Windows-Server-2003

Okay, so we received a brand new x3650 the other day entitled to replace one (or better two) of our NAS frontend servers. We installed Windows on it the other day (had to create a custom Windows Server 2003 CD first, since the default one doesn’t recognize the integrated ServeRAID), and we prepped the box during the week with the usual things. On Monday I started installing the " IBM StorageManager RDAC" MultiPath driver (since the box got two single port PCIe FC-HBA’s) and figured I’d be nice if we had this. I asked a IBM Systems Engineer of one of our partners, which told me generally there wouldn’t be a problem with Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) and the IBM MPIO driver. Only requirement would be that I’d install the new storport.sys driver (version 5.2.3790.4021) first (as in Microsoft KB932755). ...

Well, guess my " solution" didn’t work sooo good. Lemme tell you what’s happening. I successfully added the node to the cluster group, but I can’t get any resources online. The node tries bringing it online, then shows a failure and immidiately moves them over to the next node. There the resource is being successfully moved online .. So again, I’m out of ideas .. Already tried reinstalling the box, after that I could get the third node successfully into the cluster, without the " Advanced (minimum)" trick … 🤷 still ain’t bringing any resources online.

Recently, we found some systems (sadly, customer systems) that weren’t getting any Security Updates anymore. Much more sadly, them is running Windows Server 2003, and as you know Security Updates are pretty important for Windows Systems. At the time of finding this, I had no clue as to why the were not getting any updates. At first we thought it had something to do with the WSUS server, so I upgraded the WSUS 3.0 SP1 to SP2. Since that didn’t solve nothing, I went searching for a internal VM, that showed the same symptoms and I quickly found one. ...

As I wrote on Thursday, I am battling with Windows Server 2003. Now I got a list out of our change management database, which sadly ain’t that accurate. So in order to get reliable information about the target systems (in order to do some accurate planning), I ended up writing a small vbscript which simply takes the hostname on the command line (cscript //NoLogo win_sp_level.vbs 10.0.0.5) and returns a csv-like element. ...

I had myself a lot of fun today. I ended up patching a Windows Server 2003 x64 SP1, where the Task Manager wouldn’t start anymore. It simply failed (or in case of right clicking on the task bar wouldn’t even appear), so I went downstairs and pulled a hard disk out of the RAID1 array, just to be sure. Really weird Windows error I went ahead, installed SP2 (as you can see on the above picture) while having the jitters. Also installed the VirusScan I was scheduled to install, and the system came back online. Phewww. ...

After some more crunching on my VBscript, I think I finally have a working script that runs through a csv-list I point it to and walk onto each system (by ip-address only sadly) and query the os and the Service Pack that is installed. The CSV may look like this: 1 2 3 Hostname;IP;Model;Description;OS;Service-Pack;BL;Priority epimetheus;10.0.0.2;VMware guest;File-Server hades;10.0.0.1;VMware guest;Core-Router After saving that one, and running a cscript //NoLogo win_sp_level.vbs you should find a completed list like this: ...

As you might recall from my first article about this topic, I had some troubles with the Microsoft Cluster Services and the registration replication. Now, today as we tried switching the TSM-Server for some resources, we ran into this again. We were using the service install tool (dsmcutil install scheduler) to set the new password as well as the GUI. Now, as we brought the resource online with the local service manager, everything was honky dory. But as soon as we brought it online using the Cluster Manager, it failed horribly. Why ? ...

For people, who are as click and point-lazy as me, here is how you restart the service without using the service management applet. 1 2 net stop "NSClientpp (Nagios) 0.3.5.2 2008-09-24 w32" net start "NSClientpp (Nagios) 0.3.5.2 2008-09-24 w32"

Well, once you thought you don’t have any more problems, another one just pops up. I’m currently bashing my head against the wall, why the hell the forwarded (or is it redirected ?) drives are not shown in the in the “My Computer” explorer view. I pretty sure have an idea why (basically, HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Classes isn’t writeable, but that’s where Windows, or rather the Terminal Services – or whatever is creating the associations), just don’t know a clever way around/by it. ...

If you think back, I talked about my problems with MSCS while utilizing the IBM RDAC Multipath driver for Windows. Everyone I talked to about this, including our IBM business partner and it’s systems engineers; as well as some IBM systems engineer (who in fact was an freelance guy hired by IBM), told me it had to do with how we did the zoning (stuffing every controller into a single zone), and that would be the reason why the x3650 was seeing that many drives. ...