Windows Hyper-V Server 2019

This post will explain how to use the free Hyper-V Windows 2019 Server version. This version doesn't come with any GUI interface as provided in the full Windows 2019 Server version. Instead it comes with a character interface, but with the help of some third party tools you can easily get a fully functional Hyper-V server for free.

The following will be assumed:

1. You have a dedicated server connected to a network and you want to install Hyper-V 2019 on this server to run Virtual Machines and/or act as a file server.
2. You have physical access to this server to do the installation.
3. You have another machine connected to the same network to do remote management, running a recent version of Microsoft Windows.
4. You don't want to join a domain or use Active Directory. You can do this if you want to, but this is not included in this post.

First you'll need to download the Hyper-V 2019 ISO from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2019. You’ll need to register before you can download. After downloading you’ll need to write this ISO either to a DVD or USB drive. For both options you can use the Windows USB/DVD download tool available at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool.

Boot your server with this ISO and you’ll get the following screen:

Click Next and on Install Now. You’ll have to accept the license terms. Then choose the Custom: Install the newer version of Hyper-V only (advanced). Choose your destination drive and click on Next. This will install Hyper-V on your machine:

When done it will restart. After restart it will continue the installation process and it will ask you to change the Administrator password. Click OK and provide the password. Once done you’ll get the following screen:

This is the standard HyperV 2019 Core interface.

First choose option 1 & 2 to set the workgroup and computer name. In this case I’ll leave the workgroup and only change the computer name to hyperv2019.

There's no need to restart the box now. Add a local administrator using option 3. The easiest solution is to add a user with exactly the same username and password as on the PC that will be used to admin this box.

Then enable remote desktop using option 7:

Next we want to enable file sharing. Well use this to copy files over to the server, but you can also use it to move virtual hard drives around, or simply use part of the server for backups. In the command prompt window simply type powershell and issue the following command:
Install-WindowsFeature -name File-Services

Then execute the following command to disable password expiry dates:
net accounts /MAXPWAGE:UNLIMITED

Now restart your server for changes to take effect. After restart log in with your new user account. Normally you can remote desktop to the box by using the server name only, but it that fails use option 8 from the menu to get the IP address and use the IP address instead. Using Remote Desktop you should get the same screen as what you've seen on the console, implying you can now admin this box remotely.

You should also be able to browse to the network share C$ on this box from a remote client:

Using this network link you can copy files to the server so we can install extra utilities.

The first tool we're going to install is Windows Admin Center. Download the MSI for free from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/windows-admin-center and copy it to your new Hyper-V 2019 server. This tool allows remote management of the server over a secure web interface, which is ideal for Hyper-V Server which doesn't have GUI remote tools installed. On the server you can simply run this downloaded MSI file from the command prompt:

Accept the license agreement, choose to use Microsoft Update to check for updates, allow Windows Admin Center to modify the trusted host settings, use port 443, plus check the Redirect HTTP port 80 traffic to HTTPs.

After installation you should be able to open a website to your server, which should redirect to a secure site. You can safely ignore the security warnings because the server is using a self-signed certificate.

This tool allows you to manage your server, including Virtual Switches and Virtual Machines. As an example we'll add a very simple VM running SliTaz (http://www.slitaz.org/en/). First connect to the machine, then browse down to Virtual Machines. Click on Inventory, then on New. Give it a name SliTaz, choose Generation 1, Virtual Processors 1 and memory 0.5 GB. No need to connect it to a network. Add a new hard disk with a size set to 2 GB, then also pick the SliTaz ISO you've uploaded to your server. Click on Create, and once it is created click on the label to view the details.

Click on Start, wait for a couple of seconds and it should be running. The tool has functionality to connect to the VM from the web, but that's not working for me. Instead you can download the RDP file to connect to the VM over RDP:

There is another tool that allows us to connect to the VM over a web page called freerdp. You can download if from this web page: https://cloudbase.it/freerdp-html5-proxy-windows/

Copy the MSI over to your server, then run it.

Accept the license agreement, select HTTP port 8080 and HTTPS port 8443, select the Redirect HTTP to HTTPS, and ensure the firewall rules checkbox is selected.

Don't enable OpenStack integration, then click on Install. Once installed you should be able to open a web page on port 8080, which should redirect to secured port 8443. Once again you can ignore the security warnings.

I usually edit \\hyperv2019\c$\Program Files\Cloudbase Solutions\FreeRDP-WebConnect\etc\wsgate.ini and add the following lines to the [rdpoverride] section - which means I don't have to always supply these values (just use the correct password in this file):

host=localhost

port=2179

user=Administrator

pass=password

Save this file, then on your server run command taskmgr. Go to the services tab, look for service wsgate, right-click on it and select Restart.

In order to connect you'll need to use the VmId. To get the VmId you need to run a powershell command on the server:

get-vm SliTax | fl VmId

Copy this VmId to the FreeRDP web page. When you open the FreeRDP page you'll see the hostname, user & password will be greyed out. Click on Advanced and paste the VmId to the PCB input field. Go back to the General tab and click Connect.

Note: I usually also edit \\hyperv2019\c$\Program Files\Cloudbase Solutions\FreeRDP-WebConnect\WebRoot\index.html and make the following changes:

• Remove the line where it refers to //cloudbase.it/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/CBSL_web_logo3.png. You can remove the tag completely.
• Move the sections with ids rdphost, rdpuser & rdppass input fields from the General form to the Advanced form.
• Move the sections with id rdppcb from the Advanced form to the General form.
• Save & remember to fresh your client web browser to pick up the new file.

There are also some tools available to make the standard text UI a bit more like a GUI. First download the 64-bit versions of bbLean from http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/ and Explorer++ from https://explorerplusplus.com/. Copy both to your server.

bbLean is the window manager to give us a better GUI interface, and Explorer++ will give you a Explorer-like interface. From  a command prompt simply run the bbLean file you've downloaded to install. In my case I've used the default destination directory of c:\bbLean. After installation click "Start".

Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose Blackbox - Configuration - Plugins- Load/Unload. Deselect the following plugins:

• bbKeys
• bbLeanSkin
• bbAnalog
• bbIconBox
• bbColor3dc

Right-click again anywhere on the desktop and choose Styles - 3colours - blue.

Next copy the explorer executable to c:\Windows\explorer.exe.

Now when you right-click on the desktop and choose "Explorer" you'll get an Explorer-type window allowing you to browse and copy files:

To automatically launch bbLean at startup you need to add a registry entry. Type regedit from the command prompt, then browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Add a new string value with name set to "bbLean" and value to "c:\bbLean\blackbox.exe -nostartup". The nostartup parameter is there to instruct bbLean not to run any startup commands defined in the registry - because they would've been run by the native GUI and there's no need to run them again.

That's all folks! Enjoy your Hyper-V 2019 Server!