Why can’t I use the Disk Management utility for a remote server?

Q: I just installed Windows Hyper-V server R2 and I’m having issues having it recognize other hard drives in the machine. Because this is similar to a Windows server 2008 core installation I don’t have an UI to use the Disk Management utility to troubleshoot what is wrong with the hard drive. I get the following error message:

Unable to access the computer <>

Make sure that this computer is on the network, has remote administration enabled, and is running the “Plug and Play” and “Remote registry” services.

The error was: Access is denied

A: The key is to allow related services communication on Both servers. In other words, you have to enable the firewall exceptions on both the computers not just the one you want to manage. The following are the services you should enable for this to work:

• Remote Volume Management – Virtual Disk Service (RPC)
• Remote Volume Management – Virtual Disk Service Loader (RPC)
• Remote Volume Management (RPC-EPMAP)

This is also helpful when you need to manage other Windows Server 2008 core installations.