates its software and systems on an ongoing basis, usually without incident. But not always. On Feb. 24 a bug in the software that manages the location of Google’s data triggered an outage in Gmail, the widely-used webmail component of Google.

Just a few days earlier, Google’s services remained online during a power outage at a third-party data center near Atlanta where Google hosts some of its many servers. Google doesn’t discuss operations of specific data centers. But Holzle, the company’s Senior Vice President of Operations and a Google Fellow, provided an overview of how Google has engineered its system to manage hardware failures and software bugs.

Read more at Data Center Knowledge: How Google Routes Around Outages.

Say Thanks

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I was surfing around the blogosphere today when I came across the Manager Tools Blog.  Now, I’m not a manager (nor do I think I’m qualified or would want to be at this point in my life), but I found this blog a few weeks ago on Rickey’s (my manager) blog.  Every now and then I’ll browse through their stuff and ran across something this afternoon that I think applies to (some of) us in the IT world.  The post is titled “My Postman is Lonely.”  No, I’m not in the postal business (my patience could be described as “postal,” though).  But, the point of the post has to do with the service industry and how too often people from any “service” industry are seen as a service instead of as a person:

There are lots of people with jobs like his, where you meet lots of people but only briefly, and you’re seen as a service and not a person. Receptionists, security guards, catering staff, the man who fixes the heating and the guy who refurbishes your computer. I think they are lonely too sometimes.

It’s not a long post by any means, but I can remember not too long ago being a “service.”  Luckily, I work in a place now where people appreciate other people and work/accomplishments are rewarded.  And, by reward, I don’t necessarily mean a monetary reward – a simple “good job” or “atta’boy” goes a long way in a lot of cases.  Remember that.

Error 0x800704C8 in VMM

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I was trying to deploy a new virtual machine today via Virtual Machine Manager, and kept getting this error (names changed to protect the innocent):

Error (12700)
VMM cannot complete the Hyper-V operation on the [virtualhost.domain.com] server because of the error: ‘[VIRTUALGUEST]‘ failed to add device ‘Microsoft Emulated Ethernet Port’. (Virtual machine ID 26DD8B56-0594-446A-8084-405218737EB0)

The Virtual Machines configuration 26DD8B56-0594-446A-8084-405218737EB0 at ‘J:\VS\[VIRTUALGUEST]‘ is no longer accessible: The requested operation cannot be performed on a file with a user-mapped section open. (0x800704C8)
(Unknown error (0×8000))

Recommended Action
Resolve the issue in Hyper-V and then try the operation again.

Well, that’s really good advice – clear the error and try again.  So, a quick Google-ing turned up a Microsoft KB article: Creating or starting a Hyper-V virtual machine on Windows Server 2008 or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 may fail with error: 0x800704C8.  Oddly enough, this was exactly my issue:

CAUSE

This issue can be caused by antivirus software that is installed in the parent partition and the real-time scanning component is configured to monitor the Hyper-V virtual machine files.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, configure the real-time scanning component within the antivirus software to exclude the following directories and files:

  • Default virtual machine configuration directory (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V)
  • Custom virtual machine configuration directories
  • Default virtual hard disk directory (C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks)
  • Custom virtual hard disk directories
  • Snapshot directories
  • Vmms.exe
  • Vmwp.exe

Notes:

  • If virtual machines are missing from the Hyper-V Management console, you must configure the antivirus exclusions, and then restart the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service.
  • If the error code was 0x800704C8, it is likely that the virtual machine configuration file was corrupted and the virtual machine may need to be re-created or restored from backup if restarting the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service does not resolve the issue.

Chalk one up for Microsoft KB articles.  Now, a little further down in the KB article, it suggests (per Planning for Hyper-V Security) installing the antivirus on the guest (which we do) and not on the host (which we do, too):

Do not run any applications in the parent partition. Run all applications on virtual machines, which use child partitions. For example, if antivirus is required, be sure to run it on the VMs rather than the parent partition. Keeping the parent partition free of applications and running on a Windows Server 2008 core installation means fewer host updates, since nothing needs software updates except the Windows Server 2008 core installation, the Hyper-V service components, and the small (~600KB) hypervisor.