Innovative Technology Weblog

In an experiment in cooperation with some collegues @ VMWare and CAPGemini we developed a virtualized, portable MS Groove environment that can be started from a USB device. We had to call in support from VMWare because ThinApp wouldn’t start Groove. After making a bug report VMWare took it up seriously and supplied me with a version that does work! We are definately moving forward here; Groove without any additional infrastructural needs or traditional installation, running without administrative credentials and from a portable device is now very real. (will it work on Windows 7? More work to be done…)

OpsMgr is mainly used to get a grip on you server infrastructure and to optimize performance and availability by using best practice, which knowledge provide in the MP’s, and resolve errors with a head start with the provided knowledge. But the next step into monitoring is getting the most out of your infrastructure and Virtualization is one of these things that can help you get there.

Currently a lot of organizations want to save money and cut back on hardware and power with the great green IT wave landing in most organizations right now. OpsMgr can help you that. VMM 2008 has the ability to manage and optimize performance, load and availability and cut back on the off hour work by leveraging the heterogenic environment to a single management console in combination with PRO ( Performance and Resource Optimization ) it does give you the insides and tips in your environment. So System Center Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager will give you the tools you need the manage it all.

But how can i select the best virtualization candidate in my environment to make the first steps in optimizing my infrastructure? The answer is easier than expected.

To select the best virtualization candidates just import the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and the System Center Virtualization Reports 2008 Management pack from the catalog to run the report for virtualization candidate selection, even when you not using VMM 2008 in your environment.

This MP is not only for the SCOM 2007 R2 users but can be used in SCOM 2007 SP1 too. Just download the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 and import the Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.2008.mp and the Microsoft.Virtualization.Reports.2008.mp and you can run your reports.

Getting into the report go, in the SCOM console, to the reporting area and navigate to the System Center Virtualization reports 2008  and select the Virtualization Candidates report. Now you can define the parameters for you selection of virtualization candidates.

Start identifying you virtualization candidates and building your dynamic datacenter, have fun with it!

Update: The selection process for virtual candidates relays on the “Virtual machine” property “IsVirtualMachine” to be FALSE for selecting the physical machines in your environment. The downside to that property is that VMWare virtual machines are not detected so the generated reports will show the physical machines you want to see and the virtual VMWare machines.

The solution to that problem is the following Management pack made by Pete Zerger of the System Center Central. Thanks Pete!

Virtual Machine Discovery MP for OpsMgr 2007

This MP extends existing discovery of virtual machines by Operations Manager and Essentials to include VMware guests. The MP will update the “IsVirtualMachine” property of the Windows Computer object to TRUE for VMware guests. Also disables and replaces the existing discovery rule that sets this value to false for non-MS VMs.

Regards,
Walter Eikenboom
http://weblogwally.spaces.live.com

One of the most anticipated features of SCCM 2007 R2 is “App-V Integration”. We have recently tested the end-to-end scenario for this integration and we can say with confidence: it BLOWS . In a nutshell, by integrating App-V with SCCM you lose App-V’s best features and reduce the solution to something that’s even worse than SCCM by itself!

So what happens when you enable the App-V/SCCM integration feature in the SCCM Management Console?

• Control of the App-V client is seized by the SCCM client. If you had App-V running on its own before you enabled the integration, you’ll notice that all App-V apps that are published through App-V’s Publishing Server are now rendered invalid. On launch you’ll get a “Unable to initialize package information (0×00000000)” error.
• You must now publish your App-V apps through SCCM as “Virtual Application Packages”. This works by importing the .XML file of the App-V package. SCCM will distribute the packages to its Distribution Points and you can enable those Distribution Points for HTTP(S) streaming.
• To get the App-V apps to your clients, you’ll have to create SCCM advertisements. Basically SCCM advertisements replace the App-V Publishing Server. The behavior of getting App-V apps to your desktop now becomes eerily similar to SCCM’s way of installing applications. No more getting your shortcuts immediately upon logon (like you get with App-V); you will have to go get a cup of coffee and hope that SCCM is willing to give you your apps today.
• If you created non-mandatory assignments, then you’ll have to go to Add/Remove Programs yourself and click “Run” for all the apps that you want. However clicking “Run” doesn’t actually run your app, it only registers the App-V app with the local App-V client. Don’t expect to see any progress bar or visual feedback that the registration actually happened; just keep scouring around in your Start Menu in hope of finding the shortcuts for your new app.
• If you created mandatory assignments, you’ll get one or more notifications from SCCM (after some time ofcourse) that SCCM has App-V apps for you that it would like to register with the local App-V client. It will do that on *every* desktop you logon to. Prepare to spend quite a bit of quality time with the SCCM Client…
• If you’re using either Windows Terminal Services or Fast User Switching in Vista, you’re SOL because the SCCM Client is allergic to terminal sessions. You’ll get a message telling you that “No programs are available to run from a Terminal Services session”. How nice. If you happen to be running the console session, you won’t notice this limitation because at the console session, everything works just fine. So make sure you also test your solution via a terminal session so you won’t get caught by surprise.

As a result of the findings described above, we were pretty disappointed with the solution and decided to reverse our decision to integrate App-V with SCCM. However we did like the idea of using SCCM Distribution Points to stream App-V apps from. So we had a go at doing a manual integration of App-V with SCCM so that we could use just the SCCM parts we wanted. The idea was inspired by Tim Mangan’s article which included this diagram:

In his article he never got around to actually testing if it was possible to stream an application that was published by App-V’s Publishing Server from an SCCM Distribution Point. He only verified that is was possible to install the App-V app through an MSI with SCCM. So we ventured to get HTTP streaming working against SCCM Distribution Points, with the shortcuts still being provided by an App-V Publishing Server. In a nutshell: it works! You do have to setup a few mechanisms to get load balancing working though.

