Note: Microsoft has discontinued Remote Desktop Manager (RDCMan 2.7) in March 2020 due to a security vulnerability. Customers are encouraged to use the MSTSC client built-in to Windows instead.
RDCMan is a central place where you can organize, group, and manage your various Remote Desktop connections. This is particularly useful for system administrators, developers, testers, and lab managers who maintain groups of computers and connect to them frequently. I probably spend more time in RDC Manager than any other application during the day.
The previous version 2.2 was last released in May 2010, so this is a very welcome update. Previous versions lacked some functions and caused excessive CPU utilization on some computers, especially those with Nvidia GPUs. RDCMan was written by Julian Burger, one of the principal developers on the Windows Live Experiences team.
RDCMan 2.7 version is a major feature release. New features include:
Virtual machine connect-to-console support.
Smart groups.
Support for credential encryption with certificates.
Windows 8 remote action support (charms, app commands, switch tasks, etc).
Support for Windows 8, Windows 8.1 / Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2.
Log Off Server now works properly on all versions.
Important Upgrade Notes: You should know that when you upgrade, RDCMan will be unable to read any saved encrypted passwords. You will need to re-enter your saved encrypted passwords after installation.
The workaround is to set the "Store password as clear text" checkbox in RDCMan 2.2 for preexisting groups and/or servers. When you upgrade to version 2.7, RDCMan will read the existing passwords and will encrypt them. "Store passwords as plain text" is no longer an option in version 2.7.
Update: I now have a newer 5th generation EXPTA server build using the latest components, including the new Intel I5-4590S Haswell-R quad-core processor, larger faster SSD drives, and it costs $200 LESS! Check it out here!
In honor of the release of Windows Server 2012 R2, I've updated my latest server build using the latest components. You can use this home Hyper-V server to create your own private cloud, prototype design solutions, test new software, or run your own network like I do . Nothing provides a better learning tool than hands-on experience!
My last build used a third-generation Intel I5-3470S Ivy Bridge Quad-Core CPU. My G4 build uses a fourth-generation Intel I5-4570S Haswell Quad-Core CPU and a larger faster 360GB SSD to run active Hyper-V virtual machines. The new components result in a super-fast 7.5 second boot time!
My Design Requirements
This design is a little less cost-focused so I can use the latest Intel processor, faster SSD drives, and a sleek high-performance micro-ATX case. These new components currently add about $200 to the base $1,000 price, but as usual for high-end technology, those costs will go down. You can probably build it for less even now.
Minimum of 4 cores
Windows Server 2012 R2 capable. Hyper-V for Windows Server 2012 R2 requires hypervisor-ready processors with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT).
32GB of fast DDR3 RAM
Must support SATA III 6Gb/s drives
Must have USB 3.0 ports for future portable devices
Low power requirements
Small form factor
Budget: Around $1,200 USD
The processor I chose is the new Intel I5-4570S Haswell Quad-Core CPU. Even though all four cores run at a quick 2.9 GHz, it only uses 65W. The beautiful aluminum heatsink and fan included with the processor keep the CPU running at a cool 25° Celsius (77° F) at room temperature.
As before in my previous builds, RAM requirements drove most of this design. Memory is single most important component in a Hyper-V host. Pairing up a super-fast processor with quick reliable RAM is the key to a good design.
Gigabyte Motherboard - Durable enough to cut a steak on it! J
Overclocking is no longer only used by gearheads and has moved to the mainstream. Most desktop motherboards include self tuning overclocking to get every gram of power out of their rig. I don't use any of these features, even though they're available. I prefer stability over speed - and this server is plenty fast enough!
I've also found that while all SSD are fast, some are faster. Drives with high IOPS provide a noticeably faster computer especially during bootup and long drive operations, like copying ISOs and VHDXs.
This build is more stylish than previous builds, using a sleek high quality Rosewill Slim MicroATX case. Most µATX cases are designed for desktops and, as such, they usually have small 250W-300W power supplies. The included Rosewill 300W µATX power supply works just fine for my build since all the components have low power requirements. Peak power requirements for this build is only 186W, giving me plenty of power to spare. This PSU is also designed to keep the case cool by exhausting warm air at the back along with another built-in 80mm on top of the case.
I ordered everything from Amazon because they had the lowest prices. And with Amazon Primeit was all delivered in just two days. Gotta love that! You can even join Prime for free for 30 days and cancel if you want after you get your gear.
