A few weeks ago was the Hyper-V.nu Community Event in Amsterdam. Carsten Rachfahl recorded the sessions.

Hyper-V.NU – Keynote – Jaap Wesselius and Peter Noorderijk

Hyper-V.NU – Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Networking – Aidan Finn

listen carefully at 59:00

Hyper-V.NU – SCVMM 2012 – Maarten Wijsman

Hyper-V.NU – Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Storage — Hans Vredevoort

Hyper-V.NU – Windows 8 DDDD – Ronald Beekelaar

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

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.

1. Copy the SQL Server 2008 install media to C:\SQLServer2008withSP2
2. Download and copy the SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 files to C:\temp
3. 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

4. After you have done this you can install the MS SQL Server
5. 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.

The first things I tried with the new Cisco UCS C200 M2 servers was the CIMC (Cisco Integrated Management Controller). CIMC is the remote out-of-band management solution (IPMI) provided with Cisco servers, it’s basically the same like HP iLO or Dell DRAC.

One of the biggest advantages is that CIMC is included for free, so there is no extra license you need for extra features like KVM or stuff like that.

After working some hours with the CIMC I was really happy, no problems at all everything worked as expected. From the design it’s like the Cisco UCS Manager but better . I think it is much easier to use and much faster (it’s not Java).

Keyfeatures

• Web based front-end
• KVM and Virtual media
• Change BIOS Settings
• Active Directory connector
• SNMP
• IPMI (Very interesting with the Bare-metal deployment in SCVMM 2012)
• SSH
• Health Monitoring

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

For some KTSI projects I have been working a lot with Windows Server Core or Hyper-V Server. Now I had to do a lot of automation, so I made this little connection of commands. If you configure the server manually you can do the most important things with the sconfig utility.

Networking

Set Hostname

netdom renamecomputer %COMPUTERNAME% /NewName:<NewComputerName> 

Join Domain

netdom join %COMPUTERNAME% /domain:<DomainName> /userd:<UserName> /passwordd:*

Remove Domain

netdom remove

Rename Network Interface

netsh interface set interface name=”old name” newname=”new name”

Configure IP Address

netsh interface ipv4 set address name=”<Interface Name>” source=static address=<IPAddress> mask=<SubnetMask> gateway=<DefaultGateway>

Configure DNS Servers

netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name=”<Interface Name>” address=<DNS Server IP> index=1

Disable Firewall (not recommended)

netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off

Remoting

Enable PowerShell Remoting

Enable-PSRemoting

Enable Remotedesktop

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”remote desktop” new enable=yes

Enable Remote Administration

advfirewall firewall set rule group=”Remote Administration” new enable=yes

Enable Remote Firewall Administration

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”Windows Firewall Remote Management” new enable=yes

Enable ICMP (Ping)

netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8

Enable Remote Disk Management

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”Remote Volume Management” new enable=yes

Licensing

Enter License key

slmgr.vbs -ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Activate Windows

slmgr.vbs -ato

Windows Update

Enable automatic updates

cscript C:'Windows'System32'Scregedit.wsf /au 4

Disable automatic updates

cscript C:'Windows'System32'Scregedit.wsf /au 1

Roles & Features

Get availibale features & roles

Dism /online /get-features /format:table

Enable feature & roles

Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:<featurename>

Basics

Change Administrator password

net user administrator *

Restart Computer

shutdown /r /t 0

Logoff

logoff

More information about Server Core: TechNet

With the Developer Preview release of Windows Server 8 which Microsoft released at BUILD, Microsoft showed the new integrated NIC Teaming feature. Basically you could do NIC Teaming before but you had to use software and driver from network card or server vendors which was sometimes a little bit of a pain.

Now with the integrated NIC Teaming features in Windows Server 8 you can team network cards even if they are from different vendors. I am sure this will make lives of Hyper-V Engineers a lot easier.

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.

1. Copy “C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_c9392808773cd7da\cleanmgr.exe” to “%systemroot%\System32″
2. 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.

More on this on TechNet

Two days ago my HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L arrived. Since I need more disk space I was looking for a good NAS solution. My first experiences with some of the common NAS vendors were not that great, most of the time the NAS was very very slow. Now this may has changed in the past years but still I prefer a mini server with a Windows OS.

That is where the HP ProLiant MicroServer and Windows Home Server 2011 meet, so I gave it a try. And guess what, it’s a great solution and it does exactly what I need. It stores files with a good performance, it’s quiet, it does not need a lot of power, let me stream content to my Xbox and enables me remote access to my data.

HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L

• HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L
• AMD Turion II NEO N40L 1.5GHz, 15W
• 4GB ECC DDR3 SDRAM
• 2x 2TB WD Caviar Green WD20EARX 5400 rpm, 64 MB Cache, 8,9 ms, SATA3
• Windows Home Server 2011

Now at the moment I use these two WD 2TB Disks in a RAID 1, and the N40L still offers space for two other drives.

If your running Microsoft Hyper-V R2 or any Windows Server 2008 R2 Core Server you can install the SNMP Feature on the command line with the command line tool dism.

First you can list all Windows Features

Dism /online /get-features /format:table  

Now you can install for the SNMP Service:

Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:SNMP-SC

After you have done this you and you have enabled Remote Management you can mange and configure smtp via remote MMC.

Important: If you need to configure the SNMP Service on a remote machine you have to install the SNMP feature on the local administrative computer. Otherwise you will not see the SNMP specific tabs.

More Information on installing Windows Features on a server running a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 R2: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee441253(WS.10).aspx