Robert Pearman

Windows Server 2012 Essentials Feature Comparison

December 6, 2012 2 Comments

A lot of people have asked what is the difference between Server 2012 Standard and Essentials, and then the difference again when an Essentials box is transmogged. I don’t know of any official resource available from Microsoft that answers this question, so i made a little chart. This is just based on the ‘Windows Features’ built into the underlying OS and does not include the Essentials ‘Value Add’ features like Client PC Backup, the RWA and so on. Read more of this post

Filed under Essentials, General, WSE Tagged with 2012, Features, Server 2012, WSE

Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Shutdown client machines after a backup

November 23, 2012 6 Comments

A client of ours who is running a Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials on their SBS 2011 Standard network (for client PC Backup) likes their machines to shutdown each night after a backup.

This could apply to any of the Essentials Server SKUs including SBS 2011 E, WHS 2011 or Essentials 2012.

We schedule the backups to run between 7pm and 11pm so all the machines will have time to backup. It is really simple to set this shutdown task up, of course some people prefer their machines to go to sleep or hibernate but in this case we actually want to turn off those machines.

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Filed under Backup, Essentials, SBS E, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with 2008 r2, 2011, 2012, Client Backup, Essentials

Quick Fix : Update SBS2011 Essentials Windows 7 Pro Pack for Windows 8

November 8, 2012 Leave a comment

Nice title for a post, hopefully the SEO on that one will kick in.

Had a question come into one of my mailboxes about the Windows 7 Pro Pack and making the GPOs apply to Windows 8.

If you recall, SBS 2011 Essentials launched an Addin to push out some preconfigured GPOs to clients for security settings and folder redirection. I covered the WMI filters in a post about how to extend that functionality to Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Running a GPResult /R on a Win8 client, we can see that our custom GPOs that use WMI filters, are not being applied.

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Filed under General, SBS E, WIN 8 Tagged with Essentials, W7PP, Windows 8, WMI Filters

Windows Server 2012 Essentials HP Printer Unspecified Device

November 2, 2012 1 Comment

I recently did a post about adding a Printer to an Essentials server, i thought i had covered all the bases, however i have seen several questions pop up on the forum regarding HP Printers appearing as unspecified devices when connected via USB. This presented me with a unique challenge as all my lab kit is on HyperV. However i do have a USB HP printer in the office, so i hooked it up with a long USB lead to a MicroServer, and set about trying to repro the problem.

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Filed under Essentials, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with Essentials, Printer, Server 2012, Unspecefied Device, USB

PowerShell, Make it do something useful!

October 29, 2012 10 Comments

$users = ((Get-ADUser -filter * | where-object { $_.GivenName -ne $null }) | foreach{ $_.Name})
foreach ($user in $users)
{
        $FirstName = (Get-ADUser -filter {Name -eq $User} | foreach {$_.GivenName}).ToString()
        $SurName = (Get-ADUser -filter {Name -eq $User} | foreach {$_.SurName}).ToString()
        $DisplayName = ("$Firstname" + " " + "$Surname")
        $DisplayName
        Set-ADUser $User -DisplayName $DisplayName
        Set-ADUser $User -Description "User Created by Windows Server 2012 Essentials Dashboard"
}

You might be wondering what the hell that means?

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Filed under Essentials, PowerShell, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with Dashboard, Essentials, Power Shell

Windows Server 2012 Essentials : Add a Network Printer

October 24, 2012 30 Comments

I have seen and heard of people struggling to install printer drivers in mixed x64 and x86 environments, it has been a problem for a long time now, probably as far back as XP x64, certainly it was an issue with SBS 2008.

The problem being in order to install a printer on the Server, you need the x64 bit driver, but on a client pc you may be on x86 (32Bit) Windows, so you need a different driver.

Essentials 2012 is no different. So, i thought i would just get an example together using a printer i have here in the office, an HP Laserjet 3055. This is a good example actually because when you install it to WSE12, it picks up a valid driver, but there is no equivalent driver for Windows client available from HP.

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