I rebuilt an ESX host in my HA/DRS cluster today, following my build procedure to configure as per VMware best practices and internal guidelines. When the host was fully configured and up-to-date, I added it to the cluster and enabled HA and DRS. Then I went to generate some DRS recommendations to balance the load an ease off my overstretched host, but no recommendations were made. I couldn’t manually migrate any VMs either – it was odd, because both hosts were added into the cluster, and could ping and vmkping each other from the console.

This was a bit of an odd one. I was adding a Gateway Server to a newly rebuilt SCOM 2007 R2 Root Management Server when I kept encountering this error: The certificate specified in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Machine Settings cannot be used for authentication. The error is The credentials supplied to the package were not recognized(0x8009030D). I followed the Microsoft install and setup guides exactly, and it’s not my first time either – but I’d never seen that one before.

We run to monitoring systems where I work, the first is HP SIM and the second is Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. Currently, they and their databases all reside on a single rather battered server, “MONITOR1”. I’ve installed a new SQL Server 2008 server “SQL1” on Windows Server 2008 to take some of the load, and take advantage of the 64-bit OS and SQL installation. Both servers are part of the domain “DOMAIN”

If you see the following cryptic errors when trying to install FCS, then the chances are you need to install the .Net Framework 1.1 AND SP1. [06/04/2010 10:47:11] Task (Install Collection Server Component) The following process failed. Process: C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe Exit code: 1603 Number of tasks completed: [06/04/2010 10:47:12]

If you install Reporting Services on Windows Server 2008 (RTM or R2) and attempt to verify the installation by opening the http://SERVER/ReportServer site, you may well see the following message: Reporting Services Error -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The permissions granted to user ‘MCGEOWN\Sam.McGeown’ are insufficient for performing this operation. (rsAccessDenied) Get Online Help SQL Server Reporting Services Additionally, you may be able to access the http://SERVER/Reports site, but will have no permissions: You may also spend a good while checking DB permissions, IIS configurations, file permissions and so on.

I logged onto a production domain controller this morning and checked the event logs to be confronted with this: Event ID 1030 and 1058 every 5 minutes, looking into the detail for these events I can see its a replication issue for one of the GPOs. Event Type: Error Event Source: Userenv Event Category: None Event ID: 1030 Date: 29/03/2010 Time: 04:01:29 User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Computer: DC01 Description: Windows cannot query for the list of Group Policy objects.

So, you’ve installed a new server with Server 2008 R2 Core – what next? Logging on, you’re presented with a shiny command prompt, you can run notepad or regedit…but aside from that, where do you go from there? In the next few series of posts I’ll hopefully point out the basics, and some not so basics! In this post, I’m covering Installing the IIS web server (and a few useful bits) and managing it from the IIS Management Snap-in.

So, you’ve installed a new server with Server 2008 R2 Core – what next? Logging on, you’re presented with a shiny command prompt, you can run notepad or regedit…but aside from that, where do you go from there? In the next few series of posts I’ll hopefully point out the basics, and some not so basics! I’m going to look at some management tasks – the bread and butter of being a Windows admin.

So, you’ve installed a new server with Server 2008 R2 Core – what next? Logging on, you’re presented with a shiny command prompt, you can run notepad or regedit…but aside from that, where do you go from there? In the next few series of posts I’ll hopefully point out the basics, and some not so basics! Using the Server Configuration Tool The server configuration tool (sconfig.cmd) is provided in R2 for some of the basic setup tasks, so you can run that by issuing the “sconfig” command.

I’m pleased to say that yesterday I took and passed two Microsoft Certified IT Professional exams, the Server Administrator (70-646) and the Enterprise Administrator (70-647). Hopefully I can take a bit of a break from study and write a few more technical posts here now!