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Pin a File or VHD to a Storage Space Tier

Richard Green on

In Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft added the ability to tier Storage Spaces such that hard disks and solid state drives where in separate tiers allowing the Storage Pool and the Storage Spaces in the pool to operate like a SAN that offers up hot block technology, automatically moving frequently accessed data up to the faster disks and less frequently accessed data down to the slower tiers.

In some circumstances, you may find that you want to pin a particular file or in the case of Hyper-V a VHD file accessed over an SMB file share to a particular tier. For example, you may want to pin the VHD file that hosts your virtual SQL Server TempDB files onto the SSD tier of your Storage Pool so that they are nice and fast. Inversely, you may want to pin data to the slow tier so that even if the Storage Pool detects the data as frequently accessed, it will never take up valuable space in your SSD tier.

In my lab, I am using Data Protection Manager (DPM) to backup my SQL databases among other things. The DPM server is a Hyper-V VM with the VHDs for the DPM server stored on a Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Space which is accessed over SMB 3.0. As my Storage Pool consists of two tiers using SSD and spinning HDD disk, I don’t want the backup volumes to be able to ever exist on the SSD tier and storing backup data on fast disk is a waste of time (there is one caveat and that is that you may want to force the backup data onto the SSD tier in the event of a major failure in the datacentre and you are going to be doing a lot of restores over a short period of time).

To achieve pinning of files to a particular tier in the Storage Pool, we need to use the PowerShell Cmdlets for managing Storage Spaces either via PowerShell Remoting or directly on the SMB File Server hosting the files.

Setting the Desired Storage Tier

First, we need to get the name of the Storage Space, otherwise referred to as the Virtual Disk.

Get-VirtualDisk

Once we execute the Get-VirtualDisk Cmdlet, we will see a list of all of the Storage Spaces. You may have multiple in which case you need to determine which you are interested in however in my lab, there is only one. Next, we need to declare the name of our Virtual Disk in a variable.

$VD = Get-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName "VMs"

Using the Cmdlet above, we repeat Get-VirtualDisk however this time, we are setting the output for a specific Virtual Disk named VMs to the $VD variable so that we can re-use it later on.

Set-FileStorageTier -FilePath "V:\VMs\RJGDPM1\RJGDPM1 DPM Pool 1.vhdx" -DesiredStorageTier ($VD | Get-StorageTier -MediaType HDD)

With our Virtual Disk in a variable, we can now set the desired storage tier for a file. Use the Set-FileStorageTier Cmdlet above to achieve this. In my example, I am setting the DPM Pool disk VHDX file such that it will exist only on the hard disk slow disk tier. If you wanted to achieve the opposite and bind a file to the SSD tier then you would simply change the HDD value of the -MediaType parameter to SSD.

Optimize Files to the Desired Tier

Once you have run the Cmdlets above, your Storage Space is now ready and set to pin the file to the tier that you specified however this does not automatically move the files. The files are not moved until the next time a Tier Optimize job runs however we can force this if you want to move the file in a hurry or if you want to move the file to the appropriate tier before you start loading it with data (such as a new blank VHD file).

Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter V -TierOptimize

With the above, we use the Optimize-Volume Cmdlet against the drive letter on which the Storage Space and the files exist. This will start the process of evaluating file tier placement against the heat of a file and move files up and down through the tiers as required. This will also execute any placement rules which have been hard set as we did above. If you happened to be physically looking at your server at this point, you would likely see a flurry of disk activity as files get moved up and down through the drive tiers.

Once the optimization has finished, we can verify that the files are in the appropriate places using the following Cmdlet.

Get-FileStorageTier -VolumeDriveLetter V | FL

This Cmdlet will report any files which have been manually pinned to a particular Storage Space disk tier and will report their placement status. In my example, I have only the one DPM Storage Pool disk pinned to the HDD tier and this file is reporting as “Completely on tier” after the successful completion of the Tier Optimize job.

Azure Web App SSL Cipher Suite Changes

Richard Green on

Earlier this week, I got an email form the Azure Team to announce that as part of security improvements to the Azure App Service Web Apps (formerly known as Azure Websites) they will be making changes to the supported SSL cipher suites with the changes taking effect as of July 18th 2015. Additionally, Microsoft have provided a test site that is running the new suite of ciphers at https://testsslclient.trafficmanager.net.

