Windows Server 2019 Archives

Running WordPress in your virtual machine

When you’ve have a website running on WordPress, it could be very handy to get a ‘offline’ copy of this website in your own environment. This could be a virtual machine of multiple machines in your data center. Here you can edit the website, whitout any impact for your visitors. Very usefull when you want to develop some new features, themes or new posts.

In this example I’m going to setup a new wordpress environment, running on my surfacebook (Hyper-V) in Windows Server 2019. This are the steps you need to take:

Install Windows Server 2019 with the latest updates;
Download Xampp
https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html
Download WordPress
https://wordpress.org/download/
Edit the config of Xampp to auto-start the modules: Apache, MySQL, FileZilla and Mercury
Extract the WordPress zip-file and copy this folder to ‘htdocs’ in the Xampp installation folder, in my environment C:\xampp\htdocs
Create a new database user in PHPMyAdmin
http://localhost/phpmyadmin
Run the WordPress installation wizard
http://localhost/wordpress

After all these steps, your new website is up and running. You can also configure some NAT rules in your firewall to publish the website to the Internet. If you need any content from your ‘live’ website, you can copy the content to your ‘offline’ website and test, develop and change your website.

Free Windows Admin Center Webinar from Altaro

If you’ve ever attended an Altaro webinar before, you’ll know these sessions are always highly informative and worthwhile events to remember. And this upcoming webinar on Windows Admin Center looks to be no exception!

Windows Admin Center is a powerful suite of management tools that was released along with Windows Server 2019, however with such a large number of features it can be difficult for regular Windows Server administrators to know what to focus on. This webinar, presented by Microsoft MVPs Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron, is designed to do exactly that and demonstrate live the features of Windows Admin Center that give the greatest benefit to managing Windows Server!

How to Manage Windows Server Like a Boss will be held on April 9th and as always the webinar will be presented live twice at 2pm CEST/8am EDT/5am PDT and at 7pm CEST/1pm EDT /10am PDT. The reason they go through it all twice is to try and cater for live audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Both sessions have the same content so it’s just a way of enabling as many people as possible to attend live and have the opportunity to ask questions while the guys present the content!

I’ll be attending the event and if you run Windows Server then this is a must-attend event for you too! Join me and save your seat today

Webinar Title: How to Manage Windows Server Like a Boss with Windows Admin Center

Presenters: Andy Syrewicze (Microsoft MVP) and Eric Siron (Microsoft MVP)
Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Session 1: 2pm CEST / 8am EDT / 5am PDT
Session 2: 7pm CEST / 1pm EDT / 10am PDT

Save your seat for the webinar!

How to: Install Exchange 2019 on Windows Server 2019 Core Edition

In this blogpost I’m going to show you the steps to install Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 on Windows Server 2019 Core Edition. When you’re working with Windows Server Core the first time, it’s a little different then managing Windows with a GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Windows Server Core is just a command line interface, that’s all. There’re many advantages of using Windows Server Core edition, for example:

* Small footprint
* Less Windows Updates to install
* Less reboots needed after Windows Updates
* Reduced attack surface
* Less disk space required
* Reduced management

With the release of Exchange Server 2019, Windows Server Core is also supported!! YEAH!!!

Install Windows Server 2019 Core Edition

This step is really easy. Just hit next, next, next and finish!

Hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE, type the local administrator password and login to your server. After this, you can start configuring the server using SCONFIG.

Network settings

Configure the network configuration using SCONFIG or Powershell.

Assign a static IP:

New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceIndex 6 -IPAddress 172.16.1.100 -PrefixLength 16 -DefaultGateway 172.16.1.101

Configure a DNS Server:

Set-DNSClientServerAddress -InterfaceIndex 6 -ServerAddress "172.16.1.100"

Enable Remote Desktop:

cscript C:\Windows\System32\Scregedit.wsf /ar 0

Windows features

Use the following PowerShell command to install the OS component required for Microsoft UCMA 4.0 and the OS component required for Active Directory Preparation.

Don’t forget to switch to powershell

Install-WindowsFeature Server-Media-Foundation, RSAT-ADDS

Download necessary software

From an admin workstation, download the following software and copy it over to the Server Core we are preparing for the Exchange installation (for example C:\_Install)

* Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013

Install UCMA (Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 4.0)

The UCMA installable is present on the Exchange Server 2019 media itself. Use the following PowerShell command to mount the Exchange Server media:

The UCMA installable is located under the “UCMARedist” folder on the Exchange Server 2019 .ISO. Start the UCMA installation:

Do not reboot the server just yet; join the computer to an AD domain and then reboot it.

