Category Archives: Windows Server

Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 for Windows Server 2008 R2 available

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Microsoft is releasing the iSCSI Target Server

This is a very cool tool, actually you can’t live without in home aka lab/testing env. 😉

The Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 provides storage (disks) over a TCP/IP network. It turns a computer running Windows Server into a storage device which provides shared block storage. You can use Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 to perform a variety of storage-related tasks, including the following:

  • Provide shared storage for Hyper-V to enable high availability and live migration
  • Consolidate storage for multiple application servers (i.e. Microsoft SQL Server or Hyper-V)
  • Provide shared storage for applications hosted on a Windows failover cluster
  • Enable diskless computers to boot remotely from a single operating system image using iSCSI

Download:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=45105d7f-8c6c-4666-a305-c8189062a0d0

Managing Internet based Configuration Manager clients using Direct Access

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Steve Rachui published another great post over on his blog, this time about using the Windows Server 2008 R2 Direct Access feature to manage Internet based clients of System Center Configuration Manager 2007:

“Do you have internet based clients that you want to manage?  Does the idea of switching to SCCM native mode to manage those client make you nervous?  Do you have Windows 2008 R2 servers in your environment and are the internet systems you want to manage running Windows 7 (Enterprise or Ultimate) or Windows Server 2008 R2?  If you said yes to all of these questions then you might just be interested in taking a look at Direct Access (DA).”

To read Steve’s excellent blog post see the following link:

Direct Access – SCCM – Managing internet clients

Add Office 2010 KMS Key to your KMS Server

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Office 2010 will require either a MAK (Multiple Activation Key) or a KMS Key (the new volume lenience key, since Vista/Server 2008). You will only need one KMS server for your organization to serve out activations for both Windows Operating Systems and Office 2010.

1.

Download your Office Product and KMS Key from Microsoft Licensing

www.microsoft.com/licensing
2.

Download the Microsoft Office 2010 KMS Host License Pack

Download this .exe from Microsoft and install it on your current KMS server. It will ask you for your Office 2010 KMS key and then activate it against Microsoft’s Activiation Servers.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?
displaylang=en&FamilyID=97b7b710-6831-4ce5-9ff5-fdc21fe8d965

The Host Service Pack can only be installed on Server 2003, Server 2008 R2 or Volume Licence edition of Windows 7.

Once the key has activated you will receive a message indicating that the activation was successful.
3.

Let your clients with Office 2010 activate to the new KMS host key

You’re all set, your clients should now activate to your KMS server.

Conclusion

The KMS Host key for Office 2010 is somewhat different than that of the client OS’s, as it will only take 5 users running Office 2010 for the KMS to activate them, as compared to the 25 hosts required for client OS’s.
Also, if a client is off of the network and does not contact the KMS server after 180 days the user will receive a message when they open Office stating that the product is unlicensed, however, it will continue to work with no loss of functionality. Once the user connect to the network with the KMS host the error will go away and the re-activation process will be transparent to the end user.

Windows Deployment serves failes after DHCP crash

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This commandline will re-authorize the WDS Server in DHCP 🙂

wdsutil /verbose /progress /initialize-server /reminst:”e:RemoteInstall”

The errors when boot a PXE Client was:

PXE-T01: The specified file was not found.
PXE-E3B: TFTP Error – File Not Found

With procmon i noticed the file was existing at the path queried.