OWSUG.ca

I ran a Windows 7 Deployment workshop for the Western Quebec school board several weeks ago.  The workshop audience consisted of a mixed level ITPRO audience but they grasped the deployment concepts fairly quickly.

Once the basics of deploy, capture, package, etc were done we moved to some cooler topics like boot from VHD and P2V conversion.  We tested out the P2V conversion tool from Sysinternals but ran into limitations from the Virtual PC hard limit of 127GB.  The PCs that we were converting had volumes on a single partition of over 500GB some of which were 1TB drives…

It seems that the limitation is present if the disk itself which you select your volumes from is more than 127GB.  Even if the total space you select to convert is less than 127GB, somehow the VM knows that the VHD file was converted from a disk that was bigger than 127GB in size and Virtual PC will not support it.

A new version (1.62) was released on yesterday.  I am hoping this particular limitation was bypassed.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

Last night at Hooley’s in downtown Ottawa, we held our season end Ottawa Community party.  This is the 3rd celebration which takes place and it was a great time!

With our hosts “Charth and Garlie” aka Garth Jones and Charles Wiebe, we had fun social networking competitions and great prizes were given away.

Prizes included: XBox 360 S, Intel Solid State hard drive, 1 free Course from CTE Solutions, Best Buy gift certificates, and more!

Sponsors, group leads, members all had fun.  Things are looking good for the 2010/2011 season!

We were troubleshooting an issue for weeks (short monthly maintenance windows) where a SCOM agent was unable to be installed on a few particular servers.

After trying everything from scouring the registry to removing all possible signs on the local server, we were not successful in installing the SCOM agent either from the console or manually on the server.  Note that the server was being discovered up until the agent software started deploying.

We kept getting an error stating that the computer was already in the process of being managed.  So, we turned to the Management Group as our next potential culprit.

Not really knowing what I was looking for, we backed up the OpsMgr DB.

We discovered a table called AgentPendingAction.

After searching this table row by row using Open Table in SSMS, we found 3 entries with the FQDN of our servers that we could not deploy.

We deleted these rows (1 per server) and then reinstalled the agent.

Success!  These entries were somehow hanging around and preventing the agent from being installed.

Hope this helps someone.

Wow, these images have issues…

Firstly, Server 2008 is not activated.  This is not a huge deal as you can use the images for 60 days before needing to activate the OS and you can rearm the activation period several times which you must do since MS will not give a 2008 license for courseware.  See below for how to do it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948472

The major issue is SQL 2005 which has a 120 day evaluation copy that was installed last July.  I have not really wrestled with  backdating but I believe that would need to be done at the BIOS level before turning on your VMs and that has it's’ own set of complications…

How to fix?

Well, SQL 2005 cannot be upgraded from evaluation copy to full release based on my research.  It must therefore be uninstalled and a full release installed.  You are out of luck if you have no access to licensed software. 

You must back up your SCOM databases BEFORE reinstalling.  These are (OperationsManager, OperationsManagerDW and associated logs).  You cannot backup the DBs with SSMS, you need to work with the files so take appropriate steps (stop SQL services, etc).

Forget about backing up the ReportServer and ReportServerTemp DBs or the configuration for SQL Reporting services since that (SRS) is also time bombed.  I tested backing these databases up and restoring them to the new full release but there are DB versioning issues anyways so don’t bother…

Once SQL has eval has been uninstalled and full release installed, I ran into WMI exception issues working with the SRS Config utility and needed to service pack the entire installation to get this working right.

Now, configure SRS and get that working right: http:localhost/reports  and http://localhost/reportserver need to work fine…

When done, restore your backups of the DBs and start SQL.  You should be mostly good except for SCOM reporting.

After the restore, I ran into an issue with the SQL broker not enabled (which I have frequently seen when I need to move the OperationsManager DB).  Use the post below to fix that issue:

http://scug.be/blogs/scom/archive/2008/11/22/the-sql-server-service-broker-for-the-current-opsmgr-database-is-not-enabled.aspx

Lastly, you will have an issue with the reports populating, to fix that, reinstall ONLY the SCOM reporting piece…

In SCOM 2007 R2 at least ( I don’t remember if it was like that before)  the Data warehouse and SCOM reporting pieces are split as separate elements which you install when you run OMSETUP.EXE and choose to install SCOM reporting.

Once that is done (no reboot required) you should be off to the races!

