Server – The Cloud Eh!?

Feb-27-2013 VMUG Meeting Recap – Dell

by Rick ByrneMarch 3, 2013March 3, 20131 Comment

First of all want to thank everyone for coming out to our 1st Quarter Meeting. In total we had 25 Members come out, it was a good showing but I know we can get more people attending. Everyone who enjoys the VMUG please support the group by telling your peers and friends to come out to the events. You can register for the VMUG by heading over to www.vmug.com and pick your local chapter, join in on the discussions and get ready to meet some great people.

This meeting was Dell sponsored and focused on VDI and the capabilities Dell can offer. We also had a very special guest! We had the honor to have Eric Gales (VP and GM of VMware Canada) come out to the event and talk with us, and then he had a Q and A session.

Eric Gales

First of all Eric got up and did a quick overview of VMware and himself, and left the floor opened for questions. Below I am going to list the questions he was asked and provide the answers he provided in a reduce format. Disclaimer: **** Below is my understanding of his responses ****

Q: Does VMware have Cloud Availability in Canada

A: VMware does offer Cloud Availability within Canada but it is not VMware owned, it is third-party. In time VMware plans to open up their own offering for a public Cloud, but they plan to do this within USA first, and then move it to other locales.

Q: Can you go into a High Level overview of SDDC

A: In a nutshell the SDDC is taking everything that VMware is already famous for, and implementing that across the entire datacenter, and giving you the ability to use your CapEX in a more efficient matter while lowering your OpEx, but not just for your Servers everything from your Switches, Load Balancers, Proxies, Firewalls, Routers, Storage…… and whatever else you can dream of running in the datacenter. One of the main reasons they can now move all the datacenter constructs to Software is because almost everything runs the x86 architecture. This will not happen overnight, and will take time to get up to speed, but VMware is helping drive the future of the Datacenter.

Q: How is VMware positing themselves against Citrix related to Virtual Applications?

A: Not once did he say anything against Citrix. He basically said that ends users want to be able to access their data on any device they please. The End-User experience however is one of the most important things, not all data needs to be accessed in the same way, and this is where Horizon Suite comes into play by allowing the end user access in many different ways; Virtual Application, Virtual Desktop, SAAS, Data, or even XenApp published applications with a portal connection within Horizon Workspaces. The VMware solution reduces the complexity of the setup for the Administrators. This is bringing the ability to not manage the endpoint, and just worry about giving the end user the ability to get to access to information from any device and any where.

Q: How is the third-party support for the SDDC related to Networking?

A: As long as the Third-party vendor supports the x86 architecture they can run it with VMware. VMware will offer solutions that you can also use, with their purchase of Nicira they are ahead of the game. In the vSphere suite over the next 18 months thing will start to appear that will provide these solutions. In some setups you may have no choice but to use a hardware solution to provide the service, however VMware is working with these vendors to utilize API’s to plug into the VMware Software layer.

Q: What should Canada expect from the organizational changes at VMware?

A: The biggest challenges for businesses moving into Canada are the size of the country, and the two languages. Canada should expect to see much better resources that will be able to get to know the customers better. VMware will then be able to understand the Business needs with these customers, which allows them to provide solutions that fit.

Q: What do you think the biggest challenges are for VMware in the next year?

A: Translating the vision of the SDDC into reality, every business wants to spread their CapEX further, and reduce the overall OpEX, and provide end users with their information everywhere, but every environment is different and will take different steps to get towards that vision.

Eric made us all think about the SDDC, and what the Horizon Suite can bring to our Organizations. Below I am just going to provide a little overview of the Horizon Suite, and the idea of the SDDC.

Horizon Suite

The main purpose of the Horizon Suite is to empower IT and users with advantages that move the business forward. It provides a lower TCO of existing PC’s and applications, while providing a robust and reliable end-user computing on any device securely, while allowing centralized management of physical and virtual desktops keeping to business polices.

The pieces that make up the Horizon Suite are the following. Click on the links to head to the VMware Site and get all the information.

Horizon View: This product was formerly known as “View” it’s main purpose is to simplify desktop and application management.

Horizon Mirage: A layered image management solution that separates the PC in logical layers which are owned and managed by either IT or the end user.

Horizon Workspace: Combine applications and data into a single enterprise-class workspace. Provides simpler, centralized, policy-based management for the Administrator, and gives freedom of mobility to the End-User.

VMware Blog for Horizon Suite

Software Defined Datacenter

SDDC is where all compute, storage, networking, security, and availability services are pooled, aggregated, and delivered as software. In very simply terms everything will run in Software! We all know how VMware helped change the role of a system administration, now they are trying to do the same with the entire datacenter, I think we will all enjoy the journey.

