In addition to the host operating systems supported by Virtual Server 2005, R2 adds support for the following host operating systems:

• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 R2, Standard Edition
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Standard Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 R2, Enterprise Edition
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Enterprise Edition with SP1
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 R2, Datacenter Edition
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Datacenter Edition with SP1
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 R2, Standard x64 Edition
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Standard x64 Edition
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 R2, Enterprise x64 Edition
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Enterprise x64 Edition
  
  
• Microsoft Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (SP2)
  
  
• Microsoft Windows® XP Professional, x64 Edition
  
  

In addition to the guest operating systems supported by Virtual Server 2005, R2 adds support for the following guest operating systems:

• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 R2, Standard Edition
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Standard Edition with SP1
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 R2, Enterprise Edition
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Enterprise Edition with SP1
  
  
• Microsoft Windows® XP Professional with SP2
  
  

In addition to English and Japanese, R2 is also available in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.

R2 includes Virtual Disk Precompactor, a utility designed to "zero out" (overwrite with zeros) any available blank space on a virtual hard disk (VHD). We recommend that you use Virtual Disk Precompactor before you compact a dynamically expanding VHD in order to create a smaller compacted VHD.

After you install R2, you can find Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso in the folder: %systemdrive%\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\Virtual Machine Additions\.

To use Virtual Disk Precompactor, you must first capture Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso using the standard procedure for capturing .iso files as described in "To add or remove a CD or DVD drive" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide.

If your virtual machine is running when you capture Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso, Virtual Disk Precompactor starts automatically. If you click Yes when prompted, Virtual Disk Precompactor precompacts all virtual hard disks for this virtual machine. If Virtual Disk Precompactor does not start automatically, you can start it by navigating to the CD drive of the guest operating system and double-clicking Precompact.exe.

Alternatively, you can also run Virtual Disk Precompactor from the command line by navigating to the CD drive of the guest operating system and typing Precompact. The available parameters are:

-Help - Displays help for the precompactor.

-Silent - Runs the precompactor in unattended mode.

-SetDisks - Specifies the disks to be precompacted. If this parameter isn't specified, then all virtual hard disks for this virtual machine are compacted. For example, the following command will precompact your C, D, and E drives in unattended mode:

Precompact -Silent -SetDisks:CDE

Changes have been made to the way that Virtual Server allocates physical memory to guest operating systems. In some scenarios, this could result in significant performance improvements.

PXE boot support has been added to the virtual machine network adapter. This means that when the appropriate network infrastructure is in place, you can perform a network installation of a guest operating system without needing a PXE boot floppy disk.

With R2, Virtual Server now reserves sufficient space on the physical disk to save the state of each running virtual machine. It does this when the virtual machine starts up by creating an empty saved state (.vsv) file equal to amount of memory allocated to the virtual machine plus a 20 MB buffer. For example, if 200 MB of memory is allocated to a virtual machine, Virtual Server will create an empty .vsv file that is 220 MB in size. This ensures that you will have sufficient disk space to save the state of the virtual machine. When you shut down the virtual machine, Virtual Server deletes the empty .vsv. If you have selected the option to save virtual machine state, Virtual Server replaces it with a populated .vsv file. If not, Virtual Server simply frees the space on the disk without creating another file.

R2 includes a virtual floppy disk, SCSI Shunt Driver.vfd, that you can use to load the emulated SCSI drivers during installation of a Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, or Windows XP Professional guest operating system. This will speed the installation when the virtual hard disk is attached to a virtual SCSI adapter. For instructions on using this virtual floppy disk, see "Speeding operating system installation on SCSI disks" later in this document.

With Virtual Server 2005, we recommended that you disable hyper-threading on the host operating system to improve the performance of your virtual machines. With R2, this is no longer necessary. Hyper-threading does not affect virtual machine performance, except when Virtual Machine Additions is not installed.

On computers that use a symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) system which supports non-uniform memory access (NUMA), you can now specify the NUMA node to allocate the virtual machine's memory to the specified node. The value is stored in the virtual machine configuration (.vmc) file in a new key, Settings/Numa/Memory/Preferred_Node. You can specify the node programmatically by using IVMVirtualMachine::SetConfigurationValue.

On a computer that is running Virtual Server 2005, you can upgrade to R2 using the following procedure.

You can install R2 on a computer that is not currently running Virtual Server 2005 using the following procedure.

