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Welcome to the ITfreeTraining video on Integration Services. Integration Services is additional
software that can be added to Hyper-V virtual machines to add features and improve performance
of that virtual machine. In this video I will look at the features Integration Services
adds as well as how to install Integration Services on Windows and Ubuntu.
First of all, what is Integration Services? Integration Services is additional software
that is installed on the virtual machine. It provides additional device drivers and
adds additional features to the operating system. You can run a virtual machine without
Integration Services, however Integration Services improves the performance of the virtual
machine.
The most noticeable feature is it allows unrestricted mouse movements. As we will see in the demonstration,
when you select the virtual machine the mouse pointer is restricted to that virtual machine
and a special key combination has to be used to release it. Integration Services allows
seamless movement between the virtual machine and the desktop.
The next feature is that it improves video performance and adds additional video features.
Without the additional software installed, you are limited to the basic video features
and video updates on the virtual machine can be sluggish.
The next feature that it adds is a heartbeat service. Using the heartbeat service, the
host can monitor the virtual machine. If the virtual machine were to crash or become unresponsive
the host will not receive a heartbeat from the virtual machine and will know something
has happened to it. In this case, the host could be programmed to power cycle the virtual
machine or alert an administrator depending on how the administrator wanted this handled.
Integration Services adds data exchange ability between the host and virtual machine. 0:01:57.950,0:02:03:00 Using data exchange the client can pass information to the host like host name, 0:02:03:00,0:02:08:00 OS Version and build number. This information helps Hyper-V manage the virtual machine. 0:02:08:00,0:02:14.890 For example, configuring performance options based on the virtual machine that is running.
Next there is support for time synchronization between the host and the virtual machine.
With this feature, the host will ensure all the virtual machine are set to the time configured
on the host. You can also achieve the same result using time synchronization software
on the virtual machine, so it is up to the administrator to decide if they want to use
this feature.
The next feature is improved snapshot performance. A snapshot allows the virtual machine state
to be saved and then recalled later on. The virtual machine will be returned to the same
state when restored include what was in memory. Snapshots are still available without this
feature, however when preforming a snapshot there may be a noticeable delay on the virtual
machine when the snapshot is performed. That is, the virtual machine may stall for a period
of time.
The last feature is remote desktop virtualization. This allows management to be performed with
the virtual machine using remote desktop. With all the additional remote management
features in Windows Server 2012, this allows better management in Windows Server 2012 assuming
that the operating system supports the installation of Integration Services.
Shown here are all the operating systems that Integration Services supports. Essentially
everything from Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and above is supported. With the older
operating system you will need to install a service pack before you can install Integration
Services. With Linux only certain distributions are supported. If your operating system is
not listed, you can still install that operating system however the performance of the virtual
machine may be reduced. I will now change to my Windows Sever 2012 computer running
Hyper-V to look at how to install and use Integration Services.
To access Hyper-V Manager, I will first open Server Manager from the quick launch bar.
From here, I will select Hyper-V Manager from the tools pull down menu.
On this server I have 3 virtual machines setup. One running Windows Server 2012, one running
Ubuntu and one running Windows XP. By looking at these different operating systems, it will
give you a good understanding of how Integration Services can improve the performance of your
virtual machines.
I will start by opening Windows XP. This virtual machine is running a new clean install of
Windows XP. Nothing has been installed or configured. You will notice that when I move
the mouse around, the mouse does not move outside the window and thus I cannot access
anything else on the computer.
In order to use the mouse with the desktop it needs to be released from the virtual machine.
To do this I need to press the keys ctrl, alt and the left arrow at the same time. Notice
that once I press these keys, the mouse has been released and the other mouse pointer
used by the operating system is still present. What essentially happens is that when you
click on the Windows, the virtual machine captures the mouse and it cannot be used for
anything else expect in that virtual machine until you press ctrl, alt and the left mouse
button to release it.
If I close the Windows XP virtual machine and open the virtual machine that is running
Windows Server 2012, notice that I can move the mouse pointer between the virtual machine
and the desktop without having to release the mouse pointer. Windows Server 2012 has
Integration Services pre-installed so this is why this can occur. Since these drivers
are already present, you may be thinking that there is no need to install Integration Services,
but look what happens when I select the action menu and attempt to install Integration Services
anyway.
Once I select the option insert integration service setup disk, the disc containing the
Integration Services setup will be inserted into the optic drive of the virtual machine.
When I open Windows Explorer and run the auto start from the virtual optical drive, notice
that the Integration Services setup will inform me that there is a previous version of Integration
Services on the operating system and would I like to upgrade the installation. You can
see that even though Windows Server 2012 comes with Integration Services pre-installed, the
version that comes with Windows Server 2012 is an older version and it is worth taking
the time to upgrade. If you move a virtual machine from another server, it is worth taking
the time to check that you have the latest version on Integration Services installed
on the virtual machine. Having a newer version of Integration Services on the virtual machine
will improve the performance of that virtual machine.
The install is quite simple, press o.k. and the setup will do the rest. A number of device
drivers will be installed and once this is complete the system will ask to be rebooted.
The process is the same regardless which version of Windows you are using. Integration Services
is supported on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and above. On the older operating system
you will need to install a service pack before you will be able to install Integration Services.
If you attempt to run the setup and the required service pack is not present, the setup will
let you know which service pack is required.
