Tag: Windows Server

Sep112019September 11, 2019September 11, 20191Commentby Thomas Maurer
Run Windows Admin Center on Windows Server Core

Run Windows Admin Center on Windows Server Core

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, PowerShell, Server Core, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

Windows Admin Center is a locally deployed, browser-based app for managing servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, and Windows 10 PCs. If you ever asked yourself if Windows Admin Center (WAC) runs on Windows Server Core, the answer is yes. Run and install Windows Admin Center on Windows Server Core, simply copy the MSI installer to the Windows Server, or download it directly. If you are running Windows Server in a Hyper-V virtual machine, PowerShell Direct and be very handy to copy files using the VMBus from the Hyper-V host to the virtual machine.

Copy Windows Admin Center MSI to Windows Server Core VM PowerShell Direct

Copy Windows Admin Center MSI to Windows Server Core VM PowerShell Direct

Download Windows Admin Center (WAC) from here. You can simply use the following commands on your Hyper-V host to copy a file using PowerShell Direct.

$cred = Get-Credential
$s = New-PSSession -VMName WindowsServerInsider -Credential $cred
Copy-Item -Path .\WindowsAdminCenterPreview1908.msi -ToSession $s -Destination "C:\Users\Administrator"

Now you can run the MSI installer for Windows Admin Center. There is also an unattended option for WAC on Windows Server Core. You can find more about installing WAC here.

Install Windows Admin Center on Windows Server Core

Install Windows Admin Center on Windows Server Core

After the installation has finished you can now remotely access the Windows Admin Center web portal form your workstation. However, if you install the new Microsoft Edge Insider Preview, which runs on Windows Server Core as well. You can access the console form your local machine. Don’t do that in production, but it is great if you are running demos or you need to troubleshoot the installation.

Install Microsoft Edge on Windows Server Core

Install Microsoft Edge on Windows Server Core

You can download the Microsoft Edge Insider from here. Thanks to Jeff Woolsey for the tip.

If you want to know more about Windows Admin Center check out my blog post and the Microsoft Docs. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments. By the way, also make sure that you check out the Windows Admin Center Hybrid features, which allows you to easily connect Azure services.


Aug272019August 27, 2019September 17, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 WSL2 on Windows Server

How to Install WSL 2 on Windows Server

Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server

A couple of months ago Microsoft announced the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2), which is a successor of the Windows Subsystem for Linux shipped a couple of years ago. WSL 2 is currently available for Windows Insiders running Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18917 or higher and with the Docker Tech Preview, you can now even run Docker Linux Container directly on WSL 2. With the latest Windows Server Insider Preview build 18945, you are also able to run WSL 2 on Windows Server. In this blog post, I am going to show you how you can install the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) on Windows Server. The Windows Subsystem for Linux was already available in earlier versions of Windows Server; however, WSL 2 brings a lot of new advantages.

The Windows Subsystem for Linux was in Windows 10 for a while now and allowed you to use different versions of Linux on your Windows 10 machine. With WSL 2, the architecture will change drastically and will bring increased file system performance and full system call compatibility. WSL 2 is now using virtualization technology (based on Hyper-V) and uses a lightweight utility VM on a real Linux kernel. You can find out more about WSL 2 in the release blog or on the Microsoft Docs Page for WSL 2.

Install Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) on Windows Server

Here is how you can install WSL 2 on Windows Server.

Prerequisites:

After you have installed a new Windows Server with the Windows Server Preview build, you will need to add the following features:

  • Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
  • VirtualMachinePlatform

To enable these features, run the following command:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
 
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform

These commands will need a restart to complete.

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 WSL2 on Windows Server

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) on Windows Server

Now you can install your Linux distribution which is available in WSL. You can also find the links to the Linux distro packages here: WSL distro packages. In my case, I am going to use Ubuntu 18.04, which is currently working with WSL 2.

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://aka.ms/wsl-ubuntu-1804 -OutFile ~/Ubuntu1804.zip -UseBasicParsing
md C:\Distros\Ubuntu1804
Expand-Archive ~/Ubuntu1804.zip C:\Distros\Ubuntu1894

Before you start and configure your WSL distro, I recommend that you set the WSL default version to 2. This will make the setup of your distro much faster.

wsl --set-default-version 2

Now you can start ubuntu.exe to run WSL.