I chose this LGA 1150 Micro ATX motherboard over Intel because it has 4x SATA 6Gb/s and 2x SATA 3Gb/s connectors. It also uses the Intel B85 Express chipset, has an UEFI BIOS, has 2x PCI and 2x PCI-Express slots, and USB 3.0 ports. 3 year limited warranty.
1.5V 240-pin dual channel 1600MHz DDR3 RAM with built-in heat spreaders. Lifetime warranty. 10-10-10-27 CAS Latency. Great RAM at a great price. Each package contains 2x 8GB DIMMs (16GB). Be sure to buy two packages.
120GB SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3) SSD used for the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system. 85,000 IOPS 4KB random read / 55,000 IOPS 4KB random write. 3 year warranty.
360GB SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3) SSD used for active VMs (the VMs I normally have running, like a domain controller, Exchange servers, Lync servers, etc.). Toggle NAND for up to 90K IOPS random write speed. 3 year limited warranty.
2TB Western Digital Green (low power) SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3) drive. Used for storing ISOs, seldom used VMs, base images, etc. I usually configure this drive to sleep after one hour to save even more power. 2 year warranty.
I need 4x SATA cables for this build. The Gigabyte motherboard comes with two black 18" SATA cables. Flat (not L shaped) connectors work best for this build. FYI there's no technical difference between SATA2 and SATA3 cables.
The micro ATX PSU in the Rosewill case has four power connectors for drives, which is just enough -- 2x SATA and 2x Molex connectors. Use these adapters to convert the two Molex connectors to SATA. Be sure to buy two.
Sleek mirror-finished micro ATX case with removable drive bay cage for easy access. Includes quiet 300W PSU, 80mm cooling fan on top, 2x front USB 2.0, and audio ports. Excellent quality.
It took about 90 minutes to assemble everything and take these pictures. The following slideshow shows how I put it all together. Click the slideshow to open the hi-res slideshow in a new page.
The first thing you'll need to do after building your server is install the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system. This will take a total of about 8 minutes from DVD. Amazing!
Windows Server 2012 R2 will install default drivers for all the server components. Next, you'll want to update the BIOS to the latest version and install the optimized drivers available for some components. The Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H motherboard includes a utilities and drivers disk. Pop the disk in and run setup.exe in <DVD Drive>:\Utility\GIGABYTE\AppCenter. This will install the Gigabyte AppCenter utility on Windows Server 2012 R2.
Use AppCenter to download and install the latest drivers and utilities. AppCenter can be accessed using the icon in the notification area near the clock. Select Live Update and choose the following updates:
First half of the utilities and updates to install.
Second half of the updates to install.
It will take a few minutes to download and install the software and updates. You may need to restart a couple of times to complete the installation. Live Update in AppCenter makes it a lot easier to install the necessary utilities and drivers to keep your hardware up to date.
Installing utilities and updates.
My motherboard shipped with version F4 of the BIOS. At the time of this article, the latest BIOS version is F7. The @BIOS utility in AppCenter was unable to download the latest version for some reason, so I went to http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4567#bios and downloaded the F7 BIOS manually, then used the @BIOS utility to install it from the file.
Updating and flashing the BIOS.
Now you can run Windows Disk Management to initialize, format, and label your Corsair 360GB SSD and Western Digital 2TB drives. Be sure to check my article about Windows Server 2012 deduplication to increase your Hyper-V server density. Now you're ready to install the Hyper-V role and start making VMs!
Here's a short video of the beast in action!
I'll be doing a demo of this home Hyper-V server at the MVP Showcase at the MVP Summit, November 17th, 2013. If you're an MVP and will be going to the Summit, please drop by the MVP Showcase to see the server in action.
As usual, if you have any questions or comments please leave them below. I hope you enjoy reading about these server builds and take the opportunity to make this investment in your career.
By default, Windows Server 2012 automatically runs a weekly drive optimization (file-level defragmentation) on all drives. It also automatically optimizes new drives when they are added.
Now that you can install Exchange 2013 on Windows Server 2012 should you disable this feature as part of your server builds?
"The bottom line really is - you do not HAVE to file-level defrag the Exchange database drives. Exchange reads and writes to it's databases in very random fashion. Large sequential reads and writes will see much more improvement from file system defrag than Exchange databases will. But if you really WANT to do it - I would do it the old-fashioned way: move the databases off to some other volume, file system defrag the drive and then move the databases back... Or at least make sure you have a good backup, dismount the databases and file-system defrag them.”
Mike writes,
"Note that it is still not recommended to run disk defragmentation software on Exchange server volumes, but there are times where file level fragmentation can cause significant performance problems on a server merely by the way data is being written to the disk. If optimal and/or recommended settings are not used when creating the volumes, this file fragmentation issue can occur much quicker. The majority of Exchange files are in use so running any regular disk defragmentation programs on the server will not help with this situation. If necessary, the only way to resolve this is to take all Exchange resources offline to ensure none of the files are in use and then defragment the disk to make the files contiguous on the disk once again."
That's Mike's emphasis, not mine.
So, while it's not necessarily going to break anything if you defragment your disks, it's best practice NOT to do it. Especially letting Windows Server 2012 do it automatically every Wednesday at midnight, as is the default. Also consider other workloads that may be running at the same time, such as Exchange backups.
Note that this recommendation normally applies to all local disks on an Exchange server, not just the drives that contain mailbox databases and transaction logs. That's because the SMTP queue and temporary files are written to the same drive where the Exchange 2013 binaries are installed, usually the C: drive unless you've manually moved them to a different drive.
The Exchange product group will be officially adding this guidance for Exchange 2013 server builds on Windows Server 2012 in the near future.
Here's how to turn automatic drive optimization off in Windows Server 2012:
Using File Explorer, view the properties of the C: drive or any other local drive.
On the Tools tab, click Optimize.
You will see that all local drives are being optimized automatically every week:
Click the Change Settings button.
Clear the check box to Run on a schedule, as shown below:
Click OK, Close, and OK to save the settings.
Disabling drive optimization in this way will disable optimization for all drives. It does not disable your ability to manually run a disk optimization on any drive.
Hyper-V 3.0 on Windows Server 2012 offers a new feature called an extensible virtual switch. This feature allows you to replace the Windows integrated virtual switch in Hyper-V with a third-party switch, such as the Cisco 1000V. You can get a quick overview of Hyper-V extensible virtual switches here.
The Cisco 1000V virtual switch provides many advanced capabilities to Hyper-V VMs such as advanced switching (private VLANs, ACLs, PortSecurity, and Cisco vPath), security, monitoring, and manageability.
Best of all it's free to download here! The download itself is for a 60 day trial. I received confirmation from Cisco that after 60 days you have to get a license, but it is free:
Update: I now have a newer 4th generation EXPTA server build using the latest components, including the new Intel I5-4570S Haswell quad-core processor and faster SSD drives. Check it out here!
Over a year ago I wrote an article detailing how to build a Blistering Fast Windows Server for about $1,000 USD. At that time "Windows Server 8" hadn't even been released yet, but I wanted to build a server that would work with "future generations" of Hyper-V. The article proved to be extremely popular and paved the way for many fellow technologists to build their own lab servers.
Now that Windows Server 2012 has been out for a while I wanted to update that article to incorporate newer technologies, like 3rd generation Intel processors and faster DDR3 RAM. I also made some tweaks to my initial server over the year, adding another SSD drive for active VMs and enabling sleep mode on my physical storage hard drive to save more power. I'm including those items in this build, while maintaining the same price point as over a year ago.
Lessons Learned
I modified a few things since I built the original lab server I documented in January 2012. Here are the lessons I learned:
If RAM is king, IO is queen. The two most important things for a Hyper-V 2012 server are RAM (VM capacity) and IO (VM performance). IO becomes even more important as you add more concurrently running VMs, which you can easily do with 32GB of RAM!
SSD = IO. My original design used a single SSD for the operating system and binaries. I soon learned that VM performance was pretty poor running off a traditional mechanical hard drive, even though I was using a fast SATA III 6Gbps drive. I ended up buying another 250GB SSD drive to host my active VMs.
CPU isn't as important as I thought. It's important to have enough cores to share with your VMs, but most of the time my CPU is idling at 10% utilization even with 8 VMs running simultaneously.
Deduplication is amazing! You can increase the VM density on an SSD drive using Windows Server 2012'd built-in deduplication feature.
You can never have enough SATA III ports. My first build used an Intel motherboard with two SATA III 6Gbps and two SATA II 3Gbps ports. I ended up having to buy another SATA III controller when I added the other SSD drive. Better to have at least 4 SATA III ports to begin with.
My Design Requirements
This build has an emphasis on cost. Even though my budget is the same as the earlier build, I have to make it work with two SSD drives instead of one.
Minimum of 4 cores
Windows Server 2012 capable. Hyper-V for Windows 8 requires hypervisor-ready processors with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT).