Head over to VMware site to see more on the vision of the SDDC

Is your Organization ready for the SDDC

Products to help build the SDDC

VMware vCloud Suite

VMware VMware vSphere

VMware vCloud Networking and Security

VMware vCloud Director

VMware vCloud Connector

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

VMware vCloud Automation Center

VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite

VMware vFabric Application Director

VMware vFabric Application Performance Manager

VMware IT Business Management

Dell Wsye

First off Dell was up with Geoffrey Bruce and Jerry Landry with the Wsye group. Geoff started the presentation with Mega trends driving IT today; Location based services, social media, mobility, mass consumerization, and big data. Which lead into introducing “Dell cloud client computing” which empowers the IT Department to allow the end user to use any device, from anywhere.

With Dell cloud client computing your users can access data from Thin/Zero Clients, cloud PCs, personal computers, mobile clients, smartphones, tablets, and virtual machines. You can define user types such as task workers, office workers, power workers, or mobile workers. Then apply profiles to those users that will grant access to applications, peripherals, and content. Lastly you can identify the solution the user will use to access their data it could be presentation, VDI, cloud PC, Shared, or Web based.

Next up was Jerry, he talked about Wsye hardware. You have three types of Wsye hardware; flexible thin clients, dedicated zero clients, and familiar cloud PCs. His main focus was on the dedicated zero clients, which includes the P25 and P45. These devices are designed for VMware View and based off the PCoIP hardware tehnology.

Top 3 Benefits

Hardware zero client is the most secure endpoint available suitable for government, defense, healthcare, finance and other secure-sector deployments
Highest performance client endpoint for virtual desktop and remote workstation deployments
Easy to manage and quick to deploy with no OS malware protection or patches required

All your Wsye clients can be managed from a central location. Below is a product overview for management. This management comes built in with the Dell cloud client management.

If you would like to learn more about Dell cloud client computing.

Dell vStart and ASM

The last presenter of the day was Jeff Davey with Dell, he talked about Dell vStart, and Dell Active System Manager 7.0 (ASM)

Dell vStart gives you a pre-integrated solution for any size business, Dell helps take the risk out of sizing your virtual deployment.

vStart Hardware
Dell vStart 200, 100 and 50:

Multiple high-performance Dell PowerEdge™ servers to host virtual machines
A Dell PowerEdge server dedicated to managing your virtual environment
A Dell iSCSI storage area network
Dell PowerConnect™ switches
Innovative Dell power distribution and rack hardware

Dell vStart 1000:

Dell Compellent™ SAN storage
Dell Force10™ 10GB networking
Dell’s 12th-generation PowerEdge blade servers
Configurations for either Microsoft® Hyper-V™ or VMware® vSphere™
Scalability from 8- to 32-blade configurations

Your vStart rack is installed in your data center by our expert technicians, who make sure your vStart installation is ready to receive your virtual machines.

To learn more about ASM 7 have a look at the following link ASM

To learn more about vStart have a look at the following link vStart

Veeam Cloud Backup Edition

by Rick ByrneFebruary 13, 2013March 13, 20134 Comments

I have had a little bit of free time the last couple of nights….. that I enjoyed every minute in the Lab looking at the new product release from Veeam. Veeam Cloud Backup Edition is a new product from Veeam that gives you the ability to move your Veeam Backup’s off to 15 Cloud Storage providers, any that support OpenStack, and even Local/Remote File Shares. What does this give us? An Affordable solution for off-site backup of our Virtual Environment with no re-design of our local backup processes. Make sure to head over to the Veeam website and get more great products to help manage and protect your Virtual Infrastructure.

Key Features

Cloud-Agnostic – Support for 15 different public storage clouds

Encryption – Up to AES-256-bit encryption this is done on the server before transmission.

Compression – Saves time and Money! Data is compressed before sending to the cloud.

Cost Estimation – You can set limit by GB or Dollar, Makes sure you don’t go over your Storage Budget.

Job Notifications – email to keep you informed on your backups copied to the cloud

Bandwidth scheduling – Control bandwidth in real time, and based off of Local or WAN locations.

Licensing

All components of Veeam Backup & Replication Cloud Edition use the same license file. The license file should contain a Cloud backup option. If you use a license without the Cloud backup option that you previously obtained for Veeam Backup & Replication, you will not be able to use Veeam Cloud Backup. When you go to launch the application you will get the following error.

