HP Proliant Support Pack on Server 2008: Server Core

We had some problems early on with the initial version of HP's PSP on our HP DL380 G5s and Server Core. The problems seem to have been resolved in the latest (8.15) version of the PSP. To install it, simply extract the PSP to a directory and run the setup.exe from the command line in Server Core. You'll get the standard HP GUI to guide you through the installation (or you can use setupc.exe for the commandline driven installation). The only "note" is that you'll have to install the SNMP service before hand by using the command "start /w ocsetup SNMP-SC".

HyperV and Failover Clustering Qwerk

Setting up a HyperV failover cluster on Server 2008 Datacenter edition, we kept having an issue with VM's configuration object getting stuck in "Offline Pending" when moving the virtual machine between servers. Additionally, we were getting an error when trying to add additional Virtual Machines to the cluster:

"An error was encountered while loading the list of available virtual machines. The value cannot be null Parameter name ManagementObject" . With an EventID # 1183 error as well.

After banging my head over this issue, it turns out its rather simple. The Failover Cluster Management MMC doesn't automatically add the drive that the Virtual Machine Configuration is stored on as a dependency to the Virtual Machine Configuration object. It's strange because it does add it to the Virtual Machine object its self. The result is that the cluster service can offline the disk that the configuration is stored on before it's done writing to the configuration file, causing the problems.

The solution, of course, is to add the virtual disk as a dependency of the Virtual Machine Configuration:
Update:
If you've already deleted the VM Configuration, you can add it back by right clicking on the Virtual Machine Group in the Failover Cluster Management MMC, choosing Add Resource -> More Resources -> Add Virtual Machine Configuration. Alternatively you could reload VM on one of the cluster nodes and then go through the process to make it highly available again.

Update x2:
Microsoft has fixed the root problem in the Hyper-V Failover Cluster Management Hotfix; more info here:
http://hypervoria.com/hyper-v/hyper-v-failover-cluster-hotfix-now-public.aspx

SCCM 2007 & KB948109

We've got a single System Center Configuration Manager 2007 server running all of our SCCM roles, as well as running MS SQL 2005 Express Edition SP2. When we installed the latest MSSQL update, KB948109 , we found that it completely hosed the security on the SQL instance. It appears that this is a rather widespread problem, in generally it looks like this update is wroght with issues. Luckily, running SCCM's Repair Site wizard on the server followed by a reboot cleaned up the mess. The more you know.

Excel 2007, Vista, and Synergy

I've found a problem with the awesome, cross platform, multi-monitor program Synergy. When using it with Windows Vista (which, technically isn't supported but seems to work reasonably well), you can't disable the Scroll Lock key in Excel. If you pull up the Virtual Keyboard from the Ease of Access tools, you can see scroll lock turning on and off, but Excel 2007 doesn't seem to care. The solution is to: turn off Synergy, hit Scroll Lock, turn Synergy back on. The developer has expressed that he is working on the project again, so hopefully we'll see the filter driver fixed in Synergy 2.0.

Active@Boot Disk and Active@Undelete

So it turns out, the instructions I posted last year for getting Active@Undelete on a Windows Deployment Services system work just as well for getting the Active@Boot Disk on there as well. The only difference is that you have to use the Active@Boot Disk Creator first to generate the ISO image so that it will include your serial number and registration info.

Exchange Backups

Awesome. We're about half way through moving from our janky Exchange 2003 servers to our Exchange 2007 Ultra Clusters... and the Exchange 2003 server decides to take a digger last night. Not just a digger (lost three! less then a year old SCSI3 disks in a 0+1 array in a matter of 2 days), but we don't have current backups... Using Active@Undelete to try and recover some data. It's a blast and a half. At least we've got affect people backup with a dial-tone mailbox on our hot spare 2003 box.

Moral of the story: nightly incremental backups are your friend.

Active@Boot Disk on Windows Deployment Services

We use a toolset from Active@ called UNDELETE. It's a nifty little program for recovering files off of hard disks that have been wiped, have a broken partition, etc.

One of the nicest features is the ability to use the program from a Windows PE 2.0 ISO to boot a machine and recover files. While this is nice, network booting it is a a much nicer solution that doesn't require you to have a CD on you at all times. After some tinkering, I've gotten it to sucessfully PXE.

What you need: Windows Server 2003 SP2 Windows Deployment Services server and the BootDiskEnt.ISO from the Active@ Boot Disk.

Process:

1. Mount the BootDiskEnt.ISO using your favorite ISO mounting utility.
2. Navigate to "X:\Sources\" (where X is the drive letter where you mounted the ISO
   
3. Copy the Boot.WIM file over the the deployment server.
4. On the deployment server, open up Windows Deployment Services MMC
5. Expand the tree to : Windows Deployment Services -> Servers -> Server Name -> Boot Images.
6. Right click and select "Add Boot Image".
7. In the wizard, click Browse and select the Boot.WIM file. Click Next until you complete the wizard.
   
8. It will take a few minutes to load, once it does you should see "Active@Boot Disk" listed as a boot image.
   
9. To use it, simply boot the system from the WDS server over PXE and select "Active@ Boot Disk" from the list of available boot images. It will boot just as if you had loaded it off of CD.