How to Build a VMware v. Sphere VM Template for Windows Server 2. R2 – Jason. Samuel. A co- worker and myself were asked to create a VMware v. ![]() Sphere (ESX) template for Server 2. R2 and it’s not as easy as you might think. Over the course of a day and half and through much research and trial and error, we have come up with the perfect template for our organization. It’s a perfect base template for us but depending on where you intend to deploy it and your own organization’s requirements, you may have to edit it a bit. We intend to tweak the template even further and possibly even create separate images depending on if the VM will be deployed internally or externally. Please do comment if you have any suggestions or think we may have missed something. Building a VMware template for Server 2. Server 2. 00. 8 R2 has some differences. This blog post will cover everything we did to successfully get it working and a detailed explanation of why we chose certain settings. Big thanks to to Jeremy Waldrop and his blog post that described setting up a template for 2. R2. OS Used: Windows Server 2. R2 Standard (x. 64) Volume License Edition. VM Hardware config: Single v. CPU 4 GB RAM 4. 0 GB Primary Hard Drive (for Operating System) 1. GB Secondary Hard Drive (for Page File. LSI Logic SAS SCSI Controller. ![]() Use IE for best view: http:// http:// page missing @ microsoft.com. · A step by step guide to build a Windows 2012 R2 Remote Desktop Services deployment. Part 3 – Adding Session Hosts and Load Balancing session collections. · Hi, Do you mean that the NFS share is stored on a Windows-Based computer and you want Authenticated users access the NFS share? Please refer to the article. ![]() VMXNet 3 Network Adapter. I know most organizations using Server 2. GB C: partition. With 2. I suggest going to 4. GB OS drives as a standard. Server 2. 00. 8 (especially x. Out of the box 2. R2 x. 64 takes up 1. GB. Also Server 2. This is because 2. Remember, Server 2. MS product is all about componentization!! When you install a component from this store, my understanding is that it is “projected” to the OS. So basically Windows 2. As the system receives updates over time, expect this directory to grow even larger since it never deletes old stuff. Think of the different versions of kind of stacking on each other. I believe with each service pack there is a tool to uninstall components that are no longer necessary or superseded. So stick with a 4. GB OS partition and you should be fine for a long time. You will also notice we have a 1. GB secondary drive for a page file. We’ll get to that later in the article. Now on to the actual build: First create a new VMSelect Custom Configuration. Enter VM Name and Inventory Location Select Datastore. Select Virtual Machine Version: 7. Select “Microsoft Windows Server 2. R2 (6. 4- bit)” as OS Version# of Virtual Processors: 1. Amount of RAM: 4. GBNetwork# of NICs: 1. Adapter Type: VMXNET 3. Select “Connect at Power On. SCSI Controller: LSI Logic SASCreate New Virtual Disk: 4. GBAdvanced Options: No Change. Now prepare the virtual hardware: Edit VM Settings > Options > General Section > Uncheck “Enable logging”Boot Options > Check box to force going into the BIOS on next boot. Power on the VM (will go directly to BIOS) > Advanced > I/O Device Configuration: Disable Serial port ADisable Serial port BDisable Parallel port. Exit and Save OS Installation and Configuration. Install Windows 2. R2 Standard – Full Install After OS install and reboot, change Administrator Password (will prompt)Disconnect Windows 2. R2 ISO and set device type to Client Device. Set Time Zone. VMware Tools Install. Install VMtools, choose Custom Install Type. Disable the “Shared Folders” drive and install Tools ** Note we are disable Shared Folder due to profile loading issues which was documented even back in ESX 3. VMware Tools here on the VMare Communities forum. I have not personally had an issue leaving it enabled but just to be cautious and the fact we don’t use this feature in our organization, we have left it disabled. Set time synching between the VM and ESX host. Reboot after Tools Install. Network Configuration. From Server Manager, select View Network Connections. Right click on Local Area Connection and select properties. Uninstall Qo. S Packet Scheduler and both Link- Layer Topologies (Mapper & Responder) ** We don’t do QOS at the server level, our switches do that. Link Layer is not used by us. Uncheck IPv. 6 and close network connection screens ** We don’t use IPv. Server Name. From Server Manger select Change System Properties. On System Properties screen click Change on Computer Name Tab. Set Server Name and restart. Windows Updates. From Server Manager under Security Information, select Configure Updates. Select Let me choose. Under Important Updates, select Never check for updates, click ok. Start > All Programs > Windows Update > Check for updates and install all Recommended Updates. Enable Remote Desktop, choose “Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop” (2nd option)Disable Windows Firewall **Not best practice to disable, but my environment requires it. From Server Manager, select “Do not show me this console at logon” and close Server Manager. Taskbar Changes. Right click 3rd icon from Start Button (Windows Explorer) and select “Unpin this program from taskbar”Right click 2nd icon from Start Button (Windows Power. Shell) and select “Unpin this program from taskbar”Right click Taskbar and choose Properties and choose Customize under Notification Area. Select “Turn system icons on or off”, and turn Volume Off, click Ok. System Performance. From Server Manager select Change System Properties. Select Advanced Tab > Settings and choose “Adjust for best performance”Folder and Search Options. Open “Computer” > Select Organize > Choose Folder and search options. Under View Tab. Select “Show hidden files, folders and drives”Uncheck “Hide extensions for known file types”IE ESCFrom Security Information Section, select Configure IE ESCChange Administrators to Off and leave Users On ** My reasoning for this is the only “Users” should be service accounts on a server so leaving it On should not matter. Change IE Home Page to blank so you don’t get that pesky Internet Exploer Enhanced Security Configuration warning page. Under Computer, right click c: and select properties, uncheck “Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties”Apply changes to c: \ and all subfolder/files. Continue/Ignore on Access Denied errors. Power Options (from Control Panel)Change option to High Performance. Disable Hibernation. Command Prompt, enter powercfg. Delete the Page file and reboot (so c: \ can be fully defragmented)Run defrag. Page File. Edit VM Properties. Add a 2nd hard drive (1. GB) and change to SCSI (1: 0)Run Disk Manager and format as Z: \ drive ** We use Z: as the drive letter so it does not interfere with adding additional drives later on. From Server Manager, select System Properties > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory Change. Assign 1. 