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Well on every server or Windows device there is the Internet explorer and prepairing some server workloads you may need some browser and may need to connect to Azure. using an old browser is always an bad idea.

When setting up a new server what ever version it is I always remove the IE icon and install Msedge this works fine and gives me a more secure feeling.

Opening the Azure portal with IE you will see a warning about non supported browser.

With the option to download the Edge directly

The portal still opens in IE but using some functions are not working sample as anything that will use HTML5

Official Download links for Microsoft Edge Stable Enterprise

I’m not 100% sure it’s final but anyone who wishes/wants can test it.

Microsoft Edge Stable Enterprise

X64.msi
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=2093437

X86.msi
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=2093505

MicrosoftEdgePolicyTemplates.cab
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=2099616

MicrosoftEdgeIntunePolicyTemplate.cab
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=2099617

macOS.pkg
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=2093438

Blocker Toolkit to disable automatic delivery of Microsoft Edge
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-blocker-toolkit

So when you want to auto mate this the following lines could be used to install quickly Microsoft Edge

#Create temp folder
New-Item -Path ‘C:\temp’ -ItemType Directory -Force | Out-Null

#Install Edge
Invoke-WebRequest  -Uri "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=2093437" -OutFile ‘c:\temp\MicrosoftEdgeEnterpriseX64.msi’
Invoke-Expression -Command ‘C:\temp\MicrosoftEdgeEnterpriseX64.msi /quiet /norestart’

This will install Microsoft Edge and you can set this in a powershell script and in the GPO that way all new servers will get Microsoft Edge.

 

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Windows Admin Center is a new, locally-deployed, browser-based management tool set that lets you manage your Windows Servers with no Azure or cloud dependency. Windows Admin Center gives you full control over all aspects of your server infrastructure and is particularly useful for managing servers on private networks that are not connected to the Internet.

Windows Admin Center is the modern evolution of "in-box" management tools, like Server Manager and MMC. It complements System Center and Operations Management Suite – it’s not a replacement.

To get started get the latest version from the Windows insiders page.

Windows Admin Center also provides these solutions:

• Computer Management – Provides a subset of the Server Manager features for managing Windows 10 client PCs
• Failover Cluster Manager – Provides support for ongoing management of failover clusters and cluster resources
• Hyper-Converged Cluster Manager – Provides an all-new experience tailored for Storage Spaces Direct and Hyper-V. It features the Dashboard and emphasizes charts and alerts for monitoring.

So the installation is just a simple MSI file Downloaded here https://aka.ms/wacdownload

  

When not using a self signed certificate you can use your own certificate and add the thumbprint to the installation

You can also create your own self signed certificate and use a silent setup

New-SelfSignedCertificate -certstorelocation cert:\localmachine\my -dnsname MVP16core10.mvp.local

Silent setup for Installing Windows Admin Center

msiexec /i WindowsAdminCenter1804.25.msi /qn /L*v log.txt SME_PORT=443 SSL_CERTIFICATE_OPTION=generate

msiexec /i WindowsAdminCenter1804.25.msi /qn /L*v log.txt SME_PORT=443 SME_THUMBPRINT=F377B0BC731AFB1F93558C035155DE148C6214F3 SSL_CERTIFICATE_OPTION=installed

 

After installing and opening the webpage there is a welcome screen. guess we all do the Skip Tour.

 

Adding servers is really easy.  do it manually or import a csv file

Now that Windows servers are added real time info is visible in the portal.

With the extra extensions new features are added to the Windows Admin Center WAC

Currently more and more add on extensions are added to the Windows Admin Center. this makes the tool even more important to use.

https://github.com/Microsoft/windows-admin-center-sdk/

There are some great extensions for Windows Admin center. like the Storage Migration preview or the DataOn extention. Or adding the login to the Azure AD.

In the services wen can add the Azure Active directory. Keep in mind once it set I couldn’t it set back to the local account.

For Connection to the Azure AD you need a little Powershell script download it here : https://aka.ms/WACAzureConnectScript

To allow the Windows Admin Center gateway to communicate with Azure to leverage Azure Active Directory authentication for gateway access, or to create Azure resources on your behalf (for example, to protect VMs managed in Windows Admin Center using Azure Site Recovery), you must first connect your Windows Admin Center gateway to Azure. You only need to do this once for your Windows Admin Center gateway – the setting is preserved when you update your gateway to a newer version.

To connect your gateway, you must run the New-AadApp.ps1 PowerShell script (there is also a hyperlink in the Windows Admin Center UI for this download, which is visible wherever you try to use an Azure integration feature for the first time), which creates a web application in Azure AD with the name "SME-gateway" and registers the application with the Windows Admin Center gateway. This allows Windows Admin Center to connect to Azure resources like Azure AD on your behalf. You can run the script from any computer that has access to the Windows Admin Center gateway and to Azure.

