Windows Server 8 beta Review

Microsoft released Windows server 8 beta this
month first week
They were infact talking about this from last year....

Great, but being a system admin i really wonder why OS vendors especially MS building new Operating systems every time, while I plan certification & tryto learn maximum possible features of existing version?. i am not yet tried many features of windows server 2008 R2 itself except in some LAB training sessions.

Whatever,2 weeks back i could test windows server 8 beta & I was thinking to write a review here.

Domain Administrator account got disabled

What you do if Domain administrator account is disabled & unable to login.

1. Try login with an alternate domain admin account if you have.

2. Else restart DC in safe mode with networking, login with same administrator ( it allows you with same password), open Command prompt & execute below command

net user administrator /active:yes

3. Now restart & verify

How to perform Checkdisk on a clustered disk

1. install KB903650 for extended maintenance mode if its not windows 2003 SP2.

2. If quorum - change the quorum drive destination ( KB280353)

3. Bring entire cluster group offline

4. Only bring corresponding drive resource onlne.

5. run command - cluster.exe . res "%disk_name%" /maint:on

6. perform chkdsk for specified %disk_name%

7. run command to bring the disk out of extended maintenance mode - cluster.exe . res "%disk_name%" /maint:off

instead of on you can use 1, for off 0.

SERVER CORE – HOW YoU Manage ??

Limited functionality for specific scenarios

Time zone, to change

Control timedate.cpl

Keyboards and/or language, to change

Control intl.cpl

Set Administrator Password

CTRL+ALT+DEL and click Change password

net user administrator *

If cluster issues due to disk level problems

1. Use default tools (disk management, perfmon,eventviwer,chkdsk etc) to analyze if any disk issues
2. Verify if any multipath issues - use disk management,MPIO drivers,iSCSI configuration
3. Disable cluster disk driver from device manager ,restart server & verify if disk visible in disk management.Restart server & re-enable cluster disk driver to troubleshoot further.
4. If disk signature specific errors in eventviewer ,Note down the signature for each disk,Restore it using DumpCFG ( windows 2003) or Diskpart - device ID (in windows 2008)