Running CentOS 7 on a gen2 VM in Hyper-V

In my latest blog I was exploring the possibility to get a Redhat Linux to work in a generation 2 VM and I was also explaining that I had some issues with the CentOS version 7 that is currently being developed and that issue was with the EFI boot and it was malfunctioning!

Now as of yesterday 25 of June when there was a new release I could actually get a working CentOS 7 in a generation 2 VM on my lab environment!

So to get the fresh build installed on a Gen2 HyperV 2012 R2 VM you can do the following,

here I found the Boot ISO -> http://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/os/x86_64-latest/images/ and downloaded the boot.iso and configured it to be used for boot in my test-VM and as I described in the other post I unchecked the Secure boot also

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Once booted I connected the network and then added the path to the repository

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The path to be added was http://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/os/x86_64-latest/ , by using -latest in the path you will get the latest build instead of some old maybe not so well working version, as described on their page the distribution is still being developed

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And then choosing what roles to install and partitioning of the disk and then start the installation 🙂

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Once installed you can see that it now nicely boots into CentOS and I can log in

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And you can see that it utilizes the Dynamic Memory function of Hyper-V also

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Running Redhat Enterprise Linux 7 in a generation 2 VM on Hyper-V

I was reading the post from Ben Armstrong how he installed and configured a Ubuntu Linux VM to work under a generation 2 VM.

And after that I wanted to try this with either Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or CentOS 7 as they would incorporate the Linux integration components that would be needed for being able to let go of that VM BIOS legacy generation 1 Hyper-V VM :-). Red Hat has released their 7 but CentOS is still in buildmode and thus this would be done on their “nightly build” as described on the site http://seven.centos.org and I did take a test with the current release but got an error during install with the EFI Boot so I went for the Red Hat and tried with that.

So Downloading the Redhat ISO and creating a VM was the first steps, If you do not have an account at redhat you can sign up and download a trial.

And then I created a VM and as Ben showed I disabled secure boot and added the ISO to boot:

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After that I booted the VM and connected the network and configured the settings and choosed a Server with A GUI

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The installation was successful and I could reboot with no warnings or errors

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Then once the installation was complete I could start a browser and test and as you can see it is a Generation 2 🙂

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I will during the next couple of days check out the new builds of CentOS and see if my error will be fixed and I can create a Gen2 VM of that one also 🙂

 

vCenter 5.5 integration in SC VMM 2012 R2

I have for a Server Lifecycle project been investigating the possibility to add a vCenter 5.5 to a System Center VMM 2012 R2 environment as we are going to use WAP, SMA, SPF and VMM.

Based on the documentation on Microsoft Technet site the support ends with vSphere 5.1. Now this customer already runs vSphere 5.5  and I wanted to quickly check if it was possible at all to connect a vCenter 5.5 to VMM 2012 R2 and manage some basic tasks on VM´s.

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And as you can see I managed to add the vCenter Server and after adding a ESXi host the view in VMM looks like this

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Checking it in PowerShell, I can see that it looks and reports in the same manner as the 5.1 vCenter that I have registered

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And after some VM massage I can see that basic tasks as starting, stopping and also taking snapshots works as intented through the vCenter 5.5.

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Of course new features introduced in vCenter 5.5 and ESXi 5.5 for the VM´s will not work and there might be other things that also can have issues, I will continue to explore and if I find anything that seems to be a showstopper I will do a followup blog post.

Going to Windows Server 2012 R2 Core in Azure IaaS

Read on Twitter that someone wanted an image in the gallery for a Windows Server Core to get a smaller footprint instead of the full gui VM

As you know there is a way to go to core mode from a full installation so after you have deployed a IaaS VM you can run the following commands to remove the GUI. The roles Server-Gui-Shell and Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra can be removed.

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And then as instructed, you reboot and when you are up and running again there is some configuration that needs to be done so just be patient and wait…

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After that is done you can proceed to the wonderful world of the command prompt and sconfig 🙂

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And the next step is to sysprep and shut down this and capture an Image to be able to provision this one.

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Once the VM is in a Stopped State you can capture it

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Once that job has completed you can find your image in the gallery, observe that as this is saved in your storage account that is bound to the location you cannot deploy Core VM´s to all azure datacenters if you do not copy this storage blob to the other azure datacenters storage accounts that you have set up.

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And when I have deployed a new VM it is in the wonderful world of Server Core!

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