Today, after finishing up a test migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008, I deleted the SBS 2008 VM from the ESXi server to free up space for a real migration – but first, I used the built-in Windows Backup to make a one-time backup to a shared folder on my workstation via UNC path.

Then I got to thinking: This is as good a time as any to check out restoring SBS 2008, so let’s give it a go.

There are plenty of walkthroughs with screen shots on the web, so I won’t bother with that, I just want to comment on the process and give a brief overview for those who don’t need the screenshots and would rather just go through it with a few pointers.

First, I created a new VM with the same virtual disks, processors, and memory as the original. I suppose these could have been different sizes, as long as they were enough to cover it – but I didn’t test that.

Then, I attached the SBS 2008 DVD ISO image to the VM, set it to boot into the BIOS on first boot, and fired it up. Why did I set it to boot into the BIOS? Well, for two reasons actually. First, the time and date on the freshly created VM is often incorrect. In this case, the time was 1:30pm on the 24th. When I fired up the VM, it thought the time was 9:30pm. 8 hours wrong. SBS gets annoyed about things like that. The second reason was so that I could adjust the boot sequence.

Everything properly adjusted, I rebooted the VM and it started the SBS setup sequence.

At the proper junction, I told it to run a repair. I further told it to restore from backup. Here is where it got a little strange. It wanted me to select an operating system to repair, but there was none. I clicked the Next button and was rewarded with the option to do a Complete Windows PC Restore. Clicked that, and it looked around for a local backup device, didn’t find one. the available buttons were Retry, Cancel. At this point I started to despair, thinking MS had made an assumption about the backup device being local. Still, I clicked the Retry button first (more of the same), then the Cancel button on the third go-round.

The Cancel button turned out to be the right answer, because then there was an option for “Restore from a different backup”. Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere. Clicked the Next button. Was presented with a listof available backups. An empty list.

Man, if I had a lot of customer data and billable time invested in this, I would be on a serious emotional rollercoaster by now. MS could have presented this better. Still, there was a ray of hope: An Advanced button. I clicked it.

In the Advanced screen, there was an option to “Search for a backup on the network”. Bingo. Clicked that, confirmed the security warning, and Windows fired up the network stack.

Windows then prompted me for the location of the backup. I expected some trouble here, because the storage location was a UNC path to a workstation in a different subnet, on an XP machine attached to a non-trusting domain. However, my pessimism was unwarranted. MS got this one right. I was able to specify the UNC path to the machine (I used the IP address because I had no name resolution mechanism in place). It popped up an authentication dialog box and I was able to supply domain credentials, but it failed to connect to the workstation. I tried this a couple of times, just in case I had typed something wrong, but then I realized that I had fired up the VM in a network that had no DHCP server online. Well, that won’t work out really well, will it? I edited the VM settings and swapped it over to the network subnet that did have a DHCP server running, rebooted, and tried again. It worked much better that time. How about that? Anyway, once I got over that little hump, I was able to specify the full path to the storage location, and it found the backup.

From there it was pretty uneventful, which in itself is saying something positive for the process. I went and did some other things while waiting for the restore process to finish. Came back after a while and it was done. Rebooted the machine, and I had a fully functional SBS 2008, complete with users, data, configurations, etc. All was good. Didn’t have to re-activate, didn’t have to reboot to finish installing hardware.

Overall, not a bad process. Way better than loading a complete OS, booting into Directory Services Restore Mode, and restoring the backup right over the top of the freshly loaded OS that took so long to build.

Maybe there’s something to this SBS 2008 and Windows Backup thing.

Update: I ran this again with smaller disks (still larger than the 60gb requirement for SBS2008, but smaller than the original disks by 5gb). Way above the actual data size. It failed. Apparently it can’t resize on the fly, like Symantec Ghost has been able to do since the turn of the century. Sigh. Well, you can’t have everything. I guess this is likely to be a side effect of block level backups. Still, Storagecraft ShadowProtect can do this as of version 3.3, and they’re using the same VSS and block-level backup technology. Their restore operation is way different though.

Tags: backup, ESXi, SBS 2008

I just spent some time wrestling with an HP Color Laserjet 2600N printer on SBS2008.
The workstation was XP Pro SP2 x32.
The driver was for Vista x64, downloaded from HP (closest I could get).

The symptom: The driver loaded fine on the server and workstation. Server could print OK. When workstation printed, the job would stick in the queue and not go to the printer, and could not be deleted except by stopping the spooler and deleting the files from the spooler folder. When I restarted the print spooler service without deleting the files, the job would then go to the printer.

The solution: Disable bi-directional support in the printer driver on the server.

Tags: Laserjet 2600N, Print Spooler, SBS 2008

In SBS2003, if a DHCP server is detected, it simply does not install/configure DHCP. No worries, we can do that later.

In SBS2008, when you run the “CTIW” (Connect To the Internet Wizard), and it finds a DHCP server, it refuses to go forward until you have disabled it on whatever is handing out addresses.

You get three buttons: Manage Router, Postpone, and Continue.

If you click Manage Router, it brings up a web browser with the IP address of the DHCP server, so that you can log into it and turn DHCP off (it assumes a web-based management interface).
If you click Continue, it checks again and brings you back to this screen if you have not disabled DHCP.
If you click Postpone, it brings up an error page telling you that the Internet connection is incomplete.

So SBS2008 wants very badly to be the king of its own little DHCP world.

Of course, the way around this is to temporarily disable DHCP on your other device, run the wizard, disable it on SBS2008, and re-enable it on your device.

If the DHCP Server it finds is your old SBS2003 server during a migration, then here is what you should do:
1. On the SBS2003 server, run this at a command prompt:
netsh dhcp server export c:\dhcp.data 192.168.0.0  (substitute your internal network subnet)
This saves your DHCP database to a file o the root of C on your old SBS server.
2. Copy that file to C:\ on your SBS2008 server.
3. Stop and disable DHCP on your old SBS server.
4. On the SBS2008 server, enable and start the DHCP service.
5. On the SBS2008 server, run this at a command prompt:
netsh dhcp server import c:\dhcp.data 192.168.0.0  (substitute your internal network subnet).

Tags: CTIW.exe, dhcp, Manage Router, SBS 2008

 Special thanks to Drevlan for the heads-up on this.

These special product keys are provided by Microsoft for use in unattended answer files, or for switching your server from a MAK setup to a KMS setup, if you have either of those scenarios going on. More about that can be found here.

These Operating Systems provide functionality in the setup GUI to skip the product keys during setup, and provide it later. However, when you are doing an unattended setup, it will not allow you to skip the product key (whose idea was that?!).

You can use these keys during unattended setup, and then replace them later by clicking a link in Activation GUI, and entering your own keys at that time. Then you can activate against a KMS, or Microsoft, or whatever setup you’re using.

The “Windows Server 2008″ key can be used for SBS 2008 - specifically, in the OS-level answer file – not the one generated by SBSAFG. In conjunction with the SBS answer file, your SBS 2008 installation can be 100% unattended, “from Boot to Welcome“.

These keys are specifically mentioned for use with unattended setup answer files, although the ones above will probably do the job as well.

Tags: answer file, deployment, from boot to welcome, Product Keys, SBS 2008, unattended, vista

Yeah, it’s old news that SBS2008 setup can be done “unattended” with an answer file. Just run SBSAFG from the DVD, fill in the blanks, save the file to removable media, attach it to the target server, put the DVD in, turn it on, and…

Wait, what’s up with all of these prompts? I thought this was supposed to be unattended?

Well, yes, the SBS wizard portion is unattended, but you still have to go through the OS setup. You see, MS tried really hard to make the transition from OS install to SBS configuration seamless. What they really did, however, was remove the ability for us to make any fine adjustments after the OS load and before SBS installation. For example, partitioning and formatting additional disk volumes.

Anyway, the end result is that the SBSAFG generates an answer file that answers the SBS questions, but not the OS load questions.

Generating an answer file for the OS load is not nearly as simple as double-clicking an executable and filling out a structured form. It’s not even as simple as it was in 2003, where you could extract and run sysprep to generate an answer file, and then use a text editor to fill in the missing bits, with simple, easy to understand formatting.

Now, you need to download a huge program, install it, copy an even larger file from your installation media, catalog it, choose your OS version and type, start an answer file, add some things to various stages of setup, fill in the blanks, and then save the answer file. Some of those fields have tips to help you determine what needs to be typed in there. Others do not.

As if that was not confusing enough, most of the tutorials on this are focused on deploying Vista using Windows Deployment Services. On a small, disregarded, deeply buried web page, I found a note saying that to deploy Windows 2008 with an answer file, just follow the Vista instructions and use Win2008 media.

Ready? Here we go:

Download and install the Windows Automated Installation Kit (992 MB). I believe this must be installed on Vista or Server 2008. I used Server 2008.

