AVINASH GADGE, Infrastructure Solutions

Friends,  Today we are going to talk about PFU and Storage.  Firmware upgrade on any device is always a risk as you are making changes on core software of that particular hardware and when you are doing on storage risk is always HIGH. PFU: Partner Firmware upgrade. You know started knowing about storage's (  Every Storage has 2 storage controller and 2 management controllers.  Storage controller also referred as  SC and Management controllers are referred as MC.) Every storage has redundancy maintain so when one controller goes down other one take cares but there are cases which i have seen entire storage went down.  Normally people do Storage firmware upgrade when you have shutdown all your VM & Host  but you can do firmware upgrade when things up also using storage's redundancy feature. Now if you wish to do Firmware upgrade of your storage while keeping everything is up what you have to do is 1st make sure your storage is health either by visual look at sto

It was morning and got page stating one of our site is having trouble after some maintenance work and as usual i have to be on my toes to get it fixed and avoid time delay and resume plant functioning. what has happen was they lost both SC controllers and luns and vdisk were not showing, Management controller was down. (OK for those who are new in infrastructure for them. Every Storage has 2 storage controller and 2 management controllers. Storage controller also referred as  SC and Management controllers are referred as MC.) the one MC which was alive was showing following information :) which was next to Null.     Mantra for such situation is dont panic and first thing you should do is take store logs.  (store logs is your storage logs and gives detail information, you have to open report in notepad++ )  in our case it was clear that none of storage controller were alive.  You should 1st start with power down all host if they were on, shutdown

Fantastic site!   This site is owned by CISCO and we all know CISCO is most reputed network appliance, Firewall providers.   http://www.senderbase.org/  Above site servers as largest email and web traffic monitoring network, apart from this it rates the domain on the basis of their activity and as we discuss in our last post (SMTP) you need to add (External Parties) Mx Record (SMTP server Name/IP) to DNS.   This site become handy to judge external party and take decision whether we should allow that entity to send direct email to our users as this site shows is this SMTP is sending SPAM/Malware etc.  Please have a look yourself..!    http://www.senderbase.org/   Thank you Cisco for wonderful tool/site.  

What is SMTP? Simple Mail Transfer Protocol for electronic message which works on Port-25 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821   (1982) https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5321.txt (1998) How it works ? If you want to send email out of your organization you need to have MX record of particular receivers listed on your dns. Now what happen when we send email? It goes to our SMTP Server and if we are sending email outside SMTP server queries to DNS if it has MX record for receivers. DNS provide necessary information to SMTP server and here actual conversation start between 2 parties.       Send SMTP Server connect Receivers SMTP Server on Port 25 For example (Mail. *****.Com Port 25) Receiver SMTP Server: Send acknowledge by sending ELHO command. Sender SMTP Server: - Mail from 123@XYZ.com Receiver SMTP Server: - 250 (OK) Sender SMTP Server: - Recipient Mail ABC@*.com Receiver SMTP Server: - 250 (OK) Sender SMTP Server: - DATA Receiver SMTP S

Hello Friends, I have come across lot of administrators who face difficulties while working on mount points. Let’s discusses what mount point is? A mount point is a   directory   in a   file system   where additional information is logically connected from a storage location outside the operating system’s root drive and partition. Now who you will troubleshoot ntfs corrupt problems on mount points where you don’t have drive letter? Ok… Use mountvol command and it will show you all mount points hosted on your server or system copy Guid which it shows for example “  \\?\Volume{78aecb7a-1a16-4e3b-9cdd-0b9e5a4ea2b0} ” this shows you mount path also. Now run Chkdsk /F  “Guid”

Interesting things related to SCOM. Today one of my colleague came to me stating she got scom alert when disk space was 1% instead she should get on 10%. Ah! That was something new for me and I was surprised how this happened hence thought lets investigate at what threshold alert was sent. 1 St I tired checking server health explorer and see what threshold are set and then went to check overrides. This one gave me information what has set but didn’t answer my question why at 1%. So took new way that is again went to Windows computer under monitoring tab, Searched for server, than opened Performance Chat and selected legend % logical disk free space and on right side set Time range 3 days. It took few seconds and gave me graph how disk was consumed than on the graph right clicked and selected “Show Alert” which shown me what time alert was initiated and how quickly disk got filled.

