Event ID 12293–Volume Shadow Copy Service Error–Error Calling a Routine on a Shadow Copy Provider

 

Recently encountered the following error when checking DPM backup a virtual machine and the VM failed to backup. The error message displayed on the Hyper-V Event viewer was

“Event ID 12293 –Volume Shadow Copy Service Error – Error Calling a routine on a shadow copy provider”

If executed “vssadmin list writers” and check the Hyper-V Writer was indicated as Error and VMs was not backup.

Event viewer reported event id: 12293

Our SAN Storage is MD3200.

Resolution

This issue occurred is due to

1. Missing 2 SAS cable to the DAS (no redundant connection)

2. When open SAN console, received an error message “Need an Attention”

3. The error indicated the Virtual Disk Not on Preferred Path on certain LUN.

4. Temporary solution while getting an additional 2 SAS cable is force set to preferred path for the particular LUN. For my case is,

a) Select the LUN

b) Change | Ownership Preferred Path | RAID Controller Module in Slot 1 (Preferred)

After set the following setting, we was able to backup the virtual machine by using DPM without any issue.

Free Full Pass to VMworld 2013

 

Veeam recently gave away an amazing trip to TechEd, now they’re giving away a FREE full pass to VMworld 2013. As usual, the procedure is as simple as ever – just register, and you’ll be entered into their drawing.

Upgrade Integration Services to 6.2.9200.16433

 

In my previous post, we have use Powershell to check the Integration Services. You may find out that your current IC is running 6.2.9200.16384. The current updated version is 6.2.9200.16433.

Therefore, in order for you to get this IC version number, you’re require to patch your Hyper-V Host with this KB2770917 :- http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35607

Reboot your Hyper-V Host and lastly update your VM IC by using Hyper-V Manager snap-in. Below is the screenshot of the VM that I’ve successful upgraded the Integration Services to 6.2.9200.16433.

That should do the trick.

MVP Virtual Machine Book Published

 

Great news! Two of my peer (MVP Virtual Machine) has got their book published on the shelves. Let me start to introduce them

Book :- “Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Installation and Configuration”

Authors:-

• Aidan Finn, Ireland, Virtual Machine (Hyper-V) MVP
• Patrick Lownds, UK, Virtual Machine (Hyper-V) MVP
• Michel Luescher, Switzerland, Microsoft Consulting Services
• Damian Flynn, Ireland, Cloud and Datacenter Management (System Center) MVP

Technical Editor: Hans Vredevoort, Netherlands, Virtual Machine (Hyper-V) MVP

Product details:-

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Sybex; 1 edition (March 25, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1118486498
• ISBN-13: 978-1118486498
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 1.5 inches

Description of the book:

Go-to guide for using Microsoft's updated Hyper-V as a virtualization solution

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V offers greater scalability, new components, and more options than ever before for large enterprise systems and small/medium businesses. Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Installation and Configuration Guide is the place to start learning about this new cloud operating system. You'll get up to speed on the architecture, basic deployment and upgrading, creating virtual workloads, designing and implementing advanced network architectures, creating multitenant clouds, backup, disaster recovery, and more.

The international team of expert authors offers deep technical detail, as well as hands-on exercises and plenty of real-world scenarios, so you thoroughly understand all features and how best to use them.

• Explains how to deploy, use, manage, and maintain the Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V virtualization solutions in large enterprises and small- to medium-businesses
• Provides deep technical detail and plenty of exercises showing you how to work with Hyper-V in real-world settings
• Shows you how to quickly configure Hyper-V from the GUI and use PowerShell to script and automate common tasks
• Covers deploying Hyper-V hosts, managing virtual machines, network fabrics, cloud computing, and using file servers
• Also explores virtual SAN storage, creating guest clusters, backup and disaster recovery, using Hyper-V for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and other topics

Help make your Hyper-V virtualization solution a success with Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Installation and Configuration Guide.

You can buy from :- Amazon

Book :- “Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Cookbook”

Author:- Edvaldo Alessandro Cardoso

Product details:-

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (March 31, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1849686327
• ISBN-13: 978-1849686327

Description of the book:

Microsoft System Center 2012 is a comprehensive IT infrastructure, virtualization, and cloud management platform. With System Center 2012, you can more easily and efficiently manage your applications and services across multiple hypervisors as well as across public and private cloud infrastructures to deliver flexible and cost-effective IT services for your business.

This cookbook covers architecture design and planning and is full of deployment tips, techniques, and solutions designed to show users how to improve VMM 2012 in a real world scenario. It will guide you to create, deploy, and manage your own Private Cloud with a mix of Hypervisors: Hyper-V, Vmware ESXi, and Citrix XenServer. It also includes the VMM 2012 SP1 features.

