100

Posted on May 2, 2011 by workinghardinit

No this is not a cheap and reduced version of the movie 300. I do not resemble King Leonidas in anyway except perhaps in my defiance to those who want to coerce their will upon me in the data center forcing other solutions on me than what I deem best. To paraphrase it “This is Hyper-V!” But let’s get real, I’m Belgian so the Belgian chocolates (pralines) named after Leonidas are perhaps the most realistic link to the movie 300 I have and even then, when we need some pralines as a gift we manage to end up with a huge chocolate bunny. But I totally digress from the subject, having a high definition beamer and liking movies tends to invoke this. This blog is about 100; actually this is blog entry one hundred.

What can is say about it? I’m still blogging, which to me was one of the things I wanted to find out. Can I keep writing something worth reading? The first part I have answered myself but the second part, is it worth reading, that’s for my readers decide. So, if you have things to say about the blog, feedback to provide, opinions to share, by all means, please do. Let me know what you think. Is it useful, is it amusing? Or perhaps even both? If you feel like telling me, send me a mail via the contacts page, if you don’t mind voicing your opinions publicly just leave a comment to this blog or sound of on twitter to @workinghardinit

Thanks for reading Party smile

Microsoft Belgium At The Speed of Light, Traffic At A Glacial Pace, AD FS 2.0 , Vittorio Bertocci & a Large Chocolate Bunny

Posted on May 1, 2011 by workinghardinit

Wednesday April 27th 10:45

We’re helping out on the infrastructure side of a claims based authentication project with my team and I had some questions on AD FS 2.0. The two lead developers (U2U Consult’s Kris Vandermotten & Stefan Gevaert ) also had some outstanding questions or rather they needed a echo chamber to discus some design choices. Now imagine you have TechDays 2011 going on in your country and Vitoria Bertocci (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vbertocci/, @vibronet ) is over there to present a decent amount of sessions and is available to the attendees for questions. OK I have two people of my ICT team running around to broaden there horizons but I’m at the office holding the fort. Kris says he saw Vittorio the day before but missed an opportunity to talk to him on Tuesday. I’m thinking & saying , yeah I should mail him. I really should. Why haven’t I yet?

Wednesday April 27th 14:20

Kris & Stefan suggest to go to Antwerp and meet up with Vittorio. I’m thinking like, good plan but how do we get this set up so fast? Mail? Nah, what if he isn’t able to read it. We need an other approach. I decide to use two channels. Twitter and telephony. One tweet (with a very fast response from Vittorio) and some phone calls to Microsoft employees I know might be at TechDays 2011. The first two are not there that day but Arlindo Alves (@aralves) is. I get him on the phone very quickly (note that he is extremely busy during an event like TechDays) and ask him if we can set up a meeting with Vittorio. He says he’ll ask and will get back to me. Well it’s 15:00 hours and we have a meeting set up for 10:00 hrs Thursday morning. Wow Smile Now I’m impressed with how fast this went from “let’s try” to reality.

Thursday April 28th 08:00 hours

We’re leaving in Gent to go to TechDays at Metropolis in Antwerp.

Thursday April 28th 10:05 hours

We arrive at Metropolis. Wow again but not in a positive way. I’m not impressed at all at the “speed” we got to Antwerp. I’m not even sure if you can call what I witnessed driving anymore. But hey, there is a reason I love telecommuting, riding my bicycle to work and using the train to commute.

Thursday April 28th 10:10 hours

We start a very interesting and fruitful talk with Vittorio about our project. He’s extremely knowledgeable on the subject, passionate about the technology and he loves to help people understand and use it better. We’re happy with what we learned and the talk ends with us keeping our promise to Arlindo & Vittorio. We brought Belgian chocolates. Now, we didn’t exactly manage to get “pralines”, it was a bit larger (http://twitpic.com/4qglxb). For some reason we think he’ll remember us when we send him a follow up mail.

Lessons learned. If you need to talk to some one at Microsoft don’t be afraid to ask. Also be willing to act fast and to grab an opportunity because people like Arlindo Alves from Microsoft Belgium are very good at making them happen!

