Tag: Windows

Jun132019June 13, 2019August 1, 201913Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Install WSL 2

Install WSL 2 on Windows 10

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

With the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18917, the team also ships the first version of the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2), which was announced at the Microsoft Build 2019 conference. In this post, I am going to show you how you can install WSL 2 on your Windows 10 machine.

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 1) was in Windows 10 for a while now and allowed you to use different Linux distros directly from 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.

WSL 2 Architecture

Requirements

To install WSL 2, you will need the following requirements:

Install WSL 2

To install the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2), you need to follow these tasks.

  • Enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux Optional feature (WSL 1 and WSL 2)
  • Install a distro for the Windows Subsystem for Linux
  • Enable the ‘Virtual Machine Platform’ optional feature (WSL 2)
  • Configure the distro to use WSL 2

Enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux

To run the WSL on Windows 10 you will need to install the optional feature:

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

Install a Linux distro for the Windows Subsystem for Linux

If you don’t already have installed a WSL distro, you can download and install it from the Windows 10 store. You can find more here: Crazy times – You can now run Linux on Windows 10 from the Windows Store

Enable the Virtual Machine Platform feature

WSL 2 Enable Virtual Machine Platform

WSL 2 Enable Virtual Machine Platform

To make use of the virtualization feature for WSL 2, you will need to enable the optional Windows feature. You can run the following PowerShell command to do this. You will need to start PowerShell as an Administrator. After you run this command, you might need a restart of your computer.

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform

Set WSL distro to use version 2

After you completed the first two steps, you will need to configure the distro to use WSL 2. Run the following command to list the available distros in PowerShell:

wsl -l -v

To set a distro to WSL 2 you can run the following command:

wsl --set-version DistroName 2

You can also set WSL 2 as the default:

wsl --set-default-version 2

To find out more about installing WSL 2, check out the Microsoft Docs page.

If you are now running your distro using WSL 2, you can now see that there is a Virtual Machine worker process running and if you search a little bit more, you can also find the VHDX file of the distro.

WSL 2 VHDX file

I hope this helps you and gives you a quick overview, if you have any questions, let me know in the comments and check out the WSL 2 FAQ. The Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Kernel is also open-source, you can follow the project on GitHub.

By the way, you can now also start using Docker Desktop together with the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2.


May282019May 28, 2019May 30, 20191Commentby Thomas Maurer
How to Install AzCopy

How to Install AzCopy for Azure Storage

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10, Work

AzCopy is a command-line tool to manage and copy blobs or files to or from a storage account. It also allows you to sync storage accounts and move files from Amazon S3 to Azure storage. In this blog post, I will cover how to install AzCopy on Windows, Linux, macOS, or in update the version in the Azure Cloud Shell.

AzCopy v10 is now generally available to all of our customers and provides higher throughput and more efficient data movement compared to the earlier version of AzCopy (v8). Version 10 also adds additional functionality like sync of blob storage accounts and much more.

Install AzCopy

You can get the latest version of AzCopy from here: Get started with AzCopy

Install AzCopy on Windows

To install AzCopy on Windows, you can run the following PowerShell script, or you can download the zip file and run it from where ever you want. This script will add the AzCopy folder location to your system path so that you can run the AzCopy command from anywhere.

 
#Download AzCopy
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://aka.ms/downloadazcopy-v10-windows" -OutFile AzCopy.zip -UseBasicParsing
 
#Curl.exe option (Windows 10 Spring 2018 Update (or later))
curl.exe -L -o AzCopy.zip https://aka.ms/downloadazcopy-v10-windows
 
#Expand Archive
Expand-Archive ./AzCopy.zip ./AzCopy -Force
 
#Move AzCopy to the destination you want to store it
Get-ChildItem ./AzCopy/*/azcopy.exe | Move-Item -Destination "C:\Users\thmaure\AzCopy\AzCopy.exe"
 
#Add your AzCopy path to the Windows environment PATH (C:\Users\thmaure\AzCopy in this example), e.g., using PowerShell:
$userenv = [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "User")
[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", $userenv + ";C:\Users\thmaure\AzCopy", "User")

Install AzCopy on Linux

To install AzCopy on Linux, you can run the following shell script, or you can download the tar file and run it from where ever you want. This script will put the AzCopy executable into the /usr/bin folder so that you can run it from anywhere.

