John Edwards' Space

 Having failed with SuSE 11.1 on Hyper-V I successfully installed Ubuntu 9.04 last night, including a nice freeware VNC client, UltraVNC. The integration components don't work right now, but there is a fine blog from Matthew below outlining the kernel recompile requirements.

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Blog | IT From All Angles - Hyper-V Guests: Linux Integration Components Ubuntu and Debian

 Now here's a bit of a pain - it seems on some modern laptops CTRL-ALT-LEFT ARROW rotates the screen; sadly, it's the 'return to host' key on Hyper-V, and HV has no way to change the the 'host' key (AFAIK), suggestions welcome

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Microsoft’s 2008 Hyper-V mouse trap problem | ESX Virtualization

I’ve blogged a couple of times on Hyper-V server, but there are a couple of small ‘gotchas’ in getting remote access to Hyper-V on a 2008 Server from Vista or Windows7.

Of course, you can access your running Virtual Machines with remote desktop (once you’ve turned it on…), but to run a ‘headless’ server it’s nice to be able to manage your VM’s remotely.

First, install the Hyper-V remote client. On Vista, this Hyper-V Remote Management Update for Windows Vista (KB952627) at https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BF909242-2125-4D06-A968-C8A3D75FF2AA&displaylang=en for x86.

Windows7 is a little more opaque, and you need the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f6c62797-791c-48e3-b754-c7c0a09f32f3&displaylang=en and then the role needs to be enabled – a bit that seems often to be missed. See Ed’s blog at http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=2356 

here’s a snip from Ed’s blog

After installing RSAT, open Control Panel, go to Programs and Features, and choose Turn Windows features on or off. Expand the Remote Server Administration Tools Heading and the Role Administration Tools subheading, then select Hyper-V Tools, as shown here:

Click OK, and you’re done with software installation.

For either platform, you then need to run the excellent HVremote tool to enable access to manage the service; this is required on client and server. See John Howard’s blog at http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/11/14/configure-hyper-v-remote-management-in-seconds.aspx or go to the MSDN code repository for HVremote at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/HVRemote

With Windows7 and Server 2008, a virtual hard disk (VHD) can be used exactly like a physical disk to install operating systems onto physical hardware. With a hack to the Vista boot sector, it’s possible to install Vista on the local hard drive, and Win7 in a vhd on the same (or another…) drive. I now have a quad core Q6600 machine with 450Gb internal disk with Vista x86 installed native and Win7 x86 on a 200Gb VHD. I have also installed Server2008 R2 RC (phew…) on an external SATA 1Tb disk in a VHD, and have been working on Server2003/SQL 2005 accreditation on Hyper-V.

Why is this interesting?

The real advantage of this is that if and when I decide that I no longer need the Vista install, the Win7 install is untouched, or if I want to back up the Win7 environment and change the disk config, it’s easy. The migration to virtual would be easy too (although I need to test this)

There are a couple of good blogs out there; see http://www.windows7hacker.com/index.php/2009/05/native-boot-to-windows-7-in-vhd-from-windows-vista/ on how to update the Vista boot manager to Win7, to support VHD booting.

How to install Windows 7 to a VHD is at http://blogs.msdn.com/cesardelatorre/archive/2009/01/11/windows-7-natively-booting-from-a-vhd-virtual-pc-image-file.aspx, although Cesar is a little brief and misses the fact that you can press SHIFT-F10 to open the command window on Win7 install.

Another point to note is that VHDs no longer need to make use of obscure command line interfaces, the Disk Manager on Win7 and WS2008 now support VHD as ‘standard’.

I think the only reason for keeping Vista is so my son can play Pro Evo Soccer 2009, which doesn’t seem to like Se7en much

Like a few other users, I've been disappointed to see that the beta Virtual PC for Windows7 mandates hardware virtualisation support. I understand that Microsoft doesn't want to have users trying to run an XP virtual machine on a poorly performing, low spec machine, but it could offer an admin override to make VPC run anyway as per previous versions.

However, I am very impressed with the ease of install of XP mode, and look forward to trying out the new USB support.

I’ve spent some interesting times installing Windows Se7en at home, and am very pleased with the responsiveness and experience (we’ll see if this the result of a ‘clean’ install or a real performance improvement over time.

The good news is that installation on older or lower spec systems has been great; the Asus eee 701 and my old P4 3GHz Carrera media center machine have both proved great platforms for Se7en. The upgrade of my Dell x86 was also generally ok from Vista, but it looks like there’s a known issue around MCE failing to work on an upgraded platform (http://www.sevenforums.com/media-center/3729-mce-does-not-start-after-upgrade-windows.html)

The not so good news, the new wtv (WindowsTV) format recorded tv doesn’t play nice with Windows Media Player, or some of the tools around to manipulate recordings (todvrms, DVRMS tolbox). It defaults to playing back a secondary audio track for the visually impaired (“Peter is walking down the street”). See http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/335234/ShowThread.aspx and http://mcebuddy.com/forums/t/641.aspx

Equally, extender playback is choppy and unpleasant. See http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/326335.aspx. No problem playing back to another Se7en MCE machine (so that’s what my Carrera is doing in the sitting room), but stuttering on my DMA2200 and my (two) 360’s.

In summary, Win7 is an exceptional beta, with a couple of wrinkles to fix on MCE, but I’m looking forward to a fine release.