New KB Article 2494016 Related to Windows Server 2008 SP1 Hyper-V: Stop error 0x0000007a When Using CVS in Redirected Access

Posted on April 27, 2011 by workinghardinit

Well not a day after my blog post Extra Info on Clustering & Hyper-V with Dynamic Memory When You Start With Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1on important hotfixes for Hyper-V clustering with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Microsoft releases a new hot fix for issue below. I’ll add it to the post to keep up to date.

Stop error 0x0000007a occurs on a virtual machine that is running on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based failover cluster with a cluster shared volume, and the state of the CSV is switched to redirected access

The KB article with instructions on how to get the hot fix is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2494016/en-us?sd=rss&spid=14134

The scenario is detailed as follows:

Consider the following scenario:

You enable the cluster shared volume (CSV) feature on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based failover cluster.
You create a virtual machine on the CSV on a cluster node.
You start the virtual machine on the cluster node.
You move the CSV owner to another cluster node, and you change the state of CSV to redirected access.
The connection that is used for redirected access is switched to another connection when one of the following scenarios occurs:
- The cable for local area network (LAN) is disconnected.
- The related network adapter is disabled.
- The connection is switched by using Failover Cluster Manager.

In this scenario, you receive a Stop error message that resembles the following in the virtual machine:

STOP 0x0000007a ( parameter1 , parameter2 , parameter3 , parameter4 )
KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR

Note

The parameters in this Stop error message vary, depending on the configuration of the computer.
Not all "0x0000007a" Stop error messages are caused by this issue.
You may also receive other Stop error messages when this issue occurs. For example, you may receive a "0x0000004F" Stop error message.

Extra Info on Clustering & Hyper-V with Dynamic Memory When You Start With Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1:

Posted on April 26, 2011 by workinghardinit

Here’s a quick “heads up” if your starting to use or thinking about using Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 for your Hyper-V clusters. The most common issues I’ve seen in the wild are:

https://blog.workinghardinit.work/2011/04/01/kb2230887-hotfix-for-dynamic-memory-with-windows-2008-standard-web-edition-does-not-apply-to-without-hyper-v-editions/ This one is being worked on and the hotfix will be re-released to support the “Without Hyper-V” SKU of Windows Server 2008 SP2. It’s a simple oversight but one that can be important when your Hyper-V clusters are filled with that SKU.
We also got bitten by this one Déjà vu Bug: The network connection of a running Hyper-V virtual machine may be lost under heavy outgoing network traffic on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, but the hotfix was already available luckily.
And than one to head and to read the TechNet forum about Cluster Validation Bug In Windows 2008 R2 SP1 – Disk has a Persistent Reservation on it. They are also working on a fix. I’ve written a blog post on this and I suggest you read it and also take note of the discussion in the TechNet forum.
UPDATE: The hotfix for issue 3 has become available today, April 26th 2011 as announced on the TechNet forum here:

A hotfix is now available that addresses the Win2008 R2 service pack 1 issue with Validate on a 3+ node cluster. This is KB 2531907. The KB article and download link will be published shortly, in the mean time you can obtain this hotfix immediately free of charge by calling Microsoft support and referencing KB 2531907. Update 27/05/2011 Here is the link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2531907/en-us?sd=rss&spid=14134

An other one that I haven’t seen in the wild is:

Windows Server 2008 R2 installation may hang if more than 64 logical processors are active. There is is a workaround and a hotfix for this one.

Issue: When you try to install Windows Server 2008 R2 on a computer that has more than 64 logical processors, Windows Setup may stop responding in one of the following operations:

Initialization of Windows Setup
One of the two restarts that are required to complete Setup

Cause: This issue occurs because of an error in the Network Driver Interface Specification.This issue occurs because of an error in the Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) driver.
When a computer has more than 64 logical processors, the NDIS driver does not correctly handle some operations. Therefore, the computer encounters stop responding issues and other system failures.

I don’t have any nodes under my care who have more than 64 logical processors so that’s why I guess Smile But with ever more cores available you it’s bound to happen in the near future.

Update 2: To keep me busy this KB article was released within 24 hours of me posting this blog on a BSOD with CSV and redirected access for witch a hot fix is available