 
#Download AzCopy
wget https://aka.ms/downloadazcopy-v10-linux
 
#Expand Archive
tar -xvf downloadazcopy-v10-linux
 
#(Optional) Remove existing AzCopy version
sudo rm /usr/bin/azcopy
 
#Move AzCopy to the destination you want to store it
sudo cp ./azcopy_linux_amd64_*/azcopy /usr/bin/

Authorize with Azure Storage

When you start working with Azure Storage, you have two options to authorize against the Azure Storage. You can provide authorization credentials by using Azure Active Directory (AD), or by using a Shared Access Signature (SAS) token.

It also depends on which services you want to use.

Storage typeSupported method
Blob storageAzure AD and SAS
Blob storage (hierarchical namespace)Azure AD
File storageSAS only

Authenticate using Azure AD

To authenticate with AzCopy using Azure AD, you can use the following command

 
azcopy login

Authenticate using SAS token

To authenticate with AzCopy using a SAS token you can use this command as an example

 
azcopy cp "C:\local\path" "https://account.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer1/?sv=2018-03-28&ss=bjqt&srt=sco&sp=rwddgcup&se=2019-05-01T05:01:17Z&st=2019-04-30T21:01:17Z&spr=https&sig=MGCXiyEzbtttkr3ewJIh2AR8KrghSy1DGM9ovN734bQF4%3D" --recursive=true

To make things easier you can use Azure PowerShell to generate the SAS token for you. I wrote a blog post on ITOPSTALK.com about how you can do that. You can get the SAS token using the following Azure PowerShell command. If you are running Linux or macOS, you can find on this blog post, how to install PowerShell 6.

 
Connect-AzAccount
Get-AzSubscription
 
$subscriptionId = "yourSubscriptionId"
$storageAccountRG = "demo-azcopy-rg"
$storageAccountName = "tomsaccount"
$storageContainerName = "images"
$localPath = "C:\temp\images"
 
Select-AzSubscription -SubscriptionId $SubscriptionId
 
$storageAccountKey = (Get-AzStorageAccountKey -ResourceGroupName $storageAccountRG -AccountName $storageAccountName).Value[0]
 
$destinationContext = New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $storageAccountKey
 
$containerSASURI = New-AzStorageContainerSASToken -Context $destinationContext -ExpiryTime(get-date).AddSeconds(3600) -FullUri -Name $storageContainerName -Permission rw
 
azcopy copy $localPath $containerSASURI --recursive

To learn more about SAS tokens, check out Using shared access signatures (SAS).

I hope this helps you to install AzCopy and configure it. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.


May092019May 9, 2019August 10, 201930Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Windows Sandbox

How to configure Windows Sandbox

Posted in Containers, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Work

With the latest release of Windows 10 (1903), Microsoft introduced a new feature called Windows Sandbox. Windows Sandbox is based on Hyper-V technology and allows you to spin up an isolated, temporary, desktop environment where you can run untrusted software. In this blog post, I will show you how you can set up and configure Windows Sandbox in Windows 10. I will also cover how you can do an advanced configuration of your Windows Sandbox using Windows Sandbox config files.

The sandbox is great for demos, troubleshooting or if you are dealing with malware. If you close the sandbox, all the software with all its files and state are permanently deleted. It is a Windows 10 virtual machines, with the advantage that it is built into Windows 10, so it leverages the existing OS, which gives you faster startup, less footprint, better efficiency, and easier handling, without losing security.

Dynamic Image

Source: Microsoft

Windows Sandbox is a lightweight virtual machine with an operating system. The significant advantage which makes it so small is the usage of existing files from the host, for data which cannot change. For the files which can change, it uses a dynamically generated image, which is only ~100MB in size.

There are much more exciting things happening with the Windows Sandbox like smart memory management, Integrated kernel scheduler, Snapshot and clone, Graphics virtualization and Battery pass-through. If you want to find out more about the Windows Sandbox, check out the official blog post.

Prerequisites

Windows Sandbox comes with a couple of requirements. How more powerful your machine is, the better the experience will be.

  • Windows 10 (1903) Pro or Enterprise build 18362 or later
  • 64-bit architecture
  • Virtualization capabilities enabled in BIOS
  • At least 4GB of RAM (8GB recommended)
  • 1GB of free disk space (SSD recommended)
  • 2 CPU cores (4 cores with hyperthreading recommended)
Read More

Mar122019March 12, 2019June 14, 20196Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Install or Update PowerShell 6 on Windows 10

How to Install and Update PowerShell 6

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019

Today Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 ship with Windows PowerShell 5.1 as the default version. PowerShell Core 6 is a new edition of PowerShell that is cross-platform (Windows, macOS, and Linux), open-source, and built for heterogeneous environments and the hybrid cloud. PowerShell 6 today is a side by side version next to Windows PowerShell 5.1. That means on Windows you cannot just upgrade to PowerShell 6, you will need to install it, same as on Linux and macOS. This blog post shows you how simple you can install PowerShell 6 or update PowerShell 6, if you have already installed it, on Windows 10, Windows Server 2019 or Linux.

