One of the annoying absences in Hyper-V Server 2008 is the lack of a remote desktop connection client (mstsc.exe). This is due to the (welcome) reduction in clutter within Server 2008 Core, on which Hyper-V Server is based.
However, a remote connection client allows you to logon at a Hyper-V server console and then remote connect to the virtual machines directly which can be quite useful.
Thanks to this blog by Jason Huitt, http://jasonhuitt.com/blog/post/Server-Core-2008-No-Built-In-MSTSC.aspx, I discovered it's just a matter of copying the relevant files from a matching Windows Server 2008 installation. In my case I copied the files from Windows Server 2008 R2, and had to include an additional file msacm32.dll which wasn't listed on Jason's blog.
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\Windows\System32\mstsc.exe
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\Windows\System32\mstscax.dll
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\Windows\System32\msacm32.dll
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\Windows\System32\en-US\mstsc.exe.mui
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\Windows\System32\en-US\mstscax.dll.mui
Once you install these files into the relevant folders in your \Windows area on your Hyper-V Server you can just use the command line to run mstsc.exe and you can start to connecting to all the virtual machines on which you have enabled remote connection. Great if your VMs are running on an internal network not visible outside the Hyper-V host.
Print | posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:45 PM