Activating Windows servers to KMS server

For people who use a Key Management Server (KMS), you don't need to fill in a serial number and activate with Windows 7/2008/2008R2 directly, but you use a separate server for this.

On the server you need to activate, open an administrative command prompt, and type:
slmgr.vbs /skms <kmsserver> (the part between brackets is the kms server in your organisation)

It will pop up a message saying the KMS server has been set correctly:

After this, type: slmgr.vbs /ato

If all goes well, it activates the server:

You may encounter an error:

 

 
In this case, check the following:

• Can you ping the kms server?
• Can you telnet to port 1688 on the kms server?
• Is the time and date set correctly on the server you want to activate?

 I had the last one today, and forgot to check the date. The time was set correctly, but the date was 2 months off(doh!).

Active Route gets removed on Windows Server 2008 offline Cluster IP Address

An interface on a Windows 2008R2 cluster was no longer reachable. It was a management interface, and the machine was still up, but of course the server came up in the monitoring as not reachable. There was a persistent route present on the server, but somehow this route got removed from the active routing table.

Some searching by one of my colleagues turned up this article: http://blogs.technet.com/b/networking/archive/2009/05/21/active-route-gets-removed-on-windows-server-2008-offline-cluster-ip-address.aspx

Apparently when adding persistent routes on cluster nodes you need to make sure that you specify the interface as the destination rather than the next hop IP address. An example:

Adding a route as usual, open a command prompt: route add -p 10.10.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0 10.10.10.1

This would route all traffic to 10.10.x.x addresses via 10.10.10.1, and the only interface on the host (e.g. with host IP address 10.10.10.20) within that network range would use that route. However, this route could dissapear from the active routing table *despite having a persistent route* because the next hop specified is part (or could be part) of a clustered network.

With Windows 2008 (and R2) you need to add it a little bit differently for cluster nodes, according to the Technetblog:

• Open up the Network and Sharing Center
• Click Change adapater settings
• Look at the interface you want the route for and note which the "Device Name" of the interface (see screenshot). As an example, the first interface in the screenshot is the one that needs the route. It has device name "Intel(R) PRO/1000 MT Network Connection #3"

• Open up the command prompt as administrator
• Type route print, and look at the first lines that show the interfaces:

As you see the Intel interface with #3 at the end has a number in front of it: 21 in this case. This is the Interface Number

• Now type the route you want, e.g.: route add -p 10.10.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0 0.0.0.0 if 21

The trick is to add "0.0.0.0 if <interface number>" instead of the next hop address. Now, the route will stay and you will have your connectivity regardless if a Clustered IP Address is online or offline.

More than one RDP session per user on Windows 2008

Just saw an awesome post on a Dutch site that I noticed before, but never really took the time to investigate further:

It appears Windows 2008 (and noticed the same thing with 2008 R2) by default only accepts one RDP session per user. So when administrator logs in, he could potentially kick out another person who uses the administrator account. 

So Rudolf Kleijwegt posted the following command:

reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server" /v fSingleSessionPerUser /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f

AWESOME tip, and I'll definitely add this to our buildserver.