Friday, February 17, 2012

How To Install Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 On VMware 8 Part II


To configure the Virtual Machine please read How To Install Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 On VMware 8 Part I


Installing Windows Server 2008     

Installing Windows Server 2008 is done in the same way as you would on a stand alone computer. You insert the Windows Server 2008 DVD in the DVD drive of the Host computer, and click on "Start this virtual machine" in your newly created virtual machine. VMware will boot the DVD from the DVD drive and the installation will begin.

[1] If you have the DVD image double click on devices or  go to VM then click on settings


[2] On that window browse for the image from your computer under CD/DVD(IDE) option




[3] After that, verify that all parameters are properly configured and click reset in VM tab under power






[4]  The first screen you come to in the install is the language and keyboard layout screen. Make your choices and click Next.





[5] The Install process begins. Click install Now. The rest of the installation will take place according to normal procedure within VMware.










[6] Choose the hard drive to install Windows on. Notice that Windows recognizes the 15GB virtual hard drive (the virtual machine) we created.

Note:
On this screen, you can click the Next button if you want Windows to use all the drive space and perform a quick NTFS format. If you want more control over the creation and formatting of the partition,
click on Drive Options (advanced).


[7] If you have installed Windows Vista, the installation of Windows Server 2008 is very similar. Windows will now install files and reboot twice.






[8] You will be prompted to change password at first login after which you can start configuring and using Windows Server 2008 R2 x64. The same procedures more or less apply for installing a 32-bit version. However, unlike a 32-bit OS a 64-bit machine will not install without configuring the bios settings.







[9] After following the aforementioned procedure your will be successfully able to install a x64 or x86 version of Windows server 2008.







Installing VMware Tools     
VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that will enhance the performance of your Guest operating system. They are included in the installation of VMware Server. Once your Guest operating system has been installed, in your virtual machine, the first thing you should do is install VMware Tools. VMware Tools will install enhanced video, mouse, and network drivers as well as utilities to configure your virtual machine. See the VMware Server online documentation for more information about VMware Tools.

To install VMware Tools, click the VM menu option, in the VMware Server Console, and choose "Install VMware Tools".  

Note: you cannot install VMware Tools, in a virtual machine, until the Guest operating system has been installed first.




Additional Notes    

• When working in the VMware Server Console, you can press CTRL+ALT to move the mouse focus from the virtual machine to the Host computer desktop.
• With the focus in a virtual machine, use CTRL+ALT+Insert instead of CTRL+ALT+Delete.
• If you are going to shutdown or reboot your Host computer, shutdown your virtual machine operating systems first.


Important
Once the virtual machine reboots, you will login to Windows Server 2008 and the Initial Configuration Tasks window will again appear. Go through the configuration tasks so your Win2008 server is setup. Do the following:
• Set your Time Zone
• Rename your Server. Windows will assign it some random name during the install. Give it a normal name.
• Set a static IP address for your NIC (as a server, it should have a static IP address). It should be on the same subnet as your Host server, but have a different IP address. Note: you can actually create virtual switches and networks among your virtual machines using VMware. Read the VMware online documentation for more information about this.

At this point, think of this virtual server as a "real server". You will configure and use it in the same way as if it was a stand alone server. And it will function as if it was a stand alone server running Windows Server 2008. You can access it from the network, make it a domain controller and join PCs to it, install operating system components and applications on it, and all the while it will be running at the same time and on the same physical server as your Host operating system, Windows Server 2003.




• Read the VMware online documentation along with the PDF help files you can download from the VMware site. There is a lot to VMware Server that you should investigate. There are also VMware forums where you can find useful information and ask questions.
• Like any software, VMware is not without its bugs. Some may affect you, some not. Again, the VMware forums are a good place to find help and information.
• Books on VMware Server are few and far between. I would have thought there would have been numerous books out there on this popular virtualization software, but there are surprisingly few. One I would suggest is
VMware Server and VMware Player by Dennis Zimmer. It is a little expensive, and somewhat crudely published, but it has a great deal of useful information. Especially if you are new to VMware Server.