Here is how it works:

• First and foremost: disable the App-V integration with SCCM. To do this, go to the SCCM Console -> Site Database -> Site Management -> <Site> -> Site Settings -> Client Agents -> Advertised Programs Client Agent -> Properties and make sure “Allow virtual application package advertisement” is NOT selected.
• Enable your SCCM Distribution Points for BITS, HTTP and HTTPS content transfer. To do this, go to the SCCM Console -> Site Database -> Site Management -> <Site> -> Site Settings -> Site Systems -> <your DP> -> ConfigMgr distribution point -> Properties and select “Allow clients to transfer content from this distribution point using BITS, HTTP and HTTPS”.
• We found that (at least in the RTM version of SCCM 2007 R2) you don’t have to enable “virtual application streaming” on the “Virtual Applications” tab of the distribution point to be able to stream from a SCCM DP when using our manual integration. The added benefit of this is that you can now also use Secondary Site DP’s as streaming servers!
• Set up an App-V Management Server on any server you like. You can even set it up on a SCCM server, it doesn’t matter. Use the default installation settings for the entire installation. After installation, set the Default Content Path to the following: http://%SFT_SOFTGRIDSERVER%
• Add an App-V package to SCCM for distribution and streaming:
  • Go to the SCCM Console -> Site Database -> Computer Management -> Software Distribution -> Packages -> New -> Package. Enter the information about your package and click Next. Select “This package contains source files” and set the Source Directory to the location of your App-V package and click Finish. Note that you import the App-V package as a normal SCCM package and NOT as a Virtual Application Package. Importing it as a Virtual Application Package will cause the .SFT file in the App-V package to be renamed and cause the .SFT file to be added to not 1 but 2 locations on each SCCM Distribution Point, doubling storage requirements.
  • When the package is added to SCCM, find the Package ID and use it to update the streaming location in the App-V OSD files. For each OSD file in your App-V package, update the HREF statement to HTTP://%SFT_SOFTGRIDSERVER%/SMS_DP$/SMSPKG/<your SCCM Package ID>/<name of your SFT file>
    (If you are using a File Share Distribution Point, the IIS vdir may be different than SMS_DP$. Verify the vdir name in IIS Manager and ensure that all DP’s are either standard DP’s or File Share DP’s.)
  • Now add some SCCM Distribution Points to your package so that SCCM can distribute the App-V content
• Import the same App-V package into the App-V Management Server so that you can distribute the shortcuts and set permissions:
  • On the App-V Management Server, go to the App-V Management Console, go to Applications
    -> Import Application and go to the same App-V package folder. Select the .SPRJ file and click Open. Perform your regular App-V import steps and finish the import.
  • The imported applications in the App-V Management Console should now show the correct http:// paths to both the OSD file(s) and the SFT file(s).
• That’s it! Now just configure your App-V Clients on the desktops to use your newly setup App-V Management Server by configuring a Publishing Server and use Group Policy to set the %SFT_SOFTGRIDSERVER% to the name of a SCCM Distribution Point nearby. We set this variable to DNS name that uses DNS Round Robin to distribute the load to multiple DP’s.

In an act of “endeavoring to deliver a release with support [that] customers deem important” VMware accidentally left a licensing timebomb enabled in the build that it shipped to customers about three weeks ago. The timebomb causes all installed licenses for ESX to be regarded as invalid on August 12, 2008. This in turn causes virtual machines to not be allowed to start from a powerdown or suspended state or allow virtual machines to be VMotioned to another ESX host.

VMware provides one way to prevent encountering the problem and one temporary workaround until they can provide a patch: VMware has released express patches to remedy the problem.

Full repeat of VMware’s latest e-mail advisory:

Dear VMware Customers,

We have released the express patches for the product expiration issue. Please go to http://www.vmware.com/go/esxexpresspatches for download and KB articles. Since our last customer email we have completed our verification tests that the express patches we’ve released are fully compatible with the VMware Update Manager. Please see the KB articles for deployment information regarding Update Manager.

The KB articles are kept up-to-date. Please refer to the KB articles for information and updates.

In our last update, we referred to an initiative by our support and engineering teams to find an option to apply the patch without the necessity of entering maintenance mode and VMotion of VM’s to other servers, or VM power-off and re-power-on. Our earlier tests have not found a consistently successful way to address this. We continue to investigate this possibility, as we know that it would reduce the maintenance burden on our customers who may not have a patched server available for VMotion.

We are on target to release updated versions of the ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 patch at 6 PM PST today. This is for customers who have not already upgraded to the previously released version of ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2

Thank you,

The VMware ESX Product Team

Problem:

An issue has been discovered by many VMware customers and partners with ESX Update 2 (build number 103909) and ESXi 3.5 Update 2 (build number 103908) where Virtual Machines fail to power on or VMotion successfully. This problem began to occur on August 12, 2008 for customers that had upgraded to ESX 3.5 Update 2. The problem is caused by a build timeout that was mistakenly left enabled for the release build.

The following message is displayed in the vmware.log file for the virtual machine:

This product has expired. Be sure that your host machine’s date and time are set correctly.
There is a more recent version available at the VMware web site: http://www.vmware.com/info?id=4.
————–
Module License Power on failed.

Affected Products:

- VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 & ESXi 3.5 Update 2. Thank you, The VMware ESX Product Team

- The problem will be seen if ESX350-200806201-UG is applied to a system.

- No other VMware products are affected.

Resolution:

VMware Engineering has produced express patches for impacted customers to resolve the issue