Month: May 2012

VSS Crash Consistent Versus Application Consistent VSS Backups (Part 2 of 2)

Altaro has posted the second part of their series on VSS Crash-Consistent vs. Application-Consistent VSS Backups.  You can find the first post here.  In this post they discuss:

When is Application-Consistent Backup Vital? Not all situations require an application-consistent backup. Things such as file and print servers will be fine with crash-consistent and possibly inconsistent backups. If your application doesn’t provide a VSS writer, there might not even be a way to get an application-consistent backup of it while its containing machine is live. The most common need for application-consistent backups is the usage of database-backed applications.

Give it a read to learn about backup from a backup developer.

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Remember To Set Your Network Speed in ConfigMgr 2012 Multicast

I’m currently on a 2 week project on a customer site to install System Center 2012 Configuration Manager with a focus on OS deployment to bare metal and application installation.  It’s been fun dong my first production install of ConfigMgr 2012.  You can really only push it so far in a virtualised lab and quite a bit has changed since 2007 R3 – it’s kind of like moving from XP to Windows 8 Smile  The biggest challenge is finding where things have moved to.

Today we moved to physical machine testing, verifying the drivers were installed, and IDing/importing those that got missed out.  Interestingly, the recently released HP all-inclusive driver pack for PCs/laptops is missing quite a few drivers.  We’re finding them in the per-model archives with no issues, as we are for the Dell machines.

One of the nice finds today was that I’d forgot to turn on Multicast on the distribution point and set the network speed in Multicast.  By default it is 100 Mbps.  I switched that sucker up to 1 Gbps.  Two things happened:

  1. All deployments that were on-going broke as the DP was updated.  This wasn’t instant either, taking a couple of minutes.
  2. Damn, OS deployment became so much quicker afterwards, as one would expect.

One of the nasties was a 3G modem “driver” by Ericsson on one of the HP laptops.  I say “driver” because there isn’t the usual collection of files including a .sys and .inf.  Instead, it’s a setup.exe.  Extract that and you get more files and another setup.exe.  Crap!  Maybe it has a silent install.  Maybe if it does we can package it up, and distribute it to a collection based on the model name of the laptop in question.  I’m even wondering if we can make it a conditional step in the task sequence where the condition is based on a ZTIGather model discovery.   It’s the only 3G modem we’ve had like this in about 8 or so laptop models so it sucks that it stands out like a sore thumb.

VMware Cloud Management Stuck In The 1990s

Credit to Dave Northey (DPE, MSFT IE) for blogging this one.  VMware’s CTO, Dr. Stephen Herrod says:

VMware Cloud Infrastructure Suite is really more of a marketing term. Those of you know our products deeply know that they don’t fit this well together as they need to. Some of them have multiple databases, some don’t look the same, some install differently, and what I can’t stand that is Site Recovery Manager doesn’t currently work with vCloud Director. So, what we are basically able to say is that we created and acquired companies that led to a lot of individual products that don’t work well enough together yet.

Worse … he was caught on video, as you can see on the link in Dave’s post.  Someone call Tad!

Seriously, I’ve been talking about this for a while.  VMware went and bought a slew of companies in the last few years.  Last year I was at a big VMware event in Dublin where they pushed their “integrated” cloud solution for vSphere.  If by integrated they meant that they changed the icons, grouped them together, and stuck a “v” in front of the name, then they did no better than Amdahl or CA were doing in the 1990’s.  I know; I worked with both product sets back then.  What you got were uncoupled, different, and non-integrated point solutions.  Hardly a cloud at all.

That sort of thing should be buried with grunge rock and rap metal back in that dark, dark decade.

On the other hand, a couple of months ago I was asked to whiteboard the integration of System Center 2012.  I had to tell the people in question that I might as well scribble lines all over the board because it was so deeply integrated.  That’s a modern day, integrated solution for ya!

