Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of A_AmericanELectric
A_AmericanELectricFlag for United States of America

asked on

Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 Local Login and Administration

Hello. I guess I'm missing a major fundamental concept to Hyper-V Server 2012 and I realized it as I was starting to apply it.
I'm dong a bunch of major upgrades and in an effort follow best practices, I'm trying to move the primary DC off the host server and use the (bad ass) host (that I just built ;)) to run Hyper-V Server exclusively .
I got to the server setup and went to configure the network but I knew I would not be able to contact the DC because I was booted to the Hyper-V . In turn, I cannot access the Hyper-V Server when booted into the server GUI. I see tons of content regarding setting up the Remote Admin roles and logging in remotely but I was hoping I was going to be able to use one of my VMs like the DC to login to automatically every time. On the tutorials I see people switchimg from Server Setup to a GUI and it doesn't look like they are using Remote desktop.

I'm building a 2nd server but its not done yet but is a DC on a 2nd physical box and a remote connection required or is there some way to dual boot and have Hyper-V Server  fired up in the background?  If not then I will probably just go through the expense of using the  GUI version of Hyper-V  on a copy of 2012 maybe giving Server 2012 R2 Essentials a try.

"GASP! OMG he's running Hyper-v and Active Directory on the same machine?!" LOL no it is not cool but although I do run my business off of these machines I'm a small business operating from my home and much of this is for my own education and interests.
Avatar of Cliff Galiher
Cliff Galiher
Flag of United States of America image

The free hyper -v server does not have a GUI. Not locally, nor when accessed remotely via RDP. You configure it by Powershell or by using a client machine running RSAT. But the free hyoer-v server cannot be a DC either, as you describe, so it'd seem you are already running an OS capable of a GUI. So I'm not sure where you are getting hung up.
Avatar of A_AmericanELectric

ASKER

Thank you for your reply. Yes I do know that there is no GUI remotely or otherwise. And my intent is to make the first VM the DC. The hangup is how do I walk up to the server keyboard and log into that first VM? How do I start hyper V server 2012 and the VM to login locally? Is server manager my only option from the server itself? From the sounds of things 2 physical machines are required for hyper V server
Two physical machines are not required at all. If you are going to run ADDS anywhere, it requires a full server license. And server standard has 1+2 virtualization licensing rights, so there is no reason to install the free (and GUI-less) Hyper-v server.

As far as "logging in," there is nothing special about Hyper-v here. VMs can run with no user logged in, just like domain controllers run and authenticate users logging into workstations even when nobody is logged into the DC. You can leave the host in a workgroup or join it to the domain after a DC is up. And it caches credentials by default for times when no DC can be contacted.

And just to be clean, this is true with the full server product and the free hyper-v product. So two servers aren't needed either way. The only difference is an easier GUI in the host.
I'm sorry. I just don't really have the expertise to get my question across correctly.I thought it was a good idea to use the free hyper-v server because it was light weight.
 Let me lay out the topology. For
 simplicity:
New empty physical machine with HVS installed and configured. Boots to the non GUI server config.
Now I want to add VM1 AD, VM2 DNS, VM3 IIS, etc..
Q1: how do I set the server settings to the domain that does not exist yet
Q2: do I need to configure remote services for hyper-v on my Windows 7 machine and install the VM's that way?
Q3: let's say I want to administer the domain controller right at the server, how would I log in to a VM at the server?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Cliff Galiher
Cliff Galiher
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Ahh I think I got it. Use the original 2012 license on the server and then remove all roles except hyper v. Configure hyper-v and the Clients then dump the GUI. Then use that special connection to connect to clients ( I can't think of its title but very similar to RDP (can I use that from power shell?)).
Is this all correct.

Sidebar:
I have 5 gigabit  NIC to use in teaming . 3 brand new 2tb 6gbs drives in a raid5 on a new supermicro board with 32 gb ram and a Xeon CPU. Should be pretty awesome,
Planning to go virtual for everything now as long as my hardware will pass through the hyperv bus.
Then I'll try my luck with the vol sharing... SAS?
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
"The volume sharing issue is an entirely different (and big!) conversation. Not even *close* to a sidebar."
LOL understood.

"Honestly, if you're doing this for YOU and it's a lightly loaded system, just keep the GUI.  Unless you're a powershell expert.  Yes, it's adding a LITTLE overhead and overall increasing patching requirements, but for a small install, you'll never notice the performance hit (or gain, if you leave it off)."
Agreed. No need to go down a road just because. I just dont want to miss out on things I should be taking advantage of because I don't know about them but now I know. I will stay with the GUI.
Thanks very much!
One more thing:

I plan to start anew with this new RAID5 array.  Since I can only boot one physical server at a time and I understand that per Best Practices a domain controller should be dedicated. Should I use my licensed copy as Hyper-V Host or DC?
Since I only have on active server for the next few days i would prefer to reapply my curent config which is Physical server is Hyper-V host, DC and DNS. Then I could clone the DC to a virtual
*NEVER* run ADDS and Hyper-V together. In fact, never run any other roles with Hyper-V. And you can't clone a Hyper-V host into a virtual machine. That would end *very* badly.

2012 and 2012 R2 Standard has 1+2 virtualization rights. Datacenter has 1+many virtualization rights. This means that one license covers both the host and (x) number of VMs where x is dependent on the type of license. But either way, one license will cover your Hyper-V host *and* your DC as a guest at the very least.
Cliiff (I hope you're up because I just got back in and ready to do this)
If I have the server setup as only the Hyper-V host and the primary DC as a VM- how will I be able to log back into the server as a domain admin after a reboot if the hyper-v service is not yet running?
Do I need to have a 2nd machine as a the primary?
Are you saying that if I'm running a datacenter host I need not worry about licensing the guests or is there a procedure for that?

p.s. I want to learn how to do this right or I wouldn't be wasting all of our time but the old config has been running for over 2 years with 2008 R2 as follows:

Physical: Hyper-V, AD,DNS (And FTP LOL)
Guest 1- DC2
Guest 2- IIS and ColdFusion
Guest 3- SQL Server
If you want the next post its right here:
ID: 28540174
"how will I be able to log back into the server as a domain admin after a reboot if the hyper-v service is not yet running?". Why would Hyper-V not be running after a reboot?? Even if there was some critical issue that prevented the VM from starting/resuming, windows has supported cached credentials for decades. Regarding datacenter, don't confuse licensing and activation. The VMs are licensed. There are several ways to activate them. MAK, AVMA, and KMS are all options for many servers.