How many times have you not had sufficient space on your virtual server due to growing exchange data stores, SQL databases, or Data Protection Manager backups? It can be a daunting task, in smaller networks, to have sufficient drive space on VM hosts. Using Microsoft Hyper V server 2008, I've setup test and dev machines and just hosted the VM files off on an external hard drive.
In the past external hard drives running USB 1.1 and 2.0 were too slow to host a file such as a .VHD effectively. Within the last couple of years technologies like e-Sata and USB 3.0 have emerged as great choice's for an external interface. These newer external ports offer superior read and write throughput performance for hard drives. You can purchase expansion cards that give your server the ability to have these ports. In the case of e-Sata, you can also employ Raid setups using external drive housings that support raid 0,1,5,10 and others.
I've found that, depending on your virtualization hosts configuration, you can setup or relocate .VHD files onto an external drive. Also you could add an external drive to house all of your machine backups and images on drives up to 3TB in size. With the performance of both USB 3.0 and e-Sata you can create, deploy, and restore in a fairly quick amount of time. Non-essential or lightly used VM's could be hosted on a single external drive with higher use possible using an e-Sata Raid setup. This solution would be very easy to implement with many server virtualization systems and very inexpensive compared to upgrading the drives in a server.
Microsoft SQL Server Shutting Down Every Night - Microsoft SQL Upgrade
Thursday, April 28, 2011 by
Mario McGuire
I ran across an issue on a client's SQL Server 2005 Express instance. The problem was that at 4:01am every morning the SQL server would just shutdown with the event messages of
- Service Broker manager has shut down.
- SQL Server is terminating in response to a 'stop' request from Service Control Manager. This is an informational message only. No user action is required.
- SQL Trace was stopped due to server shutdown. Trace ID = '1'. This is an informational message only; no user action is required.
After a week of trying to narrow down the issue I found that it was Windows Update automatically trying to install the SP4 update for MSSQL 2005 Express and failing. This failure would cause the SQL server to shutdown for the update, but not come back up. This shutdown was affecting programs like Blackberry Enterprise Server and also BackupExec which would then crash and need to have their services restarted after bringing the SQL instances back online. The fix for this issue was merely to disable the update and also for preventing future issues I disabled the automatic installation of updates.
This issue could relate to Microsoft SQL Server Upgrades and Blackberry Enterprise Server Support.
User home directory changes in Active Directory are not updating on domain workstations - Microsoft Server Support
Thursday, February 17, 2011 by
Greg Bock
Recently SkyByte Consulting performed a Microsoft SQL upgrade for a client's Microsoft Great Plains ERP system. The original SQL server was decommissioned and replaced with a new Dell PowerEdge R710 server running Microsoft Server 2008 R2. In addition to hosting SQL, this server also hosted user home directories for approximately 25 users. The entire users' directory was copied to the new server using Robocopy, an advanced utility that transfers large folder structures while retaining NTFS and ownership permissions for the entire folder hierarchy.
All home directories for this system were configured in Active Directory under the user's profile tab. After the new Users directory was established and the correct permissions were set, the home directory mappings were pointed to the new server. We began testing user logins for several workstations and immediately noticed the changes were not being reflected on the workstations. We noticed the computers were responding very slowly, and would hang quite frequently due to the old server being unavailable. While we don't enforce user home directories in Group Policy, we double checked to confirm this wasn't the cause. We also questioned whether or not this was a network security policy setting since it was occurring on all OS's including Windows XP, Vista and 7 throughout the office. Under normal circumstances, you should be able to change the location of your My Documents under the properties, however, we could not. We finally realized logging into a workstation with a different username, all mappings would be correct, so this was a locally user driven problem.
The solution was a few simple registry edits to change the home directory paths for: My Documents, My Pictures, and My Videos. For XP, Vista, and 7, the home directory location lies in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive under Software>Microsoft>Windows>Current Version>Explorer. The two folders to look for are "Shell Folders" and "User Shell Folders".
There are several values you will need to change which include: Personal, My Pictures, My Video, and My Music entries. For a server mapped home directory, the string entry should be a UNC path like this: \Servernameshareusername. In this case, we simply needed to change the server name for each string that needed the update. After rebooting the computers the changes took effect. While no user files were lost during this, I strongly recommend having a backup available of the users files and folders before performing any changes.
