PacITPros will be having the September meeting tomorrow night at 6:30pm.
There is quite the line up of topics - Ed Horley, Microsoft MVP in Enterprise Security, will be presenting on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 as a "Better Together" story. Specifically, what items are available only from Windows S2K8R2 with Windows 7 and how they would be compelling to use.
I'll be doing a short presentation of what's new with Microsoft certification tracks (specifically info about the MCITP and MCTS certifications) and Kathy Jacobs, Microsoft MVP in OneNote, will be doing an overview of some of the cool new features in Office 2010. Plus with the VMWare conference going on right down the street, there is sure to be a lot of chatter about what's going on over at the Moscone Center.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Looking Forward with ImageRight
Enjoyed my first full day at the Vertafore Connections Conference. I've gotten a chance to chat with some of the great tech support staff that I've worked with over the last year and reconnect with some people who have been on-site at my office for installations and training in the past.
I'm looking forward to a few of the new features in version 5.2 and hope we'll be able to upgrade to that as soon as possible. The integration with Outlook 2007 is pretty slick, especially for people who aren't the heaviest users of ImageRight.
There has also been a lot of discussion about virtualization and disaster recovery related to the components of the ImageRight backend. Even though ImageRight isn't "officially supported" in a virtualization environment, quite a few organizations have had success with some or all components of it. We are running our testing version on VMWare and haven't had any issues thus far. If we have more success with the disaster recovery testing project over the next few weeks, it might be something to consider as we look at ways to make improvements in our server infrastructure.
I'm looking forward to a few of the new features in version 5.2 and hope we'll be able to upgrade to that as soon as possible. The integration with Outlook 2007 is pretty slick, especially for people who aren't the heaviest users of ImageRight.
There has also been a lot of discussion about virtualization and disaster recovery related to the components of the ImageRight backend. Even though ImageRight isn't "officially supported" in a virtualization environment, quite a few organizations have had success with some or all components of it. We are running our testing version on VMWare and haven't had any issues thus far. If we have more success with the disaster recovery testing project over the next few weeks, it might be something to consider as we look at ways to make improvements in our server infrastructure.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Vertafore Connection (IUG09) Conference
Today I'm heading out to Altanta to take part in the Vertafore Connections Conference (previously known as the ImageRight User Group Conference). This will be the 2nd chance I've had to participate in this conference and I'm looking forward to seeing what's new in version 5 of ImageRight, learn how I can take advantage of virtualization to reduce the footprint of servers we have for the application, and get to meet some of the great support team that I only know only through email and phone conversations.
I'll also be following Vertafore Connections on Twitter (hashag #VconX) while I'm there.
I'll also be following Vertafore Connections on Twitter (hashag #VconX) while I'm there.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Disaster Recovery - But for Real
This past week I've been doing the preliminary work (installing servers mostly) to get ready for our scheduled disaster recovery test. I expect that we'll learn a lot about our existing plan and systems documentation and will be looking to make some changes that will make any need for a large recovery faster and more effective.
Meanwhile, I'm managing some real disaster recovery, but on a smaller scale. A few weeks ago I posted about the need to upgrade our ImageRight installation to resolve a bug that could cause some data loss. The ImageRight support staff worked hard to run the preliminary discovery/fixing of the image files and database, followed by performing the upgrade.
Not long after, I got an email from someone in another department asking me to "find" the annotations added to a invoice that seemed to have gone missing. She was assuming that since some temporary help had worked on the document, a user error had been made and a "copy without annotations" had been introduced. I could recover the annotations by looking through the deleted pages and at previous versions of those pages.
However, what I found was a bit unexpected. I found a history of changes being made to the document, but no actual annotations visible. Curious.
So I opened a support ticket. After several remote sessions and research, the ImageRight team was "nearly positive" (they need more testing to confirm) that the process run before our last upgrade to correct the potential data loss, actually introduced a different kind of data loss. The result is that the database knows about the affected annotations happening, but the physical files that represent the annotated versions had been replaced with non-annotated versions.
We do have the logs from the original process, so it was just a matter of ImageRight Support parsing that data to generate a list of files that were changed. Now we begin the task of recovering those files from tape.
Our Sr. DBA had been working on side project that loads all our backup catalogs into a database so we have a comprehensive reference from all backup servers to identify what tapes to recall when people ask for recoveries. That project is proving its worth this time around, since we need to locate and restore over 1000 files. He also needs to cross referencing them to the individual documents accessible via the desktop client so we can do a visual comparison to any special cases and to provide a record of which documents were affected in a format that's understandable to everyone else, in case additional concerns come up after we repair the damage.
