2009 June :: Third Tier

Archive for June 2009

Jun
29

We are Tweeting

by amy

Third Tier has just opened a Twitter account.

Please follow us @thirdtier. Follow us and we’ll follow you.

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So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?

We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
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0 Categories : Announcement

Jun
23

So what's a Tombstone Reanimation Feature?

by edwin

They say that this feature is available in as early as Windows 2000 but this is the only time I am hearing about it. But what is it, anyway? Tombstore reanimation is the process of re-activating a deleted object from Active Directory. When Active Directory deletes an object, say a user or computer, from the directory, it does not physically remove the object from the database. Instead, it marks the object as deleted by setting the object's isDeleted attribute to TRUE, removing most of the attributes from the object, renaming the object, and then moving the object to a special container in the object's naming context (NC) named CN=Deleted Objects. The deleted object is now called a tombstone as is totally invisible from any LDAP tools like Active Directory Users and Computers. Even though the object is invisble, it is still there and readily available for us to salvage the data for the purpose of disaster recovery

This TechNet Magazine article highlights how to reanimate Active Directory tombstone objects in case you need to recover an object that has been accidentally deleted. I can't wait to try it out for myself though

Categories : Edwin Sarmiento

Jun
18

Q&A: Migrating to SBS 2008 – Preparation

by amy

Question: Note on DHCP: The exclusions have to be migrated, too.
Answer: Good point. Any printer exclusions need to be migrated as well

Question: I have heard it recommended that we also run the EBS prep tool.
What is your opinion on that?
Answer: Yes use that too as it checks the health of the AD

Question: Why disable the internal NIC and not the external NIC? That is
how we have done it and haven’t had any problems.
Answer: I’ll have to clarify that with Amy. It could be the way her
networks are set up

Question: The server I inherited has issues with Sharepoint but customer
doesn’t use it. Can’t install sql patch. Issue?
Answer: If you don’t need Sharepoint you can not migrate it

Question: We normally flatten SBS when migrating to a new version to
make sure we don’t migrate problems over. Is there a best practice
method you recommend?
Answer: Export out pst, export out profiles, copy the n2k file that has
the autocorrect

Question: Are you going to post a handout of this presentation?
Answer: Yes it will be on the blog

Question: What tools to you recomend for cleaning up AD
Answer: The ebs prep tool will give you good guidance, adsiedit is one

Question: As a follow-up on the removal of the ISA client. Do we also
have to manually change the IE proxy settings? Have you found any good
methods for automating any of this?
Answer: I think I’ve seen on Chad Gross’s blog a group policy push
change of this.

Question: What is the KB article for removing a domain controller?
Answer: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216498 see if that’s it

Question:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755937(WS.10).aspx another link
Answer: there’s another resource at Petri’s url as well

—
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?

We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
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0 Categories : SBS 2008, Webinar

Jun
18

Active Directory Clean-up prep for SBS migration

by amy

During the migration webinar, the topic of how to clean up the Active Directory and remove non-existent domain controllers is done came up. Here’s what you should do:

Test active directory replication.

Run repadmin /syncall this will tell you whether the domain controller is able to communicate with all domain controllers in the active directory.
Run dcdiag /test:DNS this will tell you whether all of the DNS servers are responding and available. It will also test AD integration.

If there’s a problem.

Run the SBS 2003 Best Practices Analyzer. This will check your server configuration for errors.
If you need to remove a non-existent domain controller from your active directory follow the steps in this kb article. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216498
Run the Essential Business Server Preparation Wizard. It is available as a separate download. It does not do anything to your network, it does about 100 networking checks to determine is everything is working properly. If there are issues, it provides KB article links to assist you in resolving them.
If you have Journal Wrap errors. Set this registry key System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters\Enable Journal Wrap Automatic Restore=1 and restart the replication service.

To get ready for migration be sure that your computers, users and servers are in the correct OU’s.

Servers should be in the SBS Servers. Computers should be in SBS Computers. Users should be in SBS Users. You can drag and drop them into place.
Delete any old users, computers, servers that are no longer on the network.

