Software

How to enable PowerShell in Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

Liam Westley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:00:47 GMT

After reading Tim Anderson’s blog article (here) on his installation of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 I glibly added a comment that R2 now includes PowerShell 2.0 for local management of virtual machines using PowerShell scripts. Of course, I hadn’t actually tried this before commenting ....

Why would you want to use scripting on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

If you have never installed Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 you may not realise the limited options provided by the local management tool. Based on Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core there is no Windows Explorer and none of the standard user interface components for configuration. Instead the Hyper-V team provide a simple menu which supports the configuration steps required to allow remote management of the server using the Hyper-V Manager MMC snap-in (available for Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008).

The real ‘local’ management tool is that old fashioned item, the command prompt,

So, if you aim to manage Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 you should get used to command line tools and commands, which means having access to a scripting system like PowerShell provides a route for local management of virtual machines without requiring the Hyper-V Manager on a separate client machine.

No PowerShell by default

As stated above, Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is based on Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core, and it is this update that included support for .NET framework and PowerShell scripting. Quite correctly server core locks down all functionality until it is enabled/installed. PowerShell is one of the items that are not installed by default.

First installation attempt

So I did a quick Google/Bing for Enabling PowerShell on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and got to this blog article (here) on the highly useful Virtual PC Guy’s blog. I followed the steps. No joy.

Hold on - doesn’t PowerShell required .NET Framework?

I did a directory search, dir c:\windows\*powershell*.exe /s, to see if the directory path had changed, but instead of finding a PowerShell installation, I found a list of files in a directory called c:\windows\winsxs. This directory appears to contain all the install packages for server core, and as well as PowerShell it included .NET framework installations.

This was the ‘lightbulb’ moment I was searching for. PowerShell probably won’t install because I the .NET Framework is not installed. A big more of Google/Bing and I found the following article on Window Server 2008 R2 Server Core, on MSDN, http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/r2core/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Home&version=8

I ran the command oclist to list all the installed options,

There, right in the middle was PowerShell being a child node of NetFx2 (.Net Framework 2.0) which suggested a dependency. So I ran the following installation commands

start /w ocsetup NetFx2-ServerCore

start /w ocsetup MicrosoftsoftWindowsPowerShell

After that, I had PowerShell installed,

To run it I just cd'd to c:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0 and typed powershell

Alternatively once you reboot the system, the PowerShell directory will be placed in the search path and you can just type powershell in any directory to access the PowerShell command prompt.

Next steps ...

In a post next week I’ll demonstrate how to use the PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V available on codeplex (http://pshyperv.codeplex.com/) on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 to list running virtual machines, start and stop virtual machines and do useful admin stuff like mount/dismount VHD drives.

Where has my graphic equalizer gone in Windows Media Player 12? (i.e. Windows 7)

Liam Westley — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:14:02 GMT

I have used Jabra BT320s Bluetooth headsets for some time to listen to music on my desktop PC, under Vista and Windows 7.

Although all the same model, they have dramatically different maximum volume settings (which I’m guessing are hardware related in some manner). It can be handy to use the graphic equaliser in Windows Media Player to boost the volume, especially of radio programmes I’ve recorded on my DAB radio.

When I upgraded to Windows 7 it came with Windows Media Player 12, and the graphic equaliser appeared to have gone missing from the main window. However, it is there, you just need to know where to look.

If you just ‘play’ an MP3 track you get a default album art/visualisation windows,

Well, no equaliser there. However, it used to be on the windows where you could see the playlist, you can access this by pressing the Alt key and then selecting Show Menu Bar (actually, Ctrl+1 also works but I only found that out when researching how to get the equaliser visible).

Now it used to be down near the time elapsed/remaining area, but it’s not there. Hmmmm.

So I did some Googling, and discovered it is available on the ‘mini display’ and the best way to get this is to press Ctrl+2.

Look , there is the icon for the equaliser, just there in the bottom right corner ...

... if you click on that icon you finally get the equaliser,

Once adjusted you can hit Ctrl+1 to go back to playlist mode, or Ctrl+3 to view the album art/visualisation and the equaliser setting will remain in place.

