Chatter Of The Squirrel

Tech: Microsoft Hyper-V, cheaply

November 24, 2009 on 7:39 pm | In Tech | 1 Comment

One way to use Microsoft Hyper-V, will be to purchase the MS Server 2008 R2. And you’ll have all the virtualization thingies built-in. Job-halfway-done.

Or, Microsoft also makes their Hyper-V available for download. Free. Completely. But installing this alone is useless, cos you don’t have any of the management consoles needed to actually create the virtual machines you installed Hyper-V for!

There are ways to use the command line interfaces to create VMs, but after that there’s no way to install anything INTO the VMs. Unless you’ve got some .vhd ready made somewhere else that you mean to copy in and start up. Otherwise, no dice.

BUT~! Microsoft also gives you the Hyper-V Management Console with Windows Vista. Get it up to SP1, then download the MMC from Microsoft. Free again, discounting the cost of the Vista.

This is the cheapest way to have a hypervisor virtualization system going: 2 machines, and 1 Vista license.

Step 1:
Download Hyper-V from Microsoft. Burn to a DVD. Install it on your machine. Very easily done.

Step 2:
Download the Hyper-V MMC into a Vista machine. Very easily done.

Step 3:
I thought this will be as simple as clicking the Hyper-V Console, point it at the Hyper-V machine. Maybe sort out some User/Password shit, and GO~!!

Step 4:
Disillusionment sets in. Microsoft Firewall is enabled on both OS. This blocks the remote machine’s attempt to connect to the HyperV machine. There’s like a hundred and one thing to sort out to make them TALK!

This is the Gordian Knot of Microsoft’s bullscatery~! If you’re able to make this work, then you’ve truly conquered the arcane mysteries of Microsoft networking.

Step 5:
Tear out hair.

Step 6:
Praise the Lord for geeks with too much vacation time.

HVRemote is a true life-saver.

Download it on the client machine. Copy it over to the HyperV machine.

My two PCs are on a workgroup. Not a domain. So I created an Admin user on both systems, with the same password. This probably helped in getting them to see each other, at least a little.

I did:

On the HyperV machine:

cscript hvremote.wsf /mode:server /add:adminuser

Reboot

On the Remote PC machine:

cscript hvremote.wsf /mode:client /AnonDCOM:grant

cscript hvremote.wsf /mode:client /FirewallHyperVClient:Enable

cscript hvremote.wsf /mmc:enable

Reboot

The reboot is absolutely important. Or else the MMC will only be halfway working. I wondered why it took ages to create a virtual disk. But everything worked well after the reboot.

Also, I had to enable the Intel Virtualization Technology in the BIOS.

I could create a new VM, and installed CentOS 5.4 x64 in it.

Had some trouble trying to install it while mounting the .iso image on the remote machine. Some other permission error. Wasn’t worth the grief. I just copied the image over into the HyperV machine, and mounted it from there.