Error 0x800705AA: Insufficient System Resources During SCCM OSD Task Sequence

I had an interesting week this past week, doing my first production installation of System Center 2012 Configuration Manager in a production environment, with the focus of the project being on operating system and software deployment.  On Friday I had an interesting issue start to flare up while testing on some VMs.  The task sequence was failing during the installation of the operating system image.

The key log to analyse during a task sequence execution is SMSTS.LOG which can be found in WindowsTempSMSTS on the X drive.  You can get access to this log by enabling the command prompt for diagnostics in your boot image (remember to redistribute to your distribution points) and pressing F8 while the boot image is running.  In here I found:

Error 0x800705AA: Insufficient system resources

Damn!  I had to think for a few moments about this one.  Then it hit me.  I develop my reference image using a VM (snapshot right before the sysprep so I can rollback [apply snapshot], tweak and recapture) and I test on VMs before moving onto driver testing on reference hardware.  How were the VMs configured?  Dynamic memory with 512 MB startup memory.  The boot image doesn’t appear to have integration components for DM so  the 512 MB never burst up to the potential maximum memory of 4096 MB.  The boot image requires a minimum of 512 MB.  I guess the boot image needed more RAM than the startup, couldn’t avail of the maximum amount, and failed the task sequence.

The quick fix: I bumped the startup memory to 1024 MB, tested, and everything’s sorted.

Microsoft Application Approval Workflow Available for Download

Just arrived in my inbox:

The Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team is pleased to announce that Microsoft Application Approval Workflow is now available for download! 

The Application Approval Workflow (AAW) takes an application request submitted through the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Application Catalog and transforms it into a System Center 2012 – Service Manager service request, allowing flexible approval lists and activities.      

The AAW illustrates the integration of the components of System Center 2012, taking the basic functionality of the ConfigMgr 2012 Application Catalog and extending it into the Service Catalog of Service Manager.

Key feature list:

  • Sync Configuration Manager applications data into the Service Manager database.
  • Monitor and transport Configuration Manager Application Catalog requests requiring approval to Service Manager and open a service request.
  • Return the completed approval workflow status to Configuration Manager for handling.
  • Allow administrators to define and maintain application selection criteria for specific applications or application groups and specific users or user groups.
  • Track service application requests and view application catalog contents in Service Manager.

VSS Crash Consistent Versus Application Consistent VSS Backups

When listening to a Microsoft speaker on the subject of VSS a few months ago, I realised quickly how little I understood about the subject … and I consider myself pretty well informed.  Who better to learn from about the internals of backup than a company that does backup for a living.  Queue Altaro and the first on their series on VSS Crash-Consistent vs. Application-Consistent VSS Backups.

Unfortunately, if disaster does strike, there are often more questions than answers. Planning ahead is critical, and that involves knowing what sort of backup you need and if your backup application can provide it.

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Windows Server 2012 Community Events

Microsoft is organising a series of community events globally to spread the word about Windows Server 2012.  I say community because the speakers will be MVPs.  The event site will be updated over the coming months with news of more events, and watch out communications from your local sources

Here, we have events in Belfast (May 21st, Wellington Park Hotel) and Dublin (May 22nd, Microsoft Building 2, Leopardstown).  The agenda of the events is:

  • 13:00     Registration opens
  • 13:30     Introduction                              Dave Northey
  • 13:50     Manageability                           Alex Juschin
  • 14:35     Storage and Availability            Aidan Finn
  • 15:20     Coffee
  • 15:40     Virtualisation (Hyper-V)             Aidan Finn
  • 16:25     Remote Desktop Services          Alex Juschin
  • 17:10     End

It’s a long time since we had a release like Windows Server 2012.  It would be considered a huge release with the Hyper-V changes.  If you’re serious about server, then don’t get left behind.

EDIT1:

Details have just been announced for the London (June 14th) and Edinburgh (June 15th) events in GB.  I’ll be taking time off to present so hopefully I’ll see you there Smile