Tom's Notes | Page 10

The “One ring”

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 18/11/2014 0 Comment

It’s here! Finally!

As I’ve got the Microsoft MVP award for another year (beginning October), today I’ve received the (special) “blue ring” – my fifth year of being an MVP.

It has been a long road… full of excitements, events, friendships, travels, real-world issues… but it was fun!

Once again, I want to thank my girlfriend, my family, my fellow MVPs, my mentors, my colleagues (past and present), wonderful Microsoft people and everyone else who backed me up along this path – THANK YOU, you are the real MVPs, and this award is yours as well!

Now… let’s face the new “challenges”! Smile

Cheers!

Advanced Technology Days (ATD) 10 – recap

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 14/11/2014 0 Comment

Another great conference is behind us – Advanced Technology Days 10 (or just ATD 10). Two-day conference, Wednesday and Thursday, about the latest and greatest from Microsoft, just in time for some of the important announcements, and with more than a glimpse into the future of technology – pretty cool. Smile

I’ve had two sessions – on Wednesday, I’ve had a session called “Što nam donosi Windows Server vNext (Technical Preview)?” (or “What’s new in Windows Server vNext (Technical Preview)?”), where I’ve outlined the major news in this prerelease version of the next Windows Server. There really is a lot to talk about, as Windows Server vNext brings so many news, even in this, somewhat early, stage in development cycle.

The session that I’ve had on Thursday was called “Što nam donosi System Center vNext (Technical Preview)?” (or “What’s new in System Center vNext (Technical Preview)?”), and there I’ve shown what is there in Technical Preview today with the preview of the new Microsoft Azure Operational Insights, which also entered the “public preview” phase during the conference. You can sign up and try it at https://opinsights.azure.com/.

Overall experience was great – once again located in a movie theatre, with lots of great people, networking, combined with a flawless demo experience (plug ’n’ play) and great timing… actually, I can’t wait for Advanced Technology Days vNext! Smile

I’m so happy that I was invited to speak (big thanks to all involved!), and got the opportunity to participate with my view on all the great stuff included in those releases of very important products.

More info is available at http://atd.mscommunity.hr/ and https://www.facebook.com/MicrosoftATD.

Cheers!

Hosts have “Needs Attention” status after installing the VMM 2012 R2 UR4

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 03/11/2014 0 Comment

For those who installed the Update Rollup 4 for System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager, you may be facing this somewhat “strange issue” right after the installation – your hosts will have the “Needs Attention” status.

And now the “strange” part – if you open the host Properties window, and check the Status tab, you’ll may see that everything is green.

So, what needs the attention then?
The answer is – VMM agent needs the attention, and that’s the cause of this “issue” (you’ll need to run Update Agent action on affected hosts).

And, finally, status of your hosts should be OK again.

Hope this helps!

P.S. Read the KB document thoroughly – there is a part which mentions the manual update of System Center Virtual Machine Manager DHCP Server (x64) component. It should be like this:

Windows Firewall blocking pings

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 01/11/2014 0 Comment

A short one this time… Smile

Have you ever had an issue with Windows Firewall blocking your pings on a network using Public profile, although the “File and Printer Sharing” exception is enabled for this profile?
(oh, yes, and don’t you dare to say that Windows Firewall should be disabled by default! Smile )

So, this is what I’m talking about:

As you see in the previous picture, the exception is enabled for both profiles (this PC is not domain-joined, but it would be the same with domain-joined PC on a network which is using the Public profile). When I try to ping it, I’m getting the standard “Request timed out.” message. Why is that? Is this a feature or bug?

Well, I’ve deliberately left-out two things:

if I try to ping my machine from the same subnet, the ping is passing through
if I try to ping my machine from the different subnet (routing is all set and working OK, in case you’re wondering), the ping is not passing through

The security feature that enables this kind of behavior is set in Windows Firewall by default – by default, Windows Firewall allows ping (and other traffic) only from the Local subnet, for all networks that use the Public profile. Of course, you may want to change this in certain scenarios (and you can… easily).

This is yet another thing that should be kept in mind during troubleshooting, right? (hope it helps) Smile

Have a great weekend!

Using Synology to recover data from another hard drive

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 29/10/2014 7 Comments

So, you have a disk filled with data you need and no external case or something similar (extra slot in your PC, server, …) that can be used to recover this data – if you have a Synology NAS device (with one or more free slots), you can use it to easily accomplish your task. Smile

Note: This may work with any other NAS device, but I’ve tried it only on Synology (the only devices I have access to – if you have some “extra” hardware from another vendor, send it to me and I’ll be happy to try it out on your preferred vendor’s equipment Smile ).

