Windows Server

With Windows Server 2019 and Windows Admin Center, we are able to build hybrid cloud in an easy way. First Windows Admin Center provide a GUI to configure features such as Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery or Azure File Sync. With Windows Server 2019, we can interconnect an On-Prem host to an Azure virtual network thanks to Azure Virtual Network ...

These days I’m trying in depth Windows Server 2019. Today I chose to pay attention to Remote Desktop Services. The goal of my lab is to deploy a RDS Farm with all components and with the new HTML5 Remote Desktop Client. Even though I’m running my lab on Windows Server 2019, you can also deploy the HTML5 client on Windows ...

It’s been a while that Microsoft releases new Windows Server 2019 builds regularly. The latest public build holds a new feature called System Insights. It enables the analysis for the usage of some system resources such as CPU, storage and network and build forecasting. Moreover, in specific situations, a script can be run to resolve the incident. System Insights is ...

Dell provides a smart utility to update firmware and drivers in their servers. This utility is called Server Update Utility or shortly: SUU. SUU is an ISO that holds all drivers and firmware for all supported hardware. When you use SUU in a Windows Server, it detects hardware, firmware’s versions and driver’s versions. Then SUU asks you if you wish ...

Windows Admin Center (formerly Honolulu Project) was released in April 2018 by Microsoft. WAC is a web-based management tool to help to administrate Windows Server and hyperconverged cluster. In part of my job, I use primarily Windows Admin Center for Storage Spaces Direct Cluster and to manage Windows Server in Core edition especially drivers. Since the release of Windows Admin ...

The last month, I wanted to change the Witness of a cluster from a Cloud Witness to a File Share Witness. The cluster is a 2-node S2D cluster and as discussed with Microsoft, Cloud Witness should not be used with a 2-node cluster. If the Cloud Witness fails (for example when subscription has expired), the cluster can crashes. I’ve experienced ...

This week I worked for a customer which had issue with his Storage Spaces Direct cluster (S2D). When he restarted a node, Windows Server didn’t start and a bluescreen appeared. It is because the operating system disks were plugged on S130 while Storage Spaces Direct devices were connected to HBA330mini. It is an unsupported configuration especially with Dell R730XD. In ...

Since the beginning of the year, Microsoft is working on a new management tool based on modern web languages such as HTML5, Angular and so on. This tool is called Honolulu. Honolulu is a user-friendly web interface that enables to manage Windows Server, Failover Clustering and Hyperconverged cluster. Currently, to manage hyperconverged cluster, Honolulu requires Semi-Annual Windows Server release. Honolulu ...

Before Windows Server 2016, the alerting and the monitoring of the cluster were managed by monitoring tools such as System Center Operations Manager (SCOM). The monitoring tool used WMI, PowerShell scripts, performance counters or whatever to get the health of the cluster. In Windows Server 2016, Microsoft has added the Health Service in the cluster that provides metrics and fault ...

Fault Domain Awareness is a new feature in Failover Clustering since Windows Server 2016. Fault Domain Awareness brings a new approach of the high availability which is more flexible and Cloud oriented. In previous edition, the high availability was based only on node: if a node failed, the resources were moved to another node. With Fault Domain Awareness, the point ...