I love System Center 2012 Wallpaper

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Cleber Marques has created some nice System Center 2012 Wallpapers. You can choose between different verions and colors of the wallpaper.

You can get them here: http://bit.ly/scwallpaper

Windows 8: How to create a Windows To Go USB drive

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Microsoft released a new feature called “Windows To Go” with Windows 8. With this feature it is possible to boot your Windows 8 from a USB drive on any PC. In this post I show you how you can do this.

Requirements

UBS drive with 16GB free Space
A PC running Windows 8
The Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO

Step-by-Step

First let me show you my setup to begin with.

I have my System Drive (C:), the USB drive I want to use (E:) and the Windows 8 ISO mounted (F:)

Run diskpart
With “list disk” you can list all your disk
Now select your usb drive (select disk 1) and clean it. After that you can create a new partition and format that and close diskpart.
```
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active
assign letter=e
exit
```
Now in my case the ISO is mounted as drive F:. Now with dism I can apply the Windows Image to my USB drive (E:)
```
dism /apply-image /imagefile=f:\sources\install.wim /index:1 /applydir:e:\
```
Now you have to make this drive bootable
```
bcdboot e:\windows /s e: /f ALL
```
now you are done. You can now boot your USB drive. The first boot will take some time to setup.

If you want to know more about Windows To Go I recommend you the Microsoft session from the BUILD conference.

Install Ubuntu 12.04 on Hyper-V

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Some months ago I made a blog entry about “Install CentOS on Windows 8 Hyper-V“. Now with the new Linux kernel 3.0 the Hyper-V Integration Components are integrated in the kernel. Now Ubuntu 12.04 will be based on the new Linux kernel and this is why it should run perfectly on Microsoft Hyper-V.

Download Ubuntu on Ubuntu.com. Until 12.04 is released you can download the daily builds from here.
Start the Hyper-V Manager and create a new Virtual Machine
Install Ubuntu 12.04
after the Installation everything should work fine

Windows Server “8” Beta Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Provides a visual reference for understanding key Hyper-V technologies in Windows Server “8” Beta and focuses on Hyper-V Replica, networking, virtual machine mobility (live migration), storage, failover clustering, and scalability.

You can download the poster on the Microsoft download site

The Browser You Loved To Hate

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Microsoft released a new funny Ad for Internet Explorer 9.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Blackscreen after enabling Hyper-V Role on Cisco UCS

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Hyper-V R2 SP1

Today I had a strange problem on a Cisco UCS installation. After you enabled Hyper-V on a Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1, you will get a black screen.

Cisco fixed this in the UCS Firmware version 2.0.1(t).

“After enabling Hyper-V in Windows 2008 R2 SP1 then rebooting, the server no longer shows a black KVM screen and a failure of windows startup and login.”

Release Notes for Cisco UCS Software, Release 2.0

Setup System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 CTP

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 8

This quick how-to blog postshows you how you can setup the new released System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 CTP.

Get software

First download the software:

You also need a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with SQL 2008 R2 and Service Pack 1

Setup SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1

Install a Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1
Install MS SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1
Open SQL Firewall Ports, so SCVMM can access the SQL Server

Setup SCVMM 2012 SP1 CTP

Setup a Windows Server 8 with the latest updates
Install the .NET Framework 3.5 Features with the Server Manager

or with Windows PowerShell:
[Powershell]
Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework-Features
Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework-Core
[/Powershell]
Install The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7
Install the Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 Native Client
Install the Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 Command Line Utilities
Start the setup.exe and click install
Choose VMM management server and click next
Configure the SQL connection to your SQL Server
Configure a service account. The service account you use has to member of the local administrator group on the SCVMM server and it should not be the default domain administrator.Because if you use the domain administrator as service acocunt you can not use it as “RunAs” account in SCVMM.
Configure the Library share
Install