Configuring Remote Management of Hyper-V Server - in a workgroup

I have received a number of questions about how to go about setting up remote management of our free Hyper-V server (not the one that is part of Windows).  So I thought I would sit down and write up a set of blog posts to talk about how to do this.  Today I am going to talk about how to remotely manage a Hyper-V server from a Windows 7 desktop when in a workgroup environment.

I am going to assume that you have already installed Hyper-V server and have configured the server name, workgroup name and networking appropriately (in my case – the server name is “Server1” and the workgroup name is “WORKGROUP” – not very original, I know).  Also, I am not going to be talking about the other aspects of setting up a Hyper-V server (e.g. configuring automatic updates, enabling remote desktop, etc…).  I am just focusing on how to get remote management working.

Server Configuration

The first thing you will need to do is to go to the Hyper-V server and run SConfig.cmd (this is configured to run automatically when you log into a Hyper-V server – if you have changed this you can start it manually.  It is in the Windows\System32 folder on the server).  Once you are in SConfig.cmd you will need to:

1. Select option 4 on the SConfig menu (labeled Configure Remote Management)
2. Then select options 1 (Allow MMC Remote Management) and 2 (Enable Windows PowerShell)
   
   
   
3. After you enabled Windows PowerShell you will be asked to reboot.
4. After the reboot – go back into SConfig and select option 4 again
5. Select option 3 (Allow Server Manager Remote Management)
   1. Note that Server Manager Remote Management requires that you have PowerShell enabled first – so you cannot shuffle this ordering around to try and avoid the reboot.
6. Select option 5 to Return to main menu

Next, I am going to assume that you are not logged into your Windows 7 computer with the “Administrator” account (which is disabled by default) so you will need to create a second account on the Hyper-V Server.  To do this you will need to go into SConfig and:

1. Select option 3 (Add Local Administrator)
2. When prompted for an account name – enter the user name that you are using on the Windows 7 desktop (in my case – “Benjamin”).
3. You will then be asked for a password – and again you should use the same password as you are using on the Windows 7 desktop (no – I am not going to tell you my password)
   
   

Next – to enable remote (but read-only) access with device manager – run this command from the command prompt as well: reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceInstall\Settings /v AllowRemoteRPC /t reg_dword /d 1 (once again that is a single command).

Finally you will need to restart the server one last time (you can use option 13 on the Sconfig menu).

Desktop Configuration

Now it is time to go and configure the desktop computer. 

The first thing to do is to download and install the Remote Server Administration Toolkit.  You can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d and install it by just running it and following the prompts.

After you have done this you will need to enable the correct remote management tools.  To do this:

1. Open the Start menu
2. Open Control Panel
3. Select Programs and Features (or just Programs depending on the Control Panel view that you are using)
4. Select Turn Windows features on or off
5. Find Remote Server Administration Tools and Check Hyper-V Tools (under Role Administration Tools) and Server Manager under the top level list
6. Click OK

In most workgroup configurations you will not have reliable name resolution for remote computers (i.e. you need to use the IP address).  However – many of the server management tools require that name resolution be working reliably.  If you are using a fixed IP address on the Hyper-V server – you can make this work by editing the “hosts” on the desktop computer (note – you can skip this step if you can ping the Hyper-V server using its name and have it resolve to an IP address correctly):

1. Open the Start menu
2. Click on All Programs and then on Accessories
3. Right click on Notepad and select Run as administrator
4. Once Notepad has opened, use the File menu to Open… a file
5. Navigate to the “Windows\System32\Drivers\etc” folder on the system drive
6. Change the file name option from Text Documents (*.txt) to All Files
7. Open the “hosts” file
8. At the end of this file – add an entry for your server.  The format is basically the IP address of the server followed by the name of the server.
9. Save the file and exit Notepad.

(Here is the hosts file from my desktop – after I have modified it for my server)

You will need to enable the use of WinRM to connect to your Hyper-V server.  To do this you will need to:

1. Open the Start menu
2. Click on All Programs and then on Accessories
3. Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator
4. Type in winrm quickconfig and hit enter.  You will then need to say ‘y’ (yes) to a couple of prompts
5. Type in winrm set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="RemoteComputerName"} and hit enter
   1. Substitute “RemoteComputerName” with the name or IP address of your Hyper-V server.  In my test environment my desktop computer could not resolve the name of my server – so I just opted to use the IP address.  I could also have edited the hosts file on my desktop and used the server name.
6. While we are here – we should also open the firewall on the client side to allow us to remotely manage the servers storage by running this command: netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Remote Volume Management" new enable=yes

Now you will need to use HVRemote to enable remote management of Hyper-V on the desktop computer.

1. Download HVRemote from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/HVRemote/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx
2. Open the Start menu
3. Click on All Programs and then on Accessories
4. Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator
5. Change to the directory where you saved HVRemote
6. Type in cscript hvremote.wsf /mode:client /anondcom:grant /firewallhypervclient:enable /mmc:enable and hit enter.

You can now open Server Manager on the desktop computer.  To do this:

1. Open the Start menu
2. Click on All Programs and then on Administrative Tools
3. Click on Server Manager
4. You will be automatically prompted for the name of the server that you want to connect to.

After you enter your server name – you should have full access to manage your Hyper-V server:

The only caveat here is that Performance monitor still connects to the local computer.  You can, however, add individual counters from the remote server one at a time.  One thing that tripped me up on this issue is that after entering the server name you need to select the Select counters from computer: drop down and hit enter:

Cheers,
Ben