• Windows Server 2008 is still in BETA so don't expect perfection. Microsoft has announced Windows Server 2008 will go Gold in February of 2008, so there is plenty of time to start experimenting with it.
• One thing that does not work in Windows Server 2008 is GPMC - Group Policy Management Console. At least up to and including the June 2007 CTP. Hopefully, in subsequent builds/releases, this will be fixed.
• Windows Server 2008 reminds me of Vista in that like Vista, it has similarities to its predecessors, but yet in many ways is quite different. There will be a learning curve, but Microsoft supplies an abundance of documentation to help you get started.

Monday, February 6, 2012

How To Install Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 On VMware 8 Part I

VMware is one of the coolest virtualization software. It supports most of the operating systems as guest operating system. Microsoft Server operating systems such as windows 2008 and windows 2008 R2 also can be installed in VMware workstation. Here I’m going to show how you can install FreeNAS server onVMware Workstation with iSCSI disks which can be used for your host and guest operating systems. This method will be used to install and configure MS Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 cluster in VMware workstation


Creating Your Base Virtual Machine

When starting from scratch I always create what I call a base virtual machine (VM).  This VM serves as my base image for all of my needs and will be re-used for various setups.  There are few things you need to keep in mind when you create a base image.  I’ll mark these as we go along in the screen shots below.

[1] Once VMWare Workstation is installed click File->New Virtual Machine. 


 [2] Choose the Custom Install.


 [3] Just click next


[4] Install you Os later



  [5 ]Choose your Guest Operating System.


 [6] Give your virtual machine a name and choose its location. The location ideally will be its own partition. The wizard will automatically create a \Virtual Machines directory. (you can change this)

1.Machine name
2.Location


 [7]  Choose the number of processors. VMware Server can recognize up to two physical processors. Multicore processors are considered a single physical processor.


 [8]  Choose the amount of memory the VM will use. This depends on how much total memory you have in your server, and how much you want to allocate to this VM. For Win2008, 1GB is a good amount to start with.


 [9] Choose the type of network adapter (NIC) you want to use in your VM. VMware server will install its own network driver. This virtual driver will not be the same as the driver your NIC is currently using for the Host operating system. If your Host computer is on a network, and you want to use a separate IP address for your virtual machine (or can get one automatically from a DHCP server), select "Use bridged networking". Bridged networking creates a "bridge" between the virtual machine and the physical NIC in your Host computer so you can access the network in the same way you would with a standard network card. It connects the virtual network adapter in your virtual machine to the physical Ethernet adapter in your Host computer. For more information on the types of virtual network cards in VMware Server, see the VMware Server online documentation. After you install Windows Server 2008 in your VM, you can change the IP address settings for the Virtual NIC, in Control Panel, just as you would in any Windows operating system.



 [10] Doing some reading and research the LSI Logic I/O adapter is supposedly the faster choice for SCSI adapters.




  
[11] Choose the SCSI controller you will use in your VM. Again, this is a virtual driver and is not dependent on the actually controller and hard drive you have in your Host computer. My test system uses a SATA controller and hard drive and I chose the LSI option. If you choose the BusLogic controller, you receive a warning message that Windows 2003 does not support this. There will also be another screen where you choose what type of Hard Drive to use, IDE or SCSI. You can choose SCSI on this screen too.
Also note that you cannot change the SCSI adapter type after you create the virtual machine.




[12] Disk capacity is something you really need to think about before setting this option.  I made the mistake of setting up a complete VM environment only to realize I needed more space.  While virtual machines can be resized using the disk manager utility, they cannot be resized if there are clones or snapshots tied to the VM.  For me this meant I had to blow away a lot of my work and go back to my base images (which is another reason why I do full cloning to start with as you’ll see later on). 
You’ll notice I didn’t choose “Allocate all disk space now”.  Essentially what this does is it reserves all of your hard drive space for your VM.  Think of it like formatting your VM image files.  As noted there is a performance gain.  However, this also means you are going to take up as much disk space as you enter in the field below.  In my case if this was checked, I’d eat up 50GB of disk space on the drive.  Not fun, especially when cloning full images (50GB + 50GB + 50GB).  Thus I do not check this option. I do however split the files into 2GB files.  The main reason is for defragmentation.  If you have one large image file you need twice the amount of space to defrag it.  With 2GB files you’ll only need an additional 2GB of space.