I decided to take the test site for a drive over on the Qualys SSL Labs tool the SSL Server Tester. I’ve been using this site for a long time now as a means to test SSL enabled websites as it allows you to verify the whole configuration in one place including the certificate, protocols and cipher suites. I ran the test site through Qualys SSL Server Tester as well as this blog which is running on a current generation Azure Web App site to compare the results.

It’s important to understand the difference between a Web App and a Cloud Service before we get much further into this too. Some people will be looking at this post and thinking why don’t I just enable or disable the relevant protocols or ciphers within my application however herein lies the difference between the Web App and a Cloud Service. The Web App in web hosting terms is a website running on a multi-instance web server. A Cloud Service is a dedicated instance that you are responsible for so allow you more control but at the expense of additional complexity. With a Cloud Service, we can configure the ciphers and protocols as part of the service definition which runs in the form of a start-up script. With a Web App, we don’t have any of these levels of deep system level access so have to accept what we are given.

richardjgreen.net SSL Test Result

Running the test on this site, richardjgreen.net I get the same result I have achieved for some time, a overall score of Grade B. The grade in this instance is limited to B because the server is allowing weak RC4 ciphers as well as a Triple DES (3DES) cipher. Additionally, the current site does not support Forward Secrecy, sometimes seen at Perfect Forward Secrecy or PFS for short. The final message stating that the site only works with browsers supporting Server Name Indication or SNI for short is not a security failure. This is due to the fact that I have opted to only support SSL for SNI browsers on my Azure Web App instance.

testsslclient SSL Test Result

Running the test again against the test site, we can see that the result has improved to an overall score of Grade A. This is achieved because support for the weak RC4 ciphers has been dropped along with the Tripe DES (3DES) cipher. Additionally, the cipher suites have been re-ordered slightly and a new SHA384 3072 RSA key cipher has been added at the top of the cipher suite order meaning that this cipher should be the most preferable to use.

Looking at some of the details for the test, I also appears that the Web App instances are being built now on Windows Server 2012 R2 although how long this has may have been the case, I do not know? In the HTTP Server Signature for the SSL Server Tester results, richardjgreen.net shows Microsoft-IIS/8.0 whereas the Microsoft test site shows Microsoft-IIS/8.5.

I look forward to re-running the SSL Server Tester after the 18th July and seeing if the test result for my own site is as good as the test site shown.

Hiding Users from the Essentials Dashboard

Richard Green on

I use Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials at home as my server and one problem that I have lived with for a long time is that I have a number of service accounts created to run some applications that I run centrally on the server itself. A problem with this is that these users will appear on the Essentials Dashboard which looks a bit unsightly. This isn’t something which has particularly bothered me but I accidently stumbled this morning on a blog post by Robert Pearman. His original post is at http://titlerequired.com/2014/09/18/quick-fix-hide-users-from-essentials-2012-r2-dashboard/ in which he provides the PowerShell Cmdlets for hiding users from the Dashboard.

In his example, he is using it to hide Exchange service accounts but the same principle applies. The first example below will hide the account for the service account SRV_SomeApplication.

Set-WssUserDashboardVisibility SRV_SomeApplication -Hidden

Replacing the -Hidden parameter with -Visible will unhide the account and allow it to be shown on the Dashboard once again.

As I have a number of service accounts and we all love PowerShell scripts for the sake of them, I decided to hide all my accounts in one go as I use a standard naming syntax for my service accounts. Sadly, the Wss Cmdlets don’t seem to support data received via the pipeline so whilst we would normally complete this as a one-liner by piping the get command into the related set command, this doesn’t work so we have to use a quick ForEach loop to achieve the same result.

$Users = Get-WssUser | Where-Object {$_.UserName -Like 'SRV_*'}
ForEach ($User in $Users)
{
   Set-WssUserDashboardVisibility $User.UserName -Hidden
}

 

Administering Sway in the Office 365 Admin Center

Richard Green on

With the release of Sway as I discussed in my earlier post today, Sway for Office 365 and What It Means for PowerPoint there is another application in Office 365 than now can be managed by tenant administrators.

