Could not load an object because it is not available on this machine....

when I first launched WORD in new XenApp 5 server. Deleted the user profile and the popup gone away.

Citrix Server Tuning

TS Lockdown

• TS lockdown


• Session Time Limits

Configure Citrix Universal Printer driver

• 2003 configuration


• 2008 http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xenapp5fp-w2k8/ps-configuring-universal-printer-all.html


• http://www.xenappblog.com/2010/how-to-setup-the-citrix-universal-print-driver/

Server Tuning

• TS/Citrix Tuning


• Citrix Tuning


• few more on profiles

Office Tuning for TS

• Deploy the 2007 Office System with Terminal Services


• Installing Office 2007 on Terminal Server


• Outlook 2007

Citrix Discovery Does Not Run

Fresh installed XenApp 5 on Windows 2003 R2 server. First time to open "Citrix Delivery Services Console" the configuration/discovery tool did not start automatically. If manually click on "Run discovery", it completed in one second but XenApp folder still did not display in the left tree. (see below)



Resolution:

Re-register the PSE.core.dll according to this Citrix eDoc, CTX126048

User Diskpart to increase space on volume

SQL server was running low on drive D.

Modified the setting for this volume on SAN.

On SQL VM, open command prompt and type diskpart.
Type 'list volume' to find out the volume ID.
Then 'select volume 0' and 'extend'.

Test Canon G12 Miniature Shooting Mode

The view from my office window.

XenApp 6 & 6.5 Install Experiences

• definitively enable .NET from features and Add IIS role first on Windows 08 R2 before installing XenApp.


•  install License Server role first and configure the license file first.


• then install XenApp and configure it. (check integrate with IIS)


• last to install and configure Web Interface.

Modify CPU mask on individual VM for vMotion

After setting up the lab with two ESXi 4.1 hosts, I failed to vMotion VMs from one host (Dell PE2950 Xeon E5335 @2GHz) to the other (Dell PE2950 Xeon 3.20GHz). The first error I got is below on 'eax'.



Then I shut down the VM and went to change the eax value in Level1 to the exactly the same value in the image.

Tried to vMotion again and got the 2nd error on ecx. Then I repeated the process to change the value on ecx in level1.

Then vMotion worked!!!!

Unable to install Active Directory Web Services on Windows 2008 SP2

PowerShell 2.0 comes with R2 but not Windows 2008 SP2 so that I need to install Active Directory Web Services (ADWS) first. I went to this MS download page, and tried to install "Windows6.0-KB9868934-x86.msu but failed with "The update does not apply to your system".

Googled and found out that I need to install this patch first mentioned in this KB article.

Notes: after done this, I still cannot run AD module on my Windows 2008 SP2 server. Based on this article, I need to use Windows 7 or Win08 R2 to manage it.

 

 

DRIER Winter

Ok nothing new dude. Here is the chart from today's Chron.com. The forecast always get the bad news right, and good news WRONG. See how we go this winter.
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2011/10/your-winter-forecast-dry-and-mild/

 

GodMode in Win7

Extract from this article.

It works on my 64-bit Win7 PRO.

 

 

Father of the Year

Since yesterday, all the Internet media has been posting the video below regarding a Taiwanese father dumped his daughter when trying to catch the foul ball, and got the death of look from his wife. The author of this site even would nominate him as the 'father of the year'. Funny.

This clip did not actually show father dropped his girl, but very funny the reactions are from the anchors..)
http://youtu.be/_zZHJ4m2wKM

This video dose show the whole 'accident".
http://youtu.be/zZdywEQF7JE

It also made the headline on Houston Chron.com which I have to read everyday.

Use PFDAVAdmin to Grant Permission to All

Out default policy is everyone can view everyone's calendar in Outlook. We're still on Exchange 2003 so the best way to configure that is to use PFDAVAdmin program.

Please follow this great article.

SPF & Reserve DNS Record Setup

Changed the public IP for Exchange server last night and some users have got the Undeliverable message to some recepients like the example below,

Subject: Undeliverable: Financial Statements

 Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: Financial Statements
Sent: 9/20/2011 10:07 AM

The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

John Doe on 9/20/2011 10:07 AM
You do not have permission to send to this recipient. For
assistance, contact your system administrator.
<mail.mydomain.com #5.7.1 smtp;550 5.7.1 This system is
configured to reject mail from 66.1.1.1 [66.1.1.1] (DNS
reverse lookup failed)>

I went to  http://www.openspf.org/Tools do some tests by sending an email to spf-test@openspf.org and here is what I got in reply:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

       Subject:   

      Sent: 9/20/2011 10:45 AM

 The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

       spf-test@openspf.org on 9/20/2011 10:45 AM

            You do not have permission to send to this recipient.  For assistance, contact your system administrator.