C:\Distros\Ubuntu1894\ubuntu1804.exe

I hope this gives you a step-by-step guide on how you can install WSL 2 on Windows Server. Remember this is currently in preview, and not for production use. If you want to install the Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows Server 2019, check out this blog post: Install Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows Server.


Jul242019July 24, 2019July 24, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Thomas Maurer Speaking at Experts Live Europe

Speaking at Experts Live Europe 2019 in Prague

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Office365, PowerShell, Speaking, System Center, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019, Work

Today, I am proud to announce that I will be speaking at Experts Live Europe 2019 in Prague on November 20 – 22, 2019. This is a great honor, and it will be my 7th Experts Live Europe event I am speaking at, all the way back to the first event, when it still was called System Center Universe Europe. I have presented several sessions at each event previously hosted in Bern, Basel, Berlin, and Prague. This will be the second time Experts Live Europe will be hosted in the beautiful city of Prague, Czech Republic. I am looking forward to speaking at this Microsoft community event again. The conference has a strong focus on Microsoft Cloud, Datacenter, Security, and Modern Workplace topics and brings together the community from all over the world.

This year the conference will be three days again, with a pre-conference day including a couple of different pre-conference deep dives, as well as two main conference days with over 70 breakout sessions in 6 parallel tracks. This year the conference will have not only over 40 top expert speakers but also a vast Microsoft presence. You will not just find Microsoft Cloud Advocates and Program Managers, but people from all across the organization. Guess what, this is a perfect time to connect and network with us, but also with other members of the Microsoft community.

Another big highlight for me this year is the track specifically focusing on Windows Server and System Center, presented by Cloud Advocates, Program Managers, and Microsoft MVPs.

My sessions at Experts Live Europe 2019

I am happy that I will be speaking at Experts Live Europe 2019:

Experts Live Europe 2019

Windows Server 2019 - The Next Generation of Software-Defined Datacenter

Join this session for the best of Windows Server 2019, about the new innovation and improvements of Windows Server and Windows Admin Center. Learn how Microsoft enhances the SDDC feature like Hyper-V, Storage, and Networking and get the most out of the new Azure Hybrid Cloud Integration and Container features. You’ll get an overview of the new, exciting improvements that are in Windows Server and how they’ll improve your day-to-day job. In this presentation Thomas Maurer (Microsoft MVP) will guide you through the highly anticipated innovations in Windows Server 2019 and the Semi-Annual Channel including: ○ Windows Server Containers ○ Azure Integration ○ Hyper-V features ○ Storage ○ Networking ○ Security ○ Windows Admin Center And more!

If you want to know more about the event and register, check out the Experts Live Europe website. I hope to see you in Prague!


Jul102019July 10, 2019July 10, 20195Commentsby Thomas Maurer
PowerShell 7 Installer

How to Install and Update PowerShell 7

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Software, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Work

Currently, you can install the cross-platform version PowerShell Core 6 on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Early April the PowerShell team announced the next release called PowerShell 7. PowerShell 7 is built on .NET Core 3 and brings back many APIs required by modules built on .NET Framework so that they work with .NET Core runtime. While PowerShell Core 6 was focusing on bringing cross-platform compatibility, PowerShell 7 will focus on making it a viable replacement for Windows PowerShell 5.1 and bringing near parity with Windows PowerShell. Here is how you can install and update PowerShell 7 (preview) on Windows and Linux using a simple one-liner.

If you want to know more about the roadmap, check out Steves blog post.

One great example of how cross-platform PowerShell can work, check out my blog post: How to set up PowerShell SSH Remoting.

Install PowerShell 7 (Preview)

As mentioned PowerShell 7 is currently in preview. You can download and install it manually from GitHub. However, the easiest way to install it is to use the following one-liners created by Steve Lee (Microsoft Principal Software Engineer Manager in the PowerShell Team). You can also use the same one-liners with different parameters to install the current GA version of PowerShell 6.

If you are installing the PowerShell 7 Preview, this will be a side by side installation with PowerShell 6. You can use the pwsh-preview command to run version 7.

