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Event 1222 when you create a Windows Server 2012 Failover Cluster
edited by on July 17th 2015, at 14:01
When you create a Windows Server 2012 failover cluster, the following event may be logged in the System log:

Event ID 1222 (Microsoft-Windows-FailoverClustering)
The computer object associated with cluster network name resource could not be updated.Unable to protect the Virtual Computer Object (VCO) from accidental deletion.

When a failover cluster or a cluster role is created, a computer account (a so-called Cluster Name Object (CNO)) is created in Active Directory. Since Server 2012, these objects are flagged to prevent accidental deletion. If the main cluster resource (also a computer account) does not have the required permissions on the OU containing the CNOs (by default, this is the   ...
 
SQL Server database stuck in Restoring mode
edited by on July 17th 2015, at 09:15

When restoring a database, you usually start with restoring a full backup, then any differentials, and finally the transaction logs. You set the database restore mode to WITH NORECOVERY, which allows you to perform these additional restores.

But what if you find out that there's nothing more to restore, leaving you with a database stuck in Restoring mode? Then you only need to run a single T-SQL statement:

RESTORE DATABASE [db_name] WITH RECOVERY

Replace db_name with the name of your database.

 
Rolling upgrade scenarios of a SQL Server High-Availability cluster
edited by on July 13th 2015, at 16:16

Follow the chart below to successfully perform a rolling upgrade of your HA SQL Server cluster.

 
No_Sync and No_Light on a SAN FC switch
edited by on July 10th 2015, at 12:35

No_Light means there's no link on the port. Usually this indicates a problem with the physical wiring, either a faulty cable, or the TX/RX have been swapped.

No_Sync means there's a link on the port (so technically, wiring is okay), but there's a problem with the actual communication. The most common problem is a mismatch in speed on the switch port and the HBA on the other side. Your best bet would be to set the port's speed (temporarily) to auto-negotiate and see what speed is selected. If this does not work, try manually setting the port fixed to lower speeds.

 
List of allowed LAN addresses (RFC 1918)
edited by on July 9th 2015, at 10:03

RFC1918 states the following blocks of IPv4 addresses that can be used in a Local Area Network. These are "private" address ranges that do not overlap with public IP addresses.

Network/maskClassFirst usable addr.Last usable addr.
10.0.0.0/8Class A10.0.0.110.255.255.254
172.16.0.0/12Class B (x16)172.16.0.1172.31.255.254
192.168.0.0Class C (x256)192.168.0.1192.168.255.254
 
Recommended placement of FSMO roles on 2 domain controllers
edited by on July 9th 2015, at 09:31

Based on recommendations and best practices from Microsoft, and information I found here, I compiled a FSMO placement scenario for 2 domain controllers:

DC1DC2
PDC Emulator
RID Master
Infrastructure Master		Schema Master
Domain Naming Master
Global Catalog

Also, if your domain is top-level in the AD forest, configure DC1 to sync with external time sources.

 
Remove a node from a Windows 2003 Fail-Over Cluster
edited by on July 8th 2015, at 16:55

To safely remove a node from a Windows 2003 Fail-Over Cluster, follow these steps:

  1. First, using Cluster Administrator, move all roles to the other nodes in the cluster.
    There should be no more roles, including the quorum running on the node.
  2. In Cluster Administrator, right-click the node and click Stop Cluster Service. (Skip this step if it is the last node of the cluster.)
  3. Still in Cluster Administrator, right-click the node and click Evict node. This will remove the node from the cluster.
  4. Optionally, you can now remove the Fail-Over cluster components from the server.
 
Allow a (custom) kext to be loaded by a user (non-root) process on Mac
edited by on July 8th 2015, at 16:36
By default, only processes that are run directly by root are allowed to load kexts. When a user (non-root) process tries to load a kext, an error is logged in system.log similar to:

Request from non-root process 'netbiosd' (euid 222) to load /System/Library/Extensions/smbfs.kext - not allowed.

You can resolve the issue by allowing the specific kext (e.g.: smbfs.kext) to be loaded by non-root processes. This is done by editing the Info.plist file that's included with the kext, usually at /path/to/kext-name.kext/Contents/Info.plist.

Open a Terminal.

Locate the kext and edit its Info.plist file.In our example, this would be the file: /System/Library/Extensions/smbfs.kext/Contents/Info.plist  ...
 
Clear Cache extension for Google Chrome
edited by on July 7th 2015, at 16:42

Clear Cache for Google Chrome is a browser extension for Google Chrome which adds a clear cache button on the address bar. This configurable button allows to quickly and without prompting clear browser data, such as cache, cookies, history, and more.

Add to Google Chrome

 
HTML5 Character Entity Reference Chart
edited by on July 7th 2015, at 14:23

HTML5 Character Entity Reference Chart:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/charref

 
Determine EFI architecture on your Mac
edited by on July 7th 2015, at 14:21

It may be useful to know whether your Mac has a 32-bit or 64-bit EFI. This can be done by running the following command from an OSX Terminal (can run from the installer or recovery partition):

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

This should return something like the following:

• For 32-bit EFI:  | | "firmware-abi" = <"EFI32">
• For 64-bit EFI:  | | "firmware-abi" = <"EFI64">
 
MacPostFactor 1.0.1 released
edited by on July 7th 2015, at 12:23

MacPostFactor 1.0.1 has been officially released:

Download (direct link)

MacPostFactor is a tool to install Mac OSX 10.8+ on older (Intel) Macbooks that only support up to OSX 10.7 (Lion). It works through a combination of a highly customized installer, a replaced set of drivers and various frameworks, and the original install app from the App Store. The installation can be done directly on a Macbook already running OSX Lion (so no USB disk required), or on an USB media for installation on another system.

