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Customized ESXi images by hardware vendors

August 20th, 2012 No comments

When you install ESXi server on brand made servers (IBM, HP, DELL,…) you should use customized ESXi ISO images prepared by vendors:

I hope this will help someone.

 

 

Categories: VMWare Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Unable to initialize the Information Store service

August 16th, 2012 No comments

One Exchange 2010 server didn’t mount databases after each reboot. When I looked to Event viewer I saw following events:

The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service terminated with service-specific error %%-2137221213

The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service terminated with service-specific error %%-2137221213

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No Client Access server running Exchange 2010 or a later version were found in site…

August 14th, 2012 3 comments

One of our customer has Exchange working Exchange 2010 environment. Customer wanted to create one exchange mailbox server in other physical location. Customer would use this new mailbox server to host only archive databases. So I have installed new mailbox server in separate physical location (in separate AD site), created couple databases and configured users to use this databases as archive.

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Quickie: Reliability Monitor

August 8th, 2012 No comments

Sometimes you need to have a overview what happened on OS couple days/weeks/monts ago. Before I knew there is some utility I would look into events and look for some problem ones.

Now I know there is a utility in Windows Vista and higher which is called Reliability Monitor which records all major changes/errors on OS. You can run it from Start Menu typying “Reliabi..” and you will find:

 

Reliability Monitor

Reliability Monitor

 

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Exchange log number exceeded

August 7th, 2012 No comments

Today one of our customer called that he has all exchange 2003 databases down and he cannot mount them.

In eventlog I saw following error:

 

Event 9518 error 0xfffffddc

Event 9518 error 0xfffffddc

 

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Quickie: List encrypted files

August 7th, 2012 No comments

If you want to list all encrypted files by EFS you can use command:

cipher [PATH]

This command will list all files in PATH. Encrypted files will have “E” character in front of it:

 

List encrypted files

List encrypted files

 

This command is great to handle encrypted files. Look at cipher /? command output.

 

Problem Steps Recorder

August 7th, 2012 No comments

I found great utility builtin Windows Vista and higher. It’s called Problem Steps Recorder. It’s mentioned to use it by users to record their problems and then send recorded screens to Helpdesk/Administrator.

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Quickie: Display detailed activation and license status

August 6th, 2012 No comments

Sometimes you need to find out if your windows is activated and quickes way to do so is to run command:

slmgr /dli

This command can also do

  • /ipk <Product Key> – Install product key (replaces existing one)
  • /ato [Activation ID] – Activate Windows
  • /dli – Display license information
  • /dlv – Display detailed license information
  • /xpr – Expiration date for current license state
  • …AND MANY MORE

For full help use slmgr /?.

 

Problem with enterprise certificate distribution

July 2nd, 2012 1 comment

Once upon the time I played with enterprise certification authority at one of our customers. I’ve created new certificate for certification authority. And then problem begun.

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Certification Authority – decrease key lenght

June 27th, 2012 No comments

One my colleague wanted to make one of our customer’s environment very secure so he decided to install Enterprise Certification Authority environment with 4kB keys. He created one offline root CA with 4kB key (Windows 2003). This computer is offline all the time. Another CA is Issuing CA which key is signed by root CA. This issuing CA also had 4kB key (Windows 2008 R2). Certificates issued by issuing CA were from 2kB-16kB.

Problem raised when customer wanted to create certificate for Cisco devices to secure Wifi. To make those devices use and trust certificates from issuing CA customer needed to import Root and Issuing CA public certificates into those Cisco devices. And this was a problem. Those Cisco devices didn’t want to work with more than 2kB certificates.

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