Microsoft Fraks Up Patches AGAIN

I’m sick of this BS.

Microsoft is investigating behavior in which systems may crash with a 0x50 Stop error message (bugcheck) after any of the following updates are installed:

2982791 MS14-045: Description of the security update for kernel-mode drivers: August 12, 2014
2970228 Update to support the new currency symbol for the Russian ruble in Windows
2975719 August 2014 update rollup for Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2
2975331 August 2014 update rollup for Windows RT, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012

This condition may be persistent and may prevent the system from starting correctly.

If you are affected by any of the above then the repair process (see Known Issue 3) is an ungodly nightmare.

This is exactly why I tell people to delay deploying updates for 1 month. That’s easy using SCCM (an approval rule will do the delaying and supersede for you). WSUS – not so easy and that requires manual approval, which sadly we know almost never works.

Feedback, private and public from MVPs hasn’t worked. Negative press from the tech media hasn’t worked. What will, Microsoft? Nadella oversaw this clusterfrak of un-testing before he was promoted. Is sh1te quality the rule from now on across all of Microsoft? Should we tell our customers to remain un-patched, because catching malware is cheaper than being secure and up-to-date? Really? Does Microsoft need to be the defendant of a class action suit to wake up and smell the coffee? Microsoft has already lost the consumer war to Android. They’re doing their damndest to lose the cloud and enterprise market to their competition with this bolloxology.

Microsoft News Summary – 15 August 2014

Here’s the latest from the last 24 hours:

Microsoft News Summary – 14 August 2014

There’s a new craze out there with famous people called the Ice Bucket Challenge. A person is dared to take a bucket of ice water over the head (and post the video online) or donate to charity, in in of of “raising awareness” of a disease called ALS. Nadella and Zuckerberg have done it. Gates has been challenged.

ADFS Authentication Via Azure

I’ve recently started doing lots of presentation on Azure thanks to the release of Azure via Open licensing. People wonder what the scenarios ate where an SME would deploy machines in Azure and on premises. Here’s one I came up with this morning (an evolution of one I’d looked at before).

I was chatting with one of my colleagues about a scenario where a customer was looking deploying ADFS to provide Office 365 authentication for a medium-sized multinational company. I wondered why they didn’t look at using Azure. Here’s what I came up with.

Note: I know SFA about ADFS. My searches make me believe that deploying a stretch ADFS cluster with a mirrored SQL backend is supported.

image

The company has two on-premises networks, one in Ireland and one in the USA. We’ll assume that there is some WAN connection between the two networks with a single AD domain. They have users in Ireland, the USA, and roaming. They want ADFS for single sign-on and they need it to be HA.

This is where companies normally think about deploying ADFS on-premises. Two issues here:

  • You need local infrastructure: Not so bad if you have spare license and hardware capacity on your hosts, but that’s not a given in an SME.
  • Your ISP becomes a risk: You will place ADFS on premises. Your office has a single Internet connection. A stray digger or ISP issue can put the entire business (not just that office) out of action because ADFS won’t be there for roaming/remote users to authenticate with O365.

So my original design was to stretch the network into Azure. Create a virtual network in an Azure region that is local to your Office 365 account (for example, an Irish O365 customer would deploy a virtual network in Azure Europe North). Create a site-to-site VPN network to connect the on-premises network to the Azure VNet. Then deploy an additional DC, in the same domain as on-premises, in the Azure VNet. And now you can create an ADFS cluster in that site. All good … but what about the above multi-national scenario? I want HA and DR.

Deploy an Azure VNet for Ireland office (Azure Europe North) and for the USA office (Azure USA East) and place virtual DCs in both. Connect both VNets using a VPN. And connect both on-premises networks to both VNets via site-to-site VPNs. Then create an ADFS stretch cluster (mirrored SQL cluster) that resides in both VNets. Now the company’s users (local, roaming and remote) have the ability to authenticate against O365 using ADFS if:

  • Any or both local on-premises networks go offline
  • Either Azure region goes offline

As I said, I am not an ADFS person, so I’ll be interested in hearing what those how know ADFS think of this potential solution.

Microsoft News Summary – 13 August 2014

Overnight, Microsoft released the August 2014 Update Rollup for WS2012 R2 and Windows 8. Lots of hotfixes!

KB2970215 – Microcode Update For WS2012 and WS2012R2 Running On Intel CPUs

Microsoft released a hotfix that includes a microcode update for Intel processors to improve the reliability of Windows Server. It affects Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1). The fix also solves a reliability problem for Hyper-V running on Ivy Bridge, Ivy Town, and Haswell processors.

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft.

Note hotfix for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 will be available in September, 2014.

This update reminds me of a similar update that was released soon after the RTM of W2008 R2 to deal with issues in the Nehalem CPU. Without the fix, there were random BSODs. I got tired of telling people, so called expert consultants, to install the fix. Note this fix, test it if you want to deploy immediately, or wait one month and then install it. But make sure you install it – set something in your calendar NOW to remind yourself.

KB2976884 – "Access denied error" When HVR Broker Goes Online In WS2012 or WS2012 R2 Cluster

A new KB by Microsoft covers a scenario where you get a "Access denied error" when Hyper-V Replica Broker goes online in a Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2 cluster.

Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:

  • You have a Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2012 failover cluster that is in a domain, and the domain has a disjoint namespace. 
  • You set the primary Domain Name Service (DNS) suffix of the Windows Server 2012 failover cluster to the disjoint domain name.
  • You create a Hyper-V Replica Broker in the failover cluster, and then you bring the Hyper-V Replica Broker online.

In this scenario, this issue occurs, and an error message that resembles the following is logged in the cluster log:

Virtual Machine Replication Broker <Hyper-V Replica Broker BROKER>: ‘Hyper-V Replica Broker BROKER’ failed to register the service principal name: General access denied error.

The fix is included in the August 2014 update rollup.

KB2980661 – August 2014 Update Rollup for WS2012 R2 Added Tiered Storage Spaces Performance Metrics

This KB informs us that Microsoft added much needed performance counters to Windows Server 2012 R2 for monitoring tiered Storage Spaces. You can find more details here. The new perfmon metrics are:

  • Avg. Tier Bytes/Transfer
  • Tier Transfer Bytes/sec
  • Avg. Tier Queue Length
  • Avg. Tier sec/Transfer
  • Tier Transfers/sec
  • Current Tier Queue Length
  • Avg. Tier Bytes/Write
  • Tier Write Bytes/sec
  • Avg. Tier Write Queue Length
  • Avg. Tier sec/Write
  • Tier Writes/sec
  • Avg. Tier Bytes/Read
  • Tier Read Bytes/sec
  • Avg. Tier Read Queue Length
  • Avg. Tier sec/Read
  • Tier Reads/sec

Microsoft News Summary – 12 August 2014

Welcome to the SMB 3.02 edition of this update. Jose Barreto has been very busy!

Nanu nanu!

Microsoft News Summary – 11 August 2014

I think we can call today’s issue “What’s New in Azure”: