In this video from ITFreeTraining, we will look at installing Integration Services in
Windows and the settings that can be configured. Integration services is a suite of software
that is installed in Hyper-V virtual machines in order to increase performance of those
virtual machines. I will now change to a server running Hyper-V to have a 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.
The newer versions of Windows have integration services pre-installed, however you should
install integration services to make sure you have the latest version. To show the features
that integration services provide, I will open a virtual machine that is running Windows XP.
This virtual machine is running a clean install of Windows XP. Nothing has been added or configured.
Windows XP is being used because it does not come with integration services pre-installed.
You will notice that when we move the mouse around, the mouse does not move outside the
window and thus we cannot access anything other than the virtual machine using the mouse.
To use the mouse with the operating system, it needs to be released from the virtual machine.
To do this, I first need to press the keys ctrl and alt followed by the left arrow. 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 virtual machine’s window, 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 arrow to release it.
If I close the Windows XP virtual machine and open the virtual machine that is running
Windows Server 2012, notice how 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 virtual optical 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 us that there is a previous
version of Integration Services on the operating system and will ask if I would like to upgrade
the installation. You can see that, even though Windows Server 2012 comes with Integration
Services pre-installed, it is an older version and it is worth taking the time to upgrade.
If I move a virtual machine from another server, it is worth taking the time to check that
you have the latest version of Integration Services installed on the virtual machine.
Having a newer version of Integration Services on the virtual machine will improve the performance
of the 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 of which version of Windows you are using. Integration
Services is supported on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and above. On older operating
systems, you may 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,
setup will let you know which service pack is required.
I will now go back to Hyper-V Manager and allow integration services to finish the install
in the background. To have a look at the settings that can be configured, I will right click
the virtual machine and select settings.
To see which ones 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,
for example improved video performance; however, they are not all listed because they 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.
Next 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 fine to
leave this option ticked, but there is one particular case where I would suggest switching
this off.
Consider this scenario: if you setup a physical server running Hyper-V to run virtual machines,
you would most likely put this server in the domain to make it easy to manage. On this
Hyper-V server you install a Domain Controller running the PDC emulator role. In order to
keep the time on the Domain Controller correct, you sync the time on the Domain Controller
with an external time source. It is important that this server’s time is correct because
this time is synced to the other Domain Controllers which in turn is passed onto all domain members.
The problem with this approach is that the physical computer will attempt to sync its
internal time clock to the Domain Controller running in the virtual machine. The problem
is that if time synchronization is enabled in Hyper-V, what will happen next is the server
running Hyper-V, since it is a domain member, will sync its time from the Domain Controller.
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 conflict 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 also 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 . This allows Hyper-V to accurately obtain information about
the virtual machine allowing it to be managed better.
Following this 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. This
is useful when the server is in a cluster as it allows the cluster to detect a virtual
machine that has crashed.
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 briefly 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 how to install integration services in Windows. In the next video, we will look
at how to install integration services in Linux. We hope to see you in that video and
the other videos from the Hyper-V course and other courses from us. Until next time, thanks
for watching.