I have no idea why they made it this hard, I really don’t.

Adobe Acrobat Reader Updates – how to save them locally for repeated use, a step by step guide

Liam Westley — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:57:49 GMT

As a developer I have several machines, some of which are virtual machines which may be isolated from the general internet. I used to get annoyed with Adobe not providing direct downloads for updates which means you have to download updates for each machine separately.

I realise there may be good reasons for this, differentiating between different versions of operating system. However, I do like to have the ability to rebuild a system to a known state from scratch without relying on online updates.

For this reason I quite often avoided downloading Acrobat updates, until I found out how to perform the update on one machine, capture the update files and then use these to roll out updates the various systems on which I have Acrobat Reader installed.

Step 1 – Help menu, check for Updates

Step2 – Adobe Updater progress bar should appear

Step 3 – If updates are found, you have the option to click on a Preferences link

Step 4 - In the preferences dialog you will find a setting called File Location, this is where updates will be downloaded

Step 5 – Highlight the path, right click and copy the folder location

Step 6 – Run Windows Explorer, paste in the folder location you just copied

Step 7 – Back in the Adobe Updater select the option to download and install updates, a new folder appears in Windows Explorer

Step 8 – It is quite possible that the update will download additional patches to the main installation (and these are the patches you can never normally download directly from Adobe)

Step 9 – You will need to copy the files from Windows Explorer once the download is complete, in Windows 7 the UAC confirmation (the small shield) halts the updater and gives you plenty of time to copy the files. If the Adobe Updater runs automatically you need to be very quick as all the updates files are deleted once the update is complete.

Virtualised networking issues? Sometimes it's the most obvious thing, Doh!

Liam Westley — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:41:28 GMT

I just provided some help to a friend setting up a small virtualisation network on single machine, for demonstrating a new software technology at user groups and conferences.

A few tweets and e-mails went back and forth as we discussed virtual networking options, static IP configurations and using NEWSISID to enable imaging VMs from a initial 'gold' image. Getting the machines to talk to each other on an isolated virtual network was proving to be way more difficult than it should have been.

At this point I'll veer off and mention the apocryphal story regarding a Physics PhD who was visiting his parents. When he discovered that their vacuum cleaner had stopped working the day before he offered to help out. About an hour after he started his mother brought him a cup of tea in a room now strewn with vacuum cleaner parts being tested with a digital multimeter. His mother casually asked if he had tested the fuse ...

So back to the virtualisation; I had actually hit a similar scenario with my virtualisation presentations when I installed Hyper-V Server on one laptop and used a crossed network cable to connect to a second laptop running Windows Server 2008. I blamed Hyper-V Server, I blamed my static IP configuration, I blamed the crossed network cable.

I blamed all the unfamiliar things I was working with.

And the solution for me, and my friend's isolated virtual network?

The default firewall settings in Windows Server 2008 block the ping command. Yep, the thing you'll first think of to test you have the network configured correctly won't work.

I discovered this when in desperation I configured remote administration. Once a connected remotely, I knew my network configuration was definitely working, and a bit of digging later and I discovered the truth about ping under a default installation of Windows Server 2008.

The lesson learnt; it is completely natural to blame the unfamiliar first, a very human reaction. It's also more often than not the wrong attitude, especially with new computer technologies.

Liam

P.S. Disabling the ping command follows the Microsoft goal of locking down server operating systems to be secure out of the box, and letting administrators enable services and firewall items when they are required. This is a good thing, and I definitely don't want this post to suggest otherwise. We just need to remember, no ping by default and get over it.

Hyper-V for Developers - presentation from Edge UG 16 September 2009

Liam Westley — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:29:04 GMT

Thanks to Ray and Gavin for organising another top EdgeUG meeting in Microsoft Cardinal Place and for everyone who attended my talk on Hyper-V for Developers. The audience had to deal with a huge amount of technical information that I crammed into the hour - hopefully it didn't put them off their pizza.