32GB of fast DDR3 RAM
Must support SATA III 6Gb/s drives
Must have USB 3.0 ports for future portable devices
Low power requirements
Small form factor
Budget: Under $1,000 USD
As before, the RAM requirements drove most of this design. Interestingly, I found that the newer technologies (3rd generation Intel Core I5 Ivy Bridge and DDR3 1600 RAM) actually cost less than the 2nd gen I5 and DDR3 1066 RAM in my last build.
Unlike last year's build, I discovered that Amazon usually has the lowest price for everything. This makes it a lot easier to order and receive since all the components come from one place. This should also make it easier for my European friends since they can source it all from Amazon, as well. Another big bonus is that I have Amazon Prime which gives me free 2-day shipping on all the components. I could even choose to spend $3.99 more to get it next day! I love this service!
I chose this LGA 1155 Micro ATX motherboard over Intel because it has 4x SATA3 and 2x SATA2 connectors. It also uses the Intel H77 chipset, supports RAID 1, 5 and 10, has 4 PCI-Express slots, USB 3.0, and has a great BIOS. See the video below. 3 year limited warranty.
240 pin dual channel RAM with built-in heat spreaders. Lifetime warranty. Latency is 10-10-10-27. Each package contains 2x 8GB sticks (16GB). Be sure to buy two packages.
SATA3 SSD used for the Windows Server 2012 operating system. The package includes the drive and SATA3 cable, an external enclosure, and cables. 3 year warranty.
SATA3 SSD used for active VMs (the VMs I normally have running, like a domain controller, Exchange servers, Lync servers, etc.). Super-fast drive. 3 year limited warranty.
2TB Western Digital Green (low power) SATA3 drive. Used for storing ISOs, seldom used VMs, base images, etc. I usually configure this drive to sleep after one hour to save even more power. 2 year warranty.
This is just a handy cheap addition. It slides into the floppy drive tray of the case and adds another USB 2.0 connector, SD card reader, and lots of other reader slots to the front of the computer.
Mini ATX tower case for Micro ATX motherboards, like the ASRock. It includes a carrying handle and 2x USB 2.0 ports and audio jacks under a small door on top of the case. It comes with a fairly quiet 80mm rear case fan and clear instructions.
Dual 12V rails. Nearly silent 120mm fan and mesh cable sleeving. Includes 4x SATA power connectors and 1x PCI-Express. 1 year limited warranty
Click the video below to hear a description of the parts I ordered for this beast:
It took about 90 minutes to assemble everything and take these pictures. The following slideshow shows how I put it all together:
Once assembled, I updated the BIOS online (very cool - see the video below) and installed Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Edition. Installation took only 4 minutes, 50 seconds! Amazing.
Windows Server 2012 recognized all but two of the computer's components, but some required updating so Windows Server can use their advanced capabilities. Do NOT install the drivers using the setup program on the included ASRock H77 Pro-4M DVD. The ASRock setup programs will BSOD the server since they are written for a different OS. Instead, open Device Manager, right-click the following devices, and update the driver software using the ASRock DVD.
Here are the devices that need to be updated, in this order:
System devices
Xeon(R) processor E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller - 0150
PCI Express Root Complex (Becomes "PCI bus". Requires a restart)
High Definition Audio Device (Becomes "Realtek High Definition Audio")
High Definition Audio Device (Becomes "Intel(R) Display Audio")
Network adapters
Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Standard SATA AHCI Controller (Becomes "Intel(R) 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller". The DVD drive will probably change drive letters after this update.)
Standard SATA AHCI Controller (Becomes "Asmedia 106x SATA Controller". This one is tricky. Restart and press F8 to boot in Safe Mode. Restart again into normal mode. You will now see new "ATA Channel 0" and "ATA Channel 1" controllers.)
Display adapters
Microsoft Basic Display Adapter (Becomes "Intel(R) HD Graphics". The screen flashes during installation.)
Install Intel Management Engine Components from the ASRock DVD
Run <DVD Drive>:\Drivers\ME\Intel\(v8.1.2.1318_1.5M)\Setup.exe
Accept the Intel Manageability Engine Firmware Recovery Agent license agreement
Check for updates. This takes a few minutes.
This will fix the unknown PCI Simple Communications Controller device.
I also recommend that you update the Samsung SSD 840 firmware, which includes better TRIM support:
Click Firmware Update and Update. Reboot to finish the firmware upgrade.
Finally, run Windows Disk Management to initialize, format and label your Samsung 250GB SSD and Western Digital 2TB drives.
