Paul Mrozowski's questions

I am trying to enable replication between two servers running Windows 2012 in different data centers. I've configured them for certificate validation over https. When I attempt to enable replication from the source server, when I click Finish it fails with this:

[Window Title]
Enable Replication

[Main Instruction]
Enabling replication failed.

[Content]
Hyper-V failed to enable replication.

[Expanded Information]
Hyper-V failed to enable replication for virtual machine 'MYTESTVM': A virtual disk support provider for the specified file was not found. (0xC03A0014). (Virtual machine ID blah..blah)

In the "Choose Replication VHDs" I see (and have checked) the two disk images, ex. C:\VM\MYTESTVM_12345-aaaa-bbbb-cccc-123456.avhdx

These machines are not part of a failover cluster or a domain.

I'm putting together a Windows 2012 (Standard) server that's sort of a special case - it needs to be an "all in one" appliance. I literally don't have any other physical servers I can use. As part of this, I would like to have this machine host Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) - I need 3-4 clients to be able to connect to this server (and run a Windows 7 VM).

From my testing, VDI requires Active Directory/a domain controller. I actually don't need AD for anything else and it won't be used for anything besides VDI - no other machines on the network need it. Hosting AD, VDI, and Hyper-V all on the host doesn't work.

I can't run the VDI under a VM because it's not allowed by Hyper-V. So it needs to run on the host Win 2012 machine. So that means the AD box needs to be a VM. Except my host machine has to be a member of the domain for VDI.

What are the implications of my Hyper-V host being a member of a domain that is being run on a VM it is actually hosting?

I found this question which is similar, but no real answers about the implications of this (beyond possibly using something like ESX, which is way less than ideal for me).

I have a Windows Server 2012 box that I'd like to be able to host up to 5 TS instances on it. However, it would be ideal if those instances could actually fire up a Hyper-V VM running Windows 7. So from the end users perspective, they would RDP into a server and get a Windows 7 instance.

I know I could configure RDP on my Windows 7 VM and, if the VM is left running, a user could connect to it. However, that only works for 1 client (and only if the VM is running). I need to have up to 5 people connection (and having 5 different addresses wouldn't work very well for them). I am OK with having 5 different VMs set-up to support this.

I've done some searching but haven't stumbled across the right combination of keywords to find anything (heck, it may not even be possible).

Is this even possible? And if so, could you point me to any documentation about how to go about configuring this?

We have an FTPS (FileZilla) server running and a hundred or so clients connect nightly and upload files in the 20-100MB file range. However, there are 1 or 2 that appear to be able to connect, upload the entire file, then the client reports a failure (winsock 10038 error). The file was actually successfully uploaded. I wrote a simple FTP testing client and it appears that small files (10MB) work just fine. Once we get to around 20MB it starts to fail. I tried bumping up the timeout on the client but that doesn't appear to do anything except increase the amount of time it takes before it reports the failure.

We had them reset their router and test from a few machines at their site and the problem appears on all the machines (so it doesn't appear to be related to the machine). We also checked to make sure they weren't running any anti-virus/firewall software.

To make things even weirder, it occasionally is successful - they're able to upload the file and it completes successfully.

Again, the client connects successfully, can upload the entire file successfully, then it fails.

They appear to be running a Netgear router (don't have the model # yet).

Any ideas on what might be causing this?

I have a number of servers that I would like to be able to virtualize using VMWare vCenter Converter Standalone. I've manually added/converted my servers which seemed to work OK. Now I'd like to schedule this to happen automatically nightly.

I was hoping there was a simple way of taking the configuration from the wizard and creating some kind of script from it, but no such luck. The docs are, well, sparse on this. I see that I should be able to use converter-cli.exe with some parameters to point it to an XML file. Are there any tools to help create this XML beyond just using notepad?

Also, while the examples in the PDF manual are OK they definitely don't show you all of the available options. Is there a full list of the options for the XML file available anywhere?

Is there even a manual available for version 4 - all I've been able to find is version 3?

(Edit)

To be more specific: I have a few physical (real) servers. I am looking to use VMWare Converter on a daily basis to virtualize them. The idea is that these virtual images are my backup in case of a hardware failure on the physical server: just fire up the virtualized copy until I can get the problem fixed. I don't have any real budget to purchase software and this looked like it could be a simple/free way of giving me an additional layer of protection.

How are other admins monitoring their servers to detect any unauthorized access and/or hacking attempts? In a larger organization it's easier to throw people at the problem but in a smaller shop how can you effectively monitor your servers?

I tend to scan through the server logs looking for anything that jumps out at me, but it's really easy to miss things. In one case we were tipped off by low hard drive space: our server was taken over as an FTP site - they did a great job hiding the files by messing with the FAT table. Unless you knew the specific name of the folder it wouldn't show up in Explorer, from DOS, or when searching for files.

What other techniques and/or tools are people using?