FAQ for WSv

If you get error “Hypervisor failed starting with error code 3221225488″ after installing WSv, try the following:

1. 1. Is the No Execute / Execute Disable (xD) bit enabled?
2. Did you do a hard power off on the system after you enabled VT?

Thanks to Mike Sterling in the TechNet forums: Hypervisor failed starting - TechNet Forums

Scott Hanselman has a pretty nifty walkthrough: How-To Installing Windows Virtualization Services (Hypervisor)

and you can find more info in John’s post “How to install the Windows Server virtualization role in Windows Server 2008 RC0” and Mike’s post “Installing Viridian CTP on Windows Server 2008 RC0“.  A snippet is below:

1. If you have HT (HyperThread) capability in your processor, you should disable that in the BIOS before installing WSv – HyperThread support is planned to follow in a future release.
2. Enable Hardware Virtualization in the BIOS
3. If you do have to make a BIOS changes, it is important that you perform a fully power cycle (Yes, that means a complete power off)
4. Navigate to the <systemdrive>\windows\wsv directory 
5. Double-click Windows6.0-KB939854-x64.msu and complete the installation 
6. Double-click Windows6.0-KB939853-x64.msu,
7. Open Server Manager, you will notice that the Windows Server virtualization role is listed

A few common “gotcha’s” and FAQs we are aware of:

- Occasionally after installing the two .MSUs, the Windows Server virtualization role does not show up as a possible role to install. If you hit this, close Server Manager, re-open Server Manager, select the Roles node from the treeview on the left hand side and hit F5. The role should show up after the refresh has completed.

- On the Installation Results page, you may get the following warning: “Attempt to configure Windows Server virtualization failed with error code 0×80078000. Configuring the virtual network for failed. Please attempt to configure the virtual network again using the Virtualization Management console”. Use the Virtual Network Manager in the

- It is highly recommended that no other roles are installed on the physical machine. In particular, if the machine is configured with the Active Directory Domain Services role and the role is configured through dcpromo.exe, it is not possible to start any virtual machines.

Yes, you can.  Currently, there is no direct import capability, so it’s largely a manual exercise

John has more info in his post “Moving a Virtual Machine from Virtual Server to Windows Server virtualization“, and a snippet is below:

Currently, there is no direct import capability, so it’s largely a manual exercise. A Virtual Server VM consists of a configuration file (.vmc) and one or more data files such as Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs) and other media such as .ISO and .VFD. For the purposes of migration, it’s the VHDs which are the most important ones as these obviously hold the important data.

If your VM is using a shared SCSI bus as part of a test/dev cluster, stop now. You will have to break your cluster, migrate one node and move to an alternate form of shared storage such as iSCSI for migration. That’s a blog post for another day and I won’t be covering that in this post.

…

The first real consideration is the Virtual Machine additions which will likely be installed in your VM. If they are, it’s may be easier to remove them before bringing the VM into WSv. If you know you have the latest version of the VM additions from VS 2005 R2 SP1 (v13.813), you can uninstall the additions when the VM is booted under WSv, but earlier versions of the additions may fail to uninstall when booted under WSv. If you’re unsure of which version you have installed, it’s best to uninstall while you have a working VM under Virtual Server. Once the additions are uninstalled, make sure the VM is shut down, not saved. Saved states are not compatible between Virtual Server and WSv.

Now copy all the VHDs configured in your VM across to your server running WSv. Let’s assume for the time being that this is the simplest case where there is a single VHD for the VM. Simply walk through the new virtual machine wizard and attached the existing VHD. Easy, yes?

If you have more VHDs to add, at the end of the wizard, choose to not start the VM. Instead, open the settings for the newly created VM and add each VHD in turn to the configuration. If you need more than four VHDs (or three plus a CD/DVD), attach a SCSI controller and attach the remaining VHDs to the SCSI controller instead.

You may now have some questions. The one I’m particularly thinking you’ll ask is what if my VM under Virtual Server was booting from an emulated SCSI controller, not from IDE. The answer is relatively long winded and I’ll explain another day, but if that is the case, attach the boot VHD to the IDE controller 0 at location 0. It should still boot. The less obvious one question was what if my boot VHD was on SCSI and is > 127GB in size? Again, the answer is for another day. Just use IDE and trust me!

If the VM is not yet running, start it, connect to it and login. You will probably be presented with the new hardware wizard. Cancel it by pressing escape for now. As an interesting experiment, especially if you ended up adding drives to a SCSI controller, you’ll notice that they won’t show up yet in Disk Management or Explorer. That’s because you don’t yet have the drivers installed for the “synthetic” SCSI controller. They will be installed with the Integration Components.

Insert the Integration Components CD from the Action menu option in the Virtual Machine Connection application. It should auto-play, but if not, run setup.exe from the \support\x86 directory. Follow the prompts and reboot as requested. On completion, your VM should be good to go.

One other point for Windows Server 2003 VMs, I would strongly recommend you upgrade to SP2 if you haven’t already to gain the maximum benefits of running under Windows Server virtualization. Otherwise, go have fun!

You can download the ISOs from Microsoft Downloads

You can register for Windows 2008 RC0 keys from Beta Central