When you are finished “fixing” things.

Test active directory replication again.

—
So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?

We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
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2 Categories : Amy Babinchak, SBS 2008

Jun
16

Check the last backup date in SQL Server using WIndows PowerShell

by edwin

This article highlights how to use Windows PowerShell to retrieve database properties using SMO. Notice how easy it is to check the database properties using pretty common syntax

One of the challenges I have when I was starting out as a SQL Server DBA was to check for the last backup date for a database. One way to do this is to find out which tables in the MSDB database contain the records of the backup history. What's really challenging here is the fact that you would have to look at the tables and their corresponding relationships which, apparently, MSDB doesn't have. You simply have to rely on what SQL Server Books Online has to say. Plus, the MSDB database will only contain records for databases with backups. What about those without?

For SQL Server 2005, the script below displays the last backup date of all the databases on your SQL Server instance. This script is from the MSDN Code Gallery

SELECT 
T1.Name AS DatabaseName, 
COALESCE(CONVERT(VARCHAR(12), MAX(T2.backup_finish_date), 101),'Not Yet Taken') AS LastBackUpTaken
FROM sys.sysdatabases T1 LEFT OUTER JOIN msdb.dbo.backupset T2
ON T2.database_name = T1.name
GROUP BY T1.Name
ORDER BY T1.Name

You can simply replace the sys.sysdatabases table with master.dbo.sysdatabases for SQL Server 2000

Below is the equivalent script using Windows PowerShell.

$instance="Your_SQL_Server_Instance_Name"
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('Microsoft.SqlServer.SMO')| out-null

# Create an SMO connection to the instance
$s = new-object ('Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server') $instance

$dbs = $s.Databases
$dbs | select Name,LastBackupDate, LastLogBackupDate | format-table -autosize

The only thing to note here are the last two lines - the one that creates an instance of the database object and the one that displays and formats a few of the database object properties. The first few lines will be the same for just about any PowerShell script that will access SQL Server using SMO

Categories : Edwin Sarmiento

Jun
11

Third Thursday: Migrating to SBS 2008

by amy

As promised, the Third Thursday webinars are returning to their regularly scheduled time this month with a new series. This month we begin Migrating from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008. In this series we’ll go through the migration process from pre to post using the Microsoft method.

Amy will kick off the series by presenting SBS 2003 migration preparation. In this session we’ll review the preparation procedures that have made everyone of our migrations as smooth as silk.

Please join me on Wednesday June 17th at Noon eastern time. Presentation will be for 1 hour with 30 minutes for Q&A afterwards. Bring your migration questions!

When: Thursday, Jun 18, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Scheduled to Occur: Once
Duration: 1:30

Amy Babinchak has invited you to attend an online meeting using
Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=W5PMDN&role=attend&pw=T9D2%23s%2Bp9

Meeting time: Jun 18, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)

Add to my Outlook Calendar:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/meetingICS?id=W5PMDN&role=attend&pw=T9D2%23s%2Bp9&i=i.ics

0 Categories : Amy Babinchak, SBS 2008, Webinar

Jun
10

Getting your IP back

by Eriq

So you’re having trouble getting to the Internet? Can’t ping the Internet gateway? Can’t ping your own IP address? Have network adapters that refuse to enable or disable? Could be a corrupt IP stack. You can take a look at MSKB 299357, or you can follow these steps:

Make sure you’re logged in with a local administrator account.
Open a command prompt.
Run the following command :
netsh int ip reset logfile.txt
where logfile.txt is the name of a file where the command can write its output.
When the command completes, run it again with a different filename for the output file.
When that run completes, run it one more time, again with a different filename for the log file.
Restart the computer in Safe Mode with Networking.

This will reset the TCP/IP settings back to sane defaults, which means all adapters in the computer will be set for DHCP. If you’re doing this on an SBS server, restarting in Safe Mode with Networking is absolutely crucial in order to avoid the dreaded 30 minute reboot. When the computer comes back up, set the network settings as needed, then reboot normally.

You may still have other issues, but these steps will get you a nice, clean, DHCP-enabled set of network adapters in the system.

Categories : Eriq Neale

Jun
9

Another SBS Build Day opportunity – Saturday

by amy

This Saturday comes another SBS 2008 Build Day. If you’ve yet to attend one this is your opportunity.

https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=138261

Just look at this fabulous agenda! See you there.

9:00 AM	9:10 AM	Introductions
9:10 AM	9:20 AM	What is Small Business Server 2008?
9:20 AM	9:35 AM	Answering the Answer File
9:35 AM	9:50 AM	Hardware Requirements & Recommendations
9:50 AM	10:00 AM	Network Requirements & Changes from SBS 2003
10:00 AM	10:15 AM	Break
10:15 AM	10:45 AM	Edge Security for SBS 2008 – Amy Babinchak
10:45 AM	11:05 AM	Post Install Tasks & Wizards
11:05 AM	11:35 AM	Management Console
11:35 AM	11:45 AM	Creating Users
11:45 AM	12:00 PM	Computer Connect
12:00 PM	12:15 PM	Heroware
12:15 PM	1:15 PM	Lunch
1:15 PM	1:45 PM	Securing SBS/EBS Networks & Best IT Practices – Dana Epp – MVP
1:45 PM	2:00 PM	Backup – Is the built in tool enough?
2:00 PM	2:20 PM	Migration – What are my options?
2:20 PM	2:35 PM	Break
2:35 PM	3:05 PM	SBS 2008 Q&A – Susan Bradley – MVP
3:05 PM	3:35 PM	Virtualizing SBS
3:35 PM	3:40 PM	Netgear
3:40 PM	3:45 PM	Glen
3:45 PM	4:00 PM	Survey, Giveaways & Closing

0 Categories : Amy Babinchak, SBS 2008, User Group

Jun
4

Removing Device Security Code from iPhone Configured for ActiveSync

by Eriq

Exchange 2003 SP2 and Exchange 2007 have options to require a security code on a device that will connect to the Exchange server using ActiveSync. This setting is optional in Exchange 2003 but is enabled by default in Exchange 2007. Without getting into the reasons why you might want to reconfigure Exchange 2007 so that ActiveSync devices do not require a device security code, if you do change the Mobile Device settings after an iPhone has already connected with ActiveSync and is requiring the password, you have to jump through a couple of hoops to actually get the iPhone to pick up the new security settings.

OK, they’re really small hoops, but it’s worth pointing out nonetheless because I had to Google quite a bit to uncover this tidbit. To remove the security code requirement from the iPhone, do the following:

Remove the Exchange account from the iPhone configuration.
Turn off the security code in the iPhone settings.
Add the Exchange account back to the iPhone configuration.

That’s it. If you’re prompted to create a security code when you re-add the Exchange account, then the Exchange policy hasn’t been modified correctly, and you need to dig into that. But if the requirement for the device security code has been correctly changed, you will not be prompted to enter a security code in step 3 above, and no reset of the iPhone is needed.

Categories : Eriq Neale

Jun
3

Copying DTS packages from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008

by edwin

I've seen this approach from the CSS SQL Server Engineers blog post and wondered if I can give it a shot. We're migrating a SQL Server 2000 database to a SQL Server 2005 instance (finally!) and that included a lot of DTS packages. While I would highly recommend upgrading the DTS packages to SSIS packages for the long term due to product support lifecycle reasons, that would take quite a while and would impact businesses dramatically.

I've used Method 2A mentioned in the blog post to move the DTS packages from the SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 as I have like more than a hundred DTS packages stored in MSDB. Remember that the size of the sysdtspackages table in MSDB will depend on not just the number of packages stored but the number of versions of the packages you decide to keep.

After a restore of the MSDB database from the SQL Server 2000 instance and importing the records from the sysdtspackages table, you would definitely want to install the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 DTS Designer Components to modify and edit your DTS packages in SQL Server 2005 to change those connection strings, test them after migration and so on.

Categories : Edwin Sarmiento

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