@flaxking said in Staggering Cost of Azure and Windows on Cloud:

I've heard that GitLab uses Azure in order to test their resiliency

They do, it's caused a bit of outages there.

@tim_g said in CALs: Silly or Not?:

In that example, their authentication could have been done on their AD server (as one example), which is not a web-workload server. That's why they would then require a CAL, as they mentioned.

If their authentication was done on their front-end web-workload server (web server via mangoDB as in the Mangolassi case, i think), then no CALs are needed.

I tend to agree with this as well.

It's kind of hard to help without seeing the playbook/role you created.

@eddiejennings said in Who needs an MSDN subscription?:

@bigbear said in Who needs an MSDN subscription?:

@tim_g said in Who needs an MSDN subscription?:

@eddiejennings said in Who needs an MSDN subscription?:

This thread is inspired by the never-ending thread about licensing and replication in I Can't Even.

I know that developers who use Visual Studio probably get their Visual Studio license through an MSDN subscription. One benefit of the subscription is that you're allowed to spin up Windows servers, SQL servers, etc., for development and testing.

For organizations who have full-on lab environments or IT staff who need to spin up a VM Windows Server VM here and there to try something out, how do they stay in compliance? Do they also buy a MSDN subscription (perhaps MSDN platforms) for the IT staff member? Do they have their IT staff continually use Windows server 180-day evaluation licenses? Do they turn a blind eye as they give their IT staff activation keys from a dev's MSDN subscription and hope their organization is never audited?

MSDN subscriptions are user-specific. To stay in compliance, every person who wants to take advantage of an MSDN benefit, will need to have their own MSDN subscription. They cannot be shared. Any VM spun up under the MSDN subscription cannot be used in any way by another person.

Ah, didnt read the full OP post and assumed it was for him.

However Bizspark MSDN does provide startup organizations with multiple user accounts all for internal use and testing. It is not for production or internal use.

Yeah. It's not for me. I was just musing about the test VMs and such we need to spin up as IT, and I was curious how larger businesses or businesses with test labs license those test Windows VMs. I figured MSDN platforms wasn't used because of [see the above responses], but perhaps truth was going to be stranger than fiction.

Larger is different. Once you are of any size you have enterprise agreements and your labs are just covered.

@r3dpand4 said in Microsoft Removes Storage Spaces Direct from Windows Server 2016:

@tim_g said in Microsoft Removes Storage Spaces Direct from Windows Server 2016:

@scottalanmiller said in Microsoft Removes Storage Spaces Direct from Windows Server 2016:

@darek-hamann said in Microsoft Removes Storage Spaces Direct from Windows Server 2016:

The implementation of an Azure Stack would be something to get our heads around for the time being.

Hopefully it is better than the actual Azure system!

It is Azure, same thing, but you have a physical node on-prem. You pay for the hardware, and you get Azure a little cheaper, but it's fully managed by them.

It's really only for remote places with bad bandwidth imho.

Think like, needing cloud from an 18-wheeler in a remote location.

This sounds like a crappy version of the AWS Snowball

Completely different.

This is like making your portion of the AWS cloud in-house, including the entire AWS stack.

Again, not too useful unless you are trying to bring the cloud to a remote location to avoid excessive latency or to somewhere the internet doesn't exist... like linking it to a satellite connection during a disaster or something.

There are other real uses, but that would be for bigger enterprises... for most SMBs, Azure Stack would never be a consideration.

good article thanks and handy script

Also, in the followup post on the blog they actually do another interesting lab that requires this first bit.

@darek-hamann said in Configuring Windows Server 2016 Core. Part 2: Hyper-V role installation:

@dashrender

This is actually a great article! It simplifies the procedure of installing a Hyper-V role from a GUI free Windows 2016 Core setup.

That's nice, but again - WHY. This is not the way you should NORMALLY install Hyper-V because now you have a license tied to the hardware. I get that there are reasons, but I'm asking what they are.

@dashrender said in Why Does Windows Need Special SFTP Functionality?:

@scottalanmiller said in Why Does Windows Need Special SFTP Functionality?:

@coliver said in Why Does Windows Need Special SFTP Functionality?:

@scottalanmiller said in Why Does Windows Need Special SFTP Functionality?:

@coliver said in Why Does Windows Need Special SFTP Functionality?:

I've found OpenSSH on Windows to be missing some features that Linux has. It may be a Windows vs Linux thing but home directories and jails seem to be both missing. There were some others in the past but don't remember what they were offhand.

Those are not features of SSH. SSH doesn't have them on either platform.

That's fine... but that's one of the reasons we needed to look at a different SFTP server that allowed us to designate home directories and jails for users.

Seems like an odd functionality to want in your SSH server. Why do you want that on Windows?

If you're treating it like FTP, why wouldn't you want those things?

But FTP doesn't have those things, either. In both cases FTP and SFTP are just the protocols, but we are talking about OS functions. Why does SFTP need to be treated so differently from FTP is really the base question.

