strafeonline

Late last year we installed a Windows 2008 Standard x32bit server for a client. This system was running great, until (or so it seemed), a botched Windows Update patch caused the whole Windows Update system to fail with error 0×80070005. The system, and Windows Updates, were running fine for about two months before it was promoted to a domain controller.

The Windows Update 0×80070005 error is common on Vista machines and somewhat easily fixed (just Google for the error; plenty of results). Rarely have I seen it mentioned in forums and blog posts relating to a Windows Server 2008 system. We’ve manually installed critical updates on the affected system every few months to keep it current - which is a pain. Service Pack 2 failed to install as well, leading us around in circles with System Update Readiness Tool requests and so on.

We’ve just installed a new Dell PowerEdge R610 - Windows Server 2008 Standard x64 SP1 - to act as a primary domain controller, which was performing Windows Updates just fine until we added the Active Directory Domain Services role and ran DCPROMO. After we rebooted, Windows Updates stopped working and presented with the dreaded 0×80070005 error.

The last update to be applied was KB955430, which:

Updates to the Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 installation software are included in this update. The installation software is the component that handles the installation and the removal of software updates, language packs, optional Windows features, and service packs. This update is necessary to successfully install and to remove Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 on all versions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. This update is not necessary to successfully install the service pack if you install the full file version of the service pack. The full file version of the service pack includes this update.

I have a hunch that a combination of Win 2008 SP1, ADDS, the KB955430 patch, and the system being a domain controller (so; after installing ADDS, running DCPROMO and rebooting) cause the Windows Update mechanism to fail.

As this new R610 is not yet in production, I demoted it using DCPROMO, rebooted, but kept the ADDS role installed. The server now queries Windows Update and our internal WSUS server correctly, AND lets us install SP2

The 0×80070005 error is resolved! Updates are located correctly via Winows Updates and WSUS and install correctly. SP2 also installs correctly; whereas before it would not.

Unfortunately, as soon as you re-promote the system to a domain controller, Windows Updates fail again with the same 0×80070005 error.

Frustrating!!

Here’s a great article over at the Washington Post about Danger, a mobile phone carrier who is also a Microsoft subsidiary, that has seemingly lost its clients’ data because they didn’t backup their SAN before upgrading it. The author makes some pretty accurate points about data, those who create it, and those who manage it.

Interestingly, Wikipedia’s page on Danger shows their ‘Disaster’ header, which I think is a bit over the top. A ‘Stupid Sysadmin’ header would be more appropriate.

I often have many RDP sessions open at the same time, connected to my client’s systems. I like to run them in full screen, and usually there is no problem. Until, you reboot a server, then realize you were in the wrong RDP session!

BGInfo (populates the desktop background with system information) can assist with helping to identify the server, however if you’ve seen one BGInfo you’ve seen them all.

I came across Terminals this morning while I was looking for plugins for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It lets you manage multiple RDP sessions, keep a list of hosts you regularly connect to (no more relying on most-recently-used lists or icons on the desktop), and comes with a swag of handy network tools all built in.

In a workplace that is all about becoming more efficient, Terminals is a huge improvement over the regular mstsc.exe experience.

Hit up here: http://www.codeplex.com/Terminals

I stumbled upon this project recently - www.fleetdynamics.com.au -  and have had some time speaking to the lead developer. It is essentially a GPS tracking system for vehicles, built by combining the Google Maps API, whizbang communications hardware, and some very cool .NET code. A great example of technology brought together to achieve something with real world value.

It’ll let you track your vehicles by polling the GPS grid every few seconds, then uploading the data to their servers via the mobile phone network. If you’ve got no mobile coverage, the unit queues the data until there is sufficient signal to transmit, and then uploads. It’ll cost you an initial $450 for a single unit, but that provides a years worth of tracking, and then it changes to a yearly subscription service of $90 every year thereafter.

There are comprehensive reports available too, such as travel outside of specific time frames, travel outside a specific radius, and travel over a certain speed, together with the usual plotting of routes, directions, altitudes, and speeds.