Joining the computer to AD domain

* Rename the computer to 2019-EX01

* Add the computer to domain homelab.local

Add-Computer -DomainName homelab.local -NewName 2019-EX01 -DomainCredential homelab\administrator

Restart the server

Use the following PowerShell command to restart the computer:

Restart-Computer –Force

Exchange installation

After rebooting the server mount the Exchange .ISO image.

Use the following command to start Exchange Server installation. The PowerShell command will also install the required OS components for Exchange:

.\Setup.exe /m:install /roles:m /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms /InstallWindowsComponents

Once Exchange is installed, you can launch the Exchange Management Shell using LaunchEMS command from the command line.

You can also start the Exchange Management Console from a different server using the URL below:

https://2019-EX01.homelab.local/ecp

Live Demo Webinar: Windows Server 2019 in Action

So you’ve heard all about Windows Server 2019 – now you can see it in action in a live demo
webinar on November 8th!

The last WS2019 webinar by Altaro was hugely popular with over 4,500 IT pros registering for
the event. Feedback gathered from that webinar and the most popular features will now be
discussed and tested live by Microsoft MVP Andy Syrewicze. And you’re invited!

This deep-dive webinar will focus on:
• Windows Admin Center
• Containers on Windows Server
• Storage Migration Service
• Windows Subsystem for Linux
• And more!

Demo webinars are a really great way to see a product in action before you decide to take the
plunge yourself. It enables you to see the strengths and weaknesses first-hand and also ask
questions that might relate specifically to your own environment.

With the demand so high, the webinar is presented live twice on November 8th to help as
many people benefit as possible. The first session is at 2pm CET/8am EST/5am PST and the
second is at 7pm CET/1pm EST/10am PST.

With the record number of attendees for the last webinar, some people were unable to attend
the sessions which were maxed out. It is advised you save your seat early for this webinar to
keep informed and ensure you don’t miss the live event.

Save your seat!!

Upgraded my homelab!!

Last week I’ve upgraded my homelab again. Now Windows Server 2019 is GA, this setup is running Windows Server 2019 with the Hyper-V server role enable. This machines has capacity enough to run several virtual machines and also nested virtualization. Very useful to install for example a virtual Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) cluster of other Hyper-V clusters!

So let’s rock and create some virtual machines running Windows Server 2016 and 2019!!

AMD A8 3870K 3.00GHz 4MB FM1 Box
Asus F1A75-V PRO AMD A75, SATA600 RAID, HDMI
Corsair 32GB PC3-14900 DDR3 SDRAM Vengeance (4x 8GB, 1866MHz
1 x Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250 GB
1 x Crucial CT512MX100SSD1 512 GB
1 x WD Cavlar Green 1,5 TB

And this setup is fast….realy fast!! The boot tinme of a virtual machine running Windows Server 2019 is around the 5 seconds!!

Microsoft Ignite 2018 – Book of News

Ignite Book of News: Your Guide to All the News at Microsoft Ignite

This document contains information on all the announcements made at Microsoft Ignite 2018, including:

Microsoft 365;
Microsoft Azure IaaS;
Azure SQL;
SQL Server 2019;
Security;
Artificial Intelligence (AI);
SQL Server 2019;
Internet of Things (IoT);
Windows Server 2019;
Windows Virtual Desktops;
Windows Admin Center;
Hyper-V;
Storage Space Direct (S2D);
And many, many, many more……

Download the full document here (or click the big picture below).

Example failover scenarios with Windows Server 2019 S2D cluster

In my previous blogpost, I’ve installed and configured a two node virtual S2D cluster with Windows Server 2019 within Hyper-V on my laptop (Windows 10).

Now the full infrastructure is up and running, and the first guest virtual machine is a live, it’s also nice to take a view on some failover scenarios! In the following examples, you can see the high availability and resiliency of a Storage Space Direct (S2D) cluster. It’s realy, realy, realy powerfull and absolute the feature of virtualization!!

The following scenarios I’m going to cover:

Live migration virtual machine;
Pause a Hyper-V cluster node (drain roles)
- for maintenance, for example patching, firmware updates or driver updates.
Power Off a Hyper-V cluster node
- For example a power failure or hardware failure

Scenario 1 – Live Migration:

This feature is already present in the previous versions of Hyper-V and it’s realy powerfull to migrate a virtual machine to another Hyper-V host without any downtime!

Scenario 2 – Pause a Hyper-V cluster node:

In this scenario I’m going to ‘pause’ a Hyper-V cluster node with the ‘drain roles’ option. This can be for maintenance, for example: Patching, firmware updates, driver updates or just investigate some issues within Windows.