In this scenario, you install the Virtual Server service for R2 and the Administration Website for R2 on the same computer. For more information about this configuration, see "Installing Virtual Server" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide.

In this scenario, you install the Virtual Server service for R2 on one computer and the Administration Website for R2 on a different computer. For more information about this configuration, see "Installing Virtual Server" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide.

Command-line installation of R2 is different from command-line installation of Virtual Server 2005. You can install R2 using either the Setup file or the .msi (Windows Installer) file. This topic describes both approaches.

When compacting a differencing disk that is attached to a virtual machine with Undo Disks enabled, any changes saved in an undo disk (.vud) file will be lost. This occurs because compacting the differencing disk makes the undo disk file unusable. To help prevent data loss, commit the changes stored in the .vud file when you shut down or turn off the virtual machine before you compact any disks attached to that machine.

You should share a SCSI adapter only when a virtual hard disk attached to the SCSI adapter is attached to ID 0. Otherwise the following error will occur: IVMHardDiskConnection::get_HardDisk() failed. This hard disk object has not been properly initialized. This error prevents you from returning to the configuration page to modify the configuration.

After you install R2 on a host computer running Windows XP SP2, you need to manually configure Windows Firewall even if you selected the Enable Virtual Server exceptions in Windows Firewall option during installation. You must add an exception to port 80 for the Virtual Server Web application (VSWebapp.exe) so you can use the Administration Website. For more information, search for "Windows Firewall exceptions" in Help and Support Center.

The Host key is assigned to the right ALT key by default, which might interfere with inputting certain characters on a virtual machine running a non-English operating system. You can resolve this issue by assigning the Host key to a different key. For instructions, see "To change the default Host key" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide.

When you install Virtual Machine Remote Control (VMRC) or documentation only, you might receive an incorrect error message that the installation process adds exceptions in Windows Firewall. However, no changes are made to Windows Firewall when you perform a custom installation and install VMRC or documentation only.

If you have used the fsutil command to turn off support for creating file names in 8.3 format, the R2 install will fail. You must turn on this support in order to install R2.

When you try to start a virtual machine with a user account that does not have Write access to the virtual machine configuration folder, you will receive a message such as, "The virtual machine Virtualmachinename could not be started. An unexpected error occurred." Or "Virtualmachinename could not be started because a disk-related error occurred." This occurs because Virtual Server creates an empty saved state (.vsv) file in the virtual machine configuration folder when a virtual machine starts up. You can resolve this problem by granting Write permission on the virtual machine configuration folder to the user account for the virtual machine.

If you specify a custom folder to store virtual machines and use Virtual Server security settings to add permission entries for a new user, removing and reinstalling Virtual Server will modify the access control list (ACL) on the default folder by adding the new user with the rights that were assigned on the custom folder. The default folder is %systemdrive%:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\Shared Virtual Machines.

When you remove Virtual Server, the removal process does not delete files that store settings for virtual disk files or virtual machines and virtual networks. If you do not want to keep these files, you can delete them manually. The default locations of these files are as follows:

• Virtual machine configuration (.vmc) files are stored in %systemdrive%:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\Shared Virtual Machines
  
  
• Virtual network configuration (.vnc) files are stored in %systemdrive%:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\Shared Virtual Networks.
  
  
• Virtual hard disk (.vhd) files that are created when a virtual machine is created are located by default in the virtual machine configuration folder (%systemdrive%:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\Shared Virtual Machines). Other virtual hard disk files and all virtual floppy disk (.vfd) files are stored in the location that was specified when the file was created.
  
  

After Virtual Disk Precompactor finishes, a message incorrectly instructs you to use the Virtual Disk Wizard to compact the disk. This wizard is provided only with Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. When using R2 to compact a virtual hard disk, use the Administration Website to inspect the virtual hard disk and then compact it. For instructions, see "To compact a dynamically expanding virtual hard disk" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide.

The version of Virtual Machine Remote Control (VMRC) that is provided with Virtual Server matches the version of Virtual Server, either 32-bit or 64-bit. If you install the 64-bit version of Virtual Server VMRC, you must install the 32-bit version of Virtual Server on a separate computer if you need to obtain a 32-bit version of VMRC.

When you remotely manage a virtual machine from a computer on which Virtual Server R2 is installed, virtual machine details for the remote virtual machine might include a warning that Virtual Machine Additions is out of date. This warning occurs when the remote physical computer is not running the R2 version of Virtual Server. You can ignore this warning.

