Thomas Maurer (tm)

Windows Server 2012 – Add and Remove GUI

Thomas Maurer — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:19:00 +0000

Microsoft worked hard on the management of the new Windows Server 2012. In Windows Server 2008 R2 you had to choose during the Installation if the Server is a Windows Server Full Installation (with GUI) or a Windows Server Core Installation (without GUI). In Windows Server 2012 you can add and remove the GUI from the server.

Add GUI on a Core Server

On a Core Server you can add the with the following PowerShell command

Add-WindowsFeature Server-GUI-Shell

After the Installation you have to restart the server

 Restart-Computer

Remove GUI on a Server

There are two ways you could do that, first via Server Manager remote the GUI feature:

Or via Windows PowerShell

 Remove-WindowsFeature Server-GUI-Shell

It is also important that you understand that Windows Server 2012 has three different GUI options.

Core
GUI
GUI with Management Tools

So if you activate the GUI you do not get all of the Management tools automatically. You have also to activate the “Management tools GUI”.

FreeBSD Support on Windows Server Hyper-V

Thomas Maurer — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:09:52 +0000

Big news from the Open Source guys at Microsoft. Microsoft, Citrix and NetApp together with the FreeBSD community announced the support of FreeBSD for Hyper-V. I think this is a very important step to get Hyper-V in a better position. A lot of Hosting providers I know are running FreeBSD machines, and now with the support they can run it on Hyper-V.

Check out this post about FreeBSD Support on Windows Server Hyper-V on Openness@Microsoft blog.

Virtualization technology plays an increasingly critical role at all levels of IT, from the desktop to the datacenter. As more organizations use virtualization to manage mission-critical workloads, they are taking advantage of the cost-saving benefits of server consolidation and building foundations for private, public and hybrid cloud computing. To help customers adopt virtualization and progress toward cloud computing, Microsoft is committed to supporting multiple platforms with its server virtualization solution. Tomorrow at BSDCan 2012, Microsoft and its partners NetApp and Citrix will extend this cross-platform commitment, presenting FreeBSD support on Windows Server Hyper-V.

The FreeBSD drivers will allow FreeBSD to run as a first-class guest on the Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisor. The drivers will be fully released early this summer, including the source code for the drivers under the BSD license, and will initially work with FreeBSD 8.2 and 8.3 on Windows Server 2008 R2.

For Microsoft the project breaks new ground – it’s the first project in which open source co-development was done with commercial partners like NetApp and Citrix. Also, the FreeBSD community is a new relationship for us relative to other open source communities that we’ve worked with for years. It was invaluable to have partners NetApp and Citrix, both users of and contributors to FreeBSD, be so knowledgeable about how to enable their products to run on Hyper-V with high performance. Given their expertise, they focused their attention mostly on the storage and network aspects of the drivers respectively, but the project was a joint effort in all aspects. Microsoft partnered with Insight Global on developing the VMBUS driver, which is the core that interfaces between the guest operating system and the host Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisor. From the earliest stages the code was intended to be open source, with the goal of incorporating it into the core of FreeBSD. This drove decisions such as using Github as the software development infrastructure.

System Center 2012 Unified Installer – Step by Step – Part 3

Thomas Maurer — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:54:35 +0000

In the first two posts we did all the preperation for the System Center 2012 Unified Installer. Now in this post we are going finally to run the Unified Installer.

Start the System Center Unified Installer
The System Center Unified Installer is not made for production so read the warning and click okay.
Choose the System Center components you want to install.
Set the component media Location for each System Center product
Accept the License Terms for Configuration Manager and the Prerequisite License Terms
Choose the Prerequisite Meida Locations
Specify the Installation Location
Select the System Center Target servers
Select System Center Service Accounts
provide some additional Setup information
Check the summary and click install
Now the System Center Unified Installer will Setup the first Server with System Center Orchestrator
After Orchestrator is deployed, it will Launch some Orchestrator runbooks to install the other System Center parts.
After all products are installed, SCUI will do a cleanup
And about 3 hours later you are done

I think this is very cool and can you save a lot of time if you are doing a Proof of Concept or a Lab deployment of the System Center products.

System Center 2012 Unified Installer – Step by Step – Part 2

Thomas Maurer — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:21:07 +0000

In my first post about the System Center 2012 Unified Installer I wrote about the prerequisites you need, to do a System Center 2012 deployment with the Unified Installer. In the second part I will write how you have to prepare the Installer and the Target servers.

