February, 2009

Migrating a old 2003 Terminal Server to new Equipment

I had a customer who has had a 2003 Terminal Server for about 5 years and he was wanting to go to new equipment but not the pain to reload all the applications. I usually prefer reloading but in this case the server has been really stable and no problems. So I said OK lets give it a shot and I used Shadow Protect for IT and backed up the old server and then booted the new HP Server and configured the RAID and then started the restore and I noticed when it finished the C Drive it did not load the RAID drivers and thought to myself ok it had something that matches so we are good. NOT it did not load the drivers. Dang now what I explored a few options and ended up reloading the restore again of the C and this time it loaded the RAID drivers. Whew!!!! HP does have a utility that you can change a USB Drive into a Floppy so I could have loaded the drivers this way through the booting to a server OS CD and hitting F6 but the curious guy I am I wanted to see if the other would work like it was suppose too and had before. But it was all good server came up and the users the next morning was very happy with the new found speed they had. We went from a Dual XEON 3.06 CPU’s and 2.5 Gig of RAM to a server with dual QC CPU’s and 10 Gig of RAM running 2003 Enterprise TS Server. It handles the 31 users with room to grow.

Til later just Roger

2008 Hyperv and LPT1 Port on the 2003 Virtual Servers

Have you had Virtual Servers running on a 2008 HyperV Server and needed to add a LPT port to the Virtual Server? If you was like me you searched the web and MS high and low and you found that it is a non supported deal and no one had a way to make it work. Well we had created a couple of Terminal Servers running on our HyperV Servers and some of the software needed the LPT1 port to be there. Well when HyperV was in Beta I monkeyed around and got LPT1 defined and working.  Well you know what they tell you about documentation I ignored it and did not write down anything I had done to make it work. No problem here that settling will come over when I move them to new hardware. Wrong answer the settings did not.

Okay now what do I do well I messed with it some but run out of time so Randy our network admin took this and figured out what I did and this is the steps to create a LPT1 Port on your Virtual Server running on a 2008 HyperV Server. I am going to add to this that this is not a supported MS deal this is just what we came up with the make this work for us.

So I looked at the registry keys on the old machines and on the Registry Key on the new ones

 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Parport

 I changed the DWORD Value of Start from 4 to 3

 I did the same on CurrentControSet001 and CurrentControSet002 as well

 On the registry Key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP

 I added the missing key PARALLEL PORTS

Then I added a string  \Device\Parallel0 with a value of \DosDevices\LPT1

  Next I went into the services and disabled the services HP Port Resolver and HP Status Server

 I’m not real sure if this actually had an impact but it seemed like a good idea when I ran across certain problems associated with these two services

 Lastly if the LPT1 did not exist in the Device Manager I went to add Hardware and manually added a Printer Port.

 Under the Printer port settings I changed it from LPT3 to LPT1

 Checked the Option “Never Use an Interrupt”  and checked “Enable Legacy Plus and Play Detection”

After I completed these steps on one of the terminal servers the error flag cleared immediately on the port in device manager. On the other I had to restart the server but when it came back up the error was cleared and it is working fine.

Publishing SBS 2008 with ISA Server 2004 or ISA 2006 Part 2

In this post we are going to talk about setting up the device sitting in front of your ISA Server either your Basic Router of choice or in this instance I will be using a Sonic Wall device. What you must decide is the IP Range you are going to use for your space between the SonicWall Lan link and the ISA Servers External NIC. Lets use 10.10.1.1 for your ISA Servers External Nics IP and 10.10.1.2 for your Sonic Wall Lan IP and a Subnet of 255.255.255.0

On your ISA Server on the External Nic properties you would define it’s IP as 10.10.1.1 Subnet of 255.255.255.0 and it’s gateway would be 10.10.1.2 this is your Sonic Walls LAN IP. On the Sonic Wall when you have set this up when you go through the setup Wizard the LAN and the WAN IP’s are defined which makes the whole process pretty darn easy. Once this is completed you would login to your SW and go to the Firewall Rules. I am using a Sonic Wall with the Basic Firmware on it and not the Enhanced OS that is a few more steps but for you that are familiar with the OS this will be a snap. You go to the Firewall Rules and Create the Rules for 443 and set it to allow and then from all on the WAN and point this to 10.10.1.1 on the LAN and do the same for Port 25 and Port 987. That is all you have to do on the Sonic Wall now to the ISA Server but the same logic will hold true for whatever type of device you have setting in front of the ISA Server if that is the choice you make. Or if you have nothing in front of this and you can ignore all of this and now on to setting up the ISA Server.

