VIR-Hyper-V & Virtualization Technologies
Description
Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology has been available for a relatively short period of time. We have been tracking the top issues with Hyper-V and publicly blogging about them. The first step should be to review the top Hyper-V issues blog located in the Ask Core blog site. Here is a sample of that blog for Third Quarter in FY 2008.
Scoping the Issue
If you identify your issue as one of the top hyper-v issues, please review the information provided in the blog to resolve the issue. If the resolution for your issue involves downloading and installing a hotfix, please do that and determine if that fixes the issue. If you do not find your issue discussed in the blog, we still recommend downloading and installing Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 to see if that resolves your issue.
When working with Hyper-V servers it is important to properly identify the product and the issue. The product is either the Full or CORE version of Windows Server 2008 with the Hyper-V role installed or the standalone Hyper-V server product. Typically the issues can be categorized as follows:
- Hyper-V server (Parent partition) configuration or functionality.
- Hyper-V Virtual Machine (Guest partition) configuration or functionality.
- Hyper-V Networking (Parent and\or Guest partition) configuration or functionality.
- Hyper-V Storage configuration and\or access.
- Hyper-V Integration Services (installation and\or configuration).
- Working with Hyper-V snapshots.
- Backing up Hyper-V servers or virtual machines using Windows Server Backup (WSB), Data Protection Manager (DPM) or Third Party Backup Applications.
- Exporting\Importing Virtual Machines.
The system log is the first place to look for errors generated by Hyper-V. These errors can be sourced by different Hyper-V components which are listed in the Event Viewer under Application and Services Logs\Microsoft\Windows . A listing of these components is shown here -
Figure 1
If the Hyper-V servers are running in a Failover Cluster configuration and providing Highly Available Virtual Machines, please review the section pertaining to Failover Clusters.
If the Hyper-V servers are being managed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008, be aware that after making initial contact with an engineer on the CORE Team, you may be routed to a different team for support.
Data Gathering
The new Microsoft MPS Reporting Utility will gather the initial information a Microsoft engineer needs to start troubleshooting a Hyper-V issue but be prepared to gather additional information as requested. This MPS Reporting utility can be downloaded using the following link: Microsoft Product Support Reports.
Steps to generate the report:
1. Carefully review the system requirements section and ensure all requirements have been met to run the utility.
Figure 2
2. Download the appropriate version for the operating system (x86 or x64) under the ‘files in this Download’ section.
3. Select [Run] from the pop-up.
Figure 3
4. Select ‘I agree’ and then click ‘Next’.
Figure 4
5. If you are running the utility on the machine experiencing the issue and the server has internet connectivity, choose [This computer]. If not, select [Another computer] and follow the instructions.
Figure 5
6. For Hyper-V issues please select [General], [Server Components], [Business Networks] in the ‘Select the diagnostics you want to run’ and click ‘Next’.
Figure 6
7. When the data gathering process completes, select [Save the results] option.
8. The results (CAB file) will be saved to the location specified. Ensure the location can be accessed so the results can be easily sent to the Support Engineer you are working with.
Figure 7
9.
Figure 8
10. Depending on the size of the CAB file, the results can either be e-mailed to the Support Engineer or the Support engineer can create a File Transfer Workspace and the file can then be uploaded.
Note: If you are unable to install the pre-requisites for running the MPS Reporting Utility, then you can expect to have the Microsoft Support Engineer to send a separate diagnostic tool to you to gather the data needed to troubleshoot an issue.