@jaredbusch said in Windows Server 2016 R2 Preview Has Released.:

Spam account @scottalanmiller

Gene nuked.

@dashrender said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@jaredbusch said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@msff-amman-itofficer said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@jaredbusch said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@msff-amman-itofficer said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@jaredbusch said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@msff-amman-itofficer said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@tim_g

@tim_g said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@msff-amman-itofficer said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

Oh and they provide the hyper v integration as cab file (guest agent):
windows6.x-hypervintegrationservices-x64.cab
I cant belive I complained when VIRT IO Tools was repackaged some time ago and they changed some folders in there ISO image, while MS gives you a .cab file and not even an executable.

What do you mean? What VM are you trying to install? You shouldn't need any integration tools at all for any modern operating system on a VM. They come built in and are updated via Windows Update (if running Windows OS)

If you install RHEL or CentOS, you can download a Linux Integration Services .ISO if you need to. You simply run the ./install.sh file. All other modern Linux OSs already have the Hyper-V Integration built in to the kernel.

This is what i am talking about:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-US/help/3063109/hyper-v-integration-components-update-for-windows-virtual-machines

Method 2: Microsoft Download Center

The following files are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center.

Operating system Update
All supported x86-based versions of Windows 8.1 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows 8.1 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows Server 2012 R2 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows Server 2012 Download Download the package now.
All supported x86-based versions of Windows 7 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows 7 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 Download Download the package now.

Go to the download, and it is all .cab files.

WTF are you talking about. This is not DVD media. You are doing it wrong from the beginning.

Ofcourse I know this is not DVD media, those are the Hyper-V agents that MS wants you to install on your guest machine, MS calls them Hyper-V integration components.

ESXi and KVM Virt IO all provides much better ways to get this installed on your guest machines, and dont provide you a dumb .cab file.

Just because you are not capable of providing a share to get access the files from within the VM does not mean the process is stupid.

Who wants to mount ISO files from the hypervisor all the time just to update software in a guest VM? That is the stupid thing.

Okay, granted what are the commands to create share in Windows hyper-V standalone? I tried and failed, or the only way to do so is to have share outside hyper-V like NAS ? if so both KVM and ESXi can be easier in sending files directly to the host.

I dont want to go to fight about who is the best Virtualization platform cause that is pointless, but my trial wit Hyper-V is everything required 2 extra steps to get it configured. While the competition it can be done with one step.

Why are you trying to put these files on the hypervisor? They have no need to be on the hypervisor. You cannot download them there anyway why are you trying to put them there? The guest VM does not care where they are shared from. Just put them someplace accessible. or even download them directly in the guest VM.

I am not arguing best hypervisor platform. I am simply stating you are doing things wrong and causing your own problems.

I'm guessing that he might be saying that he has no NAS, and doesn't want to create a share from his desktop machine to make those ISOs available to the hypervisor.

ESXi allows you to have a folder on the DataStore that you can then reference. I did this for my ESXi server. Same goes for my XS, I had a local piece of storage on the hypervisor for ISOs.

I don't see an actual issue with this. The biggest one I seem is that you might be using more expensive disk to store ISOs instead of storing them on a NAS.

And Hyper-V lets you access share a folder too. It is all windows, so the admin share is there and active.

\\hypervservername\c$\somefolder

@eddiejennings said in Domaing Joining Windows Servers:

@tim_g said in Domaing Joining Windows Servers:

Seems odd you'd have the least secure systems on the domain, the client computers... and not have the most secure systems on the domain, the servers. With your DC and hypervisor being on the domain, how many times have those been compromised? Do you not update your servers? Do they all have internet access

To my knowledge they haven't been. No. All servers receive Windows updates. Yes.

And I agree, this is odd. This, and so many other things, are being fixed one bite at a time.

Set your firewall to drop outbound traffic from servers that don't need Internet access. Point those servers to a local WSUS server for updates. Allow the WSUS server to get out to Internet. You can set local policy and point servers to WSUS, if they aren't domain joined. That way, servers can be updated but lower attack vector as they cannot get online.

@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server for your home lab:

The more often you are forced to rebuild, the more you will be encouraged to automate.

Can you sysprep before adding the trial license? That way you could just clone and add the license automatically.

In case you have a mix of private and public network profiles use this command.

Enable-PSRemoting -SkipNetworkProfileCheck - Force

SkipNetworkProfileCheck ignores any public network profiles so you can enable remote powershell successfully.

@syko24 free... and useless:

Limitations of the free license:

The free license is limited to five locks per day which means the free edition defends your system against five unique attacks per day. [...] The free license does not contain reporting (like the PRO edition does).

Also, no official support for Windows Server 2016.

https://cyberarms.net/download-pricing/installation-configuration.aspx

@dafyre said in Kooler on DFS-R Issues:

With Starwind's coming Linux release (or has it already been released?)... Would this not be done in a Linux VM? That would eliminate concerns about licensing and such.

StarWind Linux VSA is released

There's no problem to install anything like us into parent partition, question was is it OK to use it as a file server with a free version of Windows