Chris May

Here is the article on how to install the update on the EX47X machines.

When HP released the HP MediaSmart Server 2.5 Update for the EX48x machines, they also ^[1] announced the full software would not be available to first generation users due "to hardware differences" anhd "the underlying software architecture". Based on that statement, Nigel Wilks (Cougar) and Alex Kuretz (Yakuza) started work on a way^[2] to make the update available to EX47x owners, dubbed "SanEncore" after the code names for the EX47x (San Juan) and the EX48x (Encore).

Cougar and Yakuza have also developed a Windows Home Server Add-In to fake the Update package into thinking it is running on a 2.1 machine, and handles some of the missing configuration items so that the 2.5 update is sucesful.

This chat takes place after I have already chatted with a different support group, called the IBM parts divions, and the IBM tech support division:

Mohammed: Thank you for accepting our chat service, how may I assist you?
you: When I customize an x3500, at last screen it says: (5652) Planar Base [$699.00] is required for this configuration and has been added for you.
you: What is Planar Base and what about my configuration makes it a requirement?
Mohammed: Is this for yourself (your company) or a client of yours?
you: mysefl
Mohammed: I see. I'm not too familiar with the planar base. I can have a specialist contact you to further discuss this need of yours
you: ok. How long does that normally take?
Mohammed: our usual turnaround is 48 hours
Mohammed: however we can try to have somebody contact you by end of day tomorrow
Mohammed: but I can't make any promises
you: ok my number is (630) 708-1234
Mohammed: May I have your full name, telephone number, email address, job title, company name and physical address?
you: Chris May, (630) 708-1234, cmay@RealNameRemoved.com that should be good
Mohammed: unfortunately without all the information requested above, I will not be able to have a specialist contact you
you: ok forget it I'll just buy a Dell

UPDATE: I did buy a Dell.  Stupid IBM couldn't have someone take 5 minutes and answer a question for someone who wanted to give them $3000. 

Today I was trying to do a backup to my WHS and I was getting the message on my client:

Backup is waiting on (cleanup).

After quite a long time, it was still on this message.

I did some investigating on the server and saw that 45 minutes earlier my server had kicked off a backup cleanup process.  This was indicated in the event viewer under "Homeserver". 

Task Manager also showed whsbackup.exe doing a lot of work.

So, if you run into this, just wait a bit and when the server is done with the cleanup the client backup will start like normal.

You may notice that your clipboard will sometimes work over RDP(TS) sessions, but sometimes not.

Normally the problem is that the server has clipboard access disabled.

Just follow these instructions to enable it

1. Log into the TS (on an account that has administrator rights)
2. Run the Terminal Services Configuration program
3. Select the Connections folder (under Terminal Services Configuration on the left window pane)
4. Right-click on the RDP-tcp connection (in the right window pane) and select Properties.
5. Click the Client Setting tab
6. Un-tick the Clipboard Mapping option under the Disable the following: heading.

Presto.

I am working on some stuff with WHS that would require me to have access to the bios and POST screens on my WHS, but unfortunately there is no video output on the HP machines.

Thankfully, cakalapati has started making cables that connect into a port inside the HPs.

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1290

Nice!  No soldering!

I am in the process of testing out a Windows Home Server (WHS) for possible use in backing up multiple machines.

Today I ran into a problem.  I noticed that when logging in remotely (using mydomain.homeserver.com) it was sending me to an http page and not an https page.

Asking me for my username/password that will allow anyone to access my machine over https is not acceptable.  I tried manually changing the url to https, but I got a certificate error.

I took a look at the certificate error and it appeared the certificate was for the URL https://MYDOMAIN  which is the name of the server, but not the full domain name.

I am not fully sure which change I made fixed the problem, but I went into Settings-> Remote Access and changed the "Web Site Home Page" from the HP page to the "Windows Home Server Home Page" because my friend had it setup this way and he had a button that took him to an HTTPS page to login, but I don't think that solved the problem.  I then clicked on "Change" on the "Domain Name" section and just re-confirmed all the same settings.  At this point I think it grabs a new certificate from homeserver.com and it made it start working.

Now if I could only figure out why my one laptop is not backing up....

 

This article from Petri is pretty nice for showing you quickly and simply how to do basic shadow copy tasks:

http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_use_the_shadow_copy_client.htm

Very useful if you need to explain the process to someone.

 

On Dell machines running Windows Server 2003 they are nice enough to stick an ugly bitmap on your background.  So when you VPN and RDP into the server, you get to sit and wait as it paints this image:

Thankfully, you can remove it.