I’ve had the Synology DS-411j device (yes, I know… but it’s budget friendly and works just fine, at least) and a Seagate 320 GB SATA drive (NTFS-formatted, holding all the data that needs to be recovered):

Couple of steps that should be done before the “fun part” (a.k.a. “hardware steps”):

shut down the NAS device (maybe not necessary, but if your device is located “back there, under all of that useful stuff (actually junk, but…)”, it’s recommended )
open the enclosure (there are 4 screws on the back of the device which can, hopefully, be removed just by hand)
insert the hard drive you’re recovering from into an empty slot
close the enclosure (or leave it open if you’ll be removing the drive just afterwards)
start the device

And now the “fun part” (a.k.a. “software steps”):

open the device’s administration website by using your favorite web-browser
check Storage Manager to see if the newly added drive is visible (as Not Initialized)

enable Telnet or SSH (if not already enabled) (under Control Panel – Terminal & SNMP)

open a Telnet or SSH console session to your NAS device (PuTTY is one of the tools that can help you)

enter the following commands into your console window:

df -k
### OUTPUT ###
# Filesystem           1K-blocks       Used Available Use% Mounted on
# /dev/md0               2451064     526740   1821924  22% /
# /tmp                     59248        736     58512   1% /tmp
# /dev/vg1000/lv      1913548228 1167461820 745984008  61% /volume1

fdisk -l /dev/sdd
### OUTPUT ###
# Disk /dev/sdd: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
# 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
# Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
# Device        Boot    Start    End      Blocks      Id    System
# /dev/sdd1                 1  38914   312568832       7 HPFS/NTFS

mkdir /tmp/ntfs
ntfs-3g -o ro /dev/sdd1 /tmp/ntfs

df -k
### OUTPUT ###
# Filesystem           1K-blocks       Used  Available Use% Mounted on
# /dev/md0               2451064     526740    1821924  22% /
# /tmp                     59248        736      58512   1% /tmp
# /dev/vg1000/lv      1913548228 1167461820  745984008  61% /volume1
# /dev/sdd1            312568768  270452224   42116544  87% /tmp/ntfs

dir
### OUTPUT ###
# drwxrwxrwx    1 root     root             0 Oct 11 10:11 $RECYCLE.BIN
# drwxrwxrwx    1 root     root          4096 Oct 11 10:11 .
# drwxrwxrwt   10 root     root          1300 Oct 20 22:11 ..
# drwxrwxrwx    1 root     root             0 Oct 11 09:55 FILES
# drwxrwxrwx    1 root     root             0 Oct 11 08:44 System Volume Information

cp -R /tmp/ntfs/FILES /volume1/public/

df -k

### OUTPUT ###

# Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on

# /dev/md0 2451064 526740 1821924 22% /

# /tmp 59248 736 58512 1% /tmp

# /dev/vg1000/lv 1913548228 1167461820 745984008 61% /volume1

fdisk -l /dev/sdd

### OUTPUT ###

# Disk /dev/sdd: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes

# 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders

# Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

# Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

# /dev/sdd1 1 38914 312568832 7 HPFS/NTFS

mkdir /tmp/ntfs

ntfs-3g -o ro /dev/sdd1 /tmp/ntfs

df -k

### OUTPUT ###

# Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on

# /dev/md0 2451064 526740 1821924 22% /

# /tmp 59248 736 58512 1% /tmp

# /dev/vg1000/lv 1913548228 1167461820 745984008 61% /volume1

# /dev/sdd1 312568768 270452224 42116544 87% /tmp/ntfs

dir

### OUTPUT ###

# drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Oct 11 10:11 $RECYCLE.BIN

# drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4096 Oct 11 10:11 .

# drwxrwxrwt 10 root root 1300 Oct 20 22:11 ..

# drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Oct 11 09:55 FILES

# drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Oct 11 08:44 System Volume Information

cp -R /tmp/ntfs/FILES /volume1/public/

And there you go – you can copy or move (i.e. recover) your files to Synology shares (or somewhere else). When you’re finished, you can easily unmount the hard disk drive or even leave it inside (initialize and use it), as you wish.

Thanks for reading!

Resetting the switch – the harder way

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 25/10/2014 0 Comment

Do you remember the (good) old Catalyst 500 series switches from Cisco?
I don’t think that they are something special nowadays (being the end-of-sale and end-of-life products), but if they are in working condition – fine, I can use them.

