25. June 2009 by admin.

Microsoft seems to finalizing the stage of final release of MS Windows 7 operating system. They have now made announcement that the Windows 7 will be release and widely available as of October 22, 2009. Also new customer who acquire a new system with any pre-installed version of MS Windows (XP/VISTA) will be eligible for a free upgrade to same version of Windows 7. Instance, if you are running Vista Premium, you qualified for upgrade to Windows 7 Premium version.

Eligible Upgrade Path

Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Starter, and Windows XP are excluded from the free Windows 7 upgrade eligibility.

However if you still wish to upgrade to different version, here is a deal from Microsoft:

From the official Microsoft Windows 7 website:

“Windows 7 is coming on October 22, 2009. Here’s an easy way to get it fast and save a bundle: Pre-order a Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49** or a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade for $99.** That’s about half off the estimated retail prices. This offer is available through participating retailers. Pick one below and pre-order today. They’ll tell you how to get your copy when Windows 7 is available.”

Check for more info on this offer at the Microsoft site here as the offers start to be available as of June 26, 2009 and there will be list of retailers that will accept and process the offer.

Which version of MS Windows 7 is right for you ? Compare the features here

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23. June 2009 by admin.

Well, here is the time I am switching from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 and I have noticed that we have few Public folders on this Exchange server. Now is the dilemma how do I transfer these Public Folders from Exchange 2003 to 2007.

I do not migrate or upgrade .. I am simply building and deploying a new, vanilla MS Server 2008 with Exchange 2007. I know about options how to migrate the old server to new server but I could not find any easy to use tool that would help to move the Public Folders. I have already exported all user email accounts into PST so the re-load of emails will be easy.

• Here is an article that covers some steps and different approaches but I am not willing to mess up the new Exchange 2007. I have found little a bot different way to do this. Besides I have only 3 main folders with sub folders — so not that much of data.

Here is what I have done:

• on the laptop with Outlook 2007 I have log on as the Administrator
• In the Outlook I have created a personal folder

•  Now I have navigated down to Public Folders, selected one of the Public Folders and right click

• As you see in the screen shot - I have clicked on the Customers and it let me now point to my Personal Folder that I have created a while ago and click OK

• Once you clicked OK, the copying started and I have now copied the content of the Public Folder to my Personal Folders

Now you just Export the Personal Folder with sub folders into PST file and you have full and readable backup of your Public Folders that is easy to bring back in reverse steps.

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16. June 2009 by admin.

Here is the situation .. RAID drive has failed or has serious error and your DELL server is making the noise — alarm. You would like to turn off the sound.  Do not get confused this alarm sound with normal windows sound schema — it has nothing to do with the Windows. This is independent and sounds off only of very serious problem has been detected on your RAID array.

The following instruction is to turn off sound when one of the hard-drives in a RAID has failed

Open Dell OpenManage software and go to the Array Manager. Drill down to the Array of disks to find out the specific disk that is failing. You can tell this by a red or a warning icon. The right click and choose properties, and turn off the alarm.

Now when the sound is off, you move on with your repair

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9. June 2009 by admin.

You are an user of Adobe Illustrator CS3 .. it works fine. Next day you try to open some files or do some work and the application is too slow… You can barely move with your mouse …nothing can be done .. just simple the application is useless …

Well, good news .. if you are running Symantec Corporate Antivirus …this is the problem.

1. Click on the Antivirus icon in your task bar  ..

2.  It will open the Symantec Antivirus console and on the toolbar click Configure and select File System Auto-Protect

3. Once in the Auto-protect setup click ADVANCED

Now under Auto-Protect Advanced Options just make sure you check Modified (scan on create) under Scan Files When …

Click OK and you should be good to go .. the speed of Adobe Illustrator CS3 improves incredibly

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27. May 2009 by admin.

Strange issue I would say .. I  have my MS Windows Server 2003 setup and this server has also role as the DHCP server for network. Today for some reason I am having troubles on network with IP conflicts and I have started to investigate what the problem is.

1. The conflict is causing issue with server that has a static IP address and this IP is in reservation pool

2. Whatever device I plug in .. this new connected device will receive the same IP address as is on the on server that has the same IP assigned as a static IP

I have shut down the DHCP and power up .. nothing has been solved .. the IP is still being served and users on the servers are being for this reason disconnected …

Well, there is easy fix and I should do this right away when the problem started .. check if the IP address is in exclusion list so it cannot be assigned by the DHCP server to hosts on the network.

Microsoft has also reference KB for this issue here

To exclude the static IP address from the DHCP scope:

• Turn off the DHCP client computer in conflict with the network device that has the static IP address.
• On the DHCP server, exclude the static IP address from the scope of the DHCP IP address range.

• Restart the DHCP client computer.

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27. May 2009 by admin.

So you have changed IP address in command line or in GUI on your Linux distribution. Before the change can take place you are required to restart the computer or easy way - restart the network service so the new IP can be activated and in use.

Here is the command line how to do it :

RedHat Linux command to reload or restart network
# service network restart
OR
# /etc/init.d/network restart

To start Linux network service:
# service network start

To stop Linux network service:
# service network stop

Debian Linux command to reload or restart network:
# /etc/init.d/networking restart

To start Linux network service:
# /etc/init.d/networking start

To stop Linux network service:
# /etc/init.d/networking stop

Ubuntu Linux user use sudo command with above Debian Linux command:
# sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

To start Linux network service:
# sudo /etc/init.d/networking start
To stop Linux network service:
# sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop

You have to be the ROOT user to restart the service

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14. May 2009 by admin.

 You are running MS SBS 2003 and Exchange 2003 SP2 server as your mail server. One day your mail server goes down .. you check and see that you are running out of space on the drive where you have your Exchange transaction logs … Haha, funny, not really .. this is story of my last few days .. the Exchange store itself has something around 40GB but the logs .. they just expanded as much as they have taken over majority of the drive almost 100GB .. I could not believe it.

Now the story gets very interesting …. I see your brain is working as mine .. lets delete the old logs and we are fine —- BIG MISTAKE. This is the interesting part here. You cannot delete the Exchange fancy transaction log files .. if you do, you may have just killed your last chance to be able to recover your MS Exchange server in disaster recovery … See, I told you .. not funny.

How do transaction log files work?

When the Exchange database mounts it attaches itself to the transaction log files for storage group to which the database belongs. In MS SBS 2003 server — one storage , one group. Basically every change made to the database will be recorded in a log file before it is written to the database. These files are each 5 MB in size, and they automatically “roll over” to a new log file when they fill up. Log files are numbered in sequence according to this naming scheme: EnnXXXXX.log

Enn - it is a log prefix. The prefix is different for each set of log files on a server and it is usually E01, E02,E03 and E04 - as there can be up to four storage groups on a server ( not case with SBS).

XXXXX - represents the log file generation or sequence number. It is numbered in hexadecimal code and you may have a million of them in series (0xFFFFF = 1,048,575) before you start over with log file number 0×00001.

All databases in a storage group (up to five databases) share a single set of log files. Before database is shut down (unmounted), Exchange ensures that all transactions in the log files have been written to the database files. Once completed, it detaches itself from the transaction logs.

Not all logs are required in order to re-start the database. You will need only several last logs — but how to tell …You cannot delete the logs, you can move them to different drive to free up the space. you should NEVER delete Exchange transaction logs. These transaction logs are critical to Exchange’s recoverability.

Reason why this happened:

Very simple, I can say now. I was making backup of Exchange by way that I am creating daily PST file per user email account and as well as every 3 months. I really did not care if the Exchange fail as I have secondary plan, and I am able to give different access to email for the time of being so the users will not loose productivity. However, this is the main reason why I got to this trouble. If you do not perform a FULL backup of Exchange database the transactions logs are just growing and growing and taking up the space. These logs are purged once the FULL backup of Exchange database is completed. FULL backup once completed successfully will clear them … so … make a FULL backup at least once a month and you are safe . This is the best and easiest way to prevent this situation. If you do not have enough space and cannot make the backup .. you will need to find out which files you can move.

In my case, because my Exchange is sitting on E: drive .. executing this command:

“E:\exchsrv\bin\eseutil.exe” /MK “E:\exchsrv\MDBDATA\E00.chk”

This command will give you about a half of screen of output, and one of the lines in the output will be the checkpoint filed: Checkpoint (0×21EE,11B),9A) = which means you need E02021EE.log and newer in order to start and recover Exchange database. All older files can be moved NOT DELETED. Once you move them to different drive and re-mount your Exchange database .. you should be OK and all should work.

Reference: MS Knowledge base article here

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1. May 2009 by admin.

You are running your production server and has some sort of RAID .. I hope it is RAID and JBOD as I have seen before … The main reason for use of RAID configuration is to improve reliability and availability of your data. There is many different setups or configurations for RAID — each of them has pros/cons and price tag attached. Therefore you have to research and figure out for your self what is your data worth and how much you want spend to protect it. For example the typical RAID in use are RAID-1, RAID-10 or stripping with parity RAID-5, if you use some sort of them the server can recover from a single hard drive failure with no loss of data.