You need to install the AD powershell modules on the Server.

 
Install-Module AzureRM.Resources

Install-Module AzureAD

$cred = Get-Credential

.\New-AadApp.ps1 -GatewayEndpoint "https://mvp16core10.mvp.local" -Credential $cred

The Logon Box will appear and logon with your Azure Credentials.

Now that you are logged on you will see an App registration in your Azure AD.

If needed you need to give the App permissions

Close browser and login into the Windows admin center 

Windows Admin center will ask you for the Azure AD credentials

 

Keep in mind for Connection to the On premise Windows Admin Center you need to have WinRM firewall ports open to the WAC and WinRM enabled. but this is logical. The connection is over a Public IP or better a Site to Site VPN or express route connection.  Make sure your NSG is correct configured.

One on the nice options of WAC – Windows Admin Center is the HTML5 RDP connection. Quick and easy RDP into the VM.

Remember that I installed the extensions Storage migration service. ( this works only with server 2019)

The new Storage Migration servers will be added to the admin center. But optional server features must be added before usage.

the Above are the migration options. Migrate directly all your files to a Server 2019 or Azure Files storage

And on the Windows Server 2019 you must enable the following features.

.

And you need an orchestrator role therefore you need to install the RSAT Storage Migration Server tools

 

After this you can create a migration JOB to move all the files.

A full blog post from Ned Pyle gives in-depth details how to migrate the files 

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2018/04/12/introducing-the-windows-server-storage-migration-service/

 

Next week there is the Windows Server Summit 2018 there will be more info about Windows server 2019 and Windows Admin Center.

Join the meeting!

Get started now

The Windows Server Summit is on June 26, 2018, but you can get started now by joining the Windows Insiders program and downloading the Windows Server 2019 preview. Don’t forget to also download Windows Admin Center, the evolution of Windows Server in-box management tools.

see you on June 26th!

 

 

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In Almost a week Microsoft is hosting a Virtual event:Windows Server Summit This year Windows Server reaches the incredible mark of 25 years in market. If you’re a Microsoft professional, you probably built your career on the Windows platform and we appreciate the trust you deposited on us. The launch of Windows Server 2019 later this year solidifies the importance of Windows Server on Microsoft’s hybrid strategy and now we want to help you take the next step in your career and support you in the journey of either move to the cloud, leverage cloud services on-premises, or evolve your datacenter infrastructure and applications.

Join us on Tuesday, June 26, 2018 for a virtual experience to learn tips and tricks for modernizing your infrastructure and applications—regardless of whether you’re running Windows Server on-premises or in the cloud.

• Save the date
• Sign up for updates

We’re just a week away from the Windows Server Summit. The event will be on June 26, 2018 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time. We have a packed agenda with tons of good content, lots of demos, and excellent speakers.

Erin Chapple, Director of Program Manager and Arpan Shah, General Manager of Azure Infrastructure Marketing will kick of the event with a keynote to discuss what’s new around Windows Server, Microsoft’s hybrid strategy, roadmap, and much more. After that, we dive into the new functionalities of Windows Server 2019 and Windows Admin Center.

 

Learn how to build the future with Windows Server

Explore the roadmap for Windows Server, discover new skills and best practices, and get your questions answered in conversations with the Microsoft experts behind our products.

Hybrid

Learn how Windows Server helps you integrate Azure services into your on-premises environment and how to better run Windows Server in Azure.

Security

Better security starts with the Operating System. Learn how Windows Server helps you elevate your company’s security posture.

Application platform

Containers are changing the way developers and operations teams run applications. Learn how Windows Server helps you modernize yours.

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)

Windows Server 2016 introduced new HCI capabilities that are game-changers. Now, check what’s new around HCI for Windows Server 2019.

Sign up for updates

Get started now

The Windows Server Summit is on June 26, 2018, but you can get started now by joining the Windows Insiders program and downloading the Windows Server 2019 preview. Don’t forget to also download Windows Admin Center, the evolution of Windows Server in-box management tools.

We can’t wait to (virtually) see you on June 26th!

 

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Data Deduplication

Building a File server in Server 2016 isn’t that different tan in Server 2012R2 except there are different options, ReFS, DeDupe and a lot more options. As we start with the basic file server clustered and using ReFS and Data Duplication. This is a common scenario and can also be used in Azure.

