@emad-r said in Nested hypervisors?:

also as vendor they dont want the complexity advantages of Virtualization

ftfy

Create a new folder in the root of the data partition being used, if any, and call it something like Hyper-V-2018.

Copy the VHDX file(s) from their current location to that (assuming there is enough space to do so).

Run the following in an elevated PowerShell where X is the destination partition:

Set-VMHost -VirtualHardDiskPath "X:\Hyper-V-2018\Virtual Hard Disks" –VirtualMachinePath "X:\Hyper-V-2018"
Get-VMHost | fl VirtualHardDiskPath,VirtualMachinePath

Create a new VM and configure its settings using the existing OS VHDX. After that is complete, open the VM's properties and add the second VHDX if it exists.

Try and start the VM. If it starts, it will require some tweaking at the network level as the vNIC's GUID and MAC will be different.

Good stuff. Thanks for pointing this up and writing it up.

@phlipelder said in Use Hyper-V to replicate Linux vm file share:

@scottalanmiller said in Use Hyper-V to replicate Linux vm file share:

@phlipelder said in Use Hyper-V to replicate Linux vm file share:

Hyper-V Replica would work in this situation with a few caveats.

There is a 15 second limit on replication cycles. If the VMs are running database/active services this could be a problem.

That would be handled earlier in the process by the backup job. If the backup is good, the replication won't cause an issue. If the backup is bad, the replication can't fix it, of course, but will replicate the bad backup. But the only place that this can be addressed is in the backup step, the replication is of backup files, so not at a point in the process where it matters.

"Garbage in garbage out" never seems to go away. It's been the bane of our existence since the switch to image/block based backups. :S

File backups suffered from this, too. Databases are just hard to back up.

@jaredbusch said in Backup server - Software layout:

I use teams, even if there is only one NIC in the team most of the time, because I can add and remove NICs without impacting the higher layers.

Good idea. This server I just got has the onboard GB NICs, but also 2 dual port Intel GB NICs as well. I could create a BIG team if I wanted.

@lj said in Microsoft Hyper-V server 2016 and RD1000 backup:

Reading the Veeam Backup Free Edition it appears it installs the console on windows Server or Windows Desktop. Does that sound right? I installed Altaro on the Hyper-V host itself. I don't know which setup would be better though. Comments appreciated.

Yes, it goes on Windows.

@jaredbusch said in Ubuntu Set Default Resolution Through GRUB for VM:

@scottalanmiller said in Ubuntu Set Default Resolution Through GRUB for VM:

@aaronstuder said in Ubuntu Set Default Resolution Through GRUB for VM:

@scottalanmiller Ubuntu is a surprising choice for you 😉

Runs ScreenConnect.

So does Fedora.

Always fail when I do it, there is some trick to it. Happen to know what's needed so that it doesn't just put hashes on the screen for forever?

You can restart the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service or the Windows Remote Management service and it should work.

I ended up starting over from bare metal. Second attempt was A LOT better. Thank you everyone for all of your help.

@stacksofplates said in If all hypervisors were priced the same...:

@storageninja said in If all hypervisors were priced the same...:

@stacksofplates said in If all hypervisors were priced the same...:

Also, decisions are often more nuanced than simple TCO decisions. If you have compliance requirements this often shifts to commercial solutions that have validated FIPS 140-2 modules/solutions. If you need a DISA STIG at a given level paying some money and being able to deploy a single VIB to harden compliance vs. go through checklists and argue with auditors can be a big deal. How do you quantify the cost of applying with NIST for validation with a do it yourself setup vs. a turnkey solution?

RHEL/RHV have a good solution here. Auditors go through OpenSCAP scans with nice HTML reports and we justify any “failures.” It’s a pretty nice system.

That just audits if it was set. What I'm talking about is a single package you deploy that goes ahead and sets the configuration settings up for you.

On ESXi you can use Update Manager to track compliance with the DISA VIB, and use that for tracking it. Just attach as a baseline to your clusters and let Update Manager keep it up to date. Ed Groggin I think has a tool that will do an auto-generation of a report on the hardening guidelines.

Looking online, I'm not seeing Server 2016 in STIG viewer yet. Has Microsoft not gotten a STIG out yet?

Also Redhat Virtulization licensing cost as much (or more) than vSphere Standard. At that point if you don't need/want Redhat support VMware looks a lot more attractive. Oddly the only STIG for Suse I'm seeing is for Z series.

Well yes and no. They have built in remediations with OpenSCAP, so you can have it auto remediate your machine. We ran an auto remediate to get the correct settings and then pushed it all out with Ansible since we can apply specific rules or not based on the type of machine since they are all RHEL based (workstations, servers, hypervisors, etc). We don’t use RHV, but they have a subset of rules for RHV which is why I mentioned it. We use bare KVM for systems and it works out pretty well. Ya I’m not sure about 2016 but I wouldn’t be surprised seeing how slow they are.

The remediations are in Bash, Ansible, and I think Puppet? Anyway I have written a few of the Ansible remediations for them and have had them pulled into the project.

There should be no reason I have to ask, but this supports SSL, correct? Do you have instructions on how we could use this to use Let Encrypt to secure this?

@tim_g said in Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft Windows Hyper-V Server:

Windows is an operating system... that's like saying Microsoft Windows Office 2016, or Microsoft Windows Skype.

It just doesn't make any sense what so ever.

Correct terms:
Windows Server 2016
Microsoft Office 2016
Hyper-V Server 2016
Windows Server 2016 with Hyper-V Server Role Installed
Windows 10 with Hyper-V Feature Installed

Microsoft Windows XBOX One. :face_with_stuck-out_tongue_winking_eye:

Just tried it, and yes, missing integration services.

Long story short: I'll stick with Ubuntu 😉 Yeah, I know, I could easily install them, but I'm more in the Debian corner anyway.

Now as a general recommendation (really never do this), don't install Windows Server onto the bare metal, install your hypervisor to the bare metal. In this case Hyper-V.

Apply your licensing to the 2 VM's that you are allowed to create with Standard (and up licensing) then you'll be allowed to move your VM's around every 90 days or sooner for hardware failures etc.