Test Layout

We work with Dell servers and they come with Broadcom network cards. In general they work well, but they have an issue when being used as Hyper-V hosts. Virtual machine queues which in theory improve performance end up bogging down networking. Symptoms we've seen: Slow file copying to/from VMs over the network. Dropped network connection for entire host that is fixed by reboot. In both cases the fix is to disable virtual machine queues (VMQ). We had been doing it in the properties of the physical network on the Hyper-V host. However, we were recently having issues with a host and that option wasn't in the interface provided by the driver. Some blogs were referring to using registry edits to disable it. However, a faster and easier way in Windows Server 2012 R2 (maybe also Windows Server 2012, but I haven't verified) is by using Windows PowerShell. To view the VMQ status of your network adapters: Get-NetAdapterVmq To disable VMQ for all adapters: Get-NetAdapterVmq | Disable-...

I normally focus on troubleshooting with my blog posts, but this one is an exception. I wrote up a section for course manual on BitLocker in Windows 10 that includes a couple of short activities enabling BitLocker. However, I'm concerned that that activities could take an extended period of time. So, this blog post is providing screenshots of what those activities look like. Before I start with the steps, I was pleasantly surprised that I was easily able to get BitLocker going in a VM without doing anything goofy. Once upon a time, to get BitLocker going, we needed to use a virtual floppy to store the startup key. There is now an option to use a password instead. I haven't looked at this in a while and this is probably not a new option. I'm going to guess that Windows 8.1 at least probably had the same. There are three nice things about a startup password for BitLocker: You don't need a TPM in your computer to make it work. Many computers don't have a TPM so that re...

I just completed a new install of DPM for a client on a new server. The number of servers is fairly small. So, it wasn't worthwhile to migrate the existing backups to the new server. Instead, I just did a new install of DPM and reinstalled the DPM client software to point them at the new server. After doing the initial backups, all looked good except for a generation 2 virtual machine running Windows Server 2012 R2. This server has the error Replica is inconsistent for Bare Metal Recovery and System State . All other data backed up fine. Most of the problems I've ever had with DPM were due to Windows Backup not being installed on the server being backed up. Usually, installing that feature fixes any issues. However, in this case it was already installed. Which makes sense because the servers were being backed up successfully by the other DPM server. The application event log gave me: Event ID: 517, Error The backup operation that started at DateAndTime has failed with the fo...

Had an interesting issue on a new Dell server this week. Normally we are installing Windows Server 2012 R2 but a client had a requirement for Windows 2008 R2 on this particular server to run DPM 2010. Did our usual installation route, but the install hung at the first screen where you select language and keyboard settings. Initially I thought this might be occurring because I had the ISO mounted remotely through the iDRAC, but the same error occured on site too. It turns out that the problem was due to USB 3.0 drivers. The newest Dell servers have only USB 3.0 ports and Windows Server 2008 R2 does not include USB 3.0 drivers, only USB 2.0 drivers. For the higher end R430/T430 servers you can change the USB support to 2.0 in the BIOS for installing older operating systems. For the R330/T330 and lower, it isn't possible to turn off USB 3.0 in the BIOS. Ultimately the solution was to inject USB 3.0 drivers into the Windows Server 2008 R2 install media. Which sounds like a giant pain b...

Spam with attached malware has been going crazy lately. It's a complaint that all of our clients are dealing with. Antispam software doesn't seem to be able to keep up with new variants that are showing up each day. Many of the spam messages spoof your domain in the sender address. For example, I might receive a spam message from admin@conexion.ca when my email address is in the conexion.ca domain. Fortunately, in Exchange Server, we can modify the Internet receive connector to block messages from your accepted domains. This means that emails with your domains as the From address will not be accepted from the Internet. To block inbound messages from our own domain, we remove the extended AD permission ms-exch-smtp-accept-authoritative-domain-sender for the anonymous user on the Internet receive connector. Assuming that have already identified that connector, the following command removes the permission: Get-ReceiveConnector "Internet" | Get-ADPermission -User "NT...

Normally when you create a user account in Windows 10, the first thing asked is How will this person sign in?" This identifies whether  the account is a local account or a Microsoft account. Today as I was developing some course material for user accounts in Windows 10, this screen was missing from my laptop. Instead, it went directly in to asking for account information for a local user account. After much searching around, I finally figured out that my laptop had no network connectivity. I had just installed a Windows Insider build and the new build killed WiFi on my laptop. Once the WiFi connectivity was restored the new account wizard behaved as expected. I expect you would see the same behaviour in Windows 8.1 when disconnected from the network.

I got a comment back from a technical editor today that I didn't need quotes around the path in a CD command at the command prompt. I was surprised because the path included spaces. However, after testing, it's true! In the past I would have done: cd "folder1\foldername with spaces" However, this version (without quotes) works just as well: cd folder1\foldername with spaces Since it worked in Windows 10, I tried out Windows 8.1. It works in Windows 8.1 too. It's funny the little things you learn sometimes.