Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer

Totally useful diagraming tool!!! It requires you to have Visio as well.
Get tool here from Microsoft

Microsoft Surface Pro going to sleep every 2 minutes

I have been dealing with this issue for a while now and kept putting it on back burner. Today I just got so pissed off that I decided to have this done now or never. And thank God I did!!

For whatever odd reason surface pro was going to sleep after 2 minutes no matter what my power options were set to. I tried all kinds of settings.

After some research I found that apparently there is a power setting not available in GUI on Microsoft windows 7 and 8 this setting is called "system unattended sleep timeout". If you add following registry setting:[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0]
"Attributes"=dword:00000002
and go to power setting --> sleep - you will see a new option for "system unattended sleep timeout". Change this setting to your desired value and problems gone!!!!

Time sync with external NTP on windows server 2008 R2 DC

1. Locate PDC - C:\>netdom /query fsmo
2. Log in to PDC Server and open the command prompt.
3. Stop the W32Time service: C:\>net stop w32time
4. Configure the external time sources, type: C:\> w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist:”0.pool.ntp.org, 1.pool.ntp.org, 2.pool.ntp.org”
5. Make your PDC a reliable time source for the clients. Type: C:\>w32tm /config /reliable:yes
6. Start the w32time service: C:\>net start w32time
7. The windows time service should begin synchronizing the time. You can check the external NTP servers in the time configuration by typing: C:\>w32tm /query /configuration
8. Check the Event Viewer for any errors.

NOTE: Make sure your firewall allows NTP out before you do this or your DC will not be able to contact outside NTP servers.

Exchange DAG replication using secondary NIC betwene servers on different subnets

Recently I ran into a problem with Exchange 2010 DAG configuration. I needed to replicate databases between servers that were geographically in different sites and were each on their own separate subnets. For this purpose I wanted to use our secondary data line in order to avoid overloading our main production line with replication traffic. DAG was all set and replicating fine over production line but when I disabled replication on main NIC's and enabled it on secondary NIC's routed via secondary data line, Exchange was still pushing replication via primary NIC. Issue resolved after I collapsed DAG network on secondary ISP into a single DAG network adding both near and far subnet into it. Great article that talks just about that particular setup you can find right here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/timmcmic/archive/2011/09/26/exchange-2010-collapsing-dag-networks.aspx

Exchange 2010 view database info powershell commands

Get some info on database in particular size of it:
Get-MailboxDatabase -status | select Servername,name,databasesize

Get whole bunch of info for particular database
Get-MailboxDatabase -identity | fl

Some usefull powershell commands for fixing content index state when failed

Set content index state of particular database in PS:
Set-MailboxDatabase -identity -indexenabled $true

List databases with content index in failed state:
Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus -Server   | ? {$_.contentindexstate -eq "failed"}

Reset search index for particular database ( need to be in script directory - C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts):
.\ResetSearchIndex.ps1 -force

Update replication of catalog only on database:
Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy -identity \ -CatalogOnly

Update catalog index state only on all failed databases:
Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus -Server em-bk-exmb01  | ? {$_.contentindexstate -eq "failed"} | update-mailboxdatabasecopy -catalogonly

V2V Ubutu vm issues

Recently I was migrating 2 linux servers using v2v and ran into 2 issues.

1. ERROR - happened at first step where converter logs into VM to do what it has to do using admin credentials. Error was as follows ( Authentication error. Incorrect user name or password. This operation also requires that the source machine's SSH daemon configuration allows remote root login.) Ubuntu is one of the linux instances that does not enable root account as default so every time you need to do admin task you have to type "sudo -s" into command line. Therefore account I was using would not be able to login. Very fast RESOLUTION to this problem is to type in "sudo passwd root". This command enales root account and makes you set the password for the same. Ubuntu does not recommend this so be carefull if you decide to go this route. I personally am the only one administering these two boxes so not much concern for me.
2. ERROR - happened at 99% of conversion. Error was as follows ( An error occurred during the conversion: 'GrubInstaller::InstallGrub: /usr/lib/vmware-converter/installGrub.sh failed with return code: 127, and message: Installing GRUB1 on (hd0)... /vmware-updateGrub.sh: 59: grub:
   not found Error installing GRUB Error running vmware-updateGrub.sh through chroot into /mnt/p2v-src-root ')
• SOLUTION
• Added following code into beginning of /usr/sbin/grub-install file:
• if [ $# -eq 1 -a "$1" = "-v" ] ; then
    echo "grub-install (GNU GRUB 1.99-12ubuntu5)"
    exit 0
  fi
• More about this you can read in this thread: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1903407