Installing SBS 2008 on XenServer
Hi,
When trying to install Windows Small Business Server 2008 on a XenServer System, i encountered several errors.
The first ones I don’t really remember, but they where fixed by installing the XS-Tools before starting the SBS configuration wizard.
- Install SBS 2008
- On first boot (when the Configuration Wizard shows up), press Ctrl+Shift+Esc
- Choose xs-tools.iso in the DVD Drive dropdown list
- Go back to the Task Manager, click on “File”, “New Task”.
- Browse to the cd and run the setup.
- After this reboot the server (once or twice).
- Continue with normal installation
Then there was another problem when trying to install on XenServer 5.5. At some point in the installation the server rebooted and then stated that you should retry the setup.
The only fix for this problem that I found was to choose ”Other install media” as the Template, and not “Windows Server 2008 x64″
Ready for production use? Noticed Citrix hasn’t added it as a support OS. Did you run into any other issues after the install?
I did have some other issues.
The first one happens in combination with Forefront TMG or ISA Server. Most of the data being sent to Forefront was discarded because of a TCP Checksum error. I had to disable TCP Checksum generation on all interfaces (will post about this, just didn’t have the time for it).
Another problem is that sometimes I have random blue screens on the windows guests. This has happened since XenServer 5.5. These blue screens seem to happen only when I try to log on to a guest, not when they are left alone.
Whether it is ready for production I couldn’t really say, I am only using this at home, and you should definitely try this out for yourself. Maybe with other (more supported) hardware these problems wouldn’t arise.