Hello Friends, Production Services you might have heard one word Disaster recovery and we before going to DR we should understand few basic steps and then we will move towards DR. Backup Strategy: 1)       Backup Method 2)       Backup Window 3)       Retention Period 4)       Recovery Method What is RPO and RTO? RPO: Recovery Point Objective How much data you can afford to lose (Or how long it has been since you saved your data, the recovery point) RTO: Recovery Time Objective  It is the length of time you can afford to take to return to normal service. Technologies can be used for RPO and RTO? Recovery  Point (RPO) Tape Backups Snapshot Asynchronous replication Synchronous replication Recovery Time (RTO) Bare Metal Restore Disk Restore Tape Restore Role difference between Master Media and EMM? Media Server: These servers had some form of storage attached either network storage,  Physical  storage or tape  l

  Adds the specified SPN for the computer, after verifying that no duplicates exist. Usage: setspn –s SPN accountname For example, to register SPN "http/test" for computer "test1": setspn -S http/test TEST1

KEYTAB: Keytab is a file containing pairs of Kerberos principals and encrypted keys (which are derived from the Kerberos password). You can use a keytab file to authenticate to various remote systems using Kerberos without entering a password. However, when you change your Kerberos password, you will need to recreate all your keytabs. keytab file that you transfer to a computer that is not running the Windows operating system, and then replace or merge with your existing .keytab file, /Etc/Krb5.keytab. KTPASS: Configures the server principal name for the host or service in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and generates a .keytab file that contains the shared secret key of the service. The .keytab file is based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) implementation of the Kerberos authentication protocol. The Ktpass command-line tool allows non-Windows services that support Kerberos authentication to use the interoperability features provided by the Ker

Frustrated with syntax finding hence decided to post all NBSTLUTIL related commands so people will not face same problem. Common SLP Related Commands Show EMM Image list of Images that were backed up to an SLP STU [ -I / -U ] nbstlutil list nbstlutil list –lifecycle <name> nbstlutil list –backupid <id_value> nbstlutil list -image_state <value> nbstlutil list -copy_state <value> nbstlutil list -frag_state <value> nbstlutil list –mediaid <media_id>_–state 3 Activate /Inactivate SLP operations nbstlutil inactive –lifecycle <lifecycle name> nbstlutil inactive –backupid <backupid> nbstlutil active –lifecycle <lifecycle name> nbstlutil active –backupid <backupid> Cancel pending operations on selected image nbstlutil cancel -backupid <backupid> nbstlutil cancel -lifecycle <lifecycle> Show status on Incomplete copies of Lifecycle Managed images nbstlutil stlilist –lifecycle <lifecycle name> nbstlutil stlil

Lot of  people had question i.e. I am working in enterprise environment and want To know where my particular server authenticated from or Which DC it belongs too? Simple either of this command will help you find your answer. 1) echo %LOGONSERVER% 2) SET L I hope this answer will help some of you!

Hello Friends you have seen these kind of errors when you delete files from your shared location and don't know what to do here is the simple trick. if you want to delete entire path rename all folder which are coming on the way to reach file with one character or number. This will allow you to delete. If you want to delete specific file only and don't want to do any changes on folder structure its even simple map a drive on your computer and than File system will allow you rename file and delete. *** Why this happens in Windows that's because Windows just support 256 characters for file path and if path goes beyond its difficult for  Windows. Photo courtesy Google search.

It’s a page file. In good olden days we use to define page file in much simple way. Physical Memory =1.5 time of page file 1 GB RAM = 1.5 GB of Page file. Later game has started changing as new resource intensive application started rolling in and need better handling as well as birth of 64 bit OS and Microsoft made page file rule complex and hence here is the link for Microsoft TechNet article for the same. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/889654 Note: Remember if your application is disk intensive you should have dedicated disk for Page file.

I am excited because of VMware's new release. VSphere 6.0 (it’s called scalability) this is just basic over view there are huge improvements like Instant clone/ NVidia Graphics, Cross Vcenter clone and migration, network IO Control, Multicast Snooping, External Storage array became VM aware array! ***VSphere 6.0 (New capabilities) • 64 Host per Cluster • 8000 Virtual machines per cluster • 480 CPUs • 12 TB RAM • 1000 virtual Machines per HOST ***VSphere 5.5 (Existing capabilities) • 32 Host per Cluster • 4000 Virtual machines per cluster • 320 CPUs • 4 TB RAM • 512 Virtual Machines per HOST

I will recommend this event to all my Friends and Colleague! https://atmosphere.withgoogle.com/live/atmosphere-live-2015-june

Get all Expired accounts but they still exist in AD as well as Empty Groups which exist in AD. Script for Empty Group: Import-Module activedirectory Get-ADGroup -Filter * -Properties Members | where {-not $_.members} | select Name | Export-Csv C:\groups.csv –NoTypeInformation Script for Expired IDs: Import-Module ActiveDirectory Search-ADAccount -AccountExpired | select Name, samAccountName, ObjectClass, AccountExpirationDate, lastLogonDate | Export-Csv c:\Accounts.csv

Question came. #How to disable USB Drive but USB headphones/Keyboard/Mouse and Data cards should work? Simple:  When administrator says how he will block things using GPO what we do is we edit Group Policy Management template. #Group Policy Management Editor Following option need to be configure. What exactly happens? As we know Windows is all about registry and for each and everything we had one Reg file same thing applies to USB.  For example USB Printer, USB hub, USB headphones for each component we had different registry keys. Now I just want to disable USB storage hence will concentrate on following registry path. #[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR] and mainly START (Dword) By default it is 3 if you modify registry to 4. USB Mass storage will be block. (Cell Phones, Jump drives, Disk and Pen drives will not detect in OS.

