Month: July 2011

Recently, I setup VM in Hyper-Vof Windows Server 2008 R2 for classroom training use. I created a base hard disk image and a lot of differencing disks for difference VMs.However, I discover sometimes, when the differencing VM turn on, It will create another  NIC to use and hide the previous NIC. (Maybe it detect the new setup VM as difference hardware) Thus, the NIC name will be changed to “xxxxxxxx #2”. So, I decided to remove the hidden NIC so that the NIC will not be named to “xxxxxxxxx #2” or “xxxxxxxx #3″…etc. The following is the steps required before moving the … Continue reading Remove hidden NIC from device manager of Windows Server 2008.

The iSCSI Target solution from MS is now free! We can use it to setup a environment to test fail-over clustering!http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=19867 Here are more information about this:http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2011/04/04/microsoft-iscsi-software-target-3-3-for-windows-server-2008-r2-available-for-public-download.aspx More info: The Microsoft iSCSI Software Target has been available for production use as part of Windows Storage Server since early 2007. It has also been available for development and test use by MSDN and TechNet subscribers starting in May 2009. However, until now, there was no way to use the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target in production on a regular server running Windows Server 2008 R2. This new download offers exactly that. Now … Continue reading Free Microsoft iSCSI Target

The latest version of WSIM. Please download it from the following site: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5753 and also download the update for SP1: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5188

Overview of TS Licensinghttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732346(WS.10).aspx Install Terminal Server Licensinghttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc783569(WS.10).aspx

A student ask about the reference for Windows CAL LicensingHere are some reference for that: Licence FAQ’s http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/faq.mspx CAL http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/client-access-license.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/client-access-license.aspx#tab=2 Windows 2008 R2 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobuy/licensing/caloverview.mspx

You can reference this article:http://ss64.com/nt/diskpart.html It has an example how to use diskpart to format the drive. FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL=”New Volume” QUICK Additional information: DiskPart Command-Line Optionshttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465(WS.10).aspx

The only Variables can be used by WDS naming policy are: %First, %Last, %Username, %MAC, %[0][n]# (or combine them).

A student asked whether we can use ImageX as a backup tool: Please reference this link:You cannot use the ImageX.exe tool as a backup tool on a Windows Vista-based computerhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/935467/en-us It is same to Windows Server 2008.

There is no straight way to capture the whole disk, including C:, D:, E:,etc., to an image file in one time, and you cannot deploy an image including multiple partitions in one time. However, you can try the following steps and see if can work for you: Step 1.======Sysprep your machine and then reboot into Windows PE. Capture the offline Sysprep image into .wim format and then upload the image to the WDS server. Or you can do this by a Capture Image. Step 2.======Create a unattend answer file to automatically create and configure new volumes when you deploy the … Continue reading Multiple partitions hard drive for imaging

Usually we can use the following three ways to sysprep and capture a Windows image: 1. Install a reference computer, sysprep it and boot from a WinPE disk and run Image command to capture the image as we do in this thread:2. Use WDS 3. Use MDT.