Anthony's space

Hyper-V How To: Free Tools for Hyper-V Management

High Speed Networking Deployment Guide Released

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Authoring Resource Kit

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 Update

Troubleshooting and data gathering for WSUS

Hyper-V hotfix for "0x00000101 - CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT" on Nehalem systems

Hotfix needed to move R2 differencing disk to Windows Server 2008

Article on setting up native boot from VHD on a Windows XP computer

System Centre Cross Platform Management Pack Guides

Hyper-V Delegated Administration using SCVMM, blog from Ben Armstrong

Technet Magazine Issues by Year

Windows 7 Resource Kit PowerShell Pack

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Update

Open Source PowerShell Cmdlet and Help Designer

Free e-book: Deploying Windows 7, Essential Guidance

Using Hyper-V without re-installing your world, a blog on how to add Windows Server 2008 R2 to a a machine running Windows 7

Bootable USB Drive Recipe (by Will, from the Technet Ireland blog)

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) Wizard Editor

CSV LUN sizing Best Practices from the MVUG Blog

TechNet Webcast: Automating Windows 7 Deployments Using System Center Configuration Manager

TechNet Webcast: Understanding Operations Manager 2007 Performance and Scalability

Article on Troubleshooting Operations Manager Console Performance in large environments

Fixing Troubled Agents from Kevin Holman’s OpsMgr Blog

Setting up an image factory, part 1: Using MDT 2010 Lite Touch with SCVMM 2008 R2 from Michael Niehaus’s Blog

Troubleshooting Slow Logons from the Directory Services Team blog (Part 1, Part 2)

Common Issues accessing DFS Namespace as seen by the Directory Services Support Team (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Stop Error 0x0000007e after enabling Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2

I was working on replacing a Terminal Services Gateway running on Windows Server 2008 to Remote Desktop Services Gateway on Windows Server 2008 R2. Remote Desktop Services is the new name for Terminal Services in Windows Services 2008 R2.

The migration was relatively easy, on the TS Gateway open the TS Gateway Manager MMC, right click on the gateway server and select “Export policy and configuration settings”

Select where you want to save the configuration file to, it is in an XML format and then click Ok

I was the changing the server name as part of the upgrade process and I had to edit the XML configuration file and just change the name of the server at the top of the exported configuration before performing the import on the RDS Gateway.

On the RDS Gateway open the RDS Gateway Manager MMC, right click on the gateway server and select “Import policy and configuration settings”

Select the location of the XML configuration file and click Ok

Overall it took less 3 hours to get it up and running (including the OS installation), nice and and easy and once I get MDT 2010 in place that will cut down my deployment times.

Links

Remote Desktop Services Product Website

Remote Desktop Services Technical Resources Website

Group Policy References for Windows and Windows Server can be downloaded from here.

Advanced Group Policy Management 4.0 documentation

Hyper-V Update List

Chapter 8 from the Hyper-V Resource Kit : Moving from Virtual Server 2005 R2 to Hyper-V

Downloadable System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 documentation

A 2 part video series on Windows XP to Windows 7 Migration using MDT2010 – Part 1, Part 2

Microsoft Security Update Guide

WDS F11 Server Selection Feature

System Center Callback – troubleshooting for System Center products

Updated Virtualization Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides now available to download

This video runs for around an hour and talks about Hyper-V, Live Migration and SCVMM 2008 R2.

http://scug.be/blogs/scvmm/archive/2009/09/17/session-video-clustering-and-live-migration-with-hyper-v-server-r2-by-arlindo-alves.aspx

Saw the link to this initially on a tweet from Hans.

