January 21, 2012

Hyper-V Server core

I found a Poweredge 1950 on eBay for $130.  Bells and whistles include:
  • DRAC
  • PERC/i5
  • redundant PSUs
  • Dual CPUs
It does not come with drives or caddies. Caddies I borrowed from work, drives I had.  I installed Hyper-V Server via USB drive by designating it a Virtual Floppy drive in the BIOS (also a good time to verify Intel VT is enabled). Initial config of HyperV server can be done from the console and is pretty straight forward. I verified some of my steps with a Dell Youtube video.

The first issue I had was connecting the Hyper-V Manager from the RSAT tools on my client to to the Hyper-V Server. I received the error: [Hyper-V Manager: Access denied. Unable to establish communication between ‘Hyper-V Server’ and ‘Hyper-V Manager]:

http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2009/06/hyper-v-error-access-denied-unable-to.html


Settings firewall rules:

C:\>netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Windows Management Instrumentatio
n (WMI)" new enable=yes

Open Component Services [dcomcnfg.exe] on client. This allows HyperV server in Workgroup mode to connect to my client and mount an ISO.  I think in a domain the trust is already there.
  1. Choose Component Services
  2. Computers
  3. Right Click My Computer
    1. Select COM Security tab
    2. Under Access Permissions, click Edit Limits
      1. Select ANONYMOUS LOGON
        1. Allow Remote Access

Navigating drives in DOS
c:\fsutil fsinfo drives

Downloading Broadcom drivers and BACS

Installing BACS

During installation I was prompted to enable TCP Chimney Offload.  An unusual name for a useful technology. Offload some of the processing to the NICs from the CPU.

Dell has a nice procedure for Installing BACS from DOS (for me BACS installed to Program Files\Broadcom\BACS\BACS.exe)


Most of this is just for my own notes. At this point I've built my first 2008R2 VM and about to run dcpromo to build my first domain controller.
I'd rather be working on this than CCNA, maybe I'll feel diferently when I'm working on the next cert.





2 comments:

Jay Bazuzi said...

Funny... I tried to do this last night, but got stuck when the RSAT wouldn't connect.

Jay Bazuzi said...

I had this idea that I wanted Hyper-V on my laptop, so I could run Windows and Ubuntu at the same time, no reboots.

I installed standalone Hyper-V in its own partition, but couldn't connect with RSAT. Eventually I realize that my Windows desktop experience might not be good enough, so I abandoned that.

Then I tried to install Windows Server 2008 R2 as my desktop OS, and then add the Hyper-V role. First, the Wi-Fi didn't quite work. I was able to install the driver, but it never saw any networks. Second, there's a problem with Hyper-V and 3D graphics cards, unless your CPU has SLAT (which mine does not).

So, I'm back to Win7.

I thought about using this laptop as home server running Hyper-V, and that might still work, since I could run just VGA. We'll see.