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Windows Server 2012 Licensing

With Windows Server 2012 set to RTM in the next few weeks there are some changes to versions and licensing that you should be aware of. For years Microsoft has been saying that licensing is getting easier and with WS2012 it really has with only two editions being released.

Windows Server 2012 Standard Edition
Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Edition

And with these two editions the features and functionality is identical. Standard Edition has the same memory support (4TB) the same physical processor support (64 CPUs) and the same feature set including Failover Clustering. When it comes time to load the OS on to a server you simply need to determine if the server will run a standalone workload or if it will be a virtualization host.

Standalone workload = Standard Edition

Virtualization host = Datacenter Edition

Simple.

Both are licensed per physical CPU (number of cores is irrelevant) now with the base license including support for 2

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Export Windows Server 2012 Configuration

So I have been playing with WS 2012 a bit lately and found this very interesting feature in the Add Roles and Features Wizard that allows you to export the current configuration to an XML file. When you get to the end of the wizard click on Export Configuration Settings!

Operations Manager 2012 Activation

With the System Center 2012 suite now available in RTM format you maybe installing/upgrading to Operations Manager 2012. One thing you may not notice is that there is no request for a product key when you install Operations Manager 2012. And once the install is complete you will see the following…..

Checking Help –> About will show that you are running an Evaluation copy.

To register your product key with Operations Manager 2012 and move from the Evaluation edition to the Retail edition you will need to launch the Operations Management Shell and run the following PowerShell cmdlet.

Set-SCOMLicense –ProductId YourProductKey

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XenDesktop VDI and Dynamic Memory

XenDesktop is one of the leading VDI solutions right now due to its ability to run on the three major virtualization platforms. When running Windows 7 SP1 VDI desktops with XenDesktop you may want to take advantage of Dynamic Memory for the workloads to increase VM density. Unfortunately this cannot be done within XenDesktop at the time but you can do so via PowerShell.

The following script created by Vlad Borodin and edited by my colleague Alex Khassanov will find all VMs on a Hyper-V host and enable Dynamic Memory on them. You’ll need to know the Hyper-V host name, the prefix for the VDI VMs as well as the startup, maximum and buffer settings for Dynamic Memory.

# PowerShell Script for changing RAM settings for several machines

# Vlad Borodin (vladboro@hotmail.com)

# 05 Mar, 2011

# Modified by AK, Jan-24-2012. Enable dynamic memory, set dynamic memory params

Write-Host("——————————————————–")

Write-Host("This script

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Windows 8 Add/Remove GUI

Windows 2008 saw the introduction of Server Core which was a great idea but most people never implemented because they believed it to be overly complex having no GUI. It really wasn’t but regardless it saw limited deployment. In Windows Server 8 the GUI is a feature that can be added and removed as necessary. This will allow you to install the full OS, configure it and then remove the GUI to lock down security. When you install the Sever 8 OS you have the option of Server Core or Server with a GUI. This is a major improvement in Windows Server 8 that hopefully leads to more deployments of the core OS version.

Once the OS is installed and configured you can remove the feature through Remove Roles and

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SCSM 2012 SLA Management–Part 3

System Center Service Manager 2012 makes huge strides in SLA Management in 2012. With SCSM 2012 you can now create service level objectives that take into account help desk analyst hours, metrics and objectives and send notifications when SLOs hit a warning and/or breached stage. While this was possible in SCSM 2010 it required a lot of custom scripting to make it work. It is just easier in SCSM 2012.

Part 1 – SCSM 2012 SLA Management – SMTP Channel, Queues and Templates

Part 2 – SCSM 2012 SLA Management – Calendars, Metrics and Service Level Objectives

Part 3 – SCSM 2012 SLA Management – SLO Warning/Breached Notifications

In this 3 part example we’ll take a look at how to create an SLO that will send a notice when a new incident has been created but not assigned to a help desk analyst in 30 and 60 minutes. Special thanks to Travis

Continue reading SCSM 2012 SLA Management – Part 3

SCSM 2012 SLA Management–Part 2

Part 1 – SCSM 2012 SLA Management – SMTP Channel, Queues and Templates

Part 2 – SCSM 2012 SLA Management – Calendars, Metrics and Service Level Objectives

Part 3 – SCSM 2012 SLA Management – SLO Warning/Breached Notifications

Continue reading SCSM 2012 SLA Management – Part 2

SCSM 2012 SLA Management–Part 1

Part 1 – SCSM 2012 SLA Management – SMTP Channel, Queues and Templates

Part 2 – SCSM 2012 SLA Management – Calendars, Metrics and Service Level Objectives

Part 3 – SCSM 2012 SLA Management – SLO Warning/Breached Notifications

Continue reading SCSM 2012 SLA Management – Part 1

Windows 8 ISO and VHD Mounting

I remember when I was at an internal Microsoft conference with a colleague and we had the chance to mingle with and ask questions to the people building all the various MS products in development. I had a laugh as my colleague went on a bit of a rant about why ISO mounting was not being included in Windows 7. I had to agree that this was a big miss considering you could already mount VHDs in the betas, ISO mounting made even more sense. Afterall 99% of the TechNet and MSDN downloads are ISOs right?

Well Windows 8 is finally on board with native ISO mounting. Simply right-click the ISO and select mount.

To eject, go to the Windows Explorer Ribbon and select Drive Tools and then click Eject. For VHDs it is the same process.

Simple, functional and a very long time coming…

PowerShell and Hyper-V R3

Windows PowerShell is a “powerful” method of managing servers and in Windows 8 it becomes even more powerful. Hyper-V R1 and R2 didn’t have native PowerShell cmdlets built in. If you deployed SCVMM you would have access to the VMM servers cmdlets or you could download the PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V from Codeplex.

In Windows 8 there are specific cmdlets for Hyper-V (around 150 by my count) to help you manage your Hyper-V R3 environment via the command line. Eric Bahna from Microsoft produced this video detailing some of the things you can do with PowerShell in Hyper-V R3.

I know it is hard to see what is going on but thankfully he produced a set up guide and a step by step guide so you can reproduce this demo in your test lab.