I’ve been recently experiementing with the interesting Tiered Storage Spaces features in Windows Server 2012 R2. As part of this I’ve been going through some of the excellent MSFT File Server team blogs on TechNet.
This one in particular by Jose Barreto was supremely useful and I highly recommend it. It contains some excellent PowerShell code for setting up a VM for experimenting with Tiered Storage Spaces as well as configuring them within the VM.
In preparation for releasing an operating system image to be used as a WM template I usually like to perform some “shrinking commands” to make sure the image has as small a foot-print as possible.
All the “shrinking commands” are all command line or PowerShell based because they must also be able to be performed on a Windows Server Core installation.
Remove all Uninstalled Feature Binaries The first thing I usually do is remove any uninstalled feature binaries (as part of Windows Features on Demand).
I’m still getting my head around this whole blog thing, but I’m going to write a quick article about trimming down a Windows Server 2012 install while I wait for my partner to recover from a small bout of vertigo.
The “Features on Demand” feature of Windows Server 2012 is really great at trimming down a Windows Server 2012 installation.
To use the “Features on Demand” you need to “remove” the binaries required by any features that aren’t currently installed by your OS.
Although Windows Server Core is a great way of ending up with a slim and trim diet server, it can be a little bit tricky when first getting started configuring it. During my experiments running Server Core VM’s I found that there were a few tools either built into server core or available separately that can help get over this configuration “hump”.
Built-in Tools SConfig.exe SConfig.exe is a built in command line tool (with a simple command line GUI) that allows you to perform some simple configuration tasks on your core installation.
