Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Release Notes

Applies To: Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

Welcome to System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2. This document provides important information about this release. For more information about VMM 2008 R2, see System Center Virtual Machine Manager TechCenter (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=119246).

To get started, click one of the following sections:

  • Setup and Upgrade

  • Adding and Configuring Hosts

  • Creating Virtual Machines

  • Migrating and Storing Virtual Machines

  • Self-Service Portal

  • Reporting

Setup and Upgrade

VMM Server installation fails if there is a space between the instance name and port number for a remote SQL Server

When you specify a remote SQL Server instance during the installation of the VMM server, and you insert a space between the instance name and port number, the VMM database is not installed and the VMM server installation fails. Use the following syntax to specify the instance name and port number: InstanceName,port

An SSL port is not specified when installing the VMM Self-Service Portal

Setup does not assign a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) port during installation of the VMM Self-Service Portal. For more information about implementing SSL, see Hardening VMM Self-Service Web Servers (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=123617).

After upgrading to VMM 2008 R2, the VMM agent on a highly available VMM library server cannot be manually updated

After upgrading to VMM 2008 R2 from VMM 2008, the VMM agent on the nodes of a highly available VMM library server are not updated to the VMM 2008 R2 version until VMM runs a periodic library refresh. By default, a library refresh is run every hour. You cannot manually refresh a library server.

Adding and Configuring Hosts

After using the “Allow Server Manager Remote Management” option in sconfig, the Virtual Machine Manager Agent service does not automatically restart

If you use the Allow Server Manager Remote Management option in the sconfig command to configure a Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 host, or to configure a host that is running a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 R2, you must manually restart the Virtual Machine Manager Agent service on the computer. Until you restart the Virtual Machine Manager Agent service, the host will have a status of Needs Attention in the VMM Administrator Console.

To restart the Virtual Machine Manager Agent service at a command prompt, type net start vmmagent, and then press ENTER.

Note

The Allow Server Manager Remote Management option is available if you select the Configure Remote Management option.

Job to change VMware VirtualCenter credentials incorrectly states that no changes were made

If you use the VMM Administrator Console to change the credentials that are used to communicate with a VMware VirtualCenter server and the associated job completes successfully, the job displays No changes were logged by this job. Even though the job states that no changes were made, the credentials were changed.

Creating Virtual Machines

VMM Administrator Console stops working when viewing the properties of a virtual machine that is configured to use three virtual processors

If you have used Hyper-V Manager to configure a virtual machine to use three virtual processors, the VMM Administrator Console will stop working when you try to view the properties of that virtual machine. To resolve this issue, use Hyper-V Manager to configure the virtual machine to use a different number of virtual processors (supported values include 1, 2, or 4).

Migrating and Storing Virtual Machines

BITS file transfers might appear to progress very slowly

Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) file transfers from a source computer with a VMM 2008 R2 agent installed to a destination computer with a VMM 2008 agent installed might appear to be progressing very slowly, without any errors being reported. This can occur if the destination computer reports an error back to the BITS client on the source computer, which the BITS client interprets as a transient error and then continually attempts to retry the job but does not report any user error.

To resolve this issue, upgrade the VMM 2008 agent on the destination computer to a VMM 2008 R2 agent, and then try the operation again.

Migration fails for a virtual machine that uses multiple parent virtual hard disks that are also used by another virtual machine

You can configure a virtual machine to use differencing virtual hard disks associated with two different parent virtual hard disks. If you configure another virtual machine to use differencing virtual hard disks associated with those same two parent virtual hard disks, then you cannot migrate either virtual machine to another host. If you attempt to migrate one of the virtual machines to another host, the Virtual Machine Manager service stops working and the virtual machine does not migrate properly. This issue occurs if the host is stand-alone or is a member of a cluster. There is no workaround for this issue.

Self-Service Portal

Administrator account for a virtual machine created by using the Self-Service Portal is set to AdminUser

If you create a virtual machine by using the Self-Service Portal and specify Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Vista for the operating system of the virtual machine, the name of the default Administrator account is automatically set to AdminUser and is not configurable. After the virtual machine has been created, you can log on to the virtual machine and change the name of the default Administrator account to something other than AdminUser.

Reporting

If the reporting server for VMM uses SQL Server 2008, information in the footer of a report (for example, the page number) might display as #Error. This issue does not occur if the reporting server uses SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 or uses SQL Server 2005.

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