This book is a cookbook that covers architecture design, planning and is full of deployment tips, techniques and solutions designed to show users how to improve VMM 2012 in a real world scenario. It will guide you to create, deploy and manage your own Private Cloud with a mix of Hypervisors : Hyper-V, Vmware ESXi and Citrix XenServer

You can buy from :- Amazon

First Book Reviewed:- Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Deploying Hyper-V Enterprise Server Virtualization Platform

 

Just received a good news from Packt Publishing that the book which I have been busy reviewing since September 2012 has finally published. Spending time on reviewing a book is really a great experience. Forget to mentioned about the title of the book that I’ve completed reviewed. Initially it’s started with the code name “Hyper-V 3.0 Essential” but now has an official name called “Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Deploying Hyper-V Enterprise Server Virtualization Platform”

URL:- http://www.packtpub.com/windows-server-2012-hyper-v/book

The author of the book is Zahir Hussain Shah, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP : Exchange)

Language : English
Paperback : 450 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ]
Release Date : March 2013
ISBN : 1849688346
ISBN 13 : 9781849688345
Author(s) : Zahir Hussain Shah

There are total of 10 chapters which I’ve reviewed:-

Chapter 1: Getting to Know Microsoft Hyper-V
Chapter 2: Planning, Designing, and Implementing Microsoft Hyper-V
Chapter 3: Setting Up Hyper-V Replication
Chapter 4: Understanding Hyper-V Networking
Chapter 5: A New World of Hyper-V Automation with PowerShell
Chapter 6: Insight into Hyper-V Storage
Chapter 7: Managing Hyper-V with System Center Virtual Machine Manager
Chapter 8: Building Hyper-V High Availability and Virtual Machine Mobility
Chapter 9: Hyper-V Security Hardening – Best Practices
Chapter 10: Performing Hyper-V Backup and Recovery

Download – Sample Chapter

Now where is my name? Well, as a reviewer I’m just receive a full credit in the book including a bio about myself and my blog (www.ms4u.info) . Hopefully , I have do a great job on reviewing the book. Thanks and Gratitude to Packt Publishing on giving this opportunities.

Sponsor Announcement–March 26, 2013

 

Sponsor 1:- Veeam

Veeam has always been committed to communicating the value of virtualization to IT professionals. Recently, we launched the new campaign, "Modern Data Protection Built for Virtualization," to help delivering this message even further to non-technical audiences, including decision makers.

Learn more about Modern Data Protection Built for Virtualization:

• Five Fundamentals of Modern Data Protection
• Annual Data Protection Report
• ESG Lab Review: Veeam Backup & Replication – Built for Virtualization

New video →

Sponsor 2:- Starwind Software

StarWind has been nominated in "Virtualisation Product of the Year" category in the Green IT Awards.

Here is a link to our Press Release: http://www.starwindsoftware.com/news/93

Coming Webinar:-

LIVE WEBINAR on Wednesday, March 27      1:00 PM GMT / 1:00 PM EDT FEATURED SPEAKER:      Anatoly Vilchinsky, Solution Engineer, StarWind Software, Inc. Is it possible to improve data availability keeping the storage expenditure low and infrastructure simple? Yes, it is! Find out how StarWind helps! Learn how you can get better storage management and reap more virtualization benefits: 99.9999% uptime of your business 50% higher performance Zero to SAN in 30 minutes Enterprise features at SMB price Click here to register for this FREE webinar: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM GMT   1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT

Check Integration Services Version By Using Powershell

 

We often deploy VM and upgrade integration services. But sometime, we do missed out 1 or 2 VM on getting the update IC. Here is a useful command that I frequently use during virtual machine deployment.

get-vm | ft Name, IntegrationServicesVersion

Tried it on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. The entire VMs are installed with 6.2.9200.16384 except one VM (as listed below).

So time to upgrade the IC and make sure it is the same as the rest of the VMs.

Earth Hour 2013

 

A year has passed, it is time for us to celebrate Earth Hour 2013. Please remember to switch off light on Saturday 23 March between 8.30PM and 9.30PM.

Slow Network Performance When Using NIC Teaming in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

 

Couple day ago, I’ve deployed a new Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V into a production environment and one of the my design requirement is configure NIC Teaming using Windows Server 2012.

My scenario:-

• DELL R720
• 8 NIC Card – 1Gbps. (4 Broadcom and 4 Intel NIC)

Well, everything work well with NIC Teaming properly configure with virtual switch created on the NIC Teaming. But one of the problem detected is Virtual machine which bind to the NIC Teaming having slow performance when copying and reading file share.

Therefore, I’m using a freeware tool called “Lan Speed Test” to test read/ write in the VM. The result came out very bad. I just perform read/write 20Mbps to a file server. The speed that I got is estimated 1 Mbps for both read/write and consider took a very long period to complete the whole process. (Feel free to use other test tool)

Repeat the same process on the entire VMs and some are getting good performance but few VMs is getting bad performance.

To isolate the problem, I have decided to break the teaming and create an individual virtual switch

• Broadcom NIC –> 1 virtual switch
• Intel NIC –> 1 virtual switch

Repeat the same test and found out the slow performance problem is only happen when using Broadcom NIC. I just do some tweak on “Disable Virtual Machine Queue”.