For some organisations, they may want to stop users from using Sway or they may be happy for people to use Sway but don’t want anything authored in it to be shared outside of their organisation. To this end, we have some new administrative controls in the Office 365 Admin Center for managing Sway.

After logging in to the Office 365 Admin Center as a Global Administrator, expand the Service Settings node in the menu and then select the Sway option.

Office 365 Sway Admin

As you can see in the screenshot above, we don’t have many options right now but remember that Sway is a preview product and with more features destined for the product there I suspect will be more options for management over time also.

As of today, we have two management options. Firstly, we can completely disable Sway if we don’t want users to be able to access it. Changing this setting does not remove the Sway icon from the Office 365 App Launcher.

As you can see from the first screenshot below, when the Let people in your organisation use Sway option is disabled, users can still log in to Sway however if they try to access the My Sways menu or do anything, they will be shown the accounts are not yet supported error message.

The second option we have is to disable sharing outside of the organisation. When this option is selected, users will still be able to login to Sway and they will still be able to select the share with public option on their Sways however trying to access a Sway link as a user outside of the organisation, you will be shown an unauthorised access page as shown in the second image below.

Office 365 Sway Disabled  Office 365 Sway Unauthorised

Sway for Office 365 and What It Means for PowerPoint

Richard Green on

This week, the newest product for Office 365, Sway has been made public and is rolling its way out to Office 365 Tenants around the world.

I first noticed Sway had appeared in my tenant last night although it could have been earlier. Users can access Sway from their Office 365 Apps with the green Sway icon as shown below and they can login using their normal Office 365 credentials.

Office 365 Apps with Sway

In addition to the web interface for Sway, there are currently Sway apps available for iOS and Android and in typical Microsoft fashion of late, not for Windows Phone, something that continues to frustrate me that Microsoft leave their own platform to last to get access to apps and features.

So What is Sway?

Well that is a good question and in reality, it is a bit of whatever you really want it to be. I think of Sway as a modern cross-over between OneNote and PowerPoint, allowing you to record and collate information from various sources such as images and text, social links to Twitter, Facebook or YouTube like you can use OneNote for casual note taking and collation of text and images however with Sway, it presents it in a beautiful reflowing format that makes your content look great across a multitude of devices and form factors including the ability to automatically reflow the content for the screen resolution and orientation for you. This is where I liken it to PowerPoint in the sense that it is designed to present and portray your content in a way that people will be drawn to it and want to read it or at least that is the intention with slide decks right?

Sway has been designed for a mobile and cloud first world such that you can not only view but also author a Sway using just your web browser making it ubiquitous across platforms. The mobile apps are there in order to enhance the experience and make it easier to author Sways from portable devices.

I haven’t really played with it myself much right now but I’ve watched a few videos on it over on Channel 9 and it certainly does produce nice aesthetically pleasing output but I think that the usual rule of garbage in, garbage out will still apply. Yes, if you provide Sway with garbage input it will make that garbage look nice but it will still be garbage. I think that Sways will be best suited to those who can make the most of a host of information be it text, images or multimedia from a range of sources because Sways consisting of just plain text won’t be very engaging.

The PowerPoint Replacement

What interests me with Sway is how it could potentially be used? We’ve all seen far too many dull PowerPoint decks that make us want to either play Candy Crush on our phones instead or simply roll over and sleep so I would be interested to see how in the real world, with real information to convey, Sway could be used as a replacement to PowerPoint to deliver an engaging presentation.

I tested this theory earlier today using my Logitech R400 slide clicker that I bought for driving PowerPoint decks hands-off and to my surprise, it works really well with Sway, advancing through the Sway as you would expect it to so Microsoft have done a great job of linking Sway controls to the mouse click events that the clickers commonly use for advancing and rewinding PowerPoint slides. If we could just bring some of the multi-authoring capabilities from Office to Sway so that multiple people in an organisation could work on a Sway together that for me would seal the deal.

What I would like to see though, to make this truly possible for a mass market is two things. Firstly, I think that there needs to be some kind of offline mode for Sway so that I can download a Sway that I have created into a single file package or a HTML5 local cache so that I can launch from my laptop without connectivity because we all know that when delivering customer or board room presentations, you can’t always be sure that there will be internet connectivity to access Sway online.

