Windows Server Administration » Hyper-V

Virtualize Your Exchange Edge Server

Daniel Anderson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:55:55 +0000

OK Here we go back in the swing of things and the first server I am going to “Virtualize” is an Exchange 2007 Server that holds the Edge Server Role. After Reading this article it all seemed fairly straight forward. How wrong I was !!! Here is what I did that led me to this unwanted ERROR “The Exchange Server is in an inconsistant state” when I was trying to install the Edge Transport Role on the new Hyper-V Virtual Server.

The first thing that needed to be done was an export of the current server configuration using, as Microsoft calls it, “cloned configuration tasks”. There is a folder located in the install directory of Exchange, generally C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ called “Scripts”. Inside there are 2 Powershell Scripts that you will need.

They are ExportEdgeConfig.ps1 and ImportEdgeConfig.ps1.

To capture the configuration we need to run the ExportEdgeConfig.ps1 script in the Exchange Management Shell like so:

./ExportEdgeConfig -CloneConfigData:”C:\CloneConfigData.xml”

NOTE: Make Sure you run the Exchange Management Shell as Administrator (right click > Run As Administrator)

Now I am going to be keeping the same computer name on the new Virtual Edge Server, so I did this next.

Shutdown the current Exchange Server and then Reset the Computer Account in Active Directory. Next was to start up the NEW Exchange Server, rename it and join it to the domain. You MUST make sure that the drive letter configuration is the same as the OLD Server.

Next Install Exchange, I did this by running trying to run this command:

Setup.com /Role:Edge

This is where it all fell apart. I got an error and decided to try again by running the setup.exe file. Sure enough it was No Good and I received this Error “The Exchange Server is in an inconsistant state”. Then I tried to run the install in Recovery Mode by using this command:

setup.com /m:RecoverServer

Guess what? Failed again. Things were looking pretty grim. Considering this was a virtual machine and only hosting the Edge Transport Role I copied across a sysprepped Windows Server 2008 VHD that I created earlier and started from scratch.

While the Server was starting up I reset the Computer Account in Active Directory and I also need to get brutal and use ADSi Edit and remove the entry in the following location:

CN=Configuration, DC= Domain Name, DC=com, CN=Services, CN=Microsoft Exchange, CN=, CN=Administrative Groups, CN= , CN=Servers, CN=

and also remove the entry in the Exchange Servers and Exchange Install Domain Servers Security Groups.

The Server was now up and running and joined to the domain so I tried again to install Exchange 2007 and the Edge Transport Role, and all seemed to go through fantastically!

After Exchange was installed I then need to run the New-EdgeSubscription CMDLET on the Edge Server:

New-EdgeSubscription -FileName “c:\EdgeServerSubscription.xml”

Then import that XML File on the Server that is running the Hub Transport Role. To to that you can use the Exchange Management Console and navigate to this spot.

Organisation Configuration > Hub Transport > and then click the Edge Subscription Tab.

After that was completed I gave the Edge Server a Restart and the mail started flowing in again…….There seemed to be a few people that have had a similar issue so I hope this sheds some light on a procedure on how to get around this issue. Another bonus to virtualization !!!!.

32bit Printer Drivers on an x64 Windows 2008 Print Server

Daniel Anderson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:30:37 +0000

Continuing on with my Hyper-V Virtual Machine installations, I moved onto a Windows 2008 Print Server after yesterday I spoke about How To Migrate a Windows 2003 DHCP Server to a Windows 2008 Server. These virtuals are x64 based VM’s and as I found out after adding the Print Services Role to the server and then installing a printer to share and connecting to that printer from a 32bit XP Client the server didn’t have appropriate drivers installed and asked me to locate the driver files.

90% of my printers are HP ones so I went to the HP website and downloaded the most recent driver, it turns out they have a “HP Universal PCL 6″ driver. Now this driver appears to do, as the name suggests, provide the correct drivers to all HP Printers!.

To get the x86 drivers onto the x64 Windows 2008 Server you need to connect to the server from the x86 client and open up the printer and faxes share. THen from the File Menu select Server Properties, then from the Driver Tab add the x86 drivers that you downloaded, and they will then be uploaded to the server.

Another catch here is that both x86 and x64 drivers MUST have the same name. If they have the same name, they will appear automatically in additional drivers for both architectures in your printer’s sharing properties.

Windows 2008 Virtual Domain Controller

Daniel Anderson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:27:27 +0000

Well I got another Hyper-V host up and running today which will house a couple of VM on it, a Domain Controller which will also have DNS and DHCP installed and also a Print Server. I have set it up with 3 Logical Drives consisting of a Mirrored OS, Hardware Raid-10 for the VHD and Hyper-V data and another single drive that will have the Shadow Copies of the Raid-10 Volume on it.

The Install of the Active Directory Domain Services went great and obviously DNS was installed along the way. I also made this one a Global Catalog Server.

How To Migrate Windows 2003 DHCP to Windows 2008 DHCP Server

Next up was migrating the DHCP from the old Windows 2003 Server to this new box, below is how I did this:

First export the DHCP Database from the 2003 Server with the following command:

netsh dhcp server export C:\dhcp.txt all

Then copy that file to the new 2008 Server. Add the DHCP Server Role on the new box via Server Manager. Then with the following command import the dhcp database:

netsh dhcp server import C:\dhcp.txt all

Now when I did this I got this error “Error while importing option “6.” “This option conflicts with the existing option “” An Internal Error Occurred.”.

This was to do with the fact that while adding the DHCP Server Role to the new machine there were entries in the Server Options that were done automatically, once I went in and removed these options “006 DNS Servers” and “015 DNS Domain Name” and then re did the import with the string above everything went fine.

Next up Print Server. Subscribe to my RSS Feed so you can see how I managed this.

By the way there is a great article and script from John Howard that enables you to Configure Hyper-V Remote Management in Seconds.