Alberto Ortega’s Blog

This may happened I you use a volume-licensed media to deploy Windows Server 2008 SP2 (this was my case). The resolution is to set-up a KMS server on your LAN or switch the product key to a MAK key, find out more here:

• Volume Activation For Windows Vista: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929712/
• Error message when you try to activate Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Business, or Windows Server 2008: “Code 0×8007232b”: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929826
• Windows Server 2008 KMS Setup Demonstration: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bbf2eb61-2b30-4f2d-bccd-df53e220b8e9&displaylang=en

In my case this happened on a Geneva Server machine.

Hope it helps,

I followed this procedure from TechNET to configure dynamic updating: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd145315(WS.10).aspx. I want to share my results as it went quite straightforward.

The DHCP server might be configured in one of the following ways, we choose the second to increase our control over the workstations:

• The DHCP server registers and updates client information with the authoritative DNS server of the zone in which the DHCP server is located according to the DHCP client request.
  This is the default configuration for DHCP servers running Windows Server 2008. In this mode, the DHCP client can request the way in which the DHCP server performs updates of its host (A) and pointer (PTR) resource records. If possible, the DHCP server accommodates the client request for handling updates to its name and IP address information in DNS.
  To modify this setting, select the Dynamically update DNS A and PTR records only if requested by the DHCP clients check box, which is located in Properties on the DNS tab on the applicable DHCP server or on one of its scopes.
• The DHCP server always registers and updates client information in DNS.
  This is a modified configuration supported for DHCP servers running Windows Server 2008 and DHCP clients. In this mode, the DHCP server always performs updates of the client’s FQDN, leased IP address information, and both its host (A) and pointer (PTR) resource records, regardless of whether the client has requested to perform its own updates.
  To modify this setting, select the Enable DNS dynamic updates according to the settings below check box and click Always dynamically update DNS A and PTR records, which is located in Properties on the DNS tab on the applicable DHCP server or on one of its scopes.
• The DHCP server never registers and updates client information in DNS.
  To set this behavior, the DHCP server must be configured to disable performance of DHCP/DNS proxied updates. By disabling this feature, no client host (A) or pointer (PTR) resource records are updated in DNS for DHCP clients.
  If necessary, this change in setting can be made at DHCP servers running Windows Server 2008 by clearing the Enable DNS dynamic updates according to the settings below check box, which is located in Properties on the DNS tab on the applicable DHCP server or one of its scopes. By default, updates are always performed for newly installed DHCP servers running Windows Server 2008 and any new scopes created for them.

Procedure

This implied the following configuration:

1. [DNS] Configure DNS Zone as Secure Only
2. [DHCP] Configure DHCP Server to Always dynamically update DNS A and PTR records
3. [AD] Make the DHCP server computer account part of the DNSUpdateProxy Security Group
4. [AD] Created a service account “DOMAIN\DNSUpdate”
5. TEST: Run ipconfig /release; ipconfig /renew from my workstation and checked the created record on the DNS record, for my surprise when I tried to check the security of the DNS record I got a permission denied error. What happened here is that the owner of the record is now the “DOMAIN\DNSUpdate” and not mine, regardless I am a Domain Admin.

Source

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd145315(WS.10).aspx
  • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd183673(WS.10).aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753014.aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771732(WS.10).aspx

Today we will talk about Windows Server Foundation 2008 on a TechNET webcast. Windows Server Foundation 2008 is aimed to starters with less that 15 workstation on their premises, it became a very cost-effective alternative and a better entry point to the Windows Server platform than Windows Server Small Business 2008.

You can go further reading the official press presentation here:

“Microsoft is filling a crucial hole at the low end of its Windows Server portfolio by delivering a simple, low-cost solution geared for small businesses and first-time server users,” said Al Gillen, program vice president, IDC. “Windows Server 2008 Foundation really rounds out Microsoft’s server platform and provides a solution for a key market segment.”

This will be a quick webcast to go though the technical details, strengths and limitations of this platform, you can register here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032414726&EventCategory=4&culture=es-AR&CountryCode=AR

You can download the presentation here on this Link.

See you!

Last Wednesday 18-February we had a TechNet webcast about the System Center Suite. If you want to go deeper you can download the session resources here: http://cid-5f9c7b75bd402dda.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/TechNet/2009-02-18%20-%20System%20Center%20y%20el%20Centro%20de%20Datos

I recommend this session to earn a high-level perspective about the System Center Suite, on the online session you can watch demos about the following scenarios:

1. Datacenter Deployment: Windows Deployment Services (WDS) technology to remotely deploy OS on your datacenter environment.
2. Model Based Updates Management: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM) to achieve templates based updates roll-out to the datacenter.
3. End to end monitoring: System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta (SCOM) to have an holistic view of your production services health.
4. Model based standards in the datacenter: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM) to manage workstation and servers baselines against a desired configuration baseline enforced by IT.
5. Accountability in the datacenter: System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta (SCOM) to concentrate audit events, using Audit Collection Services,  from your windows server environment with reporting capabilities to overcome your security auditor demands.
6. Datacenter Planinng: System Center Capacity Planner 2007 (SCCP) (free download!) to size your services deployment on Miacorosft solutions like Exchange, Sharepoint and Operations Manager.

You can download the On-Demand session here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=es-AR&EventID=1032400708&CountryCode=AR

Here at Southworks we deployed many times from scratch a fully virtualized infrastructure and we have many lessons learnt so far. Since 2006, the industry is betting hard to workloads virtualization as it will address the increasing complexity IT environments are facing improving agility on the datacenter. In this post I will share a snapshot of what happened last month on the Virtualization Industry. Later (next post) I will discuss common drawbacks when moving to a virtualized infrastructure.

Virtualization Short Take

VMWare 2.0 (free server from VMWare) has reached the RC1 stage (http://www.vmware.com/beta/server/), nowadays SW-IT has every workload in production virtualized over VMWare 1.0.6 and has proved stability but we suffered in terms of management. VMWare 2.0 RC1 top features are Volume Shadow Copy, SCSI pass-though disk, USB 2.0 devices, Web access management interface and more OS support (including Win2k8 x64).

VMWare ESX 3i is free as I mentioned on my previous post, this had an impact on the SMB market so if you want to drill-down: http://blogs.southworks.net/aortega/2008/07/30/vmware-esx-3i-for-free/

VMWare has joined last week The Linux Foundation as announced here: http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/press/2008/08/06/vmware-joins-the-linux-foundation/, this is an strong bet from VMWare to empower the use of their virtualization platform on Linux systems.

Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6.2 was released. VirtualBox is an absolutely free virtualization product for x86 and x64 platform (x64 support included in this 1.6.2 release) and can be used for server and desktop virtualization, a highlight of this virtualization platform is that it is compatible with VMWare VMs, however it will not load MS VHDs files as VMWare is supposed to do. I say “is supposed to do” as we failed many times in SW-IT when trying to boot a VHD disk over VMWare Player.

Hyper-V went to RTM! And is now available through Windows Update so all your Windows 2008 running Hyper-V will have the update available for install. Although Microsoft says the VMs are compatible from RC1 to RTM be careful as we experienced performance issues related with the Integration Tools (a.k.a VM Additions) when migrating. Together with this RTM a Powershell Management Toolkit (PSHyperV) was released by James O´Neill to automate Hyper-V many management tasks check it out at http://www.codeplex.com/PSHyperv

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta has now support for managing Hyper-V hosts (get it from http://connect.microsoft.com), moreover, SW-EE (Engineering Excellence Team) deployed this Beta version and successfully managed 8 Win2k8 hosts, so we will closely look how this solution evolves as we are early adopters.

Novell upgrades PlateSpin PowerConvert to v 7.0, PowerConvert is an enterprise-ready Virtualization Management solution that optimizes the data center by streaming server workloads over the network between physical servers, PlateSpin was acquired by Novell on March 2008 and will be a key components of Novell visions to the dynamic datacenter.

Finally the Xen Summit at Boston took place this June and many posts appeared in http://blog.xen.org regarding the tracks, Yoshi Tamura from the NTT Cyber Space Laboratories in Japan gave a very interesting presentation on Kemari. Kemari is a new approach to cluster systems that synchronize VMs for fault tolerance without modifying neither hardware nor applications, Kemari proposes a sync approach instead of a shared storage approach like VMWare’s VMotion or Hyper-V Live Migration.

References: How to be on top of Virtualization news?

If I had to choose only three vendor agnostic virtualization posts I recommend:

1. http://virtualization.com/: is a great aggregator of industry news  with short posts straight to the point.

2. http://blog.scottlowe.org/: Scott Lowe has a breath view of the virtualization and storage market and frequently posts on his “Virtualization Short Take” a snapshot of the virtualization industry.

3. http://www.virtualization.info/roadmap/: Virtualization Industry Roadmap logs every product release in a time-line style for the vendors that the Virtualization Congress has in its radar

References

o Novell upgrades PlateSpin PowerConvert to v7.0
http://virtualization.com/news/2008/06/24/novell-platespin-powerconvert-7.0/

o Desktop Virtualization Portal
http://www.desktop-virtualization.com/

o Xen Summit Highlights
http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2008/07/03/xen-summit-highlights-kemari-high-availability-20/

This April 29th I will be part of the Online Event launching Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. My track will be about Windows Server 2008 and the Web Server Role, going though the top features of IIS7 from the Server Administrator point of view.

You can (and should ) register following: http://www.microsoft.com/latam/lanzamientoEdicionEspecial2008/

This online event will be fully powered by a Silverlight engine:

See you!