Til later just Roger

Publishing SBS 2008 with ISA Server 2004 or ISA 2006 Part 1

I know many of you have SBS 2003 Premium with ISA 2004 Server. I know there are those of us that like to use ISA to protect the domain either by itself or in a 2 Layer aapproach. I myself have my clients running a Sonic Wall firewalls out in front of the ISA Server. I will be walking you though the setting up the ISA Server for publishing the pieces of the SBS 2008 Server that you will want to access from the outside world. This is just basic Publishing with ISA Server.

The RWW is basically using the Terminal Server Gateway piece of 2008 Server for the connections into your network clients or servers. One thing you will have to do is export out your SSL cert off the SBS 2008 Server for your remote.domainname.com or whatever you are using for the outside world and then import that into the Server Certificates Personal Store on the ISA Server. This will be applied to your Web Listner on the External NIC of the ISA Server. Also on some you will need to import this into the Intermediate Trusts also as I have had some sites that I have had to do this on.

You can use the Exchange Wizard on the ISA Server to Publish the OWA and Mobile Access and your Exchange Server. I will go into this all in greater detail in more posts on this subject as I walk you through the setting up of the ISA Server to work with the SBS 2008 Server and also your Sonic Wall of like device in front of it all.

Til Later just Roger

Standard Server 2003 Migration to SBS 2008 Part 4

I have had some questions about once you do the migration how do i get the users to show up in the SBS 2008 Console. Here is my reply to one of those questions and hopefully it will help those that is looking for this answer.

“In your SBS 2008 Console go to Users and then over to the right you will see “Change User Role for user accounts” select this and then this will start a wizard. Select Standard User and “Replace User Permissions or Roles” hit next here you will see the users on your SBS 2008 Server but if you check the box that says “Display all user accounts in AD” this will show you your users you are looking for. You highlight the ones you want and add them and the wizard will do the rest. You will have to do this for the ones you want as Standard users and also again for the ones you want to have Administrative permissions. Also if you are wanting your computers and Servers to show up in their respective lists you add these to the SBS Computers and Servers OU’srespectively and then they will show up in your SBS 2008 console.”

Til later just Roger

HP BL 480c Memory Problem

I was setting up our BL 480c Blade servers in our c3000 Enclosure and I had installed 64 Gig of RAM in the systems. When it booted to POST it would only show 48 Gig but within the BIOS and Server Manager on the 2008 Server it would show the 64 Gig like it was suppose to have. I checked the slots the RAM was in and those was correct as you really need to pay attention when adding RAM to these servers or you will get the wrong slots and have this problem. I also verified in BIOS that the server was Advanced ECC Support and not in Mirrored memory Mode or online Spare Mode.

What I ended up doing was having to put the server into maintenance mode and having all but 2 pairs removed from the server. Setting the NVRAM dip switch number 6 to on starting the blade and letting it come to post then shutting it down and then turning Dip switch number 6 to the off position and then adding the rest of the RAM to the system and life was good. So steps was

Shutdown Server
Remove extra RAM
Set the Dip Switch number 6 to on
Power on the server to Post
Shut server down
Add the rest of the RAM
Start Server life was good.

Til later just Roger

Network messing up and where do you start

Ok Monday we get a call from one of our big customers and their network was going up and down and I had thought I had fixed this problem on Monday. Really didn’t find the problem I thought it was one of the Internal Web Servers had freaked out and had things rebooted and things was working when I left but little did I know. Well Tuesday morning we get the call they are acting up again so I head over there along with one of the Network guys meeting me there. We thought the ISA 2006 Server had a NIC or something going bad on it but I thought it was something else.

