Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager released

Microsoft has release the rollup 2 for VMM 2012 SP1. This was a late release compared to the other System Center products. For the installation of rollup 2, it’s important to uninstall rollup 1 first.

For detailed information check:

• Announcement: http://blogs.technet.com/b/scvmm/archive/2013/04/23/update-on-system-center-2012-sp1-update-rollup-2-ur2-for-virtual-machine-manager.aspx
• KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2802159/en-us

For reference, here are the issues that are addressed in rollup 2:

Issue 1
The SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 operating system is missing from the Linux OS list.

Issue 2
A virtual machine cannot start after migration from Windows 7 to Windows 8 when the DiscardSavedState method is used.

Issue 3
A connection to the VMware virtual machine remote console session cannot be established.

Issue 4
Externally published VMNDs are filtered incorrectly.

Issue 5
When you remove a virtual switch extension property or edit a virtual switch extension manager connection string, a user-interface generated script also removes the HostGroups that are associated with VSEM.

Issue 6
UPPSet is not set on a physical network adapter when you add the network adapter to a team and when the network adapter is the first in the list of network adapters.

Issue 7
The default gateway is missing on a host virtual network adapter after you add a second physical network adapter to the logical switch.

Issue 8
Static IP pool that has the first address in a subnet fails for external network type.

Issue 9
VMM crashes during host refresher when VMM is unable to create a CimSession with the remote host.

Issue 10
Standard (legacy) virtual switch creation on Windows 8 hosts with management virtual network adapter does not preserve the IP properties of the physical network adapter.

Issue 11
The administration user interface crashes with a NullReferenceException error when you click Remediate on a host instead of a virtual network adapter.

Issue 12
The Virtual Machine Manager user interface displays a network adapter in a "Not Connected" state.

Issue 13
The Virtual Machine Manager stops responding with high CPU usage for five to ten minutes when you configure a VMND that has 2,000 network segments.

Issue 14
The host virtual network adapter property for a management adapter does not show port classification.

Issue 15
Live Migration fails at 26 percent when the network adapter is attached to an isolated virtual machine network.

Issue 16
The Virtual Machine Manager Service crashes when a virtual machine that does not have a port profile is migrated to a cluster by using a logical switch that has a default port profile set.

Issue 17
Running Dynamic Optimizer on a cluster with incompatible host CPUs causes a Virtual Machine Manager Service crash.

Issue 18
The Host refresher crashes for any host that has the RemoteFX role enabled.

Issue 19
The minimum memory for dynamic memory greater than 32GB is a security risk.

Issue 20
The status of the network adapter is displayed as Not Connected in Virtual Machine Manager.

VMM 2012 SP1 Networking–Host Groups

Working with the networking functionality in System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager, first requires you to think about your Host Group structure. Hosts groups helps you to logically structure your Hyper-V hosts into a kind of folder structure. This structure is the basis for you VMM networking configuration.

If you don’t define this structure based on your networking requirements, you will not be able to implement the networking accordingly. E.g. if you put all your Hyper-V hosts into the All Hosts host group. you will not be able to configure your VMM networking using the sites feature. The question now is, do I need to use the networking features of VMM?

Network site in VMM can be used to associate VLANs and subnets to host groups. If you plan to deploy only one Hyper-V hosts or hosts cluster, you do not need to configure network sites. It’s a bit like Active Directory Sites, if you just have only physical location where you Domain Controllers are place, you don’t need to configure them. However, if you plan to deploy multiple Hyper-V hosts or clusters and you want to place them into separate network sites, with separate IP subnet or VLAN, you should create hosts groups for these network sites. Here’s an example: I have a logical network called Corporate Network and four sites: Basel, East Hanover and Prag.

Therefore, I configured a host group structure with these three locations: Basel, EastHanover and Prag in VMM Fabric management.

Within these host groups, you can add an additional separation by using another level of host groups. This depends again on the network configuration (IP subnets and VLANs) in your environment and the need to place a Hyper-V host there. This additional layer could contain host groups for e.g. Hyper-V Cluster and stand-alone Hyper-V hosts or host groups for different kind of virtualization systems like Xen Server or VMWare.

Other separation requirements for sub host groups might be based on the properties of the host group settings. Hosts groups lets you configure the following: General settings, Placement Rules, Host Reserves, Dynamic Optimization, Network, Storage and Custom Properties.

If you require specific settings in one of the local based host groups, you need this further structure of host groups.