Just use regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Then delete the key for WallPaper.

It's that simple!

 

Microsoft appears to be ready to offer a windows based service similar to Amazon's ec2.

I am not sure that I would make much use of this type of service, as I am looking for something more like GoGrid or Mosso (which I wrote about a few days ago).

Should prove to be very interesting...

In the next 72 hours, you expect the new campaign to generate 10x more traffic than you have had in the last 72 days.  How do you scale to deal with this problem?

Do you buy more servers?

A few companies are starting to offer instant scalability for needs like this.  Amazon has been doing this for a while with their web services, but it isn't very useful for people who need the site to be running 24x7 (and it isn't very MS friendly).  But now there are other companies coming into play to provide the service I am talking about.

https://www.gogrid.com/

and

http://www.mosso.com/

Both offer the ability to instantly scale up your infrastructure as needed.  You can buy more CPU cycles, storage space, bandwidth etc, for a short time period.

This may (or may not) be ready for prime time, but it an interesting development for sure!

With Windows Servers, you can setup a cluster using built in Network Load Balancing.

The interesting thing about doing load balancing via software, is that once you get up around 4-5 servers, you stop gaining in performance when you add new machines, because of the added overhead associated with mainting N number of new relationships between the servers.

Also, if you use NLB and you set them up to not use any type of server affinity (i.e. a users request might hit any of the servers at any time) you will pay a serious penality if you are using SSL because each new request to a new server will require a new negoation of the SSL credentials.

I had one of my clients call me today with this message showing up on their production server after the power went out (big storm in the area):

17xx-Controller in lock up State

The server is old, and so I started to think worst case scenarios:  the controller probably died, the data is probably lost, backups probably don't have everything, we are going to need a temp server, we are going to need a new production server etc.

Thankfully, this did not come to fruition, so if you get this error message on your Proliant, there may be some hope.

Go into the setup menu for the raid controller and you should be able to clear out the lock state simply by saving the settings.

Of course if your controller really did die, then this won't help you.

We had a problem last night as we attempted to update our site certificate on our NLB website.

We have 2 machines in the cluster, and after updating the certificate on both of them, the site stopped responding over https.

We spent a LOT of time trying to figure out what was wrong with our new certificate, or the way we had set it up.

In the end, it turned out that that when we updated the certificate, it AUTOMATICALLY removed the NLB IP address from the IPs that are listening for port 443. 

So the result was that each server would respond over SSL on it's own, but when you tried to access the cluster by it's IP address over SSL, there would be no response.

It was really easy to fix, but a real pain to find. 

I have been getting this error in the event log of one of my clients servers:

Access to performance data was denied to UserName as attempted from C:\WINNT\System32\WinMgmt.exe

I first tried this:

Open the "Computer Management" app
Expand the "Services and Applications" section
Right-click the "WMI Control" entry & select "Properties"
Go to the "Security" tab
Expand the "Root" node and then select the "WMI" node
Click the "Security" button
Add the account & give it access

That didn't work, so I found another suggestion:

1. Run regedt32
2. Select the key SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib
3. From the menu select 'Security/Permissions'
4. Add the Internet Guest Account granting only 'read' permission

In case that doesn't work, here are some more articles on the subject

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/226494

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=1000&eventno=1700&source=Perflib&phase=1

 

FreeNAS allows you to quickly convert an old PC into a NAS hosting machine for extra storage.

I have been researching ways to reset a domain admin password for a client who forgot what they typed in when they set the password.

Most password crackers work only on local accounts, not for anything on a domain.  It seems like the way to go about this is to reset the local admin account, then login using Directory Service Recovery Mode to reset the domain admin account.

Here are some of the articles I have been reading:

http://www.jms1.net/nt-unlock.shtml  <-- this idiot won't let you view his pages if you are running IE, so use firebox, but again, that's just stupid

http://www.nobodix.org/seb/win2003_adminpass.html

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

http://www.loginrecovery.com/about.html

http://www.petri.co.il/reset_domain_admin_password_in_windows_server_2003_ad.htm

 

Slashdot is running an Ask /. article on alternatives to Citrix.

At Walsh, we run a lot of applications over Citrix, mostly apps that really aren't meant to be run remotely, to allow remote users to run them against databases that are stored in our main offices.

MSi is interested in a solution such as this as well but for more daily operations than specific application access.

The details of my contract with Dell might be here somewhere. They are clueless. They said they will mail the details because they don't know what their webiste's address is. Man they are dumb. www.dellcustomer.com? Nope. www.dellcustomerservice.com? Nope... Idiots.