Now with the release of Windows Server 2012, Microsoft has added a huge huge huge improvement in PowerShell, there are about 2400 cmdlets available, and Microsoft have said that there are more to tome.
Just to display how easy it is, I thought Id give a walkthrough deployment of a simple Server 2012 farm.
Including
1x AD Domain Controller
1x RDS server session deployment with remoteapps.
1x File Server using data DE duplication and used for serving the user profile disks on the RDS server with NIC teaming. And Having 3 disks in a storage space and volumes using disk parity.
Now we are going to host all of these 3 servers on a WS2012 Hyper-V server. So first of we create a virtual network where these hosts are going to be.
First we create the switch
New-VMswitch –name vm-switch –switchtype internal
Then we create the first virtual machine and add it to that internal network.
New-VM -NewVHDPath e:vmad.vhdx -NewVHDSizeBytes 20GB -BootDevice CD -MemoryStartupBytes 2GB -Name AD
Remove-VMNetworkAdapter –VMName AD –Name “Network Adapter”
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName AD -Name “Network Adapter” -SwitchName vm-switch
After that we can boot the first computer. This is going to be our domain controller, and for the purpose of this demonstration we are going to install this as a Server Core server. (Server Core is a stripped down server which basically gives you an command prompt that you can work from.
IF you wish to manage the server you either need to use sconfig, PowerShell or Server Manager
If you wish to install full GUI on it afterwards you can do this using the commands
Install-WindowsFeature server-gui-mgmt-infra,server-gui-shell -source:wim:d:sourcesinstall.wim:4 –restart
If you look at the last command there you see that I needed to specify the source (Because when I install with Server Core it removes all the unnecessary binaries from the install so you need to insert the installation media and in my case it was ISO file on the D: drive. And I also needed to specify the install WIM file and the WIM file contains the images for Datacenter and Standard Core and with GUI so the number 4 states Datacenter with GUI.
When the server is up and running we have to configure the network, domain name and such.
New-Netipaddress –ipaddress 192.168.0.1 –interfacealias «Ethernet» –Prefixlenght 24
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias “Ethernet” -ServerAddresses 192.168.0.1
Rename-computer adds
Restart-computer
This will add the IP address of 192.168.0.2 on the interface Ethernet with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 /24
And set the DNSclient to itself (since the ADDS installs DNS as well)
Renames the computer ADDS and does a restart.
After that we install ADDS. This is the simplest setup and uses most of the default values.
Install-WindowsFeature AD-Domain-Services -IncludeManagementTools
Install-ADDSForest –DomainName test.local
Restart-computer
This will install a ADDS domain service on this server (as well including DNS server) with the domain name of test.local
after that you have to restart the computer. When the server is finished booting, you have a fully functional domain server so now its time to install the RDS server.
New-VM -NewVHDPath e:vmrds.vhdx -NewVHDSizeBytes 20GB -BootDevice CD -MemoryStartupBytes 2GB -Name RDS
Remove-Vmnetworkadapter –Vmware RDS –name “network adapter”
Add-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName AD -Name “Network Adapter” -SwitchName vm-switch
So now we run the same create vm command as we ran before just change the name and file name.
We install a full server with GUI this time since we want the remote desktop users to get a full desktop 
After the server is finished installing we need to setup the basic stuff as we did before.
New-Netipaddress –ipaddress 192.168.0.2 –interfacealias «Ethernet» –Prefixlenght 24
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias “Ethernet” -ServerAddresses 192.168.0.1
Rename-computer rds
Add-Computer -Domainname test.local –Credential
Restart-computer
This time we set the DNS client to point to the AD server. And change its name and join it to the domain. After the restart we have to install the RDS server role.
As we are going to host all the server roles on the same server (not very secure or recommended but simple
New-RDSessionDeployment -ConnectionBroker test02.test.local -WebAccessServer test02.test.local -SessionHost test02.test.local
Restart-Computer
Remove-RDSessionCollection QuickSessionCollection
New-RDSessionCollection -Collectionname Statistikk -sessionhost test02.test.local -connectionbroker test02.test.local
New-RDremoteApp -Collectionname Statistikk -Alias Notepad -Filepath C:windowssystem32notepad.exe -ShowInWebAccess 1 -ConnectionBroker test02.test.local -Displayname skriveskrive
Now what this does is to 1: Install the RDS server roles and point to where each server role is located, and then restart the computer.
After that is done it removes the QuickSessionCollection as is created by default when using Quick Deployment.
Creates a new collection and points to which sessionshost and connection broker is included in this collection.
Then it publishes the application Notepad and makes in available to users via the RDweb portal. And note I didn’t set up user profile disk on the RDS server yet since we need to set up the file server before we do that.
Now we have to create the file server, now this server needs to have multiple network cards and multiple disks in order to have High-availability.
So we start by creating the VM with multiple nics and hdds.
New-VM -NewVHDPath e:vmrds.vhdx -NewVHDSizeBytes 20GB -BootDevice CD -MemoryStartupBytes 2GB -Name FS
New-Netipaddress –ipaddress 192.168.0.3 –interfacealias «Ethernet» –Prefixlenght 24
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias “Ethernet” -ServerAddresses 192.168.0.1
Rename-computer fs
Add-Computer -Domainname test.local –Credential
Restart-computer
So here we create a fileserver virtual machine with 2 NICs and 3 virtual harddrives.
Drive 2 and 3 will be used for a storage pool with mirrored setup. Now setting up two virtual drives in a mirrored setup doesn’t make much sense but this is just to show how easy and flexible the deployment is.
Now after the server is finished installign and has joined the domain we can start by setting up the NIC teaming.
New-lbfoteam –name Test –Teammembers «ethernet 2», «ethernet» -loadbalancingalgorithm Ipaddresses –teamingmode switchindependent –teamnicname SuperPowah
You can run the command
get-lbfoteam and get-lbfoteamnic
To see the status of the team and the NIC (If its up and down or not )
Now what this does is to create a new load balance and failover team called Test, and it includes the two interfaces ethernet 2 and ethernet and the load balancing algorithm is based on IP addresses, and I choose the teaming mode switch independent and the team nice is called SuperPowah. Now that we have done that the first NIC loses it’s IP address settings so now we have to setup an IP setting for the new NIC name SuperPowah
New-Netipaddress –ipaddress 192.168.0.3 –interfacealias «SuperPowah» –Prefixlenght 24
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias “SuperPowah” -ServerAddresses 192.168.0.1
Next we have to install the dedup features (Which is not installed by default. )
Install-windowsfeature FS-data-deduplication
By default the schedule for a dedup job is set to default 5 days, but that can be changed. You can also run it manually by running the command.
Start-dedupjob –volume e: –type optimization
You can view the status by running the command
Get-dedupjob
get-dedupstatus
If you wish to remove dedup from a disk you can run the command
Start-dedupjob –volume e: –type unoptimization
Next we create a new folder on the new share then we share the folder.
mkdir userdata on C:
new-smbshare –path c:userdata –name userdata
Now after that share is created. We have to update the RDS collection configuration
Set-RDSessionCollectionConfiguration –Collectionname statistikk –EnableUserProfileDisk –diskpath \fsuserdata –MaxProfileDiskSizeGB 40
So there you go, I will try to update this with some other scenarios as well.