SQL Server Maintenance Plan "Access Denied"

Sometimes you might find your SQL Server maintenance plans do not run and when you look in the history you can see that the message "access denied" is displayed. When you look at the Job however it has the correct Owner is assigned to the Job.

The NETWORK SERVICE account is the key to this behaviour, it will be the this account that executes the Job and this account that may not have the permissions to the destination you need.

So just make sure you allow NETWORK SERVICE to Write permission to your destination and your SQL Jobs will run again successfully.

2x Thin Client PXE Boot Issue - TCAC008

We use the 2x Thin Client from www.2x.com it is a really cool PXE booting Thin Client for Terminal Services and Citrix. It has been working at our clients for months without a hitch but his morning all our users had this message displayed on their computers when starting up.

We searched the 2x Knowledge Base and could not find this error and it is not in the manual either so we were a but stumped.

Then we got a call from another office that they had the same issue. The penny dropped it must be something used at each site, the licence!

We checked and the licence we had entered was lost in the back end server application, we re entered the details and we were back in business.

Vmware Data Recovery Performance

We use VMWares Data Recovery as a backup for our vSphere infrastructure, now I know a lot of people do not consider this a robust backup solution and use other agents for that role, we had to make do with what we had in this case and make this work for us.

As an application when it works, it works well and I can restore a server to a point in time and I can mount restore points to replace files that have been changed, usually I use Shadow Copy for this but there are those users who have changed a file months ago or need it for a retention reason.

The problem with DR comes with the Integrity Checks and Catalog of the DeDupe Storage, I use 1TB VMDK files on NFS NAS because I need to store multiple backups and DR only supports two destinations at once so I need to get the most out of them in terms of capacity.

Often I will find my backups have failed because they have exceeded their time window due to the destination running a daily Integrity Check and the check on a 1TB NFS VMDK takes a long time to finish.

So what can be done, well one is to try to limit the Integrity checks to once a week and this can be done by editing the Data Recovery Appliance from the Linux console.

So the first thing to do is to logon to the appliance so open the appliance from the console and use the default credentials of "root" and "vmw@re" But be aware the keyboard may well be mapped to US so the @ symbol will actually be the " on a a UK keyboard.

Once logged on you can then create the INI file with the command

vi /var/vmware/datarecovery/datarecovery.ini

In this file you can then add the header [Options}

Then to change the Integrity check Interval enter on its own line

IntegrityCheckInterval=7

To close the file and save enter :q!

There are multiple other options available and you can read about those here

http://bit.ly/qFHj2J

http://bit.ly/oKwn3I

Post SBS 2011 Post Installation Known Errors

There are several errors post a SBS 2011 installation that can be safely ignored. Here they all are

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2483007/en-us?sd=rss&spid=1167

SidebySide errors on your Windows 2008 R2 Servers

If you start seeing a lot of Event ID 33 errors in your Application Logs on a Windows 2008 R2 Server then you will want to read this KB article.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2507938

It is nothing to worry about but is notification of security when using the Command Prompt.

Sharepoint Foundation Application Log Event 2137

I have a few customers with SBS 2011 and this is now shipping with Sharepoint Foundation Server 2010. When you perform Windows Updates on SBS 2011 it will no longer upgrade the Sharepoint Databases automatically for you and as a result you can leave your Sharepoint Databases in a unsupported state. This when you see the Event ID 2137 in the application log.

So here is what you need to do.


Patching SharePoint is a two-step process. The updated binaries are first installed and then psconfig must be run to update the SharePoint databases. SBS 2008 uses Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and updates automatically run PSconfig when installed via Automatic Updates or Windows Server Update Services. SharePoint Foundation 2010 changes the method in which patches are installed. PSconfig no longer runs automatically after an update is installed. The SharePoint binary files are updated with the patch but the databases are not automatically upgraded. SharePoint runs in a compatibility mode that still allows the sites to function with the older version databases. The SharePoint Health Analyzer will scan the databases every night at midnight to determine if an upgrade is required. If the SharePoint Health Analyzer detects an upgrade is required, it will log the following error in the application event log:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation
Event ID: 2137
Task Category: Health
Level: Error
User: CONTOSO\spfarm
Computer: CONTOSOSERVER.contoso.local

Description: The SharePoint Health Analyzer detected an error. Product / patch installation or server upgrade required. All required products must be installed on all servers in the farm, and all products should have the same patching and upgrade level across the farm.

Upgrade is required on server CONTOSOSERVER. Without the upgrade, the server is not in a supported state.

On server CONTOSOSERVER, once all required products and/or patches are installed, perform an upgrade by either running PSConfigUI.exe or by executing the command "PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures". If a former upgrade attempt has failed, you may need to resolve upgrade specific issues before attempting upgrade again. Refer to the upgrade status page (http://contososerver:19158/_admin/UpgradeStatus.aspx) for information about current and prior upgrade attempts, and to determine issues that may be preventing upgrade from succeeding. For more information about this rule, see "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=142700".

In order to update the SharePoint databases, you must manually run the PSconfig utility. To run the utility:

1. Open an Administrative command prompt.
2. Change directory to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN
3. Run PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures

Note: The Companyweb site will be inaccessible while the command is running. It is best to run the command after business hours. The amount of time the command takes to run will vary on the size of the database and the speed of the machine. On a reference machine with 8 logical processors, 32GB of RAM and a 2GB content database, the command took approximately 5 minutes to execute.

The SharePoint configuration wizard will launch and perform the configuration tasks. When the command is finished, you should see the following message:

Successfully completed the SharePoint Products configuration.
Total number of configuration settings run: 6
Total number of successful configuration settings: 6
Total number of unsuccessful configuration settings: 0
Successfully stopped the configuration of SharePoint Products.
Configuration of the SharePoint Products has succeeded.

For additional information on SharePoint Foundation 2010 patches see the following TechNet site: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff806326.aspx

Disable SSL 2.0 for PCI Compliance

If you need to switch off SSl 2.0 on an ISA Server for a PCI Compliance Scan this is quite simple to do. First you can switch off PCT and then SSL 2.0


Click Start, click Run, type regedt32 or type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate the following registry key:

HKey_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders \SCHANNEL\Protocols\PCT 1.0\Server
On the Edit menu, click Add Value.
In the Data Type list, click DWORD.
In the Value Name box, type Enabled, and then click OK.

Note If this value is present, double-click the value to edit its current value.
Type 00000000 in Binary Editor to set the value of the new key equal to "0".
Click OK. Restart the computer.

Perform the same change for the SSL 2.0 key