One-liner to install or update PowerShell 7 on Windows 10

Install and Update PowerShell 7

You can use this single command in Windows PowerShell to install PowerShell 7. The difference between the installation of version 6 versus version 7 is the -Preview flag.

iex "& { $(irm https://aka.ms/install-powershell.ps1) } -UseMSI -Preview"

There are additional switches to, for example, install daily builds of the latest PowerShell previews.

-Destination
The destination path to install PowerShell Core to.

-Daily
Install PowerShell Core from the daily build.
Note that the ‘PackageManagement’ module is required to install a daily package.

-Preview
Install the latest preview, which is currently version 7. This will

-UseMSI
Use the MSI installer.

-Quiet
The quiet command for the MSI installer.

-DoNotOverwrite
Do not overwrite the destination folder if it already exists.

-AddToPath
On Windows, add the absolute destination path to the ‘User’ scope environment variable ‘Path’;
On Linux, make the symlink ‘/usr/bin/pwsh’ points to “$Destination/pwsh”;
On MacOS, make the symlink ‘/usr/local/bin/pwsh’ points to “$Destination/pwsh”.

One-liner to install or update PowerShell 7 on Linux

Install PowerShell 7 on Linux

You can use this as a single command to install PowerShell 7 on Linux

wget https://aka.ms/install-powershell.sh; sudo bash install-powershell.sh -preview; rm install-powershell.sh

Depending on your distro you are using, this will register Microsoft’s pkg repos and install that package (deb or rpm).

You can also use the following switches:

-includeide
Installs VSCode and VSCode PowerShell extension (only relevant to machines with a desktop environment)

-interactivetesting
Do a quick launch test of VSCode (only applicable when used with -includeide)

-skip-sudo-check
Use sudo without verifying its availability (hard to accurately do on some distros)

-preview
Installs the latest preview release of PowerShell side-by-side with any existing production releases

To currently run the PowerShell Preview, you can run the following command:

pwsh-preview

After Installing

After you have installed PowerShell 7, also make sure to update PowerShellGet and the PackageManagement module.

Remember PowerShell 7 is still currently in preview, if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.


Jul082019July 8, 2019July 8, 20196Commentsby Thomas Maurer
PowerShell Get-WindowsImage Windows Server 2019 Editions

Add Drivers to a Windows Server 2019 ISO Image

Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Server Core, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019

In this blog article, I am going to show you how you can add drivers to a Windows Server 2019 ISO Image or WIM file using PowerShell and the DISM module. This will allow you to already have the latest drivers within the Windows Server installation image when you install Windows Server 2019. We will add drivers to a Windows Server 2019 WIM file (WIM stands for Windows Imaging Format), which then can be used to create a new ISO image or for example in Windows Deployment Services.

Preparation

Folder for adding drivers to Windows Server 2019

Folder for adding drivers to Windows Server 2019

First, you will need to create three new folders called Drivers, ISO, and Mount. In my example, I created these in C:\Images.

  • Drivers – This is the folder where you put all your extracted drivers, which you want to add to your Windows Server 2019 Image.
  • ISO – This is where you can extract the Windows Server 2019 ISO Image. Basically all the files on the ISO file.
  • Mount – This is an empty folder, which will be used to mount the WIM files.

You can now mount the ISO using Windows Explorer or the following PowerShell commands and copy the files to the ISO folder.

Mount ISO PowerShell

Mount ISO PowerShell

Mount-DiskImage -ImagePath C:\Temp\17763.379.190312-0539.rs5_release_svc_refresh_SERVER_EVAL_x64FRE_en-us.iso
Copy-Item D:\* C:\Image\ISO\ -Recurse

In your case, the ISO may be mounted on a different drive letter instead of my D: drive.

Add drivers to the Windows Server 2019 Image

First, you can check in which Windows editions you want to add the drivers. To check that you can use the following PowerShell command:

Get-WindowsImage -ImagePath C:\Image\ISO\sources\install.wim
PowerShell Get-WindowsImage Windows Server 2019 Editions

PowerShell Get-WindowsImage Windows Server 2019 Editions

The Get-WindowsImage cmdlet will show you the different editions included in the WIM file.

After we have seen the Index numbers, we can now mount the Windows Image our Mount folder. In my example, I use Image Index 3, which is the Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Core Edition. If you want to check which editions of Windows Server 2019 you should use, check out the Microsoft Docs.