All home directories for this system were configured in Active Directory under the user's profile tab. After the new Users directory was established and the correct permissions were set, the home directory mappings were pointed to the new server. We began testing user logins for several workstations and immediately noticed the changes were not being reflected on the workstations. We noticed the computers were responding very slowly, and would hang quite frequently due to the old server being unavailable. While we don't enforce user home directories in Group Policy, we double checked to confirm this wasn't the cause. We also questioned whether or not this was a network security policy setting since it was occurring on all OS's including Windows XP, Vista and 7 throughout the office. Under normal circumstances, you should be able to change the location of your My Documents under the properties, however, we could not. We finally realized logging into a workstation with a different username, all mappings would be correct, so this was a locally user driven problem.
The solution was a few simple registry edits to change the home directory paths for: My Documents, My Pictures, and My Videos. For XP, Vista, and 7, the home directory location lies in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive under Software>Microsoft>Windows>Current Version>Explorer. The two folders to look for are "Shell Folders" and "User Shell Folders".
There are several values you will need to change which include: Personal, My Pictures, My Video, and My Music entries. For a server mapped home directory, the string entry should be a UNC path like this: \Servernameshareusername. In this case, we simply needed to change the server name for each string that needed the update. After rebooting the computers the changes took effect. While no user files were lost during this, I strongly recommend having a backup available of the users files and folders before performing any changes.
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 installation - OCS 2005 or OCS 2007 Upgrade
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 by
Mario McGuire
Recently I had the opportunity to upgrade our existing OCS 2007 environment to Microsoft's new Lync Server 2010. Microsoft has been on a mission to re-invent some of their products. At times those product improvements came with a name change, and it was time for Office Communications Server (OCS) to have its own overhaul. Microsoft has officially changed the name of Office Communications Server to Lync Server 2010. Former CEO of Microsoft Bill Gates had a vision to use software to improve how people communicate, and Lync was it's realization.
The new communications server has a ton of new features and a fresh look. Some of the new features include:
My first impressions of Lync 2010 are very positive. Installation of the server wasn't very difficult, but wasn't exactly smooth either. Lync didn't require any major server upgrades, Microsoft SQL upgrades, or major network infrastructure upgrades. You will have to perform some relatively easy tasks which are built into the installer for Lync. Some of those tasks were a few Active Directory Upgrades and Network Firewall Security setting changes. The installation did integrate well with my clients email server which I had recently performed a Microsoft Exchange Upgrade to version 2010 SP1 on. Lync ties in with Exchange to create a bridge with unified communications. This is something that in recent years Microsoft has really been trying to improve upon.
Finally after installing the server software and checking communications it was time to test the clients. My client had been running OCS 2007 R2 previously, and one of the nice features of Lync is that you can use the OCS 2007 R2 clients with Lync 2010. It's not as nice and does have some limited functionality, but will work for basic IM functions. The new Lync client ties in seamlessly with Microsoft's new Office 2010 line of products.
All in all I would recommend trying Lync. If you migrating from OCS 2005/07 or installing your companies first communications solution this should work for you. Has your company shown interested in having this product installed within your environment? SkyByte Consulting can assist you with every aspect of this solution from planning and purchasing to implementation and roll out.
The new communications server has a ton of new features and a fresh look. Some of the new features include:
- Sense
- Pictures of Contacts
- Improved screen sharing and document sharing capabilities
- Redesigned interface
- Improved IP Phone system compatibility
- And much more
My first impressions of Lync 2010 are very positive. Installation of the server wasn't very difficult, but wasn't exactly smooth either. Lync didn't require any major server upgrades, Microsoft SQL upgrades, or major network infrastructure upgrades. You will have to perform some relatively easy tasks which are built into the installer for Lync. Some of those tasks were a few Active Directory Upgrades and Network Firewall Security setting changes. The installation did integrate well with my clients email server which I had recently performed a Microsoft Exchange Upgrade to version 2010 SP1 on. Lync ties in with Exchange to create a bridge with unified communications. This is something that in recent years Microsoft has really been trying to improve upon.
Finally after installing the server software and checking communications it was time to test the clients. My client had been running OCS 2007 R2 previously, and one of the nice features of Lync is that you can use the OCS 2007 R2 clients with Lync 2010. It's not as nice and does have some limited functionality, but will work for basic IM functions. The new Lync client ties in seamlessly with Microsoft's new Office 2010 line of products.
All in all I would recommend trying Lync. If you migrating from OCS 2005/07 or installing your companies first communications solution this should work for you. Has your company shown interested in having this product installed within your environment? SkyByte Consulting can assist you with every aspect of this solution from planning and purchasing to implementation and roll out.
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