Of note: I would like to thank Islam Gomaa and Edwin Sarmiento for their part in saving me time and helping me with some of the more tedious issues.  These are my resident SQL experts!

I know I skipped a bunch of steps.  For instance, I had rights issues reinstalling SRS and a heck of a time reinstalling SQL but I have been fighting with this issue for 4 days to get it working so I don’t remember all of the smaller steps.  If someone wants to leave a comment with the missing steps, I would be grateful… 

Happy hunting!

If this tool is news to you, basically it allows you to update your VM images while stored in a library to the whatever current patch/service pack release you want so when you deploy them they are at the most current.

Here is some content I borrowed from the CanITPRO blog:

VMST 3.0 helps customers more effectively—and safely—manage the workflow of updating their offline virtualization environment. Using VMST 3.0, customers can now service:

• Offline virtual machines in a SCVMM library.
• Stopped and saved state virtual machines on a host.
• Virtual machine templates.
• Offline virtual hard disks in a SCVMM library by injecting update packages.
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V host clusters.

Read about it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/cc501231.aspx

Join the v3 Beta here: https://connect.microsoft.com/site14

I have a SCOM 2007 R2 installation in my test environment and a colleague (Islam Gomaa) and myself are presenting on DPM 2010 protecting Hyper-V R2 and monitoring the solution using SCOM 2007 R2.

I imported the DPM 2007 Management Pack but out of the box, the DPM 2010 servers do not get discovered.

In order to discover these servers, some digging was required.

In the Authoring Pane, select Object Discoveries and Change the target type to DPM Server.

From here, you can view the properties of the DPM 2007 server discovery.

The issue lies in the script below:

The script is called DPMServerDiscovery.vbs.  You can search for it under %Program Files%\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Health Service State\

It will be in a numbered folder under a Monitoring Host Temporary Files folder.

First, back up the script for safe keeping.

To determine what the product code for DPM 2010 is, you need to search the registry.

From the Agent system where DPM 2010 is installed, launch regedit.

Next, do a search for ProductCode.  You may have to bypass a few irrelevant hits…

You will find your target as below:

The registry key should be: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10.MSDPM2010EVAL\Setup\.  Right click ProductCode and select Modify to copy the key value.

Paste the copied value in the script above.

Now, to force the discovery…

By default, the discovery runs every 28800 seconds or every 8 hours.

Override the DPM Server discovery to some value to make it run soon.  That should do it.  See below:

Your DPM Server should now get picked up and members of the DPM Server group will also become populated.

Don’t forget to put the discovery interval frequency back to 28800 seconds.  Happy hunting!

To register for Ottawa IT Days, click here:

http://www.ottawacodecamp.ca/Pages2010/Registration.aspx

The Ottawa Code Camp is back this year with even more session and a new name – Ottawa IT Day.  This year’s initiative for the Ottawa IT community includes 20 sessions across 4 tracks.   We’ve now included tracks specifically for IT Pros and DBAs along with a .NET track and a Silverlight application track, featuring some of the best speakers in Ottawa and surrounding areas.  We invite you all to come and join us a this free event for a full day of training.

We are looking for volunteers. If you are interested, check out our Volunteer page.
We have renamed the Ottawa Code to Ottawa IT Day to make it more inclusive. We have added a track specifically for IT Professionals.
Welcome to the Ottawa Code Camp site. Our next Code Camp is scheduled for Saturday, April 17, 2010 at Algonquin College at the corner of Baseline Road and Woodroffe Ave in Ottawa, Ontario.
Our objective this year is to have FOUR tracks:

• I am a Developer
• I am an IT Professional
• I am a Database guy
• I want to see an application end to end.

Saturday includes four tracks of speakers for a total of 16 sessions, focused on Microsoft related development. In addition, food is free with your advance registration - Coffee, juice, and muffins in the morning, an appetizing lunch and refreshments in the afternoon.
We open our doors at 8:00 am for registration and code presentations, networking and discussion until 5 pm. Come out for a fun day.
Directions to get to Algonquin College

So, I had input incorrect details in our April 7th event which have since been corrected.

This evening event will be a Windows 7 Security workshop hosted by Dana Epp.

https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=147202

The registration link is still valid.  Details have been corrected.

This should NOT be confused with the Hack and Defend workshops happening in the morning and afternoon and previously posted on the CanIT PRO blog.

http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro/archive/2010/03/17/hack-and-defend.aspx

Sorry for confusion.

Brad