In the last days I got my new machine for work, a Lenovo ThinkPad X1. As usual I always want to work with the latest and greates technology, that’s why I have chosen to set up the ThinkPad X1 with Windows 8.

Even in Developer Preview state Windows 8 runs very stable and brings a lot of cool new features which I can use for my daily work. I love the new PowerShell versions and Internet Explorer 10. But the best and the biggest feature for me, is the integration of Hyper-V 3 in Windows 8. So I don’t have to use VMware Workstation or VirtualBox to run virtual machines on my notebook for testing or presentations. I also can simply use the VHD (or VHDX) format to play with virtual machines or even boot them via boot from VHD.

The downside of the Windows 8 Developer Preview is missing .NET framework 3.5, but I think the Windows 8 beta, which should be released by the end of February, should fix this.

Maybe some people have realized that I am a big fan of business style notebooks. And what would be better business design than the ThinkPad series. Lenovo tried to combine good old ThinkPad values with new design features, and in my opinion succeeded. I really like the ThinkPad design in this very slim chassis. It looks elegant and business “high-class”.

The build quality of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is like you would expect it from a ThinkPad. It feels great and very robust. Keith Combs describes it in his review ”The ThinkPad X1 is build like a tank.  It’s probably the most solid notebook I’ve ever had in my hands.” and I have to agree with him.

More information on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 here.

For some courses at KTSI we need a CentOS to test some Linux spesific things like Apache and other stuff. The good thing, Windows 8 got Hyper-V and Hyper-V supports CentOS.

With Version 3.2 oft the Linux Integration Services Microsoft fixed also a bug which occurred in Windows 8.

1. First download CentOS
2. Download the Linux Integration Services Version 3.2 for Hyper-V
3. Start Hyper-V Manager and create a new Virtual Machine
4. Install CentOS 6.x
   
5. Reboot the virtual machine
6. Login as root
   
7. Mount the Linux Integration Services ISO from step 2
8. Now run the following commands in the virtual machine

   sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media
   sudo /media/install.sh
   

   

9. After you the Installation is completed you have to reboot the virtual machine again
   
10. done

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”

Exactly one year ago I got my first Windows Phone. Since then a lot has change and Windows Phone has really improved.

After the first update, called NoDo, I could leave my iPhone 4 behind and change to the HTC 7 Trophy. Of course the hardware was nowhere near the iPhone 4 but the Windows Phone OS was just great. Now one year later there is a lot of good Windows Phone hardware out there and the Windows Phone OS has improved with Mango.

I am sure there will be a lot more great Windows Phone stuff in the future.

Some you need to know which IP in a specific range is already in use. With Windows PowerShell there is a simple way to ping a IP range.

You can use the .Net class System.Net.Networkinformation.Ping to do this.

$ping = New-Object System.Net.Networkinformation.Ping
1..254 | % { $ping.send(“192.168.100.$_”) | select address, status } 

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.

In the next two days the biggest Microsoft event in Switzerland will be held at Bern.

Microsoft will bring the latest news about Windows 8, Windows Server 8 and the System Center 2012 Suite from the BUILD conference to the Swiss IT Pro audience. On the IT Pro track, private cloud will be the key topic.

More About the two days:

IT Professionals: 20. Oktober 2011

In der Keynote stellen Ihnen unsere Technikexperten die wesentlichen Neuerungen unserer anstehenden Servertechnologien Windows Server 8, SQL Server „Denali“ und System Center 2012 vor. Anschliessend werden technische Informationen und Demos für Produkte wie SQL Server „Denali“, System Center 2012, PowerShell, IPv6, Virtualisierung und Private Cloud, Windows und SQL Azure sowie Office 365 und Endpoint-Managementangeboten.

Developer: 21. Oktober 2011

Der Tag beginnt mit der Keynote des Branchenexperten Neno Loje über das neue Visual Studio 11, das kürzlich auf der BUILD-Konferenz vorgestellt wurde. Softwareentwickler und –architekten erhalten anschliessend die aktuellsten Informationen und Demos über Produkte wie Windows Azure, ASP.NET MVC 4, Windows Phone „Mango“, Silverlight 5, SQL Server 2008 R2 / SQL Azure / SQL Server „Denali“ sowie Visual Studio Lightswitch und HTML5.

More information and the agenda can you find on the techdays homepage.

See you there…

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

With Windows 8 and Windows Server 8 Microsoft released a new file format for Virtual Hard Disk called VHDX.

The VHD format, which was availible since 2005 (Microsoft Virtual PC) and is now used by Microsoft Hyper-V and other Hypervisor, had some limitations.

The latest version of the VHD format was limited to 2TB of size and a block file size of 512bytes.

Now with VHDX Microsoft kills this limitations and brings some other improvements:

• Supports up to 16TB size
• Supports larger block file size
• improved performance
• improved corruption resistance

At this time you can use the VHDX format only with Windows 8 and Windows Server 8. But you can convert VHDs the VHDX format and VHDX disks back to VHDs.