Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

Image via Wikipedia

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/04/14/creating-a-no-hypervisor-boot-entry.aspx 

From time to time I want to run Virtual PC / Virtual Server on my Hyper-V system.  While I can do this with the hypervisor running, the result is that Virtual PC / Virtual Server run quite slowly.  An easy fix for this is to create a second boot entry for my system that starts Windows without starting the hypervisor.  To do this you need to open an administrative command prompt and run:

1. bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Microsoft Windows Server 2008 - no hypervisor"
   
   This copies your currently active boot entry (assuming that this is the one you want to copy) and gives the new copy an appropriate description.
2. bcdedit /set {identifier for the new boot entry (copy from the output of a plain 'bcdedit' command)} hypervisorlaunchtype off
   

After doing this you can choose whether the hypervisor gets loaded whenever you boot the system.

 

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Enabling VSS for Hyper-V Backups With Windows Server Backup

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Source: http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2008/10/06/backing-up-hyper-v-with-windows-server-backup.aspx

 

As with anything you should be backing up your Hyper-V machines.  I think that just goes without saying.  Backing up Hyper-V has gotten easier with the addition of VSS and Windows Server Backup (WSB).  WSB is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 that replaces the old NTBackup from days gone by.  It is not installed by default but can be easily added with the Add Features wizard in Server Manager.  Once installed there is one last setting you must configure before backing up the Hyper-V virtual machines.

While Hyper-V does support VSS backups, it is not enabled by default.  I am not sure why but you need to set a few registry settings to get WSB to recognize the Hyper-V VSS writer.  You can enable this with the following two registry settings.

Under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WindowsServerBackup\ApplicationSupport add the following key {66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE

Then under that newly created key add a new REG SZ string called Application Identifier with the value Hyper-V.  Once that is done you are ready to go!  To make it a bit easier you can copy and paste the following to a command line (with administrative privileges) and it will get it all set up for you.  You will need to set this on all Hyper-V servers in your organization but there is no reboot required!

reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WindowsServerBackup\ApplicationSupport\{66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}"
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WindowsServerBackup\ApplicationSupport\{66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}"

/v "Application Identifier" /t Reg_SZ /d Hyper-V

For more information see:

Windows Server 2008 Backup Step By Step

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