February 2007 - Posts

• Virtual Machine Additions for Linux download link

  For some reason, several people have told me that they are not getting the link to download the Virtual Machine Additions for Linux on Microsoft Connect anymore. If that happens to you, try the direct link: https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=1475&SiteID=154 . You will still need to enter your Passport Live ID in order to access the Connect website, but that link should take you directly to the Linux Additions page. Posted Feb 22 2007, 03:26 PM by Jaguilar with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Virtualization

• Virtual PC 2007 FINAL is out!

  Today Microsoft released the final version of Virtual PC 2007. You can download it here. This version fully supports Vista, both as a Host and a Guest, supports AMD and Intel hardware virtualization, and also supports 64–bit Host operating systems. You can get some more information at the Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog, or directly on the VPC 2007 homepage. Posted Feb 19 2007, 07:36 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization

• NTBackup and Acronis TrueImage Server VSS troubles

  Today I decided to test out the Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) support in Virtual Server 2005 R2. In theory, as I mentioned in an earlier post, with VSS, virtual server can create a consistent “snapshot” of a running virtual machine so other applications, such as backup clients, can use that snapshot without interrupting the virtual machine itself. The only VSS-aware backup application I had installed was Windows’ very own NTBackup. So, I enabled VSS on the volumes, run NTBackup, and proceed to make a backup of my virtual machine. Everything started out OK, until NTBackup got stuck with the message “Waiting to retry shadow copy…”. Following my standard error-solving checklist, I checked the Event Viewer, and I found this message logged: Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {f5dbcc43-b847-494e-8083-f030501da611}. Routine details BeginPrepareSnapshot({f5dbcc43-b847-494e-8083-f030501da611},\\?\Volume{0cb1b616-8ea6-11db-88de-806e6f6e6963}\) [hr = 0x80070002]. We use Acronis imaging solution for deploying our server, and it turns out that Acronis’ VSS Provider has an issue with Microsoft’s VSS provider. Apparently the issue is well-known, and is documented in two forums posts. It is solved in the latest version of Acronis’ products, but I didn’t really had time to perform an upgrade (and Acronis’ products are notoriously stubborn when you try to uninstall them). So, I applied the solution suggested in one of the forum posts. I unregistered Acronis’ VSS provider using the command: regsvr32 /u \windows\system32\snapapivss.dll After that, the backup went without problems: Opening up the log once the backup is complete shows you that all files from the virtual machine were backed up succesfully:  This was done without turning the virtual machine off, taking advantage of the VSS functionality in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta. I performed the same operation on a Windows XP box, disabling NTBackup’s VSS support, and the backup predictably failed. Here’s some information on VSS: Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) Posted Feb 02 2007, 01:40 AM by Jaguilar with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Tools