Voice of the DBA

Tag: hyper-v

  • Virtual Lab – Setting up a new VM

    This is part of a series where I set up a virtual lab for testing and misc. work. The other parts in the series are here: Building a Virtual Lab with Hyper-V.

    I have my disks set up, now it’s time to create my virtual machines. I’m going to show you how to create one, but all really are done the same way. The names change, but no matter what my purpose is, this is how I set up the VMs. Once this is done, I’ll use other posts to go into the customizations for each machine.

    We’ll start in Hyper-V manager, selecting a new VM.

    virtlab_p

    After the welcome screen, you need to name your VM and choose a location. I’ve got a folder set up for this lab on my machine, so I choose that, and set the name (for this machine) as DenverDC. This will be my domain controller and the first machine I set up.

    virtlab_q

    Next we assign memory. I’ll want more for the SQL Servers, but this is easily changed at a later date, so I’ll leave this alone. One of the advantages of Core is less memory needed, and I could probably get by with less, but since I have 24GB on the host, I can spare half a gig.

    virtlab_r

    After memory comes the networking. As you can see, I have a number of choices. The "WholeWideWorld" is the connection some of my VMs use to access the internet. In this case, I’m choosing the Internal network, which is the Internal switch I have set up. This is limited to connections between the VMs and since I want this to be an isolated network, this works fine.

    virtlab_s

    My internal switch is actually configured as follows:

    virtlab_v

    Now we need to set storage. Since I set up my disks before this and named them in a way that I can understand, I choose the one I need. The default here is a new hard disk, but I’m saving space with differencing disks.

    virtlab_t

    I get a summary. Please check this as you set things up. Note that my differencing disk is set.

    virtlab_u

    I click finish, and I have a VM. I start it up from Hyper-V Manager and connect.

    virtlab_w

    Inside of Windows, I get the familiar Windows start screen (for Win8/WS2012). I click CTRL+ALT+DEL (leftmost icon on the toolbar) and then get prompted to change my password

    virtlab_x

    I change it,and I’ll use the same admin password on this machine that I use on a number of VMs.

    NOTE: This is NOT the password I use for any other services, including my VMWware VMs. At all. It’s only for Hyper-V VMs, but since I may have a few generations of VMs, I don’t want to forget this password. I also may end up starting up a few random VMs for talks, so I need to be able to get in.

    Once I log in, I get a basic session. Not much in Core.

    virtlab_y

    The only thing I really want to do here is rename the computer. I need to do more, but those will be in other posts. Let’s get the hostname.

    I could start server config (sconfig.exe) and get a basic setup, but I wanted to play with my PowerShell knowledge. So I started PoSh, and Google helped me find the computer name. I also used Google to find out the rename.

    virtlab_z

    The computer name (hostname) comes from

    $env:computername

    It doesn’t make sense, so I rename it with

    Rename-Computer -Newname "DenverDC"

    Once this machine restarts (Restart-Computer), it will have a new name.

    I know that I could use sconfig and it’s fast, or click around on my Standard servers and rename the machine, but once I get used to typing these commands in Powershell, it’s very, very quick.

    Note that my disks have been updated with changes. Their sizes have grown from the original 4MB.

    virtlab_aa

    I repeat this process for all the other machines, just to get them set with a password and name. Once they’ve rebooted, they’re ready for the next step.

  • Virtual Lab – Creating Differencing Disks

    This is part of my series on building a virtual lab for use with SQL Server and Windows. You can see the entire series here: Building a Virtual Lab with Hyper-V.

    The whole point of virtualization is better use of resources. Whether it’s CPU, storage, networking, power, etc., we are trying to save having to purchase 5 or 6 machines and connect them all, pay for them, etc. It’s much, much easier to use virtualization.

    This is especially true of storage. When we build a lab, we don’t want to have to allocate a ton of space for our systems. In my case, for my design, this is what I want to end up with.

    virtlab_o

    From my last post, I had the bottom two files already set up. These are my installations of Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard and Core, sysprep’d and ready to use.

    Differencing – Saving Space

    The idea in differencing disks is similar to the snapshot feature I used in VMWare to do this same process. I take a base disk, and create a “copy” of it. Except the copy doesn’t have everything from the base disk. Like a database snapshot in SQL Server, if I need to read something that’s in the base disk, I reference that. If I change something, or add something, I read from the copy.

