Windows Server 2008

This is a pretty specific set of instructions for a specific environment:

• If

• you are using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007

• and

• you have a Microsoft Certificate Services 2003 Certificate Authority on your domain

• and

• you have non-domain Windows Server 2008 servers you wish to monitor or set up as a gateway server.

Getting a certificate for either a Gateway Server or remotely monitored Server can be a touch vexing. If you’re installing on the same domain as the SCOM management server the security settings take care of themselves, not so for non-domain servers, which require mutual certificate authentication. The Gateway must trust the Domain CA and identify itself as trusted to the Management Server. I have bashed my head against this several times now, so I thought I’d make a precise blog post to cover the steps required!

If you have a Windows Server 2008 box in a workgroup that you require access to one of the admin shares, it can be a little more complicated than with Server 2003. In my case, we had a SQL server on the back end which was trying to access the web server in the DMZ using PSExec.exe to remotely run a process. Executing PSExec and passing the correct credentials failed with “Access is Denied”.

If you install Reporting Services on Windows Server 2008 (RTM or R2) and attempt to verify the installation by opening the http://SERVER/ReportServer site, you may well see the following message:

The permissions granted to user ‘MCGEOWN\Sam.McGeown’ are insufficient for performing this operation. (rsAccessDenied) Get Online Help

SQL Server Reporting Services

Additionally, you may be able to access the http://SERVER/Reports site, but will have no permissions:

So, you’ve installed a new server with Server 2008 R2 Core – what next? Logging on, you’re presented with a shiny command prompt, you can run notepad or regedit…but aside from that, where do you go from there? In the next few series of posts I’ll hopefully point out the basics, and some not so basics!

In this post, I’m covering Installing the IIS web server (and a few useful bits) and managing it from the IIS Management Snap-in.

So, you’ve installed a new server with Server 2008 R2 Core – what next? Logging on, you’re presented with a shiny command prompt, you can run notepad or regedit…but aside from that, where do you go from there? In the next few series of posts I’ll hopefully point out the basics, and some not so basics!

I’m going to look at some management tasks – the bread and butter of being a Windows admin.

So, you’ve installed a new server with Server 2008 R2 Core – what next? Logging on, you’re presented with a shiny command prompt, you can run notepad or regedit…but aside from that, where do you go from there? In the next few series of posts I’ll hopefully point out the basics, and some not so basics!

Using the Server Configuration Tool

The server configuration tool (sconfig.cmd) is provided in R2 for some of the basic setup tasks, so you can run that by issuing the “sconfig” command. Out of the box, it looks something like this:

I’m pleased to say that yesterday I took and passed two Microsoft Certified IT Professional exams, the Server Administrator (70-646) and the Enterprise Administrator (70-647). Hopefully I can take a bit of a break from study and write a few more technical posts here now!

If you read the Microsoft blurb for R2, the first thing you notice is that Server 2008 R2 is 64-bit only(!). It seems Microsoft are forcibly removing 32-bit server hardware from the data centre. I’ve not seen a decent upgrade guide online so far, so here’s my process.

I’m going to be upgrading a Server 2008 R2 x64 SP2 Standard Edition virtual server to R2. To see what editions can and can’t be upgraded, check out this Technet Article, but it’s safe to say that you can’t upgrade across architectures (32-bit to 64-bit) and you can’t downgrade SKUs (Enterprise to Standard).

Configuring the Virtual Environment and Virtual Machines

Note – this configuration will work for ESXi 4 upwards due to the server 2008 MSCS requirement for persistent SCSI-3 reservations.

The first step is to create a new vSwitch for the host-only cluster heartbeat network, don’t assign any network adaptors to the switch as it’s going to be local only.

Create a new virtual machine with a single hard disk. For the purposes of this test, I’ve assigned 2 vProcessors, 1GB RAM, 30GB drive for the OS, 1 vNIC in the default vSwitch0.

I recently had an issue where a hosting environment was registering a lot of Netlogon Event 1030/1058 issues, being unable to find the Group Policy objects or download them. In this example, the server DC is the domain controller for DOMAIN.LCL.

_Event Type: Error

Event Source: Userenv

Event Category: None

Event ID: 1030

Date:  10/09/2009

Time:  06:24:29

User:  NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

Computer: DC

Description:

Windows cannot query for the list of Group Policy objects. Check the event log for possible messages previously logged by the policy engine that describes the reason for this. For more information, see Help and Support Center at_ http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp .