Yet Another IT Professional Blog

This is a weird issue that I don't fully understand why it would happen. But the symptoms are very persistent as we're able to reproduce these behavior easily. Issue: The MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queuing) fails to create Public Queues and throws  "the System.Messaging.MessageQueueException (0x80004005): A workgroup installation computer does not support the operation" exception.

Problem Description; I had this issue on one of my backup jobs recently and I was able to fix the issue with the solution explained below. After a quick google search, I realized that I'm not the only one and neither you are :) Full Error Description; Failed to prepare guest for hot backup. Error: VSSControl: Failed to prepare guest for freeze, wait tim eout 9 00 sec Error: VSSControl: Failed to prepare guest for freeze, wait timeout 900 sec

HOW TO IMPORT / EXPORT ActiveDirectory User List with Properties (French Characters – UTF8)   1- Export Users to a CSV file from an OU with the following command. (Don’t forget to “import-module ActiveDirectory” when you start PowerShell) Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase "OU=Administrateurs Systeme,OU=Utilisateurs,dc=domain,dc=com" -properties * | Export-Csv C:\AdminSysteme.csv -Encoding UTF8

Server 2016 is out and although it's still a baby, I've decided to slowly put it in production as a secondary storage/backup server. I was testing on a Dell PowerEdge T320 server with 10GB & 1GB nics and other than some iscsi configuration, everything else was at default settings on the system. Please note that this is a physical machine and not a VM! Server 2016 is great and I have to admit, the experience has been really good so far... I'm sharing one of the difficult issues I had

Problem: When Veeam backup job is running for a SQL server VM and the "application aware processing" is activated on the job Veeam is not capable of using the VSS Writers to backup the databases. Instead, Veeam will proceed with a full backup. The disadvantage is when you need to restore backups in crash-consistent state, you won't be able to recover just the application items (databases, mailboxes, AD objects, etc...), you'll have to do a full restore or just OS files but no application objects recovers. Notes: Veeam even has a KB article for the issue. https://www.veeam.com/kb2095 Most of the time, it looks like it's a database naming issue. If your database names contains spaces in them, Veeam is not able to use the SQL VSS Writers. I strongly suggest that you go trough that article before trying the solution found here. However, in my case, none of the solutions worked from veeam's article. Solution: I had to login to my SQL server and under...

Windows 10 is coming and Microsoft is pushing out its updates to prepare our computers for this fresh operating system from Microsoft. But do they really need to be that aggressive so that our existing services stops working? Frustrating monday!

I’m a big fan of easy deployment, scripting, automating etc… Therefore I love deployment tools. I am constantly using tools like Microsoft System Center, WDS, MDT, etc… Thanks to these kinds of tools, I can be alone and have the workforce of an IT army :)

I am not sure if this happens under all circumstances but I wasn't able to use the boot.wim file from a Server 2012 R2 setup media. In my WDS server, I added a boot.wim file from the Server 2012 R2 setup ISO as a new Boot Image. I used a vm to boot into the PXE server and try the new boot image but I got the following error; File: \Windows\System32\winload.exe Status : 0xc000000f Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

Recently, I was working on a vSphere 4.1 upgrade to vSphere 5.5 and of course, first thing first; I had to update all the physical servers to the latest versions of BIOS, firmware, drivers… At a first glance, this seems an easy procedure. I’m thinking to use the Dell iDrac console to update most of the stuff but I soon realized that I wasn’t able to update NIC firmware and BIOS through the iDrac. When you go to the Dell Support web site to download the drivers for a specific model of server, you’ll realize that Dell is offering at least 4-5 different troubleshooting and updater utilities… Some of them are as big as 7.5GB ISO files! The problem with these utilities is that they are not really well documented and it takes a lot of effort to prepare and use them.  Here are a couple of examples;

Problem : Windows Image Backup is failing while backing up a drive. In my case, it was a "bare metal" backup scenario. You may also find the following error in the "Event Viewer" under "Applications and Services Log, Microsoft, Windows, Backup" "The backup operation that started at '‎2014‎-‎05‎-‎13T16:49:41.618242900Z' has failed with following error code '0x807800C5'

WMI filtering is a very neat tool. I personally find its syntax a little complicated. Recently I came across with this 2 line article. How to WMI Filter with computer name. Here is an example. select * from Win32_ComputerSystem where Name = ‘Computer Name’ If you are looking for more WMI Filter examples, this article has it all… http://blog.enx1.com/2011/07/03/wmi-gpo-filters-for-operating-system-types/ Here is another example of how to target Windows 7 by its architecture type (X86 or X64). This is great while deploying applications through Group Policy. Not all the applications are compatible both 32 and 64 bit, so you can target only 32bit or only 64bit computers with the help of this WMI query. Here is how it looks like to target only Windows 7 X86 Systems select * from Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version like "6.1%" AND ProductType="1" AND NOT OSArchitecture = "64-bit" Targeting Windows 7 X64 Systems select * from Win32_Operatin...