It’s still important: Neither the System Center Unified Installer nor this guide is made to deploy the System Center Suite in production. It is only for lab or demo environments.

In my case I created two OUs to deploy my small lab. One for the Installer Computer and one for all the System Center servers. And I created some GPOs to save some time.

Preparing the Installer Computer for System Center 2012 – Unified Installer

First I installed a Server with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 as the installer Computer and installed all the patches which came with Windows Updates.
Now you have to do some configuration of WinRM. You can do this via Group Policy or CMD commands.
Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System / Credential Delegation / Allow Delegating Fresh Credentials (Enabled with the value: “WSMAN/*” and Concatenate OS defaults with input above selected)
Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System / Credential Delegation / Allow Delegating Fresh Credentials with NTLM-only Server Authentication (Enabled with the value: “WSMAN/*” and Concatenate OS defaults with input above selected)
Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Management (WRM) / WinRm Client / Allow CredSSP authentication (Enabled)
Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Management (WRM) / WinRm Client / Trusted Hosts (Enabled with a * in the TrustedHostsList option)

You could also run the following comands

winrm set winrm/config/client/auth @{CredSSP="True"}
winrm set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="*"}
winrm qc

Now you you have to open some Firewall ports, you can do this also via Group Policy or in the local Windows Firewall settings.
Create a new Inbound role for the following ports:
TCP 81
TCP 1433
UDP 1434
ICMP v4
Because it is a demo or lab Environment you could also disable the Firewall

On the User’s Guide for System Center 2012 – Unified Installer you can get more Information how you can prepare the Installer Computer.

Preparing a Target Servers for System Center 2012 Components

First I installed a Server with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 as the installer Computer and installed all the patches which came with Windows Updates.
Like for the Installer Computer we also have to create some GPOs for the Target Servers.
Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Management (WinRM) / WinRM Service / Allow automatic configuration of listeners (Enabled and the for the values of IPv4 filter and IPv6 filter type *)
Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Management (WinRM) / WinRM Service / Allow CredSSP authentication (Enabled)
Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Shell / Allow Remote Shell Access (Enabled)
Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Shell / Specify maximum amount of memory in MB per Shell (Enabled and set MaxMemoryPerShellMB to 2048)
You could also run the following commands on the target servers.
```
winrm qc -q
winrm set winrm/config/service/auth @{CredSSP="True"}
winrm set winrm/config/winrs @{AllowRemoteShellAccess="True"}
winrm set winrm/config/winrs @{MaxMemoryPerShellMB="2048"}
```

Create Installer User and Service Users

I also created a Service Users for every System Center product, you could also just use the same user account for all products.

svc-sc2012-scvmm
svc-sc2012-scac
svc-sc2012-sco
svc-sc2012-scom
svc-sc2012-sccm
svc-sc2012-scsm
svc-sc2012-scdpm

And I created a Installer User which has local Administrator rights on every machine. You also have to login to your Installer Computer and run the System Center Unified Installer with this account.

sc2012-installer

This was the last preperation post, in the next post the “Fun” Begins and we can fire up the System Center 2012 – Unified Installer

System Center 2012 Unified Installer – Step by Step – Part 1

Thomas Maurer — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:26:29 +0000

With System Center 2012 Microsoft released another tool called System Center Unified Installer. The System Center Unified Installer is design to do an automated installation of all the System Center 2012 products in Demo or Lab environments. It is not designed to install System Center 2012 in productive environments, because most of the time you have to work on the existing infrastructure and you change things on productive systems which you should do manually and check if they work as expected.

But it is a good tool to deploy System Center for demos, testing and proof of concepts. Because it can install all System Center 2012 components in less than three hours fully automated. Still you have to do some preparation of the environment and your target servers.

In this series of posts I will show you how you can deploy System Center with the System Center Unified Installer with less effort as possible.

In part one of this blog series the focus will be the pre-requirements and the sources for a deployment with System Center Unified Installer.

Download the System Center 2012 Suite. If you don’t have a license yet you can download the Private Cloud Evaluation Software.