Data Deduplication can effectively minimize the costs of a server application’s data consumption by reducing the amount of disk space consumed by redundant data. Before enabling deduplication, it is important that you understand the characteristics of your workload to ensure that you get the maximum performance out of your storage.

In this demo I have a two node cluster a quick create of the cluster. This is a demo for file services.

Create Sample Cluster :

#installing the File server and cluster features

Get-WindowsFeature Failover-Clustering
install-WindowsFeature "Failover-Clustering","RSAT-Clustering" -IncludeAllSubFeature
Restart-Computer –Computername Astack16n014,Astack16n015 –force

#Create cluster validation report
Test-Cluster -Node Astack16n014,Astack16n015

#Create cluster

New-Cluster -Name Astack16R5 -Node Astack16n014,Astack16n015 -NoStorage -StaticAddress "10.255.255.41"

 

Now that the Cluster is in place we can start with the basic of the file cluster, the disks need to be sharable so no local disks.

If you want to build a file server with local disk only then we should use storage spaces direct, I’ll use this in the next blog post.

We add a shared disk to the cluster. Enable the disk and format the disk.

I format the disk with ReFS as this is the next file structure and has more options than NTFS.

The next iteration of ReFS provides support for large-scale storage deployments with diverse workloads, delivering reliability, resiliency, and scalability for your data. ReFS introduces the following improvements:

• ReFS implements new storage tiers functionality, helping deliver faster performance and increased storage capacity. This new functionality enables:
  • Multiple resiliency types on the same virtual disk (using mirroring in the performance tier and parity in the capacity tier, for example).
  • Increased responsiveness to drifting working sets.
  • Support for SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) media.
• The introduction of block cloning substantially improves the performance of VM operations, such as .vhdx checkpoint merge operations.
• The new ReFS scan tool enables the recovery of leaked storage and helps salvage data from critical corruptions.

The disk is formatted and added to the cluster,showing as Available Storage.

Our next step would be Adding the File server role to the cluster.

The question here is is this a normal file server or do you want to build a sofs cluster. Currently SOFS is only supported for RDS UPD,Hyper-v,SQL. Comparing both SOFS and a file server.

SOFS = Active – Active File share

Fileserver = Active – Passive File share

We are sing the file server for general usage.

 

Give your file server a name. Remember this is the netbios name and needs to be in the DNS!

Default is a DHCP IP but I assume you will set this to fixed or make this static in the DHCP & DNS

Now that the file server and the disk is added to the cluster we can start the file Server and add some shares to this

add the file share.

When adding the file share we see this error “ client access point is not ready to be used for share creation”

This is a brand new File Server and already broken ? well no reading this error message it said we can’t access the netbios name

We we do properties on the file server you can see there is a DNS failure. It can’t add the server to the DNS or the registration is not correct.

Just make sure the name is in the DNS and a nslookup works.

When adding the file share you get a couple off options, and lets pick the SMB share Quick option

Get the file share location, this would be on the shared disk in the cluster. if there are no folders make the folder first.

I Give the folder a name and put this to the right disk.

Here you can pick a couple of options and some are already tagged. I this case I only use access-based enumeration.

The file server is ready. clients can connect. Access ACL must be set but this depends on the environment.

Our next step is enable Data Deduplication on this share. It is a new option in Server 2016. Want to know what is new in Windows Server 2016 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/whats-new-in-storage

Install Data Deduplication every node in the cluster must have the Data Deduplication server role installed.

To install Data Deduplication, run the following PowerShell command as an administrator:

Install-WindowsFeature -Name FS-Data-Deduplication

• Recommended workloads that have been proven to have both datasets that benefit highly from deduplication and have resource consumption patterns that are compatible with Data Deduplication’s post-processing model. We recommend that you always enable Data Deduplication on these workloads:
  • General purpose file servers (GPFS) serving shares such as team shares, user home folders, work folders, and software development shares.
  • Virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI) servers.
  • Virtualized backup applications, such as Microsoft Data Protection Manager (DPM).
• Workloads that might benefit from deduplication, but aren’t always good candidates for deduplication. For example, the following workloads could work well with deduplication, but you should evaluate the benefits of deduplication first:
  • General purpose Hyper-V hosts
  • SQL servers
  • Line-of-business (LOB) servers

Before enabling the Data Deduplication we can first check and see if there any savings are by doing this.

Run this in a Command or powershell command where e:\data is or data location that we are using for the dedupe

C:\Windows\System32\DDPEval.exe e:\data

Even with a few files there is a saving.

get-volume -DriveLetter e

To enable the dedupe go to server manager , volumes and select the disk that need to be enabled.

Selecting the volume that needs Dedupe other volumes won’t be affected. It’s important to note that you can’t run data deduplication on boot or system volumes

The setting of the # days can be changed in to something what suite you.

