For those reading my posts on the Microsoft Surface, I have mixed feelings about the device. It has a great form factor. An awesome set of inputs (keyboard, mouse and touch) all in one easy to carry form factor. Sure, I have had two Microsoft Surface Touch Cover failures in the first month, but I still think it is a great input combination. Windows RT is a good start, but there is still a lot locked down. For Office applications, it can do most of what you would want it to. For server administration, it is a bit lacking. There are a few things that I still cannot do on the Microsoft Surface which have limited my use. However, with Windows 8 Hyper-V I now have a solution that works well. Case and point, I installed Windows Server 2012 on a test machine while watching the San Francisco 49ers v. New Orleans Saints (American) football game using the Microsoft Surface. Let’s take a look at what made this possible.First, here are a few server admin tasks I have struggled with on the Microsoft Surface (Amazon link here) with Windows RT.
SSH using Putty. I have been using Putty on Windows for as long as I can remember. When doing admin tasks on ServeTheHome and on Linux clients, I generally turn to Putty. We really need a Windows RT Putty client.
KVM-over-IP. Most KVM-over-IP or iKVM solutions rely on JAVA. Windows RT limits the JAVA usage so these KVM solutions tend to have major issues.
Use tools like Supermicro IPMIView and LSI MegaRAID Storage Manager. These do not yet have Windows RT variants and these tools help a ton.
Keeping a persistent connection. The Microsoft Surface travels almost everywhere. To save power, the screen dims and much of the machine goes to a low power state. Not great if you need to keep a connection live. There are some workarounds like using screen with Linux, but that does not solve every time you need this to work.
Those are just some examples, and there are certainly others. One Sunday I was watching a football game and decided to give myself a challenge: Install Windows Server 2012 on a machine only interfacing with the Microsoft Surface. I just needed the machine to run, nothing fancy, but this is not something that is easy to do on the Microsoft Surface. That is when it dawned on me – Windows 8 Hyper-V is the answer!
Microsoft Surface Administrative Hyper-V Virtual Machine Setup
The basic setup is this: Microsoft Surface connects via Remote Desktop to a dedicated Windows 8 Hyper-V virtual machine on the desktop. The Windows 8 Hyper-V VM then is used to perform all of the server setup tasks. This works especially well since the tablet may turn off to conserve power. If you use MegaRAC or other remote disk mounting through the JAVA applet, normally a machine going to sleep will break the remote mount disk connection. Using an always-on VM changes this and makes life easier.
The first step [...]
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