Tony Soper posted a lot of Hyper-V Howto's on his blog, here is an excerpt: Hyper-V How To: Add a PT Disk to A VM with a Script Hyper-V How To: Add a...

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The webbernetz are abuzz with news that a new version of Ubuntu has been released today.  As such, I figured that I should post instructions on how to get it going under Hyper-V.

Now, I know that these steps are pretty complex, so I'll try to use as much detail as I can when writing them out.

Step 1.  Download the ISO for Ubuntu.
Step 2.  Create a VM and attach the ISO to it.  Use a Legacy Network Adapter if you need network access.
Step 3.  Turn the VM on.
Step 4.  Follow the on-screen instructions.

That's it.  It works right "out of the box", so to speak. 

Enjoy!

The other day, Ben Armstrong posted the steps for installing Windows PowerShell on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.  How awesome is that?  A real, modern, powerful shell on Hyper-V Server!

It should be noted that this also works on Windows Server 2008 R2 Core SKUs, so if you’re running Hyper-V on one of those, you can also use this trick.

So why is this cool?

Well, first of all, if you install PowerShell on a Server Core SKU, you can use a new and more powerful tool for installing and configuring server roles and features.

To do this, you need to load the Server Manager module into your shell with the following command:

Import-Module ServerManager

You can get a list of the new cmdlets that this module provides by running:

Get-Module ServerManager

So, if you’re on a Windows Server SKU, you can install all of your roles or features this way.  To install Hyper-V, you would use this command:

Add-WindowsFeature Hyper-V

Ok, that’s cool and all, but it’s not that spectacular.  So how about being able to actually interact with Hyper-V from this shell?  Even on Server Core or Hyper-V Server 2008 R2?

Check out James O’Neill’s PSHyperV project over on CodePlex.  If you download this library, you can interact with Hyper-V directly from your Core console. 

The first thing to remember is that you need to dot-source the HyperV.ps1 script so that all of the functions remain in memory, like so:

. .\hyperv.ps1

After you do that, you’ll get a list of all of the new functions and filters that this library provides.  Just as an example, you can create and configure a VM with these commands:

$vm = New-VM -name “MyVM”
Set-VMMemory -vm $vm -memory 2GB
Set-VMCPUCount -vm $vm -CPUCount 2
# some other logic to create a hard drive, or attach an existing one.
Start-VM -vm $vm -wait

I haven’t updated my three part series about different ways to install Hyper-V for our RTM release.  I’ve been working on getting some step-by-step videos created, but it’s always been on the back burner, and I was waiting to update the posts until I had the videos ready.

Well, a discussion on an internal DL yesterday lit a fire under me, so now I’m going to sit down and do this.  The videos aren’t done yet, but I’ll add them when they are.

Since not much of the original content has changed, I’m just going to update the original posts with the new bits.  I’ll add some more descriptions about why I’m doing what I’m doing, and where I got certain things.

Hopefully, this will make the series more useful.

1. Sysprep and Hyper-V
2. Unattended Installation of Windows and Hyper-V
3. Integrated Installation and The Beauty of the Win6 Servicing Stack

Mike Sterling just made a triumphant return to blogging by posting an article on how to add the RC1 ICs to WinPE.  Check it out here.  Keep in mind, though, that this only works for WinPE 2.0, which is the WinPE that is based on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

As for my triumphant return to blogging, I'll be back next week with some updates to old posts and new posts as well.  In the mean time, I'm going to go back to playing GTA4.

Thus far we covered the steps necessary to capture a system image with Hyper-V installed, and how to install Windows and Hyper-V at the same time without dealing with system images at all.

Let's take a step back and talk about system images again.  Images are a great way to deploy a customized version of Windows to many different workstations or servers without having to go through the effort of configuring each system independently of each other.

Even if you're just setting Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 up from a DVD, you're still using an image to do the installation.  If you look on the DVD in the \sources folder, you'll find a file called install.wim.  WIM stands for Windows IMage, and it's an actual image of a real Windows installation that Setup applies directly to your hard drive (and then manipulates a bit, but that's a different story).

You can also make your own WIM files using the imagex.exe tool that ships with the Windows AIK, which I'll link to again. 

The cool thing about WIMs (and there are actually many, but I'm just going to stick with the one that's relevant to this post) is that - using imagex.exe - you can mount a WIM as a folder on your Win6 (that's Vista and Server 2008)-based system and copy files to or from it, then save your changes.

So what does this have to do with Hyper-V installation?

Well, hang on...  there's more that we need to talk about.

With Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, some really cool work was done to make the operating systems more servicable.  I'm not really in a position to go into all the details, but one of the absolute coolest side effects was the ability to service a Windows installation without actually booting it, which is called Offline Servicing. 

No, really... what does this have to do with Hyper-V installation?

Hyper-V RC0 ships as a hotfix, which means that you can use the Offline Servicing features of the servicing stack to integrate it with any Windows Server 2008 image that you've got.  (This includes the retail media, as well as any image that you made yourself.  For best results, you should only use images that have been sysprep'd, or are otherwise generalized.)

Assuming you're using WIMs, here's how to do it.

1. Download the Hyper-V RC0 hotfix (it could actually be any hotfix packaged into an MSU)
   
2. Extract the CAB file from the MSU you just downloaded, just like we talked about in Part 2.  There's also a KB article that describes the process.
   
3. Open an elevated AIK Tools Command Prompt (because you've installed the AIK, right?).
   
4. Create a folder to use as a mount point for your WIM (I typically use C:\mnt).
   
5. Run:
   imagex /mountrw <path to WIM> <WIM Image Index> C:\mnt
   (A WIM can have multiple images inside of it, so you need to specify which image you want to deal with.  To get a list of images and their indexes, use imagex /info <path to WIM>)
   
6. Run:
   start /w pkgmgr /ip /m:<path to CAB extracted from the MSU> /o:c:\mnt;c:\mnt\windows /s:%temp%
   
7. Check the return code by running:
   echo %errorlevel%
   
   If it's anything but 0, there was a failure while applying the update.
   
8. Run:
   imagex /unmount /commit c:\mnt

And there you have it.  The next time you apply that image, your Windows installation will have the Hyper-V RC0 bits already present in the package store.  That's different than having the role enabled, though.  You'll still need to enable it (which can be automated using parts of the unattend fragments provided in Part 2), but when you do, you'll have RC0 from the beginning).