Some links to stuff I found interesting

Building PRO Enabled Management Packs - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1d7fb014-9826-47e8-a69b-018f785cb963&displaylang=en

SCVMM 2008 and 2008 R2 Microsoft Product Support Reports RTW - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4e3dc013-c299-4b80-9735-64a8b9fa60c7

Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer for SCVMM 2008 and SCVMM 2008 R2 - http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/archive/2009/09/17/announcing-the-rtw-of-virtual-machine-manager-configuration-analyzer-vmmca-for-scvmm-2008-and-2008-r2.aspx

Active Directory Web Service for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 RTW - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=008940c6-0296-4597-be3e-1d24c1cf0dda

SCCM 2007 support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 - http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/09/16/clarifying-windows-os-support-and-configuration-manager-2007.aspx

Over on the SuperSite for Windows Paul Thurott has blogged that Microsoft has announced the RTM of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The announcement was made by Steven Sinofsky and is on the Windows Team Blog and Windows Server Blog

Credit : Paul Thurott

Some of the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides are after been updated to cover Windows Server 2008 R2.

The following guides in the Infrastructure Planning and Design series have been updated to reflect new features and capabilities available in Windows Server 2008 R2:
•    Active Directory Domain Services
•    Internet Information Services 7.5
•    File Services
•    Print Services

The guides can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/ipd

This page has links to resources to help create SCOM mangement packs. There is a new Management Pack University which is a series of webcasts on creating management packs.

Credit : System Center Central

Microsoft have released a Windows Server 2008 R2 Performance Tuning Guide and it can be downloaded from here.

The Windows Server 2008 Performance Tuning Guide was recently updated to cover service pack 2 and it can be downloaded from here.

Credit : Windows Server Performance Team

I  checked on the Volume Licensing Web site earlier and SCOM 2007 R2 is now available for download. I am looking forward to getting this into production as soon as possible.

One thing to watch out for is some new licensing for the System Center Server Management Suite CAL kick in when you start using SCOM 2007 R2. Another article on the transition and migration path is here.

In my weekly update email from Dell there was a link to a Dell Server Pro Management Pack link.

Under the important information it had the following

“Dell Server PRO Managament Pack version 1.0 is compatible with System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 / System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 only.”

To download the management pack, click here and you should end up on the download page on the Dell website

The System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 documentation is available for download or for your reading pleasure here.

Want to learn how to dual both between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 from VHD, Keith Combs has posted a blog post on how to do that. The post has a 23 minute screen cast as well. I have not viewed the screen cast yet but I plan to take a look at it.

The blog post is here.

The trial version of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 is now available here. The product will be generally available from the 1st of July.

On the Windows Vista Team blog they announced that Service Pack 2 has been released to manufacturing (RTM).

Some of the key benefits of Windows Vista SP2:

• Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches
• Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology
• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista
• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration
• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.

It comes in a single installer for both Vista and Windows Server 2008. It is expected to be publicly available in Q2 2009 (i.e. by the end of June).

I was watching the first keynote speech of MMS 2009 (Microsoft Management Summit) by Bob Kelly. Bob announced the availability of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 in 30 days. This is a product I have really been looking forward to for a while for the support for the management of Linux servers.

The other thing that Bob mentioned was the availability of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 will be released 60 days after the RTM of Windows Server 2008 R2.

There was some demos of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 managing Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2. There was also a demo of application virtualization running on servers and where MS are going with product.

To see the MMS keynotes, click here and as far as I know the keynotes will be available for viewing later. There is a second keynote tomorrow, not sure if I will watch it as I was only keeping my eye on this for news on System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.

It looks like some good upgrades to the System Center products in the next little while and I will be busy with the upgrades.

Since I have not posted in a while I thought I might post a few links to some products and guides that may be useful and are of interest to me.

Hyper-V Planning and Deployment Guide 1.2 released

SCVMM 2008 R2 Beta released and can be downloaded from Microsoft Connect.

Microsoft and Red Hat have recently signed agreements to test and validate their server operating systems running on one another’s hypervisor. More here on the Port 25 blog.

RichCopy is a bulk file copy utility.

Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer Update 1 released and available to download from here. There is information about the original release of the product here.

A article on creating a Windows Server 2008 template in SCVMM 2008

I came across this article on how to migrate from a Windows 2003 DHCP server to a Windows 2008 DHCP server. The article is from the DHCP Team blog.

http://blogs.technet.com/teamdhcp/archive/2009/02/18/migration-of-dhcp-server-from-windows-server-2003-to-windows-server-2008.aspx