Tag Archives: Windows Server 2012

Installing & using the Windows Server Migration Tools To Migrate Local Users & Groups

Posted on by
9

Introduction

I was working on a little project for a company that was running TS Gateway on 32bit Windows 2008. The reason they did not go for x64 at the time was that they used Virtual Server as their virtualization platform for some years and not Hyper-V. One of the drawbacks was that they could not use x64 guest VMs. Since then they have move to Hyper-V and now also run Window Server 2012. So after more than 5 years of service and to make sure they did not keep relying on aging technology it is time to move to Windows Server 2012 RD Gateway and reap the benefits of the latest OS.

All in all the Microsoft documentation is not too bad, all be it that the information is a bit distributed as you need to use various tools to complete the process. Basically, depending on the original setup of the source server you’ll need to use the TS/RD Gateway Export & Import functionality, Web Deploy (we’re at version 3.0 at the time of writing) and the Windows Server Migration Tools that were introduced with Windows 2008 R2 and are also available in Windows Server 2012.

In a number of posts I’ll be discussing some of the steps we took. You are reading the second post.

  1. x86 Windows Server 2008 TS Gateway Migration To x64 Windows Server 2012 RD Gateway
  2. Installing & using the Windows Server Migration Tools To Migrate Local Users & Groups
  3. TS/RD Gateway Export & Import (Fixing Event ID 2002 “The policy and configuration settings could not be imported to the RD Gateway server "%1"" because they are associated with local computer groups on another RD Gateway server”)

As discussed in the first part we need to migrate some local users & groups on the TS Gateway (source) server as they are also being used for some special cases of remote access, next to Active Directory users & groups for the Remote Access Policies (RAPs) & Connection Authorization Policies (CAPs). The tool the use is the Windows Server Migration Tools. These were introduced with Windows 2008 R2 and are also available in Windows Server 2012.

Some people seem to get confused a bit about the installation of the Server Migration Tools but it’s not that hard. I have used these tools several times before in the past and they work very well. You just need to read up a bit on the the deployment part and once you have it figured out they work very well.

Installing the Windows Server Migration Tools on the DESTINATION Server

First we have to install the on the DESTINATION host (W2K12 in our case, the server to which you are migrating)). For this we launch Server Manager and on the dashboard select Manage and choose Add Roles & Feature.clip_image001

Navigate through the wizard until you get to Features. Find and select Windows Server Migration Tools. Click Next.clip_image001[4]

Click Install to kick of the installation.clip_image001[9]

After a while your patience will be rewarded.clip_image001[11]

Installing the Windows Server Migration Tools on the SOURCE Server

To install the Windows Server Migration Tools on the SOURCE server, you need to run the appropriate PowerShell command on the DESTINATION server. This is what trips people up a lot of the time. You deploy the correct version of the tools from the destination server to the source server, where you will than register them for use. Do this with an admin account that has admin privileges on both the DESTINATION & SOURCE Computer.

Start up the Windows Server Migration Tools from Server Manager, Tools.image

This launches the Windows Server Migration Tools PowerShell window.image

Our SOURCE server here is the32 bit (X86)  Windows 2008 TS Gateway Server. The documentation tells us the correct values to use for the parameters /architecture and /OS to use.

SmigDeploy.exe /package /architecture X86 /os WS08 /path \SourcerServerc$sysadmin

Now before you run this command be sure to go to the ServerMigrationTools folder as the UI fails to do that for you.

Also this is PowerShell so use . in front of the command otherwise you’ll get the error below.image

While you want this:image

Now you have also deployed the correct tools to the SOURCE server, our old legacy TS Gateway Server. Next we need to register these tools on the SOURCE Server to be able to use them. You might have gotten the message already you need PowerShell deployed on the SOURCE Server as documented.

If you have PowerShell, launch the console with elevated permissions (Runs As Administrator) and run the following command: .SmigDeploy.exeimage

Congratulations you are now ready to use the Windows Server Migration Tools! That wasn’t so hard was it? Smile

Using the Windows Server Migration Tools To Migrate Local Users & Groups

To export the local users and groups from the source TS/RD Gateway server you start up the Windows Server Migration Tools on the SOURCE server (see the documentation for all ways to achieve this) and run the following PowerShell command:
Export-SmigServerSetting -User All  -Group –Path C:SysAdminExportMigUsersGroups –Verboseimage

As you can see I elected to migrate all user accounts not just the enabled or disabled ones. We’ll sort those out later. Also note the command will create the folder for you.

To import the local users and groups to the target RD Gateway server you start up the Windows Server Migration Tools on the Destination server (see the documentation) , i.e. our new Windows Server 2012 RD Gateway VM.

image

and run the following PowerShell command:

Import-SmigServerSetting  -User Enabled  -Group -Path C:SysAdminExportMigUsersGroups -Verbose

Do note that the migrated user accounts will be disabled and have their properties set to "Next Logon". This means you will have to deal with this accordingly depending on the scenarios and communicate new passwords & action to take to the users.image

image

Do note that the local groups have had the local or domain groups/users added by the import command. Pretty neat.image

You’re now ready for the next step. But that’s for another blog post.

x86 Windows Server 2008 TS Gateway Migration To x64 Windows Server 2012 RD Gateway

Posted on by
6

Introduction

I was working on a little project for a company that was (still) running TS Gateway on a 32 bit  x86) version Windows 2008. The reason they did not go for x64 at the time of deployment was that they then used Microsoft Virtual Server as their virtualization platform and had been for some years.

In a number of posts I’ll be discussing some of the steps we took. You are reading the first one.