Download the following Prerequisites

Prerequisite	For
Microsoft .NET Framework 4	SCAC SCCM SCDPM SCOM SCO
Report Viewer Redistributable 2008	SCOM SCSM
Report Viewer Redistributable 2010	SCOM
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2	SCAC SCCM SCDPM SCOM SCO SCSM SCVMM
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Native Client	SCVMM SCAC
Windows Automated Installation Kit	SCVMM SCAC
Microsoft Analysis Management Objects	SCSM
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Command Line Utilities	SCVMM SCAC
SP1 for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2	SCCM
Cumulative Update Package 4 for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1	SCCM

Now as the last step you have to unpack System Center 2012 and the prerequisites to your installer Computer. I created a Source Folder with the subfolders SC2012 for all the System Center Products and a subfolder Prereq for all the Prerequisites.
So of the downloads you have to uncompressed using the command .exe /x:C:\Source\Prereq\
For example:
- SQL Server 2008 R2
- SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1
- SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU4
- System Center App Controller

Now this was step one of the preperation. In the next part I will write about how you have to setup the Installer and the Target servers.

Links for the Unified Installer:

Configure Hyper-V Host Network Adapters Like A Boss

Thomas Maurer — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:39:56 +0000

If you are working a lot with Hyper-V and Hyper-V Clustering you know that something that takes a lot of time is configure the Hyper-V Host Network Adapters. First because most of the time you have a lot of NICs build into your host for the different Hyper-V and Cluster networks and secondly Windows names the NICs in a random way and this makes it hard to find out which network card is the right one. Maybe your first NIC on your Hyper-V Host01 is called “Local Area Connection 2″ and on your second Hyper-V Host with the same hardware configuration the “same” NIC is called “Local Area Connection 3″. One of the possibilities to find out which network card is the right one is to check the MAC address of the network adapter. But for this you still have to know which MAC address is on which network adapter port.

Another way to do it is to plug in the network cables one by one. So you can see which port is active and then you can rename the network adapter. Now some times this one is one of the only solutions, but it takes a lot of time to do this on every host. And if you build Clusters up to 16 Hosts you really don’t want to do that.

Now there is a solution, you can sort your NICs by PCI bus and PCI slot. Maarten Wijsman did a blog post how you can do this on the Hyper-V.nu blog. With this knowledge you can start to automate this very easy.

I have created two Windows PowerShell scripts which make my life a lot easier.

First I configured the first Hyper-V host and renamed all the Network adapters. If you have a GUI server you could do that via GUI or if you have a Windows Server Core or Hyper-V Server you can do this via netsh.

netsh interface set interface "Local Area Connection 2" newname="Management"

If I have done that I use my Windows PowerShell script called Get-NICInformation.ps1 to get the information about the network adapters.

This gives me a lot of information about the NICs in my first hosts. But the important part is the order of the NICs. In my example I know that the order is this:

Management
VMNet
CSV
LiveMigration
iSCSI01
iSCSI02

Since my other hosts have the same hardware they will have the same PCI Bus order.

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
# Powershell Get-NICInformation $Rev: 748 $
# (c) 2011 Thomas Maurer. All rights reserved.
# created by Thomas Maurer
# www.thomasmaurer.ch
# www.itnetx.ch
# last Update by $Author: tmaurer $ on $Date: 2012-02-24 14:07:36 +0100 (Fr, 24 Feb 2012) $
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #

#region [INFO BLOCK]
# INFO
Write-Host "                               " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host " PowerShell Get-NICInformation " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host "                               " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host " by Thomas Maurer              " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host " www.thomasmaurer.ch           " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host "                               " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
#endregion

$adapters = Get-WMIObject Win32_PNPSignedDriver | Where-Object { $_.DeviceClass -eq “NET” -and $_.HardWareID -like “*PCI*” } | Sort-Object location

foreach ($adapter in $adapters ) {

    $adapterName = Get-WMIObject Win32_NetworkAdapter | Where-Object { $_.PNPDeviceID -eq $adapter.DeviceID }
    $adapterConfiguration = Get-WmiObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration | Where-Object { $_.index -eq $adapterName.Index }

    Write-Host ‘Adapter Name :’ $adapterName.NetConnectionID
    Write-Host ‘PCI BUS :’ $adapter.Location
    Write-Host ‘MAC Address :’ $adapterName.MACAddress
    Write-Host ‘GUID :’ $adapterName.GUID
    Write-Host ‘Adpater Index :’ $adapterName.Index
    Write-Host ‘Hardwarename :’ $adapterName.Name
    Write-Host ‘DHCP enabled :’ $adapterConfiguration.DHCPEnabled
    Write-Host ‘IP Address :’ $adapterConfiguration.IPAddress
    Write-Host ‘Subent :’ $adapterConfiguration.IPSubnet
    Write-Host ‘Default Gateway :’ $adapterConfiguration.DefaultIPGateway
    Write-Host   

}

For the next step I go to my second host. There I have my other Windows PowerShell script (Set-IPAddressfromXML) and a XML file (networkconfig.xml).