            <mail.mydomain.com #5.7.1 smtp;550 5.7.1 <spf-test@openspf.org>: Recipient address rejected: SPF Tests: Mail-From Result="none": Mail From="cc@mydomain.com" HELO name="mail.mydomain.com" HELO Result="none" Remote IP="66.1.1.1">

So I had to put the Reverse DNS back. It's been a long time since I needed to do that, and I was also confused it with SPF record which needs to be done in DNS zone hosted by provider. Here is what I actually need to do:

1. Call ISP to set up the reverse DNS record for my Exchange server. (That easy!)
2. Set up SPF records for my domain and exchange server. (See below)

Check this page for more details.

Sent a test message again to spf-test@openspf.org, then I got:

Recipient address rejected: SPF Tests: Mail-From Result="pass": Mail From="cc@mydomain.com" HELO name="mail.mydomain.com" HELO Result="pass" Remote IP="66.1.1.1">

also, sent a test message to check-auth@verifier.port25.com, the result is:

SPF check:          pass
DomainKeys check:   neutral
DKIM check:         neutral
Sender-ID check:    pass
SpamAssassin check: ham

YAHOO!!

 

Rain Rain Come Back Again

As usual, the forecast has never been accurate, we did get some rains this weekend. Yahoo! we need more!

Shrink WSS3.0 Log.ldf size

WSS 3.0 server was running low on C drive. Only 2MB was available. I then ran the FolderInfo - my favorite disk space tool - so easy to use to find out "SharePoint_Config_xxx_log.LDF" has grown over 30GB.



 

Then I followed this article on web to shrink the file and it went down to 500KB only.



 

My Upgrade: from WSS3.0 to SharePoint 2010 Foundation

This is my upgrade experience by using "Attach databases and upgrade to SharePoint 2010". It's quite straight forward but since it was my first time upgrading a farm and I had created two new OS so it took me two days to figure out.

Source:
Single WSS3.0 server on a Windows 2003 server, 32bit standard with embedded SQL.

Target:
WFE: SharePoint 2010 Foundation farm on Windows 2008 standard server, 64 bit.
Database: SQL 2008 SP2 (64 bit) on Windows 2008 standard server, 64 bit.

Steps I took:

1. Follow this article, Attach databases and upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010

 

Ran STSADM.EXE -o preupgradecheck first on source WSS server.

Ran into the first problem while installing SP2010. The error is "Cannot connect to database master at SQL server at <SQL_server_name>. The database might not exist, or the current user does not have permission to connect to it.



Then I made sure the followings..

1. Both SharePoint and SQL ware assigned the static IP address, and SP server can PING SQL and DC without problem


2. Enable 'dbcreator' and 'securityadmin' Server Roles for the SP admin in Security/Logins in SQL Server Management Studio.


3. Enable TCP/IP in "Protocols for MSSQLSERVER"

2. I got the new SharePoint set up without problem and I could browse to the default home page at port 80, but what I needed was the restored content database instead of a blank new site. So I went to "Manage Content Databases" in the Central Administration and deleted the default WSS_Content database, and deleted the WSS_Content SQL database from SQL management studio.

3. Run Mount contentt database command again below.

Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name <DatabaseName> -DatabaseServer <ServerName> -WebApplication <URL>

It went ok with the message below. Then I was able to see the "WSS_Restored" was created in my content database page.


4. Try to browse to the SharePoint website and all my old WSS3.0 root site shown ok, but not the subsites.

 

 

Websense Express Seat Count

1. From the Websense\BIN directory command prompt, type: consoleclient localhost 15869 Enter 2 for PrintSelf.


2. Enter 1 for Dump to Local File.


3. Enter 3 for the Data Dump Level.


4. Enter a text file name (example: Seatcount.txt).


5. Select entry for SubscriptionTracker.


6. Enter Q to quit.


7. At the DOS prompt, type the text file name (Seatcount.txt) and it will open up in Notepad.

Houston Forecast FAIL!!!

This was the forecast on 8/30/11, but what did we get? Nothing, Nada, not even a drop. It is just getting old.