I will now allow Integration Services to install in the background. To have a look at the settings
that can be configured I will go back to the virtual machine, right click on it and select
settings.
To see which integration services are enabled, select Integration Services. Here you can
see the 5 possible settings that can be configured. Additional features are also added with Integration
Services however not all features are listed here because some do not need to be configured.
The first option, operating system shutdown, allows the Hyper-V Manager to issue a command
to shut down the operating system. This will perform a clean shutdown just like if you
selected the shutdown option using the desktop and mouse. Without this option, the Hyper-V
manager would only be able to power off the virtual machine, the same effect as pulling
the plug out of a physical computer.
The next option is time synchronization. This will allow the virtual machine to keep its
time in sync with the local physical computer’s time clock. In most cases it should be o.k.
to leave this option ticked, but in one particular case I would suggest switching this off.
If you consider this scenario, you have a physical server that is a domain member. It
is running Hyper-V and one of the virtual machines running on this server is running
a Domain Controller. This Domain Controller has the PDC emulator operational master role.
Since the PDC emulator is used to effectively sync all computers in the domain you want
the time to be correct. For this reason you sync the Domain Controller to an external
time source.
The problem with this approach is that you can see that the physical computer will attempt
to sync its internal time clock to the virtual machine. Since the virtual machine is a Domain
Controller and the physical machine is a domain member, the Domain Controller will attempt
to sync the physical computer with the time on the virtual machine. If the virtual machine
time and the physical server time are close, this should not cause too many problems, but
once they get out of sync, both will fight with each other to sync the others time clock
and this can cause serious problems. This is one scenario where you would want to disable
the time synchronization on the virtual machine. As an alternative you could sync the physical
server with an external time source rather than the Domain Controller and this would
eliminate the problem.
The next option is data exchange. This provides a communication system between the host running
the virtual machine and the virtual machine itself by using the registry. For example,
the registry could contain information like which operating system is being used and the
version of that operating system.
The next option is heartbeat. This causes the physical server to send a message to the
virtual machine at periodic intervals. If the physical server does not receive a message
back from the virtual machine, the virtual machine may have crashed or become unresponsive.
If you are in an environment where certain actions are performed when the server becomes
unresponsive, for example restarting the virtual machine, in some cases you may want to disable
the heartbeat. For example if a backup is running that may make the virtual machine
temporarily unresponsive you may disable the heartbeat. Unless you have something special
like this configured, you would leave the Heartbeat option enabled.
The option backup (Volume snapshot) allows the physical server to communicate with the
virtual machine when snap shots are being performed. A snapshot allows the state of
the virtual machine to be saved at any time. When it is saved, the administrator can restore
the virtual machine to the snapshot at any time and the system, including memory, will
be restored back to that point. If you do not have this option enabled, you can still
perform snapshots, however the virtual machine will be paused when the snapshot is started.
If this option is on, there is less interruption to the virtual machine when a snapshot is
performed.
This covers the Integration Services settings. I will now go back to the Hyper-V manager
and have a look at the Ubuntu virtual machine.
You will notice that I have two mouse pointers, but I can move the mouse freely between the
virtual machine and the desktop. This is because this install of Ubuntu has some of the required
features installed by default. Ubuntu has integration services built into the operating
system and some features are enabled by default and others need to be enabled. Microsoft provides
a download for some Linux distributions, for example Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. In other
distributions, if supported, the required features need to be enabled. In the reference
section of this video is a link to a Microsoft social network article outlining which distributions
are supported.
To enable these options, I will right click on the top left icon and select the option
applications. Next I will search for terminal and open it. Notice that the screen update
is very slow. Once integration services is enabled, the video update speed should improve.
To make the required changes, I will run sudo which will allow me to run a command with
root access, followed by pico, which is a text editor, followed by the configuration
file that I want to modify. This configuration file changes the options used to create the
initial image that is first loaded by Linux at boot. Since integration services works
at such a low level in the operating system, the changes need to be performed here.
Once I run the command I will need to enter in the root password and then the text editor
will open. In the file I need to add 4 lines. These lines load the appropriate modules for
Integration Services. I have included the four lines that need to be added in the description
for this video.
Once I exit and save the changes, the next command I need to run is an update command.
Even though the command starts with update, you need to add the minus u switch in order
to tell it that you want to perform an update. What happens now is the image file that is
first loaded when linux boots up is rewritten to include the Integration Services modules.
Once the update has completed, I will run the shutdown command to reboot.
The system will now boot up again, but this time the extra modules will be loaded. Once
it has booted and I am logged in, notice that when I move the mouse this time I have only
the one mouse pointer. Although it may be hard to tell in the video, but the mouse pointer
is little bit more responsive.
If I open a terminal again and run the command lsmod, this will show all the modules that
are currently loaded. Notice that the modules I entered before are listed. If I close the
Ubuntu window and open the settings for the virtual machine, notice that when I select
integration Services, just like in the Windows virtual machine, I have the same options available
to me.
That covers it for integration services. You can see that installing integration services
in Windows or enabling it in UNIX is worth the time and effort for better performance
and additional features. Thanks for watching this video from ITFreeTraining and I hope
to see you in the other free videos from us. All our free videos are available on the Web
site and YouTube channel. Until next time, goodbye and good luck.