Format, Extend/Reduce and Create Volume Groups / Logical Volumes in Linux

Recently I had to set up some linux volumes and partitions in a production environment. I have compiled some points that I find relevant.

In this post I will show you how to do the following configurations in Linux Operating Systems:

• Add a new Physical Volume and Create Partition;
• Create new Volume Group and Logical Volume with one or more disks;
• Extend Volume Group with new Logical Volume;
• Extend Volume Group and the Logical Volume;
• Reduce a Logical Volume;
• Mount/Umount NFS Volumes

3PAR Procedures - Replace Disk, Remove Disk & Change Disk Position - Rebalance

In the first Post of the year I will show you three procedures regarding disk failure, remove a disk from the CPG and rebalance disk position in a 3PAR array.

• Replace a failed disk in 3PAR
• Objective: Remove failed disk and replace with a new one
• Remove disks from the CPG and rebalance the data
• Objective: Remove a disk from the 3PAR. The disk will be in New state and you can use it in another 3PAR
• Change disk position in 3PAR so you can rebalance data in the array
• Objective: Maximize performance of your array when you upgrade the 3PAR with new cages or disks

Let's see how to do this three procedures.

Errors with Custom vCenter Appliance 6.7 Certificates and SRM 8.1 (Error 25239)

In this post I decided to talk about two topics regarding vCenter certificates. VMware has improved a lot, but there are still a few bugs and some strange errors. I will show you how to import new custom certificates into vCenter 6.7 and how to resolve an error 25239 installing SRM 8.1. I had this error in a customer and the troubleshoot was quite difficult and the problem was certificate related. So here are my notes about the two topics:

• Installing custom certificates into vCenter 6.7 and troubleshooting
• Installing SRM 8.1 with custom certificates in vCenter 6.7 and troubleshooting

Import Custom 3PAR SSMC Certificates

This is the web based version of the classic 3PAR Management Console application (if you don't use it already, you might know that the old versiont is discontinued).
Today I will show you how to change the default certificates from 3PAR SSMC in a windows platform. You can use external or internal certificates from your Certificate Authority.

All the tools you need to complete this task are pretty well already on the server where you installed the SSMC software.

I think from another post I read that when you upgrade the SSMC version this will overwrite the certificate and you will have to do this again, i have not tested this yet.

Let's see how to do it!

VMware Troubleshoot Commands, Logs and Performance - ESXTOP

Today in this post I will show you some commands and logs to try to solve some errors in a VMware environment. I'll give special attention to a very useful command called esxtop

 

What I'm going to show is the following: 

• Important Log Files

• Useful ESXi Commands

• Some ESXi Configuration Files

• ESXTOP Command

Let's Begin!

Upgrade Firmware Brocade SAN Switch

 

In this post I will show you how to Upgrade the Brocade Switches Firmware.

Requirements:

• Filezilla FTP Server (or similar)
• Filezilla FTP Client (or similar)
• Putty
• Java JRE (the version will depend of the Switch Brocade. Probably you will need version 7)
• Log on credential for Brocade website or vendor website
• Downloaded upgrade firmware. Read the Release Notes because you might need more than one firmware

Let's start with the Upgrade Paths and then with the procedures.

Step-by-Step - Cisco UCS Firmware Upgrade

 

I once had to upgrade a Cisco UCS Manager and the process went very smoothly, without any downtime and I documented all the procedures.

For those who do not know this system here is a brief description:

Cisco UCS Manager supports the entire Cisco UCS server and Cisco HyperFlex Series hyperconverged infrastructure portfolios. It enables server, fabric, and storage provisioning as well as, device discovery, inventory, configuration, diagnostics, monitoring, fault detection, auditing, and statistics collection. You can extend the benefits of Cisco UCS Manager globally across an enterprise to thousands of servers in multiple domains with Cisco UCS Central Software.

More information:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/servers-unified-computing/ucs-manager/index.html

 

In this post I will show you how to Upgrade UCS 2.2(3c) to version 2.2(8f), but it also applies to other versions. I'm  going to show you how to Upgrade the infrastructure (UCS) software, Fabric Interconnects and I/O modules firmware in a two-stage operation.

So, let's start! 

