Robocopy and Windows Server Backup

 　　　　　

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 The recent bad update that supposedly only affected Windows 7 64 bit machines can also affect 64 bit Server machines. A Customer had a symptom of no incoming mail and had remote support looking at their Server. They could not see certain files so they suggested that the customer reboot. After the reboot the server would not boot into windows in safe or regular mode. Remote support  had me go out and take a look. There was no blue screen when it rebooted, but I tried the AVG fix for update 3292 anyway. It had no affect so I assumed that this was not the problem. There was some concern the customer that the system may have been hacked by a disgruntled ex employee, so I went into save data and restore system mode. I booted up with the SBS install disk and connected an external drive. I used repair mode to get to a cmd prompt and used robycopy to copy 2 groups of data that would have been newer that the last backup. I then restored the entire system to the 8th at 8:00 pm. It still would not boot. They mentioned that that they started having issues on Monday the 6th so I restored the system to Thursday the 2nd at 8:00 pm. It still would not boot. I tapped f8 and managed to get into the advanced startup menu and chose to disable automatic restart on system failure. This time after a couple of mins sitting there I finally got a BSOD. The stop error was c0000135 unable to locate component.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 After doing some research on that error I found that it was AVG afterall. I tried the fix again, no success. I then found on a post outside of AVG that some users had deleted or renamed the AVG directories and were then able to boot. I booted up with the install disk again and got into the cmd prompt. I renamed 2 AVG directories, one in Program Files and one in Program files (x86). I was then able to boot, however the system was still sluggish, so I rebooted into safemode. I then renamed the hidden folder C:\$AVG and rebooted. Now all seemed to be well. I copied back the newer data that I had backed up and downloaded and performed repair installs of AVG and AVG Admin.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Some of my fun with Windows Server Backup propmted me to create a page with screen shots to make some of the "next" buttons a little less scary to click on. I hope to have it up quite soon.

　　　　　　　

Oddities Using Disk2VHD to Virtualize

  
   Recently I was performing due diligence preparing for an upcoming server consolidation by means of virtualizing two existing servers, one from failing hardware. Since one server is coming from hardware that has started showing signs of impending doom I decided to start with that one. When I created the VHD, I chose to mark up HAL for Virtual PC to lessen the probability of BSOD while trying to boot the virtual machine of a 2003 server. When I tried to boot the machine on my Hyper-V test server, I would get the splash screen and then BSOD, unmountable volume. If I mounted the VHD using Disk Manager the Primary partition showed up as RAW, the secondary had all of its data there. Since this was from a failing server I assumed that the array may not have been read correctly by Disk2VHD. I used testdisk to try to repair the VHD. I ran it and it found errors, I saved the correction and ended up with a readable Primary Drive of the wrong size. The second partition was now RAW but the VHD would boot, the next issues was that it was in a "The HAL must be upgraded before integration services can be installed, a reboot is necessary" loop.

       So.. I made a VHD of the other server and tried to mount it with the same results. At this point I am starting to get a little worried that my Virtualization adventure could turn into a nightmare. After considering numerous other possible methods to get these servers from P2V, I decided I could try ghosting the individual partitions to blank VHDs that I created in Hyper-V and mounted with Disk Manager. I was quite surprised when Ghost actually read the Data from the RAW partitions and copied them to the blank VHDs. This still Left me with the HAL loop, unable to install integration services.

   I now had a real plan emerging, I would create the VHDs using Disk2VHD, being sure to leave the HAL fixup unchecked. I would then create blank VHDs and ghost the contents to them. Success !!!!! I now had 2 new virtualized servers. A little bit of configuration and I had working mirrors of their physical counterparts. I was once again fully comfortable that I could get this done for the customer.

    Finally the new server arrived I took it to my office, assembled the parts, Installed the Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V. I decided just for kicks to try and mount one of the VHDs that were freshly created without the HAL fixup checked. It booted like it had always lived there, no BSOD no HAL fixup loop, no need to ghost. Live and learn, never take anything for granted and it sure helps to have the same hardware to test something as what it will end up on.

     One of the main things that I learned is that Disk2VHD is an awesome tool for Virtualization and DR but depending on hardware you can end up with many varying results.