"Using Microsoft Loopback Adapter" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide includes the section "Configure NAT" that is missing information about Internet Protocol security (IPsec). If IPsec is enabled on the host operating system, you cannot share the host operating system's internet connection with virtual machines.

When scripting the _IVMRCClientControlEvents::OnSwitchedDisplay method for virtual machines on remote servers, be sure to include the remote server name in the URL. You can access the remote server name using the ServerAddress property. For more information, see "_IVMRCClientControlEvents::OnSwitchedDisplay" and "ServerAddressProperty of IVMRCClientControl" in the Virtual Server 2005 Programmer’s Guide.

The Virtual Server 2005 Programmer’s Guide incorrectly states that VMDHCPVirtualNetworkServer.DefaultGatewayAddress returns an error code of E_INVALIDARG when the defaultGatewayAddress parameter is an empty string.

Correction: When you specify an empty string for defaultGatewayAddress parameter, the currently specified default gateway is deleted.

The Virtual Server 2005 Programmer’s Guide incorrectly states that the path string returned by VMVirtualServer.DefaultVNConfigurationPath is terminated by a trailing \.

Correction: If the property is set to a path without a trailing \, no \ character is appended.

The Virtual Server 2005 Programmer’s Guide incorrectly states that the VMTaskResult enumeration includes the value vmTaskResult_Cancel.

Correction: The value is vmTaskResult_Cancelled.

The Virtual Server 2005 Programmer’s Guide incorrectly states that the parameter RpcAuthnLevel.PktPrivact should be provided in a call to CoInitializeSecurity in InitVS().

Correction: The parameter is RpcAuthnLevel.PktPrivacy.

In the Virtual Server 2005 Programmer’s Guide, the description of the virtualNetworkName parameter incorrectly states that it specifies the name of the virtual machine to add.

Correction: This parameter specifies the name of the virtual network to add.

In the "Key Identifier Reference" in the Virtual Server 2005 Programmer’s Guide, Key_Application is missing. The missing information is as follows:

Key identifier string: Key_Application

Meaning: the Application key

"Virtual Server scripting support" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide includes this incorrect statement: "If a script is attached to an event that is associated with a virtual machine, the quoted name of the virtual machine will be passed as the first parameter to the script."

Correction: This statement is incorrect and should be ignored.

"Configuring Virtual Server scripts" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide includes this incomplete statement: "Scripts are executed in a new process in the logon session of the Virtual Server service, which runs under the Network Service account by default. As a result, any user interface (UI) that the script may try to present will not be visible on the local computer. In general, you should not attempt to display UI from these scripts."

Correction: This statement should read as follows: "Scripts that execute when Virtual Server starts or stops are executed in a new process in the logon session of the Virtual Server service, which runs under the Network Service account by default. As a result, any UI that the script may try to present will not be visible on the local computer. In general, you should not attempt to display UI from these scripts. Also, keep in mind that the Network Service account might not have the user right required to perform one or more of the actions in the script. In such cases you need to either modify the script or grant the user rights to the Network Service account. When possible you should modify the script because granting additional user rights to an account makes it more vulnerable to attack. If you need to grant a user right, from a command prompt, type:CACLS "%DIR%" /C /E /G "NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService":permission

Other scripts are executed in a new process in the logon session of an individual virtual machine, which runs under the user account configured for that virtual machine. Because the user account might not have the permission required to display UI, you also should not try to display UI from these other scripts."

In "Configuring constrained delegation" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide, there is an error in "Step 3: Allow the Virtual Server service to delegate a user's credentials to another computer."

The current instruction is as follows:

• Type the name of the computer running the Virtual Server service, and then click OK.
  
  

The correct instruction is as follows:

• Type the name of the computer hosting the resource files, and then click OK.
  
  

Virtual Machine Additions in R2 is installed as part of the .msi setup package instead of through the Virtual Machine Additions .iso image file. As a result, the instructions in the topic "Load Virtual Machine Additions" in the Virtual Server Migration Toolkit help (Vsmt.chm) are incorrect.

Correction: Instead of capturing the .iso and copying files from that source, you will need to copy the following files from a guest operating system on which Virtual Machine Additions is installed. Vmsrvc.sys is located in the %systemroot%\System32\Drivers folder of the guest operating system. Msvmscsi.sys is located in the %systemdrive%\Program Files\Virtual Machine Additions folder of the guest operating system.

The instructions for pasting them to the Deployment Agent repository folder remain the same.