Domain Controllers - DCDiag & Repadmin

All system engineers have experienced replication problems once in a lifetime.Today I will show you some basic commands to Troubleshoot and Diagnose Domain Controllers and replications. I'm talking about DCDiag and Repadmin.

DCDiag:

This command-line tool analyzes the status of one or all domain controllers in a forest and reports all problems to provide assistance in troubleshooting. DCDiag.exe consists of a variety of tests that can run either individually or as part of a set to check the state of the domain controller. Here are some examples:

1. Preparing to install or migrate to Exchange;
2. Checking FSMO roles;
3. Troubleshooting Group Policies;
4. Investigating Active Directory not replicating frssysvol error;
5. Running down Kerberos authentication problems;
6. Resetting the Directory Service Administrator's password;
7. Fixing a servers Service Principle Name (SPN) error.

Repadmin

Performs replication-related tasks, such as managing and modifying replication topology, forcing replication events, and viewing replication metadata and updated vectors.

Let's see some examples and a Script to automize all Domain Controllers replication.

SCCM - Failed to validate content hash on Distribution Point. Yellow Warning

In SCCM when there are many Distribution Points with different published Software, it may happen that there are validation failures and that WMI repository is inconsistent. The events are represented as in the following table:

 

SCCM by default does not have any tools that allow you to resynchronize the entire WMI repository without removing the Distribution Point Role and adding it again. Let's see how to get around this.

Office 365 Users Not able to view Free/Busy and Room information of On-Premises

The other day I had to validate and solve a problem with calendar synchronizations between Office 365 and Exchange 2010 (and vice verse). I was aware that On-Premises users could see the status of all users calendars, but Office 365 users only could see the Office 365 users status. (Office 365 users were not able to view F/B information of On- Premises user mailboxes).

This scenario is valid for Exchange 2010/2013 and Office 365 hybrid architectures with or without ADFS. The errors that I had were this:

Trying to share a Calender between On-Prem and an Office 365 User:

"One or more users cannot be added to the folder access list"

The outlook/webmail calendar had errors:

"No Information. No free/busy information could be retrieved"

"The recipient's server could not be contacted. Contact your administrator"

Let's see the necessary steps for the resolution.

Create Multiple Mount Points in Multiple Disks in one Datastore VMware

I was in a costumer where I had to create many disks to present to several virtual machines in VMware. The Datastores were few, but I had to create 60 disks in each VM (maximum supported with four SCSI controllers). To increase complexity, all of these Volumes in Windows meant to be Mount Points. To optimize this process I had to create some Scripts to help me.

I splited in different points:

• Script to add multiple disks from one datastore to a VM;
• Script to change all the Disks paths to Round Robin (The Storage was a HPE 3PAR);
• Script to Create all the Windows Mount Points;
• Script to view the Mount Points created.

Let's see how to do it!

Capture Image for SCCM - WDS - MDT using DISM and WinPE

We often want to capture machines with SCCM using the ISO capture and we have very strange errors, namely because of sysprep, Windows 10 applications or even permissions. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this capture is to not use SCCM's ISO and let us capture the image at a low level. To do this, just use the ADK tools already installed on the SCCM server.

In this Post I will show you the steps to accomplish this task!

Upgrade HPE Storage 3PAR to v3.3.1 - Upgrade Service Processor to v5.0

SP5 Release Notes:
https://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-a00002915fr_fr

3PAR 3.3.1 Relase Notes:
https://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-a00017203en_us


Service Processor 5.0 is completely new and there is only one way to upgrade. Lets find out how.

Changing SQL Server Collation After Installation and in Production

 

 

In some scenarios we can find different SQL Server collations between the server instance and its databases. Sometimes the collation is fixed in some table columns or inside stored procedures to solve some of relationship problems with columns that have different collations. The most common technique to have a consistent collation for the instance and all it databases has a lot of steps and can sometimes be problematic.

 

A classic example is that when you want to reuse a SQL Server for System Center components and the Collation is not SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS (required for the installation)

 

To correct the collations in a few steps is outlined in this Post. It is recommended to create a backup of all databases (including system databases) before take administrative actions on a SQL Server instance. It is important to ensure that there is no fixed collation logic in columns or inside stored procedures, triggers, etc., otherwise the command below may report problems.
In this post I will change  "Latin1_General_CI_AS" collation to "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI"

Automation Azure - Script to Change Virtual Machines Size ARM & ASM

In this post I'll show you how to resize automatically azure virtual machines.

