April 2009 - Posts

• Our NEW Website is LIVE in Time for the Microsoft Management Summit, CHECK IT OUT!

  http://www.thinkigi.com Posted Apr 25 2009, 11:36 AM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Unable to connect to Hyper-V VM after P2V conversion

  During an OWSUG user group meeting a few weeks ago, a member approached Garth and I with an issue in Hyper-V. He was not able to connect to a VM using the network no matter what he tried.  My first instinct is always to verify the IP connectivity with ping tests and so forth. The configuration was confirmed to be fine in Hyper-V in that, he was using an external network so binding to the physical NIC. The member kept repeating that this was after a P2V conversion and something did not sit right. The solution was eventually discovered by Garth.  I’ll post this as a caution to hopefully save other ITPros time and be aware of this potential issue. Remember what you are actually doing with a P2V conversion.  You are virtualizing a physical host computer.  It does not have to be a host in the VM sense… Elements of the VM will be identical to the physical system (IP address, server name, MAC address, so on)… The reason this is important is that you cannot keep BOTH systems online at the same time without making some changes… The element in particular that I want to point out is the MAC address.  After P2V, this is set to static and it retains the same value of the MAC address from the physical system. You cannot have 2 systems on the network at the same time with identical MAC addresses just like you cannot have 2 systems on the network at the same time with identical DNS names, NetBIOS names, or IP addresses. Duplicate MAC addresses are way more rare of an issue because of some of the safeguards in place by the standards committees who make the network cards. P2V actually does this on purpose… The idea being that the physical system is usually migrated for purpose of being decommissioned or repurposed.  Bringing it back online at the same time as the VM you made from P2V creates this duplication conflict. There is another issue which was not covered that I will go into now.  Duplicate SIDs… If you P2V a system that is a member of an existing AD and keep both systems around, 1 SID must change. Microsoft does not support changing SIDs after a machine has been joined to an AD domain.  There is a utility available from winternals called newsid.  This does the job and honestly, I have deployed an army of over 30 systems imaged with ghost and ran newsid after the fact with no issues.  A reboot is required after running the tool. Remember, use this tool at your own risk… :-) Posted Apr 24 2009, 02:37 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Scouting for Canadian TechDays09 at TechEd

  I am honoured to have been selected as one of only a handful of Canadian ITPros who will attend TechEd to scout for content which will be presented at the Canadian TechDays09 events.  My track will be “Security and System Management.” TechEd 2009 is taking place in Los Angeles, CA from May 11-15.  I’ll come back with comments on what sessions were popular, interesting, and with positive feedback to make the TechDays09 content very appealing to our audience! Posted Apr 24 2009, 02:14 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Unable to Perform P2V Migration from VMM 2008 – VSS Writer Stopped Responding

  I ran into a weird issue today while performing a P2V migration.  The process would get to 40% and stop stating that the VSS Writer service stopped responding.  Here is the error from the VMM Admin console job: In the Application Log, the error showed up as follows: In the System Log, the corresponding error was: Is Services, the Volume Shadow Copy service was set to Started.   While troubleshooting the message from the Application Log, I was led to confirm that the “System Writer” was present as an association within the Volume Shadow Copy Service.  To verify this, from the Command Prompt, type: vssadmin list writers “System Writer” was not there!  How to fix…?  Now I had to really dig. The solution was posted here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/windowsbackup/thread/bb760434-de80-4cb6-ae9e-bd253e4b037c   It is quite the solution…  Here goes.  From and Administrator Command Prompt: Takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\* /a icacls %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\*.* /grant "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(RX)" icacls %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\*.* /grant "NT Service\trustedinstaller:(F)" icacls %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\*.* /grant BUILTIN\Users:(RX) - Stopped and started Cryptographic service net stop cryptsvc net start cryptsvc Now, I verified again if “System Writer” was present.  It was! I successfully completed my P2V migration after this issue was resolved. Posted Apr 16 2009, 08:37 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• VMM2008 Hyper-V Host displays as “Needs Attention” in Admin console

  You have just added a Hyper-V host in the VMM 2008 Admin console.  The host has all applicable updates installed.  Yet, it still displays as “Needs Attention” in the Admin Console… how to fix? Hmm…  I have been researching this for awhile.  Although you would not really know it, the host requires an upgrade to the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS).   Updates for Hyper-V: KB956589 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FD44B4E3-2DCC-4299-B345-BC09A9A37B60&displaylang=en KB956774 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9EC9DBB9-82AD-4D34-9267-76A0126A8F18&displaylang=en These updates will resolve the issue.  KB956589 and KB956775 require separate reboots, trying to install a second update before restarting will generate the error that only 1 instance may run at a time…   Incidentally, I read about this solution on Mike’s Virtualization blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mbriggs/archive/2009/01/29/host-needs-attention.aspx   Once you have restarted the system after both updates, within the Admin Console Refresh the Host: You should now be ok: Problem solved! Posted Apr 16 2009, 04:04 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Ottawa Influencers Workshop Helped me to Focus my MMS Presentations

  I am a technical guy by nature.  I have 2 awesome topics to present at the Microsoft Management Summit in a couple of weeks. I’ve been working away on my presentations and focusing on the technical content.  So I have what I want to show…  why don’t I feel like this presentation is quite ready? That was 2 weeks ago. Last week, I attended an exclusive event that the Microsoft ITPROs held to help Ottawa area influencers improve their technical presentation skills.  I have taken a business communication skills class before and I feel I am better for it so I was eager to learn from the same guys who I have worked alongside with and respect. Something I heard in the workshop just clicked… “Focus on the message, use the technical content to support your message.” This may seem obvious but let me tell you, when you are focused on creating and delivering a presentation at a key even like MMS in Las Vegas, you can lose focus. I realized that I was focusing my efforts in the wrong area.  I know the technical content.  What I was not doing was focusing on what information I want those attending my presentation to walk away with. Now that I have that fact straight in my head, things immediately fell into place and I feel I have regained control. Focus on the message! Posted Apr 16 2009, 11:08 AM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Upgrade from Windows 7 Beta to RC will not be Seamless

  Windows 7 Beta has been around for awhile now.  I have been using it since January.  One thing I liked about installing the beta was the simplicity in moving from Vista SP1.  For the Windows 7 RC, this will still be the case.  What will not be automatic is the ability to perform an in place upgrade from Windows 7 Beta to the RC version.  The reason for this is that there is a pre-release check that is performed during the install routine.  If the check detects that you are using a pre-release (non-RTM) version, it disables the Upgrade option as a selection. Microsoft explains that the reasoning for this is that they did not focus on an upgrade path from Beta to RC given the audience using the Beta software.  This actually makes sense as far as resource allocation for the product team.  The ability is there to disable the pre-release check and is documented in the post below.  Please note that Microsoft clearly states that although you CAN disable the pre-release check, they don’t support upgrading from beta version to the release candidate. http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/07/delivering-a-quality-upgrade-experience.aspx The CanIT PROs also blogged about this last week.  I linked them below. http://owsug.ca/blogs/canitpro/archive/2009/04/07/Windows-7-from-Beta-to-RC.aspx The suggested path to take is either: 1- Downgrade to Vista SP1 and then upgrade to Windows 7 RC. 2- Backup all data and use either Easy Transfer of the User State Migration Toolkit (USMT) to bring over your settings and customizations. Personally, I know about the USMT but have never actually used it so I see this as an opportunity.  I will of course back up my system first but I see this as an opportunity to familiarize myself with this tool so I’ll be sure to blog about the process. Posted Apr 16 2009, 10:47 AM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Hyper-V Course taught in Boston – Courseware should be Revised for Relevance

  A few weeks ago, I taught Microsoft Official Curriculum course 6422A Implementing and Managing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V in Boston.  This is a 3-day class which if pushed can possibly be covered in 2-days with the labs. The course went off quite well I must say with fairly little hiccups and those which did occur were as a result of under performing hardware.  The manual had some issues and the exercises listed on the student CD did not necessarily always sync up with the labs but a good instructor can get through it without too many issues. My issue is the actual methods used to teach.  The courses are taught in a way that the time must be kept backdated so that the class can run using the beta Hyper-V and the beta VMM 2008 software. While the concepts are mostly still relevant, we are now into V2 of both those products within the software lifecycle.  I feel that there should be some more strict controls maintained on these courses to maintain their relevance. The software industry is one where things can change daily and if methods cannot be found to keep the classes we learn from relevant with current versions, the challenge will continue to be daunting indeed fir ITPROs to keep current especially when the reason they pay to fast track learning in a classroom style is to quickly be up to speed… Just one humble MCTs opinion! Posted Apr 07 2009, 09:47 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Last Known Good configuration Repair – Old Fix Can Still Save the Day

  On my Dell Latitude E6500 laptop installed Server 2008 in dual boot with my production Windows 7 environment. Now, I actually need both environments intact for different reasons.  I had installed the dual boot to Windows Server 2008 from within Windows 7 so that is how the boot manager got installed. This weekend, I was working with demo scenarios and wound up rebuilding my environment a bunch of times. Low and behold, at some point I booted my laptop from the Windows Server 2008 DVD and launched setup which rebuilt my server 2008 environment just fine. Well, when I restarted the laptop, Boot Manager was nowhere to be found and the laptop went straight into server 2008.  My production environment!!!! So I interrupted the boot process, and restarted the laptop and selected last known good configuration.  From here, my system detected that there was a start up issue and proceeded to repair it. Now the laptop grants me the dual boot capabilities like before I mucked it.  Ahhh…  old fixes still work. Posted Apr 06 2009, 04:38 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Microsoft ITPro’s in Ottawa respond to Community Feedback to Increase Understanding of Patching in a Creative Way

  On February 19, 2009 there was a user group meeting held by the OWSUG in downtown Ottawa.  The meeting was themed “Ask your Peers” where a panel of Microsoft experts were present to address questions about technology in general. Out of that, it was apparent that patching and Security were at the forefront of the minds of Ottawa ITPRO’s. After the meeting, the OWSUG execs and some members, went out for a few pints with the Microsoft ITPRO’s who attended. The Microsoft guys, asked us for feedback and ways to package information in an easily digestible fashion in order to increase awareness and understanding of Security Updates and patching. The idea of the audio cast or “podcast” came out.  The MS ITPRO’s, went back to the cave with this info :-) As a result, the 3 Ottawa Microsoft guys got busy making the first podcast. Here it is! “Security Bulletins for the regular IT guy” Podcast – 03/10/2009 http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro/archive/2009/03/10/security-bulletins-for-the-regular-it-guy-podcast-03-10-2009.aspx ITPRO evangelist Rick Claus narrates as Senior technical account manager Pierre Roman and principal security advisor Bruce Cowper attack the 3 security updates released at March 3rd, 2009 in an easily digestible fashion. Way to go guys! Posted Apr 02 2009, 05:23 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Next week is packed with User Group and Microsoft events in Ottawa

  Starting on Tuesday is the EnergizeIT User Group connection meeting.  There are also events being held on Wednesday, and Thursday on Windows 7, Cloud Computing, Software as a Service and more! See below:   http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/bb410823.aspx Posted Apr 02 2009, 04:52 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Windows 7 Springboard Site Loaded with tons of new content

  It has been a couple of weeks since I have been to the Windows 7 Springboard site.  It has received tons of new content! Check it out! http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/default.aspx Posted Apr 01 2009, 01:31 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate