I've moved!

I've moved from blogger to Azure and you will find my blog over at www.fjml.se

Over and out!
Joseph

Problems with system state backup - DPM

I ran into a common issue regarding DPM and System State backup today at the office.

When running a system state backup the following event is recorded.

DPM cannot create a backup because Windows Server Backup (WSB) on the protected computer encountered an error (WSB Event ID: 517, WSB Error Code: 0x8078001D). (ID 30229 Details: Internal error code: 0x809909FB)

And it's a common error and the reason this occurs is because there is a illegal character, or a reference to a local disk that no longer is present, for a service in the registry.

There are multiple ways to check the imagepath. One is to use the msinfo32 tool, do a regquery or  use powershell.

Since I'm starting to learn powershell I opted for it. Powershell has the nifty feature of having drives and besides regular drives there are a few other. To see the available drives just issue the command Get-PSDrive. 

So I ended up with a command that looked like this.

get-childitem -Recurse -path HKLM:\system\CurrentControlSet\Services | Get-ItemProperty | Where-Object {$_.imagepath} |Select-Object -ExpandProperty imagepath | out-file C:\temp\registry.txt

That made it easy to check if it was a service with a faulty image path that caused this problem.

And in my case it was a HP SUM Service that was the cause of the problem.

/Joseph

 

Dell VRTX

We are opening a new branch office in Poland soon and we were looking for some hardware that would be fitting for a branch office. We are going to support somewhere around 200-250 users. And the servers that we are going to have in this office includes SCCM, AD and a general fileserver to start with. I hope I don't have to mention a backup solution? I hope it goes without saying?

I found a really cool looking solution in Dell VRTX.  It is a chassie with storage, networking and room for four blades.

Here you see what we got, it consists of three Dell M520 blades and 16 600Gb SAS disks.

So far it looks really good. It has a Chassis Management Controller for the blades, network and for the storage. Aswell individual management for the storage, network and the iDrac.

The soundlevel is on a OK level during idle load, I have not tested it during full load yet.

Over and out!
/Joseph

Long time, no see

I haven't written a blog post in ages! And it's due to the fact to me beeing too focused on one thing at a time. A bit like not beeing able to walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.

But the hurdles have been overcomed and beeing a stand-in dad for a 7 year old girl is going really good. I've settled in to my new work and the new home.

With that I will pick up the blogging again and also, with the support of my girlfriend, focus more on my biggest hobby, IT!

Long time passes..

.. between the blog posts at the moment.

There has been a huge change in my life. I moved in with my girlfriend into her house and I have become a step-dad in the bargain.

And I was not prepared with the changes that came with owning a house and being a step-dad.
Firstly, there are a bazillion things that needs fixing in the house. And so far we have finished one room (almost, we are missing some IKEA furniture). After that we have the living room, kitchen and then the rest of the 6 rooms.

And being a step-dad is a tough job, since I don't really know how harsh I can be when it comes to the discipline. But' its a learning process and I suspect I will never be fully educated.

On the work front it has been like entering a 90's film, it looks good on the surface but when you start to scratch it you find a lot of faults.

There are 20+ domains, 1000+ servers and everything is running on old hardware. And when it comes to the software I can count all the servers on one hand that runs a operating system newer then 2008 R2.

They didn't even have a deployment solution for the servers, they did everything manually with CD's!

We even have a few NT domains!

After the vacation I have a tonne of things to fix and I don't even know where to start!
I suspect that the first task will be to migrate the old NT domains,

And I have a tough battle when it comes to trying to convince the bosses that we should migrate from VMWare to Hyper-V.

On the home-network front I have just now finished the physical installation of all the servers.  And I have been living here since the beginning of April!

I will do my best to update the blog, but at the moment I am happy of I get some time in front of the computer.

Over and out!
/Joseph

Out-Of-Sync-Error

Ok, I've just finished the second day at a big company that supplies equipment to the pharmaceutical industry and the first two days has been filled with introductions to the various systems that this company has.

And prior to getting started at work I have been focused on getting my stuff sorted out. I can say that it's still a few boxes unpacked but atleast my main computer is up and running. :)

I noted that HP has released a new version (1.1) of thier Powershell tools for iLO management for the Proliant servers. You can grab it over by HP with this link http://hp.com/go/powershell

On a different subject, I was sitting by the desk at the office when my boss came over and said "Hey, Joseph, Could you install a server.. We got a CD somewhere that you can use"..
When he said that  you could hear my jaw drop. I instantly said that "I will never ever install a server using a CD or almost never use a USB" so I started implemeting a MDT envirorment. So I got my work cut out for me for the next week or so.

Over and out!
/Joseph

Big changes in my life

At this moment I've taken everything I own and moved it 1530km south from Santa down to a small town called Getinge.

Here I've entered a domestic relationship with a beautiful girl so this means that I'm not currently in sync with anything!

Implementing a new DPM solution in Santas new workshop, and instantly ending up in problems!

Here I am wrapping scripts in all joy when I stumble upon a few DPM errors in a new envirorment, and instantly I thought "Wait? What, an error already? But I haven't done anything yet!"

Here is the error(s) I received:
DPM cannot create a backup because Windows Server Backup (WSB) on the protected computer encountered an error (WSB Event ID: 521, WSB Error Code:  0x17663A0). (ID 30229 Details: Internal error code: 0x80990ED0)

DPM cannot create a backup because Windows Server Backup (WSB) on the protected computer encountered an error (WSB Event ID: 546, WSB Error Code:  0xD317E0). (ID 30229 Details: Internal error code: 0x80990ED0)

From those error messages I can understand DPM, Cannot, .. you get the point.

After some reasearching it seems that this is cuases by the recovery volume being too small. You know that recovery volume that's supposed to be 350MB in Windows Server 2012 R2? It seems that it's only 300MB and that is too small for DPM and a BareMetal Restore backup option.

So, dig out your command prompt and assign a new location for the shadowstorage for the recovery volume by first listing where you have the recovery volume with vssadmin list volumes that will give you a something like this:

Volume path: C:\
    Volume name: \\?\Volume{7815fed2-f917-44b3-b3af-f9bb2bdb86fa}\
Volume path: N:\
    Volume name: \\?\Volume{9e3e1356-d856-11e3-80b7-00155d016606}\
Volume path: F:\
    Volume name: \\?\Volume{9e3e135a-d856-11e3-80b7-00155d016606}\
Volume path: \\?\Volume{d02c7a79-db9b-4a55-99df-f697a3dc2b6c}\
    Volume name: \\?\Volume{d02c7a79-db9b-4a55-99df-f697a3dc2b6c}\

After that, either shrink an existing volume or add some more space, where doesnt matter as long as you can spare it. 

Then execute the command vssadmin add shadowstorage /for:<the volume path for the only volume with no drive letter, i.e \\?\Volume{d02c7a79-db9b-4a55-99df-f697a3dc2b6c}\> /on=S: /maxsize=900MB (You can pick from a range from bytes to Exabytes or UNBOUNDED)

If you get an error message saying Error: The specified shadow copy storage association already exists. Then you have to delete the existing association before readding a new one.

Hope this helped anyone! Besides me that is!

Have a great day out there!

/Joseph

Inventory done with Powershell

I was sitting in my corner of the workshop minding my own business when I got the question "Hey Joseph, can you find out where the XXX account is used in the domain?"

Without hessitation I answer "Of course I can! And it wont take long!"
I was all joy and happiness beacuse I knew that I could do all the inventory from Powershell but I had no clue on how to do it programmatically but after a quick search on the internet I found what I needed.

Since Santas Workshop has a few SQL servers I wanted to search through them as well just to make sure that the account was not used within SQL and I stumble across a superb too called SQL PowerDoc and it's written by Kendal VanDyke.

That took care of the SQL Servers, but how about all services and if there are any Task Sequences using this XXX account?

Then I found this great script called Get-RunAsAccount.ps1 from Jan Egil Ring's blog that pointed me in the right direction. This little nifty script finds pretty much all that I was interested in.

In all it took me just a few (2-3) hours to do an inventory of all the servers out there in the Santas Workshop and it's all done with Powershell.

I have a colleauge that's not that much into Powershell (He's stuck in the VB world) and he was in awe over how easy it is to work with powershell.

Ok, so I'll head back to the cellar and continue to build the cloud solution for Santa so he finally can get migrated from the competitors onto Hyper-V

/Joseph

TechEd and Powershell

I was working and watching the live stream over at channel9.msdn.com when Jeffry Snover and Don Jones was presenting Powershell and how they use it. What struck me was that they used it in (almost) the same way that I do! Searching commands using Get-Command, Show-Object and so on. And something that struck me was how much they were using get-help, and that is somewhat of a ego-boost for a rookie powershell'er as myself!

One of the news that was presented yesterday was Powershell.Get - a way of easily searching and installing modules from a invite-only repoistory. This is something that I look forward to. They mentioned as well about the new package called oneget where you easily can add program such as Putty by just type Install-Package putty and powershell runs out on the internet and downloads and installs the package for you.

The fature, oneget, requires Windows Management Framework 5.0 which still is in Preview version.

Well, I'll better focus on building a cloud for Santa and his workshop before I escape from the artic regions!

Watch MSTechED live

Oh, I failed to mention that you can watch Tech ED live over at channel9.msdn.com/ so head over there and enjoy the new announcements from Microsoft!

Lack of updates

I have been terrible when it comes to updating this blog, and the reason for this is that I am moving 1500km South in Sweden (Halland), with that fact in hand I have had a tonne of work to finish before the move.

One part of that is System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Santa and his Workshop is currently in the workings of deploying SCVMM to replace their current Virtual solution.

I will do my best to update this blog!

Over and out
Joseph

System Center 2012 R2 Update Rollup 2 is now avaible

I might be a bit late, but Microsoft have now released Update Rollup 2 for its System Center 2012 R2 products.

In this update support for Windows Server 2003 is added, also support for the following workloads on Windows Server 2003:

• SQL 2005
• SQL 2008
• SQL 2008 R2 
• Sharepoint 2007

Here is a link for the KB over at Microsoft. KB2932881

And remember, always take a backup of the DPM database before installing the upgrade!

/Joseph

dpmdsacl.exe has stopped working - When enabling End-user Recovery

So easter is over and thank god for that! Too much food and whatnot!

Anyway, Im back in the sadle as they say, or back to behind the bench at Santas Workshop.

Today I hit a strange problem when enabling End-User Recovery on the DPM server. (Note: I have had an old DPM Server in this domain that I uninstalled, and that DPM server had EUR activated in the current labdomain)
When clicking on "Configure Active Directory" and filling in the credentials I was prompted with the following error message:

"dpmdsacl.exe has stopped working" 

With the problem details:

"Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
  Application Name: dpmdsacl.exe
  Application Version: 4.2.1205.0
  Application Timestamp: 5226e06b
  Fault Module Name: KERNELBASE.dll
  Fault Module Version: 6.3.9600.16496
  Fault Module Timestamp: 52b3f283
  Exception Code: e0434352
  Exception Offset: 0000000000005a88
  OS Version: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.272.7
  Locale ID: 1033
  Additional Information 1: 7644
  Additional Information 2: 7644cee486badc818e8a96bb7aba3bfd
  Additional Information 3: 323f
  Additional Information 4: 323fd7577665c71a733ee3b0c137aa0d"

It seems that when you run the dpmdsacl.exe it creates and tries to set the rights for the container in Active Directory called CN=MS-ShareMapConfiguration,CN=System,DC=SantasWorkshop,DC=north,DC=pole
and the ACLs List Content and Create/Delete ms-ShareMapConfiguraiton.

I added the access rights for the new DPM server and now it works!

CBA Protected Servers

I'm configuring Certificate Based Authentication between the DPM Server and a few ProductionServers and I noticed that if you miss out on a really important step, at least myself got stuck with my head banging against a wall. 

When running the command Attach-ProductionServerWithCertificate.ps1 -DPMServername DPMServer -PSCredential <pathToBinFile> I got this error message

WARNING: Connecting to DPM server: DPMServer
There is failure while attaching production server with certificates
C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\DPM\DPM\bin\Attach-ProductionServerWithCertificate.ps1 : DPM CPWrapper Service on the ProductionServer computer has encountered a failure and may
 be in an unusable state. Exception Message = The socket connection was aborted. This could be caused by an error processing your message or a receive timeout being exceeded by th
e remote host, or an underlying network resource issue. Local socket timeout was '00:00:59.9680000'..
At line:1 char:1
+ .\Attach-ProductionServerWithCertificate.ps1 -DPMServerName DPMServer -PSCredential  ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Write-Error], WriteErrorException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WriteErrorException,Attach-ProductionServerWithCertificate.ps1
- Check that the relevant firewall exceptions are configured correctly.
- Check if the certificate used by the DPM CPWrapper service on the ProductionServer computer is trusted by the peer server.
- Try to restart the DPM CPWrapper service on the ProductionServer computer.

And it turns out that the problem behind all this is the lack of the root certificate. Just install the root certificate in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities (and any intermediate certificates in the Intermediate Certification Authorites) you should be good to go!

/Joseph

Update on Re: Hardware - Hardware - Hardware

I sat down with Santa and had a discussion about what to do with the hardware and if we should invest in a new Raid Card, and after a quick glance on the blogpost to see the performance numbers we looked at each other and nodded intensely. So after asking Santas Wife for OK to order we did, and it is here!

It's been installed in the server and I was exited when I started up the server for the first time with the new card installed. But after running the CrystalMark program I felt my heart drop, take a look at these numbers!






These are the numbers, and just look at them! 49MB/s compared to 31MB/s with the PERC H310 card. So after thinking for a few minutes I realized that I might have to configure something. Said and done I installed the Server Administrator software from Dell in order to reconfigure the write settings.

After changing the setting I did another test with CrystalMark and here are the results!



That is some improvement! Time to work some more!