(if you are wondering what I’m talking about, here’s the picture)

Anyhow, I’ve found one the other day (near mint condition), and wanted to make use of it in my lab. The only problem with it was that its password and IP and everything else was changed from factory defaults, without any note or document saying into what. Smile

So, the adventure begins…

Well, yes, you can say “But the switch works (at least the switching works). Why would any of this be a problem?”. The truth – I’ve had some spare time, and not having the complete access to my newfound piece of hardware was bugging me… Smile

The first thing I’ve tried was browsing the Cisco website for instructions on how to reset this type of switch. Note that this switch doesn’t have the ‘console’ interface, only web management. Soon I’ve found this article, explaining the whole process in great detail. Following the official instructions, I’ve come to the the part where my PC had to get the dynamic IP from the switch, but it was unable to get it (my PC actually got an APIPA address, but the other side wasn’t responding to queries on 169.254.0.1).

As per instructions, my switch could get either 169.254.0.1 or a 10.0.0.1 IP address, and I can easily set fixed IP on my PC and the problem will be solved. The thing that was bothering me is that I haven’t received the IP address from switch, as I should have and the question is why? I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one facing this issue – there’s even an article about this issue on Microsoft Answers. So, the problem seems to be in my DHCP BROADCAST flag on my PC (which is running Windows 10 Technical Preview, by the way). Long story short, the workaround provided didn’t help in my case.

And then I’ve taken another approach:

find out which address my switch has at the “setup time” (switch should be “talking” something during the setup, and probably a tool like WireShark or Microsoft Message Analyzer (great and free tool, by the way), can catch this “talk”)
set up my PC to the corresponding IP
try to access the configuration page
set up the router as I want to

So I’ve set up WireShark on my PC and started capturing the traffic… a lot of traffic… traffic that needs to be filtered by something. But what should the filter be?

Not so long ago, when my girlfriend was learning for her CCNA exam, she mentioned something called Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) and I’ve remembered that maybe this thing can help me now… so, I’ve entered the ‘cdp’ as a filter in WireShark and voilà – now I have something that actually seems useful!

From there, I’ve explored the CDP information in these filtered packets. In there, there is something called ‘Management Addresses’, which should be just the thing I’m looking for. And it is! I’ve seen that my switch actually has an IP of 169.254.180.146! It’s also safe to say that I never would have guessed it… would you? Smile

So, now I have the IP address of the management interface on my switch, and when I try to open it using my browser, I’ve got this:

Now comes the easy part – I’ve erased the system configuration, set the new one and this switch is finally ready to be used for whatever necessary.

And this is the end of this adventure. Switch is set to factory to defaults (and then configured as needed), I’ve been using CDP and WireShark to accomplish the task, and it was such fun! Can’t wait for the next adventure! Smile

Happy reading!

New ADRMS-ADFS document published

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 30/09/2014 0 Comment

I’m so happy to announce that we have completed our work on producing the “Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services with Active Directory Federation Services” document.

This document was actually inspired by the step-by-step guide for Windows Server 2008/R2, but because of so many updates and changes to the AD FS coming with Windows Server 2012 R2, we’ve ended up with a completely new document. Smile

You can find the official announcement here, and the document itself is available here.

I’m so glad for being a part of this – now I have a better idea of how much hard work is put into every one the documents available in TechNet Library. I’m also glad that we’ve achieved so much more than we hoped, during this “adventure”.

Congratulations and thanks to Carol Bailey, who led our team, and to all others that were included at some point (especially Enrique Saggese and Sandor Teglasy) – I think that you all of you can be proud of what was done!

I hope that this document will be also useful to all of you, and if you encounter any errors, feel free to contact me or the team.

Happy reading!

Just released – Veeam Management Pack v7

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 07/08/2014 0 Comment

Guys at Veeam have released a new version of their management pack for System Center – Veeam® Management Pack™ v7 (now with Hyper-V support, which is kind of a big deal for those running Hyper-V & Veeam)!

As they say on their website – “This new version is the most comprehensive, intuitive and intelligent extension for app-to-metal management of Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere and Veeam Backup & Replication™.”

One interesting thing about the product is that it now offers the same features for monitoring, reporting and capacity planning for both hypervisors. You’ll get:

Interactive topology views of compute, storage and network
Real-time Hyper-V performance monitoring
In-context dashboards and heat maps

More detailed info is available here.

They also have a very cool offer – here you can request a free product license (Enterprise edition) including one year of free Standard maintenance for Hyper-V environments up to 100 sockets (offer available until December 31, 2014).

So… grab your license and start exploring! Smile

Need a Book for the Beach?

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 17/07/2014 0 Comment

I’m happy to announce that our MVP colleague, Alessandro Cardoso got published again. His book, System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager Cookbook, got an update to the latest System Center version and much more!

I’m also happy that I was selected as a Technical Reviewer of this book and, in a (small) way, helped in creating this awesome resource. My final copy arrived just this morning, and I can’t wait to read it (again). Smile

You can find more info about it (as well as order your copy) here.

Cheers!