I have never seen the water level of our lake is such low. I can even see the bottom of the lake.

NO rain today!!??

TX is really doomed! The possible rain chance is getting little when the storm from gulf coast made a slight turn toward New Orleans. WHY? Don't we deserve some rain after 8 months drought?

Extracted from Chron.com

Here’s the updated outlook for what Lee means for the Houston area from ImpactWeather‘s Fred Schmude:

Temperatures will remain fairly hot over the region today and tomorrow and gradually decrease on Sunday through the early to middle part of next week as the effects of the front start to impact the region with lows falling in the 60s and highs struggling to make 90 degrees over most of the Houston area by next Tuesday and Wednesday.

As for rain, unfortunately the chances for seeing some much needed widespread rainfall in the Houston area has subsided thanks in large part to drier air filtering southward on the west side of the tropical cyclone. Several days ago it appeared we could see some much needed widespread rainfall over the area; however, the developing tropical cyclone is acting as a sponge east of the area and absorbing most of the tropical moisture that normally would have already been over southeast Texas if it were not for the tropical system south of Louisiana.

It’s still possible we could see some fast moving showers and isolated thunderstorms moving across the area on the west side of the tropical cyclone through Sunday, but most areas will probably not see much in the way of rainfall as the tropical cyclone moves inland over Louisiana this weekend.   The extended outlook calls for another reinforcing surge of cooler and drier air maintaining the early fall weather pattern into the 2^nd week of September.

Got that? If we don’t get some unlikely rain this weekend, it’s going to be dry until at least the 12th of September or so. The forecast is almost the exact opposite for Louisiana and areas to its northeast.

What the hell!!

Active Directory operation failed on "DC1". You cannot retry this operation: "Insufficient access rights to perform the operation"

I got this error when tried to enable certain users in Lync Server Control Panel.
Then I followed the resolution in MS KB 2466000 regarding "Enable-CsUser", however I got the error saying "Enable-CsUser: Specified SIP domain (SipDomain) is not valid. Specify a valid DIP domain and then tray again. Blah blah blah.

I finally came cross to the page below:
Enable-CsUer Commandlet
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398711.aspx

Then simply followed this command and enabled the problematic users by using "SamAccountName" parameter.

Enable-CsUser -Identity "Pilar Ackerman" -RegistrarPool "atl-cs-001.litwareinc.com" -SipAddressType SamAccountName  -SipDomain litwareinc.com

Rain Rain PLEASE Come!

The lengthy drought has made me depressed. Looks like the relief is coming. Very excited. Please don't let me down.



 

 

IE9 failed to open after Win7 SP1 installed

Symptom:

1. Got this error at startup. "The ordinal 379 could not be located in the dynamic link library iertutil.dll."
   


2. Checked the update history and found out the 'failed' status in "Windows Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7". Opened it up and got the "Error Code 355"

I thought this could be a difficult fix or hard-to-find-solutions problem after a quick google search without luck.

Eventually I came cross Microsoft KB 929833, and decided to give a shot by running 'sfc /scannow' command. It took a good 30 minutes and told me to reboot in the command prompt. I did and to my surprise, the IE9 opened up.

SQL Backup Script

To create a simple backup job by using SQL Server Agent in MS SQL Server Management Studio

DECLARE @BackupPath VARCHAR(100)

SET @BackupPath = '\\<UNC Path>\PM_' + CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE(), 112) + '.bak'

BACKUP DATABASE [<database_name>]

TO DISK = @BackupPath
GO

 

Step by Step Site to Site VPN setup

A good video demos the Site-to-site VPN tunnel setup on ASA.

http://www.petenetlive.com/KB/Article/0000072.htm

Incoming email setup on my SharePoint Servers

WSS3.0



 

SharePoint2010

Fun Never Stops Applying Windows Updates

"100 important updates"!!?? Seriously?



 

See these security updates? yuck!

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

Error connecting to WSS database backup files

I was testing Selective Restore Manager for SharePoint from Metalogix on my WSS3.0 server. I had no problem connecting to SharePoint database or SharePoint site, but was not able to connect to any database backup file. Then of course, I could not test the file restore either.