System Requirements

Veeam Cloud Backup Console

Specification	Requirement
Hardware	CPU: any modern x86/x64 processor (minimum 2 cores recommended) RAM: 4 GB HDD: 25 MB Network: 1 Gbps
OS	Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the following operating systems are supported: · Microsoft Windows XP SP3 · Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2 · Microsoft Windows Vista SP2 · Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 · Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 · Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 · Microsoft Windows 8 · Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Note that Microsoft Windows 8 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 are not supported for the file-level restore from the cloud scenario.
Software	.NET Framework 4.0 (included in the setup)
Cloud Storage	A registered cloud service account.

Installation

The installation of the this product is very fast, and painless. That is one of the reasons I enjoy working with Veeam products. You need to keep in mind when installing Cloud Edition, it has to have all of its components installed on the same local machine as the Veeam B&R SQL Database. The reason is to get all the integration working correctly, with the integration you will see the History of the Cloud Jobs from within the Veeam B&R Console.

Prerequisites

– Of course make sure it meets the System Requirements

– Make sure you have the proper license file

– From above highly recommended to install Cloud edition on the same machine as the SQL Database.

Screenshot of Install

For this installation I already have a version of Veeam B&R already running, I am only showing the Veeam Cloud Backup Install.

You can now choose your User Mode. To sum it up all users can have the same settings and plans, or they can have different plans and settings for their own account. I am going with the Common Setup. But you could see the use case for this.

You can change your install location, I’m moving mine to my D Volume. I just find it easier to manage. You can go ahead with the defaults.

Time to watch the progress, but you won’t be waiting long.

Took all of 3 Minutes from the point I launched the installer.

First Launch

The Welcome Tab is your first landing spot where you can go ahead and setup your backup plan. All the other tabs are practically empty right now until you create a Backup Plan and start running them.

Under the File Menu you will get to see all your Cloud Storage Vendors. I don’t think anyone will be displeased with the choices. If you do not have a Cloud Storage Vendor at the moment you can start your shopping now. You can even select Amazon Glacier, and start to use that for very low cost storage for archive data.

From the Screen Shot above you will also see Export configuration and Import Configuration. This gives you the ability to export your Backup Plans and restore them on another server.

From the tools menu you can select “Change Service Account” this will allow you to run the Cloud Console under a different service account, if you need to change authentication for a Backup/Restore. Network Credentials gives you the ability to use different credentials for different network paths, very handy option.

Now we get into the options. You can set Application preferences, connection attempts, bandwidth schedule, Global Purging settings, proxy, logging and advanced settings.

Create a Backup Plan

I do not have a Cloud Storage Vendor Account. For my testing I am going to be using a Shared folder that is not part of my Lab Domain.

The first thing I am going to do is setup network credentials for that path.

Time to complete the Backup Plan Wizard.

Next setup is select your Cloud Storage “In my case I will select File System” and create a new account. From the Advanced link, you can choose a Backup Prefix that will allow you to have more than one Job go to the same bucket but be able to identify it easily.

With our Storage defined we now need to give the Plan a name, and decide if we want to store the plan configuration in the Storage. The default is yes. I agree that it is a good choice, this way if the server you are running the Cloud Backup’s from is no longer with you, you have the configuration for the job saved offsite.

Backup Mode

You have two main choices

Advanced Mode – You can use Encryption and supports Versioning of Files. But you can only access your files with Veeam Cloud Edition manager.

Simple Mode – You can use any file manager to access your files, however encryption and versioning is not supported.

Really the choice is yours, but I like the Advanced mode where I can use Encryption to protect my data, and also the ability to keep versions of files. Custom Mode basically does a vanilla replication. You may be very interested in the last option to force using VSS, this will be quite useful if another process is accessing your files.

Now it is time to go ahead and select your Backup Source. I am going to select a Veeam Backup folder called Critical VM_s.

The Advanced Filter is just that, it lets you choose exactly what you want to replicate or what you don’t want to replicate. Along with the ability to skip folders, and choose files that were modified within a certain date/time.

Now we get into Compress and Encryption. I am going to select compress all files, and do AES 128 Bit Encryption *** Please do not forget your Encryption Key, that could turn into one bad day when you need it to restore *** You can also select to encrypt your file names.

Purge Options can be pulled from the Global settings in the options, or you can set different ones per Job.

Schedule gives you a few options. You can do it manually, specific date, recurring, or real-time. With real-time it will monitor the folder and check it every 60 Sec for any changes. It will store the Changes locally, and every 10 Minutes move it to your cloud storage.

Pre / Post Commands will allow you to execute a command before or after the Job. Depending on the result of the command the job will continue or fail.

Notifications can send off Email alerts, and can also generate a Windows Event log entry.

look over your summary and make sure all looks as you had planned.

Now with a Backup Plan in place the Welcome Screen has changed. It now shows our new Storage, and Backup plan. The Backup Plan tab is the place to go if you want to run a Job, view it’s progress, or make changes.