I edit the networkconfig.xml file with the correct network information. Important here are the id=”" parameters. They are showing the order of the NICs so with Get-NICInformation I can see the Management interface is the first one, so it gets id=”1″, VMNET is the second one it gets id=”2″ and so on. You also set the correct IP Address information for the second host. Most of the time you just have to change the last number.

You can also set non static IP Addresses (DHCP), in my case I did this for the VMNET adapter which will be used by the Hyper-V Virtual Switch and does not need a IP address.

After you have done this, you can now simply run the Set-IPAddressfromXML script. This will use the Information from the networkconfig.xml file and will rename all network adapters and will set the correct IP addresses.

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
# Powershell Set-IPAddressfromXML $Rev: 748 $
# (c) 2011 Thomas Maurer. All rights reserved.
# created by Thomas Maurer
# www.thomasmaurer.ch
# www.itnetx.ch
# last Update by $Author: tmaurer $ on $Date: 2012-02-24 14:07:36 +0100 (Fr, 24 Feb 2012) $
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #

#region [INFO BLOCK]
# INFO
Write-Host "                                 " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host " PowerShell Set-IPAddressfromXML " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host "                                 " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host "  done by Thomas Maurer          " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host "  www.thomasmaurer.ch            " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
Write-Host "                                 " -BackgroundColor Black -ForegroundColor White
#endregion

#region [CONFIG BLOCK]
# Get XML Information
[Xml]$global:xmlData = Get-Content ".\networkconfig.xml"
# Set NIC number starting value
[int]$global:nicNumber = "1"
#endregion

#region [MAIN BLOCK]
#Get NIC list
$Adapters = Get-WMIObject Win32_PNPSignedDriver | where { $_.DeviceClass -eq “NET” -and $_.HardWareID -like “*PCI*”} | Sort-Object location

foreach ($Adapter in $Adapters ) {
    # Get Adapter Info
    $AdapterName = Get-WMIObject Win32_NetworkAdapter | where { $_.PNPDeviceID -eq $Adapter.DeviceID }
    $nic = $xmlData.config.networkadapters.nic | Where-Object {$_.id -eq $nicNumber}

    # Write NIC Info
    Write-Host ‘Adapter Name :’ $AdapterName.NetConnectionID
    Write-Host ‘PCI BUS :’ $Adapter.Location
    Write-Host ‘MAC Address :’ $AdapterName.MACAddress
    Write-Host ‘GUID :’ $AdapterName.GUID
    Write-Host ‘New Name :’$nic.name
    Write-Host

    # Change NIC Name
    Invoke-Expression ('netsh interface set interface `"' + $AdapterName.NetConnectionID + '`" newname=`"' + $nic.name + '`" | out-null')
    Write-Host ('netsh interface set interface "' + $AdapterName.NetConnectionID + '" newname="' + $nic.name + '"') -BackgroundColor Green -ForegroundColor Black

    # if true set IP Address
    if ($nic.static -eq "true"){
        Invoke-Expression ('netsh interface ipv4 set address `"' + $nic.name + '`" static ' + $nic.ip +' ' + $nic.subnet + ' ' + $nic.gateway + ' | out-null')
        Write-Host ('netsh interface ipv4 set address "' + $nic.name + '" static ' + $nic.ip +' ' + $nic.subnet + ' ' + $nic.gateway) -BackgroundColor Green -ForegroundColor Black
    }
    else {
        Write-Host "No IP set" -BackgroundColor Green -ForegroundColor Black
    }

    # Count +1 for next Adapter
    $nicNumber++
}
#endregion

I can now copy the Set-IPAddressfromXML.ps1 and the networkconfig.xml to each Hyper-V hosts and edit the IP Addresses in the xml file, run the PowerShell file and I am done.

Lets recap:

Rename the NICs of the first hosts
Run the Get-NICInformation.ps1 on the first host and check the NIC order
Edit the networkconfig.xml on the second hosts with the right order of the NICs
Run the Set-IPAddressfromXML.ps1
Do this for all Hyper-V Hosts.

I hope this will make life easier :)

You can download the Scripts from my Skydrive

Some other things:

I have tested this with Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V Server R2, Windows Server 8 beta, Hyper-V Server 8 beta
It works for both because it’s not done with PowerShell v3, maybe I will update it to get it even better.
I do not support this script, and you are running it on your own risk.

Windows Server 2012: Hyper-V Snapshot Reminder

Thomas Maurer — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:21:12 +0000

Last year I created a Windows PowerShell script for System Center Virtual Machine Manager which checks all the Virtual Machines for Snapshots and if you have any it will send you an E-Mail and it will remind you about that.
It were just some small changes from the SCVMM PowerShell cmdlets to the Windows Server 2012 PowerShell cmdlets.


# Get Snapshots
$snapshots = Get-VM | Get-VMSnapshot

# Check for existing Snapshots
if ($snapshots.count -gt 0){

    # Create the List of Snapshots
    $info = $snapshots | Format-Table VMName, Name -auto | Out-String

    # Mail Configuration
    # ==================

    # Configuration
    $emailFrom = "user@mydomain.com"
    $emailTo = "user@yourdomain.com"
    $emailSubject = "VM Snapshot Reminder"
    $emailMessage = "You have still some snapshots: `n `n" + $info + "`n Greetings your Hyper-V Server"
    $smtpServer = "mail.server.com"
    $smtpUserName = "username" # This could be also in e-mail address format
    $smtpPassword = "password"
    $smtpDomain = ""

    # SMTP Object
    $smtp = New-Object System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
    $mailCredentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential
    $mailCredentials.Domain = $smtpDomain
    $mailCredentials.UserName = $smtpUserName
    $mailCredentials.Password = $smtpPassword
    $smtp.Credentials = $mailCredentials 

    # Send E-Mail
    $smtp.Send($emailFrom, $emailTo, $emailSubject, $emailMessage)
 }

Windows Server 2012: Doing multiple configuration changes on Hyper-V VMs via PowerShell

Thomas Maurer — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:13:48 +0000

Over the weekend I was Setting up my lab for the RTM of System Center 2012. I created some Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtual Machines on my Windows Server 2012 beta Hyper-V server. After I had created all VMs and installed them, I realized I forgot to configure the limit for Dynamic Memory for the Hyper-V Virtual Machines.

Now here the new PowerShell module for Hyper-V which comes with Windows Server 2012 helped me save some time.

First I check the Dynamic Memory Maximum value for all my System Center 2012 Virtual Machines.

Get-VM -Name SC2012* | ft Name, MemoryMaximum

After that I changed the value from all my System Center 2012 Virtual Machines to 8GB

Get-VM -Name SC2012* | Set-VM -MemoryMaximumBytes 8589934592

btw. if you don’t know that 8GB are 8589934592 Bytes PowerShell can help you, check this out:

Get-VM -Name SC2012* | Set-VM -MemoryMaximumBytes 8GB

Ben Armstrong, Virtualization Program Manager, did also a blog post on performing bulk configuration changes in Hyper-V via Windows PowerShell on his blog.

The new SkyDrive rocks…

Thomas Maurer — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:46:23 +0000

Today Microsoft released some new SkyDrive Apps for Windows and Mac and alos offers 25GB of free online storage. I really love SkyDrive to keep my files in sync and access them everywhere. With the new apps the integration is much better, easier and 25GB of free storage is a fair deal.

Making personal cloud storage for Windows available anywhere, with the new SkyDrive

With the new Apps, SkyDrive is integrated in your operating system. If you need some online Storage, Cloud Sync or you are already using a service like Dropbox or GDrive you should have a closer look at Microsoft SkyDrive.

New features:

SkyDrive for the Windows desktop (preview available now). View and manage your personal SkyDrive directly from Windows Explorer on Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista with this new preview app available in 106 languages worldwide.
Fetching files through SkyDrive.com. Easily access, browse, and stream files from a remote PC running the preview app to just about anywhere by simply fetching them via SkyDrive.com.
SkyDrive storage updates. A new, more flexible approach to personal cloud storage that allows power users to get additional paid storage as their needs grow.
SkyDrive for other devices. We’ve updated the SkyDrive apps on Windows Phone and iOS devices, bringing better management features and sharing options to those devices. We’re also releasing a new preview client for Mac OS X Lion, letting you manage your SkyDrive right from the Finder.

Checkout more about SkyDrive

Winning

Thomas Maurer — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:14:27 +0000