List of Hyper-V and Cluster Hotfixes for Windows Server 2008 R2

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Recently I posted about a page in the TechNet Wiki which lists a lot of Hyper-V tools. Yesterday on Hyper-V workshop, Michel Lüscher mentioned two lists in the TechNet Wiki where you can find Hyper-V and Cluster Hotfixes for Windows Server 2008 R2.

List of Hyper-V Hotfixes for Windows Server 2008 R2 (TechNet Wiki):

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1349.hyper-v-update-list-for-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx

List of Cluster Hotfixes for Windows Server 2008 R2 (TechNet Wiki):

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2008.list-of-cluster-hotfixes-for-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx

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

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.

Building a new Hyper-V Private Cloud Lab

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

Two years ago I created my first real IT Lab with some HP ProLiant ML110 G5. I used this in the past years to test new products and projects. The Lab at this time was very limited, no storage, no cluster, not much RAM and weak CPU performance. Not much help if you work a lot with Hyper-V Clusters and System Center products.

I was looking around for some time now to find a cheap offer for new servers. In the last week I found a offer from Cisco with c200 M2 servers and I couldn’t resist to buy two of the for my Hyper-V Cluster nodes. The offer was a special deal which was even cheaper than building the servers by my own, at this point thanks to my former employer Atlantis Informatik AG.

Now what I will do is creating a new Hyper-V Cluster friendly environment with two Cisco C200 M2 Hyper-V nodes, one HP ML110 G5 as Storage Server and one of my old HP ML110 G5 servers as Hyper-V Server which all my Management servers and Active Directory will run on.

If you want to know more about Hardware you can use for a Hyper-V Lab I recommend the posts of Carsten Rachfahl on hyper-v-server.de (german).

Hardware Configuration

Hyper-V nodes:

2x Cisco C200 M2 - Intel Xeon 5620 2.4GHz Quad Core, 16GB RAM, Remote Management, IPMI, 6 Networkports

Storage Server:

1x HP ProLiant ML110 G5 – Intel Xeon E3110 3.0 GHz Dual Core, 8GB RAM, 4x 500GB Raid 10, 3 Networkports

Management Hyper-V node:

1x HP ProLiant ML110 G5 – Intel Xeon E3110 3.0 GHz Dual Core, 8GB RAM

How to add Disk Cleanup tool in Windows Server 2008 R2

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

Disk Cleanup option on drive’s general properties and cleanmgr.exe is not present in Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 by default.So in order to use cleanmgr.exe you’ll need to copy two files that are already present on the server, cleanmgr.exe and cleanmgr.exe.mui.

Copy “C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_c9392808773cd7da\cleanmgr.exe” to “%systemroot%\System32″
Copy “C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_en-us_b9cb6194b257cc63\cleanmgr.exe.mui” to “%systemroot%\System32\en-US”

Now you can launch the Disk cleanup tool (cleanmgr.exe) from the command prompt.

You could also install the “Desktop Experience” feature this would also work, but why install something if you don’t need it, specially on a server.