The Backup Storage Tab gives us a view into our Storage, and gives us the ability to restore files from the location, or delete them.

Backup Plan Execute

Now that I have my plan configure, and just finished doing a full backup of two VM’s. I am going to move that to my backup storage.

This is going to be a fairly small transfer of about 14.3 GB’s. To start the Backup Plan launch the Cloud console and go to the Backup Plans Tab, and click the link “Run”

click the down arrow on the right to get more details

The Backup has completed

The Email Notification

From the Backup Storage Tab you can view your files

From within the File Share this is what you will see. D$ are where the files reside in an encrypted format, meaning from this location I can look at the files, but can’t do anything with them. CBB_Configuration is where the configuration for the Backup Plan is stored.

Command Line Trigger Backup Plan

You may be asking yourself, well….. I want to run a backup job from Veeam B&R, then have it automatically run a Cloud Backup to my Off-Site Storage? That you can! Veeam Cloud Backup has a little tool called cbb.exe it is located at the install location for Veeam Cloud (C:\program files\Veeam\Cloud Backup\cbb.exe) To learn more about it just go ahead and run the command with no arguments or the ?. Also Veeam Cloud Backup Help from within the console has a full section related to the CLI.

But all we want to do is trigger a Cloud Backup after the Veeam Backup is complete. To get a list of Backup plans run cbb.exe plan –l the plan I want to trigger is VM Different-Storage.

The command that trigger this pan would be as follows

We now know the command we will need. Go ahead and open up notepad, paste the command, and save it as a bat file. Lets go edit our Veeam Backup Job. As you can see we can enter in a post command from the Advanced options from the Storage settings. I’m going to go ahead and save the changes.

Going to start the Job again with the new post command.

Once the Job is completed the post command runs and then we run the cloud backup.

Restore Time

Time to test the restore, no point replicating this data if we can’t restore it.

First thing I am going to do is delete two files.

Let’s restore them. Go to the Cloud Backup Console and go to the Backup Storage Tab. Expand your location where the files should exist.

You will see the two files I deleted from my Backup Folder. I have selected them, right clicked and now going to restore them to their original location.

Just going to do this once, no need to save

I’m going to restore the latest version. This is where Versioning comes into play if you did the advance mode.

In this case I want to restore to the original location.

These files were encrypted and still are, we need to have the password to complete the restore.

Make sure all is as it should be.

The progress of the Job

It took all of 30 secs, but again this is local storage and no compression needs to take place.

You can check now under the History Tab to see the two files that were restored.

My files are back where they should belong.

Take Away

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed something amazing about the new Cloud Backup……. It can replicate any file, I didn’t go into detail on it, but I have done other Job’s of just random files, without an issue. Veeam could have built this product to block any other type of replication that wasn’t a Veeam Backup, but they didn’t. Which I thank them for that, it makes my business case that much easier. I think when I put this in my environment I am going to find many more uses for it. For what this product is going to cost in the overall picture of data protection and security, I am getting… What about you?

To find out all the details, have a look here

Windows Server 2012 RC Install

by Rick ByrneAugust 19, 2012August 19, 2012Leave a comment

Been fairly busy lately, haven’t had a whole lot of time to play in the LAB. Today decided it would be a great day to sit and relax and catch up on some things. Following screen shots are just from a base install of Windows Server 2012 RC with GUI. Nothing fancy at all Smile or advanced.

I’m using my lab to run W2k12 as a VM, the lab is running ESXi 5.0.0 768111 anything less and you will get issues trying to install the RC version.

Once you have the VM configured, which I have only assigned 1 CPU/2 RAM/60 GB Disk this VM is just to look at the install and have a browse at some new features and the GUI

This is the first screen you will see when you power on the VM and load the ISO

At this point you will get to pick your regional settings.

At this point you are prompted to install the OS, or repair your OS if there is problems.

With the RC version you have to options to Chose, either Server Core Installation or Server with a GUI. For this install I am going to chose GUI, another blog I will go ahead and just pick the core version.

Of course the “License Terms” Accept and on your go.

As you can see the install is very similar to Windows Server 2008 R2/Windows 7/Windows 8 which we all expected.

Pick your drive to install on.

At this point you can walk away. But don’t go for very long, the entire install process took only 25 Minutes.

In total I counted 2 Reboots that occur, but they are very quick.

I

Go ahead and chose a password. One new feature I noticed on this screen is that you can show your password, this allows you to make sure you are typing the correct information in both boxes. In the dialog box, when you have it selected there will be a little Black Circle with a half Circle underneath it. To display your password click and hold, if you do not click and hold you will not be able to see your password.

