Everything-Virtual

Category: Windows 2012 R2

  • Condusiv Technologies V-locity 5 Testing

    I have been running the Condusiv Technologies V-locity 5 software on a couple of test machines in my home lab over the last couple of days, alongside those VMs I also ran a couple of VM’s with the older V-locity VM product to see how performance differed.

    Testing on both products still takes a few days but there are a couple of differences in how the performance data is presented at the end of the test.

    In the previous version you ran a Benefit Analysis Report to show you before and after information which generated a nice PDF that you could save, this PDF gave you a page full of information that made for very easy reading.

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  • Condusiv V-locity 5 Testing

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    Nearly two years ago I was given the opportunity to take out the Condusiv Technologies V-locity VM version 4 product for a spin in my home lab, the results were pretty positive and certainly something I would suggest to anyone running a Windows estate to investigate.

    Move forward a couple of years and I was contacted by their technical director after having filled out an online questionnaire, he remembered my blog articles and wondered if I wanted to take the new version of V-locity 5 out for a spin to see how it compared, V-locity 5 now combines both the V-locity VM and V-locity Server products under one product banner.

    V-locity is an I/O reduction software solution that increases application performance in virtual, physical and cloud environments by 50% or more without the cost of additional hardware

  • Dramatically Faster Application Performance
  • Target Applications
  • Performance Validation
  • Seamless Deployment and Management (more…)

  • 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 SCCM 2012 R2 – Pre-Requisite Installs Part 2

    In Part 1 of this multi-part post I detailed the Active Directory requirements for installing SCCM 2012 R2, in this post is the SQL Installation. In my lab I am going to be running this from an already existing SQL 2012 instance and I just needed to add the Reporting Services component to my installation, however the installation routine for adding the Reporting Services is somewhat similar for a new SQL installation and where it’s different I will let you know.

    I know I said that Part 2 would contain the Windows OS requirements for the SCCM 2012 R2 installation but this has proven to be a bit longer than I expected.

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  • Installing the Home Lab – Installing vCenter 5.5 on Windows 2012R2

    This post will detail all the steps required to install vCenter 5.5a on to a Windows 2012R2 guest machine, I should add that at the time of writing 2012R2 isn’t on the supported OS list and that there is an additional step that needs to be done to ensure that the installation succeeds first time.

    You will need to get a copy of OCSetup.exe because for some insane reason Microsoft dropped the use of it in Windows 2012R2 (it’s present in 2012). As a side note you can also use a copy of the file from Windows 2008R2 if you don’t have 2012 available. Once you have a copy place it in the C:\Windows\System32 folder.

    29-09-2013 00-06-5129-09-2013 00-08-0229-09-2013 00-09-04

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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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