Copy the install.wim file from the SBS2008 DVD to the hard disk of the computer you are running the IAK on. I am not sure if it can be run from the DVD directly, but I didn’t want to listen to the drive whine/click/whir longer than necessary, or be prompted for the file again later, so I just went ahead and copied it.

Run Windows System Image Manager. 

1. Right-click the Select a Windows Image, choose to select one, and browse to the WIM file.
   Choose the OS you want (in this case let’s go with ServerStandard, because we’ll be automating SBS2008 Standard).
2. Choose to create a catalog for that OS.
3. Right-click in the answer file section, and choose to create a new answer file.

Great! Now we have some components, and a framework of installation stages in the answer file. Now what?

You can have all kinds of fun with this, and here is a reference guide to help.

However, there is a small set of core pieces listed on this page that we need to put in there to make it unattended. Before you slam those in there, however, be aware that those pieces are required for a fully built, distributable instance of Vista, resealed and all. If you include all of those things, it will break your SBS2008 installation.

Below is a listing of what I put in there, the values I entered.
All of it goes into “1 windowsPE”.

Note: This is not XML-formatted text. Do not copy/paste this into an XML file, that will not work for you. Instead, look for these settings in the AIK. I am not planning to post a full XML file because your settings/requirements might be significantly different – so it is best if you build yours from scratch.

amd64_Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE_neutral
  InputLocale: 0409-000000409
  SystemLocale: en-us
  UILanguage: en-us
  UserLocale: en-us
\-> SetupUILanguage
      UILanguage: en-us
      WillShowUI: OnError
amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Setup_neutral
\-> DiskConfiguration
      WillShowUI: OnError
   \-> Disk[DiskID=”0”
         Action: AddListItem
         DiskID: 0
         WillWipeDisk: true
       \-> CreatePartitions
           \-> CreatePartition[Order=”1”]
                 Action: AddListItem
                 Extend: false
                 Order: 1
                 Size: 61500
                 Type: Primary
       \-> ModifyPartitions
           \-> ModifyPartition[Order=”1”]
                 Action: AddListItem
                 Active: true
                 Extend: false
                 Format: NTFS
                 Label: OS
                 Letter: C
                 Order: 1
                 PartitionID: 1
\-> ImageInstall
    \->OSImage
         WillShowUI: OnError
       \->InstallTo
            DiskID: 0
            PartitionID: 1
\-> UserData
      AcceptEula: true
      FullName: John Q. Public
      Organization: Your Company
    \->ProductKey
         Key: TM24T-X9RMF-VWXK6-X8JC9-BFGM2
         WillShowUI: OnError

Some notes about the above values:

The values in the first section assume US English installations. Check out the reference guide for your locale.

The disk configuration I specified wipes out any existing partitions and creates a single 65 GB partition at the start of the disk. Adjust as appropriate for your installation, and be careful not to wipe out an important partition on your server. I recommend duplicating your server’s disk structure on a white box and testing before you actually run this on your server.

The UserData section is unimportant, as it gets replaced later by the answers from the SBS answer file. These will get you through without requiring customization for each client.

The product key I used is a special key for unattended installations. It is not a “real” key, and you will need to replace it when it is time to activate. SBS2008 provides an easy mechanism in the activation UI for this.

Once you have inserted all of these items and typed in the values, it is time to save your answer file to removable media. I suggest also saving it to the same folder with the WIM file and the catalog, for later use.

A quick note about virtualization: When running SBS2008 setup on a Hyper-V platform, the display size goes to 1600×1200 pixels. I tried adding display settings in every stage of setup, to no avail. When done, I was still looking at a 1600×1200 desktop. If I figure this out later, I’ll post an update. This issue does not happen on ESXi.

So, now that we have the initial OS answer file, we need to create the SBS answer file. This step is fairly straightforward.

You can run the SBSAFG executable straight from the DVD, or copy it to a workstation somewhere and run it there. It does not like being run over the network, I have found, but it executes locally on Windows 2008, Windows 2003, and Windows XP without fuss. I did not try it with Vista, but I assume it would work there as well.

Fill out the form as you wish, and save the file to the same removable media you put your OS answer file on. Thankfully, they use different file names, so there will not be a conflict.

Now you’re ready to attach your removable device, insert your SBS2008 DVD, and build a system.

Good luck!

Tags: answer file, from boot to welcome, SBS 2008, SBSAFG, System Information Manager, unattended, Windows AIK