  1. x86 Windows Server 2008 TS Gateway Migration To x64 Windows Server 2012 RD Gateway
  2. Installing & using the Windows Server Migration Tools To Migrate Local Users & Groups
  3. TS/RD Gateway Export & Import (Fixing Event ID 2002 “The policy and configuration settings could not be imported to the RD Gateway server "%1"" because they are associated with local computer groups on another RD Gateway server”)

In those early days of W2K8 they had not yet switched to Hyper-V. As an early adopter I was able to show the the reliability of Hyper-V, so later they did.

One of the drawbacks of using Microsoft Virtual Server was that they could not use x64 guest VMs and that’s how they ended up with x86, which was still available for a server OS for W2K8. Since then they have move to Hyper-V and now also run Window Server 2012. Happy customers! So after more than 5 years of service and to make sure they did not keep relying on aging technology it is time to move to Windows Server 2012 RD Gateway and reap the benefits of the latest OS.

The Migration

Their is no in place upgrade from a x86 to an x64 OS. So this has to be a migration. No worries this is supported. With some insight, creativity and experience you can make this happen. The process reasonably well documented on TechNet, but not perfectly, and your starting point is right here RD Gateway Migration: Migrating the RD Gateway Role Service. These docs are for Windows Server 2008 R2 but still work for Windows Server 2012. Another challenge was we needed to also migrate their custom website used for the employees to check whether their PC is still on and if not wake it up or start it up remotely.

There are some things to take care of and I’ll address these I some later blog posts but I want you to take to heart this message. While an in place upgrade of an 32 bit X86 operating system to X64 version of that OS is not possible that doesn’t mean you’re in  a pickle and will have to start over from scratch. For many scenario’s there are migration paths and this is just one example of them, or better two combined,TS Gateway and a Website.

If You Can, You Should Attend TechEd 2013 Europe

Posted on by
5

It’s that time of the year again, when TechEd is coming closer. I’m attending the European Edition in Madrid, Spain. But I can guarantee you I will be on line a lot during the USA edition as well. At be attending the USA edition this year if I could but work, time and budget wise I can’t make that happen. This isn’t because the European edition is less, absolutely not. The reason is that at MMS2013 in Las Vegas last month we got the heads up that Microsoft will start talking publicly about the new version of Windows and I’m game for that. Windows Server 2012 is the best Windows version ever but I know what I’d like to see in there to make it even better. I’m kind of curious if anyone at MSFT follows my thinking on this subject. I hope so!

TechEdEU_250x250_7

So yes I’m a TechEd advocate, you bet! If you want to know why, read my blog post here on https://blog.workinghardinit.work/2010/06/05/why-i-find-value-in-a-conference/.

Come and learn amongst your peers, network with them and industry experts. To become competent and gain expertise you are going to have to get out there and expose your ideas, insights and thinking to your peers around the globe. That’s how it works. To those who dismiss quality conferences like this I can only say that you are wrong. To those who claim it’s a paid holiday I can only say that to a liar all other men are liars and to a thief all other men are thieves.  Enough said. Invest in knowledge and competence development, it will pay of better than some extra thousands of € in the bank!

So if you can please join me and attend TechEd. It’s a blast and a tremendous learning experience. I never ever miss attending TechEd, not even at times it wasn’t easy for me to do so. You can register here. I hope to see you there!

SMB Direct RoCE Does Not Work Without DCB/PFC

Posted on by
5

Introduction

SMB Direct RoCE Does Not Work Without DCB/PFC. “Yes”, you say, “we know, this is well documented. Thank you.” but before you sign of hear me out.

Recently I plugged to RoCE cards into some test servers and linked them to a couple of 10Gbps switches. I did some quick large file copy testing and to my big surprise RDMA kicked in with stellar performance even before I had installed the DCB feature, let alone configure it. So what’s the deal here. Does it work without DCB? Does the card fail back to iWarp? Highly unlikely. I was expecting it to fall back to plain vanilla 10Gbps and not being used at all but it was. A short shout out to Jose Barreto to discuss this helped clarify this.

DCB/PFC is a requirement RoCE

The more busy the network gets the faster the performance will drop. Now in our test scenario we had two servers  for a total of 4 RoCE ports on the network consisting of a beefy 48 port 10Gbps switches. So we didn’t see the negative results of this here.

DCB (Data Center Bridging) and Priority Flow Control are considered a requirement for any kind of RoCE deployment. RDMA with RoCE operates at the Ethernet layer. That means there is no overhead from TCP/IP, which is great for performance. This is the reason you want to use RDMA actually. It also means it’s left on it’s own to deal with Ethernet-level collisions and errors. For that it needs DCB/PFC other wise you’ll run into performance issues due to a ton of retries at the higher network layers.

The reason that iWarp doesn’t require DCB/PCF is that it works at the TCP/IP level also offloaded by using a TCP/IP stack on the NIC instead of the OS. So errors are handled by TCP/IP at a cost: iWarp results in the same benefits as RoCE but it doesn’t scale that well. Not that iWarp performance is lousy, far form! Mind you, for bandwidth management reasons,you’d be better of using DCB or some form of QoS as well.

Conclusion

So no, not configuring  DCB on your servers and the switches isn’t an option, but apparently it isn’t blocked either so beware of this. It might appear to be working fine but it’s a bad idea. Also don’t think it defaults back to iWarp mode, it doesn’t, as one card does one thing not both. There is no shortcut. RoCE RDMA does not work error free out of the box so you do have the install the DCB feature and configure it together with the switches.