Check it out!

I have always been troubled by vendor certification. I find it really difficult to justify spending several thousands of dollars on learning a technology, only to have to sit a refresher course in a few years time, or have to sit a brand new course because the last course is now obsolete.

As I’m learning up on a whole suite of new technologies at the moment, like VMware’s offerings, and Symantec’s security and backup technologies, I find that most of the information I already know due to experience. Of all the free online presentation/quiz style “entry-level” certifications, I enjoyed VMware’s the most, but the next step up is costly.

Being an IT professional, I don’t have five days to set aside my regular duties and engage in a classroom style course, and being a small business owner in a slow economy, I don’t have the massive amounts of cash required to actually sit the courses anyway.

Even if the funding wasn’t an issue, justifying the expense is difficult, considering that it won’t be long until that course and information set has been superseded.

So, I have a few questions for the community:

• What are your experiences with vendor certification?
• Do you think the costs are justified in most cases?
• Which vendor gives the biggest bang-for-your-buck in their certification (think not only up front cost, but longevity of the product, possible returns for the business, etc)?
• What do you think of hardware certification?

I have just cruised through examinations and earned myself a VMware Sales Professional accreditation, as well as the company now holds the title of VMware Services Provider Partner. Yay us!

This is the first of many new certifications and accreditations to come, as well as many new partner programs.

Look out Dell and HP!

Mid January we upgraded our SBS2003 box to SBS2008. As there is no in-place upgrade (due to differing architectures), the choices are:

• install SBS2008 on a new server
• convert the SBS2003 to a virtual machine, wipe the existing server, install SBS2008 on existing server.

We went down the road of the second option, and overall the install process was satisfactory. We did run into some snags, as during the first attempt of installing SBS2008 the process crashed. The following attempt the server seemed to get ’stuck’, waiting for response from the SBS2003 VM.

The problem in the second attempt was that the 2008 install had transferred the domain operations master, infrastructure master, schema master, and other roles away from 2003 in the first install attempt. When the second install tried to do this, it could not complete this step and was stuck. The 2008 installer did not give any reason for the problem, so we had to manually figure it out.

The roles were seized back to the 2003 server using NTDSUTIL, and the next install attempt was much more successful!

I am very impressed with the SBS2008 system. We manage our client’s SBS boxes, rather than letting them do it, so even from an experienced point of view, SBS2008 is really quite good. I don’t like how WSUS is automatically enabled; I think this should be one of the ‘Getting Started Tasks’. I do like how easy it is to relocate an Exchange store, WSUS data, shared folders, etc, to another drive via the SBS Console.

Once running, configured, and stable, VMWare Server v2 was installed, and a Ubuntu linux virtual machine installed as the first VM on the system. With the Ubuntu VM we run an in house lab for PHP web development. I’m undecided about Ubuntu, after spending five years with FreeBSD. Our first project on this lab VM is a redevelopment of our client management system, something which has been on hold for about a year. More on the project to come in later posts.

Well, the September quarter is done and dusted, and if it weren’t for a few busy weeks of fixing servers it would have been pretty quiet. The past few days however have seen numerous PC failures - it is as if the servers work fine while the workstations have issues, and the workstations work fine when the servers are down. If only the users would work fine 10% of the time

In the past six months I have gone through two serious (one of them majorly serious) failures relating to the same server. I’ve noticed there are two good things to come out of a serious server crash/outage. When I say serious, it is on the level where it impacts the majority of the organization for longer than 24 hours, however only time is lost, all company data is safe.

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One of our clients currently runs an SBS 2003 system on some hardware that has hard its fair share of trouble (one week of downtime earlier this year, and two days of downtime in August), resulting in a decision from management to move the e-mails to a new box, and rebuild the SBS into a vanilla Win2K3 Server system.

For the new Exchange box, we ended up with a Dell PowerEdge 2950 III with two RAID 1 arrays, dual quad-core, 4GB RAM, etc. It arrived about a week earlier than scheduled, and so far has been a breeze to work with. (more…)