Meanwhile, I'm managing some real disaster recovery, but on a smaller scale. A few weeks ago I posted about the need to upgrade our ImageRight installation to resolve a bug that could cause some data loss. The ImageRight support staff worked hard to run the preliminary discovery/fixing of the image files and database, followed by performing the upgrade.
Not long after, I got an email from someone in another department asking me to "find" the annotations added to a invoice that seemed to have gone missing. She was assuming that since some temporary help had worked on the document, a user error had been made and a "copy without annotations" had been introduced. I could recover the annotations by looking through the deleted pages and at previous versions of those pages.
However, what I found was a bit unexpected. I found a history of changes being made to the document, but no actual annotations visible. Curious.
So I opened a support ticket. After several remote sessions and research, the ImageRight team was "nearly positive" (they need more testing to confirm) that the process run before our last upgrade to correct the potential data loss, actually introduced a different kind of data loss. The result is that the database knows about the affected annotations happening, but the physical files that represent the annotated versions had been replaced with non-annotated versions.
We do have the logs from the original process, so it was just a matter of ImageRight Support parsing that data to generate a list of files that were changed. Now we begin the task of recovering those files from tape.
Our Sr. DBA had been working on side project that loads all our backup catalogs into a database so we have a comprehensive reference from all backup servers to identify what tapes to recall when people ask for recoveries. That project is proving its worth this time around, since we need to locate and restore over 1000 files. He also needs to cross referencing them to the individual documents accessible via the desktop client so we can do a visual comparison to any special cases and to provide a record of which documents were affected in a format that's understandable to everyone else, in case additional concerns come up after we repair the damage.
Our current plan is to have this resolved by the end of next weekend, but this is something that needs careful handling since we don't want end users to have any doubt about the integrity of the system, which I still have total confidence in once we sort this out. Thus, I'm happy to spend the extra time making sure no other issues are introduced.
Plus I need some time to find our DBA some really nice coffee for his efforts.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Dusting off the Disaster Recovery Plan
This week, I started testing our department's disaster recovery plan. The goal is to use the contents of our existing "disaster recovery box" that we keep off-site combined with our current backup tapes to restore some key parts of our infrastructure.
Success or failure will be measured by what road bumps we encounter and most importantly, our ability to work around them using only the resources in the box. If I have to go "outside the box" for some critical piece of software or some undocumented configuration detail it would be a black mark in our preparations that needs to be remedied.
Our testing scenario includes the domain, Exchange, the document imaging system, the financial system, the primary file server and the time card application. We are also going to provide remote access to restored applications so staff from other departments can test out the results and give us feedback on changes that could improve the end-user experience during this type of event. As an added bonus, we'll be able to try out Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services.
In the last 6 months we started using VMWare ESX to consolidate some of our servers in production, but none of the machines needed for this scenario are virtual yet. I will be doing "classic" restores where the OS has to be installed before restoring our data from backup tapes. However, we are using VMWare to host several of the machines in the disaster lab, so I will be able to save time by cloning my first installation of Windows Server a few extra times before installing specific applications.
Depending on how this project goes, I'd like to see us take more advantage of virtualization within our disaster recovery planning and maybe start looking into backup solutions that are easier and faster than tape.
Success or failure will be measured by what road bumps we encounter and most importantly, our ability to work around them using only the resources in the box. If I have to go "outside the box" for some critical piece of software or some undocumented configuration detail it would be a black mark in our preparations that needs to be remedied.
Our testing scenario includes the domain, Exchange, the document imaging system, the financial system, the primary file server and the time card application. We are also going to provide remote access to restored applications so staff from other departments can test out the results and give us feedback on changes that could improve the end-user experience during this type of event. As an added bonus, we'll be able to try out Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services.
In the last 6 months we started using VMWare ESX to consolidate some of our servers in production, but none of the machines needed for this scenario are virtual yet. I will be doing "classic" restores where the OS has to be installed before restoring our data from backup tapes. However, we are using VMWare to host several of the machines in the disaster lab, so I will be able to save time by cloning my first installation of Windows Server a few extra times before installing specific applications.
Depending on how this project goes, I'd like to see us take more advantage of virtualization within our disaster recovery planning and maybe start looking into backup solutions that are easier and faster than tape.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Bringing Paper to the Computer Screen
Two years ago, my office embarked on the road towards reducing the amount of paper we keep on-site and in storage. We have thousands of boxes in storage and easily hundreds just stacked around various places in the office. For a while, it was hard to convince people that it was a good idea to have some kind of backup solution in place for all these hard copies.