 [13]  The Virtual Machine will now be created. This will take several minutes.

Note: if you create a VM on an existing partition that is already being used, this process could take much longer. Using a new, blank partition makes this process go much faster.


 [14] You will now have a new tab with the new Virtual Machine. Now that the VM is created, you can install Windows Server 2008 in the virtual machine.

Click here to go to Installing Windows Server 2008  

How To Create A Domain In Windows Server 2008




Windows Server 2008 R2 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009 and launched on October 22, 2009 also the retail availability was September 14, 2009.It is built on Windows NT 6.1, the same core operating system used with the client-oriented Windows 7. It is the first 64-bit-only operating system release from Microsoft. Version enhancements include new functionality for Active Directory, new virtualization and management features IIS 7.5, and support for up to 256 logical processors.


Ok let's get start it.....

[1] To get started, go to Run or a Command Prompt and type dcpromo and hit Enter.


[2] The following window will appear



This will show you a message to wait until the installation wizard opens. Once the installation wizard opens, hit Next. Make sure the Use advanced mode installation option is unchecked.



[3] The next step will display a screen explaining operating system compatibility details with a link at the bottom of the wizard which can be used to get more information about the topic. Hit Next to continue.



[4] When making a domain you will be given the option to add a domain in an existing forest or creating a new domain within a new forest. You can also use this wizard to add a domain controller to an existing domain (a domain tree). Here we will select Create a new domain in a new forest option and hit Next.





[5] A tree is made up of multiple domains and multiple trees merge under the realm of a forest. The name of the first Domain created within a forest (the forest root Domain) also becomes the name of the forest. To move forward, enter a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name), e.g. askfromravi.lk. The wizard will proceed further after checking the NetBIOS name to make sure that there is no existing domain already present with the same name.



[6] In the next step, select the forest functional level by choosing the appropriate Windows Server version. Choosing a newer version will give you more functionality options, however, you can select older levels as well.



[7] The DNS Server checkbox is checked by default to install the DNS server.



The global catalog is a distributed data repository that contains a searchable, partial representation of every object in every domain in a multidomain Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) forest. The global catalog is stored on domain controllers that have been designated as global catalog servers and is distributed through multimaster replication. Searches that are directed to the global catalog are faster because they do not involve referrals to different domain controllers.

for more :http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc730868.aspx
[8] While attempting to proceed further you may be prompted to assign a static IP if it is set to obtain (IP automatically). It is not advised to use a dynamic IP from the DHCP server for a domain as the dynamic IPs change after a set period of time which will cause major disruptions as client operating system will disconnect if and when the IP changes.





[9] To assign a static IP to the adapter, go to the Network and Sharing Center and click on Change Adapter Settings. From here select TCP/IPv4 and set a static IP e.g. 192.168.1.254. Also set a Default Gateway, which is normally the IP of a router. In the Proffered DNS section you can simply enter the Domain IP (which in this case is 192.18.1.254) or add a loopback IP (127.0.0.1) so that the domain automatically send itself the DNS queries. This will be helpful if you ever change the Domain IP, as the DNS will not have to be adjusted. You can also use an alternative DNS in the Alternative DNS Server section. To move forward click on No, I will assign static IP addresses to all physical adapters.
 [10] In the next step, you will have the choice to save the Database, Log and SYSVOL files to the same or separate locations. Some administrators save them separately to balance the load or hard disk space considerations, whereas others save them at the same location. This is not much of an issue nowadays, especially in the wake of better disaster recovery mechanisms.


 [11] Moving forward, you will be asked to save a restore mode password (which is separate from the Domain Administrator s account). This password is configured to be used when the Domain Controller is started in Directory Services Restore Mode.

 [12] In the final part of the wizard, you can check the summary of the configurations in the Review Your

Selections box and proceed to create your Domain.

 

The installation will complete after a brief period of time (depending upon your hardware capability) and you will be able to start working on your Domain after restarting the system.




There you go you have successfully created the Domain In Windows Server 2008 .If this article

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