Install LIS 3.5 on CentOS 6.3 and then upgrade to 6.5

Now that the Integration Services 3.5 has been released from Microsoft I wanted to try out to install them in a CentOS VM

Interestingly the support is for CentOS up to 6.3 and when reading the README file from CentOS in the dist that version is deprecated. According to the forums the CentOS version 6.4 and 6.5 has their own Integration services already in the distribution and that can be confirmed when I was testing out and trying to install 3.5 and still the modinfo said 3.1. The reason I was pursuing to install was that the nic in hyper-v said degraded..

Screen Shot 2014-01-03 at 15.32.01

So I tested some different cases ending up with the same result that the IS reported 3.1 and always the Network adapter as Degraded.

In the 6.3 version of CentOS there is no Integration Services by default so installing gives the following result

Screen Shot 2014-01-03 at 14.07.54

And when rebooting and checking the version I can see that I successfully installed the IC 3.5

Screen Shot 2014-01-03 at 14.15.36

The exiting part comes here where I now wanted to upgrade my CentOS 6.3 to 6.5 with “yum update” and as you can see on the next screendump I got version LIS 3.1

Screen Shot 2014-01-03 at 15.16.38

But my 3.5 rpm are still installed as you can see.

When checking the from the PowerShell side you can see that it first reports as version 3.5 and then when I have upgraded it says 3.1

Screen Shot 2014-01-03 at 15.52.33

One interesting bit in why I would like to do the LIS 3.5 upgrade on a CentOS 6.4/6.5 is that first after upgrade I get the integration services version from the host side as this is part of the new feature in 3.5, Key-Value Pair (KVP) Exchange that now works with Linux also. That is not part of the built in LIS 3.1 yet that CentOS/Redhat distributes.

Screen Shot 2014-01-03 at 16.02.20

Here you can read more about the new features in LIS 3.5.

Awarded MVP 2014 for the first time

As everyone else with some ITPro community engagement there is a date of the first day every quarter that makes the heart go a bit faster and the hopes for becoming one of the few privileged that get the Most Valuable Professional Award from Microsoft.

Today I got the award for my contributions in the Virtual Machine community 🙂

header_logo

I have been during quite some time trying to give the community my sharings in virtualization and automation and helping out so that others can benefit and not having to reinvent the wheel again.

Thank you all that have been following me on this blog, twitter and at other social networks and I hope that you benefit somewhat from my scavenges in the wonderful world of IT!

I am looking forward to this year when I will together with my fellow MVP´s explore and work together to help out in the deployment of Cloud OS.

 

New version of Convert-WindowsImage.ps1 that support Gen2

So I noticed that the awesome Convert-WindowsImage.ps1 PowerShell script has been updated to version 6.3 and published during the Christmas holidays. The script is maintained by Microsoft Consulting Services and was originally created by Mike Kolitz.

I really like this script and have used it alot when creating new VM´s and I have been awaiting an update to support the Generation 2 VM´s with UEFI boot.

Here you can see that I have added the parameter -VHDPartitionStyle GPT to use for the generation 2 VM

Screen Shot 2013-12-30 at 21.59.28

You can find the script here.

 

New Disk2VHD(x) from SysInternals that can make VHDx

So I saw today that Mark Russinovich have released a new version of the Disk2VHD binary from SysInternals

One really nice new feature is that you can with this updated tool now create VHDX directly without needing to convert a VHD and that does not require a Windows 2012 or Windows 8 or later to be able to work. This tool can be used when doing P2V also.

As you can see on my screendump I have tested it on a Windows 7 and the checkbox with VHDX.

Screen Shot 2013-12-20 at 13.53.09

You can find it here on SysInternals page http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415