In this video from ITFreeTraining I will be performing a clean install of Windows Server
2012 R2 standard edition. Before I start the install, I will first have a quick look at
the system requirements.
In order to install Windows Server 2012 R2, you will, at a minimum, need a computer with
a 1.4 GHz 64bit CPU, 512 Megabytes of RAM and a 32 Gigabyte drive. This is enough to
get Windows installed and up and running, but not much else. For a production system
I would recommend at least 1 Gigabytes of RAM but 2 Gigabytes if you can spare it. For
drive space, 50 Gigabytes for a starting size, but personality we use 100 Gigabytes so there
is room to expand. This leaves room for updates, temporary files and other data. I will now
change to my vSphere client to start the install.
For this install I will install Windows Server 2012 R2 in a VMWare virtual machine. The Windows
Server 2012 R2 DVD has been placed in the virtual optical drive for this computer. To
ensure that the computer boots from the DVD, I will go up to the VM menu and select the
option “edit settings”.
In here I can change a lot of the settings for the virtual machine. The first tab displays
the hardware used in the virtual machine. In this case, I will select the “options”
tab and then select the option “boot options”.
At the top, notice that I have selected the option for “EFI firmware” for this virtual
machine. This is a newer standard than the older Bios standard. Bios is more compatible
with older operating systems, so if you are not sure which to use, leave it on the default
setting of Bios.
To force setup to appear on the next boot, tick the option “The next time the virtual
machine boots, force entry into the EFI setup screen”. Now that is done, I will press
o.k. to save the changed setting and then start up the virtual machine.
Once the virtual machine starts up, the setup screen will appear. Unlike the Bios screen,
there are not too many option in here to select. To make sure that the system boots off the
DVD I will select the option Boot Manager and then on the next screen select the option
for the virtual optical drive.
The virtual machine will now boot from the DVD. Notice that I get a message asking to
press any key to boot from the CD or DVD. This normally occurs when an existing operating
system is present. If you do not press a key the computer will boot from the existing operating
system. This is done so that, if the install is finished and the DVD is left in the drive,
the system will still boot into Windows rather than attempt to install Windows again. In
this case, the EFI setting has caused the boot loader to wrongly detect an operating
system on the drive. There is no operating system on this drive but in order to start
the install I will need to press a key.
The “loading files” screen is loading Windows PE from the DVD into RAM. Once in
RAM, the virtual machine will boot into Windows PE. Once Windows PE has booted, Windows PE
will automatically run the setup.
The first screen of the setup will ask which language, time, currency and keyboard that
you want to use. In this case I will accept the defaults and move on.
On the next screen, you need to select “install now” to start the install. You also have
the option “repair the computer”. If the system has problems booting, the ‘repair
your computer’ option will give you access to some tools that may be able to fix the
problem.
On this screen, a product key needs to be entered that will be used with Windows. Depending
on which DVD you use, the DVD may contain multiple editions of Windows and the product
key will determine which one of these editions will be installed. In this case, I will enter
in a product key for Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard.
The next screen will show you which editions of Windows Server on that DVD will work with
that product key. If the product key is valid but that edition of Windows Server does not
exist on that DVD, setup will give you a prompt to indicate that. If this occurs, you
need to use a DVD that contains the edition that matches your product key.
The first option is to install Windows Sever with the server core interface. This is the
default option for Windows Server installation. In this case, I will select the second option
to install Windows Server with the full GUI and move on.
On the next screen, I need to tick the option “I accept the license terms”. The license
is displayed on this screen if you want to read what you can and cannot do with Windows
Server 2012 R2.
The next screen determines whether an ‘in-place upgrade’ or ‘clean install’ is going
to be performed. The top option “upgrade” is available; however, if this was selected,
setup would give you an error. In order to upgrade an existing operating system using
the “upgrade” option, the operating system that you want to upgrade from needs to be
booted up. Once booted, setup needs to run from the DVD.
Since no operating system exists on this computer as yet, I will select the second option, “custom”,
to perform a clean install of Windows Server 2012 R2.
On the next screen there are options to partition and format the drive. If the drive has not
been partitioned, which in this case it has not, setup will automatically partition the
drive as required. If your drive does not appear, you may need to select the option
at the bottom right called “Load Driver”. In this case I do not need to load any additional
drivers and I am happy for setup to partition the drive as required, so I will press next
and move on.
Setup will now copy the required files and setup the hard disk. Depending on the speed
of your computer, this should take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes to complete. I will
pause the video and return once it has completed.
Once setup has finished copying files, the system will reboot and Windows will finish
the install. This includes performing steps like detecting hardware on the system as well
as running a number of performance tests. The system may reboot a number of times and
the whole process takes a few minutes. I have, however, sped up the process so we do not
need to wait.
Once booted I will need to enter in an administrator password. Once this is done, Windows will
finalize the operating system and I will be able to login.
First login will take a bit longer than normal as Windows needs to create a profile for that
user. Once logged in, server manager will be loaded up automatically. Also since a new
network card was installed I will receive a message asking if this network card will
automatically be used to find other devices on the network. In this case, this server
will be on an internal network behind a firewall so I press yes for this particular network
adapter.
Even though I have finished the install, the last step that I will do is install VMWare
tools. This will improve the performance of the virtual machine - in particular the responsiveness
and speed of the mouse.
To do this, go up to the menu VM and select the option ‘guest’ and then the option
‘Install/Upgrade VMware Tools’. Once I accept the prompt, I can launch the autorun
to start the setup.
Once the setup starts up, in this case all I need to do is accept all the defaults for
the install. The process takes a few minutes but I have sped it up. Once complete the next
step is to reboot the server.
Once the server reboots, it will start up again with the VMWare device drivers installed.
This gives a lot of performance advantages to the virtual machine. Once the server has
rebooted and I have logged in, notice that I can now move the mouse between the virtual
machine and the operating system without having to press ctrl and alt.
This concludes this video on installing Windows Server 2012 R2. This is just one of the many
videos that we have on Windows Server and other IT related topics. Please feel free to
have a look at our web page or Youtube channel for more free videos. Thanks for watching
and see you next time.