Category Archives: Support

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 DNS Stops Resolving Names “Can’t find google.co.uk: Server failed”

Leave a Reply

Windows_Server_2008_R2_Logo

I use Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 DNS to resolve my public names and precisely every two days I get “Can’t find google.co.uk: Server failed” messages and the usual “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” nonsense. This only happens when using root hints and not forwarders and only for few selected top level domains (.co.uk being one of them) Here is what the situation looks like when the DNS server is broken:

Windows_Server_2008_R2_SP1_DNS_Stops_Resolving_Names_Can't_find_google.co.uk_Server_failed_1

Ping returns “Ping request could not find host google.co.uk. Please check the name and try again” and nslookup throws error in title. Pretty annoying and so far the fix was to simply bounce the dns service – not elegant in any shape or form but highly successful!
Continue reading →

Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 “Changing the Primary Domain DNS name of this computer to “” failed….”

8 Replies

Windows_Server_2008_R2_Logo

Windows Server 2008 R2 VMs started giving me errors while joining the domain recently, here is the exact error message that comes up:

Windows_7_Server_2008_R2_Changing_the_Primary_Domain_DNS_name_of_this_computer_to_failed_1

netsetup.log (%SystemRoot%\debug\netsetup.log) shows no errors and my VMs appears to be joined properly:

Windows_7_Server_2008_R2_Changing_the_Primary_Domain_DNS_name_of_this_computer_to_failed_2

Now to fix this there are two potential solutions/recommendations:
Continue reading →

SCCM 2007 R3 – Remove All Packages from DP (Distribution Point)

2 Replies

SCCM_Logo

Lets assume that you have to decommission a distribution point that’s part of your ConfigMgr 2007 R3 infrastructure. Doing it the clean way would mean manually removing all packages, you have ever copied, which is definitely not fun. Initial copy of packages, when the DP is first setup, has a nice feature called “Copy Packages” but there is absolutely nothing allowing you to remove them. Pretty stupid really as trying to find every single package and manually “Manage Distribution Point” can take literally hours… Fortunately there is very handy tool to help us out here called “ConfigMgr 2007 Distribution Point Package Utility” created by Cory Becht.

This utility queries the primary site server for all of its distribution points including child sites and then displays the packages for each distribution point. You check or uncheck which ones you want on that distribution point. You can also copy the packages list from one DP to another.

This utility was done in Visual Studio 2005, so it does require .NET Framework 2.0
Version History:

1.3 – Now includes duplicating the packages of another distribution point.
1.2 – Updated to include new ConfigMgr 2007 classes for packages (SoftwareUpdate, BootImage, etc.)
1.1 – Fixed multiple DP’s per site error.
1.01 – Included “Select All” button for packages.

Continue reading →

IBM IMM (Integrated Management Module) Defult Username and Password

13 Replies

IBM_Logo

Default login credentials for IBM IMM (Integrated Management Module) are as follows:

  • Username: USERID
  • Password: PASSW0RD

    • Both username and a password are case sensitive so they have to be in block capitals. Please notice there is a zero ‘0’ in the word PASSWORD instead of letter ‘O’.

    That’s it, hopefully this will be useful in case you get stuck 😉

    VMware Performance Data Overview Shows “Perf Charts service experienced an internal error.”

    Leave a Reply

    VMware_vSphere_Logo

    Closer look at what’s happening (or not happening as a matter of fact):

    “Perf Charts service experienced an internal error. Message: Report application initialization is not completed successfully. Retry in 60 seconds.”

    Performance_Data_Overview_Shows_Perf_Charts_service_experienced_an_internal_error_1

    Now, this error has been around for as long as I can remember. There are many causes of it but I will try to cover the one I have experienced (and solved)

    Let’s get to it.

    In vCenter 4.x this has never been an issue and charts stopped working since I have upgraded my vCenter to version 5.0 Update 2. Generally you look at log files for vCenter (stats.log is what we’re after) to determine the root cause. Location of stats.log depends on version of Windows and its as follows:
    Continue reading →

    How to update mpt2sas driver on ESXi 5?

    4 Replies

    VMware_vSphere_Logo

    Interesting question and even more interesting is why VMware would use such an archaic version of mpt2sas driver in their fairly recent builds of ESXi. Quick background on why I’m writing about this.

    I bought my IBM M1015 RAID controller from eBay for about £65 and since M1015 is not supported by ESXi natively cross-flashing was the only way to get it working without too much of a hassle (if you could call cross-flashing RAID controllers not too much hassle!) I went for IT mode as opposed to IR for simplicity and ease of adding drives without mocking about with virtual disks etc. I will write a separate post about how to cross-flash to IT/IR mode later on this week (if time permits)

    Going back to my issue, here is what my IBM card looks like right now cross-flashed to LSI 9211-8i in IT mode:

    How_to_update_mpt2sas_driver_on_ESXi_5_1

    As you can see it’s running the latest available firmware (P15) and its in IT mode meaning its simply doing straight pass-through for any connected hard drives. Once we’re booted to ESXi we can quickly list all HBAs and the driver names by issuing this command:
    Continue reading →

    VMware ESXi 5 Error “XXX esx.problem.syslog.nonpersistent.formatOnHost not found XXX”

    6 Replies

    VMware_vSphere_Logo

    Here is rather not interestingly looking error message popping up when you don’t have Syslog configured properly on ESXi 5.x. I have seen few variations of this error but only have one screenshot at hand!

    VMware_ESXi_5_Error_XXX_esx.problem.syslog.nonpersistent.formatOnHost_not_found_XXX_1

    In a nutshell the cryptic message says that you have logs configured on non-persistent storage and they’ll not survive a reboot of the host. If we look closely at the exact location they’re indeed configured to point at ESXi scratch partition i.e. [] /scratch/log:

    VMware_ESXi_5_Error_XXX_esx.problem.syslog.nonpersistent.formatOnHost_not_found_XXX_2

    There are at least three ways to get us out of trouble in this situation:

  • Use 3rd party Syslog server,
  • Use Syslog server that’s bundled with vCenter 5,
  • Use persistent storage to store your logs.

    • Continue reading →

    How to kill a stuck or hung VM?

    Leave a Reply

    VMware_vSphere_Logo

    Today meant to be just another ordinary day in the office and for most part this was the case. Around 1PM I have noticed that 2AM NetApp VSC backup job was still running… Bit odd I thought as this never happened before – its normally done in 30 minutes tops. vSphere client was showing 1 VM in recent tasks as being in progress. Hmm so what’s up with that VM then? It looked completely stuck, I couldn’t edit settings, power off, reset etc. Nothing worked. Tasks and events tab was explaining the situation a bit better:

    How_to_kill_a_stuck_or_hung_VM_1

    So basically backup started and its stuck while taking snapshots due to being unable to quiesce the file system. Beyond this point vSphere client is pretty much useless so its was time to hit the command line via SSH to get me out of trouble. First you need to know the name of your stuck VM, it doesn’t have to be letter for letter as you can simply search for it using grep in a list of active processes on ESXi host. My VM had ‘STD’ in its name (aka Standard flavor of Windows Server 2012) and to find the actual PID number I’d to run the following command:

    How_to_kill_a_stuck_or_hung_VM_2

    to kill the process (that run your VM) its simply kill command followed by PID number, in my case:

    How_to_kill_a_stuck_or_hung_VM_3

    Now it should be gone. Quick check for PID number that we killed shows there is no such PID anymore – good.

    At this point my VSC job simply timed out and moved on to backup other VMs in the datastore.

    Happy days.