Happy New Year

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

Another great year ends and 2012 is just around the corner. 2011 was a successful year but I think 2012 will be even better. The private cloud products we all have talked about in the past months like System Center 2012 and Windows Server 8 will finally be released. And I am sure a lot of other stuff is coming in 2012.
I hope you all had fun reading my blog posts and tweets. I have learned a lot in the past year and had the chance to talk to a lot of interesting people.

Some predictions for 2012:

2012 will be the year of Hyper-V (by Aidan Finn)
Windows 8 will be released
I will buy my first Windows Tablet
My blog will hit the magic line of 2000 unique visitors a day
A lot of interesting projects
System Center 2012 changes the datacenter
Windows Phone will get some market share
I will do my private cloud proof of concept for my diploma thesis

Thank you all and happy new year.

Hyper-V 3: Import and Export VMs with PowerShell

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

Aidan Finn (Virtual Machine MVP) just made a blog post about Hyper-V & PowerShell in Windows Server 8 and how you can enable Hyper-V via PowerShell in Windows Server 8. So this gave me the idea about doing a little more with PowerShell and Hyper-V 3.

I already did a blog post about how you can attach multiple VHDs to a SCSI Controller with PowerShell in Windows Server 8. In this post I will show how easy you can export and import a lot of Virtual Machines.

First you can run a Get-VM Test*, to check which VMs you will export.


Get-VM Test*

Now you can export the Virtual Machines


Get-VM Test* | Export-VM -Path "C:\VMs"

Now I removed the Virtual Machines in Hyper-V with Powershell (You could also add the -confirm parameter so you don’t have to press “y” for each VM.


Get-VM Test* | Remove-VM

And now you can import the Virtual Machines again


Get-Childitem "C:\VMs" -Recurse *.xml | Import-VM

I will post more about PowerShell in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8 (Hyper-V 3) in the next upcommig weeks. If you want know more about what new Hyper-V features and improvments are coming in Windows Server 8, you can read the following blog post: “Hyper-V: Version 3 kills them all”

Enable RSAT on Windows Server 2008 R2 for Hyper-V

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

With the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) you can administrate the Server with remote consoles. Now you can download the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7, but if you are on Windows Server 2008 R2 you can just enable the tools per ServerManagerCmd.exe.


ServerManagerCmd -install RSAT-Hyper-V
ServerManagerCmd -install RSAT-Clustering

Automated Active Directory Deployment with PowerShell

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

For a small presentation at KTSI I created a PowerShell script will automatically will deploys Active Directory Servers, adds other member servers, creates Organization Units and adds users via Powershell Remoting. As source there is a XML configuration file and CSV files for User Data.

This script is just for Lab deployments not for production, and it is not perfect, but I think maybe some people will enhance this script with their own code.

I do not support this script. it is just something I need to deploy my test environments and nothing more. More it shows diffrent

You can find more information about it works in this document.

XML Config file:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<lab>
<config>
<servers>
<server name="ADS01" ip="192.168.100.11" id="1" adminpw="passw0rd"/>
<server name="ADS02" ip="192.168.100.12" id="2" adminpw="passw0rd"/>
</servers>
<ad>
<domain name="ktsi.local" netbiosname="ktsi" forestlevel="4" domainlevel="4" safemodepw="passw0rd" />
</ad>
<ous>
<ou name="UserAccounts" path="DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="BASEL" path="OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="CHICAGO" path="OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="NEWYORK" path="OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="SALES" path="OU=BASEL,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="IT" path="OU=BASEL,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="ADMINISTRATION" path="OU=BASEL,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="PRODUCTION" path="OU=BASEL,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="SALES" path="OU=CHICAGO,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="IT" path="OU=CHICAGO,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="ADMINISTRATION" path="OU=CHICAGO,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="PRODUCTION" path="OU=CHICAGO,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="SALES" path="OU=NEWYORK,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="IT" path="OU=NEWYORK,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="ADMINISTRATION" path="OU=NEWYORK,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
<ou name="PRODUCTION" path="OU=NEWYORK,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
</ous>
<users>
<file name="users.csv" path="OU=ADMINISTRATION,OU=BASEL,OU=USERACCOUNTS,DC=KTSI,DC=LOCAL" />
</users>
<members>
<member name="PC101" ip="192.168.100.21" />
<member name="PC101" ip="192.168.100.22" />
<member name="PC101" ip="192.168.100.23" />
</members>
</config>
</lab>

The PowerShell Script:

Continue reading →

Slipstream SQL Server 2008 SP2 for SCCM 2012

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

The Release Candidate version of System Center Configuration Manager 2012 requires MS SQL Server 2008 SP2 with Cumulative update package 6. Now this can be a little annoying and will hopefully change to SQL Server 2008 R2 in the RTM version.

Now if you want to install MS SQL Server 2008 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 you need at least a install media with SP1. Now this post shows you how you can integrate Service Pack 2 into the install media of SQL Server 2008.

Copy the SQL Server 2008 install media to C:\SQLServer2008withSP2
Download and copy the SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 files to C:\temp

Now you can run the following commands:

SQLServer2008SP2-KB2285068-IA64-ENU.exe /x:c:\SQLServer2008withSP2\PCU
SQLServer2008SP2-KB2285068-x64-ENU.exe /x:c:\SQLServer2008withSP2\PCU
SQLServer2008SP2-KB2285068-x86-ENU.exe /x:c:\SQLServer2008withSP2\PCUrobocopy C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\PCU c:\SQLServer2008withSP2 Setup.exe
robocopy C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\PCU c:\SQLServer2008withSP2 Setup.rll
robocopy C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\pcu\x86 C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\x86 /XF Microsoft.SQL.Chainer.PackageData.dll
robocopy C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\pcu\x64 C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\x64 /XF Microsoft.SQL.Chainer.PackageData.dll
robocopy C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\pcu\ia64 C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\ia64 /XF Microsoft.SQL.Chainer.PackageData.dllecho PCUSOURCE="C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\PCU" >> C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\x86\DefaultSetup.ini
echo PCUSOURCE="C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\PCU" >> C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\x64\DefaultSetup.ini
echo PCUSOURCE="C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\PCU" >> C:\SQLServer2008withSP2\ia64\DefaultSetup.ini

After you have done this you can install the MS SQL Server
After you have installed it, you still need to download and install the Cumulative update package 6 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2

More about SQL Slipstreaming on Peter Saddow’s MSDN blog post.