We went looking for a solution that was similar to how paper was already organized naturally. We reviewed a few different options, but most were trying to force paper files to be managed in the same way people use Windows Explorer, which isn't how people organize papers in their file cabinets. ImageRight was designed to line up with the way people use paper - documents in folders or files and then organized in drawers.
While it makes sense when you are touching paper, it's hard to get your head around the terminology when it directly conflicts with the way Windows uses the same terms. In ImageRight, much like with real paper, a DRAWER stores hanging FILES that hold manila FOLDERS in which the DOCUMENTS are organized, some with multiple PAGES. In Windows Explorer, the FOLDERS hold the FILES (ImageRight is opposite), some of which have multiple PAGES.
So while everyone in my office is working to best utilize ImagRight, there is still a lot of struggle with the terminology.
We went looking for a solution that was similar to how paper was already organized naturally. We reviewed a few different options, but most were trying to force paper files to be managed in the same way people use Windows Explorer, which isn't how people organize papers in their file cabinets. ImageRight was designed to line up with the way people use paper - documents in folders or files and then organized in drawers.
While it makes sense when you are touching paper, it's hard to get your head around the terminology when it directly conflicts with the way Windows uses the same terms. In ImageRight, much like with real paper, a DRAWER stores hanging FILES that hold manila FOLDERS in which the DOCUMENTS are organized, some with multiple PAGES. In Windows Explorer, the FOLDERS hold the FILES (ImageRight is opposite), some of which have multiple PAGES.
So while everyone in my office is working to best utilize ImagRight, there is still a lot of struggle with the terminology.
Monday, August 17, 2009
An Oldie But Goodie
Recently, I rolled out the Client Side Extensions for XP in order to support Group Policy Preferences. The change in the GPO to use preferences instead of scripts for mapping some drive letters was a non-event for the majority of our staff machines. But there were a few reports of the the mappings not taking place. A closer look at these machines proved that they had not recieved the update for the Client Side Extensions.
I'm running WSUS 3.0 SP1 in our office to update client machines. We have a lot of "spare" machine on the floor for use by visitors and consultants, often those machines are powered off for long periods of time. Because of this I don't worry too much about machines that haven't reported in to WSUS for 30+ days, unless they appear to be assigned to a regular user. When I checked WSUS for the status of the machines with the policy issue, they had not updated in a long period of time.
Those machines were throwing a "0x8024400e" error in the Windows Update log file. This error was documented a while back in the WSUS Product Team Blog. The fix to the problem is to "decline" (if not already declined) the Office 2003 Service Pack 1 update, un-decline (but not approve) it, and then decline again.
After that, the affected client machines will be able to get updates again. This worked for the all but one of the machines that I saw this problem with. The last box then threw a "80072ee2" error in the Windows Update logs.
This is related to general connectivity to the WSUS server. To solve this, I did a "hard reset" of the WSUS client by stopping the Automatic Update Service, deleting the contents of the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder and then restarting the Automatic Update service again. Then I used the wuauclt.exe tool with the "/detectnow" switch to kick of an update immediately.
Sometime this week, I'll have to go around at turn on all those spare computers, to make sure they all report in to WSUS and confirm that no other machines need special handling.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Mark Your Calendar
Mark your calenders, Microsoft has two upcoming Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 events planned in San Francisco.
TechNet Presents: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 - September 9th.
Topics include: Migrating Windows XP to Windows 7, Securing Windows 7 in a Windows Server 2008 R2 Environment, and New Features in Windows Server 2008 R2 Directory Services
The New Efficiency - Windows 7/Server 2008 R2/Exchange Server 2010 Launch - October 20th.
Several lectures in 3 different tracks, include topics such as: Introducing Windows 7 and the Windows Optimized Desktop, Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtualization Technologies-- Saving IT Costs, and Exchange 2010 Archiving and Retention.
Other dates and cities are available as well. See you there!
TechNet Presents: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 - September 9th.
Topics include: Migrating Windows XP to Windows 7, Securing Windows 7 in a Windows Server 2008 R2 Environment, and New Features in Windows Server 2008 R2 Directory Services
The New Efficiency - Windows 7/Server 2008 R2/Exchange Server 2010 Launch - October 20th.
Several lectures in 3 different tracks, include topics such as: Introducing Windows 7 and the Windows Optimized Desktop, Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtualization Technologies-- Saving IT Costs, and Exchange 2010 Archiving and Retention.
Other dates and cities are available as well. See you there!
Monday, August 10, 2009
XP Mode in Action
Today I arrived at the office to find a new workstation ready for me to set up with our volume licensed version of Windows 7. (Kudos to my collegue who makes my hardware wishes come true.) My goal is to replace my primary XP workstation, so I decided to start with our ImageRight client software, since I use/administer that daily and it's fast become one of our key enterprise applications.