At "Add connection" drop-down, I selected "Connection to SharePoint Database Backup file - ready only' option, pointed to my BAK files location, (both network share and local disk). The SQL server name was automatically populated as "<SERVER_NAME>\MICROSOFT##SSEE", and the Authentication is set to "Use Current Windows user". Once I clicked connect and was returned with the following error: 

I contacted Metalogix and was told it's the permission issue to sql. However, I don't have any other account besides my Windows domain admin account used to set up WSS server. I could not enable the remote connection either because this edition of SQL does not support it.

Then I used SQL server management studio express to back up the content database, then SRM seems to see the backup file but SRM crashed as soon as it started to restore.



 

So maybe this is not the backup solution for me till I found the workaround.

 

Manage MS internal database on WSS 3.0

1. 
   
   Install “SQL Server Management Studio Express” at the same server you have this “##ssee”  database server.


2. 
   
   When connecting to the database, use this as the “Server Name”:\\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlexpress/thread/2d8dfefb-6928-4a18-8b30-420bd6fde9f9
   

VMFS vs RDM

originated from http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/Exchange_2010_on_VMware_-_Best_Practices_Guide.pdf

 

Install XP in VMWare

See the solution of getting no-disk error when installing XP in ESX.
http://youtu.be/ku-Q6MMwJoM

http://www.vladan.fr/windows-xp-installation-as-a-vm-trouble-to-see-the-disk-or-not/

 

反射性疼痛的警訊

50歲的陳媽媽是家庭主婦，身材很標準、看起來很年輕，除了有高血壓外，並沒有其他疾病。而且她非常注重飲食養生，不菸、不酒，每天都有運動的習慣。
但是，最近陳媽媽卻發現，早上慢跑時牙齦會痛，假日和先生去爬山，沒有多久，牙齦也會痛，只好提早回家休息。先生勸她去看牙科，可是陳媽媽從小就怕牙醫，
所以，當她去看她的家庭醫師時，順道告訴醫師最近發生的這些情形。沒想到醫師很謹慎告訴她：「趕快去看心臟專科醫師，請醫師幫您做詳細的檢查。」
陳媽媽回家後告訴先生，陳先生半信半疑說：「牙痛怎麼會看心臟科呢？」陳媽媽說：「但是醫師是很嚴肅地建議我趕快去看耶！不是開玩笑喔！」隔天夫妻倆一起到心臟科門診求診。
醫師聽完陳媽媽的敘述後，告訴她：「陳太太，我建議您住院安排做心導管檢查，您的牙齦痛應該是『心絞痛引起的反射性疼痛』。」
經過心導管檢查果然發現，陳媽媽的心臟有3條血管阻塞，而且還有多處阻塞的情形，因此醫師建議陳媽媽接受心臟冠狀動脈血管繞道手術；她在手術後，恢復良好。
大多數人對「心絞痛」症狀的認識是：胸悶、胸前劇痛、盜冷汗。其實，心絞痛的症狀還有：手麻、肩胛骨（後肩膀）痛、下巴（或牙齦）痛、麻，而這些症狀都稱為反射性疼痛。容易罹患心血管疾病的危險因子除了高血壓、高血脂、糖尿病、抽菸、肥胖者外，年齡（40歲以上）、停經後婦女、有家族史者，亦都是罹患心血管疾病的高危險群。
關於心臟病發作除左胳膊痛苦以外，心臟病發作會有其他症狀:如下巴會劇痛，以及噁心和盜汗，然而這些症狀也許並不常常發生。

注意：心臟病發作期間，可能不會有胸口的痛苦。多數人(大約60%)在他們的睡眠期間心臟病發作，因而沒有醒來。 然而，胸口痛也許會讓您從您的熟睡中醒來。
如果這樣，立刻咬碎二阿斯匹靈在您的嘴中並且與水吞下他們。之後，給鄰居或居住非常近的家庭成員打電話 -說; " 心臟病發作! 已吞了2顆阿斯匹靈。" 然後坐在前門附近的椅子或沙發上，並且等待人們的到來~絕不能再躺下來~  心臟科醫師聲明，如果每個人，在收到這電子郵件以後，送給10個人，大概
會有一個人的生命能被保存。

Qs on DMZ in VMWare

Here is a good article explaining DMZ in the virtualization environment.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was not clear about how to play DMZ in the VM so I posted this question and got the answer from Edward L. Haletky.
Original Post: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1790430#1790430

Answer:
So you have the following:

vminc0 --> a physical switch --> Linksys Internet router --> Internet

Not what I would do, why? Because vmnic0 is often used by the Management Appliance in ESXi or the Service Console in ESX, therefore you rather not do this. THe full picture is....

Mgmt <-> vSwitch0 <-> pNIC (vmnic0) <-> pSwitch <-> Router <-> Outside

What you really want is:

Mgmt/Internal <-> vSwitch0 <-> pNIC (vmnic0,vmnic2) <-> pSwitchI

DMZ  <-> vSwitchD <-> vFW <-> vSwitch1 <-> pNIC (vmnic1) <-> pSwitchE <-> Router <-> Outside

Then I would bridge vSwitch0 and vSwitch2 with a vFW. You really want two physical switches one for DMZ and one for internal. If that is not possible then use VLANs (but I highly recommend a second switch unless you are using high end switches with all sorts of layer-2 protections)

If you want Internal to talk to the DMZ, then the virtual Firewall (vFW) could handle that for you as well, depending on what you use for that firewall. Always add a vFW to protect/segregate the DMZ. vSwitchD in this case is an internal vSwitch that does not have a pNIC connected to it, therefore it is considered private.

 

Edward L. Haletky
Communities Moderator, VMware vExpert,
Author: VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security,VMware ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise 2nd Edition
Podcast: The Virtualization Security Podcast Resources: The Virtualization Booksh

 

 

 

Install Exchange 2010 Notes

If you're installing Exchange 2010 on the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system, don't use the downloadable .NET Framework package. Instead, use Server Manager in Windows Server 2008 R2 or run ServerManagerCmd -i NET-Framework. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638130.aspx

Some Key Terminology of Exchange 2010

Database availability group (DAG)

A group of up to 16 Exchange 2010 Mailbox servers that hosts a set of replicated databases.

A DAG is the base component of the high availability and site resilience framework built into Exchange 2010.A DAG is a group of up to 16 Mailbox servers that hosts a set of databases and provides automatic database-level recovery from failures that affect individual databases. Any server in a DAG can host a copy of a mailbox database from any other server in the DAG. When a server is added to a DAG, it works with the other servers in the DAG to provide automatic recovery from failures that affect mailbox databases, such as a disk failure or server failure.Exchange 2007 introduced a built-in data replication technology called continuous replication. Continuous replication, which was available in three forms: local, cluster, and standby, significantly reduced the cost of deploying a highly available Exchange infrastructure, and provided a much improved deployment and management experience over previous versions of Exchange. Even with these cost savings and improvements, however, running a highly available Exchange 2007 infrastructure still required much time and expertise because the integration between Exchange and Windows failover clustering wasn't seamless. In addition, customers wanted an easier way to replicate their e-mail data to a remote location, to protect their Exchange environment against site-level disasters.

Exchange 2010 uses the same continuous replication technology found in Exchange 2007. Exchange 2010 combines on-site data replication (CCR) and off-site data replication (SCR) into a single framework called a database availability group (DAG). After servers are added to a DAG, you can add replicated database copies incrementally (up to 16 total), and Exchange 2010 switches between these copies automatically, to maintain availability.

Unlike Exchange 2007, where clustered mailbox servers required dedicated hardware, Mailbox servers in a DAG can host other Exchange roles (Client Access, Hub Transport, and Unified Messaging), providing full redundancy of Exchange services and data with just two servers.

This new high availability architecture also provides simplified recovery from a variety of failures (disk-level, server-level, and datacenter-level), and the architecture can be deployed on a variety of storage types.

For more information about DAGs, see Understanding Database Availability Groups.

Database mobility

The ability of a single Exchange 2010 mailbox database to be replicated to and mounted on other Exchange 2010 Mailbox servers.

Disaster recovery

Any process used to manually recover from a failure. This can be a failure that affects a single item, or it can be a failure that affects an entire physical location.

High availability

A solution that provides service availability, data availability, and automatic recovery from failures that affect the service or data (such as a network, storage, or server failure).

With the significant core improvements made to Exchange 2010, the recommended maximum mailbox database size when using continuous replication has increased from 200 gigabytes (GB) in Exchange 2007 to 2 terabytes in Exchange 2010. With more companies realizing the greater value in large mailboxes (from 2 GB through 10 GB), significantly larger database sizes can quickly become a reality. Supporting larger databases means moving away from legacy recovery mechanisms, such as backup and restore, and moving to newer, faster forms of protection, such as data replication and server redundancy. Ultimately, the size of your mailbox databases depends on many factors you derive during the Exchange 2010 planning process for. For detailed planning guidance for mailboxes and Mailbox servers, see Mailbox Server Storage Design.

