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Resolving hostnames locally with syslog-ng
edited by on July 26th 2017, at 10:34
Resolving hostnames locally enables the use of hostnames (instead of IP addresses) without relying on a DNS server. If you do not want to use reverse DNS resolving but still would like to use hostnames instead of IP addresses, then this is a useful workaround. The key is to configure syslog-ng to use only the local DNS cache as a source for reverse DNS lookups, completely eliminating the need for a DNS server (and the negative impact this would entail).

Add the hostnames and IP addresses to the local name resolution file /etc/hosts, then reconfigure syslog-ng (by editing the global options in /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf) to use DNS resolving but only use the persistent cache (i.e. whateve  ...
 
List of sysprep files for VMware Converter
edited by on July 24th 2017, at 17:19
In order to succesfully convert Windows systems to a VMware virtual machine, you need to install the sysprep files of the to be converted host. Below is a list of downloads to these sysprep files:

The base folder of where to put the files is always:

Quote
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone\sysprep

Extract contents to: base-folder\2k

Available in SP4 or the CD-ROM of Windows 2000 SP4 at Support\Tools\Deploy.cab

Extract contents to: base-folder\svr2003

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14830.

Extract contents to: base-folder\svr2003-64

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8287.

Extract cont  ...
 
Enable Windows Photo Viewer on Server 2016
edited by on July 24th 2017, at 10:06
Windows Server 2016 no longer has an option to enable Desktop Experience from Server Manager. Instead, most (but not all) features are enabled by default. One such feature is Windows Photo Viewer, which no longer seems to be available, and there's no clear way of enabling or installing it. Luckily, there's a workaround to get it enabled again.

First of, you need to check on Server 2016 whether the required files are already present. If you have selected to install the full UI, the required files should already be there:

C:\Program Files\Windows Photo Viewer\

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Photo Viewer\

They should already be present on a fresh install of Server 2016, but if not, then you  ...
 
List of VMware vSphere clients
edited by on June 26th 2017, at 09:53
A list with direct links to VMware vSphere clients. Saves you a lot of time when you need to (re)install many different versions.

Starting with 6.5, the vSphere client is no longer available.

VMware vSphere Client 6.0 Update 3: VMware-viclient-all-6.0.0-5112508.exe

VMware vSphere Client 6.0 Update 2a: VMware-viclient-all-6.0.0-4437566.exe

VMware vSphere Client 6.0 Update 2: VMware-viclient-all-6.0.0-3562874.exe

VMware vSphere Client 6.0 Update 1: VMware-viclient-all-6.0.0-3016447.exe

VMware vSphere Client 6.0: VMware-viclient-all-6.0.0-2502222.exe

VMware vSphere Client 5.5 Update 3d: VMware-viclient-all-5.5.0-3705931.exe

VMware vSphere Client 5.5 Update 3: VMware-viclient-all-5.5.0-3  ...
 
Enable/disable an interface on a Juniper EX switch
edited by on June 15th 2017, at 13:17

To administratively disable (shut down) or enable a port, first go into edit interfaces mode, then:

To disable: 

set interfaces <interface> disable

To enable:

delete interfaces <interface> disable
 
Set Private Computer checkbox to unchecked (Public) by default on Exchange OWA
edited by on June 14th 2017, at 14:25
By default, when the Private computer checkbox is visible, it is checked by default, meaning that OWA will store some things in your browser by default. Sometimes, this may not be desirable, and you may prefer the checkbox is unchecked by default so as to prevent this. There is no setting to change this default, but there's a workaround, allowing you to obtain the same result. The only downside of this workaround is that it needs to be done anew after each update of Exchange.

To show the Private Computer checkbox in the first place, read this article about enabling the option.

To apply the workaround, you need to manually edit the logon.aspx page so it does not check the checkbox by defaul  ...
 