   

   

Therefore, the structure or design of your host groups is quite important if your Hyper-V deployment contains more that just one Hyper-V host or Hyper-V cluster. One you start configuring the VMM fabric networking settings, you will soon find out that you require additional host groups. Fortunately you can always add new host groups and you can easily more hosts and host clusters between the host groups.

New Microsoft Blog from Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Windows Server & System Center

Microsoft’s Brad Anderson, who is the corporate vice president for Windows Server and System Center just a week ago started a now blog called "In the Cloud”. Brad explains there reason on purpose of this blog with:

With In the Cloud I want to discuss with you – through ongoing posts, podcasts, and videos – how IT decision makers can think above and beyond product names or product features, and instead assemble cloud and datacenter solutions that are the best this industry has to offer.  A big part of this discussion will be about the Consumerization of IT, e.g. how companies choose to enable their users to work how, when, and where they want – while ensuring that corporate data is secure.

It will be exciting to see what this visions and directions are. You can find his blog here:

• http://blogs.technet.com/b/in_the_cloud/

New Microsoft Technet Blog Posts addressing System Center

For reference, here’s a list about new blog post on Technet regarding System Center topics. Additional System Center post can be found here:

System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
System Center – Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
System Center – Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
System Center – Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
System Center – Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
System Center – Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center – Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Application Virtualization	How to use App-V to virtualize Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 - PowerPivot for Excel 2010
Configuration Manager	Support Tip: No reports show up in the console after installing a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Reporting server
Configuration Manager	Announcement: Configuration Manager Documentation Library Update for February 2013
Enterprise Desktop Virtualization	Updated List of Recommended Hotfixes for Windows 7 SP1 Computers Running MED-V V2
Operations Manager	New Operations Manager Management Packs for Cluster, NLB, WDS
Operations Manager	MP Blog - Consistent, World-Class Manageability
Operations Manager	System Center Operations Manager Sessions @ Microsoft Management Summit 2013 (4/8-4/12)
Orchestrator	Code Sample for “Cascading Dependencies”
Service Manager	How Microsoft Uses Service Manager: Automated Service Catalog Deployment
Service Manager	How Microsoft Uses Service Manager: Sending Mail to Related User Cis
Service Manager	Updated Version of Cloud Services Process Management Pack Now Available!
Service Manager	Form Customization Tips From Cireson
Service Manager	Launching the Configuration Manager Remote Control Program from Service Manager
Service Manager	Month Ordering by Calendar Sequence when Slicing Measures by CalendarMonth
Service Manager	How Microsoft Uses Service Manager: Adding the Request Offering Relationship to the Service Request or Incident Form
System Center Advisor	System Center Advisor is now a FREE service!
Threat Management Gateway	Access to remote FTP server through TMG 2010 may fail with error 550 (Access Denied)
Threat Management Gateway	Clients Are Not Prompted to Choose a Certificate When Authenticating to ISA/TMG
Virtual Machine Manager	Free Jump Start course: Microsoft Tools for VMware Integration & Migration
Virtual Machine Manager	KB: Network settings for a VM are lost after performing a Storage Migration in Virtual Machine Manager
Virtual Machine Manager	VMM 2012 Tip: How to assign an IP Address using PowerShell during deployment
Virtual Machine Manager	Support Tip: Adding a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 core server to VMM 2012 fails with Error 441
Virtual Machine Manager	Custom Placement Rules and Availability Sets in SCVMM 2012 SP1
WSUS/Security	Advance Notification Service for March 2013 Security Bulletin Release
WSUS/Security	Windows Store App Security Updates
WSUS/Security	Evolving Response and the March 2013 Bulletin Release
WSUS/Security	March 2013 Security Bulletin Webcast, Q&A, and Slide Deck

How to change the product key of System Center 2012 (SP1) Operations Manager

There are situations where you installed System Center 2012 Operations Manager without a proper license key but you would like to make that SCOM installations a productive deployment afterwards. Providing a valid license key is possible with all System Center product, but with Operations Manager 2012 (SP1) you have to use power shell for this. So here’s what you need to do:

Open PowerShell as an Administrator on the SCOM server and execute the following steps:

import-module operationsmanager
New-SCOMManagementGroupConnection
Set-SCOMLicense -ProductId "yourlicensekey“

To check the license update use:

Get-SCOMManagementGroup | ft skuforlicense, version, timeofexpiration –a

So here’s what it looked like when I executed the steps in my environment.

Since the license did not change, I had to reboot the SCOM server. After the reboot, the version was corrected:

Upgrade to System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) – Rough Guide

Note: Although the VMM 2012 SP1 product is officially called System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 - Virtual Machine Manager, I will refer to it as VMM 2012 SP1, which is bit easier and shorter to write.  If I don’t mention the SP1 then I am referring Virtual Machine Manager in System Center 2012 without the service pack.

