Windows 8 Hyper-V Improved Integration Services Setup

Posted on March 19, 2012 by workinghardinit

In Windows 8 Beta there is a nice and functional improvement in Hyper-V Manager when you want to install or upgrade the Integration Services. It shows you what version (if any) is installed and if an upgrade is needed or not. Until now it just “mentioned” that “a previous” (no version, could be the latest one) were installed and happily let you reinstall them needed or not. Begs the questions how does this all deal with “corrupted” integration services if such a thing exists. I, personally, have never seen it. Uninstall/reinstall I guess when you come across it as I don’t know of a forced/repair install option.

Walkthrough of The Improved Integration Services Setup

In the Virtual Machine console navigate to Action and select “Insert Integration Services Setup Disk”

In the Virtual Machine console you’ll see that inserting the integration services disk succeeded.

Like before, if the setup process doesn’t start automatically just navigate to the DVD and kick start it yourself.

As you can see below it now shows what version (if any) of the integration services is already installed and asks you if you want to update. In the example below you can see it has the Windows 2008 R2 SP1 version of the integration services. This is as expected as this machine (a W2K3R2SP2 guest) was imported from a Hyper-V cluster running that Windows 2008 R2 SP1.

You click OK and the installation process for the integration services will start.

When the installation is done you’ll be notified that the virtual machines needs to restart.

The server will reboot and if you then try to install the integration services again it will notify you that it has already the correct version of the integration tools running.

Remarks

If you hit an error in the Beta of Windows 8 Hyper-V I advise two things I have experienced myself in the labs.

Make sure you have enough disk space. I had one test server that had only a few MB left on the C partition and that bit me
Make sure you do it after a clean reboot. Just to make sure you have no pending hardware detection/installs lingering around. I experienced this one on a Windows 2003 R2 SP2 guest. Error code 1618, yup that means Another installation is already in progress.

Our Visit To The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Posted on March 16, 2012 by workinghardinit

I have had the distinct pleasure of visiting the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle during my stay in Bellevue for the MVP Summit. Some of my colleagues and I were invited to tour the data center & discuss some of the challenges they have to deal with and the solutions they’ve found for those.

I cannot go into any details about our visit but I can convey that the technology needs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are being met by a professional crew at all levels of the IT infrastructure stack. On top of that they have invested in a state of the art data center that is purpose build and that really shows in the quality & details. It was also interesting to meet some of our American counter parts. We’ve learned that some of our challenges are the same and that some are very different. For one they have to deal with making their infrastructure earthquake proof and I saw some nifty technology to protect SAN storage racks against such an event. This is something we never have to deal with in our neck of the woods.

In correspondence with their mission to create a better world for all people in order to live better lives they have created a very pleasant work environment that takes care of both the needs of the foundation and its employees. The campus is modern, built to last and designed to minimize it’s environmental impact. It lies in the shadow of the Space Needle and it is brand new (2011).

A view of the campus.

It lies in the shadow of the Space Needle in Seattle.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the IT team of the foundation for the invitation and the opportunity to visit. It was an experience to remember and we’ve left with a better understanding of their IT needs in regard to supporting the foundation’s mission.

MVPs Kerstin Rachfahl, Aidan Finn, Didier Van Hoye, Hans Vredevoort & Carsten Rachfahl during their visit.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the mission of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation I suggest you visit their website. You can also find an animated video showing the new campus & more information here and this link takes you to a pdf brochure about the campus.

I’m very happy to see that the Gates family has invested so much of their wealth in helping to improve lives all over the planet and can only suggest we all do our part, where we can and when we can.

TechEd Europe 2012 (Amsterdam, 25-29 June 2012)

Posted on March 13, 2012 by workinghardinit

After a sad year of no TechEd Europe in 2011, one of our favorite tech conferences for Microsoft technologies is back in full force. Ladies & Gentlemen, TechEd Europe 2012 will be here sooner than you think.

It’s more than just technical training, it is networking, white board sessions and passionate discussion amongst peers, experts & Microsoft employees who built the products. If you still need more technical content than that take a look at the pre-conference agenda for a full day of expertly delivered education.

No this is not just a commercial, I haven’t missed a TechEd Europe yet this century and for good reasons. If you’d like to read why take a look at this blog post Why I Find Value In A Conference

There will be loads of sessions on all products in the System Center 2012 and Windows 8. In the developer sphere there’s the .NET Framework 4.5 & Visual Studio 2012 to look forward to. Combine this with a lot of experience based guidance on current technologies and you can’t afford to miss out. To avoid disappointment register as soon as possible to join your fellow IT Pros & Developers.

Hope to see you there!

