Sometimes it’s necessary to have two DNS servers that are authoritative for the same DNS namespace. This is the case if you use the same namespace for your web site and your internal Active Directory domain, e.g. terlisten-consulting.de. Or that you have created the zone terlisten-consulting.de in your Windows DNS to point specific hosts to internal IP addresses. The DNS servers at your ISP would be authoritative, and the domain controllers of your Active Directory would also be authoritative for the same domain.
This is not a specific problem of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) OmniSwitches, but I’m affected by this behaviour and it’s really, really annoying. It’s not a problem with the switch, but with the device handling of Windows.
ALE delivers a micro USB-to-USB cable with each OmniSwtich 6860E. This cable is used to connect to the console port of the switch. Each time you connect the cable, Windows will discover a new USB-to-UART bridge and creates a new COM port.
As any other environment, my lab needs some maintenance from time to time. I use a Windows 2012 R2 VM with the Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) role to keep my Windows VMs up to date. Like many others, I was surprised by KB3148812 (Update enables ESD decryption provision in WSUS in Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2), which broke my WSUS. But the fix was easy: Uninstall KB3148812 and reboot the server.
Last week, I was surprisingly booked by a customer who observed a problem in his network. Unfortunately, colleagues worked on this network some day before (moving servers, routers etc. to a new pair of HP 7509 new core switches).
It was quickly clear, that some of the clients have received the wrong DNS servers from the DHCP server. The environment is a bit unusual. The customer is running two Active Directory domains (root and sub domain) in a single layer 2 broadcast domain.
Generating a certificate signing request (CSR) is the first step towards a signed certificate. The requests is generated with the applicants private key and consists of the public key, a name and optional attributes.
To generate a CSR, you can use tools like OpenSSL on a Linux box, or sometimes the application itself can generate a CSR. But if you have a Windows box, you don’t have OpenSSL by default. And it’s unhandy to install something just for a single CSR.
Some day ago, I installed a new Exchange 2013 CU11 for some test ins my lab. Nothing fancy, just a single server deployment on a Windows Server 2012 R2 VM. I deployed this Windows Server from a template, which was updated with the latest Windows Patches and WMF some days ago. The Exchange setup went smooth. I updated the SSL certificates and the internal and external URLs for the virtual directories.
IPv6 is not really new. According to Google, 10% of all users that access Google, do this over an IPv6 connection (Source). My blog is also accessible over IPv6 since its start in January 2014 (and since January 2016 only over HTTPS - thanks to Let’s Encrypt!).
When I talk with customers about IPv6, I often hear things like “Oh, we had to disable it. Too much problems!” or “We had to disable it.
Some days ago, I blogged about the new HP StoreOnce software release 3.13.0. This release included several fixes. One fix wasn’t mentioned by me, although it’s interesting.
Fixed issue where Windows 2012 R2 built-in native backup was not supported with 3.12.x software (BZ 61232) Windows Server Backup (WSB) is part of Windows Server since Windows Server 2008. WSB can create bare metal backups and recover those backups. The same applies to system state backups, file level backups, Hyper-V VMs, Exchange etc.
A customer of mine is currently refreshing his branch office server infrastructure. A part of this project is to demote the Active Directory Domain Controllers, that are currently running in each branch office. The customer has multiple branch offices and each branch office has an Active Directory Domain Controller which is acting as file-/ print- and DHCP server. Each branch office has its own Active Directory site. The Domain Controller and the used IP subnets are assigned to the corresponding AD site.
Sometimes you have to update the OS of your DataCore Storage Server, or the server is crashed and you have to reinstall it. In both cases, a configuration backup is the starting point. The procedure remains the same, regardless if it’s an update or a reinstall after a server crash:
Install Windows Server OS Copy configuration backup file to C:\Program Files\DataCore\SANsymphony\Recovery Install DataCore SANsymphony-V Take a backup You can take the configuration backup on different ways:
