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Windows 8 Developer Preview: Virtualization Options (VMware Workstation)

Sep 14

Posted by Anil Desai in Desktop Virtualization / VDI, Development, Microsoft Hyper-V, Virtualization, VMware, Windows 8 | 1 Comment

imageFor those of us developers that are itching to get our hands (and fingers) on the recently release Windows 8 Developer Preview, you might hit an unexpected snag.  If you’re like me, the first thing you tried after downloading the bits was to create a new virtual machine in your favorite desktop virtualization platform (most likely Microsoft Windows Virtual PC or VMware Workstation).  However, after creating and booting the VM and attaching an ISO, I encountered the following error:

VMware Workstation internal monitor error

vcpu-O:NOT_IMPLEMENTED vmcore/vmm/intr/apic.c:1903

image

Unfortunately, it looks like VMware Workstation 7.x platform (and, reportedly, VirtualPC, though I haven’t tested it myself), does not yet support Windows 8.  Perhaps I should have realized that a lot of the undercover boot and CPU optimizations would require an architectural shift to support the required CPU commands.

Options That Should Work

Though this might not be ideal for all users, there are several options to get the Developer Preview of Windows 8 running in a virtual machine:

  • Use Microsoft’s Hyper-V: If you have a Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 installation (or the stand-alone Hyper-V Server), you should be able to spin up a new Windows 8 VM quickly and easily.  It’s not desktop virtualization, but if you have a spare machine that supports Hyper-V’s CPU requirements, you should be all set.
  • Wait for the release of VMware Workstation 8.  While I haven’t yet tried it myself, there are reports of people having success with the beta of the upcoming release of VMware’s Workstation production.  A beta virtualization stack with a Developer Preview OS – How’s that for living on the edge?  It looks like the product is officially available from VMware now and you can request a VMware Workstation 8 Evaluation online (registration required).
    • Update: I downloaded a 30-day evaluation version of VMware Workstation 8, and the Windows 8 Developer Preview installed without one minor catch: Don’t use the VMware "Easy Install" option, as it’s based on the automatic install procedures for Windows 7.  Other than that, I’m up and running!
  • VirtualBox apparently supports the WIndows 8 Developer Preview (again, I haven’t yet tried it myself).  The application is available for free download.  The Windows 7 Hacker site has a walkthrough titled Install Windows 8 Developer Preview on VirtualBox.

Dual-Boot / Clean Install

Of course, you could skip virtualization altogether and install Windows 8 directly on your hardware.  That would give the best overall performance and the best experience with the new Metro UI.  You could install The Windows 8 Dev Preview alongside your current OS (though you might need to repartition), or you can just pop a spare hard drive in your computer to avoid any messy boot complications.  In general, this approach has worked great for me in the past.

Another option is to Boot to VHD.  That’s a significantly more complicated process, but the blog post Installing Windows 8 on Bare Metal with VHD-Boot should help.

A Note About the Developer Preview

While we’re all itching to try the new UI and functionality in Windows 8, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.  First, this version is not yet a “beta”.  It’s an earlier release that is designed to get developers up and running.  The official build number is Build 8102 M3.  Even if you’re like me and you’re willing to live on the bleeding edge with software, you probably don’t want to install this build as your primary OS.  Furthermore, Microsoft has mentioned that several features are not included in this build (though I haven’t yet run into anything that’s a showstopper for me).

On the brighter side, this build does not require product activation.  Coupled with the easy accessibility of the download from the Windows 8 Developer Preview site, that effectively means everyone will have easy access to this preview release.  Downloads are also available for MSDN Subscribers.

For More Information…

In case you missed it, Microsoft’s BUILD Conference keynotes are available at the BUILD Conference Web Site.  The Day 1 Keynote covered dozens of really exciting features, presented by Steven Sinofsky and several other Microsoft Program Managers.  I’m just getting started with my testing/development, and I’ll try to post more here once I have something of value.

Update (09/19/2011)

Based on the numbers of hits to this article, I thought this would be a fairly important topic.  On the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft has recently published a post titled, Running Windows 8 Developer Preview in a virtual environment.  It includes more details on the pros and cons of running Windows 8 using virtualization and provides the following summary:

Functional:

  • Hyper-V in Windows 8 Developer Preview
  • Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2
  • VMware Workstation 8.0 for Windows
  • VirtualBox 4.1.2 for Windows

Non-functional:

  • Microsoft Virtual PC (all versions)
  • Microsoft Virtual Server (all versions)
  • Windows 7 XP Mode
  • VMWare Workstation 7.x or older

For now, I’m happily running Windows 8 test VMs on an evaluation version of VMware Workstation 8.0 and in Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.  Next stop: Running on some fairly recent hardware.

Free P2V Backup/DR Tutorial

Feb 14

Posted by Anil Desai in Backup / Disaster Recovery, Management, VMware | No Comments

Virtualization technology provides a lot of promise related to implementing backups and  managing disaster recovery environments.  For example, since VMs are self-contained, they can be easily moved or copied to other servers.  Administrators can use a variety of methods to keep multiple VMs synchronized (see my Backup / DR category for some articles on the topic).  But, in the real world, the problem becomes implementation.  With most virtualization platforms, you’ll either need to invest in additional (and often, costly) tools, or you’ll need to roll your own.

For the latter approach, Frane Borozan has created a physical2virtual.backup tutorial that walks through the major steps of setting up backups and DR for VMware environments.  From the site’s home page:

I will here describe whole process of implementation of virtual servers into your current network infrastructure. With virtualization you will get virtual failover servers and you will have fresh replica of all of your important data, so in case main servers failure you will have fast disaster recovery plan that just works. Of course you can have clusters in your network infrastructure but what is the cost of managing clusters and paying licenses for that expensive kind on in stable software.

There are always savings into hardware and power consumption, imagine now you need to have one physical for every server you own if you want to have good disaster recovery plan, with this you can have dozen of backups on the same server and you will run only backup that is needed in case of the disaster.

He also provides scripts and batch file commands for automating the process (a huge time-saver for those that want to use this approach).  Perhaps the best thing about the Tutorial is that it’s really practical.  It doesn’t assume you’ll be making multi-million-dollar investments in proprietary hardware and software.  Rather, it helps you utilize your standard infrastructure – multi-homed servers and Gb Ethernet switches. 

Good luck, and feel free to leave comments if you have any feedback on the approach!