Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine

When we have to build Servers for many different scenarios, it sure is helpful to have a base Windows OS Image handy to start with. Even though it seems simple, I thought I would share my personal experience and “How To” steps to help those who are still somewhat new to this process. I happen to use Hyper-V for all of my virtualization stuff so my instructions will be based on this.

The first thing I take into consideration is the versions of Windows Operating Systems that I plan on using during my testing, learning and demos.

Based on the different scenarios that I tend to evaluate, I happen to need the following:

Windows 7 Base Image Virtual Machine

Windows 8.1 Base Image Virtual Machine

Windows 2012 R2 Base Image Virtual Machine

Since the process of building the image is pretty much the same for all above operating systems, you will not need to follow all the examples.

Here are my “How To” Steps:

Watch on youtube: here

Or follow these steps:

1- On your computer, open Hyper-V Manager 2- In Hyper-V Manager, in the actions pane, click New and then click Virtual Machine 3- In the New Virtual Machine Wizard, on the Before You Begin page, click Next

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

4- On the Specify Name and Location page, in the Name field, type en_base_windows2012R2 and then click Next

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

5- On the Specify Generation page, click Generation 2, and then click Next.

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

6- On the Assign Memory page, in the Startup Memory field, type 1024, select the Use Dynamic Memory for this virtual machine check box, and then click Next.

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

7- On the configure Networking Page select your internet connection, and then click next

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

8- On the connect Virtual Hard disk page , on the Specify Name and Location, in the Name field, type

en_base_windows2012R2.vhdx, confirm that the Location field is set to YOUR LOCATION, and then click Next.

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

9- On the installation options page, select install an operation system from a bootable image file , click browse to your ISO files location

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

10 - On the Completing the Virtual Machine Wizard page, click Finish. Virtual machine named en_base_windows2012R2 is created.

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

11 On your computer, in Hyper-V Manager, right-click the en_base_windows2012R2 virtual machine, and then click Settings.

12 Click Memory. In the details pane, confirm that Enable Dynamic Memory is selected, and in the startup RAM field, type 1024, in the minimum RAM field type 1024 and in the maximum ram field accept your default configuration.

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo 13- Click Processor. You can modify the number of virtual processors based on the number of processors on your physical computer. In my case 8

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

14- Start the VM and press any key to start the installation boot

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

15- On the Which type of installation do you want? Page, select custom

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

16- Wait a few minutes

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

17- In the username field, type User. In the Type a password Field, type P@ssw0rd. All the passwords in these guides will be Pa$$w0rd

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

18- Well done!

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

19- Open a windows Explorer console and create a new folder c:\TEMP. We will use this folder to save different files that we will use in this lab.

C

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

20- Open the Server Manager and Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC)

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

21- Go to Sysinternals website and download PStools suite. Save the files on C:\Temp

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

22- Unzip the files and Copy all the files to C:\windows\system32

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

23- Run a Command Prompt as an Admin and execute psgetsid and accept the license agreement

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

24- Now you can see your Computer`s SID, copy the SID. This number has to be unique for each computer

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

25- Create a new notepad file and save in C:\temp. Rename the file with your SID number

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

26- Open windows firewall window and Turn Off windows firewalls in all your networking locations

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

27- Now it`s time to use SYSPREP http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577 Windows operating system installations include many unique elements per installation that need to be "generalized" before capturing and deploying a disk image to multiple computers. Sysprep seeks to solve these issues by allowing for the generation of new computer names, unique SIDs, and custom driver cache databases during the Sysprep process

28- Go to C:\windows\system32\sysprep and Execute Sysprep 29- Select Generalize and Shutdown.

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

30- When the sysprep process has finished. Open the Hyper-V Manager console and delete the virtual machine. We only need the Virtual Hard disk.

Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Base Virtual Machine – Step by Step Guides by Herman Arnedo

31- Go to the location of your base hard disk and configure as Read-Only

32- Now we have a new Windows 2012 R2 Base virtual Machine that we will use in the next Step by Steps Guides.