However, nothing is perfect so sometime happens that the bad luck comes around and one or two disk will fail — bad, bad situation. Hopefully your backups were working and you can trust them. Therefore is a good idea that you perform some sort of check or maintenance as you would do on anything else if you want to increase  the reliability. One of the maintenance steps to keep you RAID array healthy and happy is running consistency check on RAID  on regular basis. Once a month seems as a good idea. A consistency checks help spot blocks that have gone bad or are corrupted. This is excellent opportunity for you to remove the hard drive with bad blocks from RAID array and exchange. You do not want to leave the bad hard drive in the RAID and let it build bad blocks.Can you image you have RAID-5 array, bad blocks on one of the drive, you never check for consistency, bad blocks are being built and suddenly game over moment - drive is gone. You replaced the bad drive but you may be out of luck to rebuild your RAID-5 array — as bad blocks are everywhere … If you have RAID-6 - which is more expensive, use more disks and uses two parity stripes instead of one .. you would be protected even against this situation. Therefore, if you do not, you better start and accommodate into your monthly maintenance plan to run consistency checks on your RAID arrays in servers. If you never tun these check, you will never know what is happening - until it is too late.

If you are running DELL servers .. you should have the DELL OpenManage Administrator software installed, simply go to STORAGE item , click VIRTUAL DISK and from the drop down menu select task = CHECK FOR CONSISTENCY — it will take some time …

If you have a HP servers .. they have a software solution the NetRAID assistant  and the software does the check on weekly basis for you. Also good point to consider .. if your RAID controller does not have a battery backup … the safest course is to set the write cache size to zero.

• All about RAID and different configurations can be found here
• More info on how to run consistency checks here
• Some good tips for RAID and checks here
• More info on RAID here

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29. April 2009 by admin.

It seems that McAfee is trying to boost its revenue on Linux community this time as they have released a new product - LinuxShield the Linux Antivirus solution. It is more less for the Enterprise users that are operating their supported/paid versions of Linux such as RedHat, Suse, Novel …etc.

Supported distributions for 32 bit platforms
Red Hat® 9.0 Red Hat Enterprise 2.1 Advanced Server, Workstation, Enterprise Server Red Hat Enterprise 3.0 Advanced Server, Workstation, Enterprise Server Red Hat Enterprise 4.0 Advanced Server, Workstation, Enterprise Server SuSE 8.2 SuSE 9.0 SuSE Enterprise 8 Server United Linux 1.0 SuSE Linux™ Enterprise Server 9 (SLES9), SP1, SP2, SP3 Novell Open Enterprise Server Novell® Linux™ Small Business Server Novell Linux Desktop 9 (NLD 9), SP1, SP2

The LinuxShield offers:

• Comprehensive on-access anti-virus scanning and cleaning using the McAfee scanning engine.
• On-access scanning for local file systems, NFS and Samba.
• Kernel-level scan cache for improved performance.
• Scheduling of on-demand scans.
• Scheduling of updates for scanning engine and virus definition files
• Remote administration and reporting using ePolicy Orchestrator.
  

LinuxShield (License + 1 Year of Maintenance) = $22USD

More info on this new product and specs can be found here If you are intereste din testing Trial version is also offered .. here is link for McAfee trial version. It is a small 1.5 MB file in tar.gz format.

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26. April 2009 by admin.

I almost forgot to mention that another  Microsoft flagship software is being offered in BETA version - so called MS Exchange server 2010 also known as version 14. This is juts sign that new MS Office suite version 14 will be released as well in next few months. Mostly all these new products are scheduled to be released and made public sometimes in beginning of 2010… It is very interesting to see how Microsoft is launching new product by product. We have barely touched MS Exchange 2007 and here it comes - now 2010 version.

“Exchange Server should be in full release by the end of the year, but the rest of the products in the suite won’t be out until early 2010, said Julia White, director of the Exchange product management team. Microsoft will release technical previews of other products in the suite, including Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010, in the third calendar quarter. A technical preview is tested by hundreds of thousands of users, while millions of people will have access to the Exchange 2010 beta, White said.”

• Here are the software pre-requisites for install Exchange 2010, which include:
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
  • Windows Remote Management (WinRM) 2.0 CTP 3
  • Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP 3
  • Update from KB 951725
  • Update from KB 950888
  • Update from KB 951116
  • Update from KB 952664
  • Update from KB 953290
  • Update from KB 958178

More info on the product can be found here

Also some initial release info on Exchange 2010 Beta and what to expect here

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