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

Of course, you can find excellent documentation out there on Microsoft Docs. However, Steve Lee (Microsoft Principal Software Engineer Manager in the PowerShell Team) shared some one-liner, which helps you quickly install and update PowerShell 6.

Install PowerShell Core 6

Before showing you the one-liner option to install PowerShell 6, I want to share with you the documentation to install PowerShell Core 6 on different operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Read More

Mar072019March 7, 2019July 7, 20192Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Windows Server 2019

Which Windows Server 2019 Installation Option should I choose?

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Docker, Hyper-V, Kubernetes, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Nano Server, PowerShell, Server Core, Uncategorized, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019, Work

Windows Server 2019 will bring several installation options and tuning options for virtual machines, physical servers as well as container images. In this blog post, I want to give an overview of the different installation options of Windows Server 2019.

To compare the different Windows Server 2019 editions, check out the Microsoft Docs.

Installation Options for Windows Server 2019 Physical Servers and Virtual Machines

As always, you can install Windows Server 2019 in virtual machines or directly on physical hardware, depending on your needs and requirements. For example, you can use Windows Server 2019 as physical hosts for your Hyper-V virtualization server, Container hosts, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure using Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct, or as an application server. In virtual machines, you can obviously use Windows Server 2019 as an application platform, infrastructure roles or container host. And of course, you could also use it as Hyper-V host inside a virtual machine, leveraging the Nested Virtualization feature.

Installation OptionScenario
Windows Server CoreServer Core is the best installation option for production use and with Windows Admin Center remote management is highly improved.
Windows Server Core with Server Core App Compatibility FODWorkloads, and some troubleshooting scenarios, if Server Core doesn’t meet all your compatibility requirements. You can add an optional package to get past these issues. Try the Server Core App Compatibility Feature on Demand (FOD).
Windows Server with Desktop ExperienceWindows Server with Desktop Experience is still an option and still meets like previous releases. However, it is significantly larger than Server Core. This includes larger disk usage, more time to copy and deploy and larger attack surface. However, if Windows Server Core with App Compatibility does not support the App, Scenario or Administrators still need the UI, this is the option to install.
Read More

Feb152019February 15, 2019February 19, 20192Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Updated PowerShellGet and PackageManagment

Update PowerShellGet and PackageManagement

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

Since I am just setting up a new work machine, I wanted to share some information how you can update PowerShellGet and PackageManagement to the latest version. This will give you the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements. Since you don’t get the latest version in Windows PowerShell nor PowerShell Core, you will need to update it manually.

PowerShellGet is a PowerShell module with commands for discovering, installing, updating and publishing the PowerShell artifacts like Modules, DSC Resources, Role Capabilities and Scripts. For example you use PowerShellGet to install the Azure PowerShell module, or other modules.

PowerShellGet module is also integrated with the PackageManagement module as a provider, users can also use the PowerShell PackageManagement cmdlets for discovering, installing and updating the PowerShell artifacts like Modules and Scripts.

(source: GitHub)

How to update PowerShellGet and PackageManagement

Updating to the latest version of PowerShellGet and the PackageManagement module is simple. Since both modules are part of the PowerShell Gallery, you can update them using a couple of simple commands.

You can find both modules in the PowerShell Gallery:

First lets check which versions of the modules you have available. If you use Update-Module, it will automatically load PowerShellGet and PackageManagement and list them as loaded PowerShell modules. Of course you can also use Get-Module -ListAvailable.

PowerShell Modules PowerShellGet and PackageManagement

 
Get-Module -ListAvailable PackageManagement, PowerShellGet

As you can see, In my default installation, I got PowerShellGet version 1.6.7 and PackageManagement 1.1.7.2. If you have a look at PSGallery, you will see that these are pretty old versions and that there are newer available.

To get the latest version from PowerShell Gallery, you should first install the latest Nuget provider. You will need to run PowerShell as an Administrator for all  the following commands.

 
Install-PackageProvider Nuget –Force
Exit

If you run PowerShell 5.0 or newer, you can install the latest PowerShellGet using the following command. PowerShell 5.0 is included in Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, any system with WMF 5.0 and 5.1 or a system running PowerShell 6.

 
Install-Module –Name PowerShellGet –Force
Exit

Two quick tips, first of, you will need to set the execution policy to RemoteSigned to allow the new module to run. Secondly in some cases you will need to use the -AllowClobber parameter to install the updated version of the module.

