Anguel's Techie Blog

The problem: I have: 1. A single physical server which is a Hyper-V host running Windows Server 2012 R2. 2. A single Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials Guest VM running on top and acting as a domain controller. Now I have researched a lot whether I should join the host to the domain running on top of it or leave it in a separate workgroup. There is no best practice but many sources confirm that this is possible and joining the domain offers many management benefits, e.g. here see Option #4: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/11/24/the-domain-controller-dilemma.aspx Now the problem is that after having joined the host to the domain sometimes everything works fine and the host manages to join the domain on startup but sometimes this seems to fail - I think that the join process times out as the DC in the Guest VM does not start up in time. In this case the firewall tells me that the host is connected to a "public network" instead of the ...

This is intended to be a guide how to install Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 ESSENTIALS as a virtual server, i.e. inside a virtual machine (VM). This VM will run on a physical Hyper-V host which will be again Windows Server 2012 R2 ESSENTIALS itself. This type of installation is allowed by Microsoft but they have not included a tool to simplify the process. In order to achieve our aim, we need to modify the original ISO by removing the Essentials Role and Essentials Setup using Microsoft's own tools. DISCLAIMER: To my best knowledge everything described here complies with the MS license terms. It worked for me but does not mean that it will work for you as is. So make sure that you have understood everything and check if each step applies to your system. There is no liability for damages. Physical Hyper-V Host vs Virtual Server (Guest VM) Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials is a very interesting operating system for small businesses. What many people don't know: Microsoft...