Discussion of Windows 2003 installation procedure

In the Install Windows 2003 as VM on ESXi4 recipe, we documented a very simple procedure for installing a Windows Server. Here we discuss the thinking behind the choices made in that procedure.

  • ESXi provisioning (procedure)
    • Thin Provisioning was chosen as a way to conserve disk space on the ESXi host. While the guest thinks it has a 30GB disk, in reality the initial virtual disk will use less than two gigabytes of ‘real’ disk space. It can grow to as much as 30GB, but in the meantime, will only use as much disk space as the data stored there. We are not aware of any performance or reliability penalties associated with thin provisioning.
    • We generally provision our new servers with a 30GB C: drive. There was a time when 8GB was enough, but alas, those days are gone now. And it really sucks to run out of space on your OS partition!
  • Windows installation sequence - pre-GUI (procedure)
    • Although the choice of a FAT filesystem is still available, no sysadmin serious about security or performance should choose it. FAT has absolutely no filesystem security at all, wastes much space at larger partition sizes, and does not generally perform as well as NTFS. NTFS is the only practical choice.
    • The NTFS(quick) formatting option was chosen to save time. This skips the lengthy scan for bad sectors, which is (in our opinion) useless in a virtual disk.
  • Windows installation sequence – GUI (procedure)
    • All defaults were chosen for this example. You may wish to choose other options at any of the following points. Keep in mind that all of these can easily be (re)configured anytime after the system is fully installed.
      • Regional Options. Windows defaults to US English language. This affects more than just the language the OS presents in. If you are in the UK, for instance, you have different conventions for displaying dates, currency (money) values, and the like. Do choose the region settings appropriate to your locale.
      • Personalize Your Software. We have seen sites where these two informational fields were used for various non-obvious bits of information: budgeting codes, location codes, etc. Windows does not depend on these values for anything important that we are aware of, so use your imagination.
      • Product Key. This is a must; installation will not proceed without it.
      • Licensing Modes. We have left this at default, but there are advantages to either licensing mode, depending on how your organization will use the server. We will explore this in a future article.
      • Date and Time Settings. You will want to set the proper time and timezone at this point.
      • Networking Settings. Leaving this at “Typical settings” will configure the Network Interface Card (NIC) to use the TCP/IP protocol and acquire its address via DHCP. Additionally it will attach the standard “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” (also known as CIFS or SMB) protocol. Our test server was built in an environment which provides DHCP; if yours is not, you may wish to set static IP settings here. We will more thoroughly explore networking options in a future recipe.
      • Workgroup or Computer Domain. You may join a Windows domain (either Active Directory or NT4-style) or a workgroup during the installation if you wish. We left this at default, which creates a standalone server.