Fortunately the Stack Overflow master and author of C# in Depth, Jon Skeet, was on hand after the break for a interesting glimpse into code contracts coming with VS2010 and C# 4.0.

For those who weren't there last night, the presentation provides an overview of Hyper-V Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 running Hyper-V, tools that you can install to help you out, how Snapshots work and finally automation of Hyper-V using the PowerShell library for Hyper-V as might be used in CI (continous integration) server.

I've got two version of the slidedeck, one in PowerPoint, hyperv4dev-ppt.zip, and a PDF version complete with speaker notes that contains all the interesting stuff including the PowerShell script, hyperv4dev-pdf.zip.

Thanks again to the guys from EdgeUG and all those who joined us down the pub afterwards for a beer and a chat.

Liam

P.S. Jon mentioned that Microsoft has decided that static checking of Code Contracts should be limited to the Team System versions of Visual Studio 2010. Here is a link to the Microsoft Connect request to reverse this blinkered approach and place static checking into Visual Studio Professional edition;

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=481327

Do please vote on t his topic and let Microsoft know what you think, hopefully it 's not too late to reverse this marketing decision.

I wouldn't buy a phone that didn't charge off USB because ...

Liam Westley — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:48:07 GMT

I recently bought a new Windows Mobile phone, Benq E72, and one reason it won over a Samsung model is the standard mini-USB connector for data and charging (hint, hint, Nokia).

Why does this matter? Apart from charging off any laptop, and off an 4 x AA battery pack I already have for emergency charging, it can even charge off the weirdest devices. Here it is with a standard USB to mini USB lead charging from my Philips DVD recorder which has a USB port for displaying photos and playing MP3s.

If you need a clearer image of the phone screen try here.

I'm always stunned by phones with a mini USB port but can't charge from it (Nokia's, until recently), even more by phones with a mini USB port that will only charge from their own charger (Alcatel). Not counting the worse offenders, phone manufacturers who connect via USB but have customer connectors (Samsung, it's you I'm looking at) that lock you to the one and only charger you get with the unit.

Hyper-V for Developers - presentation from DevEvening 13 August 2009

Liam Westley — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:01:13 GMT

Thanks to Alex and Matt for organising another top DevEvening user group in Woking and for everyone who attended my talk on Hyper-V for Developers. Apologies for over running and hope it didn't stop you from enjoying your meals. I think I achieved a good warm up for Sebastien Lambla's talk on best practices in MVC.

For those who weren't there last night, the presentation provides an overview of Hyper-V Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 running Hyper-V, tools that you can install to help you out, how Snapshots work and finally automation of Hyper-V using the PowerShell library for Hyper-V.

I've got two version of the slidedeck, one in PowerPoint, hyperv4dev-ppt.zip, and a PDF version complete with speaker notes that contains all the interesting stuff including the PowerShell script, hyperv4dev-pdf.zip.

Thanks again to the guys in Woking, and for Sebastien Lambla for helping me polish off a bottle of nice wine on the way back to London.

Review: DisplayLink USB to DVI adapter, adding an external display to a laptop or desktop

Liam Westley — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:04:38 GMT

DisplayLink USB

Last week I wrote a review of a Kensington USB docking station which included DisplayLink technology to allow an external display to be added to a laptop via a USB 2.0 port. I described how I used this docking station to enable the holy grail of three external screens on my laptop. You can read about it here,

http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2009/06/03/132579.aspx

Declaring an interest

On publishing, I promoted the blog post via Twitter where recently someone had bemoaned the inability of a laptop to support more than two displays. I was curious to see if DisplayLink might follow me on Twitter, and checked to see if they had an active account. When I discovered they had no account, I created a DisplayLink account and sent the guys at www.displaylink.com the username and password so they could keep it safe for future use.

The next day, the marketing guys at DisplayLink sent me an e-mail thanking me for setting up the Twitter account. Also, as a gesture of appreciation they requested my address so they could send out a USB to DVI adapter based on their DL-160 chipset.