Microsoft Azure offers some cheap low spec virtual machines. But as we all know, the prices can go up pretty quickly as the specs go up. But we need large VMs to support today’s modern day workloads. The downside is that most of these workloads are only present during business hours but you end up running and paying for these large VMs even during non-business hours and on weekends.

 

The solution here is to have an azure automation script that resizes the VMs to the lowest possible size during non-business hours and have another automation script to resize the VMs to their original size just before start of business.

 

Because Azure has two portals (for now..), I'll show you the scripts from both (since threre are many differences).

• Old Portal - Azure ASM (Azure Service Manager)
• New Portal - Azure ARM (Azure Resource Manager)

Let's see how to do it!

 

Upgrade In-Place SCCM 2012 R2 - WIndows Server 2008 R2 to 2012 R2

Today, in the post I will show you how to migrate SCCM operating system from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2012 R2 in-place. I had some problems and that is what I will try to describe in more detail. You can do a in-place upgrade from:

• Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2012 R2 (SCCM 1602 or higher)
 
You cannot go from Server 2008 R2 to Server 2016, Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2012!

 

The key reason for this change is that most installations of SCCM 2012 R2 are based on Windows Server 2008 R2. And if the SCCM evolves, the operating system also has to evolve. Another possible approach would be to install a Windows Server 2012 R2 from scratch and do a restore of the SCCM and database (keeping the same name and IP). I think the first approach is simpler and I will describe it.

 

Terminal Server. Windows cannot connect to the printer. Error 0x00000002

A few days ago I had a customer with a problem that was as follows:

• In a RDS Farm (Terminal Server) some users cannot print to any printer
• It was only happening in one server of the Farm
• some users logged in on the same server had no problem at all and could print to their preferred printer. The error was 0x00000002
• Some users reported that they didn’t get their printer(s) mapped by Script when they logged in to that specific RDS server
• The Terminal Servers were in Windows Server 2008 x86

Let´s see how to resolve this:

Migrate Azure Portal ASM to Resource Manager ARM - Powershell & MigAZ

Today I will show you how to migrate your Azure Service Management (ASM) virtual machines to the ARM (Azure Resource Manager) environment. In this new structure the IAAS service has become more complete and malleable in creation, you can create a virtual machine with two network cards and move that same network card to another machine without having to create everything again. This freedom of movement of resources between virtual machines has made the Azure administration service much easier.

 

So, let's Start!

 

Exchange 2010 Inter-Organizations Migration – Remote Move

The migration scenario:

• Two different forests;
• Exchange 2007 in one forest and Exchange 2010 in the other;
• Exchange 2007 with SP2 installed.

Requirements:

• Create a DNS Conditional Forwarding on the source domain for the destination domain;
• Create a DNS Conditional Forwarding on the destination domain for the source domain;
• Before starting the migration itself, you need to trust between the two domains and deactivate SID Filtering:
• Netdom trust destination.local /domain:source.local / quarantine: No / usero: destination\user / passwordo: *******
• Netdom trust source.local /domain:destination.local / quarantine: No / usero: source\user / passwordo: ********

 

This way, when migrating with ADMT, users' SIDs remain the same (Filtering Disabled), thus ensuring the same permissions on files and groups in the target domain.

 

With ADMT installed on a server machine in the target domain, migrate the users/groups from the source to the destination (need to install the password exporter on a Domain Controller at the source, so we can guarantee the passwords are the same in both domains)

O In this document I will not go ahead with the ADMT settings.

 

Redirecting Webmail (OWA) URLs in IIS for All Exchange Versions

In this post I will show you how to redirect all OWA requests to the correct HTTPS address. It works not only with OWA, but with EWS and/or ECP.

I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember in Exchange 2007/2010/2013 so that requests go automatically to https://owa.customer.com/owa (or /exchange). So, if someone goes to http://owa.customer.com or https://owa.customer.com, they get redirected to the correct (secure) URL.