    As you can see above, I have 5 small disks at 4MB and my 2 large base disks. Each of the small disks is a differencing disk off either the Standard or Core base installations.

    I created these by selecting New Hard Disk in Hyper-V Manager

    virtlab_i

    After the intro screen, I make sure I’ve picked VHDX.

    virtlab_j

    At the next screen, I choose the differencing option.

    virtlab_k

    Now I need to pick a location for the copy. On my setup, I’m trying to keep this lab contained, so I have a WS2K12 Lab folder. I choose that as my location for the differencing disk. I give it a name, in my case, I’m using “Function” concatenated with the name of the Windows host. As seen below, my file server will be named “FileAvalanche.vhdx”.

    virtlab_l

    Next I choose the parent disk. this is the base image. Depending on what I had in my design, I choose the Standard or Core images for various machines.

    virtlab_m

    I get a summary where I can see all my options, and then click finish.

    virtlab_n

    I do this five times and all of a sudden I have a lab.

    A few things. Use some naming convention so you can tell which disk is which. Also, make sure you stick things in a location. I set a specific folder location for my VMs and disks, and then altered the Hyper-V Manager settings to default to this folder. On my machine that’s D:\Virtual Machines.

    That helps me keep things contained, and it also means that when I want to copy a VM for a backup or to another machine, it’s easy.

  • Building a Virtual Lab with Hyper-V

    I needed to get this one on Hyper-V, so I decided to document the process. I’ve put together a series that looks at the steps I took.

    This will fill in as I go through the process, so if there’s something you don’t see, it’s coming.

  • Virtual Lab – Design and Setup

    This is part of a series where I set up a virtual lab for testing and misc work. The other parts in the series are here: Building a Virtual Lab with Hyper-V.

    I haven’t had a good lab set up since I moved from VMWare to Hyper-V on my systems. Since then I’ve had a number of random VMs set up, but none connected in any meaningful way as a domain. They were all standalones, but that needs to change.

    I wanted to do some additional testing with a few Windows and SQL features that needed a domain. So I decided to set one up with Hyper-V.

    I googled around and found a few references:

    I decided to try to do some of this myself, using these as guides, but also incorporating some of my new Powershell knowledge along the way. I won’t claim this is the best way to build a virtual lab, but this is the way I did it by cobbling together various piece of information.

    With that in mind, here’s what I’m looking to do. I want to create a domain with a few servers and a client for testing. I plan on making this setup on a separate network, using the 10.10.10.x address space as I don’t expect to run into networks with that one at home, or work.

    The machines I’m looking for are as follows. The role, OS, and then names are listed below:

    • DC (WS2K12 R2 Core) – DenverDC
    • SQL Server instances (WS2K12 R2 Core and Standard) – Broncos, Nuggets, and Rockies
    • File Server (WS2K12 R2 Standard) – Avalanche
    • Client (Win 8) – Keystone

    I’ll be running through the process and trying to document this for myself, and others.

    First Steps

    The first steps here are easy. I have Hyper-V setup, but if you don’t, it’s an easy confg item you can see at the beginning of this article.

    Next, download software. I didn’t have Windows Server on this machine, so I accessed MSDN and downloaded Windows Server 2012 R2. I have an MSDN license, so I get a few licenses. As this was downloading, I made not of the product keys.

    I’ve had a space on my machine setup. Since I used to use VMWare and Hyper-V, I have a space on my spare drive where I separate Hyper-V and VMWare. Inside the Hyper-V folder are my VMs for quick copying to my external drives and laptop as backups. In this case, I’m setting up a “WS2K12 Lab” folder.

    virtlab_g

    The Parent

    This is a standard setup I’ve seen in all the tutorials. Create a VM, create a new hard disk (I used defaults), install Windows Server, and run “sysprep” on the VM. I did this with both Core and Standard Server. This gave me two hard disks that had images of the server systems on them.

    virtlab_h

    I first set these disks to “read only” and then deleted the parent VMs. This gets me the base systems on which I will build things. I’ll deal with the Win 8 client later.

    That’s all I’m talking about here. I’ll move into the rest of the steps in future posts.