Lagged mailbox database copy

A passive mailbox database copy that has a log replay lag time greater than zero.

Mailbox database copy

A mailbox database (.edb file and logs), which is either active or passive.

Mailbox resiliency

The name of a unified high availability and site resilience solution in Exchange 2010.

Site resilience

A manual disaster recovery process used to activate an alternate or standby datacenter when the primary datacenter is no longer able to provide a sufficient level of service to meet the needs of the organization. Also includes the process of re-activating a primary datacenter that has been recovered, restored or recreated. You can configure your messaging solution for high availability and enable site resilience using the built-in features and functionality in Exchange 2010.

Exchange 2010 STD or ENT

Server: Standard
CAL: Enterprise

Reasons:
Server: 5 Database stores - 200GB max per store
http://www.infotechguyz.com/exchange2010/exchange2010editions.html

CAL:

The functionality of the client is dependent on the CAL and independent of the Server.

• Integrated Archiving (Ent CAL)


• Multi-mailbox Search & Legal Hold (Ent CAL)


• Advanced Journaling (Ent CAL)

Exchange 2010: Editions and Versions
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232170.aspx

• No loss of functionality will occur when the Trial Edition expires, so you can maintain lab, demo, training, and other non-production environments beyond 120 days without having to reinstall the Trial Edition of Exchange 2010.


• You can also use a valid product key to move from Standard Edition to Enterprise Edition.


• The RTM version of Exchange 2010 is 14.00.0639.021. The SP1 version of Exchange is 14.01.0218.015.

 

VPN Clients cannot Ping beyond RRAS Server (DR-Site)

My workaround: manually assign a range of LAN IP in the static route pool.

To create a static IP address pool

1. Open Routing and Remote Access.


2. Right-click the server name for which you want to create a static IP address pool, and then click Properties.


3. On the IP tab, click Static address pool, and then click Add.


4. In Start IP address, type a starting IP address, and then either type an ending IP address for the range in End IP address or type the number of IP addresses in the range in Number of addresses.


5. Click OK, and then repeat steps 3 and 4 for as many ranges as you need to add.

This is a good article on troubleshoot this issue.

Get Service Tag using Command on Dell Systems

type "wmic bios get serialnumber" in the command prompt to retrieve the Service Tag.

VMware Lab Setup

Without spending any $$$, I utilized our spare desktops to set up a ESXi 4.1.0 lab. My goal is to having two ESXi hosts and one iSCSI SAN.

Hardwares:

• Hosts: Two Dell Precision T5400. 4GB memory each.
  It came with the Intel E5405 processor which supports VT and 64-bit. I was using Precision T3400 first and didn't check if it supports VT. Of course, it does not. Check if Intel CPU supports VT here. 


• For configuraiton: check this article. (read the section of  Volumes – Important Information (for the clarity of mind)


• Downloaded and installed OpenFiler. A little bit hard time getting it configured properly till reading this good white paper by John Borhek, VMsources.

 

Notes:

1. Install ESXi 4.1.0 Build 260247 on each T5400.
   
   
   
   1. Create a VMKerner on the same switch for iSCSI connection.
   
   
   2. Select iSCSI Software Adapter in Storage Adapters, go to Properties. Enable "Software Initiator"
   
   
   3. Then go to Dynamic Discover and add OpenFiler's IP address as the target.
   
   
   4. Go to Storage, you should see the new LUN. If not, click on Add Storage wizard.
   
   
   
   


2. Install OpenFiler on Precision 390.


3. 
   
   
   
   1. Using auto partition option which is not recommended by the instruction.
   
   
   2. Add a secondary hard drive for iSCSI shared storage.
   
   
   
   


4. Install vCenter 4.1.0 Build 258902

Tested to migrate vCenter VM between hosts. No problem.

SuppressStateChanges value for Exch2010 Prep

I ran MS Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer (ExPDA) on my Windows 7, and got this warning message below.

Googled and found the the solution below,

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. Locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\RESvc\Parameters.
3. Right-click Parameters and select New | DWORD value. Name the new DWORD value SuppressStateChanges.
4. Double-click SuppressStateChanges.
5. In the Value data field, enter 1.
6. Close Registry Editor and then restart the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service, the Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine service, and the Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks services for the change to take effect. (Thanks for this good article.)

