Magnus's questions

So today was RTM of Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials released. I immediately tried to do an in-place upgrade of an existing RTM 2012 Essentials to RTM 2012 R2 Essentials, but get:

Windows Server 2012 Essentials cannot be upgraded to Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials. You can choose to install a new copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials instead, but this is different from an upgrade, and does not keep your files, settings, and programs. You’ll need to reinstall any programs using the original installation discs or files. To save your files before installing Windows, back them up to an external location such as a CD, DVD, or external hard drive. To install a new copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials, click the Back button in the upper left-hand corner, and select “Custom (advanced)”.

This seems a bit odd, is this really the case? I can't find anything in the official documentation stating that this upgrade isn't possible.

I have setup a Windows Server 2012 Essentials guest to run on a Hyper-V host (Windows Server 2012).

A physical HDD (spinning rust) is setup as pass-through to the guest, but it's incorrectly identified as a SSD on the guest (as seen in the drive optimization dialog).

How can I correct this so Windows optimizes its settings for spinning disks?

Well, title more or less says it all. Is it possible?

One of my Windows Server 2008 R2 server has started to go into System Recovery Options at reboot. I have tried to let it go through a System Image Recovery, which it says completes successfully. But after reboot it again wants to do a system recovery.

Safe mode doesn't work; it still wants to do a system recovery. Putting in the install DVD trying to do a repair actually brings up the very same System Revoery dialog again. Nothing has changed configuration wise.

Any ideas?

I have a standalone (non-domain) Windows Server 2008 R2 that I need to securely access using RDP from the public internet. I want to access it using the standard 443 SSL port, since other ports are most likely blocked within corporations and schools etc.
So I read about the Remote Desktop Gateway (former known as the Terminal Services Gateway). All the examples I have stumbled upon relies on a dedicated server for this role, gatewaying the traffic to the request server within the intranet.

So, can I install the Remote Desktop Gateway role to this standalone server without any issues? Essentially, it will then acting a a gateway for itself. I am planning on registering a dedicated host name, such as rd.domain.com (this would also be used to purchase a SSL certificate) that the gateway will use. On the RD client, this would be the gateway name, and the actual remote server name would be the computer name of the server

Will this work?

On my Windows Server 2008 R2 w. the Hyper-V role, I have these guest VMs:

• 3 x Windows Server 2008 R2
• 2 x Windows Server 2003 x86
• 2 x Windows 7 x64
• 1 x Windows XP Pro x86

In general, all machines are very fast and responsive. However, the Windows XP Pro guest is very sluggish. It can take up to 2 minutes to connect to the console/or a RD session. Sometimes it can "go into sleep" for several minutes. I have tried to add a 2nd CPU and more memory, but it doesn't help. When the issue happens, it's more or less impossible to get a responsive Task Manager up to analyze which process is hogging the CPU. But I have noticed that it can be various processes; lsass.exe, crss.exe etc.

Integration Services is installed. Microsoft Security Essentials is installed, but I have tried without it, no difference.

Any ideas?

I have a box with 8GB RAM and a Quad Xenon processor and I'm planning to use this as my development server. On this, I want at least 3-4 virtual instances consisting of 1 SQL Server 2008, 1 or 2 SharePoint Server 2007 servers, 1 or 2 misc servers and/or XP/Vista/7 client instances for testing.

Now, since I also do some AD development, and I need SharePoint AD import functionality, I must also have a domain controller.

So my question is, should I set up my box with:

A)

• Host: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
• Guests: DC, SQL , SharePoint etc.

or

B)

• Host: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 running as DC with Hyper-V role
• Guests: SQL, SharePoint etc.

Any thoughts on this?

I have started to get various login attempts from different IP addresses. How can I block these IP addresses in the Windows Server 2008 Firewall?

For my ISV I'm using SmarterMail on my VPS. Everything works fine, except the fact that the SmarterMail service is very memory hungry. Right now it is setup to handle 2 domains and a handful accounts, and it allocates 250 MB. From my point of view it's a little bit too much. The SmarterMail service is by far the most memory hungry process on my VPS right now. And I run a handful of IIs app pools and SQL Server.

Can anyone recommend a good alternative?

Requirements:

• Runs on 64bit Windows Server 2008
• Can handle DKIM/DOmainKeys
• Reasonable easy to set up
• IMAP support

I'm having problems with a MOSS setup that after an incremental crawl, the search results will get corrupted. Troubleshooting it further using the search web service, the resulting XML looks like this:

 <ResponsePacket xmlns="urn:Microsoft.Search.Response">
  <Response domain="QDomain">
  <Range>
    <StartAt>1</StartAt> 
    <Count>20</Count> 
    <TotalAvailable>34</TotalAvailable> 
    <Results>
      <Document xmlns="urn:Microsoft.Search.Response.Document">
        <Action>
          <LinkUrl /> 
        </Action>
        <Properties xmlns="urn:Microsoft.Search.Response.Document.Document">
          <Property>
            <Name>RANK</Name> 
            <Type>Int64</Type> 
            <Value>1000</Value> 
          </Property>
        </Properties>
      </Document>
      <Document xmlns="urn:Microsoft.Search.Response.Document">
        <Action>
          <LinkUrl /> 
        </Action>
        <Properties xmlns="urn:Microsoft.Search.Response.Document.Document">
          <Property>
          <Name>RANK</Name> 
          <Type>Int64</Type> 
          <Value>1000</Value> 
        </Property>
      </Properties>
    </Document>
...
...
...
...
...

    </Results>
  </Range>
  <Status>SUCCESS</Status> 
  </Response>
</ResponsePacket>

In other word, it says it can find 34 hits, but returns blank data. Doing a reset of the search content, a full crawl, everything works for a day or so, then it gets corrupted again. Full crawl at 02:00, incremental crawl every 20 minutes, MOSS v12.0.0.6300 on Win2003 x86. The crawl log files says nothing of interest.

Anyone has any ideas?