Saturday 2 January 2010

Intel Modular Server – Installing the Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 OS On Multiple Compute Modules

Once we had our storage configured for our OS installation, the next task is to get the Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 operating system installed onto their Virtual Disk partitions.

In the Modular Server Control’s Servers node click on the first Compute Module then click on the Remote KVM & CD (previous blog post) button under the Actions menu:

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Once the KVM session comes up, click on the Device menu then on the Redirect ISO menu item:

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An Open dialogue box will come up. We placed the necessary ISOs on the 1U management server to start with to give maximum bandwidth to the installation routines.

Do this for each subsequent Compute Module. Do not close the KVM sessions, just minimize them for now.

In the Modular Server Control we can then power up all of the Compute Modules simultaneously using the Power On/Off Multiple Servers under the Global Actions menu.

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Note that the simultaneous access of the same ISO was a bit of a struggle. Here’s why:

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Java keeps choking and causing the ISO redirect to fail or the outright loss of the KVM session. :(

Initial Cluster Management

The desktop that we are using to connect to the clustered network and 1U management server a desktop OS installed on one of our own Hyper-V servers. We plugged one of the VM dedicated NICs into the same switch as the Intel Modular Server and the 1U management server.

Any PC or laptop will do, but for us it has been a bit simpler to work at one of our workbench systems and use our Hyper-V VM as a way to keep things isolated.

A bonus to the process is the ability to delete the VM and its VHD when finished to wipe any references to our client’s configuration.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

2 comments:

Josh Gay said...

Based on my experience I'm now using an external USB DVDRW to load the OS on these, (all the redirection happens over the management bus on these, so that ISO is being served over what I seem to remember is the 100 not 1000 connection on the management module, and yes, it can get REALLY slow, its very handy, but yeah, one of the project on my list is to make a bootable usb boot drive to install Hyper-V R2 from for these sorts of reasons.

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Josh,

We put together the needed flash drives to load the Hyper-V OS. But, I figured we would try the redirect for our first trial run.

You are right, from now on we will load the Compute Module's OS via USB flash from now on.

Philip