And test using the above tool. The result has improved to

Since the performance has improved and I’ve re-create the NIC teaming and virtual switch with “Virtual Machine Queue” disable on Broadcom NIC.

Now the performance result is faster.

Note:-

• Read/Write result is varies
• Take note on time to complete.
• Test small file (20Mbps) to get result on fast/slow

Backup to Windows Azure Using Veeam Backup and Replication Cloud Edition

 

Let continue from where we start. In the previous post , we have look into how to register a Windows Azure Cloud Storage. Therefore in this post we are going to talk about backup vm to cloud.

To upload to cloud, you are require to

1. Configure backup to using Veeam Backup and Replication to Backup Repository. 2. Once you have do that, then use Veeam Backup and Replication Cloud Edition to upload to Windows Azure.

We assume that you know how to configure 1st step: Backup using Veeam Backup and Replication 6.5. Therefore, we will look into 2nd step:- Configure backup plan using Veeam Backup and Replication Cloud Edition.

1. On the Welcome page, click Setup Backup Plan.

2. At the Select Cloud Storage page, select Windows Azure that you have register in previous post.

3. At the Plan name page, enter the backup plan name

4. At Backup Mode page, it is recommend that you leave the default settings. By default is “Advanced Mode”

5. At the Backup Source page, select your backup data from Backup Repository.

6. At Compression and Encryption page, you can specify compression and encryption to secure the backup data in the cloud.

7. Next is purge option, here you can select your purge option and number of version to keep in the Cloud.

8. At the Schedule page, specify the schedule to upload backup files to the cloud. You can choose to run the backup plan at specific date, recurring or Real Time Backup and Manual. Based on Veeam recommendation, do NOT use the “Real Time Backup option to upload backup files created with Veeam Backup and Replication to the cloud

9. At the Pre-Post Action page, you can run an additional command. To allow backup record appear in Veeam Backup and Replication SQL database and History View, make sure that you select run Veeam Backup Notifier.exe (located in Veeam Cloud folder) to execute after successful backup.

10. At the Notification page, specify the necessary SMTP settings to receive fail or or any results or Add an entry to Windows Event Log.

11. Review the summary before click Next to create the backup plan

12. Once created, you view the backup plan from “Backup Plan tab”. From here, you view the plan, the status of the backup and History of the plan.

Discount Starwind HA Products

 

Anyone looking to buy Starwind software (StarWind iSCSI SAN & NAS edition or StarWind Native SAN for Hyper-V edition)?

All you need to do is enter the following code “STARMARCH312013_LYS4 “ when buying from this link . You will get

a) discount rate as listed below.

b) 2nd year ASM for free

c) 90 days payment term

Hurry while the promotion end on 31st March 2013.

Register Windows Azure to Veeam Backup and Replication Cloud Edition

 

Last week, Veeam has just released this product and I have downloaded this bits to play around in my lab environment.  In today article, we are going add Windows Azure as the platform to store the backup data.

1. Login to Windows Azure Portal and create storage account.

2. Once you have create the storage, get the key. Just click “Manage Key”

3. Below is the sample of the storage account name that I’ve created. Copy the primary access key and back to Veeam Backup and Replication Server.

4. If not yet download the product, please click here. Once download, install the cumulative patch 2 (20MB) first before proceed to install the Cloud Edition (12 MB) on top of Veeam Backup and Replication 6.5. Once install, a new icon on your desktop is displayed : “Cloud Backup”.

5. Double click the icon and access the console. Here is the list of the supported cloud storage that you can use with Veeam Backup and Replication Cloud Edition. Click File to view

6. In our case, let select “Windows Azure Storage Account”

7. Click Add Windows Azure Storage to register.

8. Enter the following details:

• Account – (register storage account name)
• Shared key – (primary access key)
• Container – create a new container to store the backup.

This is the step on how easy to add a Windows Azure Storage Account. On next post, we are going to explore on Configure Backup using Veeam backup and replication cloud edition.

Cisco Nexus 1000v For Hyper-V/SCVMM Public Beta Program

 

Damian Flynn (MVP) shared about this news. Here is the news:-

Brace yourself, the fun is about to truly begin. On Wednesday March 6^th at 9am PST, Cisco will unveil its greatly anticipated Distributed Switch solution for Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V; the Nexus 1000V.

 

What is the Nexus 1000V?

Cisco Nexus® 1000V Series Switches provide a comprehensive and extensible architectural platform for virtual machine (VM) and cloud networking. The switches are designed to accelerate server virtualization and multitenant cloud deployments in a secure and operationally transparent manner. Integrated into the Windows Server 2012 Extensible Switch, and fully compatible with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1,

Please blog, tweet, and pass on the message, to learn about the Nexus 1000v, and how to join the beta program; grabbing the all-important Beta Code!

For more information, and registration details please follow and share this link

Additional resources:-

• Cisco Nexus 1000v