02. MB Page file to c: \Assign 5. MB Page file to z: \SNMPServer Manager > Add Features > SNMPServer Manager > Configuration > Services > SNMP > Security. Accepted community names – Add your community (as READ ONLY)Accept SNMP Packets from these hosts – Add your hosts (remember to leave localhost in there)Turn VM into a Template This procedure will copy the Administrator account profile into the default user profile so that all users that login or that will be created in the future will get the same profile with all the customizations you have done above. When you sysrep a server template and create a new VM from it, a new SID is generated which means a new local Administratior account is created during the sysrep procedure. This means all the customizations you have done will be wiped out above unless you copy all your settings above when you create a new VM. In the past with Server 2. Server 2. 00. 8, you had the “Copy To” feature to copy a user profile to another. With Server 2. 00. R2, Microsoft has disabled this feature. It is now done via an unattend.Copy. Profile” node.I actually prefer this method now after doing it a few times.This procedure is detailed per the Microsoft KB article http: //support. Unlimited Terminal Server Licenses 2003 Nba there. Create unattend. xml in “c: \windows\system.NOTE: Do not copy and paste the text below because my website messes up the quotes which will lead to errors during sysprep. Please right click- save as this link and copy and paste from the txt file instead. Microsoft- Windows- Shell- Setup" processor. Architecture="amd. Receive Side Scaling (RSS) in Windows Server 2. Windows Server 2. R2. Receive Side Scaling (RSS) is a technology on a network adapter to distribute network receive traffic to multiple processor cores. By default, only the first single core of CPU handles the network traffic. The single core will be the bottleneck because only 1 single core to handle all network traffic in a server. What's new in Windows Server 2. Windows Server 2. R2 of Receive Side Scaling (RSS)? RSS enables Windows Server 2. RSS allows multi- NUMA node servers, such as web servers, file servers, and servers running other workloads, to scale efficiently. For Direct. Access, RSS allows improved scalability by actively load balancing forwarded traffic. RSS enables financial applications, such as ticker plants and algorithmic trading systems using UDP as their transport, to scale with increasing load. RSS provides applications with an input/output control to align themselves with the stack. RSS is compatible with the Windows load balancing and failover solution. RSS provides administrators with the ability to deploy, manage, and diagnose RSS functioning through standard management interfaces and diagnostics tools. RSS optimally scales all workloads by aligning the networking stack with the kernel scheduler. RSS uses the processor list provided by the kernel scheduler while making processor selection decisions. Quote from Receive Side Scaling (RSS)To use Receive Side Scaling (RSS), network adapters and Operating Systems need to support it. Windows Server 2. Windows Server 2. R2 support Receive Side Scaling (RSS) and enabled by default. We can launch the NIC properties of "Device Manager" to make sure "Receive Side Scaling" is supported by this NIC. Get- Net. Adapter. Advanced. Property - Name < NIC Name> " to check the "Receive Side Scaling" setting of a NIC. Now, we know how to check the RSS settings of NICs and Operating Systems. We can perform some cmdlets to change the settings of RSS. Remark: There is no GUI to configure the RSS settings. The default profile of RSS is "NUMAStatic". Administrators can perform Set- Net. Adapter. Rss - Profile to change to other profile. As before version, administrators can configure the registry to assign the processor for RSS. Staring from Windows Server 2. Set- Net. Adapter. Rss to configure the settings. Perform "Set- Net. Adapter. Rss - Name < NIC Name> - Base. Processor. Number 1 - Max. Processor 2" to update the RSS settings to use the second core processor and then maximum processors to assign is 2. Remark: The first processor core starts from 0. Now, I assigned 2 processors for this NIC for RSS. After changing the processor number of RSS, administrators should need to update the "Number of Receive Queues" of RSS to fully utilize the CPU. Remark: Make sure the NIC supports to update the "Number of Receive Queues". Why do we need to update the processor number of RSS? If Dynamic Virtual Machine Queue (DVMQ) is also enabled on the server, By default, Dynamic Virtual Machine Queue (DVMQ) share same processors with RSS. It affects the performance of CPU and network. Administrators need to assign difference processors for RSS and DVMQ. To update the processors assignment of DVMQ, administrators can perform "Set- Net. Adapater. Vmq"RSS can be enabled on a network adapter that is teamed with another network interface card using NIC Teaming. In this scenario, only the underlying physical network adapter can be configured to use RSS. A user cannot set RSS cmdlets on the teamed network adapter. Quote from Choosing a Network Adapter. More information. This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights!
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