Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Windows Server 2012 and Installation Media

On Windows Server 2012, the installation of the server does not include all of the usual components necessary to support activating some of the server features and roles, such as the Application Server role with the .NET 3.5 framework.  The server will give you a warning about missing components and ask for a location of the installation media.  If you have the ISO or disk for the installation, you will find these components under [drive]:\sources\sxs.

I have to say I am not a fan of this model.  Early versions of both client and server kept the components separate, requiring you to have the original media every time you wanted to add a Windows feature.  Recent versions have solved this by including them, but certainly increased the size on disk.  I’d prefer the components to be copied, to avoid the necessity of installation media, and this can be done by manually copying the above directory to a location on the disk.  Why did Microsoft change this from being automatic?

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