WHS and Hamachi

    So, I was sitting in my office/workshop/man cave getting ready to watch "The Battle of Ohio" when I decided to test the ability of WHS to back up a remote workstation or server. I had seen many different posts on various ways to accomplish this. I chose to try Hamachi VPN now owned by LogMeIn. I then needed to figure out what remote machine I could test this with. I chose my test server in the Dublin office about 40 some miles away from my location.
    I created an account with LogMeIn Hamachi and downloaded the VPN software on to both servers.
I configured the type of network as hub and spoke, with the home server being the hub. Once connected with the VPN I tried to RDP into the test server from the home server no luck. So to save time I disabled the firewall on the virtual adapter created by Hamachi on both machines. I now had complete 2 way communication going between the servers. I then downloaded the connector software from the home server to the test server and installed it.
   After installing the connector software I configured the backup. I thought this will be interesting, how long will it take to backup over 20 gigs of Data over the Internet, will it actually work or will it time out or just fail outright. Well I got my answer 21 hrs later with a successful completion of the backup. It has been backing up now for over a week successfully, with the ongoing backups taking less that 2 hrs. Pretty cool stuff, Bare Metal Restore would not be feasible over the remote connection but random file restores would be just fine.
   The big question would be is it actually a violation of the EULA to use WHS in this manner and how are Vail and Aurora going to compare functionality wise.

Bypass SBS 2008 RWW Website to connect to Work Computer

I was troubleshooting remote access for a customer when I decided to try to connect to the clients machine using the built-in RDP client. I used the customers computer name as the computer to connect to and the external website name as the gateway address. I clicked connect and much to my surprise it started to connect, gave me a warning about not trusting the machine's certificate, which I promptly by-passed and viola I was connected to their machine without going through the website.

This can come in real handy when you just can't get that darn self signed server certificate installed\ on the home computer. I would have to assume that the proper permissions would need to be in place in the Console as far as connecting to the computer, I have not tested this. Beats having to configure the firewall and the registry to use some non-standard port so a customer can get right into their machine.

Disk2VHD

     Mark Rossinovich and Bryce Cogswell at sysinternals have created all kinds of great free utilities over the years. Disk2vhd has to be one of my favorites. I have used it to virtualize my old XP machine to use on Windows 7 and used it to virtualize SBS 2003 servers to do complete off site swing migrations. But just like any other tool there are limitations and times that it doesn't work as planned.

   If you have disk or array issues on the machine you are using it on, chances are that it will fail to work at all or end up giving you a corrupted VHD. I recently created a VHD from a machine that was giving me array errors in event viewer. If I mounted the VHD with 2008 disk manager, the primary partition showed up as RAW. After searching posts I found a utility called testdisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk. Another great free tool to have in your kit. I used it to fix the disk configuration and was then able to boot the VHD.

I hate when things blow up

Excerpt from RFC 822:
6.3. RESERVED ADDRESS

It often is necessary to send mail to a site, without knowing any of its valid addresses. For example, there may be mail system dysfunctions, or a user may wish to find out a person's correct address, at that site. This standard specifies a single, reserved mailbox address (local-part) which is to be valid at each site. Mail sent to that address is to be routed to a person responsible for the site's mail system or to a person with responsibility for general site operation. The name of the reserved local-part address is: Postmaster, so that "Postmaster@domain" is required to be valid. Note: This reserved local-part must be matched without sensitivity to alphabetic case, so that "POSTMASTER", "postmaster", and even "poStmASteR" is to be accepted.

So in this day of spam filters that gobble up mail or spit it back at you anytime some RFC isn't followed, most of us will have a postmaster@domain  address in our organizations. You had better get rid of it before doing an SBS2003 to SBS2008 migration. Something as simple as that can cause irreparable damage to Companyweb and Exchange on the new server. Requiring restore of source server and restarting the migration after removing the postmaster address. Here is a link to some of the gotchas for the great adventure called SBS Migration. http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2009/02/19/sbs-2008-migrations-from-sbs-2003-keys-to-success.aspx

My First Post

I have always wanted to have somewhere to share tips tricks and gotchas that I learn on a day to day basis and frequently completely forget until I run into the problem again.  My thoughts are, if I write it down somewhere, that it could save me ton's of time the next time that particular issue comes along and I can't remember the solution. So if any of my friends and colleagues would like to add to this, it might save us all some time.