 
Disable ESXi Shell/SSH warnings on vSphere
edited by on July 7th 2015, at 11:54
When you enable the ESXi Shell or SSH on a particular host in a vSphere cluster, a warning will appear on a ESX host:

ESXi Shell for the host has been enabled

or SSH for the host has been enabled

This is normal behaviour, but you can turn off these warnings for each of the hosts.

Note that prior to vSphere 4.1 Update 2, it is not possible to suppress the warnings.

Open vSphere Client.

Select the ESX host. From the Configuration tab (right pane), click Advanced Settings.

Navigate to UserVars → UserVars.SuppressShellWarning.Set its value to 1.

Click OK to confirm. The warning will disappear immediately.

Log on to vSphere Web Client.

Select vCenter from the Home menu. Select Host  ...
 
Setting up an authoritative (Windows) time server in your AD domain
edited by on July 3rd 2015, at 15:46
Active Directory uses Kerberos for authentication, which relies strongly on having the date and time of day running synchronously across the entire network and all devices in it. By default, each server and client joined in the AD, including domain controllers, will follow the domain hierarchy to sync its time. Domain controllers are set to automatically determine whether they can be used as a (reliable) time source. If a DC has considered itself as a time source, it will accept requests from clients and provide them with the its own current time.

Domain controllers at the top of the forest (top-level DCs) don't have another server above them to sync against, so they can either opt to sync   ...
 
vSphere Web Client error: Failed to verify the SSL certificate for one or more vCenter Server System
edited by on July 3rd 2015, at 15:39
The vSphere Web Client may display the following error:

Failed to verify the SSL certificate for one or more vCenter Server Systems: https://vCenter-Server-FQDN:443/sdk

or

Could not connect to one or more vCenter Server Systems:https://vCenterFQDN:443/sdk

Additionally, objects such as hosts or VMs are not displayed in the vSphere Web Client.

These errors usually occur with a re-installation or upgrade of vCenter Server, where the vCenter Server is registered to the same vSphere SSO more than once.

The faulty registration needs to be resolved by unregistered all duplicate vCenter Server instances from vSphere SSO, so only the correct registrations remain.

You will have to unregister al  ...
 
Change the weight and priority of a domain controller in the same site
edited by on July 2nd 2015, at 13:29
Contacting a domain controller in Active Directory is done through DNS lookup. Several DNS SRV records are used to find domain controllers in a site. If multiple domain controllers are present in the same site, the client will arbitrarily select one, based on the contents of those records.

By default, the selection is random, and all DCs have an equal change of being picked. The inherit properties of SRV-records allow for this behaviour to be influenced, by changing the weight and priority of those records. This enables fine-tuning and configuration of which DC to favour or even exclude. By default, all SRV records (thus, all DCs) have their weight and priority set to 0.

The weight defines  ...
 
Get the black boot screen + white Apple logo on any Mac with DarkBoot
edited by on June 30th 2015, at 15:15

Recent models of Mac boot up with a black boot screen and white Apple logo, instead of the old gray and dark gray boot screen. DarkBoot enables older Mac systems to get the black boot screen as well. For newer Macs, the app can also change the boot screen back to the traditional gray color.

  1. Download latest release of DarkBoot.
  2. Unzip and run the DarkBoot app.
  3. Select the desired color, then click OK.
    You will be prompted for the admin password. Enter it and press OK.
  4. Reboot twice for changes to take effect.

Known to work with OSX 10.10 and 10.11 DP.

 
MacPostFactor 1.0 released
edited by on June 29th 2015, at 17:15

MacPostFactor 1.0 has been officially released:

Download (direct link)

MacPostFactor is a tool to install Mac OSX 10.8+ on older (Intel) Macbooks that only support up to OSX 10.7 (Lion). It works through a combination of a highly customized installer, a replaced set of drivers and various frameworks, and the original install app from the App Store. The installation can be done directly on a Macbook already running OSX Lion (so no USB disk required), or on an USB media for installation on another system.

 
MSExchangeIS Event ID 9646: mapi session exceeded the maximum objects type
edited by on June 29th 2015, at 17:14
Users that have access to a number of shared mailboxes in their Outlook may notice the contents of those shared mailboxes are no longer synchronized properly. Their own personal mailbox does not seem to have this problem. On the server running the Exchange Information Store (MSExchangeIS), a variation of the following event is logged when this occurs:

Event ID 9646
Mapi session "ba765653-5439-437a-993f-806575b85fbb: /o=My Company/ou=First Administrative Group/cn=Recipients/cn=user" exceeded the maximum of 500 objects of type "objtFolder".

The reason for this error is that the Outlook client has hit the maximum number of MAPI connections allowed for the specified object   ...
 
Customize default Windows 8.1 Start Screen, the easy way
edited by on June 29th 2015, at 13:00
Microsoft's recommendations for customizing the default start screen for new users are known to be somewhat over-complicated and perhaps difficult to implement. They involve editing the reference image, using unattend.xml, or some other elaborate procedure. There's also the posibility of using a group policy to provide users with a customized start screen, but while this is relatively easy to implement, it does not allow the user to change the layout afterwards.

Fortunately, there's a far easier method, involving two Powershell cmdlets that provide us with a very easy way to provide new users with a default customized start screen, but still allow the users to make changes to it. This metho  ...
 
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