So we get on-site and are digging and poking around and not seeing a darn thing that would be effecting them. The network guy started to watch the ARP Table on the main core switch and started to see a entry for the IP of the ISA Server changing from one MAC address to another. OK this is weird and we could not find anything to what that one pointed at for a device. So he set the switch to hard code the MAC for the ISA IP and things calmed down. We looked some more and didn’t find anything else. But from the result of the network we had some things to clean up with users which we went around doing. We get tot he last one and this is a mobile user with a laptop. I get to looking on the laptop and notice that the NIC has sharing turned on, jackpot we found the device that was conflicting with the ISA Server as one of the NIC’s had the same IP of the server. So we will be moving the servers to a new IP Range. It was funny when I found this the user goes what when I was showing it to the network guy. I asked do you want me to lie to you or tell you the truth. They picked the truth and I told them that they was the one taking down the whole network. Boy was there face red but problem solved. The reason I thought I had it fixed the day before the user had packed up and left.

Til Later just Roger

SBS 2003 and Wild Blue

I am sure others have had this experience with a Wild Blue connection but this was my first. This was a new customerthat was 4 hours away and we sold the server over the phone and I thought I had asked all the questions I should have but not true I forgot one important one and assumed they was in town. Which in all actually they was outside of the town about 5 miles. So they had Wild Blue for a Internet connection, I had asked can you get a static IP and they checked and the answer was yes and I had asked do they block any ports and they checked no they don’t. But I did not ask any names anything like that of the ISP. Me bad and yes I can admit me bad.

So I get on-site get the server all setup and going which I did try SBS 2008 first but we couldn’t make the legacy LOB App work  so I rolled them with SBS 2003 R2 and then we went to address the Internet stuff which I could not make any connections to the server from the outside. So a call to support and no they say we don’t block ports so more testing thinking I had the router wrong. Nope this all looked good more digging and I hit the web and find others with this problem. When they say they are not blocking ports that is true they are smashing the packets in all actuality so you can’t do what the customer wants. Ok the customer calls back and asks them why did they sell them a Business Class service if that was not a true statement. No answer from them on that this is the way it is to them and the customer is hung with a contract and a buy out if they want to get out of it. We did find another service that will do the satellite and allow anything to come in but more equipment to be purchased. So we are exploring a couple of ways to go which this is one of them and now the ISP in town has wireless and they will find out if this will work next week. Bottom line if you have a customer that mentions Wild Blue tell them run screaming away from that call and find something else.

Til later just Roger

When it rains it pours and look what I got.

I want to say right away here I am not complaining. But you ever had one of those times when there is not enough time in the day it seems like. I have about 5 big projects all running at the same time here which I am not going to complain about as I know some probably wish they had this problems. But you are bouncing from one to another to another and keeping them all straight on where you are at with each. I guess the alternative could be worse sitting around wondering where the next gig is going to be.

I know I have not blogged much about really fixing things but this is a time where they are all new installs of new equipment and not much fixing going on. I know I put my wifes SBS 2008 Server into her network about 45 days ago and the box has not been rebooted since it just keeps working. I like that and I know the first SBS 2008 server that I migrated from Standard Server 2003 has just been working. Is that a good thing for a break fix guy not really but you sure have happy customers then.

Today is Valentines Day and I had to go out of state Thursday and Friday on a server install and I thought ahead and ordered with the local florist something to be delivered on Friday which turned out to be a huge thing of flowers. I guess that is what they meant by Ultimate Choice wow looks like I biggy sized my happy meal here. She was happy and surprised which is a good thing and that is me.

I had to drive home in a snow storm last night which turned my 3 hour trip into a 5 hour trip but it was worth it as I got home and there was a big box waiting for me. It was a steering wheel and brake and gas pedal for my xBox 360 I am so spoiled.

Til Later just Roger

SBS 2003 and OWA

We had another site with OWA having issues and I am wondering if this was a problem with maybe a update that came down or was actually just something that came up. But they was getting the 500 error and Site busy from the outside when OWA was tried to go to. What they ended up doing was running this

We had to sync IUSR and IWAM

Used this piece of flotsam

We used the /inetpub/AdminScripts for this.

The syntax we used:

cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/anonymoususerpass “f00″

cscript adsutil.vbs get w3svc/anonymoususerpass (reports correct password)

cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/wamuserpass “f00″

cscript adsutil.vbs get w3svc/wamuserpass (reports correct password)

To sync the passwords with IIS we used:

cscript.exe synciwam.vbs -v

2^nd time through it worked

Til later just Roger