Friday, March 22, 2013

Boot from VHD - Windows Server 2012


In this blog post I will list the steps required to Boot from VHD - Windows Server 2012.

Reason for Boot from VHD, if you really want to make use of full hardware resources. No virtualization and sharing of resources, so you get better performance.

To start with, you can download the VHDs from Technet website links below

Windows 2012 - 180 days validity


Windows 8 - 90 days validity


Please follow the steps below to boot from VHD
1.     Boot into Windows 7 OS.
2.     Go to Disk Management option. 
       Right click My Computer --> Manage
       or
       Start --> Run --> DiskMgmt.msc
3.       Choose menu Action --> Attach VHD.
4.       Browse to your Windows 2012 VHD, click OK until the VHD is attached as a drive on your system.
5.       If no drive letter is assigned to the VHD, assign one manually. (Right click on the Volume and use Add/Change Drive Letters.). for example say J:
6.       Run Command Prompt as Administrator C:\Windows\System32>
7.       Run using command prompt --> C:\Windows\System32\BCDBOOT.exe  "J:\Windows" (where J:\ is the drive letter of your Windows Server 2012 VHD).

BCDBoot will copy the boot stack settings from J:\Windows (bootmgr, etc.) and install them on your system.  It will also set up a new OS Boot Loader entry for the Windows Server 2012 VHD and mark it as default boot loading option.

Note:
I  used EasyBCD from http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ for Boot Loader settings change, as i donot want the VHD boot loading as my primary boot load option.

Recommendations when you work on VHD based development
- Save files to main hard drive and not to the VM virtual drives so we have files safer.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Check SharePoint Build version

In this post documenting following three ways of checking the SharePoint build version

  1. Using PowerShell script
  2. Using Central Admin
  3. Using SharePoint Admin database Versions table sql select query

1. Using PowerShell Script

Get-SPFarm | Select BuildVersion


2. Using Central Admin


a. Open Central Admin and go to Upgrade and Migration



b. Under Upgrade and Patch Management click on link "Check product and patch installation status" and now you can now view the patch status for products installed on servers in the farm.






3. Using SharePoint Admin database Versions table sql select query

Log in to SharePoint database server and select the SharePoint Admin database.

select * from Versions