Gee what did I get for Christmas

Well Santa was good to me this year as I finally got the Xbox 360 Elite I had asked for the last couple of years. I didn’t think I would get this but I am thinking my wife realized I am a big kid at heart also and that resistance was futile. We have found so many extra uses for this outside of the normal playing games. I have the Xbox 360 talking to my home server that is running virtually the cool thing about that was the Xbox just found the Windows Home Server without any extra setup.

I also have a Vista Ultimate workstation that I setup to connect to the Xbox with the media center. We also have hooked up our Netflix to play on demand movies through the Xbox 360 which we have been using a lot since I set this up Christmas day. We had got my Father-in-law the Netflix Player by Roku which is real slick to setup and it works great if you are into Netflix. Plus I have been playing the games that came with the Xbox 360 but I mainly like the racing games and my son JD will be getting me Need for Speed Undercover for Christmas.

Til later just Roger

SBS 2008 to SBS 2008 Migration Hiccup

I got this from a TAP person I had worked with on the SBS 2008 TAP. He was doing a SBS 2008 to SBS 2008 migration and had the migration completed and thought he would do the MS Updates. Did these and rebooted his server and it just hung trying to start. He went through all the procedures you would troubleshoot the problem from safe mode to Directory Services restore mode and could not find anything wrong anywhere in the event logs or anything he could think of checking. On a a whim he had exported the Root Certificates off the old server and imported them into the new server and away the server went booted up fine with no issues. I will see if I can get more info on this and pass it on but thought I would put it out there for things to be aware of and to check when you are doing a SBS 2008 to SBS 2008 migration and if this happens to you also.

Til Later just Roger

SBS 2003 and migrating to Exchange 2007 Part 4

Well we continued with working on the Palm OS Phones not syncing with the Exchange 2007 SP1 server and what it boiled down to was the Security Policies for the phones not allowing the phones to sync. After a lot of debate and discussion we finally decided to remove the Default Policy. This cannot be done with the Exchange Management but with the Exchange Power Shell. The command for this was remove-ActivesyncMailboxPolicy -identity “default” and then I restarted the Hub transport and boom the phones started syncing.

They are going to get these users different phones so we can re enable this and have the options of wiping the phones if needed. But this got us up and running. I also had a issue with Outlook Anywhere but that was just a matter of going through and defining the External URL’s on the Client Access Server pieces. Nothing big here just things to add to the todo list when you have a customer with the Palm OS Phones.

Til Later just Roger

SBS 2003 and migrating to Exchange 2007 Part 3

What a week I had and I finally got to start the migration of a SBS2003 server to Exchange 2007 SP1 and 2008 Servers. We started the move using the Exchange 2007 Console at 5 PM after doing a couple of different types of backups. One of the complete SBS 2003 Server and one of the Information store. We finally got all the email moved by 4:30 in the morning to the Exchange 2007 Server. Took the box down and moved it to the other office and brought the server up and OWA and ActiveSync and email was working and flowing. We also had the Windows Mobile Phones connect up with no issues and the ones running Blackberries had no problems also after we changed that server to point to the new server. What we have run into is a Palm OS Phone not syncing. More on that this week when we find the fix tomorrow. But the migration was a snap just like you would with a Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 transition.

I have yet to move the Public folders and remove the Exchange 2003 off the SBS box but we are getting there. I was impressed with the ease of the bring in the new Exchange 2007 server and connecting to the SBS 2003 Server. But more on this move as we go and the fix for the Palm OS phone.

Til Later just Roger

SBS 2003 and Spyware on the server

Well it has been a interesting week none the less around here, I had a customer who had thier SBS 2003 Server start rebooting on its own and they could not get it to boot. So I went onsite and yip it sure was so I got into the server in safe mode, anything with networking selected it would keep rebooting on Applying Computer settings. So I got in to the server in safe mode and went into msconfig and took out everything of startup and also any non MS Services. Booted the server and got it up and running without rebooting.

After this we thought we had it clean but the next day the onsite IT guy found that the server was spewing email so he did a scan and found the offending bug. So he cleaned it and rebooted the box and the box would just hang. So I got that call and went onsite and got the server to boot into Directory Restore Mode and found none of the services would start. So we tried a new network card with no luck and the biggest problem service was the Network Connections Service, I fought this for a while and came across a article that if you change the RPC to LocalSystem for startup type from Network Service you could get this to start. We thought what the heck we were just spinning anyway so I made the change. I had to do this in the registry as we could not get anything else to start and did this for anything depending using Network Service. Rebooted the box and I was now at least pulling a IP but not good when you need to define one for the network as this was a SBS2003 server and the DC. So I set a reservation off another DC running DHCP that I had installed the day before when the box was having problems and now got it to what it should be. Things was starting to lookup but we had a ways to go.

We fought this longer trying to get all the AD Services and then Network Connections service to start. What we finally found was that the workstation service had lost its registry settings. We recreated that by looking at another server created the same settings and rebooted the box and we were back in business. Life was good now and the moral to the story is don’t surf the net from server.

