I have my own security software I use on Windows Server operating systems and take out Windows Defender. Normally, I can do this through Feature removal, but the option to remove Windows Defender was unable to be removed from the manager.
To remove, I used Powershell.
Remove-WindowsFeature Windows-Defender, Windows-Defender-GUI
To join my Windows Server 2016 Nano server to my test domain I used the djoin.exe (Domain Join) command.
From a domain controller, or server already joined to my domain, I run the following command. This will create a file called NANOSERVERTP5 at the location I run the command.
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djoin.exe /provision /domain TESTDOMAIN /machine NANOSERVERTP5 /reuse /savefile .NANOSERVERTP5
Copy the NANOSERVERTP5 file to C: on the Nano Server. I temporarily enabled File and Sharing through the Firewall on the Nano Server in order to gain access to the Administrative share, so I could copy it to 192.168.100.50c$.
In order to enter into a remote Powershell session, I needed to make sure I had a trusted host entry for my Nano Server in Web Services Management (WS-Management, or WSMan). I launched an administrative Powershell shell. Also, make sure WinRM service is running on the machine you’ll be using (net start winrm).
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Set-Item WSMan:localhostClientTrustedHosts -Value 192.168.100.50 -Concatenate
Accept (Y) the WinRM security prompt.
Start a remote PowerShell session into the Nano Server.
Enter-PSSession -ComputerName 192.168.100.50 -Credential Administrator
Run djoin and specify the location that NANOSERVERTP5 file was copied to; in my case, C:NANOSERVERTP5.
djoin /requestodj /loadfile c:NANOSERVERTP5 /windowspath c:windows /localos
I was trying to build a Nano Server image (2016 Tech Preview 5) and kept getting the following error:
Turns out that is because the documentation is not updated and instead of -GuestDrivers it now uses:
Running the following updated command works without issue building the image.
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New-NanoServerImage -MediaPath c:tp5iso -BasePath .Base -TargetPath .Nano1Nano3.vhd -ComputerName Nano3 -DeploymentType Guest -Edition Standard
You can add packages to the image that is being built by specifying -Packages [PackageName].
To install IIS, for example:
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New-NanoServerImage -MediaPath c:tp5iso -BasePath .Base -TargetPath .Nano1Nano3.vhd -ComputerName Nano3 -DeploymentType Guest -Edition Standard -Packages Microsoft-NanoServer-IIS-Package
Here’s a listing of the Packages in the Server 2016 TP5 ISO as of this writing.
I used the following command within the Packages directory of the Nano distribution to generate this.
PS C:usersrkreiderdesktopnanobasePackages> gci . -filter *.cab | foreach-object { write-output $_.basename; dism /online /get-packageinfo /packagepath:$_ | select-string Description|Product Name|^Name :; }
Continuing with learning some Powershell, I cooked this up which will connect to the vCenter server and get all the VM’s and list the name, operating system and power state.
foreach ($vm in get-vm) {
$os=get-vmguest -vm $vm.name | where-object {$_.osfullname -ne $null} | select osfullname;
write-host ($vm.name.tostring() + "," + $os.osfullname + "," + $vm.powerstate.tostring()) -ErrorAction silentlycontinue
}
Example Output
VM01,Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit),PoweredOn VM02,Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (32-bit),PoweredOn VM03,Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit),PoweredOn VM04,Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (32-bit),PoweredOn
Clear Powershell’s last 10 commands:
clear-history -count 10 -newest
After executing that, use get-history to see what’s left…
Clear the console buffer by scripting F7+2:
[system.reflection.assembly]::loadwithpartialname("System.Windows.Forms")
[System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys]::Sendwait('%{F7 2}')
Try using the Up key to cycle through history — won’t happen.