Windows 8 Server With GUI, Minimal Server Interface & Server Core Lesson with the Desktop Experience Feature

Posted on March 12, 2012 by workinghardinit

I’m one of those people that run Windows Server on their desktop workhorse. The reason for this is that this gives me the server features for rapid testing, scripting and taking screenshots for documentation. When you tweak it right you have a very nice desktop that doesn’t lack anything in functionality compared to a desktop but you do get the extras I just mentioned. An alternative is to run a Virtual Machine locally. The latter has become a lot easier & better now we have Hyper-V in the client Open-mouthed smile .

This subject leads to another interesting capability of Windows 8. You can install Windows 8 as Server Core or Server with GUI, which is the full GUI option. But there is a world between those. This is the Minimal Server Interface option. How do these differ? Well actually “only” by the features that are enabled.

The feature Graphical Management Tools and Infrastructure is the set of features that makes up the difference between a Server Core installation and the Minimal Server Interface option of a Full server installation. This means that uninstalling this feature will convert a Full server to a Server Core installation. Server Graphical Shell cannot live without the Graphical Management Tools and Infrastructure as both are needed to get the full GUI server.

Server Graphical Shell is the same user interface that is installed by default when you choose the Server with GUI installation option during Setup. This always installs “Graphical Management Tools and Infrastructure” as a prerequisite. To decrease the servicing requirements of your server while still being able to use Microsoft Management Console (MMC) locally, you can uninstall the Server Graphical Shell using Server Manager, leaving you with the Minimal Server Interface. As stated above the Minimal Server Interface requires the “Graphical Management Tools and Infrastructure” feature to be installed.

The real good news is that you can switch between these server options with reinstalling. You can switch from Full Server with all whistles & bells to Server Core by enabling or disabling features. This an very nice improvement compared to Windows 2008 (R2) as with those versions you’re stuck with your choice and only a reinstall is the way to change this. Not only that but I can help out when you need the GUI for some reason temporarily.

A Walk Through of Installing The Desktop Experience

Even for lab environments it also can be handy to have some tools available. On my Windows Server 8 Beta Machine I needed the Snipping Tool for example. So I had to install the Desktop Experience feature.

Using the GUI

In Windows Server 8 you’ll find that under Server Manager, Manage “Add Roles and Features”.

The “Add Roles and Features Wizard “ pops up at the default start screen which you can elect to skip for future use.

Select the Installation Type.

Select the server on which you want to work.

The Desktop Experience is a feature so go straight to “Features”. Scroll down until you see User Interfaces & Infrastructure (Installed), open the tree and you’ll see that you can select Desktop Experience.

As you can see The Desktop Experience feature requires that you also install the Graphical Management Tools and Infrastructure and Server Graphical Shell features, meaning it will only run of the Full Server GUI option.

Once you select that a message will pop up telling you that the Ink Support feature under Ink and Handwriting services and the Media Foundation Feature are required for the Desktop Experience feature. Accept the defaults and click Add Features.

You can scroll along the GUI to check these features have indeed been selected.

Click next and you’ll be asked to confirm the installation of the features. You can opt to restart automatically when needed.

The Add Roles and Features Wizard starts the installation/ Please note that you can close the wizard and get o with something else. You don’t have to baby sit the GUI.

When finished the shows you need a restart.

If you closed the wizard and came back to server manager late it will warn you about the fact something is pending with the yellow exclamation mark.

Using PowerShell

To install Desktop Experience with Windows PowerShell, use the following commands:

Import-Module ServerManager

Install-WindowsFeature Desktop-Experience

You’ll find that this also installs the “Ink Support” under “Ink and Handwriting Services” automatically for you. Note below than wen using DISM you’ have to manage all that yourself.

To install Media Foundation with Windows PowerShell, use the following commands:

Import-Module ServerManager

Install-WindowsFeature Server-Media-Foundation

Using DISM

This works but you need to do some more work. Each and every single feature part needs to be installed separately. You need Server Media Foundation, Desktop Experience, but here you’ll need to add Ink Support AND the yourself or you may run in to issues. In the Example below we left out ink support.

dism /online /enable-feature /all /featurename:ServerMediaFoundation

dism /online /enable-feature /all /featurename:DesktopExperience

That means It looks like you have no Desktop Experience installed in the GUI while the extra tools do appear on your desktop.

So to fix this we need to add Ink Support but also Ink And Handwriting Services as top level feature. If you don’t it wont be “grayed in” to indicate sub features have been selected (in our case the Ink Support).

dism /online /enable-feature /all /featurename:InkAndHandwritingServices

dism /online /enable-feature /all /featurename:InkSupport

You might have noted that DISM is a bit more hands on than PowerShell. PowerShell is perhaps the best automation tool to use but don’t forget that DISM has off line editing capabilities that can come in handy for all kinds of stuff from injecting drivers to fine tuning your deploy image. Powerful stuff!

Working Hard In IT

My view on IT from the trenches