How to manage virtual machines on your Windows Server 2012 Core with Hyper-V role.

If you install Windows Server 2012 Core, when you log on to server you will have only command prompt. Difference after you log on between Hyper-V 2012 and Windows Server 2012 Core with Hyper-V role is sconfig (so called blue) window. You can always start sconfig window by typing sconfig to your command prompt.

Hyper-V role by default does not install Hyper-V management console. If you try to run it you will receive error “c:\Windows\System32\virtmgmt.msc” does not exist. To install it you must use PowerShell

PowerShell give us possibility to install different Windows Features. To install Hyper-V management console you will use syntax: Add-WindowsFeature –name RSAT-Hyper-V-Tools

If you want to install other RSAT tools you can type Get-WindowsFeature to see names of available features and then type Add-WindowsFeature –name Name_Of_The_feature

Enabling File Sharing on Windows Server 2012 Core and Hyper-V 2012

One new/old thing about File and Printer Sharing.

If you have Windows server 2012 Core or Hyper-V 2012 server you can face problems where you want to open admin shares on server. If you type \\servername\c$ you will receive error message that you can’t reach this share.

This is because File and Printer sharing is disabled by default in Windows Server 2012 and in Hyper-V 2012. To enable File and Printer Sharing in command prompt you must type:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”File and Printer Sharing” new enable=Yes

After this you will be able to reach admin shares on Windows Server 2012 Core and Hyper-V 2012.

This is applicable also to Windows Server 2012 with GUI.

What to do if your Hyper-v admin shares wont work

At friday had strange situation. I was installing my new Hyper-V server, and I had problems with migration. I was exported machine with Hyper-V manager but i couldn’t copy it to new Hyper-V server.

Why? I couldn’t reach admin shares (C$, D$) to copy virtual machine for import. I set up everything, checked firewall twice but problem was still here.

Then I think about solution to enable file and printer sharing.

And how to do that at Hyper-V? Because Hyper-V is Core OS any you don’t have all nice mmc plug-in for firewall setup.

You must do that using Command Prompt.

Syntax for this is:

“netsh firewall set service fileandprint”

After this all shares is accessible and i was completed my migration (import) to new Hyper-V machine.

Installing Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 on IBM X346 with ADAPTEC SCSI u320 controller

It could be pretty tricky to install Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 on IBM x346 with Adaptec controller. If didn’t want to throw away my old server so I decided to install Hyper-V on it to create testing environment.

I do this with colleague of mine, and we faced with problem. Hyper-V wont install on IBM x346. Why? Server asked for driver….

I think that driver is so old that Hyper-V don’t have it in its drivers database, and You can’t install it using ServerGuide CD.

What were we do.

After spending hours trying to install Hyper-V on IBM x346 with Adaptec u320 SCSI controller, finally we have solution.

My colleague Luka Gros spend finds x64 driver for Adaptec SCSI controller. He found it on this link.

After downloading, you must extract this driver and burn it on CD

Steps what we are do after that is:

booting from Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 and starting installation

when asked for driver change CD to one with driver and click Browse

find driver on CD and click Next

change CD to installation CD again and finish your installation

Hyper-V is installed and running fine now

P.S.

If You need to manipulate with physical HDD on your Hyper-V, MMC console will return error “RPC server unavailable”.

To avoid this run this command with elevated privileges:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”Remote Volume Management” new enable=yes

Thanks to Luka Gros