In this part of the Virtual Lab setup, we will look at how to clean the image up before generalizing and packing it back up to its install state age.

To get started, if you haven't already, you need to run Windows update. This will save a whole bunch of time later, for when you start a new machine up from this image.

This may take some time and several reboots to get all the required updates. You should probably go ahead and install the optional ones now as well.

So now you've install all the updates, we can start cleaning up the image and reducing the size of Windows Server.

First you need to stop the Windows update service from the services console. Click start and search for 'Services', then scroll to the bottom and find 'Windows Update', right click and Stop.

Now you can delete the 'SoftwareDistribution' folder in C:Windows. This just a temp store for updates, logs and config's. (Depending how you delete this, you may need to empty the Recycle Bin)

The next step properly isn't going to do much since this is a clean install, but could be valuable step to keep things running smooth in future.

Running Disk Defrag tool quickly should insure Windows Server is going to be at its best for each server you fire up.

If your Virtual Hard disk is stored on an SSD however, its recommended not to run this tool.

And for the final step in Part 3, System Preparation Tool or Sysprep for short.

What is Sysprep? The Sysprep tool prepares an installation of Windows for duplication, auditing, and customer delivery. Full details here

To run the tool, navigate to C:WindowsSystem32Sysprep and run the application. Becuase we will want to duplicate and use this image in the future, running the tools with the options set to:

• Enter System Out-of-Box Experience
• Generalize
• Shutdown

OOBE will put the image back to the initial install state.

Generalize clears any settings unique to this install and forces the install process to generate the settings again.

Finally, we dont want to start this virtual machine again. Next we created the Linked clone in VirtualBox.

Once the machine has finished and shut down, we need to bring up the snapshot window in Virtualbox and create a snapshot.

You need to give it a name and a short description of what it is and when it was last updated.

Once you have completed that, you can move on to creating the first Linked Clone. Right click on the machine in the list and click Clone.

Name your new server with something appropriate, like DC-1 or SQL, etc. Clicking Next, you need to select Linked Clone at the bottom and then click Clone.

And there we have it, you can now create as many clones of our server as you require for your lab setup.

This setup is intended for testdeveloping systems rather than production systems.

Assuming your Virtual Box Machine or other virtual machine, is ready to go, you can now install Server 2012.

The first step is to boot from the optical drive or ISO. VB will boot from the ISO if no Operating System is found automaticlly.

First screen you need to select the install language, time and keyboard languages. Then click 'next'.

On the next screen, you can select which version you want to install. For this example, I have selected Standard with GUI. (Warning: Server Core is command line only)

Next you can pick which type of installation you want,

• Upgrade - This can be used to upgrade from previous versions of Windows Server.
• Custom   - Clean install windows.

For this tutorial, we need to use Custom. 

On the next screen we can pick where you want to install Windows Server. If its a new server, chances are you will just need to create a new partition and click apply. If your using a hard drive with content already on, you may need to click delete and format before continuing.

Now your server should be installing. This may take around 10-15 minutes depending on the configuration of your Virtual Machine. The machine will also reboot several times during this process.

After it has completed the install, you will be asked to set a password for the Local Administrator account. This should be a strong password containing a mixture of upper / lower case letters and numbers.

When your ready, click Finish and your server should then prompt your for your first login.

Congratulations, Windows Server 2012r2 Standard is now installed!

First of all, Microsoft recommend the following hardware requirements for running Server 2012:

Component	Minimum	Recommended
Processor	1.4 GHz	2 GHz or faster
Memory	512 MB RAM	2 GB RAM or greater
Disk Space	32 GB	40 GB or greater

For my installation using Oracle's VirtualBox, I opted to have 2GB RAM and 2 CPU cores, however a much smaller disk space of 25GB.  

To create a new Virtual Machine in VirtualBox, simply click on 'New' in the menu and from there you will get the screens shown above, where you can start configuring your new VM.

In the first screen you need to give the VM a name and most importantly tell VB which Operating System and the Version you will be using. You can also set the RAM here, I have mine set to 2048MB or 2GB for this example.

Because Windows Server requires installation, you will need to create a hard disk in the next step once you've clicked 'Create'. Again for this example I went with a much smaller disk than the recommended but you can make it as big as you require, not forgetting about the amount of space on the physical disk itself.

Once you've created your disk and set the right save location for it, click the 'Create' button again and the initial setup is complete.

Selecting the machine from the list on the left and right clicking on it, then 'Settings', you can change all the machine settings here.

You might want to add another CPU core under the 'System' tab depending what the server will be used for. Otherwise you will need to load the install disc or ISO in our case in the 'Storage' tab. Click the drive and then select the ISO image to be loaded.

You may also want to check the 'Network' settings. In the example I've change mine to a 'Bridged Connection' so that my router can give it an IP address rather than it having a NAT address. You can also pick a different NIC card if you have more than one available here.

Now that you have setup the basic settings, you can install Server 2012.

Part 2 - Installing Server 2012r2 Standard. - Coming Soon