Windows Server 2008 Installation & Configure

How do I... Install and configure Windows Server 2008 core?

Component	Requirement
Processor	Minimum: 1.4 GHz (x64 processor) Note: An Intel Itanium 2 processor is required for Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-Based Systems
Memory	Minimum: 512 MB RAM Maximum: 8 GB (Foundation) or 32 GB (Standard) or 2 TB (Enterprise, Datacenter, and Itanium-Based Systems)
Disk Space Requirements	Minimum: 32 GB or greater Foundation: 10 GB or greater Note: Computers with more than 16 GB of RAM will require more disk space for paging, hibernation, and dump files
Display	Super VGA (800 * 600) or higher resolution monitor
Other	DVD Drive, Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse (or compatible pointing device), Internet access (fees may apply)

Installation

• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (Full Installation)
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (Server Core Installation)

The following eight screen shots (Figures A-H) walk you through the installation of Windows Server Core which took approximately ten minutes to install.

When you first run through the installation of Windows Server 2008, you have two options for installation. They are:

Figure A

Figure B

Figure C

Figure D

Figure E

Figure F

FigureG

Figure H

After the installation, the main window for your new installation appears and you are ready to login as shown in Figure I. The initial login is Administrator and blank password (Figure J). You are required to change the password and set an Administrator password on initial login.

Figure I

Figure J

Now that you are logged in (Figure K), you are ready to configure the date, time, and time zone. In the command line type the following: controltimedate.cpl and set the options accordingly (Figure L).

Figure K

Figure L

If you need to configure and change the keyboard layout and settings, type the following in the command window: control intl.cpl (Figure M).

Figure M

Let's move on and change the server name. The default name is a bunch of random letters and numbers and I would like to change the name to a local standard. You can view the current hostname by typing the following:

c:windowssystem32hostname

c:windowssystem32netdom renamecomputer %computername% /NewName:ssw-svr15

Now let's use the name ssw-svr15. We will perform this option in the command line (Figure O) by typing the following:

c:windowssystem32netdom renamecomputer %computername% /NewName:ssw-svr15

Figure N

After choosing to proceed, the task completes successfully. You now need to reboot the server using the shutdown command. For the proper syntax, type:

shutdown /?

shutdown /r /T 10 /C "Changed Server Name"

After reviewing the syntax, (Figure N) I will type the following: shutdown /r (switch for shutting down and restarting the computer) /t 10 (wait 10 seconds to shutdown and restart) /c "Changed Server Name" (add comment of max 512 characters). They total syntax will look as follows:

shutdown /r /T 10 /C "Changed Server Name"

Figure O

Let's now configure our networking so we can join this server to a domain. In order to see what interface you have to configure, (Figure P) type

netsh interface ipv4 show interface

Figure P

The Local Area Connection that we are going to configure has an index value of two. Let's proceed and configure TCP/IP for this connection. (Figure Q) Type the following command to set the TCP/IP information:

netsh interface ipv4 set address name="2" source=static address=192.168.1.199 mask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.1.1

Figure Q

Follow the same example to configure DNS (Figure R):

netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name="2" address=192.168.1.1 index=1

Figure R

If you type ipconfig /all, you will see the newly added information (Figure S).

Figure S

Let's join it to a domain! In order to perform this function, we will take advantage of the netdom.exe. (Figure T) The syntax is as follows:

netdom join ssw-svr15 /domain:watchtower /userd:Administrator /passwordD:Password01

Note: Do not forget to reboot the server using the following command:

shutdown /r /T 10 /C "Added to domain"

Figure T

As a final step, we should not forget to activate the server (Figure U) by typing the following:

slmgr.vbs -ato

Figure U