Windows Server 2012 R2 installation media issues (OEM)

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 2 Comments

Here’s an easy one – you may have encountered and solved it already, but let this be here… as a reminder. Smile

If you ever tried to install the Windows Server 2012 R2 into a Hyper-V virtual machine by using the provided OEM installation media (in my case, from IBM), your installation may fail even before it started because the hardware you’re using (i.e. “virtual” hardware) is not the one the installation expects (which is “imprinted in the media itself”).

So, you get an error like this:

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Solution here is kind of simple – IBM provided the little utility (just 5 KB) called Hyper-V-OEM-BIOS-V2.exe, which makes the virtual machine “produced by IBM” (actually, virtual machine BIOS gets updated to contain the IBM specific information, that the Windows installation is looking for, and which is the cause of this error).

After you run the utility (on your Hyper-V host), Windows installation using the OEM media proceeds as it should.

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Other solution (actually a workaround) is to use the retail media for the virtual machine installation. In this case, you won’t get the error, and installation proceeds as it should right from the beginning.

IBM published a document explaining this issue, and the possible resolution/workaround, you can view it here.

As I’ve said – quick & easy (hope it helps)! Smile

Cheers!

New ADRMS-ADFS document published

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

I’m so happy to announce that we have completed our work on producing the “Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services with Active Directory Federation Services” document.

This document was actually inspired by the step-by-step guide for Windows Server 2008/R2, but because of so many updates and changes to the AD FS coming with Windows Server 2012 R2, we’ve ended up with a completely new document. Smile

You can find the official announcement here, and the document itself is available here.

I’m so glad for being a part of this – now I have a better idea of how much hard work is put into every one the documents available in TechNet Library. I’m also glad that we’ve achieved so much more than we hoped, during this “adventure”.

Congratulations and thanks to Carol Bailey, who led our team, and to all others that were included at some point (especially Enrique Saggese and Sandor Teglasy) – I think that you all of you can be proud of what was done!

I hope that this document will be also useful to all of you, and if you encounter any errors, feel free to contact me or the team.

Happy reading!

Installing the KB2920189… successfully!

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 1 Comment

The other day, I’ve written about an issue with installation of update KB2920189 for Windows Server 2012 R2 (post called [TIP] Latest “Patch Tuesday” & errors installing update). So, the problem I was facing was failing installation on Generation 2 virtual machines, with Secure Boot enabled.

Actually, you can overcome this problem easily by reading the documentation before it happens or… with PowerShell after (OK, you can use GUI also, but who uses it nowadays?)! Smile

As I’ve already mentioned, all you need to do is just one thing – install the BitLocker feature on your server.

(yes, “-Restart” is optional – if you want, you can restart your server manually, of course)

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After that, BitLocker is installed, and you can successfully install the KB2920189 also.

Second (not official) approach on installing this update on Generation 2 virtual machine, as I’ve written in the mentioned post, is to uncheck Secure Boot, install the update, and then check the Secure Boot option again.

This can be easily done using the following script:

We can now install this “problematic” update as the Secure Boot feature is disabled:

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…and Secure Boot is enabled again (“nothing” happened)!

Of course, you can do all of this manually, but then again – why do we have PowerShell? Smile

Cheers!

P.S. I’m no PowerShell expert… just like to automate some things. Smile

Latest “Patch Tuesday” – errors installing update

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 1 Comment

Latest “Patch Tuesday” (May 13th, 2014) has brought us a pack of updates (you can read all the details about them here and here), but one of them was making trouble for me. The update I’m talking about is called “Security Update for Windows Server 2012 R2 (KB2920189)”. You can read more about this update in KB2920189.

I’ve tried to install it on a number of my Hyper-V virtual machines (Generation 2), but the update keeps failing with error 800F0922:

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ISSUE:
This error and its cause is described in KB2962824. In short, this update expects that the BitLocker feature is installed (not enabled or used, but installed) – in my case, the problem was Secure Boot, which is enabled by default on Generation 2 virtual machines.

RESOLUTION/WORKAROUND:
You can install the BitLocker feature on your Windows Server 2012 R2 servers before installing this update, or you can switch the Secure Boot off, install the update and switch it back on (I’ve decided to do the latter).

After switching the Secure Boot off, installing the update and switching it on again, the update installed successfully:

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Have fun!

Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview – Upgrade tips

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

If you are planning to upgrade your Windows Server 2012 to the Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview (and you are not planning to spend some time reading the documentation), here are some tips that can help you make this more quickly, and (hopefully) without errors:

  • CREATE A FULL BACKUP! (before proceeding with upgrade, of course)
  • you can only upgrade Windows Server installation which is installed onto physical disk (i.e. you cannot upgrade Boot from VHD(X) installation, as you will get error saying this in compatibility report before upgrade starts) (note that you still can upgrade Windows Server installation in virtual machines, though)
  • make sure that you have enough disk space available (the compatibility report says that at least 42609 MB of free space is required)
  • make sure that your applications (and drivers) support Windows Server 2012 R2 (unfortunately, site with the compatible apps and documentation (as it says inside the upgrade wizard – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=243105) still isn’t alive, so you can’t check your applications there)
  • make sure that you have enabled page file on C: drive (I’ve had one on D: only, and the upgrade kept failing until I’ve create one on the C: drive also)
  • make sure that you don’t go online and install updates during installation (as this will probably make the upgrade fail, saying that it cannot open Compatibility report)
  • remember – if you get error during upgrade, you can always check upgrade log files located in “$WINDOWS.~BTSourcesPanther” (or “%WINDIR%Panther”) folder

I will update this list as something new comes up (also, feel free to comment with your upgrade experiences).

Thanks for reading (and good luck)!

Windows Server 2012 R2: Hyper-V – What’s new (at first glance)?

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Well, the new version (R2) of the best server operating system is on it’s way! Windows Server 2012 R2 brings many new & upgraded features as announced at TechEd: North America 2013 conference last week.

Although I like Windows Server 2012, I’m specially excited about the news coming in the next Hyper-V upgrade. Some of them are:

  • Gen2 VMs – imagine VMs that don’t have anything emulated – no emulated devices such as IDE disk controllers and NIC cards. Well, that’s coming in R2 – we will have the new virtual machines that will be capable of booting from SCSI disks, machines that can use Secure Boot feature introduced in Windows 8, etc. This will have one downside however – to use it, you will need to run Windows 8 (x64) or Windows Server 2012 as guest OS.
  • VM Direct Connect – the new feature that allows you remote desktop connection into the virtual machine, without using network and channels you usually use – this time, you are going into the machine from the “inside”, through VM bus.
  • Hyper-V Replica to a third site – now you can have two replicas of you VMs – pretty cool and veeeery useful, if I may say so!
  • Replica frequency – now you can control the replication frequency (no more fixed 5 minutes replication intervals which allows you to “fine tune” the replication intervals to your networking infrastructure).
  • Compression – allowing from 2x to 10x faster live migrations (depending on hardware used)… do I need to say more?
  • Dynamic Memory for Linux – finally we have support for Dynamic Memory on Linux virtual machines also.
  • Online VM exporting and cloning, VHDX resizing
  • and much, much more!

This is just a list of some features and improvements that caught my attention. More is available in Ben’s talk at TechEd – http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013/MDC-B330.

See you soon!