Building the DEC LH AD Workshop VMs

This post goes through the step-by-step tasks for building the four virtual machine images for the DEC LH workshop on Virtual Server 2005 R2. Note that for best performance of the Longhorn images, you should install Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, which is current in Beta form. You can download it from Connect. You have to authenticate using Passport before you can see th VS 2005 R

SCHOOL

  1. Create a VM named SCHOOL and create the associated hard disk. Configure at least 512MB (1GB is better) of memory, since this will be a full LH server install. Make sure the VM has a network card connected to the physical NIC. Using Undo disks would be a good idea.
  2. Mount the Longhorn x86 Beta 3 ISO image on the VM, and boot the image.
  3. Select English language and US English time, currency and keyboard languages.
  4. When asked for a product key, just press Next. This will put the image into evaluation mode, which means it will stop working "after a while".
  5. When prompted for the install version, select SERVERSTANDARD. Be sure and check the box that indicates you bought the version that you select, WHICH OF COURSE YOU DIDN'T PURCHASE BECAUSE ITS A BETA! 
  6. Accept the license agreement, assuming you really do agree to all the terms. 
  7. When prompted, select the "Custom" install, which will format the drive and install a new copy of the OS instead of upgrading an existing Windows install.
  8. When prompted for installation drive, choose drive 0 (assuming you only configured your VM with a single drive). The installation will go off and do stuff for a while.
  9. When the machine reboots, login as Administrator (there will be no password initially). You will be presented with the Initial Configuration tasks application. 
  10. Set the Administrator password to "dec2007", the timezone to US Mountain Time, leave the networking using DHCP, and set the machine name to "school". Leave it as a Workgroup server.
  11. Enable Remote Desktop, allowing conenctions from computers running any version of the Remote Desktop client.
  12. Turn off the Windows Firewall.
  13. Close the Initial Configuration Taks window. Server Manager will appear automatically.
  14. Set the screen resolution to 1024x768x16
  15. Disable the screen saver.
  16. Disable automatic updates.
  17. Install the Virtual Machine Additions from Virtual Server.
  18. Restart the virtual machine. When it comes back up, login as Administrator using the password you specified.
  19. Copy the entire \Workshop directory structure from wherever you shared it to the C:\Workshop directory of the VM.
  20. Run C:\Workshop\Post-DCPROMO.CMD. After doing all its stuff, it will shut down the VM
  21. In Virtual Server, merge the undo disks if any and save the .vhd somewhere.

OPERAHOUSE

  1. Create a VM named OPERAHOUSE and create the associated hard disk. Configure at least 256MB (512MB is better) of memory. Make sure the VM has a network card connected to the physical NIC. Using Undo disks would be a good idea.
  2. Mount the Longhorn x86 Beta 3 ISO image on the VM, and boot the image.
  3. Select English language and US English time, currency and keyboard languages.
  4. When asked for a product key, just press Next. This will put the image into evaluation mode, which means it will stop working "after a while".
  5. When prompted for the install version, select SERVERSTANDARDCORE. Be sure and check the box that indicates you bought the version that you select, and accept the license agreement on the next page.
  6. When prompted, select the "Custom" install, which will format the drive and install a new copy of the OS instead of upgrading an existing Windows install.
  7. When prompted for installation drive, choose drive 0 (assuming you only configured your VM with a single drive). The installation will go off and do installation stuff.
  8. When the machine reboots, login as Administrator (there will be no password initially). You will be presented with the Initial Configuration tasks application.
  9. Use CTRL-ALT-DEL to set the Administrator password to "dec2007"
  10. From the Virtual Server console, install the Virtual Machine Additions. This mounts a virtual CDROM image, but Server Core won't autorun it, so from the command prompt, go to the D: drive, go into the Windows directory, and run SETUP.EXE. When prompted, reboot the virtual machine.
  11. Run C:\> TIMEDATE.CPL, the time and date Control Panel applet. Set the timezone to US Mountain Time
  12. Run C:\> NETDOM RENAMECOMPUTER localhost /newname:operahouse to rename the computer.
  13. Run C:\> NETSH FIREWALL SET OPMODE DISABLE to disable Windows Firewall.
  14. Run C:\> CSCRIPT \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SCREGEDIT.WSF /AU 1 to disable automatic updates.
  15. Run C:\> CSCRIPT \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SCREGEDIT.WSF /AR 0 to enable remote desktop connections.
  16. Run C:\> CSCRIPT \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SCREGEDIT.WSF /CS 0 to allow downlevel RDP clients.
  17. Run C:\> 1365VIDCHNG 1024x768x16x75 to set the video resolution. You can get 1365vidchng here.
  18. Run C:\> SHUTDOWN /r /t:0 to reboot the machine so the rename will take effect.
  19. Copy the entire \Workshop directory structure from wherever you shared it to the C:\Workshop directory of the VM.
  20. Run C:\Workshop> Post-DCPROMO.CMD. The machine will shutdown when it is done.
  21. In Virtual Server, merge the undo disks if any and save the .vhd somewhere.

SHARKBAIT

In this lab, SHARKBAITin a 64-bit full-install Longhorn server. The problem we have is that Virtual Server doesn't yet support x64 guests (where's Veridian?). So for our purposes here, build the SHARKBAIT image exactly as you did the SCHOOL image (with the obvious exception of setting the machine name to "sharkbait".)

DON'T START THE VMS YET! THERE IS STILL ONE MORE CONFIGURATION STEP!

And I'll cover that in the next post.

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