Til Later just Roger

Windows 2008 HyperV Host Drive Space Problems

Well I got one of those help emails from our network admin that one of his 2008 HyperV Servers hard drive had filled up and the guest machine had stopped in mid operation of moving a large SQL Database from one drive to another. I got in remotely and seen there was not much I could do to free up space. I did decrease the Page file from System managed to 1 Gig but the drive just filled back up again. So I said I would be in and ran by and grabbed a couple of the hard drives I had for my wife’s new SBS2008 server that I would be installing the beginning of January and headed to the office and boy does Randy owe her now or that is the rumblings I heard anyway but that is another story.

The fix was actually pretty simple and what I did was boot to my Storage Craft Shadow Protect CD and I did a backup of the Windows 2008 Servers hard drive to a USB device. I then once this completed shut down the server and replaced the smaller drives in the server with the larger ones I brought with me and then booted to the Shadow Protect software and selected the option to restore to all available space. Once this completed I booted the server and it came up cleanly and then when we checked the Virtual SQL Server it was copying over that SQL databases like nothing had happened. This was a simple clean fix for what could have been a bad situation and I looked good also. It also could be a fix for any server that has a hard drive space problem.

Til Later just Roger

Exchange 2003 and RPC over HTTP Problem

I got called into a call for one of our customers that it had been through a few of the other techs and then I got that call can you look at this please. What the problem was they was trying to setup HTTP over RPC and they thought it was good but something wasn’t right yet. I got the articles they had used and reviewed what they had worked with and then did a basic check of the work as most anyone would coming into a project 3rd or 4th handed. Took me a bit but I found in the registry where you set some keys for ports to use for the connection. I found they had the internal NetBIOS and DNS names correct but they had left off the mail off the .domainname.whatever once I added these and they tested and it worked. Moral to the story is don’t over look the obvious and assume that everything was done correctly. It was a honest mistake that I have done myself and it never hurts to have another set of eyes to look at the work when it isn’t just not right yet.

Simple Enough everyone happy and on to the next adventure.

Til Later just Roger

Another Week Part 2

Well the week has buzzed by already and I am looking around and ok where did it go. Do you ever get into a project and it is the only thing you focus on and it is very hard to get your mind on other things? I have been building up to the Email migration at this customers site on Monday evening for the past week or so and the fun thing is this customer relies on email heavily for their remote on the go 24 x 7 users so should be fun. Life has swirled around me in the mean time and finally Thursday night my wife looked at me and said can you put the laptop down for a while. This means I have been spending way too much time on the project and work I am not getting done that is the normal day to day stuff I have to do and not enough home time. Which I realized was true so I took a step back and postponed my MS test on Monday till Jan 12th and concentrated on more of the normal things. Sometimes you just have to stop and say Whoa Big Feller and smell the cookies. I know it should be flowers but this time of year cookies are everywhere.

Which makes me smile as I like food and a lot of my good customers know this and there is usually a abundance of this around when I show up. Which I know makes my boss very jealous as he likes food too but I am the one getting the food from happy customers. So it has been getting the house ready for the family to come over on Christmas and also getting the rest of out shopping done. I know what does this have to do with SBS2003 or SBS 2008 well if you really think about it, it has a lot to do with it. Even though you might not like it work and home life seem to swirl around each other and mix at times and you just have to know when to do this or get that friendly little reminder that maybe you need to step back for a few and take a breather. Then if the words don’t work then I get a little tap in the front of my forehead and then I know it is time to smell the Cookies.

Til Later just Roger

Another Week

It has been another week for me so not much posting going on here. I have been studying to take the 70-297 MS test and working on the SBS 2003 to Exchange 2007 Migration and getting ready to migrate my wife’s server in her office and and and. I hate taking tests as to me they do not reflect the real world but one that a few of us will deal with coming from a smaller business space. Like the one I am currently studying for deals with a lot of Enterprise type of situations. Why can’t they have something that deals with the smaller space and what kind of things you would do with AD for smaller companies and not the one where you have offices everywhere and hundreds if not thousands of users. I guess the concept is the same small or large you just have to expand your thinking. Plus in who’s mind would you be given a situation for a company then only be given 15 minutes to fix their problems. This is not real life and you would have days in some of these on here. Ok rant over but I hate tests can ya tell.

Til Later just Roger

SBS 2003 and migrating to Exchange 2007 Part 2

Well the first thing I did was run the SBS BPA on the SBS 2003 server. This machine has had issues in the past, a past crash and a past crash and restore so I run the SBS BPA on the server and it was actually pretty clean. One thing I did was look at the Event logs and got all the logs cleared up that related to AD and the server. Had some old stale DC info in DNS and got that cleared up and also got the domain and forest raised in functional level to 2003. Brought in the new servers to the domain and DCPromoed the the 2 DC’s. One is a temp DC and the reason of this is Exchange 2007.

I did some research and found anything releated to bringing in the Exchange 2007 to a SBS2003 domain and what I found was if you bring it in on a DC things goes pretty smoothly so we will find out and I will let you know how that works out for me. Once I have the mail moved to the temp server and squared away we will move the mail again to the member server it will reside on. Then I have the SQL 2005 Server to install and a File Server and then we also plan on running a 2008 server running HyperV and TS gateway and probably 3 or 4 servers running Virtual. This is a big project and I should get some good insite on how to split out the SBS 2003 Server. Well more as I go and now I have to go wrap the many presents I purchased for family.

Til Later just Roger