Windows 7 Windows Management

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Patrick

Around the office, most of us are used to using UltraMon to manage our windows on the beautiful 23″ monitors we have. Unfortunately, for the time being, UltraMon doesn’t provide support for 7, so some of us are left manually wrangling windows around.

In a rare moment of helpfulness, I managed to find some keyboard shortcuts to help. One of the plus sides here, is that when using the shortcuts below, a window can be docked to the inside of your dual monitor setup (since you can’t do it with the mouse).

Win + Up Arrow	Maximizes the window.
Win + Down Arrow	Minimizes a restored window. Restores a maximized window.
Win + Left Arrow	Docks the window to the left side of the screen. If the window is already docked, restores. If the window is docked to the right side of the screen, re-docks to the left side.
Win + Right Arrow	Docks the window to the right side of the screen. If the window is already docked, restores. If the window is docked to the left side of the screen, re-docks to the right side.
Win + Shift + Left Arrow	Moves the window to the left monitor, assuming dual monitors.
Win + Shift + Right Arrow	Moves the window to the right monitor, assuming dual monitors.
Win + Home	Minimizes all windows except the one currently in focus.
Win + Space	Shows the desktop (the “peek” feature).
Win + Plus Sign	Activates the magnifier and zooms in.
Win + Minus Sign	Activates the magnifier and zooms out.

Oh, and for those of you that I see using “Ctrl+Alt+Del” and pressing “Enter” to lock your computer, try Win + L.

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Release Candidate

Posted on May 27, 2009 by Patrick

For future reference, here are the remote administration tools for Windows 7:

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC)

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows® 7 RC enables IT administrators to manage roles and features that are installed on computers that are running Windows Server® 2008 R2, Windows Server® 2008, or Windows Server® 2003, from a remote computer that is running Windows 7 RC.

Unsupported Cluster Configuration

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Patrick

Maybe Michael should go away more often. I seem to get a lot more done when he’s out.

Today, I added the third node to the Hyper-V R2 cluster we’re currently testing. When I did, VMM freaked out and all of the guests on the other two nodes went into a warning state. The error they displayed:

Warning (13921)

Highly available virtual machine <INSERT NAME> is not supported by VMM because one or more of its network adapters is not configured correctly.

Recommended Action

Ensure that all of the virtual network adapters are either disconnected or connected to highly available virtual networks.

So, how do we fix this issue? You use Google, of course. A quick Google-ing gave the following information (edited for grammar):

For a VN [Virtual Network] to be marked as HA, the location and tag of the VN in all nodes must be the same. For each VN in the cluster[, be sure that]:

The NICs to which the VN is attached in each node have the same location.

The Tag in the VN in each node is the same.

The VN Name is the same.

After you commit changes, refresh the cluster so ensure that the VN is detected as HA.

Our problem, specifically, was related to the network tagging. To fix the tag, do the following:

Open VMM, and navigate to the “Hosts” view.
Right click on one of the hosts and select “Properties.”
Navigate to the “Networking” tab.
Once, there, you’ll need to click each network (in this case, we have two) and add text to the “Network tag:” field. Keep in mind that these tags will need to be the same across all your hosts in order to make them highly available.
Rinse and repeat for the rest of your hosts.
Once you finish tagging, you’ll need to refresh the cluster node in VMM.

That fixed our problem. Maybe it will help you.

More information here in the “Troubleshoot ‘Unsupported Cluster Configuration’ Status for a Highly Available Virtual Machine” section.

The subsystem needed…

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Patrick

So, I’m bee-bopping along setting up a new Server 2008 R2 virtual host, when I get to our SAN software’s install. When I tried to run the executable, the following error was thrown:

The subsystem needed to support the image type is not present.

A quick Googling led me to this Technet post. The relevate parts of the post:

WOW64 is not present in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. This change was made because Microsoft Hyper-V Server is supposed to be a single purpose OS, and users have asked for it to be as small as possible. So, whenever possible, we will not include general Windows components that are not needed by Hyper-V.

And the resolution:

Issue this command to install WOW64 support:

start /w ocsetup ServerCore-WOW64

And of course: reboot.

Server Core Patches

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Patrick

Need to see what patches/hotfixes are installed on Server Core? There’s a command for that:

WMIC QFE

You can also send this to a text file for easier viewing:

WMIC QFE > [FILENAME].txt

2008 R2 High Availability

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Patrick

Michael and I are probably the only two people in the world that would find this even remotely amusing, but…

We’re testing 2008 R2′s Failover Clustering. In particular, we’re going to test Hyper-V and highly available machines. So, in Michael’s infinite wisdom, he asked me what to name the first test cluster. I suggested the following:

Installation Results

Posted on April 6, 2009 by Patrick

When you run the script mentioned here (to updated a Server Core 2008 install), you’ll see a part of the output called “Installation Results.” In the infinite wisdom of Microsoft, they don’t seem to feel the need to plainly document these results. They have instead included a number (1-3) to indicate the results of the installation. Here are these codes in case you’re looking:

Exit Codes:
0 = scripting failure
1 = error obtaining or installing updates
2 = installation successful, no further updates to install
3 = reboot needed; rerun script after reboot

More here.