Here's a video of the Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V server in action, showing its sub-10 second boot time and VM performance:
I hope this article, slideshow and videos are helpful to you in your quest to build the perfect Hyper-V lab server. This is a great investment in your IT career!
Special thanks to my ExtraTeam colleague, Aman Ayaz. It was his need for a new Hyper-V lab server (and his Visa card) that made this article possible. :)
The following article describes how to use Windows Server data deduplication on an Solid State Drive (SSD) that holds active Hyper-V virtual machines.
Coloring Outside the Lines Statement: This configuration is not supported by Microsoft. See Plan to Deploy Data Deduplication for more information. Use these procedures at your own risk. That said, it works great for me. Your mileage may vary.
A while back I decided to add another 224GB SATA III SSD to my blistering Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V server for my active VMs. The performance is outstanding and it makes the server dead silent. I moved my primary always-on HyperV VM workloads to this new SSD:
Domain Controller on WS2012
Exchange 2010 multi-role server on WS2012
TMG server on WS2008 R2
These VMs took 134GB, or 60%, of the capacity of the drive which was fine at the time. Later, I added a multi-role Exchange 2013 server which took up another 60GB of space. That left me with only 13% free space, which didn't leave much room for VHD expansion and certainly not enough to host any other VMs. Rather than buy another larger and more expensive SSD, I decided to see how data deduplication performs in Windows Server 2012.
Add the Data Deduplication Feature
Data Deduplication is a feature of the File and Storage Services role in Windows Server 2012. It's not installed by default, so you need to install it using the Add Roles and Features Wizard (as above) or by using the following PowerShell commands:
Next, you need to enable data deduplication on the volume. Use the File and Storage Services node of Server Manager and click Volumes. Then right-click the drive you want to configure for deduplication and select Configure Data Deduplication, as shown below:
Configuring Data Deduplication on Volume X:
So far, this is how you normally configure deduplication for a volume. You would normally configure deduplication to run on files older than X days, enable background optimization, and schedule throughput optimization to run on at specified days and times. It's pretty much a "set it and forget it" configuration.
From here on I'm going to customize deduplication for my Hyper-V SSD.
In the Configure Data Deduplication Settings for the SSD, select Enable data deduplication and configure it to deduplicate files older than 0 days. Click the Set Deduplication Schedule button and uncheckEnable background optimization, Enable throughput optimization, and Create a second schedule for throughput optimization.
Enable Data Deduplication for Files Older Than 0 Days
Disable Background Optimization and Throughput Optimization Schedules
Click OK twice to finish the configuration. What we've done is enabled data deduplication for all files on the volume, but deduplication will not run in real-time or on a schedule. Note that these deduplication schedule settings are global and affect all drives configured for deduplication on the server.
You can also configure these data deduplication settings from PowerShell using the following commands:
This configuration mitigates the reason why Microsoft does not support data deduplication on drives that host Hyper-V VMs. Mounted VMs are always open for writing and have a fairly large change rate.1 This is the reason Microsoft says, "Deduplication is not supported for files that are open and constantly changing for extended periods of time or that have high I/O requirements."
In order to deduplicate the files and recover substantial disk space you need to shutdown the VMs hosted on the volume and then run deduplication manually with this command:
This manual deduplication job can take some time to run depending on the amount of data and the speed of your drive. In my environment it took about 90 minutes to deduplicate a 224GB SATA III SSD that was 87% full. You can monitor the progress of the deduplication job at any time using the Get-DedupJob cmdlet. The cmdlet shows the percentage of progress, but does not return any output once the job finishes.
You can also monitor the job using Resource Monitor, as shown below:
Process Monitor During Deduplication
Here you can see that the Microsoft File Server Data Management Host process (fsdmhost.exe) is processing the X: volume. When the deduplication process completes, the X: volume queue length will return to 0.
Once deduplication completes you can restart your VMs, check the level of deduplication, and how much data has been recovered. From the File and Storage Services console, right-click the volume and select Properties:
Properties of Deduplicated SSD Volume
Here we can see that 256GB of raw data has been deduplicated to 61.5GB on this 224GB SSD disk - a savings of 75%!!! That leaves 162GB of raw disk storage free. I could easily create or move additional VMs to this disk and run the deduplication job again.
The drive above now actually holds more reconstituted data than the capacity of the drive itself with no noticeable degradation in performance. It currently hosts the following active Hyper-V VMs:
Domain Controller on WS2012
Exchange 2010 multi-role server on WS2012
TMG server on WS2008 R2
Exchange 2013 multi-role server on WS2012
Exchange 2013 CAS on WS2012
Exchange 2013 Mailbox Server on WS2012
Caveats:
Because real-time optimization is not being performed, the VMs will grow over time as changes are made and data is added. The manual deduplication job would need to be run as needed to recover space.