As you can see, in my two node S2D cluster, we can ‘pause’ one of the Hyper-V cluster nodes and the virtual machine is still up and running!!

Scenario 3 – Power Off a Hyper-V cluster node:

In this scenario I’m going to simulate a power failure or hardware failure, just to ‘Power Off’ on of the Hyper-V cluster nodes! The virtual machine is saved for a couple of seconds, migrated to the other Hyper-V node and started again!

With also with a hardware or power failure, the impact and downtime is that much!! Because the power of Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), your workloads are maximum protected and available!!

Wrap Up:

In this blogpost you’ve seen some scenarios with Storage Space Direct (S2D) in Windows Server 2019. Here you can see the high availability and resiliency of a Storage Spaces Direct infrastructure. Realy powerfull and it meets all your needs for your virtualization environment.

Build a virtual S2D cluster with Windows Server 2019 build 17744

Windows Server 2016 and 2019 Storage Sapces Direct (S2D) allows building HA storage systems using storage nodes with local storage, such as SATA or SSD disks.

In this blogpost, I’ll deploy a two node S2D cluster based on Windows Server 2019 build 17744. The main machine is a HP ProBook 450 G5 with Windows 10, 16 GB memory, 512 GB SSD disk, and Hyper-V enabled.

First of all, I’ve deployed the following virtual machines:

S2D-W2019-DC01 (Domain Controller, DNS, Group Policies)
IP address: 172.16.0.100
S2D-W2019-HV01 (Hyper-V host, S2D node)
IP address: 172.16.0.101 (LAN)
IP address: 10.10.0.101 (Live Migration)
S2D-W2019-HV02 (Hyper-V host, S2D node)
IP address: 172.16.0.102 (LAN)
IP address: 10.10.0.102 (Live Migration)

All the servers are installed with Windows Server 2019 build 17744. The first server I’ve configured is the domain controller. My internal domain is s2dlab.local.

For both S2D nodes (S2D-W2019-HV01 and S2D-W2019-HV02), you’ve to configure some additional settings, because this servers are virtual. So we’re going to run Hyper-V in Hyper-V and on that Hyper-V host there’re some guest virtual machines (nested virtualization) 😀 Cool stuff!!!


$S2DHOST1 = 'S2D-W2019-HV01'
$S2DHOST2 = 'S2D-W2019-HV02'

# List all virtual machines
Get-VM

# Enable nested virtualization on virtual machines
Set-VMProcessor -VMName $S2DHOST1 -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true
Set-VMProcessor -VMName $S2DHOST2 -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true

Next, you’ve to Configure the following settings within the VM configuration:

Disable dynamic memory;
Set the number of virtual processors to 2 or 4;
Turn on MAC address spoofing on your network interface(s);

Now the domain controller is up and running and both S2D nodes are installed and configured with Windows Server 2019, it’s time to add some storage. Both servers have 3 x 50 GB virtual disks attached! Note!! this is only for testing and demo!!

So we’ve 300 GB storage available for our S2D cluster. After this is done, you can install the following roles and features within Windows Server:

(Role) File and Storage Services;
(Role) Hyper-V;
(Feature) Failover Clustering;

Now all the components are ready to build the cluster. It’s recommended to run the cluster validation before building your cluster! The name of my cluster is ‘S2D-CL01’ with IP address 172.16.0.200/16. Note!! Uncheck the option ‘Add all eligible storage to the cluster’!!

The cluster is up and running. As you can see within your Active Directory and DNS configuration, there’re three computer objects (two cluster nodes and one Failover Cluster object).

The last step before enabling ‘S2D’ on our cluster is checking the disk configuration.


# List all available disks within the cluster nodes
Get-PhysicalDisk

# Enable Storage Spaces Direct on the cluster
Enable-ClusterS2D

# List all Storage Pools within the S2D cluster
Get-Storagepool S2D*

Now our cluster is Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) enabled. The last step is to create a virtual disk within our Storage Pool and add it as a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) to the cluster, wo we can store workloads on it! Bacause we’ve a two node cluster, the only Resiliency type is Two-Way Mirror.

Wrap Up:

In this blogpost we’ve builded a two nodes virtual Storage Spaces Direct cluster in Hyper-V (Windows 10). The S2D nodes are running Windows Server 2019. It’s really a nice opportunity to run this configuration virtual on your laptop or desktop, while nested virtualization is supported and it works great!!

In the next blogpost I’ll show you to install and configure a virtual machine within our S2D cluster. Also performing some live migrations to show the high availability and resiliency of our setup!