When upgrading to VMM 2012 SP1 consider the following basics:

• You need to ensure that you fulfill the prerequisites for VMM 20120 SP1 for the OS plus tools and the database server, library server and console.
• You can upgrade from VMM 2008 R2 to VMM 2012 (without SP1)
• You can upgrade from VMM 2012 to VMM 2012 SP1
• You cannot upgrade directly from VMM 2008 R2 to VMM 2012 SP1. If you are still on VMM 2008 R2 you need to upgrade to VMM 2012 first. If you are only on VMM 2008, you first need to upgrade to VMM 2008 R2 in order to upgrade to VMM 2012 and then to VMM 2012 SP1.
• Choose your Service Account and Distributed Key Management Settings carefully. If not, you might loose encrypted data like passwords of run-as accounts.
• There is no VMM Self-Service Portal in VMM 2012 SP1. Use App Controller as a Self-Service portal for VMM instead.

Prerequisites for VMM 2012 and VMM 2012 SP1

Now, here’s a summary of the prerequisites, separated by the server types. Be sure that you plan the prerequisites of VMM 2012 and VMM 2012 SP1 into your upgrade planning, otherwise you might get stuck during the process.

VMM Management Server:

VMM 2012	VMM 2012 SP1
Windows Server 2008 R2 (full installation) - Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter, SP1	Windows Server 2012 (full installation or Server Core installation), Standard and Datacenter edition
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1: if not installed, the VMM setup wizard will install the feature	Microsoft .NET Framework 4 is included in Windows Server 2012
Windows AIK for Windows 7 (download)	Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 8 (download)

Database Server:

VMM 2012	VMM 2012 SP1
SQL Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) SP1, Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter or SQL Server 2008 (64-bit), SP2 or SP3, Standard and Enterprise	SQL Server 2008 R2 (64-bit), Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 - Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter or SQL Server 2012 Enterprise, Standard (64-bit) - Service Pack 1 – All editions

Console:

VMM 2012	VMM 2012 SP1
Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 or earlier (full installation) or Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or earlier	Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (full installation) or Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 Client

Library Server:

VMM 2012	VMM 2012 SP1
Minimum of Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 or earlier	Minimum Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 or earlier

Hyper-V Hosts:

VMM 2012	VMM 2012 SP1
Windows Server 2008 R2 (full installation or Server Core-MiniShell installation) or Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 (full installation or Server Core-MiniShell installation)	Windows Server 2008 R2 (full installation or Server Core-MiniShell installation) or Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 (full installation or Server Core installation)

For the requirements of VMware and Xen Server hosts see here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610663.aspx

Service Account and Distributed Key Management Settings During an Upgrade

There are two settings that you need to plan carefully. The service account for VMM and the distributed key management (DKM) settings. Once you configure your VMM service account during setup, you can not change it afterwards. The same with the DKM. Basically the keys to encrypt information in the VMM database are either stored on the server locally or in Active Directory, which is called Distributed Key Management. The advantage to store the key in AD is that you can recover you VMMM installation without the need to recovery the Windows Server where VMM was installed, because the key are in AD.

Check out the Microsoft Technet information on the different scenarios for the service account and the DKM setting for the setup. Make sure that you understand this topic, and consider the scenario for high availability of VMM 2012 (SP1).

Choosing Service Account and Distributed Key Management Settings During an Upgrade - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh430988.aspx

Before you upgrade

• Ensure that all running VMM tasks are complete
• Not pending computer restart is waiting
• You performed a backup of the system and the database

Upgrade from VMM 2008 R2 to VMM 2012

Before you start the upgrade plan the upgrade of the systems that VMM depends on, like database server, Windows server for VMM or VMM Library server.

• Check the prerequisites of your VMM service target systems. If you database server is not on the correct level, you might need to upgrade the database server or move the database itself during the upgrade process.
• Check the required OS version for VMM itself. You might need to upgrade your VMM server OS to a new version during the upgrade process.

E.g. if the server you are running VMM 2008 R2 on is a Windows Server 2008 R2 and the database server is on SQL Server 2008 R2, there is no need to upgrade the Windows server or the database server first. In this situation, you can start the setup of the VMM 2012 installation and confirm that you want to upgrade to VMM 2012. This is a very straight forward installation.