So a big thanks to DisplayLink for enabling me to review the DVI version.

Hardware

Unlike the Kensington docking station which incorporated a USB 10/100 network chip, 4 port hub and USB audio, this is a dedicated display unit. It’s wonderfully compact compared to the full docking station, approx 10cm x 5cm. Connecting to the PC via a standard mini USB lead, it is self powered via USB, with video displayed using a DVI connector.

DVI Connector

Mini USB Connector

(I placed a measuring tape next to the adapter sio you can see just how small it is, the tape measure is locked at 10cm)

Software

The software was identical to that used for the Kensington docking station (see previous blog post for details), I just left the old driver in place. When I booted up Windows 7 RC there was a ‘New Hardware Device’ pop up for a few seconds, after which the DisplayLink adapter worked immediately, appearing as my display number 3 on my desktop.

Being a DVI output, the image was crisp and rock steady first time, with no need to adjust the display. If anything it looked slightly brighter with better contrast on my test 17” display compared to the analogue version in the docking station, but that is most likely due to the monitor settings.

Conclusion

My third monitor, a 17” Sharp model, while great on the DVI connection, is slightly fuzzy when displaying analogue VGA, so having a DVI version of DisplayLink is a great solution for my setup.

The small size of the dedicated adapter really sells itself to those who spend their life fighting with projectors at client sites. Having a couple of these, for both analogue and DVI solutions means you could guarantee best connectivity.

I’m tempted to lend the unit to a friend who regularly finds Windows 7 RC on his Mac Air struggles to connect to projectors at anything above 640 x 480 to see if this could solve the problem. I suspect it might.

It’s one of those rare IT products. It does a single job, really well, with the minimum of effort to install.

Review: Three external screens from a single laptop with help from DisplayLink

Liam Westley — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:07:16 GMT

As a developer I’ve become used to multiple monitors to increase my productivity. Debugging applications is much easier when one monitor is running Visual Studio and a second monitor is displaying the application being debugged, or SQL Management Studio, or your Locals window.

When I plugged my latest HP 6910p laptop into the docking station I was amazed to find that it supported dual external displays; both the DVI and analogue VGA ports can be active simultaneously. It’s a real advantage to get off the laptop display which I never find ideal when working at a desk. You really need the two monitors to be arranged side by side rather than above each other. This places the laptop much further away than normal and makes the screen hard to read.

I’ve been using dual 17” monitors at 1280 x 1024 with my laptop/docking station combination for some time. A few months ago I bought a 24” HD screen, 1920 x 1080. The ‘spare’ 17” monitor was relegated to my old desktop system, used for monitoring Outlook and Messenger and for Media Player duties.

If only I could have all three screens connected to my laptop ...

Enter DisplayLink

For some time, there have been proprietary graphics solutions for laptops which use PC Cards using the CardBus and Zoomed video abilities. Effectively you are adding a new graphics card to the system. These tended to be expensive and there was always the worry about driver availability for new operating systems.

DisplayLink takes a different route to enabling an external display by using a USB 2.0 interface. A desktop graphics driver delivers compressed video to a dedicated hardware decoder which has an analogue VGA output. Not only does this make it available to any laptop with USB 2.0, it also supports desktop systems without upgrading the main graphics card.

Cheap route to DisplayLink

I’d actually been following the progression of DisplayLink for some time in various www.pcpro.co.uk reviews, from the expensive Village Tronic ViBook (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/244438/village-tronic-vibook.html?searchString=vibook) at £130 to the more reasonable Kensington Dual Monitor Adapter (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/246230/kensington-dual-monitor-adapter.html?searchString=kensington) at £60.

Also, companies like Samsung have been selling external monitors which include smaller secondary screens powered by DisplayLink, as well as high end digital photo frames which include DisplayLink connectivity.

However, one of the PC Pro reviews included the comment it might be a better idea to search eBay for a Kensington USB docking station which supports video as these are normally available for less than the dedicated solutions.