Since the SSD actually contains more raw duplicated data than the drive can hold, I'm unable to disable deduplication without moving some data off the volume first.
Even though more VMs can be added to this volume, you have to be sure that there is sufficient free space on the volume to perform deduplication.
Here's a quick tip on how to sign out, shutdown or restart Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 from the desktop the easy way. Simply click the Windows Taskbar to give focus to the desktop and press Alt-F4.
Windows 8 presents a dropdown dialog box like this where you can easily switch user, signout, sleep, hibernate, shutdown or restart the computer:
Windows 8 Shut Down Dialog
Windows Server 2012 presents the following dialog box where your can disconnect (if connected via Remote Desktop), sign out, shut down, or restart the server:
Windows Server 2012 Shut Down Dialog
That's a heck of a lot easier than navigating through the charms, especially if your connected via RDP!
I love Windows Server 2012 RTM, I really do. But who's bright idea was it to boot to the "Modern UI" (aka, Metro) instead of the Windows Desktop? There's really no reason for this, so I wrote a PowerShell script that configures Windows Server 2012 with a GUI to boot directly into the Desktop after signing in locally. It does not affect RDP connections - those already go directly to the Desktop.
This is not a hack. The script simply changes permissions on an existing registry key to allow the value to be changed, and then changes it.
NOTE: This script does not work on Windows 8 RTM -- It only works on Windows Server 2012 RTM. Early beta builds of Windows 8 allowed you to toggle booting to the Desktop. Microsoft removed those hacks in the RTM build of Windows 8, sorry. :(
Now simply run the BootToDesktop.ps1 script from an elevated Windows PowerShell prompt and reboot. The next time you sign in Windows Server 2012 will go straight into the Desktop.
The PowerShell script does three things:
It assigns ownership of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Server registry key to the local built-in Administrators group. By default this key is owned by the protected TrustedInstaller security principal.
Full control is given on the key to the built-in Administrators group. By default built-in Administrators only have Read access. Full control gives us the ability to change values in the key.
Changes the ClientExperienceEnabled value from 1 to 0, which configures Windows to start directly to the Desktop.
Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 secure protected registry keys and files using the TrustedInstallersecurity principal. TrustedInstaller is a core part of Windows Resource Protection (WRP) technology. Windows usually assigns ownership of WRP protected items to TrustedInstaller and they normally cannot be modified or deleted. This script overcomes that and allows you to change the value of the ClientExperienceEnabled value.
Since this is really just a simple registry change, you can safely use it in your server imaging process for all your Windows Server 2012 computers. It only needs to be run once per server and affects all users who login to that server.
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V offers a new virtual disk type called VHDX. VHDX virtual disks have many benefits, including larger maximum disks up to 64TB, protection against data corruption, and improved alignment of the virtual hard disk format to work well on large sector disks. See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831446.aspx for more information about the VHDX disk type.
You can convert existing older format VHD disks to the new VHDX format using the Hyper-V Manager console. This process will create a new VHDX disk and copy the data from the existing VHD to the new disk. At the end of the procedure you will have two disks, the original VHD disk and a new VHDX disk with the same contents. You can safely delete the original VHD disk once you have confirmed that the new VHDX disk is fully functional.
Here are the steps to convert an existing VHD disk to a VHDX disk:
Shut down the VM that is accessing the disk, if necessary. You cannot convert a disk that is in use.
Open the Hyper-V VM settings, navigate to the hard drive you wish to convert, and click the Edit button, as shown below:
The Edit Virtual Hard Disk Wizard will start. Select Convert from the Choose Action page and click Next.
Select the VHDX disk format and click Next.
Choose whether the new disk should be fixed size or dynamicallyexpanding. Note that this gives you the opportunity to change disk types from the previous disk type. Click Next.
Select the name and location for the new VHDX disk and click Next.
Review the summary and click Finish to create the new disk. This may take a few minutes depending on the size of the VHD and the speed of your hard drive(s). A 30GB VHD converted in less than two minutes on my SSD drive. The size of the new VHDX disk will be slightly larger than the original VHD disk.
The last step is to mount the new VHDX disk to the Hyper-V VM. Note the new VHDX extension.
Once you have started up your VM with the new VHDX disk you can safely delete the old VHD disk. There are no other configurations necessary.
