Windows 8 Powershell to import exported VMs

So I have a bunch of VM's that I exported from an old environment that I wanted to import into my Windows 8 machine. Using the following powershell command made this much easier then going thru the wizard for each one.

Launch this from the root directory of the VM's to import and it looks for the EXP files and passes them to the import-vm cmdlet to register them in Hyper-V
dir -filter *.exp -recurse | foreach {import-vm -path $_.fullname -register}

ConfigMgr SP2 Secondary Sites

Upgrading a ConfigMgr Secondary site with SP2 can be a little tricky. There are 3 ways that I tend to use to update them..

Secondary Site Upgrade Wizard

Preinst.exe /upgrade

Create a package for Software Distribution
This package needs to contain the downloaded prereqs and can be a little tricky to create. I put all the files in 1 directory and create a CMD file to install

install.cmd
SMSSETUP\BIN\I386\setup.exe /upgrade %cd%\prereqs-sp2

Select a folder to save to...

Function Get-SaveDir()
{
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.windows.forms") |
Out-Null

$SaveFileDialog = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.FolderBrowserDialog
$SaveFileDialog.Description = "Type in a description"
$SaveFileDialog.ShowDialog() | Out-Null
$SaveFileDialog.SelectedPath
}



$SaveDir = get-savedir

ConfigMgr Native Mode Lab

I needed to setup a Lab environment to get a better understanding of how ConfigMgr Internet Based Client Management (IBCM) works. Well, before you can do IBCM, you must first have your ConfigMgr site in Native Mode. So, I needed to setup a LAB for ConfigMgr in Native Mode. I do all my labs in Hyper-V, so if your using a different virtualization platform, your mileage may vary.

Since this LAB will be expanding to a IBCM LAB, we are going to plan for that as we setup the framework.

So lets start with this the Virtual Machines
3 x Windows Server 2008 R2

• DC1 - DC/DNS/DHCP/CA
• SCCM1 - ConfigMgr/SQL
• RT1 - RRAS
  

1 x Windows 7 Ultimate x86

• Win7-1 - ConfigMgr Client
  

Data Recovery Tools

I had a SD card that suddenly stopped working in my camera. I would load it into the computer as well and nothing, no data. See this was not good, because the pictures that I took on here were not only pictures on my neice, but also my sister-in-laws college graduation.

In the past, I have used all sorts of tricks to recover data from bad hard drives (i.e. dd, ddrescue, ...) but I have never had to recover data from an SD card.

In my quest to recover these pictures, I found all sorts of software out there to purchase to recover data. I knew that there had to be a open source alternative and I found it, PhotoRec.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

These guys actually have some pretty neat software for things that I have done manually in the past.

I was able to recover all the missing files from the SD card.

ConfigMgr Reporting Services Permissions, Step-by-Step

I have seen a lot of information out there about setting up permissions on ConfigMgr SQL Reporting Services, but most of them seem to be confusing to me and point to many other locations. I hope to put together a simple Step-by-Step to configuring permissions to ConfigMgr Reporting Services. This assumes that you already have the Reporting Services Point up and running and functioning for your ConfigMgr Admin account.

(NOTE: If you are using Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2, you may have issues accessing the reports. The simple solution is to run IE as Administrator. Their appears to be some issues with UAC and accessing Reporting Services on the same host.)

These instructions will walk you through creating a group with permissions to view and run all reports published to Reporting Services.

Bad NIC Strikes Again!

I have a pretty complex lab setup in order to be able to model different scenarios. The lab consists of 3 host computers each running Hyper-V. Each host have 3 - 5 NIC cards; management, VM Network, iSCSI, Live Migration, and Heartbeat NICs.

In order to allow the VM's to communicate with each other on their own each host is connected to a switch for the VM Network. Well, I have been fighting to setup my domain controllers for the last two days. 1 DC is on host A and the 2nd is on Host B. I was getting some weird timeout issues when trying to join the domain and dcpromo the 2nd DC on host B. I disabled firewalls, change policies, and even rebuild the VM's. Same issue.

So, I decided to run a few pings while I was doing a promo. From a VM on host B, I ran pings to VM's on Host A, Host B, and Host C. I saw request time outs to both VM's on Host A that I was pinging.

I switched my VMNet to a different NIC on Host A and the problems gone... Looks like I need to buy a new NIC. Now that I go back and look at the logs on Host A, I see errors in the logs


Log Name: System
Source: VMSMP
Date: 12/9/2010 12:19:57 PM
Event ID: 24
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: HOSTA
Description:
NIC '/DEVICE/{E7692807-E1EA-4792-8E72-184C01BDCF7E}' is no longer operational, status = 2.





Realtek NIC, you are being replaced ...

UPDATE: When I actually opened the box to look at the NIC, its a Netgear GA311... I have one of these installed in each box. No I wonder if just this one if bad, or if there maybe some issue with this card and Hyper-V Virtual Switches.