Error 0x800704C8 in VMM

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Patrick

I was trying to deploy a new virtual machine today via Virtual Machine Manager, and kept getting this error (names changed to protect the innocent):

Error (12700)
VMM cannot complete the Hyper-V operation on the [virtualhost.domain.com] server because of the error: ‘[VIRTUALGUEST]‘ failed to add device ‘Microsoft Emulated Ethernet Port’. (Virtual machine ID 26DD8B56-0594-446A-8084-405218737EB0)

The Virtual Machines configuration 26DD8B56-0594-446A-8084-405218737EB0 at ‘J:\VS\[VIRTUALGUEST]‘ is no longer accessible: The requested operation cannot be performed on a file with a user-mapped section open. (0x800704C8)
(Unknown error (0×8000))

Recommended Action
Resolve the issue in Hyper-V and then try the operation again.

Well, that’s really good advice – clear the error and try again. So, a quick Google-ing turned up a Microsoft KB article: Creating or starting a Hyper-V virtual machine on Windows Server 2008 or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 may fail with error: 0x800704C8. Oddly enough, this was exactly my issue:

CAUSE

This issue can be caused by antivirus software that is installed in the parent partition and the real-time scanning component is configured to monitor the Hyper-V virtual machine files.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, configure the real-time scanning component within the antivirus software to exclude the following directories and files:

Default virtual machine configuration directory (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V)

Custom virtual machine configuration directories

Default virtual hard disk directory (C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks)

Custom virtual hard disk directories

Snapshot directories

Vmms.exe

Vmwp.exe

Notes:

If virtual machines are missing from the Hyper-V Management console, you must configure the antivirus exclusions, and then restart the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service.

If the error code was 0x800704C8, it is likely that the virtual machine configuration file was corrupted and the virtual machine may need to be re-created or restored from backup if restarting the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service does not resolve the issue.

Chalk one up for Microsoft KB articles. Now, a little further down in the KB article, it suggests (per Planning for Hyper-V Security) installing the antivirus on the guest (which we do) and not on the host (which we do, too):

Do not run any applications in the parent partition. Run all applications on virtual machines, which use child partitions. For example, if antivirus is required, be sure to run it on the VMs rather than the parent partition. Keeping the parent partition free of applications and running on a Windows Server 2008 core installation means fewer host updates, since nothing needs software updates except the Windows Server 2008 core installation, the Hyper-V service components, and the small (~600KB) hypervisor.

Windows Web Application Gallery

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Patrick

I stumbled across something today I think is pretty cool: the Windows Web Application Gallery. From iis.net:

The Windows Web Application Gallery makes it easy to explore, discover and install popular community ASP.Net and PHP applications on Windows. Users can browse and view applications for different types of Web sites, ranging from photo galleries to blogs to ecommerce sites.

The Web Application Gallery integrates with the Web Platform Installer 2.0, so that when a user clicks “Install” for an application, the Web Platform Installer 2.0 launches with context set on the user’s selection. This powerful combination of application discovery and simplified installation makes it easier than ever for community-based applications to run on Windows.

This has some neat implications. For one, developers can have their stuff put out for the whole world to see – and install in a few clicks. Another, if you run a web server (like me) that has several blogs on it, this could streamline installing, say, WordPress. Or Gallery for your users.

I don’t get terribly excited about some stuff Microsoft does, but this is pretty cool. That is, if it takes off.

Create a Service in Windows

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Patrick

There are only a few things I hate more than SPAM. Only a few.

Anyway, I’ve been migrating to my new server and with that comes email. And, of course, with email comes SPAM filtering. So, I’ve been trying to run SpamAssassin. Luckily, someone ported SA to Windows. But, in this case, you have to run the executable or the filtering doesn’t happen.

Now, any self-respecting admin won’t stay logged into his server 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s where services come in. Here’s a nice little (easy) write up for creating your own service in Windows. Best of all, it was written by Microsoft.

A note: this article says it’s for 2003 and below (and does mention anything about 64-bit). I’ve just finished installing spamd.exe as a service on my machine and it works fine. That said, I offer no warranties or gaurantees this will work for everyone. Alternatively, there is this from Microsoft’s K nowledgebase – I just didn’t have access to the resource kit at the time. Happy spamming.

Tales from the Datacenter