It´s a good practice to increase NTFS performace to remove the feature configured by default in Windows 2000, Windows 2003 and Windows XP operating systems, that maintains for every file on the system the date and time of the last operation performed over the file.
Because the quality of the storage impacts directly in the performace of Hyper-V environment it is also a best practice for Hyper-V to remove that audit functionality in Hyper-V parent and guest partitions. But be careful, some applications could depends of that functionality, so you have to assess the applications running into the server to be sure that there are no dependencies.
The way to remove the audit feature is just to modify the registry as following:
You have to create a new REG_DWORD key named NTFSDisableLastAccessUpdate inside the registry path HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\
In Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 this feature is unset by default.
There is a new feature available in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 that allows to increase the value of the TCP Receive Window size over its default maximum value, 65,536 bytes.
This feaute that is configured by default, in some circumstances, for example Firewall products that doesn´t implement correctly TCP Window Scaling, could impact the performace of some network operations launched from a Vista/Win2008 machine, some programs may respond slowly or may stop responding.
The command to check the configuration of this feature is: netsh interface tcp show global
The command to change the configuration of this feature is: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled|highlyrestricted|restricted|normal|experimental
Where:
disabled: Fix the receive window at its default
value. highlyrestricted: Allow the receive window to
grow beyond its default value, but do so
very conservatively. restricted: Allow the receive window to grow
beyond its default value, but limit such
growth in some scenarios. normal: Allow the receive window to grow to
accomodate almost all scenarios. experimental: Allow the receive window to grow
to accomodate extreme scenarios.
WARNING: This can dramatically degrade
performance in common scenarios and should
only be used for research purposes.
Windows Remote Management and Windows Remote Shell allow us to remotely administration of Windows Vista and Windows 2008 machines. For Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 there is also an update that align them with WinRM features used in Windows Vista and Windows 2008.
WinRM is installed and configured to start automatically in Windows Vista and Windows 2008, but it is not at all configured.
So, before to start to use it it is mandatory to proceed with its configuration. The command to do it is:
“winrm quickconfig” or “winrm qc” in abbreviated mode.
The command will launch the question “Make these changes [y/n]?“, just type y
Once the service is configured you can query its state using the command:
“winrm enumerate winrm/config/listener”
Now it´s time to execute WinRS in the client that will manage the romote machine. These are some examples about some ways to execute commands into the remote machine:
There is a limitation in the number of logon that a user can perform in a computer that has not connection with its domain controller. In this case, the logon process use the cached logon information stored in the computer.
This number is by default 10 for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
This default behaviour could be changed using the Key CachedLogonsCount stored in the Registry Path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\winlogon Valid values for this key are from 0 to 50.
In case you want to deny logon for domain login accounts if the active directory domain is not reachable you can set this value to 0.
The installation of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 includes an evaluation period that allows you to using full features of both products for a period of 30 days for Windows Vista and 60 days for Windows Server 2008 without having a valid and legal product key.
Also, Microsoft includes by default a supported and legal way to extend that evaluation period for three more times. In this way, you can evaluate Windows Vista without having a valid product key for a period of time of 120 days and Windows Server 2008 for a period of time of 240 days.
The procedure is so easy as to execute a .vbs script that is included by default into C:\Windows\System32 directory. This script .vbs script is named slmgr.vbs and the commando to execute before the evaluation period expires, for example the day before, is the following :
C:\Windows\System32\slmgr.vbs –rearm
You must to restart the computer to apply the new evaluation period after the command execution.
You have the chance to apply this procedure for three times.
There are many options related to licensing topic that you can manage with this .vbs script, as you can see in the following usage instructions:
]
MachineName: Name of remote machine (default is local machine)
User: Account with required privilege on remote machine
Password: password for the previous account
Global Options:
-ipk
Install product key (replaces existing key)
-ato
Activate Windows
-dli [Activation ID | All]
Display license information (default: current license)
-dlv [Activation ID | All]
Display detailed license information (default: current license)
-xpr
Expiration date for current license state
Advanced Options:
-cpky
Clear product key from the registry (prevents disclosure attacks)
-ilc
Install license
-rilc
Re-install system license files
-rearm
Reset the licensing status of the machine
-upk
Uninstall product key
-dti
Display Installation ID for offline activation
-atp
Activate product with user-provided Confirmation ID
![share save 171 16 Hyper V Best Practices : [NTFSDisableLastAccessUpdate]](http://www.hkeyusers.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png "Hyper V Best Practices : [NTFSDisableLastAccessUpdate]"){kind=small}