If you are not on the correct OS level, you need to uninstall VMM 2008 R2 first. It’s important that when you uninstall VMM 2008 R2 you need to choose the setting to retain the VMM database. Then upgrade the OS version to a supported version and after that, install VMM 2012. During the VMM 2012 installation, choose to connect to the existing database and choose to upgrade the database to VMM 2012.

If your database server is not on the supported level, upgrade your database first or move the database to a database server with the supported level. Before you upgrade your database server or you move the database, uninstall VMM and choose the retain database option during uninstall.

Upgrade from VMM 2012 to VMM 2012 SP1

In this upgrade it’s important that the OS where VMM 2012 SP1 will be installed on is Windows Server 2012. If your VMM 2012 database is already on a SQL 2008 R2, there is no need to upgrade that first.

If you VMM 2012 installation does not use the DKM, you need to upgrade your Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows 2012 in-place to retain your encryption keys. If you used AD to storage the DKM, you can provision a new server with Windows Server 2012 and connect to the DKM in AD again.

Remember that VMM 2012 SP1 does not support Windows Server 2003 as a library server. So you might have to upgrade that server or move the share to another Windows 2008 R2 server.

To upgrade VMM 2012 to VMM 2012 SP1 run setup.exe and follow the wizard. At the database page select existing database and configure where you VMM 2012 is located. This will upgrade the VMM 2012 database to a VMM 2012 SP1 database.

After the upgrade

After the upgrade of VMM you need to perform the following tasks:

• You might need to reassociate virtual machine hosts to VMM, in the case that you used a new VMM server instead of an upgrade.
• Update the VMM agents on the Hyper-V hosts, library server and update server (if used)
• Update VM template. During the upgrade VHD information might be lost. Also check the VLAN IDs of your logical networks in the template.
• Update driver packages. After upgrading to System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, any driver packages that were added to the VMM library in VMM 2008 R2 SP1 must be removed and added again to be correctly discovered.
• Check your VMM Library. If you have a new library server, move the files over from the older library server to the new server. Recreate you OS and hardware profiles, if you used them.

For more information on VMM upgrade see Technet:

• Upgrading from VMM 2008 R2 to VMM 2012: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh430986.aspx
• Upgrading from VMM 2012 to VMM 2012 SP1: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj870890.aspx
• If you want to migrate multiple System Center components to the SP1 version, check the sequence that Microsoft recommends for this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj870890.aspx

Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 SP1 released

For reference, Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 provides fixes to the following issues. The rollup 1 can be installed via Windows Update.

App Controller (KB2790935)

Issue 1
Copying a .vhd file between Windows Azure storage accounts may be unsuccessful, and you receive a "Retrieved data is complete" warning message. This issue occurs if the .vhd file already exists on the destination or if the .vhd file is mapped to an existing virtual machine.
Issue 2
The import of Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) library server certificates may be unsuccessful for VMM library servers that are clustered.

 

Data Protection Manager (KB2791508)

Issue 1
Client backups fail when there is a case difference between the client computer name on the computer and the client computer name that is stored in Active Directory.

Operations Manager (KB2784734)

Issue 1
Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) in Operations Manager may provoke an increase in reporting threads and choke points.
Issue 2
After the Alert Attachment Management Pack (Microsoft.SystemCenter.AlertAttachment.mpb) is imported, you create a dashboard that contains an alert widget. When you click an alert, the Operations Manager console may crash.
Issue 3
When a Windows PowerShell module uses the Monitoringhost.exe process on an x86-based client that is running Windows 8, more than 800 megabytes (MB) of memory may be consumed.
Issue 4
After an application domain is created, adding another application domain may be unsuccessful.

Operations Manager - UNIX and Linux Monitoring (Management Pack Update)

Issue 1
When multiple process monitors are used to target the same computer or group, processes may incorrectly monitor some template instances. Additionally, problems with the monitored processes may not be detected. This issue occurs when each process monitor uses the same name as the process even though different argument filters are used in each process monitor.
Note After the updated Microsoft.Unix.Process.Library.mpb file is imported, all existing Process Template instances must be edited and saved for the fixed behavior to take effect.

 

Service Provider Foundation (KB2785476)

Issue 1
The OperatingSystemId property on a virtual hard disk (VHD) object is always set to NULL.
Issue 2
Virtual machine usage metrics are not aggregated at hourly intervals and are missing basic usage metrics such as network sent and receive I/O operations per second (IOPS).