Mount-WindowsImage -Path C:\Image\Mount -ImagePath C:\Image\ISO\sources\install.wim -Index 3
Mount-WindowsImage

Mount-WindowsImage

After the image is mounted you can now add the drivers to the Windows Server 2019 Image using the following command:

Add-WindowsDriver -Path C:\Image\Mount -Driver C:\Image\Drivers -Recurse
Add Drivers to Windows Server 2019 ISO Image

Add Drivers to Windows Server 2019 ISO Image

After you have added all the drivers to the image, you need to dismount the image and save it.

Dismount-WindowsImage -Path C:\Image\Mount -Save

We have now added the drivers to the Install image, and you should also add the drivers to your boot image if it is, for example, a network or storage controller driver you might need to install the server. To do this do the same steps to the C:\Image\ISO\sources\boot.wim.

Now you can use these WIM files with Windows Deployment services or create a USB drive to install Windows Server 2019. If you want to create an ISO file, you can use the oscdimg command-line tool. The oscdimg tool comes with the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK), which you can get here.

oscdimg -n -m -bc:\temp\ISO\boot\etfsboot.com C:\temp\ISO C:\temp\mynew.iso

I hope this post helps you to add drivers to your Windows Server image. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.


Jun282019June 28, 2019June 28, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Nigel Frank Migrating and extending with Microsoft Azure

Article about Azure Migration on Nigel Frank International

Posted in Blog, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Software, Virtualization, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2019, Work

This week my blog post on Azure Migration and Hybrid Cloud on the Nigel Frank International blog went live. The title of the article is, Migrating and extending your on-premises environment with Microsoft Azure. In that blog post, I what your advantages are by using the cloud and some of the different approaches to use Microsoft Azure. Before I then go deeper on different Azure scenarios and topics.

I cover a lot of different Azure options like:

Read Article

Nigel Frank International

The public cloud is becoming more and more important for companies that want to stay agile and flexible to meet their business demands. But if a company decides to move to the public cloud, what are the best ways to migrate to Microsoft Azure? In this blog post, we’ll take a quick look at what services Microsoft offers to make your cloud migration easier.

It was fun to work with the team at Nigel Frank International and I hope you like the article.


Jun152019June 15, 2019June 15, 20193Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019

Download Hyper-V Server 2019 now

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019, Work

A lot of people have been waiting for this. After the release of Windows Server 2019 back in October 2018, you were able to download Windows Server 2019 Standard, Datacenter and Essentials. Today you can also download Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019. This is the free version of the Hyper-V role which you can find in Windows Server 2019. It includes all the great Hyper-V virtualization features like the Datacenter Edition. This is especially interesting if you don’t need to license Windows Server VMs, and is ideal when you run Linux Virtual Machines or VDI VMs.

This version of Hyper-V also comes with a lower footprint, since it is only available as Server Core and doesn’t include any other roles and features, which are not related to virtualization. That said, it does not come with other Software Defined Datacenter features like Storage Spaces Direct (S2D). These features are only included in the Windows Server Datacenter edition.

Microsoft Hyper-V Server is a free product that delivers enterprise-class virtualization for your datacenter and hybrid cloud. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019 provides new and enhanced features that can help you deliver the scale and performance needs of your mission-critical workloads.

The Windows hypervisor technology is the same as what’s in the Hyper-V role on Windows Server 2019. It is a stand-alone product that contains only the Windows hypervisor, a Windows Server driver model, and virtualization components. It provides a simple and reliable virtualization solution to help you improve your server utilization and reduce costs.

You can download Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019 ISO from the Microsoft Evaluation Center. You should also have a look at the Windows Admin Center, which is a locally deployed, browser-based app for managing servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, and Windows 10 PCs

If you want to learn more about the new Hyper-V and Windows Server 2019 features, check out my blog: Windows Server 2019 – What’s coming next



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    Thomas Maurer

    My name is Thomas Maurer. I am a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. I am part of the Azure engineering team (Cloud + AI) and engage with the community and customers around the world. I am located in Switzerland. I am focusing on Microsoft technologies, especially cloud and datacenter solutions based on Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack and Windows Server. Opinions are my own.

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