When enabling Deduplication, you need to set a schedule, and you can see above that you can set two different time periods, the weekdays and weekends and you can also enable background optimization to run during quieter periods, and for the rest it is all powershell there is no gui on this.

Get-Command -Module Deduplication will list all the powershell commands

Measure-DedupFileMetadata -Path e:\data

I places some of the same ISO files on the volume and as you can see there is a storage saving.

get get the data run an update on the dedupe status.

Update-DedupStatus -Volume e:

It is all easy to use and to maintain. If you have any cluster questions just go to https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/home?forum=winserverClustering and I’m happy to help you there and also other community or microsoft guys are there.

 

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HTML5

Ready for Part 2 of the RDS setup.  As I did already an step by Step Step by Step Server 2016 Remote Desktop Services QuickStart Deployment  #RDS #VDI #RDP #RemoteApp https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2015/06/23/step-by-step-server-2016-remote-desktop-services-quickstart-deployment-rds-vdi-rdp-remoteapp/

Then I did the Part 1  Ultimate Step to Remote Desktop Services HTML5 on Azure QuickStart Deployment #RDS #S2D #VDI #RDP #RDmi https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/part1-ultimate-s…s2d-vdi-rdp-rdmi/

Where I decided I do a blog on how to build my perfect RDS environment and yes it always depends but some components are just there to use in Azure. I did cover all the basics but currently there are so many options that I thought it is time to build a new reference guide for RDS. Remember this is my opinion. The good or bad this works and yes you can combine all the roles en split them in use the GUI version and use the other product as well.

As Microsoft Ignite is behind us, and as expected the New RDmi (RDS modern infrastructure) is almost there (see Channel 9 https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/OEMTV/OEMTV1760 ). Totally new design If you are using the Azure Components. But this is more like a RemoteApp replacement but what about on premise ? you can build some interesting configurations. The Hybrid model of the RDS farm with the Azure File Sync option. I see great possibility’s  is some configurations. and usage of the HTML5 client. On your own build you can have those benefits also.

Building the RDS on Premise is not multi domain It all needs to be in one domain.  But should you wait if you want RDS ? well then you could wait for ever as there is always new exiting technology around the corner.

Just start with RDS and learn and yes maybe next year your design is obsolete but it will still work. So for now I want to touch the Current RDS build as I see on my old blog post a lot of you are building RDS on premise but also in azure. To build to max scalable Solution you will need to separate all roles. 

But in this case I want to use the option to build a feature reference for RDS and yes this can also be a RS3 or above release(that’s core anyway). I use core Server where I can and after the traffic manager there is no firewall but it would make sense that you use one of your choice. Do use NSG’s for the public networks and or IP’s ! https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/step-by-step-azure-network-security-groups-nsg-security-center-azure-nsg-network/

The basic Remote Desktop Services with HTML5 I build is below. in Part 1

When you don’t have the right performance in your RDS host and you are running this in Azure like me you can always change the RDS host size. Currently I use all BxMs machines Good for making Blog posts and save some costs. and running this with minimal load it performs well.

We have the RDS farm in place and we added the HTML5 client – the Bits are for preview users only there for there is not a dive deep yet on the installation.

But the HTML5 client is the same as on the Remote desktop services modern infrastructure the only difference is that you are using your own RDS setup just the way you always did in server 2016 (see part1)

Now that the RDS site is up and running, we can take a look at the new HTML5 client. Running this combined with the default RDS page makes it easy to test.

The usage is a bit different but I must say it is fast and instead of multiple windows open it all opens in just one tab with sub icons. in the browser.

As you can see a lot of sub icons in the bar but there is only one tab open. In this case there is more offloading to the RDS host. With using less local compute power.

So you can use less heavy clients and work faster & better

All the Explorers are combined to one single icon. (Everything is running in the back ground)

All the applications that started more than once are combined in the upper bar

So Connection is made on just the same method.

 

the web client is added to the RDS site and if you want to make this page default you can easy change this.

In the HTTP redirect use the webclient.

A nice option is that publishing the RDP client it opens also in the Tab and Checking the Memory usage.

It is less than expected, this is on the client. and still We have some applications open.

On the back ground (RDS server) you can see all the processes are there. And running the 32 bit Internet explorer eating memory.

 

Above the task manager of the RDS host the first is the HTML5 usage and the second is the default RDS usage.

below all the icons on the taskbar instead of one browser tab.

See the load on the local machine based on the above workload.

 

That is all for now In the next part I’ll show you more on deployment and the RD modern Infrastructure.

 

 

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