Archive for the ‘Server 2019’ Category

Server Essentials not Sending Health Reports

A built in feature of Server Essentials, till 2019, is the ability of the server to send a daily “Health Report”. This contains information about the last backup, storage, services and more. I always configure this on all Essentials servers and set to send at 7:00 am for my review later. On 4 of the Essentials servers I manage it seems on the morning of the Daylight Savings change, at 1:00 am it tried to send a report for some reason, failed, and has failed the 7:00 am report ever since.

Though the error shows the problem is the “Windows Server Essentials Management Service” is not running, checking the Services management console shows it is. Simply restarting the service resolves the problem. You can right click on the last report and choose “send e-mail” to verify.

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Category:

E-mail, Essentials, Reporting, Server 2012, Server 2019, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized

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Shutdown Event Tracker

Recently after a dirty shutdown one server kept displaying the familiar “Why did the computer shutdown unexpectedly” for all users, at every logon.

Usually a reboot resolves this, but did not. I have heard of this happening over the years due to specific updates, but no updates had been applied recently. Ultimately it required locating the registry key which contains the flags to initiate the popup; \HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Reliability and deleting any subkeys referencing the last event, such as “DirtyShutdown”. These keys get recreated after the next event. Changing values from 1 to 0 will stop the popup, but this disables it all together. Not a good idea. Of course; make sure you backup the registry before doing so and do not make changes to the registry if you are not familiar with doing so.

Category:

Server 2019, Troubleshooting, TS/RDS, Uncategorized

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Install Office on Remote Desktop Server

You cannot install a standard version of Office on an RDS server.  Prior to Office 365 you had to buy Enterprise licenses for each user which are quite expensive.  I understand Enterprise licenses are still available and I assume they will still work but you may already have a suitable Office 365 subscription, or you can upgrade to one that will.   Your Microsoft 365 license must include Office Pro Plus, a Business Standard license will not work.  There is an Office Pro Plus license or an E3 or higher license includes Office Pro Plus.  With Office/Microsoft 365 you can use your current licenses but have to download a special installation version and jump through a few hoops.  This method is supported by Microsoft.

(Oct 2020 update: Microsoft has changed the naming of it’s Office 365 subscriptions to new Microsoft 365 names. I believe the minimum license level now is Microsoft 365 Business Premium but be sure to confirm with your vendor. The following is a Sept 2020 article referencing the install with the new licenses https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/deploy-microsoft-365-apps-remote-desktop-services#:~:text=If%20you%20use%20Remote%20Desktop%20Services%20%28RDS%29%20to,installation.%20The%20following%20are%20two%20common%20RDS%20scenarios%3A )

Note: when installing apps on terminal servers in the past you had to put the server in “Install mode” by running from an elevated command prompt 

  •    Change User /Install
  • and to exit Install mode run
  •    Change User /Execute

Though this is still recommended, I tried it without doing so and it worked, but make sure you are an administrator of the machine (local or domain) and all other users are logged out. I recommend a clean reboot before starting.

Create a shared folder such as \\RDS\O365 pointing to C:\Temp\O365  

Download the Office deployment tool from the link below and extract to your shared folder  \\RDS\O365

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36778

Create an .xml configuration file for the download and save to the same folder. I named DownloadConfig.xml 

<Configuration> 
  <Add SourcePath="\\RDS\O365" OfficeClientEdition="64"> 
   <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail" > 
     <Language ID="en-us" />      
   </Product> 
   </Add> 
</Configuration>

Download the custom version of Office.  To do so open an elevated command prompt, change to the directory containing the .xml file  C:\Temp\O365\MayBeSubfolder and run the following command.

setup.exe /download DownloadConfig.xml

This may seem like it hangs, but wait.  I believe it took about 15 minutes with my connection.

Create another .xml configuration file for installation and save again to the same folder. I named InstallConfig.xml

<Configuration>
  <Add SourcePath="\\RDS\O365"
       OfficeClientEdition="64" 
       Channel="Monthly">
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="True" /> 
  <Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="1" />
  <Logging Level="Standard" Path="C:\Temp" />
</Configuration>

Deploy Office using:  \\RDS\O365\setup.exe /configure  \\RDS\O365\InstallConfig.xml

Note: you must use the full path

Again it may appear to hang, but be patient

If you ran Change User /Install before starting, run Change User /Execute

Microsoft has more detailed information and options to customize the xml files at:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/deploy-microsoft-365-apps-remote-desktop-services

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/office2019/deploy

Category:

Office, Outlook, Server 2019, TS/RDS, Uncategorized

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Remote Access

Many years ago I wrote numerous blog articles relating to VPNs, and primarily PPTP VPNs. Hits on those blog pages are up 300% since the Coronavirus outbreak due to people looking for ways to work from home. I wanted to warn PPTP is an old solution and is considered to be “broken” and very insecure. Please consider other options.

