BESR cloning not exact.

I've been bit a couple times thinking that cloning a machine using Backup Exec System Recovery would give me an exact copy. This is probably the case if you do a straight recovery on the same hardware but when you recover checking off the option that this is different hardware, you get a minisetup from microsoft on first boot so that it can find and load the new device drivers.

I couple of things different on these clones that I've found:

1. If you had any secondary IP addresses on the network card, you need to re-add them

2. If you Data Execution Protection settings, they appeared to be changed. I had to re-add the applications that were listed before cloning.

Dell PowerEdge Perc 6 Alerts

Ok. What is it with Dell Perc controllers? The Perc 5 came with the Audible Alert disabled and unusable. Why would we not want to have all possible means of knowing if a drive goes down in the RAID? With Perc 6, still no audible alerts. Not only this, but it has been a hassle to get some sort of notification...especially email.

In the DRAC cards, we can get email for all sorts of alerts. For one of the most common failure in servers - hard drive failure - NO.

Version 5.5.0 of the Dell Server Administrator program, we can finally get alerts easily for virtual drive warnings and failures..Can we get an email alert....still NO. You can get a broadcast message sent out (this only goes to local network), a console alert?.(I'm hardly ever at the console since my servers are over 2K miles away from me..I'm usually in an RDP session), or execute an application.

SO I used bmail.exe which is a simple command line app that will send SMTP email to our SMTP server. Here's my cmd file with the names and IPs changed to protect the innocent.


REM This is called via the Dell System Administrator in case of storage alerts
REM using bmail to send logs via email to the recipients listed in toaddress
REM when calling email.cmd, use first parameter "%1" as subject
REM use second paramater as full path to log file then alter command line to include -m "%2".

SET SMTP="10.2.2.33"
SET toaddress="jrd@ntwc.com,alert@mj.com"
SET fromaddress="MJWDM@mj.com"

c:\bmail\bmail -s %SMTP% -t %toaddress% -f %fromaddress% -h -a "%1"


SMTP is the IP of the SMTP server that will allow you to relay.. ..so this is of course a local SMTP server. toaddress is a comma-delimited text with the email recipients. Fromaddress I usually create bogus email address with the domain name of the client and the name of the server sending the alert.

So I store this as email.cmd in C:\bmail folder along with the bmail.exe. Then under Server administrator under Alert Management, I set each to Execute Application. For example for a Virtual Disk Warning, the command line would be

c:\bmail\email.cmd "VirtualDiskWarning"


The email will now have the subject of "VirtualDiskWarning" I can't use spaces for some reason..not interested in troubleshooting that.

Be aware if you are interested in creating a vbs script, you have to encapsulate it in a cmd.exe command line...see Dell's manual for details.

DocsOpen 4.0 adding Parent doc type

We added a parent document type table and made Document Type table the child. The client is reorganizing there 100+ document types in a heirarchy in preparation to move to DM 5 and to use the Designer Folder views feature of that product. They don't want to see 100+ folders under their matter folder when they switch.

Created the parent doc type table and altered all the profile search screens and maintenance screens.

Need to put the old doc types under a parent doc type so created an 1_OLD parent document type (the "1_" so it will be listed first in a lookup). Looked up the SYSTEM_ID of the 1_OLD parent document type and used this SQL command in SQL analyzer

update docsadm.documenttypes set PAR_DOC_LINK = '295778' WHERE PAR_DOC_LINK is null

to change all the old document types so they will be children of this parent document type.

20090331 - Robocopy parameters

Wanted to copy from a mounted BESR (Backup Exec System Recovery) image. Found that the recovery feature built into BESR is slow and doesn't copy any security info. Copying from the Explorer is the same way. Using the robocopy command from the Windows Resource Kit and it's fast and copies the security with the right parameters.

robocopy E: D: *.* /E /ZB /COPYALL /NP /R:5 /W:15 /LOG:d:\migrate.log

/ZB will copy in restartable mode and if a file is set so that administrator cannot access, it copies in backup mode so it still can copy it. /NP keeps the progress from showing in the log file. /Copyall copies all the security info.

20090325 - BESR

Windows - No Disk
Exception Processing Message 0xc0000013 Parameters 0x756392A0 0x00000004 0x756392A0 0x756392A0

When booting using Backup Exec System Recovery boot cd-rom. After trying multiple things determined that it was due to using the virtual CD-ROM by mapping using the PowerEdge's DRAC card. If I had someone stick a physical CD of the BESR boot, it booted fine and I could restore.

20090126 - TCPIP not working

Servers had been restarted and Windows Security updates applied. Exchange server appears to be up but not responding on the network. No RDP, No Ping, no email, etc. Found IPSEC service not started and error message in logs.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: IPSec
Event Category: None
Event ID: 4292

Description: The IPSec driver has entered Block mode. IPSec will discard all inbound and outbound TCP/IP network traffic that is not permitted by boot-time IPSec Policy exemptions. User Action: To restore full unsecured TCP/IP connectivity, disable the IPSec services, and then restart the computer. For detailed troubleshooting information, review the events in the Security event log.

Found this could be caused by Security Update when DNS service randomly picks a port that a service uses. In this case it was IPSEC.

Added the following Reserved ports in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\ReservedPorts

1645-1646 - Used by IAS
1701-1701 - Used by L2TP
1812-1813 - Used by IAS
2883-2883 - Used by AUTD
4500-4500 - Used by IPSEC

Restarted and access back. Restarted BES server and sent test...

This is from the Official SBS blog...click here to see this blog

20090110 - Pool memory errors and Liveupdate problems

Getting Event


Type: Error
Event Source: Srv
Event Category: None
Event ID: 2020
Date: 1/9/2009
Time: 6:39:59 AM
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
The server was unable to allocate from the system paged pool because the pool was empty.

This started around the time I noticed problems with Liveupdate installs. I had also seen this error on another machine running Symantec Mail Security and Anti-virus server. This error was caused by the symantec software. So I updated the pool memory settings (see below for recommendation by Microsoft if you get these errors)

LiveUpdate Errors
Running BackupExec 12 Rev 1364 SP1. Getting the following error in LiveUpdate (also install errors reported in event log) "LU1812: A program that was part of this update failed when it ran. This update was not applied."

Confirmed: BackupExec Services uses Administrator account which I'm logged in as when I run LiveUpdate.

Checked the log in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Backup Exec\Logs\Bkupinst.htm. And found V-225-136: The patch failed to install. Return code: 1602

Cleared C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\LiveUpdate\Downloads folder. It had over 1000 files... some over 3 months old

Still getting the error.

Manually downloaded SP2 and installed.

Ran liveupdate again and it began doing the 1 thru 8 patches it had run before SP2. I stopped and uninstalled LiveUpdate (3.3.0.61) and installed 3.3.0.73. Ran and it still began the 1 thru 8 patches. This time I let it download and install...and it was successful.

Microsoft Recommendations for Pool Memory
The following tuning recommendation has been helpful in alleviating the problem with pool memory issues:
Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value name: PoolUsageMaximum
Data type: REG_DWORD
Radix: Decimal
Value data: 60
Setting the value at 60 informs the Memory Manager to start the trimming process at 60 percent of PagedPoolMax rather than the default setting of 80 percent. If a threshold of 60 percent is not enough to handle spikes in activity, reduce this setting to 50 percent or 40 percent.
Value name: PagedPoolSize
Data type: REG_DWORD
Radix: Hex
Value data: 0xFFFFFFFF
Setting PagedPoolSize to 0xFFFFFFFF allocates the maximum paged pool in lieu of other resources to the computer.
Quit Registry Editor.
Restart the server for the changes to take effect.