Yes, I know, many of you now said “Misha is going to talk about Shrink”. You know what, you pretty true, but …

Everybody knows What the “shrink” does. Shrink removes an empty space from .VMDK file.

However, the problem is this: What is empty space?

When Windows deletes a file, it doesn’t actually delete the data on the disk, it just deletes the references/pointers in the file allocation table. So when “Shrink” is processing a vmdk and is looking at the raw disk, it’s seeing values that aren’t empty (non-zero), and exports them as such.

You can easily test this out. Create a new vmdk on a VM. Export the VMDK right after you’ve created it. The exported files will be very small. Now fill the vmdk up with files and export; it will be very big. Now, delete all the files in the vmdk and export; it’ll still be big! If you will try to do a “Shrink”, you will see that the vmdk file is still big.

So, before doing a Shrink, I’m always using a really cool command line tool developed by Mark Russinovich, SDelete. Simply, execute SDelete with parameter -c inside running Virtual machine, then shut down the Guest and do a Shrink.

Last note. Just in case you forget how to do a shrink . From command line go to C:\Programme\VMware\VMware Server\ and execute the vmware-vdiskmanager.exe as shown in following example:

“C:\Programme\VMware\VMware Server\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe” -k “ITSTUFF-SRV-1.vmdk”

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In short, Red Hat has joined Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, and Microsoft is now a Red Hat partner for virtualization interoperability and support. Microsoft will also be listed in the Red Hat Hardware Certification List once the Red Hat certification process has been completed later this year.

This free e-learning collection of four clinics offers a comprehensive introduction to Hyper-V and Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008, System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008, and Microsoft Application Virtualization.

Click here to learn more

Summary

Collection 6333: Exploring Microsoft Virtualization Technologies

Overview

This collection of three 2-hour online clinics and an 1-hour online clinic provides IT Professionals experienced in Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 with the knowledge and skills to implement and manage virtualization technologies.
Topics covered in the clinic within the collection include:

• Introduction to Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
• Overview of Microsoft Application Virtualization
• Overview of Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008
• Overview of Hyper-V

Student Prerequisites

• Experience in planning, implementing, and supporting Windows Server–based networks, operating systems and platform infrastructure. This may include experience in Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008.
• Knowledge of server virtualization and Hyper-V.

The Failover Clustering feature enables you to create and manage failover clusters. A failover cluster is a group of independent computers that work together to increase the availability of applications and services. The clustered servers (called nodes) are connected by physical cables and by software. If one of the cluster nodes fails, another node begins to provide service (a process known as failover). Users experience a minimum of disruptions in service.

This guide shows you how to use these two technologies together to make a virtual machine highly available. You will do this by creating a simple two-node cluster and a virtual machine, and then failing over the virtual machine from one node to the other. Continue @ Source…

“System Centercentre Virtual Machine Manager requires Windows PowerShell 1.0.”

We can see this error in two situations:

1. We have not installed PowerShell 1.0.
2. We have installed another version of PowerShell, let say PowerShell CTP 2.

BTW, we will have the same issue if we try to install Exchange 2007 Admin Tools while having PowerShell CTP 2 installed.

The workaround is very simple.
“Prerequisites Checking” is looking for a registry key named PID. The value for this key should be “89383-100-0001260-04309“.

We can create it manually, create file PSv1.reg. Here is a content of PSv1.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1]
“PID”=”89383-100-0001260-04309″

Import the PSv1.reg, by running it, and ran the SCVMM installation again and the problem will disappear.

Now that the prerequisite phase is complete we can safely remove the created key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT
\CurrentVersion\WindowsServerBackup\Application Support\{66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}

When the keys listed above created, we also need to create a String Value with the following parameters / settings:

Name: Application Identifier
Type: REG_SZ
Value: Hyper-V

When backing up virtual machines, we must select all volumes where VM related files is present, because Windows Server Backup only supports volume based backups.

For more information about Hyper-V virtual machine backups, take a look on the KB958662.

Download (14.4MB PDF)

Source: www.microsoft.com