VSS Diagnostic -VSSDiag Tool

 

VssDiag is a tool that scans Windows Event Viewer for VSS, VolSnap, Disk, and Hyper-V errors within a 10 minute time window specified.

It will filter out all error and warning entries and display them. This is generally useful when you get VSS errors during backups and you need to find out why they are happening.

It's not the super innovative thing in the world but it saves time and is generally useful for novices, too.

• Free tool
• Pre-requisite:- .Net 4
• No installation is require. Just double click to execute
• Select the date and click Investigate
• If found an error, it will the result.

Sample:- Disk error

To try it, please go to http://backupchain.com/VssDiag.html

Real Time Performance Monitoring - VMTurbo Virtual Health Monitor

 

Just tested this product on my our lab. It’s provide FREE and unlimited real time performance monitoring solution which regardless of hypervisor in your environment. This product is an appliance and support the following hypervisor:-

• Citrix XenServer
• Microsoft Hyper-V
• VMware ESXi/vSphere
• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

What’s the system requirement? Well, please refer to below table

If you are using Hyper-V hypervisor to store the appliance, then you are require to has at least 16GB of memory, 2 vcpu and 16GB of storage space in order to make it run

This appliance allow users to support up to 10000 virtual machines. The appliance is running OpenSuse OS and the appliance size is around 400 MB (zip). After unzip, the size is 1.45 GB. Use Hyper-V Manager to import the appliance.

Configuration steps:-

1. Configure IP address of the appliance by using the following authentication:- ipsetup/ipsetup

2. Then, use browser and key in the http://ipaddress of the appliance. Make sure your machine is installed with Adobe Flash Player.

3. Use the wizard to apply “free edition” license.

4. Enter the target Hyper-V Host and authentication into the system. If you enter a cluster host, the system will automatically added the entire host into the VMTurbo. Just wait till the system collect the inventory data.

5. Once complete, it enables you to

• gain visibility into your entire infrastructure. You can view your infrastructure from Hyper-V, Local Disk, Shared Storage and Virtual Machine Workload from a single pane of glass

One of the Hyper-V Host performance:-

Storage:-

Able to identify the IOPS and Latency of the storage.

Ubuntu VM workload. No agent is require to get the performance data.

• See and identify problem in real time

Host issue:-

Example:- Detected that one my cluster having an issue. Click on the icon to drill down of the issue. The server has reached to 85% of memory utilization. In this o free action, you cannot perform an action. To perform an action, you’re require to upgrade this version to Enterprise /Cloud Edition

VM Issue:-

Several virtual machine having high memory utilization.

Drill down, you view the utilization according to time. Drag the slider to view the utilization on specific time.

• Generate performance and efficient reports

From the system, you also able to generate performance and efficient reports. Here is a sample of Hyper-V Server performance report: (Click on the thumbnail to view the report)

If you are looking for performance monitoring tool, download this product and give it a try to understand your infrastructure

Starwind V2V Convertor

Provider:- Starwind Software



Starwind Software offered a free virtual image convertor which allows you to convert virtual disk images between Vmware virtual disk (VMDK), Micrsoft Virtual PC virtual disk (VHD) and raw virtual disk (IMG).

To download, all you need to do is fill up your particular detail in below link:-
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/download-starwind-converter

StarWind Converter is very simple to use:

1. Select your source File (VMDK, VHD, IMG).

2. Select your destination image format as listed below figure

3. Choose a location to save the converted data file

4. Click 'convert' and let the converter run



















5.Import the resulting file into VMware, Hyper V, or mount the resulting image using StarWind

HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2

The HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 is an automated, downloadable tool that provides quick and helpful sizing guidance for “best-fit” HP server and storage configurations running in a Hyper-V R2 environment. The tool is intended to assist with the planning of a Hyper-V R2 virtual server deployment project. It enables the user to quickly compare different solution configurations and produces a customizable server and storage solution complete with a detail Bill of Materials (BOM) that includes part numbers and prices.


The HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 allows users to create new solutions, open already existing solutions, or use other types of performance data collecting tools, such as the Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool (MAP), to build rich Hyper-V R2 configurations based on HP server and storage technology. The tool allows rapid comparison of Hyper-V R2 characterizations using various HP server and storage choices.

To Download:- http://g3w1656g-vip.houston.hp.com/sb/installs/Hyper-VR2_Sizer.zip

Tools to check support for Virtualization

As an updated on my previous article on how to identifying a server to support virtualization

http://www.ms4u.info/2009/07/intel-processor-to-support.html
http://www.ms4u.info/2009/09/why-choose-hyper-v.html

Here is some additional tools to identify if your processor support Hyper V

a) AMD Hyper V Compatibility Check Utility
b) Intel Processor Identification Utility 
c) Window Server Catalog - search for Hyper-V as an additional qualification. Windows Server catalog shows an up-to-date list of all successfully Hyper-V tested systems

Utility Disk2vhd v1.4

Good news! Disk2vhd v1.4 has released. Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs).
More info, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

To download- Click here

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.0 CTP released

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.0 CTP is an agentless tool designed to simplify and streamline the IT infrastructure planning process across multiple scenarios through network-wide automated discovery and assessments. This tool makes it easier for Microsoft customers and partners to quickly identify critical assets in their IT environment. It performs key functions including hardware and software inventory, hardware compatibility analysis, virtualization readiness planning, and generation of actionable, environment-specific IT proposals for infrastructure planning.


What’s New with v5.0 CTP?

Version 5.0 CTP of this toolkit has the following new features:
• Heterogeneous Server Environment Inventory for Technologies including Windows Server, Linux, UNIX and Vmware.
• Ability to determine usage of deployed System Center Configuration Manager, a member of the Core Client Access License Suite.
• Office 2010 Readiness Assessment.
Additional Features
• Windows 7 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment.
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment.
• Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V Server Consolidation.
• Inventory of VMware Server Hosts and Guests.
• User Interface and Proposal Customization for Partner co-branding.
• Enhanced Usability and Improved Inventory Performance.
• SQL Server Instance Discovery.
• Desktop Security Assessment for Anti-virus and Anti-malware Programs Installation.
• Forefront Client Security/NAP Readiness Assessment.

Register for the MAP Toolkit 5.0 CTP and download at: https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23188&SiteID=297