We have the 7000 release of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 set up as a Hyper-V guest.
Out of the box, Windows 7 has the Hyper-V Integration Services installed so there is a time savings and a manageability improvement right there. We no longer need to install the Integration Services after the fact.
Not only that, managing and connecting to Hyper-V based VMs while connected to a Hyper-V Management capable Windows Vista desktop via RDP could be a real struggle without Integration Services being installed. Just try to connect to a Linux based VM while in a Remote Desktop Session and see what happens to mouse control in that VM as an extreme example.
The OS definitely installs quicker as a Hyper-V guest than Windows Vista Enterprise does. It is also quicker to boot and reboot.
The one hang-up we did run into was connecting the Windows 7 VM to our SBS 2003 domain.
For Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 RTM we use the following command via an elevated command line:
- netdom join MI-* /Domain:MySBSDomain.local /OU:OU=SBSServers,OU=Computers,OU=MyBusiness,DC=MySBSDomain,DC=local /userd:Administrator/passwordd:*
Note that in the above command line is line wrapped and the OU the system would be deposited in is the standard SBS 2003 OU for servers. We have an OU specifically for Windows Vista and now Windows 7 clients with applicable GPOs specific to those operating systems.
It turns out that the NedDom.exe command is deprecated in the Windows 7 OS. After some searching around, and subsequently asking my fellow SBS MVPs for some direction, the PowerShell Add-Computer cmdlet was the solution.
What we discovered after a lot of struggles trying to get the Add-Computer command to work was that it was broken in the 7000 build of Windows 7!
We now need to wait for the newest version of Windows 7 as the problem will be fixed in it. When the new release of Windows 7 in whatever form that takes is not really clear yet. Once it does, we will post the correct syntax for the PowerShell command.
For now, we need to settle on using the age old method of manually joining the domain and subsequently moving the computer object into the correct OU via ADUC.
Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac!
Hi Phil,
ReplyDeleteHave a look at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324949 - this allows the Users and Computers containers to be redirected to an OU.
Also dsquery/dsmove in a script can move objects either in a batch or at startup using a Startup script, so long as the computer account was given permissions to move the object, or if dsmove was given alternate credentials that had permissions to move the object.
adfind/admove from www.joeware.net is functionally equivalent to dsquery/dsmove but with much more flexibility.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the pointers!
The redirect looks interesting. Though we do use netdom to place servers into their corresponding OU too, so we have not run into this problem on any Windows Server 2003+ version .
Apparently the updated Windows 7 image will have the PowerShell RC that has a working Add-Computer command. So, that will eliminate this hiccup at least.
Philip