Backup, Backup, Backup your data. Then go back and verify those backups. Then do test restores. Some administrators may say this is being paranoid. Thinking that looking at the logs and verifying everything has a "green checkmark" by it is good enough is arrogant. I once had an issue where for 4 months a set of our backups were failing going to tape. The software showed that everything backed up successfully, but we found there was some known issue with our tape library that was causing an issue. Luckily we had no major catastrophic event where we needed it, but it changed my way of thinking on how to manage backups.
See a video below of how Pixar had a similar issue.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Hyper-V CSV Possible Owners
So this past weekend we had an issue with Windows disconnecting our CSV's during a routine backup of the Virtual Machines. We were able to reconnect the storage once we removed some SCSI reservations. Once we had the storage up we tested failover and one CSV was fine, the other CSV wouldn't failover to a particular host. Through digging we found out that somehow the node having the issue was not assigned as a possible owner for the disk. Unfortunately, with CSV's you can't do this through the GUI, it has to be done via the command line. To the issue open the command prompt (with elevated privileges) and run the following command. Replace "MyCSV" with the name of your CSV, and replace nodename with the name of the node that needs to be added to the list of possible owners.
cluster res “MyCSV″ /ADDOWNER:nodename
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Monitoring Lync (My Ignorant Method)
So I'm going to preface this blog entry with saying that, I have had no Lync training what-so-ever. Everything I know is self taught. So needless to say, I'm ignorant on the matter.
So the firm I work for has been testing out video conferencing solutions. Everything from Webex, to GoToMeeting. I one day suggested to my boss that we give Lync a shot. He said give it a shot. So I provisioned a 2008 R2 VM, and installed Lync. I got it running in the most basic form. IT has been playing with it, and we love it. The partner's loved it because the base product was already included in our EA agreement.
It was decided to push Lync out to all the Attorneys to let them get a feel for the product by itself, and do some video conferencing with other attorneys in different offices. Unfortunately, I will not have full Lync training until the end of April. So one of things I needed to do was to find who was actually using the product. So I rounded up the below script. It counts the total items of the Conversation History folder, and sorts it from largest to smallest. Then it puts the results into a CSV. You will need to run this from the Exchange Powershell.
So the firm I work for has been testing out video conferencing solutions. Everything from Webex, to GoToMeeting. I one day suggested to my boss that we give Lync a shot. He said give it a shot. So I provisioned a 2008 R2 VM, and installed Lync. I got it running in the most basic form. IT has been playing with it, and we love it. The partner's loved it because the base product was already included in our EA agreement.
It was decided to push Lync out to all the Attorneys to let them get a feel for the product by itself, and do some video conferencing with other attorneys in different offices. Unfortunately, I will not have full Lync training until the end of April. So one of things I needed to do was to find who was actually using the product. So I rounded up the below script. It counts the total items of the Conversation History folder, and sorts it from largest to smallest. Then it puts the results into a CSV. You will need to run this from the Exchange Powershell.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Worksite Word Add-In Problems
The firm I work for uses Filesite as a DMS. We recently upgraded all the PC's to the newest version of it. This includes some add ons within MS Word. Quickly after deployment we found an unforsean bug. It has to deal with when a user brings open the open or save box from within word, then switches from one application to another. When the user comes back to the Word window, it appears to be in a non-responsive state. In reality the open/save box is sitting in the background, and holding all of Word hostage. We quickly informed our users of how to get around this, but still some people don't listen, or frankly don't understand. Autonomy knows about this issue and has a bug number for it.
The problem that comes from this is that many of our users have learned to go to task manager at any instant they see a program freeze. They kill Word, then relaunch it. The first prompt that comes up is an alert stating that the Worksite add-in caused the problem, and requests to disable it. Most of our users are also click happy, and click yes through it. As soon as that happens it disable their ability to check in word documents, and save any word documents to the DMS. I saw this happen several times a day. On top of this, the add-on requires administrative rights to enable it. So the fix is between 5 - 10 minutes because of the granting of admin rights, then log off and log back on.
I needed to stop this. So I eventually came accross a macro solution for another add-on. This was set to run every time you launched word. I thought this was a little accessive, and decided that every logon was good enough. Here is the general since of how to do it:
I hope this helps someone, cause it took me a while to figure it out. My manager and I equated this to between 17 to 18 hours of savings per year.
The problem that comes from this is that many of our users have learned to go to task manager at any instant they see a program freeze. They kill Word, then relaunch it. The first prompt that comes up is an alert stating that the Worksite add-in caused the problem, and requests to disable it. Most of our users are also click happy, and click yes through it. As soon as that happens it disable their ability to check in word documents, and save any word documents to the DMS. I saw this happen several times a day. On top of this, the add-on requires administrative rights to enable it. So the fix is between 5 - 10 minutes because of the granting of admin rights, then log off and log back on.
I needed to stop this. So I eventually came accross a macro solution for another add-on. This was set to run every time you launched word. I thought this was a little accessive, and decided that every logon was good enough. Here is the general since of how to do it:
- Delete the key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Resiliency\DisabledItems
- Then set the value SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\WorkSiteOffice2007Addins.Connect\LoadBehavior is set to 3.
I hope this helps someone, cause it took me a while to figure it out. My manager and I equated this to between 17 to 18 hours of savings per year.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Kaspersky Anti-Virus and small offices
I work at law firm which has a total of 6 offices interconnected by a MPLS network and Riverbed optimization. Most of our servers are hosted out of our main office including our KAV server. All of our MPLS lines have T1's to them, and in some cases is not enough to fit the need.
The other day I along with other collueges were looking at the riverbed's optimization and noticed that KAV traffic was not being compressed... at all. One would figure that it should compress easily. Well we did some digging and found that by default KAV transferred updates in a compressed and encrypted SSL format. This was why it wasn't being compressed. See the following link. So we did our due diligence and set the settings to allow compression. Now we are seeing an amazing 95% compression rate! So the LAN tranferred 549MB, but really has only 25MB transferred over the WAN.
Today, I found while browsing the KAV admin kit, a "Traffic limiter rule" This rule allows me to setup KAV to bottleneck itself during the day, and unleash it at night.
So Recommendations if you have a KAV Server running operations over a WAN.
The other day I along with other collueges were looking at the riverbed's optimization and noticed that KAV traffic was not being compressed... at all. One would figure that it should compress easily. Well we did some digging and found that by default KAV transferred updates in a compressed and encrypted SSL format. This was why it wasn't being compressed. See the following link. So we did our due diligence and set the settings to allow compression. Now we are seeing an amazing 95% compression rate! So the LAN tranferred 549MB, but really has only 25MB transferred over the WAN.
Today, I found while browsing the KAV admin kit, a "Traffic limiter rule" This rule allows me to setup KAV to bottleneck itself during the day, and unleash it at night.
So Recommendations if you have a KAV Server running operations over a WAN.
- If you have a Riverbed, disable SSL, and compression.
- Create Traffic Rules to limit bandwith usage during the day.
Introduction
Hello,
I feel as if I am the person in the street that you pass by that talks to himself about anything and everything. Except I'm just doing it on the internet.
I'm Corey I have been working in IT for the past 6+ years. I love what I do and can't stop learning new things in the relm of information technology. With that said, I think you know what this blog is going to be mostly about. Let's get started.
I feel as if I am the person in the street that you pass by that talks to himself about anything and everything. Except I'm just doing it on the internet.
I'm Corey I have been working in IT for the past 6+ years. I love what I do and can't stop learning new things in the relm of information technology. With that said, I think you know what this blog is going to be mostly about. Let's get started.
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