Show the Private Computer checkbox on the logon page of Exchange OWA
edited by on June 14th 2017, at 14:22
Exchange OWA stores data offline in your browser for a better user experience and performance. In older releases of Exchange, this behaviour could be turned off at the logon page by unchecking a checkbox, but since Exchange 2013, this checkbox is no longer visible on the logon page. But, this option can be turned on again by changing a configuration option of OWA in Exchange.



The option can be enabled through EMS on the CAS server. If you have more than one CAS server, this needs to be done on all of them.

Get-OwaVirtualDirectory | Set-OwaVirtualDirectory -LogonPagePublicPrivateSelectionEnabled $true

After the change, don't forget to reload IIS:

iisreset /noforce

Optionally, you can a  ...
 
Independent Disk option in VMWare Fusion
edited by on June 9th 2017, at 13:31
In VMWare Workstation and vSphere ESX, it is possible to set disks to be independent so they are not linked to snapshots. Independent disks can then be set to be Persistent (changes are written immediately and permanently to disk) or Non-persistent (changes are lost when the VM powers down). In VMWare Fusion, although this option does not seem to be present, it is still available, and can be configured by manually changing the parameters in the VM configuration file (.vmx).

A VM configuration file is a text-based file containing all the parameters and properties for a VM. This file can include options that are not present in the Fusion UI. By adding parameters manually, you can enable featu  ...
 
Installing latest nginx on Debian
edited by on June 8th 2017, at 13:59
nginx provides packages for Debian in their own repository, allowing you to install the most recent version rather than the older versions provided through the main repositories.

Add these lines to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/debian/ jessie nginxdeb-src http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/debian/ jessie nginx

Change jessie to wheezy if you are still on Debian 7 "Wheezy".

Download and add nginx's public key:

wget http://nginx.org/packages/keys/nginx_signing.key && cat nginx_signing.key | apt-key add -

Update the package list and then install nginx:

apt-get updateapt-get install nginx

By default, the latest version of nginx will be ins  ...
 
Patch KB4012598 manual download link (MS17-010 WannaCry vulnerability)
edited by on June 8th 2017, at 09:25

To protect your Windows devices against the MS17-010 vulnerability, used by WannaCry cryptolocker variants, be sure to install the March 2017 Quality Rollup or newer. It is available from Windows 7 or newer through Windows Update.

Emergency patches of MS17-010 (WannaCry) for older (unsupported) releases of Windows, starting from Windows XP, can be downloaded manually here:

→ http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4012598

More information: https://support.microsoft.com/help/4013389

 
Mac App update stuck in Paused mode
edited by on May 24th 2017, at 09:57

I had an issue with an app being stuck in Paused mode in Launchpad, and was unable to cancel/resume the update from the App Store because it wasn't listed in the updates list.

The solution, as stated here, was to open Launchpad, hold down the mouse on the app until it started jiggling, then clicking the delete button (x). The app reappeared normally and was even updated correctly.

The reason was probably the app got updated along with a system update, and Launchpad was unaware the update was completed.

 
Microsoft SQL Server version matrix
edited by on May 9th 2017, at 15:54
This article contains the version matrix for Microsoft SQL Server. It outlines the product and its internal version numbers, along with download links for the service packs (if any).

 RTM (no SP)SP1SP2SP3SP4SQL Server 2017     SQL Server 201613.0.1601.513.0.4001.0   SQL Server 201412.0.2000.812.0.4100.1
* 12.1.4100.1   SQL Server 201211.0.2100.6011.0.3000.0
* 11.1.3000.011.0.5058.0
* 11.2.5058.0  SQL Server 2008 R210.50.1600.110.50.2500.0
* 10.51.2500.010.50.4000.0
* 10.52.4000.010.50.6000.34
* 10.53.6000.34 SQL Server 200810.0.1600.2210.0.2531.0
* 10.1.2531.010.0.4000.0
* 10.2.4000.010.0.5500.0
* 10.3.5500.010.0.600  ...
 
PowerCLI: quickly set storage path policies to Round Robin in VMWare
edited by on May 8th 2017, at 14:32
A very common practice when setting up SAN storage on a VMWare cluster is to configure the storage path policy to be set to "Round Robin" to properly benefit from MPIO in addition to standard failover. However, if the cluster consists of many nodes or there are many volumes, this can take up quite a lot of time if you configure this using the (Web)GUI. A better way to adjust the setting for the entire cluster is through PowerCLI.

The one-liner:

Get-VMHost <Cluster-or-Host> | Get-ScsiLun -LunType "disk" | Where {$_.MultipathPolicy -ne "RoundRobin"} | Set-ScsiLun -MultipathPolicy RoundRobin

The cmdlet selects a cluster or host, gets all LUNs which are of   ...
 
Debian 7 Wheezy download link
edited by on April 26th 2017, at 16:50

Although Debian 7 "Wheezy" (release info) has been superseded by newer releases, it still benefits from Long Term Support (LTS) until end of May 2018. In case of disaster recovery, it may still be useful to download Debian 7 install images (ISO). They can be found here:

→ Installing Debian 7.11

 
Rapid Recovery 6.1: Reporting Powershell scripts no longer work
edited by on April 26th 2017, at 10:35
After updating Rapid Recovery to 6.1, you will notice the reporting Powershell scripts (such as Reports.ps1) no longer work.

When running such a script, the following error is generated:

Exception calling "LoadFrom" with "1" argument(s): "Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\ProgramFiles\AppRecovery\Core\CoreService\coreadmin\bin\Reporting.Implementation.dll' or one of its dependencies. The systemcannot find the file specified."

This is caused by several auxilliary script files not being updated as part of the general 6.1 release of Rapid Recovery, causing the reporting scripts (such as Reports.ps1) not to work properly.

To resolve, you can either dow  ...
 
Get hardware info from all members in a IRF cluster on HP switches
edited by on April 14th 2017, at 17:15

By default, when logging in on a HP switch in IRF mode using the web interface, you can only retrieve hardware information of the switch holding the master role. You can retrieve information for the other switches when you log on using Telnet or SSH, then type:

display device manuinfo

This will display hardware information for all chassis and slots.

 
Veeam: testing linux credential fail even though they are correct
edited by on April 11th 2017, at 15:52
In Veeam, when backing up linux-based VMs with application-aware processing turned on, testing the credentials may fail even though they have been entered correctly.

First, check whether you are really using linux-credentials and not Windows credentials, this can often be overlooked very quickly.

Check whether you see the logon attempt in linux. Depending on the distro, it is logged in a file in /var/log. E.g. for Debian/Ubuntu, it's logged in /var/log/auth.log. Looking at the logging will reveal whether it is a password or SSH key problem, or something else is going on.

Another possibility is that the required cipher is not allowed. Veeam requires the cipher aes128-cbc to be enabled. Alt  ...
 
List virtual disk info (incl SCSI ID) for a VMWare VM using PowerCLI
edited by on April 11th 2017, at 14:03

I wrote a script to list virtual disk information for a specified VM, including VMDK path, SCSI IDs and more. It is loosely based on this script but excludes all WMI info.

Download here.

 
Azure AD Connect: manually trigger sync
edited by on April 10th 2017, at 11:36

You can manually trigger Azure AD Connect to perform a sync cycle. Open a Powershell on the server running Azure AD Connect, then type:

  • Perform a delta sync:
    Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Delta
  • Perform a full sync:
    Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Initial
 
Azure AD Connect Health for Sync registration failed
edited by on April 10th 2017, at 10:41

During the installation of Azure AD Connect, the registration of the Azure AD Connect Health for Sync-agent may fail. When this happens, you can manually register the agent by running this Powershell cmdlet:

Register-AzureADConnectHealthSyncAgent -AttributeFiltering $false -StagingMode $false

You need the credentials of an O365 account with Global Admin rights.

 
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