 
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
 
Install-Module –Name PowerShellGet –Force -AllowClobber

You can then use Update-Module to get newer versions:

 
Update-Module -Name PowerShellGet
Exit

Updated PowerShellGet and PackageManagment

After that you will see the latest versions of PowerShellGet and PackageMangement available

If you run older versions of PowerShell you can check out the full documention on the PowerShell Docs. I hope this blog post helps you to update PowerShellGet and benefit from the latest versions. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.


Jan292019January 29, 2019March 13, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Hyper-V VM Configuration Version

Hyper-V VM configuration version supported features

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows Server, Windows Server 1709, Windows Server 1803, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article about the new Microsoft Hyper-V UEFI in Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10 virtual machines. With that version Microsoft also released a new Hyper-V VM configuration version 9.0. This is not unusual, the Hyper-V teams usually bumps up the version number from release to release, since new Hyper-V features are introduced. In the comments, the question came up, what is new in this version of the Hyper-V VM configuration, Since the version was still a preview release of Windows Server and Windows 10, Microsoft didn’t share the full list of features per configuration version. However, now the documentation is ready and you can find the documentation here.

Supported features

The following table shows the minimum virtual machine configuration version required to use some Hyper-V features.

Windows ServerWindows 10VersionFeature
Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3Windows 10 15076.2Hot Add/Remove Memory
Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3Windows 10 15076.2Secure Boot for Linux VMs
Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3Windows 10 15076.2Production Checkpoints
Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3Windows 10 15076.2PowerShell Direct
Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3Windows 10 15076.2Virtual Machine Grouping
Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4 Windows 10 15117.0Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM)
Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 57.1Virtual machine multi queues (VMMQ)
Windows Server 2016Windows 10 Anniversary Update8.0XSAVE support
Windows Server 2016Windows 10 Anniversary Update8.0Key storage drive
Windows Server 2016Windows 10 Anniversary Update8.0Guest virtualization-based security support (VBS)
Windows Server 2016Windows 10 Anniversary Update8.0Nested virtualization
Windows Server 2016Windows 10 Anniversary Update8.0Virtual processor count
Windows Server 2016Windows 10 Anniversary Update8.0Large memory VMs
Windows Server 1803Windows 10 April 2018 Update8.3Increase the default maximum number for virtual devices to 64 per device (e.g. networking and assigned devices)
Windows Server 2019/1809Windows 10 October 2018 Update9.0Allow additional processor features for Perfmon
Windows Server 2019/1809Windows 10 October 2018 Update9.0Automatically expose simultaneous multithreading configuration for VMs running on hosts using the Core Scheduler
Windows Server 2019/1809Windows 10 October 2018 Update9.0Hibernation support

Source: Microsoft Docs (Thanks to Rene Moergeli for the link)

How to list the supported VM configuration versions

You can list all supported VM configuration versions on your Hyper-V host using the Get-VMHostSupportedVersion cmdlet.

 
Get-VMHostSupportedVersion

Get-VM Hyper-V VM Configuration Version

If you want to see the version of a Hyper-V virtual machine, you can use Hyper-V Manager or the following PowerShell command:

 
Get-VM

Full list of Hyper-V VM versions

Here you have a full list of VM configuration versions of Hyper-V VMs together with the operating system.

Windows ClientWindows ServerVersion
Windows Server 20081.0
Windows Server 2008 SP12.0
Windows Server 2008 R23.0
Windows 8Windows Server 20124.0
Windows 8.1Windows Server 2012 R25.0
Windows 10 1507Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 36.2
Windows 10 1511Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 47.0
Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 57.1
Windows 10 Anniversary UpdateWindows Server 20168.0
Windows 10 Creators Update8.1
Windows 10 Fall Creators UpdateWindows Server 17098.2
Windows 10 April 2018 UpdateWindows Server 18038.3
Windows 10 October 2018 UpdateWindows Server 2019 / 18099.0
Windows 10 April 2019 UpdateWindows Server 19039.1
PrereleasePrerelease254.0
ExperimentalExperimental255.0

How to upgrade Hyper-V VM configuration version

Hyper-V vNext Update VM Configuration Version

Upgrading the Hyper-V VM version is pretty straight forward. If the VM is running on a host supporting a newer version of Hyper-V VMs, you can right click the virtual machine in the Hyper-V Manager and click on upgrade or you can run the Update-VMVersion PowerShell cmdlet.

 
Update-VMVersion

I hope this blog was help full for understanding Hyper-V VM versions, let me know if you have any questions in the comments!



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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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