Cannot Deploy Template / Orphaned Template

Posted by Ali on May 22, 2008 One comment

Right click on your orphaned template
Select “Remove from Inventory”
From the host you would like the template to reside on…
Select you host
Select the “Configuration” tab
Select “Storage” under the Hardware pane
Double click on the storage device in the right pane..this will bring up the “Datastore Browser”
Browse to your orphaned template’s location
Right click on the template file..it will have a “.vmtx” extention with the Type displayed as “Template VM”
Choose “Add to Inventory”

Go through and answer the wizard information to complete the “fix”

Categories: VMWare. Tags: , , .

How do I disable Exchange Server 2003 minor link-state changes?

Posted by Ali on March 13, 2008 No comments

Exchange 2003 can detect link state changes, notify other Exchange servers about the changes, and advise them to use other routes. A minor state change is when a link is detected as either available or unavailable. The notification actually sends the entire state table. A major state change is an administrator-made manual routing change, such as adding a new connector or changing an existing connector’s attributes.

Sometimes, minor state change notifications are undesirable, such as when the notification sending of the entire state table could flood a network. This could happen in a large Exchange environment. It could also happen in a combined Exchange Server 2007and Exchange 2003 environment with multiple routing group connectors between routing groups and different Exchange 2003 bridgeheads in different routing groups.

To disable minor link state changes, use the following commands on each Exchange 2003 server:

1. Start the registry editor (regedit.exe).
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesRESvcParameters.
3. From the Edit menu, select New – DWORD value.
4. Enter as a name SuppressStateChanges and press Enter.
5. Double click the new value and set the value to 1, then click OK.
6. Close the registry editor and restart the SMTP, Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine, and the Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks services.

Categories: Exchange.

Windows Update Error 0xC80003FB

Posted by Ali on March 5, 2008 5 comments

Click Start, select Run, type in: services.msc
then press enter
Now look for the Automatic Updates Service, right click it and choose to stop

Click Start, select Run, type in: %windir%SoftwareDistribution
then press enter
Open the Datastore folder and delete its contents.

Click Start, select Run, type in: type services.msc
then press enter
Now look again for the Automatic Update Service and choose to start

Try running the Updates again.

Categories: Exchange, Vista, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP. Tags: .

Can I still use Microsoft Virtual Server or Microsoft Virtual PC to test Windows Server 2008 clustering?

Posted by Ali on January 15, 2008 No comments

Virtual Server has commonly created a shared disk over the emulated SCSI controller to use for clustered storage. However, Server 2008 clustering doesn’t support parallel SCSI.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Server 2008 clustering supports the majority node set model, which means a cluster doesn’t need shared storage. Server 2008 can use node-voting with three nodes or more, or a file-share witness instead of the quorum disk for two-node clusters.

If you want shared storage, the easiest option is probably iSCSI because the iSCSI initiator is built into both Server 2008 and Windows Vista. For the iSCSI target, you may have access to an iSCSI SAN/device, a software solution such as Windows Storage Server, or an add-on iSCSI

Categories: Exchange, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP.

What is the /admin switch in Microsoft Terminal Services Client (MSTSC) for Windows 2008 and Vista?

Posted by Ali on January 6, 2008 No comments

Although the /console switch no longer has any effect on Server 2008 and Vista Terminal Server connections, a new switch called the /admin switch has a similar effect when you use it to connect to a Server 2008 server with the  Terminal Services role. When you use this switch with MSTSC, connections don’t consume Terminal Services CALs.

The /admin switch involves elevated rights. If a user has the authority to use the /admin switch but has been marked with Deny Users Permissions To Log On To Terminal Server, he or she will be able to connect using mstsc /admin. Also, if a terminal server is in drain mode (no new sessions are accepted), an /admin session can still be created. The /admin sessions don’t count toward the session limit that may be configured on a terminal server to limit the number of sessions.

Categories: Vista.

How can I rename a file with todays date?

Posted by Ali on August 30, 2007 No comments

You can use this simple batch file to rename a file and append today’s date:
set Day=%Date:~0,2%
set Mth=%Date:~3,2%
set Yr=%Date:~6,4%

rename c:test.log test_%Day%-%Mth%-%Yr%.log

Categories: General, Scripting, Windows 2000, Windows 2003.

I changed the IP address of a server running the SMTP service, but I can’t send mail to it locally. What’s the problem?

Posted by Ali on August 20, 2007 One comment

t’s common to install the SMTP service on servers that require limited mail-sending capabilities–for example, on a Microsoft SharePoint server. I recently had a problem in which the box got a new IP address, and at that point the services that used the SMTP service could no longer send email. The problem was that the server had a relay restriction list in place, and the list didn’t have the new IP address listed.

To resolve the problem, you need to update the relay list. Start the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Internet Information Services Manager snap-in by accessing Start, Programs, Administrative Tools, Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Right-click the SMTP virtual server and select Properties, then select the Access tab. Click the Relay button. Be sure to add the IP address of the server trying to connect or a subnet containing the servers trying to send via the server by clicking the Add button. When you’re finished, click OK on all dialog boxes.

Categories: Exchange, General, Windows 2003. Tags: , .

How can I pre-cache the Microsoft Office 2007 installation files?

Posted by Ali on July 25, 2007 2 comments

Office 2007 uses the MSOCACHE folder as part of its core installation and functionality process. The folder is typically populated during the Office 2007 installation. However, to avoid network activity during installation, you can accomplish a pre-cache by performing the following steps. (Use caret brackets in place of the square brackets.)

1. From the network installation point, use Notepad to open the config.xml file, which is located in the core product folder (e.g., Pro.WW for Office Professional 2007).
2. Find the [LIS] element, and uncomment the line by deleting the opening [!– and closing –] tags.
3. Set the [CACHEACTION] attribute to “CacheOnly”. The line in Config.xml should look like

[LIS CACHEACTION=”CacheOnly” /]

4. Save the config.xml file.
5. Run setup.exe on users’ computers, specifying the fully qualified path to the modified config.xml. For example,

\[server][share]Office12setup.exe /config
\[server][share]Office12Pro.WWConfig.xml

Categories: General, Scripting, Vista, Windows XP.

What’s the new transaction log size in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007?

Posted by Ali on July 20, 2007 No comments

The transaction log size in Exchange 2007 is now 1MB instead of 5MB, which was the transaction log size for Exchange 2003. The reason for the size reduction is related to the new log shipping clustering technologies in Exchange 2007. The smaller the log file means a smaller amount of data loss because you can’t ship a transaction log until it’s closed and it needs 5MB of data written before you can close. With Exchange 2007, you only need 1MB of data written. In addition to the reduction of size of the transaction logs the naming scheme has been changed from E<2 digit storage group identifer><5 hexidecimal digits> to E<2 digit storage group identifer><8 hexidecimal digits> which means even though there will be five times the number of transaction logs the number of transaction logs you can have in total is over two thousand times the number of transaction logs you could previously have under Exchange 2003 (you don’t go all the way up to ffffffff, rather 7fffffec).

Categories: Exchange, Windows 2003.
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