Data Leak Protection- OUTLOOK I was talking about dual persona in mobile phone personal and enterprise and most of vendor was showing me stare like I am talking French. Now I think people heard me GOOGLE brought multiple profile in Lollipop they are not there what I am saying but it’s a start... Microsoft today demonstrated new Outlook and which has feature because of which content of your email or corporate data can’t be copied to your personal app or emails etc. on your mobile. Thanks you for working on these initiatives.

Today at Microsoft Ignite, the company released a preview of Office 2016. The preview is free for Office 365 users, and a trial is available to everyone else. The new suite can edit or attach files directly from One Drive. You can also try out collaborative editing in Word 2016, allowing you to edit documents others are working in simultaneously using every version of the application, including Word on the desktop. Read more  here  or get started  downloading the preview here . Try the Office 2016 Preview if you Enjoy trying out software that’s still being developed and providing your insights and feedback. Know how to reinstall your previous version of Office from the original installation point. Really know your way around a PC and feel comfortable troubleshooting problems, backing up data, and uninstalling and installing the Office 2016 Preview to fix issues.                         https://products.office.com/en-us/office-2016-preview#howT

Disk Management. One of my  colleague  from Europe called me stating on one of his server he extended disk and it was completed successfully but in my computer it still shows existing size and disk management shows new value. It was #Windows Server 2008 server as it was escalated to me initially I thought it must be wrong disk or Lun has issue where he was extending disk but that was not the case hence tried to refresh disk, re-scan disk and even did storage refresh :) I tried #DiskPart too and it was showing latest value so I was got confuse  from where the old value is coming  and hence decided to run following commands one by one and got success. Disk Part List Volume Select volume # (Number on volume) Extend  Now we know some time disk size don’t get refresh and hence you should use #DISKPART… Weird but funny…!

Active Directory Users and Computers and Attributes.. Lot of IT folks had access read-only Active Directory access but they want to know when particular id was use for login and who owns it ? Simple way to see that information and get output in txt file. Yeah Yeah its a Powershell command. Get-ADUser username  -Properties * | Select * > output file path. 

Frustrated with HP P2000 G3? Hello, I know it’s frustrating when you had 100 of P2000 G3 across your environment and it gave you Management host down errors. TBH management host down basically don’t impact you but it will restrict your remote access for storage and hence you need management host up and running Two options... 1st Option Each enclosure has 2 management host A and B if one of these were down you can telnet working one and Reboot another management host you can do this anytime this doesn't Need any down time. Telnet working host Provide Storage credentials Command Restart Mc A (whichever you want to reboot A or B try this 4-5 time and your management host will be up and working)     2nd Option... Connect USB cable at the rear side of your storage you will sew CLI port (Mini USB) connect there one end and other to your working server.   Open Device Manager- Refresh Check serial and LPT Port You

Data Deduplication and growing Disk/Storage demand. IDC REPORT – Storage Purchase and expected. Source:   IDC Worldwide File-Based Storage 2011-2015 Forecast:   Foundation Solutions for Content Delivery, Archiving and Big Data, doc #231910, December 2011   Using DDPEval.exe we can use to evaluate savings with Deduplication without even installing or enabling deduplication. Yes I am talking about Windows 2012 deduplication. How it works? 1. Segment data into small variable sized chunks 2. Identify and remove duplicate chunks 3. Replace duplicate copies of each chunk with a reference to a single copy 4. Compress Chunks. DFS and Deduplication: Data Deduplication works fine with Distributed File System (DFS) Replication. Optimizing or unoptimizing a file will not trigger a replication because the file does not change. DFS Replication uses Remote Differential Compression (RDC), not the chunks in the chunk store, for over-the-wire savings. The files on

I had lot folks coming and asking about this so thought it is good thing to cover for rest of our community. Explorer view (Doc Library) and SharePoint. Lot of people try to open doc library and want to have explorer view but they get weird errors.   If you are experiencing this problem in Client side this is because “Desktop Experience feature” is not available /enable on your system.   If you are experiencing similar problem on Windows servers than you should remove WebDAV module from IIS and enable WebDAV Authoring in IIS.

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