VMRCplus on Windows Server 2008
It has been a while since my last post. I am busy doing Hyper-V stuff these days. Trying to grasp the Hyper-V API is one of them...
Anyway, Windows Server 2008 has become available and people are installing Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 on it. Yes, you may think everyone is using Hyper-V beta on Server 2008. But there are still a lot of Virtual Server users out there. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 is not supported on Windows Server 2008. It will be, but that will be an update to Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.
Some people reported issues with VMRCplus and accessing Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 on Windows Server 2008. So I had to see for myself if it worked or not.
After having performed the required configuration of Windows Firewall, I was able to access the remote Virtual Server host.
My scenario consisted of three Windows Server 2008 machines. 1 DC, one member server with Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 installed, one member server with VMRCplus.
I was logged on as a domain administrator. I allowed VMRCplus through Windows Firewall and enabled the 'Remote Administration' exception on both member servers. That was it, I could connect just fine.
Now, you may not want to run as domain administrator but use a regular user account. I tried that too.
I logged on to the VMRCplus machine with a regular domain user account (you can do that on Windows Server 2008).
But VMRCplus failed connecting to Virtual Server. One reason is that I did not give this account permissions on Virtual Server. So I gave this 'user' account Full Control of Virtual Server (not the host machine, just Virtual Server). It still failed because of insufficient DCOM permissions. So that was easily fixed by setting the proper permissions. I ran dcomcnfg, opened the properties of the computer, selected Edit Limits for 'Launch and Activation Permissions' and added the user account and gave it Remote Launch and Remote Activation permissions.
When using multiple accounts, I suggest using a 'Virtual Server Users' group and give that group the required permissions as outline above. You would then only have to add the user accounts to that group who need access to Virtual Server.
