An engineer's ramblings

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.

Administrators have several tools to check the state of their users accounts,  i came across this PowerShell command to check for disabled accounts.

Load up “Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell” from your AD server.

Copy and paste the following command into Active Directory PowerShell.

Search-ADAccount -accountdisabled | FL SamAccountName

This is the response you would expect:

Test that it is working by creating a users Account and disabling in within Active Directory.

Jason

With SCONFIG (Built into R2)you can easily have a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core deployment setup in minutes.

SCONFIG include:

1. Domain join
2. Rename Computer
3. Configure Remote (Enable management via Server Manager, & PowerShell including properly configuring the firewall.)
4. Configuring Windows Update
5. Enabling Remote Desktop (in case you want to login remotely.)
6. Configuring Networking (static vs. DHCP and for multiple NICs)

To enable SCONFIG, Type SCONFIG at the command Line

The main goal of SCONFIG is to allow simple config to be completed to the core install so that complete more complicated tasks can be completed remotely.

When you install Windows Server 2008 R2 the default page file setting is ‘Automatically manage paging file size for all drives’. Hyper-V hosts are often loaded with a lot of RAM (96GB is not an exception). Because of the ‘Automatically manage paging file size for all drives’ setting your page file will be huge:

There is no reason for such a huge pagefile nor it has any advantage for the parent partition (paging will take place in the virtual machines).

So you can save some space on your hard drive by setting the page file setting to a fixed size:

In the various Hyper-V deployments that I’ve already done I’ve set the pagefile fixed to 6 GB and it works well! Even monitoring this setting with SCOM does not popup alerts

There is one thing you need to keep in mind: when configuring the pagefile with a value lower than the physical memory, a full memorydump/crashdump file will be incomplete when the system crashes.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 support booting into the OS from a VHD file attached to Virtual PC or Hyper-V.

Follow the simple steps below and be amazed how easy it is…….

Right-Click on “Computer” and select “Manage.” From there expand “Storage” and right-click on “Disk Management” and select “Create VHD.”

Select what VHD you would like to boot from and select the VHD size and click OK.

Once you have created the VHD file, boot your machine with the OS DVD in the drive and choose “Install Now,” then press SHIFT+F10 to get the command prompt. Type the following:

When you return to the installation procedure, you will see a 20GB partition.You will be warned that you cannot boot from this volume – ignore this message and continue the install.

When you boot up, it will make Windows 7 the default boot option. You can change this using bcdedit

Have a play and enjoy…

I’ve recently worked on a project that required IIS7.5 to be load balanced using windows network load balancing, part of the proposal was to describe how were the two web servers going to keep in sync, there were several options open to us.

After reviewing them all we proposed to have the two server load balanced using windows network load balancing, connected to the same IIS configuration using the built in “shared Configuration” tool, and then hold all the web data such as the sites and content on a Windows clustered back end file share.

For the benefit of this post I’m not going to blog how to set up a pair of windows network load balanced servers, but i will document the steps you need to take to configure content sharing and how to redirect a site to a UNC path on a backend cluster share.

First off we will configure the steps to share the IIS configuration between the two web servers for this i assume you already have two servers with IIS role installed, and a shared volume that both servers will be able to see.

Configure IIS Shared Configuration:

1. On one other web servers launch the IIS manager, in the left pane highlight the server name as pictured below.

2. In the in the centre pane, then open shared configuration.

3. In the right pane, select the export configuration

Fill in the details for the share that you have created that both web servers can see.

Enter an encryption key (this is a password that will be needed to add nodes to the shared configuration).

the next step is to add the nodes to both share the configuration.

4. Enable shared configuration box, and fill the details to the configuration files that you
    have just exported.

5. Restart IIS to apply the configuration, Repeat the impost on the other web server and hay presto, the servers are   sharing the configuration and to test if you create a new site on one of the web servers you will see that is is mirrored on the other server.

Redirect the site content

The next part to the blog is to redirect the site content to ensure both web servers are using the same web content file, the benefit to this would be there would only be one location to upload new content to, you are sure that the content on both servers are the same.

Only a few steps to ensure that this is correct, and if you have already done steps above to share the configuration you will only have to do this on one of the servers as the configuration is mirrored and will automatically be replicated onto the other web server.

1. Launch the IIS manager on one of the web servers,

2. Right click on sites and select “Add new site”

3. Under the physical path section enter the UNC path to your clustered share.
    (this share again needs to be accessible by both web servers.

4. Once the site has been created, right click on it navigate to:
    “Manage web site>Advanced settings”

5. Under “physical path credentials” enter a domain account that has permissions to the
    clustered share as below.

6. Test the web site, and if you have configured the NLB content sharing as above look on the other web server and you will notice that the settings are visible and matched on both.

Hope this helps someone along the way.

Hyper V Best Practice step by step.

Once the Hyper V Role and updates have been applied you are able to check your installation and configuration by running the Hyper V best practice analyser.

>Launch the “Server Manager” locate “Roles” and highlight the “Hyper V” role.

Scrolling down the centre panel until you come across ”Hyper V Best practise analyser” , To the right select “Scan This Role”.

After a short time you will be presented with several suggestions or errors that will need to be addresses.

By double clicking on the errors you will get relevant information and a possible resolution.

To follow Microsoft Best practice simple correct all the errors, it might be worth running this every time a change has been made to your environment, or before logging a support call with Microsoft.

Hope you find this useful.

VMware’s development team really must be bored as they released an on line game, that has already wasted 20 or so minutes of my life that ill never get back.

http://info.vmware.com/content/apac_ap_cloud_jumper_game

Don’t waste too much time!!

Microsoft have released an update for their Hyper-V Best Practice Analyzer that you can download here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2485986

Please note you need to have the original Best Practice Analyzer installed before installing the update.

Cheers