 

Virtual Machine Manager (KB2792925 - Console; KB2792926 - VMM Server)

Issue 1
When a logical unit number (LUN) is unmasked on an iSCSI array, the VMM service may crash.
Issue 2
When a node is put in maintenance mode, virtual machines in the cluster change to a status of "Unsupported Cluster Configuration."
Issue 3
When an add-in that uses multiple DLL files is imported into the VMM console, the add-in is not imported. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

Add-in cannot be installed

Issue 4
When an add-in is imported into the VMM console on a server that is running Windows Server 2008 R2, the add-in is not imported.
Issue 5
When an add-in is imported into the VMM console, the console may crash.

• For more information see KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2785682/en-us

Installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 Beta - Step by Step

Here´s a step-by-step guide on installing VMM 2012 SP1 Beta.

First you need:

• Windows Server 2012 (which includes .NET Framework 4.0)
• Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK): http://www.microsoft.com/de-de/download/details.aspx?id=30652
• SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2012
• Minimum of 2 GB of RAM. (If you have less, the installation won´t allow you to proceed)

For the full table of requirements for VMM 2012 and VMM 2012 SP1 see here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/gg610562.aspx

1. SQL Server Installation

For my installation of VMM 2012 SP1 Beta, I install SQL Server 2012 on the same Windows Server 2012 where I was going to install VMM 2012 SP1 Beta. The installation of the SQL Server 2012 was basically the default installation, with default collation. SQL 2012 was installed quickly without any issue.

2. Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) Installation

I installed the ADK from the link mention above. For my installation, I first downloaded the full ADK and then installed the features required. The only features required from the ADK are:

• Deployment Tools
• Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE)

 

After this was done, the installation of VMM 2012 SP1 Beta could start.

3. VMM 2012 SP1 Beta Installation

The installation of VMM 2012 SP1 beta is straight forward as usual with the new System Center 2012 installation wizards. I installed the Management server and the Management console on the the machine.

   

   

I used the default database name for the VMM database. You can also specify the username that is connecting to the database server.

   

I deployed only a single VMM server and therefore did not create a DKM space in AD. Port and Library configuration stayed default.

   

After a few moments, the installation completed.

   

4. Adding of the Hyper-V Cluster to VMM

Since I already had a running Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V cluster, I now only needed to add the cluster to VMM. For this I used the Add Resource wizard. I quickly created a Run-As account during the wizard and entered the computer names of the cluster nodes manually.

   

 

Finally, the cluster (HVCLUSTER) showed up in the Fabric view of the VMM Console.

Overall, the installation of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 beta was as nice and easy as expected. Now the real fun start with configuring the other parts of the VMM fabric, like the networking. More on that later…

Running PowerShell Scripts as Recovery Tasks in System Center Operations Manager

You might run into the situation where you want to run a PowerShell cmdlet or a small PowerShell Script in a Operations Manager Recovery Task. There are multiple ways to do that. The following way can be configure by using the Operations Manager console and does not require to work with the Authoring console. However, if you have larger and more complex scripts that you want to run, this it’s not a appropriate solution.

So I created a Event based rule in Operations Manager and configured a recovery task that is based on the PowerShell.exe command. The solution looks like this:

Full path to file is the powershell.exe:

C:\windows\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe

In the parameter field are the PowerShell cmdlets separated by semi-colon in the following way:

-Command “& {cmdlet ; cmdlet ; cmdlet}”

Note: that if you need to use the “ character in your PowerShell cmdlet, you need to substitute it with the ‘ character.

This also works if you have to add additional PowerShell Snap-ins (using add-pssanpin) for the command you want to run.

Hope that help,

Gunter

Create a SMB 3.0 Share for a Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Failover Cluster

There are some settings to consider when creating a share for Hyper-V VHDs for a Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V failover cluster:

• The File and Storage role must be installed on the file server
  
  Install-WindowsFeature File-Services, FS-FileServer
• Create the Share as an SMB Share – Applications
  
  
• Give the Full control access on the NTFS and Share permission on the shared folder to:
  
  
  1. Hyper-V cluster nodes (in my case: HV01 and HV02)
  2. Cluster account itself (in my case: HVCLUSTER)
  3. Hyper-V administrative users (in my case: admin)
     
       
     
     Grant-SmbShareAccess –Name VMS –AccountName Test\HV01$,Test\HV02$,Test\HVCLUSTER$,Test\admin            -AccessRight Full
     (Get-SmbShare VMS1).PresetPathAcl | Set-Acl

Now you can create new virtual machines on the share or copy existing virtual machine VHDs to the share and import them in the Hyper-V Manager. Ensure that the VHD is located on the create share.

Finally, make the virtual machine highly available on the failover cluster using the Configure Roles… features in cluster manager.