Author Archive: travis

bugs in code

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Eventually you discover that the bugs you create in your code have more to do with karma than skill.  Once you develop the skill to code there is no reason for there to be bugs.  It is through clearing out the karma that your development ability becomes more and more unhindered.  Bugs point to what remains.

Multiple Hyper-V virtual switch lab environments requires PowerShell

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Windows Server 2019

The Internet Connection Sharing tab can be found by viewing the Ethernet Properties of a network connection.  This can be used to select a Hyper-V virtual switch in order to enable a Hyper-V virtual switch of the “Internal” network style Internet access via the Hyper-V server.

But what if you’d like to have more than one lab network setup in this way?  PowerShell to the rescue:

New-VMSwitch -SwitchName "lab10" -SwitchType Internal
New-NetIPAddress -IPAddress 192.168.10.1 -PrefixLength 24 -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet (lab10)"
New-NetNAT -Name "lab10" -InternalIPInterfaceAddressPrefix 192.168.10.0/24

New-VMSwitch -SwitchName "lab20" -SwitchType Internal
New-NetIPAddress -IPAddress 192.168.20.1 -PrefixLength 24 -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet (lab20)"
New-NetNAT -Name "lab20" -InternalIPInterfaceAddressPrefix 192.168.20.0/24

New-VMSwitch -SwitchName "lab30" -SwitchType Internal
New-NetIPAddress -IPAddress 192.168.30.1 -PrefixLength 24 -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet (lab30)"
New-NetNAT -Name "lab30" -InternalIPInterfaceAddressPrefix 192.168.30.0/24

New-VMSwitch -SwitchName "lab40" -SwitchType Internal
New-NetIPAddress -IPAddress 192.168.40.1 -PrefixLength 24 -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet (lab40)"
New-NetNAT -Name "lab40" -InternalIPInterfaceAddressPrefix 192.168.40.0/24

Infrastructure as code and an infinite trial period

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If you implement infrastructure as code with something such as ansible, you will be able to spin up a new VM and automatically setup the software.

An interesting side effect of this is you can wipe and reload a system, running say System Center, over night just before the trial period ends.  Perhaps this a gray area, getting around the intention of a trial period, but an interesting side effect none the less.

Using infrastructure as code requires that you back up everything, in order to restore things if desired.  This means the home pc can also be reloaded at will, if network drives are used or some other backup method is used, leading to the fastest performance possible when otherwise a PC has the tendency to slow down over time.

DevOps, what a beautiful thing.

Note: The current subscription fee to have access to all Microsoft software for a development/lab environment is $45 a month Visual Studio Professional Monthly Subscription.

image files, wim files, mdt, pxe, and kms

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In an isolated test environment it can be interesting to experiment with available technologies, though some might be questionable (hence the isolated test environment).

Steps to perform:

  1. Rip available .wim files from an OS install dvd
  2. Setup and configure MDT (and optionally WDS server)
  3. Install py-kms as an experiment
  4. Import .wim file into MDT
  5. Target py-kms as part of your task sequence or configure as DNS SRV record
  1. Rip available .wim files from an OS install dvd
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Convert install images from a source DVD to individual .wim files, ready for MDT

.DESCRIPTION
DVDs come ready with multiple images to install in various formats, before importing
into MDT for the purpose of PXE booting it is necessary to obtain individual .wim
files.

.NOTES
Author: Travis Loyd
  Date: 2020-11-08
#>
[CmdletBinding()]
Param (
    # Path to DVD including sources folder
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=0)]
    [string]$SourceImagePath = "D:\sources",

    # Target folder where ripped .wim images are stored
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=1)]
    [string]$DestinationImagePath = "E:\ISO_Import"
)


# Various install file format styles
$SupportedExtensions = @("esd","swm","wim")
foreach ($Extension in $SupportedExtensions) {
    # Next potential source file
    $SourceImageFile = "$($SourceImagePath)\install.$($Extension)"

    # Skip if not found
    if (-not (Test-Path $SourceImageFile)) {
        continue
    }

    # debug
    Write-Host "Working with '$SourceImageFile'"

    # Loop through images contained within install file
    $Images = Get-WindowsImage -ImagePath $SourceImageFile
    foreach ($Image in $Images) {
        # debug
        Write-Host "$($Image.ImageIndex): $($Image.ImageName)"

        # Form resultant wim file name
        $DestinationName = "$(($Image.ImageName -split " ") -join "_").wim"
        $DestinationImagefile = "$DestinationImagePath\$DestinationName"

        # Handle possible extension types
        switch ($Extension) {
            "esd" {
                dism /export-image /SourceImageFile:$($SourceImageFile) /SourceIndex:$($Image.ImageIndex) /DestinationImageFile:$($DestinationImagefile) /Compress:max /CheckIntegrity
            }
            "swm" {        
                # prep
                $SwmFile = "$($SourceImagePath)\install*.swm"

                dism /export-image /SourceImageFile:$($SourceImageFile) /swmfile:$($SwmFile) /SourceIndex:$($Image.ImageIndex) /DestinationImageFile:$($DestinationImagefile) /Compress:max /CheckIntegrity
            }
            "wim" {
                dism /export-image /SourceImageFile:$($SourceImageFile) /SourceIndex:$($Image.ImageIndex) /DestinationImageFile:$($DestinationImagefile) /Compress:max /CheckIntegrity
            }
        }
    }
}

2. Left up to the reader as an exercise

3. Install and configure docker then:

docker run -d --name py-kms --restart always -p 1688:1688 pykmsorg/py-kms

4. Left up to the reader as an exercise

5. Left up to the reader as an exercise