Rather than creating new articles explaining how to configure various remote access methods I thought I would provide some suggestions and links as it has all been written before by very talented IT folk.

Firstly VPNs. I would always recommend using a VPN appliance/router over the server itself. It is more secure, authenticates at the network perimeter not the server itself, and allows more control. Cisco, Sonicwall, Juniper, Watchguard, and others provide very good solutions . However one concern with any VPN solution is the fact that though it is a secure tunnel, it also allows any and all traffic between an unmanaged remote client computer and the corporate network. Viruses can travers the VPN tunnel, should the client PC be hacked the hacker has direct access to the corporate network, and the remote user can easily copy/steal corporate data that they maybe should not. In addition VPNs occasionally just do not work due to network addressing, slow ISP service, or blocked protocols by ISPs.

If you do want to set up a VPN on a windows server, I would recommend SSTP.  Thomas Maurer has a great configuration guide:https://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2016/10/how-to-install-vpn-on-windows-server-2016/

Perhaps a better option than a VPN is a terminal server, now called a remote desktop server (RD Server). I have never seen the RDP protocol blocked, performance is usually better than a VPN, and all data stays on the corporate network. If set up correctly it uses the Remote Desktop Gateway service and SSL which is very secure. You can, if you like, also use this within your VPN tunnel and if using a business class VPN solution restrict traffic to RDP.

Another alternative if you don’t want to set up an RD Server is to configure the RD Gateway service on your server and allow users to connect securely to their own desktops PCs with the same level of performance. This was a built in feature of SBS and Server Essentials 2016 and earlier.  Mariette Knap has a excellent article on configuring the RD Gateway service, specifically on Server 2019 Std:https://www.server-essentials.com/support/setup-rds-gateway-as-a-replacement-for-access-anywhere-from-the-essentials-experience-role

Regardless of what method you use, as soon as you allow any remote access, make sure you configure Group Policy to enforce strong passwords and to lock accounts after ‘X’ wrong password guesses.  (I use 5, and lock out for 30 minutes). You can set this on the server for domain wide deployment or on an individual PC using GPedit.msc. For both it is located under Computer Configuration |Windows Settings | Security Settings | Account Policies .

The other alternative of course is to use cloud based services such as Microsoft’s Office 365 which you can from any where, at any time.  If dong so, make sure you enable multi-factor authentication for security.

I hope this is of some help and please stay safe n these uncertain times.

 

 

 

Category:

Networking, RRAS/VPN, SBS, Server 2012, Server 2019, TS/RDS, Uncategorized, VPN, Windows 10

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Hyper-V Missing VMs

Over the past 6 months I installed 4 Server 2019 Hyper-V hosts for various clients. After several months with no problems, following a reboot, all running VM’s completely disappeared from the Hyper-V management console and were not accessible from the network using management tools, file shares, remote desktop, or even pings. Oddly, shut down or saved VM’s were present.

When this first happened I was shocked. The VHDX files were all present so I could create a new VM, but that didn’t seem practical. Googling showed that this can happen if the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service did not start, but in my case it had. I tried restarting the service, the VM’s instantly reappeared, and were in a running state with boot up almost complete.

This issue over the coming months started happening on other 2019 servers and after every reboot, planned or due to a power outage, I had to connect to the host and restart the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service.

Further Googling this issue brings up suggestions of corrupt VM configuration files, granting “NT Virtual Machine\Virtual Machines” the “logon as a service right”, doing the same with group policy, and other suggestions, but where restarting the service would resolve in every case I assumed there was not a configuration issue.

In the end setting the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service start up type to “Automatic (delayed start)” resolved the problem on all machines, though it resulted in a slightly longer boot time for the VMs.

All of thee servers worked fine for a few months so I assume the problem was due to a Windows update but to date I have found no actual cause. Also, I can confirm this only occurs on my 2019 Hyper-V hosts. There are no issues with Server 2016 or earlier servers.

Hyper-V restart

Update: Oct 2020. I had another server with the same issue. O/S had been installed 8 months prior and no updates applied in recent months. Setting the service as delayed start did not resolve. I had to create a scheduled task to run 10 minutes after boot up. 5 minutes did not work. The scheduled task simply pointed to a batch file with the following. (the ping command just delays the process to be sure Net Stop completes before the next line).

Net Stop VMMS
ping -n 10 127.0.0.1
Net Start VMMS
Exit

Category:

Hyper-V, Server 2019, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized

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No virtual machines were found on this server.

A client had a 4 hour power outage today.  Though the Hyper-V host, which was connected to a business class UPS, rebooted as it should, none of the VMs came back on line. The Hyper-V management console showed “No virtual machines were found on this server”.

capture1

After researching several solutions before simply recreating the virtual machines I restarted the “Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service”, which was already running.  Instantly all VM’s reappeared and started up.  Perhaps this may assist others down the road.

Category:

Hyper-V, Server 2019, Uncategorized

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