You can also use accessibility options, and change the keyboard layout.

the install is complete. As you see from below the screen for logon is different. But not in a bad way.

Type in your password

Wait for your profile to setup.

Once your profile is complete you are brought to the Server Manager.

As you can see the install is very straight forward. This is all I am going to show in this post, but I plan to show more as I play more with Windows Server 2012 RC.

Add Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) with PowerShell

by Rick ByrneJune 17, 2011June 17, 2011Leave a comment

Ever wanted to install the Domain Services with PowerShell? Well I did. If you would like to know more just read below.

Run PowerShell as an Administrator.
Import the ServerManager Module with the following command

“Import-Module ServerManager”

This command will not have any feedback

Run the command Get-WindowsFeature to see what you need to install. From the screen shot below we will need to install the Active Directory Domain Services (AD-Domain-Services) and Active Directory Domain Controller (ADDS-Domain-Controller)

Before we commit the command lets do this, run “Add-WindowsFeature AD-domain-Services,ADDS-Domain-Controller –WhatIf”. this command will tell us what is going to happen. Notice the Screen shot below. It is letting us know that this command will also install .NET Framework 3.5.1 Features, which is needed for AD DS.

“Add-WindowsFeature AD-Domain-Services,ADDS-Domain-Controller”

Lets go ahead and add the Features

“Add-WindowsFeature AD-Domain-Services, ADDS-Domain-Controller”

This command will take a few minutes to complete. Now to make sure we have everything we need we can run the Get-WindowsFeature again. Anything with a “X” means the feature is installed and ready to use. You can export this command to a file so you can keep it for your documentation.

“Get-WindowsFeature > C:\WindowsFeature.txt”

This will save the Text file to your C: Root.