I remembered that I was able to install ImageRight successfully on Windows Vista once before, so I expected success with Windows 7. However, my new box is 64-bit and the ImageRight installer program was not recognizing the 64-bit version of .NET Framework 2.0. I don't know if this is just an issue with the installer prerequisite check or if the program just won't run at all on 64-bit, but I guess I'll save that question for the ImageRight conference at the end of the month.
So I opted to install XP Mode and setup the software there. The ImageRight installation was successful on the XP VM and I was happy to see the program begin to launch. However, it stalled out due to a logon failure. We use the ImageRight Active Directory integration to take advantage of single sign-on, but the XP Mode VM wasn't part of our corporate domain and automatically logged on as "XPMUser" when launched. Thus, ImageRight could get past the logon screen.
I loaded the desktop of the VM and joined it to our domain. Then I tweaked the registry settings for the automatic logon enough that it now prompts me for my domain credentials. The ImageRight software launched properly, so for the sake of today's goals I'm happy with having to re-enter my credentials when the VM launches for the first time.
I'd like to refine the authentication issue further and might take a closer look into MED-V, especially if we start planning to roll out Windows 7 in the near future on 64-bit boxes and need a more managed solution. If we are sticking with our existing 32-bit hardware, it's less likely that we'll need XP Mode to support this particular application, but we have other legacy application that may need similar handling.
Until then, I've got what I need from XP Mode.
I remembered that I was able to install ImageRight successfully on Windows Vista once before, so I expected success with Windows 7. However, my new box is 64-bit and the ImageRight installer program was not recognizing the 64-bit version of .NET Framework 2.0. I don't know if this is just an issue with the installer prerequisite check or if the program just won't run at all on 64-bit, but I guess I'll save that question for the ImageRight conference at the end of the month.
So I opted to install XP Mode and setup the software there. The ImageRight installation was successful on the XP VM and I was happy to see the program begin to launch. However, it stalled out due to a logon failure. We use the ImageRight Active Directory integration to take advantage of single sign-on, but the XP Mode VM wasn't part of our corporate domain and automatically logged on as "XPMUser" when launched. Thus, ImageRight could get past the logon screen.
I loaded the desktop of the VM and joined it to our domain. Then I tweaked the registry settings for the automatic logon enough that it now prompts me for my domain credentials. The ImageRight software launched properly, so for the sake of today's goals I'm happy with having to re-enter my credentials when the VM launches for the first time.
I'd like to refine the authentication issue further and might take a closer look into MED-V, especially if we start planning to roll out Windows 7 in the near future on 64-bit boxes and need a more managed solution. If we are sticking with our existing 32-bit hardware, it's less likely that we'll need XP Mode to support this particular application, but we have other legacy application that may need similar handling.
Until then, I've got what I need from XP Mode.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
What voice mail?
Only had a few days this past work week to get caught up after a short vacation and telecommunications related items seems to percolate to the top of my list at the end of last week. My office runs Shoretel for our phone system and a user reported a problem with her alerts for voice mail, saying all her message are ending up in the "heard" box, so the message waiting indicator doesn't light up on her phone.
No one else is reporting this issue, but for good measure I restarted some of the voicemail services this weekend. On Monday I'll need to check her desktop settings to make sure she doesn't have something conflicting going on with the way Outlook integration handles her voicemail messages, since it's possible for someone to configure Outlook to automatically move voicemails out of the inbox using a rule and then have them automatically marked as heard, rendering them essentially invisible.
Also, spent part of my Friday down at the Shoretel office in Sunnyvale giving user feedback on some of their future phones. I can't talk details, but it was certainly fun to be involved. It reminded me that I really need to start planning to upgrade our Shoretel software later this year. We are several (embarrassing!) versions behind at this point and there are some features in the newer versions that I'm sure our office would like to take advantage of.
No one else is reporting this issue, but for good measure I restarted some of the voicemail services this weekend. On Monday I'll need to check her desktop settings to make sure she doesn't have something conflicting going on with the way Outlook integration handles her voicemail messages, since it's possible for someone to configure Outlook to automatically move voicemails out of the inbox using a rule and then have them automatically marked as heard, rendering them essentially invisible.
Also, spent part of my Friday down at the Shoretel office in Sunnyvale giving user feedback on some of their future phones. I can't talk details, but it was certainly fun to be involved. It reminded me that I really need to start planning to upgrade our Shoretel software later this year. We are several (embarrassing!) versions behind at this point and there are some features in the newer versions that I'm sure our office would like to take advantage of.
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