Hyper-V and in-place upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate
A cautionary note for those of you performing an in-place upgrade of a machine running Windows Server 2008 with the Hyper-V role enabled, to Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate.
During the installation, you will see the following compatibility report message stating that you should turn off the Hyper-V role:
This warning is incorrect, and you should not do this as the virtual machines will not be present, and virtual network configuration will be lost once the role is re-enabled.
You will see a similar message if you have virtual machines running at the time of upgrade, but it is a “hard block” (in other words, you cannot proceed further). In the case where you hit the hard block, running VMs should be cleanly shut down prior to upgrade. However, I re-iterate, you should not remove the role itself.
One other point to note is if you have online snapshots or virtual machines in a saved state. Saved states are not compatible between Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 RC build, so you should ensure you cleanly shut down VMs and delete online snapshots prior to upgrading to avoid the following message after the upgrade is complete:
Cheers,
John.
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Abiodun - assuming you follow the gotch above, the only other thing you should look to do is to cleanly shutdown VMs before the in-place upgrade and merge online snapshots. Otherwise, it should work just fine. Thanks, John.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Jason - no logs needed. This is fully expected - we were not able to fix the issue in the RTM builds, so it affects the RC to RTM upgrade scenario as well. However, saved states and online snapshots will be compatible between R2 RC and R2 RTM. Thanks, John.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Anderson - Did remote management work before the upgrade to R2? (ie it's not an issue with TMG, even if the service is disabled). If it's a remote management connectivity issue, your best bet to diagnose is hvremote from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/hvremote. I suspect that it if you did an inplace upgrade and had non-admin users added before, the ACLs on the WMI namespaces have not been preserved across upgrade. hvremote /show /target:otherboxname on both boxes will reveal all. Thanks, John.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Jason - can you provide hardware details and confirm you are running the latest BIOS available. We generally only see "hang on reboot" on desktop hardware (as opposed to "real"/aka 'supported' servers), and then 99%+ of the time it is solved by a BIOS update. Thanks, John.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
Ron - the hang described above was on one particular system. It strongly implies a problem with the hardware (BIOS most likely), and I iterate it's not a supported platform for running Hyper-V (Windows Server Catalog lists supported systems). Are you using the same hardware? Have you attempted to upgrade the BIOS to verify? Thanks, John.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
PingBack from http://last-words.linkedz.info/2009/05/05/hyper-v-and-in-place-upgrade-to-windows-server-2008-r2-release-candidate/Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
Rajshekhar - you're welcome :) And thanks! Cheers, John.Anonymous
May 08, 2009
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May 19, 2009
John, Thanks for the reply. Here's your requested info. It's an HP Pavilion A6518F Desktop / Athlon 64 X2 (B) 5400+ 2.8 GHz with 8 GB of RAM - Definately desktop class hardware. BIOS is 5.17 which is showing as the latest version on HP's website. It's not that troubling to me, I just wanted to share that I was able to uninstall the Hyper-V role and reinstall it without much issue. One caveat to that is that I run a very simple network setup, with a single NIC dedicated to Hyper-V and no serious VLAN configurations.Anonymous
June 07, 2009
John, Just thought I'd send you an update... after digging into my BIOS a little more, I noticed that HP has two BIOS updates labeled 5.17 for my machine, one released around March of 08 and one marked on December. So I booted into my BIOS, and saw that the date on my 5.17 was March. I decided to try the December version, and after some work, updated. Now, I can reboot my computer with HyperV installed without issue. Pretty silly of HP to have two releases of a BIOS at the same version number. Thanks again for all your help, and your awesome blog.Anonymous
June 07, 2009
Well John, I spoke too soon. It appears that my BIOS update reset my virtualization flag in my BIOS. After failing to start any VM's, I realized that my flag had been changed to disabled. I reset it, and still get the hang on shutdown. Oh well. ;)Anonymous
June 09, 2009
Hi John, Last weekend I did an inplace upgrade from Windows 2008 RTM with Hyper-V enabled to RC. Except for the network configuration the upgrade went smooth. The 5 guests did startup properly after the upgrade. One virtual switch was set to internal where the original configuration was external. Besides that I know have my 5 guests in Hyper-V manager and also 5 GUIDS of VM-Guests which I cannot delete, the have a status of saved-critical ??? How to get rid of these GUIDS?Anonymous
June 29, 2009
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July 10, 2009
Hi, John, The problem is actually resolved. There is no extra step has been added, but the server just can manager the client somehow after another power cycle. It looks it takes a while for the server to recognize the client. Thank you for your help. Thanks, SherryAnonymous
August 23, 2009
John, I've just experienced the same upgrade rollback issue going from the R2 RC to the R2 RTM. Do you still want log files? I can send them to you, before trying to uninstall the Hyper-V role and then upgrading.Anonymous
September 01, 2009
Thanks for your awesome blog, JohnAnonymous
September 12, 2009
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September 23, 2009
Hello John, i am keen follower of your blog and i always find very educating. i have been running Server 2008 with the the hyper-V role enabled for some time now. i have 3 VMs running on the host. i am in the process of upgrading the Hyper-V role to the R2 version, is this possible? if yes, what are the necessary precautions to take for a smooth upgrade experience? thanks for your anticipated help. AbiodunAnonymous
March 24, 2010
Hi everyone. This paper is really helpful, but in my case is not working. I already done all the steps. I got the next message from Hyper-V manager tool in my laptop ""cannot connect to the RPC service". My HYPER-V server has TMG, but I already discard firewall, because I stopped the service and the problem is still happening. The client is a workgroup and the TMG is domain server. I have checked everything on the web and I didn't find anything. My client is Windows 7 x64 enterprise and my Hyper-V server is Windows 2008 enterprise R2 with all recent updates. any help it will be appreciated. RegardsAnonymous
March 14, 2011
well on the other side of the note how do you actually correct this issue if you have did as the instructions asked and deleted hyper v and then installed 2008 R2 then reinstalled hyperV. because now i get event id 3040 and 3080 since i did this upgrade