Tariq Jaber.. » Windows Server 2008

Exchange 2010 on a Hyper-V guest machine

Tariq Jaber — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:44:00 +0000

If you want to deploy Exchange Server 2010 on a Hyper-V guest machine then make sure your environment meets the following conditions:

Requirements for Exchange guest machine:

It is deployed on Windows Server 2008/SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 OS.
Doesn’t have the Unified Messaging server role installed. UM server role is not supported as a virtual box because of the real-time response required by voice communications.
Using fixed virtual hard disks (VHDs) and it should be less than 2,040 GB. Virtual disks that dynamically expand or differential virtual disks aren’t supported by Exchange.
The host machine must be dedicated only to run guest machines. It is not supported to have AD, Exchange, SQL or SAP on the host server.
Database Availability Groups (DAG) are supported in a virtualization environment if the host machine is not clustered, Microsoft doesn’t support combining Exchange high availability solutions (DAGs) with hypervisor-based clustering.
Taking virtual machine snapshots of an Exchange guest virtual machine isn’t supported. This is because snapshots aren’t application aware, and using them can have unintended and unexpected consequences for a server application that maintains state data, such as Exchange.
The VHD that will host the guest OS has a minimum requirement of 15 GB plus the size of the virtual memory that’s allocated to the Exchange guest machine. For example if you allocated 32 GB to Exchange then the minimum supported VHD size for the OS is 47 GB (15+32), fixed size VHD.
Storage used by Exchange should be hosted in disk spindles that are separate from the storage that’s hosting the guest virtual machine’s operating system.

for more information about this, see Exchange 2010 System Requirements.

DNS zones not created in Windows Server 2008 Domain Controller

Tariq Jaber — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:56:57 +0000

If you promote a Windows Server 2008 to become a Domain Controller, you may notice that the default DNS zones haven’t been created!

To solve this issue, make sure that IPv6 is not disabled on the server and all the network interfaces cards have the “Register this connection’s address in DNS ” check box checked.

Restart the DNS service and the zones should be created.

Syspreping a Hyper-V machine

Tariq Jaber — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:13:20 +0000

If you want to sysprep a Hyper-V machine, make sure it has no snapshots.

I was syspreping one of my Hyper-V machines, I copied the syspreped vhd and created a new virtual machine linked to this existing syspreped vhd. When I start this new virtual machine it starts as it wasn’t syspreped with menu to select either to “Safe mode” or to “Start Windows normally”.

I deleted the snapshots that I don’t need and I applied others to the original virtual machine. After this, I was able to sysprep and create a new virtual machine successfully.

PS: Usually we will sysprep a clean machine, not a machine with applications and services installed on it with so many snapshots.

How to sysprep Windows Server 2008

Tariq Jaber — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:18:05 +0000

If you want to sysprep a Windows Server 2008 machine, it is an easy process :

Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep
Run Sysprep.exe
Check "Generalize" (this regenerates SID’s)
Change Shutdown option to to Shutdown.

That is it

Adding DHCP Scopes using command line in Windows Server 2008

Tariq Jaber — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 10:38:44 +0000

Adding so many DHCP scopes to the server all at the same time, this will consume a lot of time, so it is good to know how to add, configure and activate DHCP scopes using command line in Windows Server 2008.

The following commands are used to add the scope 172.16.16.0 with the name of “HR Users” with the subnet mask 255.255.255.0.

The IP range for

netsh dhcp server \\DHCP-Server add scope 172.16.16.0 255.255.255.0 "HR Users"
netsh dhcp server \\DHCP-Server scope 172.16.16.0 add iprange 172.16.16.1 172.16.16.254
netsh dhcp server \\DHCP-Server scope 172.16.16.0 add excluderange 172.16.16.1 172.16.16.20
netsh dhcp server \\DHCP-Server scope 172.16.16.0 set optionvalue 003 ipaddress 172.16.16.1
netsh dhcp server \\DHCP-Server scope 172.16.16.0 set optionvalue 006 ipaddress 172.16.10.10 172.16.10.11
netsh dhcp server \\DHCP-Server scope 172.16.16.0 set state 1

Commands’ description:

netsh dhcp server \\ add scope
netsh dhcp server \\ scope 172.16.16.0 add iprange
netsh dhcp server \\ scope 172.16.16.0 add excluderange
netsh dhcp server \\ scope 172.16.16.0 set optionvalue 003 IPADDRESS
netsh dhcp server \\ scope 172.16.16.0 set optionvalue 006 IPADDRESS
netsh dhcp server \\ scope 172.16.16.0 set state 1

Hyper-V Mouse not captured in Remote Desktop session.

Tariq Jaber — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 09:06:30 +0000

If you are connecting using remote desktop to the server on which you installed Hyper-v role. When you try to connect to a guest machine for the first time and you want to install the operating system, you are using the mouse, you will receive the message:

“Mouse not captured in Remote Desktop session”

The solution for this is to connect physically to the server and install the OS on the guest machine!