The output will match the following

Display Name                                            Name
————                                            —-
[ ] Active Directory Certificate Services               AD-Certificate
[ ] Certification Authority                         ADCS-Cert-Authority
[ ] Certification Authority Web Enrollment          ADCS-Web-Enrollment
[ ] Online Responder                                ADCS-Online-Cert
[ ] Network Device Enrollment Service               ADCS-Device-Enrollment
[ ] Certificate Enrollment Web Service              ADCS-Enroll-Web-Svc
[ ] Certificate Enrollment Policy Web Service       ADCS-Enroll-Web-Pol
[X] Active Directory Domain Services                    AD-Domain-Services
[X] Active Directory Domain Controller              ADDS-Domain-Controller
[ ] Identity Management for UNIX                    ADDS-Identity-Mgmt
[ ] Server for Network Information Services     ADDS-NIS
[ ] Password Synchronization                    ADDS-Password-Sync
[ ] Administration Tools                        ADDS-IDMU-Tools
[ ] Active Directory Federation Services                AD-Federation-Services
[ ] Federation Service                              ADFS-Federation
[ ] Federation Service Proxy                        ADFS-Proxy
[ ] AD FS Web Agents                                ADFS-Web-Agents
[ ] Claims-aware Agent                          ADFS-Claims
[ ] Windows Token-based Agent                   ADFS-Windows-Token
[ ] Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services     ADLDS
[ ] Active Directory Rights Management Services         ADRMS
[ ] Active Directory Rights Management Server       ADRMS-Server
[ ] Identity Federation Support                     ADRMS-Identity
[ ] Application Server                                  Application-Server
[ ] .NET Framework 3.5.1                            AS-NET-Framework
[ ] Web Server (IIS) Support                        AS-Web-Support
[ ] COM+ Network Access                             AS-Ent-Services
[ ] TCP Port Sharing                                AS-TCP-Port-Sharing
[ ] Windows Process Activation Service Support      AS-WAS-Support
[ ] HTTP Activation                             AS-HTTP-Activation
[ ] Message Queuing Activation                  AS-MSMQ-Activation
[ ] TCP Activation                              AS-TCP-Activation
[ ] Named Pipes Activation                      AS-Named-Pipes
[ ] Distributed Transactions                        AS-Dist-Transaction
[ ] Incoming Remote Transactions                AS-Incoming-Trans
[ ] Outgoing Remote Transactions                AS-Outgoing-Trans
[ ] WS-Atomic Transactions                      AS-WS-Atomic
[ ] DHCP Server                                         DHCP
[ ] DNS Server                                          DNS
[ ] Fax Server                                          Fax
[ ] File Services                                       File-Services
[ ] File Server                                     FS-FileServer
[ ] Distributed File System                         FS-DFS
[ ] DFS Namespaces                              FS-DFS-Namespace
[ ] DFS Replication                             FS-DFS-Replication
[ ] File Server Resource Manager                    FS-Resource-Manager
[ ] Services for Network File System                FS-NFS-Services
[ ] Windows Search Service                          FS-Search-Service
[ ] Windows Server 2003 File Services               FS-Win2003-Services
[ ] Indexing Service                            FS-Indexing-Service
[ ] BranchCache for network files                   FS-BranchCache
[ ] Hyper-V                                             Hyper-V
[ ] Network Policy and Access Services                  NPAS
[ ] Network Policy Server                           NPAS-Policy-Server
[ ] Routing and Remote Access Services              NPAS-RRAS-Services
[ ] Remote Access Service                       NPAS-RRAS
[ ] Routing                                     NPAS-Routing
[ ] Health Registration Authority                   NPAS-Health
[ ] Host Credential Authorization Protocol          NPAS-Host-Cred
[ ] Print and Document Services                         Print-Services
[ ] Print Server                                    Print-Server
[ ] LPD Service                                     Print-LPD-Service
[ ] Internet Printing                               Print-Internet
[ ] Distributed Scan Server                         Print-Scan-Server
[ ] Remote Desktop Services                             Remote-Desktop-Services
[ ] Remote Desktop Session Host                     RDS-RD-Server
[ ] Remote Desktop Virtualization Host              RDS-Virtualization
[ ] Core Services                               RDS-Virtualization-Core
[ ] RemoteFX                                    RDS-RemoteFX
[ ] Remote Desktop Licensing                        RDS-Licensing
[ ] Remote Desktop Connection Broker                RDS-Connection-Broker
[ ] Remote Desktop Gateway                          RDS-Gateway
[ ] Remote Desktop Web Access                       RDS-Web-Access
[ ] Web Server (IIS)                                    Web-Server
[ ] Web Server                                      Web-WebServer
[ ] Common HTTP Features                        Web-Common-Http
[ ] Static Content                          Web-Static-Content
[ ] Default Document                        Web-Default-Doc
[ ] Directory Browsing                      Web-Dir-Browsing
[ ] HTTP Errors                             Web-Http-Errors
[ ] HTTP Redirection                        Web-Http-Redirect
[ ] WebDAV Publishing                       Web-DAV-Publishing
[ ] Application Development                     Web-App-Dev
[ ] ASP.NET                                 Web-Asp-Net
[ ] .NET Extensibility                      Web-Net-Ext
[ ] ASP                                     Web-ASP
[ ] CGI                                     Web-CGI
[ ] ISAPI Extensions                        Web-ISAPI-Ext
[ ] ISAPI Filters                           Web-ISAPI-Filter
[ ] Server Side Includes                    Web-Includes
[ ] Health and Diagnostics                      Web-Health
[ ] HTTP Logging                            Web-Http-Logging
[ ] Logging Tools                           Web-Log-Libraries
[ ] Request Monitor                         Web-Request-Monitor
[ ] Tracing                                 Web-Http-Tracing
[ ] Custom Logging                          Web-Custom-Logging
[ ] ODBC Logging                            Web-ODBC-Logging
[ ] Security                                    Web-Security
[ ] Basic Authentication                    Web-Basic-Auth
[ ] Windows Authentication                  Web-Windows-Auth
[ ] Digest Authentication                   Web-Digest-Auth
[ ] Client Certificate Mapping Authentic… Web-Client-Auth
[ ] IIS Client Certificate Mapping Authe… Web-Cert-Auth
[ ] URL Authorization                       Web-Url-Auth
[ ] Request Filtering                       Web-Filtering
[ ] IP and Domain Restrictions              Web-IP-Security
[ ] Performance                                 Web-Performance
[ ] Static Content Compression              Web-Stat-Compression
[ ] Dynamic Content Compression             Web-Dyn-Compression
[ ] Management Tools                                Web-Mgmt-Tools
[ ] IIS Management Console                      Web-Mgmt-Console
[ ] IIS Management Scripts and Tools            Web-Scripting-Tools
[ ] Management Service                          Web-Mgmt-Service
[ ] IIS 6 Management Compatibility              Web-Mgmt-Compat
[ ] IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility            Web-Metabase
[ ] IIS 6 WMI Compatibility                 Web-WMI
[ ] IIS 6 Scripting Tools                   Web-Lgcy-Scripting
[ ] IIS 6 Management Console                Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console
[ ] FTP Server                                      Web-Ftp-Server
[ ] FTP Service                                 Web-Ftp-Service
[ ] FTP Extensibility                           Web-Ftp-Ext
[ ] IIS Hostable Web Core                           Web-WHC
[ ] Windows Deployment Services                         WDS
[ ] Deployment Server                               WDS-Deployment
[ ] Transport Server                                WDS-Transport
[ ] Windows Server Update Services                      OOB-WSUS
[X] .NET Framework 3.5.1 Features                       NET-Framework
[X] .NET Framework 3.5.1                            NET-Framework-Core
[ ] WCF Activation                                  NET-Win-CFAC
[ ] HTTP Activation                             NET-HTTP-Activation
[ ] Non-HTTP Activation                         NET-Non-HTTP-Activ
[ ] Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)      BITS
[ ] Compact Server                                  BITS-Compact-Server
[ ] IIS Server Extension                            BITS-IIS-Ext
[ ] BitLocker Drive Encryption                          BitLocker
[ ] BranchCache                                         BranchCache
[ ] Connection Manager Administration Kit               CMAK
[ ] Desktop Experience                                  Desktop-Experience
[ ] DirectAccess Management Console                     DAMC
[ ] Failover Clustering                                 Failover-Clustering
[ ] Group Policy Management                             GPMC
[ ] Ink and Handwriting Services                        Ink-Handwriting
[ ] Ink Support                                     IH-Ink-Support
[ ] Handwriting Recognition                         IH-Handwriting
[ ] Internet Printing Client                            Internet-Print-Client
[ ] Internet Storage Name Server                        ISNS
[ ] LPR Port Monitor                                    LPR-Port-Monitor
[ ] Message Queuing                                     MSMQ
[ ] Message Queuing Services                        MSMQ-Services
[ ] Message Queuing Server                      MSMQ-Server
[ ] Directory Service Integration               MSMQ-Directory
[ ] Message Queuing Triggers                    MSMQ-Triggers
[ ] HTTP Support                                MSMQ-HTTP-Support
[ ] Multicasting Support                        MSMQ-Multicasting
[ ] Routing Service                             MSMQ-Routing
[ ] Message Queuing DCOM Proxy                      MSMQ-DCOM
[ ] Multipath I/O                                       Multipath-IO
[ ] Network Load Balancing                              NLB
[ ] Peer Name Resolution Protocol                       PNRP
[ ] Quality Windows Audio Video Experience              qWave
[ ] Remote Assistance                                   Remote-Assistance
[ ] Remote Differential Compression                     RDC
[X] Remote Server Administration Tools                  RSAT
[X] Role Administration Tools                       RSAT-Role-Tools
[ ] Active Directory Certificate Services Tools RSAT-ADCS
[ ] Certification Authority Tools           RSAT-ADCS-Mgmt
[ ] Online Responder Tools                  RSAT-Online-Responder
[X] AD DS and AD LDS Tools                      RSAT-AD-Tools
[X] AD DS Tools                             RSAT-ADDS
[X] AD DS Snap-Ins and Command-Line … RSAT-ADDS-Tools
[X] Active Directory Administrative … RSAT-AD-AdminCenter
[ ] Server for NIS Tools                RSAT-SNIS
[ ] AD LDS Snap-Ins and Command-Line Tools RSAT-ADLDS
[X] Active Directory module for Windows … RSAT-AD-PowerShell
[ ] Active Directory Rights Management Servi… RSAT-RMS
[ ] DHCP Server Tools                           RSAT-DHCP
[ ] DNS Server Tools                            RSAT-DNS-Server
[ ] Fax Server Tools                            RSAT-Fax
[ ] File Services Tools                         RSAT-File-Services
[ ] Distributed File System Tools           RSAT-DFS-Mgmt-Con
[ ] File Server Resource Manager Tools      RSAT-FSRM-Mgmt
[ ] Services for Network File System Tools RSAT-NFS-Admin
[ ] Hyper-V Tools                               RSAT-Hyper-V
[ ] Network Policy and Access Services Tools    RSAT-NPAS
[ ] Print and Document Services Tools           RSAT-Print-Services
[ ] Remote Desktop Services Tools               RSAT-RDS
[ ] Remote Desktop Session Host Tools       RSAT-RDS-RemoteApp
[ ] Remote Desktop Gateway Tools            RSAT-RDS-Gateway
[ ] Remote Desktop Licensing Tools          RSAT-RDS-Licensing
[ ] Remote Desktop Connection Broker Tools RSAT-RDS-Conn-Broker
[ ] Web Server (IIS) Tools                      RSAT-Web-Server
[ ] Windows Deployment Services Tools           RSAT-WDS
[ ] Feature Administration Tools                    RSAT-Feature-Tools
[ ] BitLocker Drive Encryption Administratio… RSAT-BitLocker
[ ] BitLocker Drive Encryption Tools        RSAT-Bitlocker-DriveEnc
[ ] BitLocker Recovery Password Viewer      RSAT-Bitlocker-RecPwd
[ ] BITS Server Extensions Tools                RSAT-Bits-Server
[ ] Failover Clustering Tools                   RSAT-Clustering
[ ] Network Load Balancing Tools                RSAT-NLB
[ ] SMTP Server Tools                           RSAT-SMTP
[ ] WINS Server Tools                           RSAT-WINS
[ ] RPC over HTTP Proxy                                 RPC-over-HTTP-Proxy
[ ] Simple TCP/IP Services                              Simple-TCPIP
[ ] SMTP Server                                         SMTP-Server
[ ] SNMP Services                                       SNMP-Services
[ ] SNMP Service                                    SNMP-Service
[ ] SNMP WMI Provider                               SNMP-WMI-Provider
[ ] Storage Manager for SANs                            Storage-Mgr-SANS
[ ] Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications               Subsystem-UNIX-Apps
[ ] Telnet Client                                       Telnet-Client
[ ] Telnet Server                                       Telnet-Server
[ ] TFTP Client                                         TFTP-Client
[ ] Windows Biometric Framework                         Biometric-Framework
[ ] Windows Internal Database                           Windows-Internal-DB
[ ] Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environm… PowerShell-ISE
[ ] Windows Process Activation Service                  WAS
[ ] Process Model                                   WAS-Process-Model
[ ] .NET Environment                                WAS-NET-Environment
[ ] Configuration APIs                              WAS-Config-APIs
[ ] Windows Server Backup Features                      Backup-Features
[ ] Windows Server Backup                           Backup
[ ] Command-line Tools                              Backup-Tools
[ ] Windows Server Migration Tools                      Migration
[ ] Windows System Resource Manager                     WSRM
[ ] Windows TIFF IFilter                                TIFF-IFilter
[ ] WinRM IIS Extension                                 WinRM-IIS-Ext
[ ] WINS Server                                         WINS-Server
[ ] Wireless LAN Service                                Wireless-Networking
[ ] XPS Viewer                                          XPS-Viewer