Secondly, there needs to be some kind of presentation mode in Sway.

Right now, we have an option in the toolbar at the top for Preview which puts the Sway into a chromeless view port and I can hit F11 in Internet Explorer to make that full screen which gives the impression of a presentation however there are a few problems I see with Preview mode like this today. For one, the Sway logo is shown in the upper left corner when you are at the start of the Sway which I don’t want to see on my slide decks along with the fact that the forward and back controls are permanently visible in the lower right corner. The biggest problem though is that most users won’t know that F11 is the full-screen view shortcut for Internet Explorer and Project Spartan or Microsoft Edge as we should call it doesn’t even have a proper full-screen mode right now and I definitely don’t want to see a presentation within the Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge window.

I genuinely think that with the right introduction of multi-authoring tools and a fully fledged presentation mode, Sway could be the death of PowerPoint as we know it. I think Sway has a lot of potential and I really look forward to seeing what Microsoft do with it once it’s an official product and out of preview.

Windows 10 Build 10122

Richard Green on

As we know, I’ve been running the Windows 10 Technical Previews on my daily driver laptop, a Dell Latitude E7440 provided by work since the first builds and there have been moments of greatness as well as moments of sadness.

The defining moment of sadness came with Build 10049 when the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client ceased to work due to stack changes Microsoft were making to the networking. It’s understandable that changes like this would occur but it was an inconvenience too. I resorted to enabling the Hyper-V role on my laptop and running a Windows 8.1 virtual machine so that I could get to my corporate resources.

I reached out to Cisco on Twitter at the time and they responded that they were aware of the issue and they were working with Microsoft on it. Fast forward to present time and I installed the update to move to Build 10122 last night at home after Windows Update prompted me that the update was available for download whilst in the office yesterday.

Cisco got back in touch with me last night with the following response.

The fact that Build 10122 allows VPN clients to function against is obviously positive news but I wasn’t going to build a-fresh with an unofficial .iso built from the .esd file download in part because I don’t want to have to reinstall and re-configure all my applications but also because there are threads circulating online that Windows 10 will fail to activate if it was built using an unofficial media.

You can probably therefore imagine my surprise when after doing the upgrade, I found that the Cisco AnyConnect client in fact was actually working and I responded to Cisco accordingly.

Given that their initial statement was that this would require a fresh install to work, I have no doubt that I could be in an edge case and that some people may still find this to be now working however I want to point out that I hacked or modified nothing to make this work. I didn’t previously have AnyConnect installed due to it not working so this was a clean install of the AnyConnect 3.1.05182 client package.

Although this post largely centres on my relief that VPN is now working, I am having an issue with Cortana right now where she doesn’t want to acknowledge the UK as a functioning region even though I have all the relevant language and speech packs for en-GB installed. Working from home today, when I connected my laptop to my Lenovo USB 3.0 Dock, I also found that ports on the dock weren’t detected the first time around. I had to connect and disconnect a couple of times before the Ethernet and DisplayPort connections for my screens were detected but it is all working okay now.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with Build 10122 thus far and it seems like we are slowly working towards a solid build for RTM. If only the same could be said for the current crop of Windows 10 Phone builds.

Cireson Announce Partner Only Channel Sales Model

Richard Green on

This week, Cireson, the company best known for their System Center Service Manager extensions such as the Self-Service Portal have made an exciting announcement regarding their sales channels.

Historically, Cireson have offered customers both a direct and a partner channel for purchasing their products however this week, it has been announced that Cireson are moving to a partner only model to align themselves with the Microsoft global partner ecosystem.

For some, this may come as a bit of a disappointment if you have previously purchased products directly however working for a Cireson partner organisation as I do, I see this as a great thing for our customers as it allows us to really help customers ensure that they are making the most of their Cireson product purchases. If you are based in the UK or Ireland you have four partners available to assist you currently with Cireson products and services with Fordway Solutions, the company that I work as a Microsoft Consultant at being one of them.

If you are interested in Cireson products for System Center Service Manager such as the Self-Service Portal, Knowledge Base, Dashboards and more then please get in touch with us at Fordway and we’ll be sure to help you with your service management needs.

