a Single Point of Contact

Issue:

You’ve installed VMWare Workstation on Vista or Windows 7 and the two VMNet adapters display as unidentified by the host OS.  This causes your firewall profile to switch to the Public setting and lock down your computer even on a trusted network.  Manually switching the virtual NICs to Private solves the problem only until the next reboot.

Cause:

The root cause has to do with the way Vista and Windows 7 automatically identifies network types.  The information can be found on MSDN:

Windows Vista automatically identifies and monitors the networks to which a computer connects. If the NDIS_DEVICE_TYPE_ENDPOINT flag is set, the device is an endpoint device and is not a connection to a true external network. Consequently, Windows ignores the endpoint device when Windows identifies networks. The Network Awareness APIs indicate that the device does not connect the computer to a network. For end users in this situation, the Network and Sharing Center and the network icon in the notification area do not show the NDIS endpoint device as connected. However, the connection is shown in the Network Connections Folder. Also, if NDIS_DEVICE_TYPE_ENDPOINT is set, the Windows Firewall ignores the connection when Windows Firewall enforces public, private, or domain policies.

Solution:

NOTE: This solution will also work on Server 2008 when you have multiple NICs installed (aka: cluster or backup network). 

Option 1

Important: This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

• 322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Click the follwoing subkey:HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

 

3. Browse through the 00xx subkeys until you find the REG_SZ VMNet subkey with a value of either “\DosDevices\VMnet8” or “\DosDevices\VMnet1” (default values)
4. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type *NdisDeviceType, and then press Enter. 
6. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
7. Type 1, and then click OK.
8. Exit Registry Editor.
9. Disable & re-enable the VMWare NICs
10. DoneNote: In case simply disabling and re-enabling the virtual NICs doesn’t fix the problem immediately reboot your computer.  

Option 2

If all this seems a bit confusing or you are unfamiliar with modifying your registry then you can download a powershell script that will automagically do the work for you.

Option 3

If you only use VMWare Workstation guests in a Bridged network then you can simply disable the NICs which will solve the problem all together.

This information was originally posted here…

Matt :: Oct.30.2008 :: Microsoft, Virtual, Vista :: 3 Comments »

Can’t wait to try this out…things are getting very interesting. How long before someone loads this on their laptop?

Overview

Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 is a stand-alone product that provides a simplified, reliable, cost-effective and optimized virtualization solution enabling organizations to improve server utilization and reduce costs. It allows organizations to consolidate workloads onto a single physical server and is a good solution for organizations who want a basic and simplified virtualization solution for consolidating servers as well as for development and test environments. Low utilization infrastructure workloads, departmental applications and simple branch office workloads are also candidates to virtualize using Hyper-V Server 2008.

• Click here to download Hyper-V Server 2008…

So just what is Hyper-V?

(from the MS Virtualization Team blog)

• Hyper-V Server 2008 was built using the Windows hypervisor and other components, including base kernel and driver technologies. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 shares kernel components with Windows Server 2008.
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 contains a sub-set of components that make up Server Core deployment option of Windows Server 2008, and has a similar interface and look and feel. But as you know, Server Core has roles like DNS, DHCP, file. Hyper-V Server 2008 is just virtualization.
• Because Hyper-V Server 2008 shares kernel components with Windows Server 2008, we don’t expect special hardware drivers to be required to run Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
• The maximum number of guest instances that can run on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 is 128 (of course this is dependent on the hardware, memory and workloads). Additionally, each guest OS must have a valid license.
• Hyper-V Server 2008 runs/upports all the guest OSes supported by its big brother, WS08 Hyper-V. See here for a complete list.

The Virtual PC guy’s post on Hyper-V Server 2008…

Here’s a screenshot of Hyper-V Server 2008 after first logon:

Matt :: Oct.02.2008 :: Microsoft, Virtual :: No Comments »

Congratulations to VMWare for being the first to be validated under Microsoft’s new Microsoft Server Virtualization Program (SVVP).

“VMware Lays Foundation for Broader Market Penetration by Giving Customers Access to Support for Software For All Major Microsoft Applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, SharePoint Server and others across Virtualized Environments

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Sept 3, 2008 — VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced it has qualified its industry-leading VMware ESX hypervisor under the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). VMware ESX 3.5 update 2 (ESX 3.5u2) is the first hypervisor to be listed under the program, providing VMware customers who run Windows Server and Microsoft applications with access to cooperative support from Microsoft and VMware. “

Click here to read the rest of the news release…

Updated 9/10/2008:   VMware has only achieved support for Windows Server 2008 x86.  There is not 64-bit support as of yet.  However if you read the fine print under Additional Information, products that have passed SVVP requirements for Windows Server 2008 are considered supported on Windows Server 2000 SP4 and Windows Server 2003 SP2 and later.  Good news.

Click here for more information…

Matt :: Sep.10.2008 :: Microsoft, News, Virtual :: No Comments »

We all knew it was coming shortly after Hyper-V RTM’d a while back.  MS had been hinting around at releasing an update to their support policy for virtualizing Exchange and they finally delivered.

"Today Microsoft announced some significant changes to its licensing and support policies for applications in hardware virtualization environments. There are two key parts of the announcement worth highlighting for Exchange customers:

1. Microsoft now supports Exchange Server 2007 SP1 running Hyper-V or hypervisors validated under the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).
2. Microsoft is waiving its 90-day license reassignment policy to enable customers who virtualize Exchange to move their licenses between servers within a data farm as often as necessary."

Highlights for Exchange 2007

• The guest is running Exchange Server 2007 SP1
• The Exchange server is deployed on Windows Server 2008 OS  (This is a big one)
• The Exchange server does not have the Unified Messaging server role installed
• No dynamically expanding disks (fixed disks only)

It is highly recommended to read the Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments found on the Exchange TechNet library if you plan on or are even thinking about virtualizing Exchange.

Click here to read the entire article…

Matt :: Aug.19.2008 :: Exchange, Microsoft, Virtual :: No Comments »

I’m never one to reinvent the wheel when Jim Collins of the Microsoft Core Team has done a great job explaining how to get Virtual Server to run on Vista.

“If you’re trying to run Virtual Server on Vista, you need to do two things.

STEP 1: Enable IIS and the correct settings. To do this, go to Control Panel and under the Programs category click on Windows Features to Turn Windows features on and off. Here you will see a long list of features that can be enabled/disabled in Vista. For this discussion were specifically interested in enabling features under Internet Information Services (IIS). I’ve typed out what needs to be enabled below and included a screenshot.

STEP 2: Run IE using elevated privileges. To do this, right click on IE and select Run as Administrator.

You must do both.”

Read the rest of Jim’s post here…

Matt :: Nov.21.2007 :: Microsoft, Virtual, Vista :: No Comments »

Compatible with Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
Virtual Machine Additions for Linux (32bit and 64bit) are designed to improve the usability and interoperability of running qualified Linux operating systems as guests or virtual machines of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

Matt :: Oct.24.2007 :: Microsoft, Virtual :: No Comments »