Upgrading to Hyper-V RTM

Upgrading to Hyper-V RTM

Michael Otey

If you’ve been trying out Microsoft’s beta or Release Candidate (RC) code for Hyper-V then you’ll certainly be interested to know that Microsoft has made the Release-to-Manufacturing (RTM) code available for download from their web site. You can download the Hyper-V RTM code from the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F3AB3D4B-63C8-4424-A738-BADED34D24ED&displaylang=en

In a call with Jeff Woolsey Senior Program Manager for Virtualization at Microsoft, Jeff told us the CPU overhead for running in a Hyper-V RTM was only about 5-6% and that that Microsoft has been running their live TechNet and MSDN sites using their Hyper-V technology for some time. The Hyper-V release code has a number of significant performance improvements over the earlier prerelease code. If you’ve been using the prerelease code you’ll definitely want to migrate to the RTM code.

To manually migrate to the Hyper-V RTM code:

1. Download the Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB950050) from the above link.

The download is about 30.5 BM. Remember this only applies to the x64 edition of Windows Server 2008. The 32-bit x86 edition doesn’t support Hyper-V

2. Remove the Hyper-V Role from the target Windows Server system

When I tried to install the update without first removing the Hyper-V role I received an error and the update installation didn’t finish. If the system is running the full version of Windows Serer 2008 then you can use Server Manager to remove the Hyper-V role. If the sever is running Server Core then you can remove the Hyper-V role using the command start /w ocsetup.exe Microsoft-Hyper-V /uninstall. The server will need to be rebooted following the removal of the Hyper-V role.

3. Install the KB950050 update to the Windows Server system.

You can run Windows6.0-KB950050-x64.msu by double clicking on the update if you’re using the Windows Server 2008 full installation or by executing Windows6.0-KB950050-x64.msu from the command-line on Server Core.

4. Reinistall the Hyper-V Role

If you’re running the full version of Windows Server 2008 you can install the Hyper-V role using Server Manager’s Add Roles option. If you’re running Server then you can install the Hyper-V role using the start /w ocsetup.exe Microsoft-Hyper-V command. When I didn’t this the server rebooted three different times.

My earlier VMs all ran. However, I did need to readd the Virtual Network Adapter to them.