Everything-Virtual

Category: Microsoft

  • Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 – Installing SCCM 2012 R2 and CU4

    In the first three posts of my SCCM 2012 R2 posts I covered the Active Directory, SQL and Windows requirements to install Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 in a lab environment.

    SCCM 2012 R2 Pre-requisite installs part 1 Covered Active Directory and Schema Extensions
    SCCM 2012 R2 Pre-requisite installs part 2 Covered SQL 2012 Additional Feature Installs (Reporting Services)
    SCCM 2012 R2 Pre-requisite installs part 3 Covered the Windows 2012R2 Requirements for SCCM 2012 R2, this includes IIS, WSUS and ADK

    In part 4 I cover the installation of SCCM 2012 R2 and the recently released Cumulative Update 4 (CU4).

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  • Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 – Pre-Requisite Installs Part 3

    In the first two posts on this multi-part blog post about installing Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 I covered the pre-requisites for Active Directory and SQL Server (Reporting Services). In Part 3 I am covering the requirements for the Windows OS for the SCCM 2012 R2 Site Server.

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  • Microsoft SQL 2012 Installation Video for SCCM 2012 R2

    Quick video to show a SQL 2012 Installation to use with SCCM 2012 R2

     

    Microsoft SQL 2012 Installation Video for SCCM 2012 R2 from Everything-Virtual.com on Vimeo.

  • Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 – Pre-Requisite Installs Part 1

    With an ever expanding Windows estate in my lab (and being a former Microsoft SCCM Engineer) I decided that rather than downloading Microsoft patches to every single server in my lab I would install SCCM 2012 R2 and utilise a single source for my downloads. Now sure I could have just gone down the WSUS route but as I haven’t actually played with SCCM 2012 (or R2) I decided to have a play with that instead.

    The next couple of blog posts are going to detail the installation of the pre-requisites for SCCM 2012 R2 (Active Directory, SQL and the SCCM Host Pre-Reqs) as well as the actual SCCM 2012 Installation.

    For obvious reasons I am going to use a couple of posts as this isn’t a simple double click to install.

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  • Installing the Home Lab – VMware Certificates – Part Two

    In the first post in this series we installed the Windows 2012 R2 Root Certificate Authority. This, the second in a series of posts details the configuration of the VMware specific Template and the distribution of the Root CA Certificate.

    VMware Cert Template Creation

    22-11-2013 15-47-26

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  • Installing the Home Lab – VMware Certificates – Part One

    The following post, the first in series of posts, details the installation and configuration of a Windows 2012R2 Enterprise CA to be used with a VMware Infrastructure Home Lab.

    It is assumed at this stage that you have a single host installed and are running a Windows Domain controller.

    As this is a home lab I have chosen to install the CA on to my Domain Controller rather than a dedicated server but if your environment is capable of running a dedicated CA VM then please do so.

    The installation can be carried out either using a PowerShell script or by using the Microsoft Wizard. I have only documented the PowerShell method here but you can use the Wizard if you want instead.

    Use the PowerShell script below to install the CA and Web Enrolment roles.

    Add-WindowsFeature ADCS-Cert-Authority, ADCS-Web-Enrollment -IncludeManagementTools

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  • Microsoft drops the bomb about TechNet Subscriptions

    Microsoft dropped the bomb last night about the retiring of the TechNet Subscription service from the 31st of August 2013 with the added news that subscribers may still activate purchased subscriptions up until the 30th of September 2013.

    I for one have been a big champion for the yearly subscription service from Microsoft and in fact have petitioned VMware to bring back their VMTN offering a while ago so this announcement comes as a big disappointment Sad smile

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  • VMware Converter 5 Error – No Source Disk

    During a recent VMware Converter P2V conversion I ran across an issue where I was getting an error and the conversion process would fail to obtain hardware information from the source machine. I could install the client just fine but once installed it didn’t see the local disk.

    image

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  • Slipstreaming SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 2

    As I mentioned in a previous post I have decided to refresh my home lab to running Windows Server 2012, part of the installation requirements was installing SQL Server 2008 R2 into the new 2012 environment, easy you may think however it’s not as simple as that because whilst trying to install SQL 2008 R2 RTM I had the following screen appear.

    image

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  • Desktop Operating Systems – I moved away from Windows to Ubuntu 12.04

    In my last post I mentioned that I had looked at alternatives to Windows as I wasn’t happy with the direction that Microsoft have taken with Windows 8, don’t get me wrong I really like Windows 7 and think that it’s a great OS but Windows 8 left a lot to be desired where laptop\desktop OS’s were concerned. The last blog post highlighted some issues I was having with the installation of Ubuntu 12.04 taking way too much time and leaving me with a black screen at boot up.

    Move forward a couple of weeks and I have now been running Ubuntu 12.04 in a stable environment with the same hardware as before, this time however what’s changed is that NVidia had released a new driver which made my system way more stable and for the last two weeks I have been happily using Ubuntu as my main OS of choice, sure there are things I miss from my Windows days (SnagIt and Camtasia Studio as well as not being able to play Battlefield 3) but as a whole the experience hasn’t been as bad as it could have been. In addition to the now working NVidia driver my installation times have also drastically reduced down from the many hours I experienced for the first couple of days to about 15 minutes (thank you 50mb cable connection Smile).

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