You can read the Cireson announcement at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/4/prweb12690930.htm and you can get in touch with Fordway Solutions regarding Cireson, System Center and more at http://fordway.com/contact-us.

Update Rollup 6 for System Center Service Manager

Richard Green on

On the 28th April 2015, Microsoft are going to make available Update Rollup 6 for System Center Service Manager 2012 R2. Microsoft have provided the details of the update in a blog post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2015/04/22/it-39-s-time-for-ur6.aspx.

This update heavily focuses on performance enhancements including improvements to the AD and SCCM connectors as well as improvements to the MPSyncJob, one of the many Data Warehouse jobs which causes no end of problems in my experience. For non-US customers, this update also includes the previously released hotfix to address SQL Nvarchar errors that I blogged about at http://richardjgreen.net/nvarchar-data-type-error-with-scsm-2012-r2-update-rollup-5/.

It seems from the post that the Service Manager team are also starting to put a lot of focus on performance and addressing the speed and performance problems that people experience using Service Manager once it is actually loaded up with data, connectors and ITIL related incidents, requests and changes. I’m looking forward to see what comes out of this team over the coming updates and see how they can improve the usability of Service Manager as it’s a key piece in the System Center puzzle that does indeed need a bit of work to make it more usable.

Managing the Skype for Business User Experience

Richard Green on

Yesterday, Microsoft rolled out the April 2015 update for Lync 2013 which replaces Lync 2013 with the Skype for Business user experience. I tried out Skype for Business with the Office 2016 Technical Preview a few weeks ago and although it’s early doors, I’m liking the coming together of the two product families thus far.

In this post, I am going to cover off the prerequisites for client and server and also the configuration settings for managing the end-user experience as already, there seems to be a wave of confusion online about it.

Client Prerequisites

In order for your clients to receive the new Skype for Business user experience, there are some prerequisities that apply. Firstly, you must be running Office 2013 with Service Pack 1 (KB2817430). If you don’t have Service Pack 1, you can download it from here for 32-bit and here for 64-bit installations.

With Service Pack 1 applied, you then must have the March 2014 Update for Lync 2013 (KB2863908) applied which you can obtain from here for 32-bit and here for 64-bit installations. There are many updates for Office 2013 post-SP1 which apply not only to Lync but to the whole suite so I would recommend updating all the other products too, not just Lync but for the purposes of this post, this is the update that is critical.

With both the Office 2013 Service Pack 1 applied and the March 2014 update for Lync applied, you are ready to install the Skype for Business update. This update is the April 2015 Update for Skype for Business (KB2889853) and you can download the 32-bit version here or the 64-bit version from here.

Update for Skype for Business

Once you have installed Skype for Business from KB2889853 above, you will want to get another update which is KB2889923 which is a post-April 2015 update for Skype for Business which addresses known issues with the original release. Hard to believe that such an update already exists but it sure does. You can download this update, KB2889923 for 32-bit here and for 64-bit here. Don’t be alarmed that the download page for this update still reports Lync 2013 as the effected product as this is a known thing.

Client Experience

Once you have the updates above installed, you will be running Skype for Business however for many users, you will be prompted at first login that your administrator doesn’t want to run this version of Skype for Business and that you need to revert to Lync.

Restart Skype for Business Dialog

This is caused by server-side settings and depending on your environment whether you are on-premise Lync Server or Office 365 will effect how you resolve it. If you want to control this behavior manually for testing purposes then you can edit the registry key which governs the client experience at HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Lync where you can edit the value of the EnableSkypeUI binary value accordingly. 00 00 00 00 denotes that the classic Lync user interface is used and 00 00 00 01 denotes that the Skype for Business UI is used.

EnableSkypeUI Registry

Managing Office 365 Client Experience

If you are using Office 365 then one of the benefits of the service is that Microsoft keep your platform up to date for you so you can go right ahead and configure the server-side policy.

In order to connect to Lync Online via PowerShell, you need to have the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant installed which you can obtain from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28177 and you will need to have the updated version of the Lync Online Connector Module installed in order to access the Skype for Business parameters. You can download the Lync Online Connector Module from http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=39366. If you have managed your Lync Online tenant from PowerShell before you will already have the sign-in assistant so just grab the updated Lync module.