With all of the required Features installed we can now run DCpromo.exe to finish the install of our Domain Controller, New Domain, or New Forest.

If you would like to know more about Creating a Domain in Windows Server 2008 R2 Click Here.

DISM Windows Server 2008 R2 Change Edition

by Rick ByrneJune 16, 2011June 16, 201110 Comments

Hit a little issue in my lab today, It happens that I went ahead and installed Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard for a bunch of my Lab VM’s. Now the issue is that I need Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition to support the Windows Failover Clustering feature.

So long story short, I didn’t want to have to fully rebuild my Lab VM’s. So I went looking around and found a very nice way to in place upgrade to Enterprise Edition.

The command that we are going to use is the DISM.exe command (Deployment Image Servicing and Management Tool), that is available in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. You can find out more about the Tool HERE

First of all go ahead and on the server you want to run this command open up PowerShell as an administrator.
Click on the “Start Button” Type Power, PowerShell will then show under programs, Right Click the PowerShell Icon and select “Run as administrator.

Enter is this command in the window to find the version you are running, just to confirm. “DISM /online /Get-CurrentEdition”

Enter the following command to see which version you can in place upgrade too “DISM /online /Get-TargetEditions” You can see from the output of the command window, Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard can be upgraded to Enterprise and DataCenter.

Enter in the following command to upgrade your version of Windows Server. In my case I am going to be upgrading too Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition, and the following command will do this. You need to have a key for Enterprise edition and fill in the XXXX with that information. Once the command is done running you will need to restart your computer, if you are ready just type “Y”.

“DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerEnterprise /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX”

Once the computer restarts, you can go ahead and look at your computer properties, and you will now see you are running Windows Server Enterprise. Well in my case anyways.

Errors: If you get an error while running this prodcedure, see if any of the below issue will resolve the issue.

“Setting an Edition is not supported with online images” More than likley the reason you are getting this error is because the server you are trying to inplace upgrade has the AD DS Role installed and is acting as a domain controller. The only way to upgrade this one is to move the FSMO Roles to another server, then DCpromo the server, and make it a member server and then run the command, and then you can go ahead and make the server a Domain Controller once the edition of Windows has been changed.
“The specified product key is not valid for the target edition. Run this command again with a product key specific to the target edition.” I have no reason why this issue happens,(its key confusion of some sort) but to fix it you can go ahead and use the default KMS key provided by Microsoft 489J6-VHDMP-X63PK-3K798-CPX3Y, use this key in the command, and once the system reboots, go into the Server Manager and change and activate the softare with your own key.

Note: You cannot downgrade with this method, just upgrade. Also please do this at your own risk, I am doing this in a Lab Environment which is going to impact only one me. This is not a major upgrade, basically all it is doing is changing the product key if need be, and changing some registry values.