My hardware

I spent a few months on eBay tracking Kensington docking stations with video, for the ‘right price’, and last week I finally won one in an auction for £20. The unit came with a power adapter, USB lead and the actual docking bar itself. In addition to DisplayLink the bar provides a 4-port powered USB 2.0 hub, audio and 10/100 networking

Docking Station - Front

Docking Station - Rear

The great news is that if all you are using is the DisplayLink connecter there is no need for the power adapter as the USB 2.0 connection provides the power.

The laptop is a HP 6910p (with 128Mb ATI Mobility Radeon X2300), 2.2GHz Core Duo, 4Gb RAM, with the advanced docking station providing simultaneous DVI and VGA outputs by default when the laptop lid is closed.

Drivers for Windows 7 RC 64-bit

One of my criteria for using DisplayLink was that the software had to work under Windows 7 as, since the beta release this has become my day to day operating system on my laptop. Even worse, it is a 64-bit installation which always makes one more wary of driver compatibility.

The good news was that the software drivers are available from the guys who make the hardware chip at http://www.displaylink.com rather than from Kensington. I thought I might be able to use a Vista 64-bit driver, but on the driver download page was a warning that it was not compatible with Windows 7. But right next to that warning was a link to a specific Windows 7 Preview driver.

By the time I finally won a Kensington docking station from eBay at the ‘right price’ my laptop had been upgraded to Windows 7 RC and the DisplayLink Windows 7 driver software had also been updated to a new release on 3 April 2009.

As with most USB devices, I ran the driver setup first (no reboot required) before plugging in the docking station. Various new hardware devices were detected, including the DisplayLink adapter. Only an AX88772 device wasn’t recognised, the ASIX USB 2.0 LAN controller.

A quick right click on the desktop, Screen Resolution, and there were three monitors on one laptop.

I enabled the monitor and took my first photo of three monitors running live on one laptop.

DisplayLink utility

Although you can configure the resolution and layout of the monitors within the standard Screen Resolution dialog, there is a special DisplayLink utility. This is installed during the driver setup but on my system was not added to the Start Menu. I found the utility files in, \Program Files\DisplayLink Core Software. Running DisplayLinkUI.exe provides a new icon in the system tray/notification area where you can control the DisplayLink specific options.

Colour Depth

Resolution

Rotation Options

During writing this blog post I decided to test whether the standard Windows 7 screen rotation options could be used instead of the DisplayLink utility menu. Big mistake, my other two displays went blank and it took a few dock/undocks and a DisplayLink driver uninstall and reinstall to get everything back to normal. Admittedly both Windows 7 and the DisplayLink drivers are both beta software so I’ll forgive them as long as the final releases work as expected.

CPU utilisation

The big downside with DisplayLink is that it uses the system CPU to compress the video it is sending to the hardware decoder. Kensington recommend at least a dual core CPU running at 1.2GHz and above. You do notice a bit of screen lag compared to the ‘real’ monitors but for applications like Outlook and Messenger work fine.

I decided to do a bit of simple benchmarking using Task Manager, tracking the core Display Link process, DisplayLinkManager.exe (you need to click on Show Process From All Users to view this).

Here are the results of my simple CPU utilisation tests,

Outlook and Messenger running in background < 1%

Windows Media Player playing MP3 files 10%

bbc.co.uk iPlayer video within a web page 15%

(Turkish Grand Prix 2005)

Windows Media Player MPEG4 video 30%

(Sebastien Lambla ASP.NET MVC best practices from VistaSquad user group)

Conclusion

What I wanted was a simple and cheap solution to providing a third display for my laptop which could handle background applications such as Outlook, Messenger or Twitter without compromising general performance. I’d say DisplayLink has achieved that with an elegant solution to a simple problem, all for £20 delivered thanks to eBay.

BSI Role of Virtualisation in Green IT - presentation now available

Liam Westley — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:18:24 GMT

For all who were at the BSI Green IT conference on 19th May, here is my presentation for download, in PowerPoint PPT format

http://www.tigernews.co.uk/blog-twickers/bsi/virtGreenIt.zip