With the two installed, you can download the SwitchSkypeUI.zip file from Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46404. This .zip file includes three PowerShell scripts.
DisableSkypeUIGlobal.ps1 will disable the Skype for Business UI for all of your users and force them to use the Lync UI.
EnableSkypeUIGlobal.ps1 will enable the Skype for Business UI for all users and if they have the relevant updates installed will be forced to use the Skype UI.
EnableSkypeUIForUsers.ps1 will enable the Skype UI for a specific set of users. The script accepts pipeline input to the $users variable for your users.

If you run any of these scripts you will be prompted to enter your Office 365 Global Administrator credentials to perform the operation. If you run the selective users script then you will need to provide the users in UPN format such as lyncuser@richardjgreen.net.

Managing Lync Server On-Premise Client Experience

If you are using Lync Server in an on-premise or hosted environment then the work may potentially be a little more consuming. In order to access the Skype for Business parameters in the Lync PowerShell Module, you must be running at least the December 2014 Cumulative Update for Lync Server 2013. You can obtain this update from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3018162/ and this updates carries a version number of 5.0.8308.857 if you want to check your current versions.

If you don’t have this update installed then you are going to first need to plan the deployment of it throughout your Lync topology. If you are in a hosted environment, check with your service provider whether the update has been applied.

With the update applied, we expose a new parameter for the CsClientPolicy Cmdlets in PowerShell to configure the Skype for Business user experience.

Either from a Lync Server or from a client with the Lync PowerShell Module installed, you can use the following commands to configure the client experience.

To disable the Skype for Business experience for all users, enter the Cmdlet Set-CsClientPolicy -Identity Global -EnableSkypeUI $False. If you want to enable the experience for everyone then you can use the Cmdlet Set-CsClientPolicy -Identity Global -EnableSkypeUI $True.

If you want to configure the experience to be enabled only for a subset of users such as a test group then you can apply the parameter to a specific Client Policy such as Set-CsClientPolicy -Identity CustomPolicyName -EnableSkypeUI $True.

Changing SQL Server Instance Collation

Richard Green on

Working in my home lab over the last couple of evenings, I have been installing some additional SQL Server instances ready for me to install System Center Service Manager. As anyone who has worked with System Center 2012 or 2012 R2 knows, getting your SQL instance collation right is critical. To compound matters, when you think you’ve got an instance setup right, you could end up finding that although one product has the correct collation, another does not.

In my case with Service Manager, making sure you use the correct collation not only effects Service Manager but also potentially your ability to integrate it with other parts of the suite such as Operations Manager. There is a really helpful blog post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2012/05/24/clarification-on-sql-server-collation-requirements-for-system-center-2012.aspx which not only talks through the SQL collations for System Center but additionally offers up a table of interoperable collations.

Needless to say, I got the collation wrong when installing Service Manager in my lab and I really didn’t want to have to go to the trouble of uninstalling it and re-installing it as not only is that time consuming driving a SQL installation but because I have two instances, one for the Management database and another for the Data Warehouse database I would have had to do it twice.

Luckily for me, I found that it is possible to change the collation of a SQL Server instance after installation. I want to point out that although this is possible to do, I’m not sure I would recommend it for someone in a production environment and I would definitely tell you to back anything relating to that instance up first. Doing this not only drops any user databases but because it causes the master database to be rebuilt, it will lose any customisations or setting changes you have made to that instance since install.

With everything backed up and ready, use the following command to change the collation of the instance.

Z:\setup.exe /QUIET /ACTION=REBUILDDATABASE /INSTANCENAME=SCSM /SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS=RJGLAB\Administrator /SQLCOLLATION=Latin1_General_CI_AS

To break the command down, Z:\setup.exe is the path to the SQL Server setup executable on my server. the INSTANCENAME parameter is where you specify the instance you want to modify the collation for. SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS is where you specify who will be make a sysadmin on the instance after the rebuild (as remember our master database is going to be reset) and SQLCOLLATION is where you specify the new collation to use.

If your instance is running in Mixed Mode Authentication, you can also provide the SAPWD parameter to specify the password that will be used for the sa account however my instance is in Windows Authentication mode so I don’t need to set or use the sa account.