Configure MX record on 1and1.com and GoDaddy.com

Once I got my Exchange 2010 set up in my lab, the next exciting thing would be sending/receiving emails testing from the external domains. The outgoing email was pretty straight forward to set up once the 'send connector' was configured and it worked right away.

 

I was not sure about the incoming emails and MX records setup at the first place because the domain name of my lab is an internal domain name only. I decided to use two of my personal domains to be the accepted domains in Exchange and messed around the MX record/DNS settings.

 

My first personal domain is hosted by GoDaddy and the other one is hosted by 1and1.com.

 

GoDaddy
The MX record setup with GoDaddy was a breeze. Here are the steps I've taken:

1. Log in GoDaddy account


2. Click "My Account" on navigation bar.


3. Click "Domains/Domain Manager" on the left


4. Click the proper domain name


5. Click 'Launch' under DNS Manager.


6. Create a new A (Host) record, 'mail' and pointed it to my Exchange server. Leave everything else untouched.
   


7. Create a MX record with the name, 'mail.<my_personal_domian1>.info' and give it the first priority order, 0. Lease the default MX record intact.
   


8. Save it.


9. It took no time before I was successfully receive my first test email from outside to the email address, xxx@<my_personal_domain1>.info.

 

1and1.com
My experience setting up MX record with 1and1 was not as good as GoDaddy because it costed me one support email to make it works.

1. First I needed to create a sub domain for my email server as the MX record. I named it 'mail.<my_personal_domain2>.net'. (This is the part I got help from 1and1.com).
   


2. Modified the A-Record for my sub domain to point it to my Exchange server.
   


3. Then I went back to the DNS setting for the top-level domain name and added the sub domain name as the first MX record.
   


4. Then I was able to receive the test email to xxx@<my_personal_domain2>.net shortly.

Upgrade Firmware on Dell PowerConnect 6248 Switch

The PWR light turns RED on my 'brand new' Dell PowerConnect 6248 switch as soon as plugged into the 'brand new' Dell RPS-600 power supply. However, PC6248 itself powers on ok without error without connected to RPS-600.

 

Called Dell support and they saying it's a known issue will exchange my RPS-600. They also asked me to upgrade the firmware to the latest one and I document it here.

(If it's a new switch, make sure to assign the management login:
DellSW1 (config)# username admin password 3C2cpk2H level 15)

1. I first downloaded the tftp program from here and latest firmware, both provided by Dell engineer.


2. Unzipped the 3.2.1.3 firmware to the folder "PC62xx_3213" to my desktop


3. The tftp installer failed to install so I downloaded the zip file and run the executable file from my desktop directly. The IP of my Win7 desktop is 10.5.100.123.

1. I 'putty' into the PC6248 switch (10.5.100.234) and issued the copy command as below,

1. And I could see the progress in the tftp app,

1. I saw the "File contents are valid" message very quick, then 5 minutes later, the transfer is completed with the message, "File transfer operation completed successfully." Console was locked before it's completed.

1. "Show ver" to check the new firmware. Done!

Write to startup: copy running-config startup-config
Reboot switch: reload

530 5.7.1 Client was not authenticated - Exchange 2010

I finally got the MX record to publish for one of my two test external domains. Then I tried to send a test email, but got rejected with the error, "530 5.7.1 Client was not authenticated". Fortunately, it didn't take long to find the fix.

1. Go to Exchange Management Console


2. Go to Server configuration, hub transport server and default receive connector's properties


3. Click on last tab “permission Groups” and tick a check mark into “Anonymous users” click apply and ok.

Thanks for this article, http://smtp25.blogspot.com/2009/04/530-571-client-was-not-authenticated.html.

 

Problems backing up VM with vRanger Pro

Here are the issues I have with vRanger PRO. v5.0.0

• vRanger cannot back up the non “Raw Device Mappings” drives on SAN storage: I understood this and still placed the order even though 60% of our mission critical servers would not work with vRanger. However, I thought I can still use it to back up 40% of mission critical servers and the rest of non critical servers but there’re more issues…


• vRanger is not a ‘out-of-box’ solution on application-level quiescing: well I had to spend extra time deploying ‘vzShadow.exe’ to all our servers running databases…it’s not the deal breaker yet.


• vRanger does not support “File Level Restore” for the drives configured as GPT or dynamic. That mean I cannot restore any single file. This is the big problem. All our VM disks are configured as GPT and dynamic. If I could reformat all the disks, I would but I cannot.