Windows 2008 VM's and hiberfile.sys

I found that one of the Windows 2008 VM's on ESX VI3 was running out of space, and so I investigated. It turns out that there was a hiberfile.sys lurking on the system drive. I tried to delete, but wouldn't let me, I tried to find the option in Control Panel\Power Options, but nothing there. Turns out the following command needs to be run

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

Low and behold, the file is gone, and a few GB of disk storage is returned :)

Checked this on the Hyper-V W2K8 VM's, and it says that hibernation is not supported by the firmware, so not an issue.

Negative Ping Time on HP Proliant DL385 G2

Encountered an issue where installing W2K3 on a HP DL385 G2 caused some funnies. When trying to ping from the server, you'd get negative ping times. I didn't think too much about it as performance was OK and this was the only noticable issue. However, it turns out that there are issues with the timing on the AMD Opteron chipsets when using 2 or more cores. Windows 2003 uses the Time System Counter for timing, and this was being affected. Adding "/usepmtimer" to the BOOT.INI fixes this problem.

Find further discussion on the problem here.

PS. it looks like it could affect VM's on Hyper-V using 2 or more AMD processors assigned to it, installed with W2K3. I've added the switch to one such VM and it *appears* to have resolved the issue

Installing Windows Updates on Server Core

Here's a wonderful script that'll check what updates are required for your system, prompt if you want to install and go and do it if you so wish.

It's very handy for people like me, running Hyper-V on Server Core, who want to control when updates take place. On systems other than SC, it was easy to do, just run up the WUA client, but this script is a godsend for the SC devotee :)

If you want to see what Hotfixes are install on your system, try this

wmic qfe list (if you want better formatting, run wmic first, then enter qfe list)
WUA_SearchDownloadInstall.vbs

ESX 3.5 Update 2 Problem

It looks like users who've upgraded to Update 2 for ESX server 3.5 are having problems powering on or Vmotioning their VM's. It looks like a bug was introduced to the licensing code with update 2 that knackers up operations on VM's when the clock strikes 12 August 08 ! Already powered on VM's are OK, and although MS Patch day is today, with a nice raft of fixes, if the systems are set to auto update, it *should* be OK, as the system won't be powered off, just rebooted, but I would turn off DRS.

Turning off NTP on the host and setting the calendar to prior to the 12th fixes the issue, and it shouldn't affect the time on the VM's, apart from the fact the time could drift.

I bet MS are rubbing their hands together, you wouldn't get this kind of snafu with Hyper-V !:-0

More on this here.