Convert Windows 2012 R2 Hyper-V Cluster Server Core to Full GUI Mode

I had just completed to convert 2 x Windows 2012 R2 Hyper-V Cluster Server Core to Full GUI Mode at my client side as they are more comfortable with the Full GUI Mode

Please refer to the following high level steps to complete this task without downtime

  1. Live migrate all running VMs and Quorum from Hyper-V02 to Hyper-V01 Host
  2. Mount the Windows 2012 R2 ISO file using PowerShell command
  3. Enable Full GUI Mode and restart the servers

Get the existing VMs running Cluster

Get-ClusterGroup</pre>

HV-ConvertToGUI-01

Live Migrate all VMs from HPV02 to HPV01

Get-ClusterGroup "SERVER01" | Move-ClusterVirtualMachineRole -Node HPV01 -Wai
t 0 -Verbose

There is no GUI to move the Quorum Disk from NodeA to NodeB, in Windows 2012 R2 and the default Name is "Cluster Group"

Move-ClusterGroup –Name "Cluster Group" -Node "HPV01" -Wait 0</pre>

Mount the Windows 2012 R2 ISO file located in C:\ISO folder and create C:\Mount

Mount-DiskImage -ImagePath 'C:\ISO\WIN2012R2.ISO' -StorageType ISO –PassThru 
#Create a Directory C:\Mount
mkdir c:\mount

Ensure that D: Drive had been mounted for the ISO file and mount the Install.wim to C:\Mount

The conversion will take very long time to complete as it will download the required files directly from Internet and you can speed up the installation by specific where is the Source File located
/Index:2 – for Windows 2012 R2 Standard Edtion, /index:4 – Windows 2012 R2 Data Center Edtion

dism /mount-wim /wimfile:d:\sources\install.wim /index:2 /mountdir:c:\mount /readonly

HV-ConvertToGUI-02

Enable Full GUI Mode and restart the Server when prompted

install-windowsfeature server-gui-mgmt-infra,server-gui-shell –restart –source c:\mount\windows\winsxs

Once the server is rebooted, and you can login to Full GUI mode now.

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