Like Snapshots in Hyper-V? – Please read this

This is such a great ‘heads-up’ article.  Save yourself the pain and read this now.

taken from:

Like Snapshots in Hyper-V? – Please read this – A blog for the Tech Heads…

Like Snapshots in Hyper-V? – Please read this

Snapshots is nice to have, in fact very nice to have when running a virtual platform. In Hyper-V it is easy to do snap-shots and there are no problems, or is there something you should be aware of…

Yes, there is a a issue, it is not a bug but there is something you absolutely need to know, otherwise you will be in serious trouble. So lets here the story…

***article clipped – best practices recommended are below***

1. If you use snapshot, delete them after you have done your job and turn OFF the virtual machine as soon as possible.
2. Only use Snapshots as a temporary protection to be able to rollback, not as a backup solution.
3. Watch disk space BEFORE shutting down a virtual machine
4. Use fixed size disk for performance
5. Use dynamic disk for LAB/Demo/Play/low performance
6. If you use dynamic disk, be sure to monitor the disk

Mikael Nystrom – TrueSec
MCT, MVP Windows Server – Setup/Deployment

Hyper-V Management Configuration Made Easy

For those who wish to use and deploy Hyper-V, this ‘freeware’ tool helps make the management UI configuration a cinch.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/HVRemote

The author, John Howard, is a Program Director in the Hyper-V team. He created this over a recent vacation and just published it for public download. This makes the configuration of Hyper-V Remote Management Tools a far easier experience than what is was prior; in fact John claims it takes but seconds now!

If you invest any time reading his blog you quickly realize how greatly he has mastered the usage of and written the guiding instructions for its adoption.  This tool is a further of extension of his outstanding community commitment to helping this product find its way.

This covers both the client (Vista SP1) & server (Win2008) and both domain & workgroup scenarios …in other words, all the bases

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/11/14/configure-hyper-v-remote-management-in-seconds.aspx

The System Properties UI quick command

From a Run prompt (winkey+R) enter sysdm.cpl.  This will invoke the System Properties UI in Server 2008 or Vista without any clicking.

This can be useful as from here you can gain access to the Device Management UI.  If you are installing a virtual OS in Hyper-V sometimes a critical driver isn’t installed from the install media (such as the NIC in SBS 2008).  Through this method you can invoke the Device Management UI and manually install the needed driver.  First though you would need to get to a Run prompt and to do this you bring up Task Manager Ctrl+Alt+End (Hyper-V) and from File menu choose the “New Task (Run)” option.

In the example of SBS 2008 you need to run the Integrated Services Setup Disk to gain virualized networking hardware functionality.  First from the Run prompt type “Explorer.exe” to open Explorer.  Next, with any previous ISO ejected, you choose from the Action menu to Insert this ‘Disk’.  With Explorer now running, the mounted disk will Autorun and install.  A restart will be needed and afterwards you can finish the SBS 2008 installation.

The location of this is at “C:\Windows\System32\sysdm.cpl ” in case you want to create a shortcut.

How to improve disk I/O performances with VMware Workstation | virtualization.info

After doing some research in tweaking a slow performing VMware Workstation guest OS I came up with this concise and well written resource (although dated the content is still relevant).

How to improve disk I/O performances with VMware Workstation

 

Even on a 2 GB RAM workstation (as mine) VMware virtual machines can run slowly. Too slowly sometimes.

This can depend on a large amount of factors but we can reduce the number to 4 critical issues:

1. Antivirus real-time protection
2. HostOS disk fragmentation
3. Memory trimming
4. Page sharing

…link below is full article with implementation steps

How to improve disk I/O performances with VMware Workstation | virtualization.info

Remote Desktop Connection 6.1 client update for Terminal Services in Windows XP Service Pack 2

This should work nicely for those that want to wait to deploy XP SP3 a little longer but need to connect to Server 2008 TS Remote App.  Link is at the bottom of brief overview.

Description of the Remote Desktop Connection 6.1 client update for Terminal Services in Windows XP Service Pack 2

View products that this article applies to.

Article ID: 952155

Last Review:  June 24, 2008

Revision:  2.1

INTRODUCTION

This article discusses the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) 6.1 client update that helps you use the new Terminal Services features. These features are introduced in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008 and are available from a computer that is running Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).

Description of the Remote Desktop Connection 6.1 client update for Terminal Services in Windows XP Service Pack 2