SCVMM 2008 R2 Operations Timeout

Sometimes, using SCVMM on a new Hyper-V cluster to deploy a new VM may result in an operational timeout. This is an example:

Although the error message did not state "timeout" directly, you would see the following exact error when you execute "winrm helpmsg" on the error code given (in this example 0x80338029):

C:\> winrm helpmsg 0x80338029

The WS-Management service cannot complete the operation within the time specified in OperationTimeout.
 
The Hyper-V hosts may need longer time to respond to the VMM server using Windows Remote-Management (winrm). To increase the time-out period and to increase more concurrent operations that can be performed by the VMM server, execute the following commands on the affected Hyper-V hosts:
 
winrm set winrm/config @{MaxTimeoutms = "1800000"}
winrm set winrm/config/Service @{MaxConcurrentOperationsPerUser="400"}
net stop winrm
net start winrm
net start vmmagent
 
For other "Not Responding" host status issues on SCVMM 2008 R2, refer to this useful guide on Microsoft official site.

Updating of SCVMM Template in Offline mode

The new Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (VMST) 3.0 helps to service and patch Hyper-V VMs in offline mode. The new v3.0 introduces the following new features:

1. Offline virtual machines in a SCVMM library.
2. Stopped and saved state virtual machines on a host.
3. Updating of Virtual machine templates.
4. Offline virtual hard disks in a SCVMM library by injecting update packages.

The new feature that I’m waiting for is the ‘offline’ patching of VM templates. In SCVMM, template is an efficient way to deploy pre-configured VMs quickly over and over again. However, the newly created VMs out of a particular template will be ‘out-of-patch’ soon. Imagine you can’t enjoy the new features offered in Windows 2008 R2 SP1 immediately, as the VM template was created quite sometime ago.

For downloading of this tool, click here. I won’t go into details, as a “Getting Started” guide is included in the toolkit. Hence, I would just summarize the procedure of servicing VM template (the feature that I’m most interested on):

1. Prepare the infrastructure for servicing, including AD, DHCP, SCVMM, and updating services (WSUS/SCCM). I believe most of us should already have this infrastructure in place if you’re using Hyper-V and SCVMM seriously.
2. The Virtual Machine Servicing Tool must be installed on the same server as the VMM Administrator Console (the Administrator Console provides Windows PowerShell support). The VMM server and library components can reside on the same server or on one or more additional servers.
3. From the target template that you want to update offline, use SCVMM to create a Gold VM out of it. VMST will deploy the Gold VM on a maintenance Hyper-V host with WSUS/SCVMM patches and replace it with an updated VM template eventually. The Gold VM must be stored in the same VMM library.
4. Perform initial setup on VMST to reference the VMM server, Maintenance Host, update server (WSUS and/or SCCM server).
5. Create a Template Group. Associate the Gold VM to this template.
6. Create scheduled servicing jobs. Start the job.

During the servicing job, the following tasks will occur:

1. Mounts the gold virtual machine associated with the virtual machine template on the maintenance host.
2. Starts the gold virtual machine on the maintenance host, and then invokes either Configuration Manager or WSUS to update it.
3. Clones the updated gold virtual machine, creates a template from the cloned virtual machine, and then uses Sysprep to generalize the cloned gold virtual machine to remove hardware ID information.
4. Shuts down the updated gold virtual machine, and returns it to the offline VMM Library.
5. Associates the .vhd file of the cloned virtual machine template with the original template, and then deletes the cloned virtual machine template.

Rebuilding Perfmon WMI for SCVMM

Just earlier, SCVMM (great management tool for Hyper-V) reported that one of our Hyper-V cluster nodes stopped responding. We raised a ticket with Microsoft Technet. After some days of troubleshooting with the great Chinese Microsoft engineers (with my limited Chinese vocabulary), it was discovered that the Performance Monitor (Perfmon) WMI of the affected node was corrupted and hence unable to report to the SCVMM host.


To rebuild the perfmon WMI, enter the following command using elevated command prompt at the system32 prompt:

C:\Windows\system32 > lodctr /R

Re-sync the perfmon counter with WMI by running winmgmt /resyncperf.

C:\Windows\system32 > winmgmt /resyncperf

And then restart the WMI service. The parameter 'R' for lodctr must be in capital for the rebuild. This parameter is not even documented on Microsoft Technet.

Sharing ISO images among Hyper-V hosts

By default, when you want to mount an ISO image to a DVD drive on your Hyper-V VMs, SCVMM would copy the ISO image to the hosting parent partition. For better I/O performance & resiliency, this is desirable when you need to mount the image on a permanent basis. However, quite often, we only need to mount the image temporarily to install some applications.

SCVMM R2 (yes, only the latest version at this time of writing) allows you to share the image over CIFS (a.k.a file share). This saves storage space and time to transfer the image over.


If you read the in-built help, it only briefly mentioned about using "constrained delegation". Constrained delegation (1) allows a computer to impersonate a user account to gain access to resources that normally only available to that user; and (2) constraints the access only to specific services e.g. CIFS. How do configure that? Someone did the step-by-step explanation. Read this blog post.

CPU Type of VM in SCVMM R2

The performance of one of the Hyper-V VMs deteriorated severely. I started the task manager and noticed that the CPU utilization hits 100%! I logged on SCVMM R2, checked on its hardware properties and realized that the CPU was just the ancient Pentium III?! I didn't even able to choose the CPU type when the VM was managed by Hyper-V manager.

Fortunately, someone posted this interesting article that explains it does not specify actual hardware but is used to calculate host ratings. In addition, SCVMM also uses it to set CPU resource allocation accordingly. As I set my "busy" VM to higher CPU, the host should assign more CPU cycles for it.