A friend of mine who is still a student has been building his own VMware lab environment for some time now. Yesterday he contacted me that he couldn’t get the “VMware VirtualCenter Server service” to start anymore.
The log showed: EventID 7021 “The VMware VirtualCenter Server service terminated with service-specific error 2 (0×2).”
A quick google search however showed that many things could be causing this error. Because it was a lab environment, I wanted to upgrade the virtual center to the latest version. Before doing so, I took a look at the VMware blog post covering the latest update 5.1.0B. In the readme it said:
“SSO service dependency on MS SQL
When SSO is installed with local Microsoft SQL Server, the services must start in a specific order.
SSO must start after SQL Server starts. If SSO starts before SQL Server starts, restart the SSO
server after SQL server starts.”
Doing so resolved the issue. To prevent the issue from re-occurring, I made the SSO service dependent on the SQL service.
I don’t understand why this is not part of the automated installation process though 😦
Tags: dependency, ICT, Microsoft, MS SQL, MSSQL, service, SQL Server, SSO, The VMware VirtualCenter Server service terminated with service-specific error 2 (0×2), virtual center, virtualcenter, virtualization, VMware, VMware Virtual Center, VMware virtualcenter, VMware VirtualCenter Server service, VMware vSphere, vSphere, Windows
Tags: 070-410, 070-411, 070-412, 070-413, 070-414, 070-417, 70-410, 70-411, 70-412, 70-413, 70-414, 70-417, blog, blog post, Born To Learn, certification, Exam, forum, learn, Learning, Microsoft, microsoft learning, Microsoft Virtual Academy, MVA, preparation, preparation resources, resources, Server 2012 Virtual Labs, Tweakers, Tweakers.net, Virtual Academy, virtual lab, virtual labs, wiki, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012
After the recent flood of Microsoft product releases, a lot of new exams have been released as well.
Even though I’ve been able to pass quite a number of these exams in beta, I still failed some of them unfortunately. Since I’m planning to retake these exams, I’ll take advantage of the second shot program. Should I fail again, which I don’t hope … at least I’ll still have a free retake.
So if you’re planning to take some exams in the near future take a look at the second shot program and the Microsoft certification packs that provide discounts.
Tags: certification, Exam, Fail, Free, Microsoft, Pass, Prometric, retake, Second Shot, second shot program, Voucher
For those who are unfamiliar with Desktop Virtualization, Train Signal is providing a free video series “Intro To Desktop Virtualization on YouTube.
Be sure to check out these websites and twitter accounts as well if you want to keep track of what Train Signal is doing:
http://www.trainsignal.com
@TrainSignal
@davidmdavis
Tags: desktop, infrastructure, Microsoft, train signal, Training, Training Videos, trainsignal, VDI, videos, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, virtualization, VMware, Youtube
While I was studying for the 74-324 exam, I was reminded that by default the “Default MRM Policy” will be applied to a new mailbox (when you enable archiving)..
Very simply put, some items will be deleted or archived after a specific period of time. By example, files in your deleted folder will be removed after 30 days. This is unexpected for most people who are used to be able to browse their “deleted items” indefinitely.
Personally, I don’t want this to be automated because I want to be completely in control of my mail items. Especially considering the very large mailbox sizes with Office 365 (and even unlimited size for some subscription plans) I have disabled this “Default MRM Policy”.
You can set/disable the retention policy either using PowerShell or using the web interface by going to the mailbox, details, retention policy and selecting no policy.
Also if you want to know more about archiving, take a look at a couple of blog posts created on Techdom.nl by my colleague Dominique Hermans.
PS:Also take a look at this great post discussing backups, recovering deleted items and why you might want to enable litigation hold: http://www.spaceage.co.za/blog/technical/office-365-backup-data/. Also take a look at this article covering single instance recovery: http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/hh125820.aspx.
Tags: backup, delete, deleted item, deleted items, e-mail, Exchange, Exchange 2010, Exchange online, ICT, litigation hold, mail, messaging, Messaging Records Management, Microsoft, mrm, recovery, retention, retention policy, sir, zingle instance recovery
Last chance ….
At the 31st of January these special Windows 8 related offers are ending:
This means that the Windows 8 (Pro) upgrade will be much more expensive:
http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2013/01/18/update-on-windows-8-pricing.aspx
On the Microsoft Store it looks like it’s current upgrade price of 30 euros will become 280 euros.
So even if you don’t need/want Windows 8 yet, it might be worth considering to just buy it right now.
For more information, including how to perform a clean install when you’ve bough the upgrade, please check my previous post.
Tags: Free, Microsoft, Upgrade Offer, UpgradeOffer, Windows, Windows 8, Windows 8 Media Center Pack, Windows Media Center, Windows Media Center Pack
Summary of what Windows To Go (WTG) is
In short, Windows To Go is a Windows 8 Enterprise feature that allows you to boot and run Windows 8 from a USB flash drive (USB stick).
Potential reasons and scenarios for using Windows To Go
There are many potential reasons and scenarios for using Windows To Go, but here are some of them from the top of my head:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Apple, BitLocker, boot, boot from usb, Bring Your Own Device, BYOD, dual boot, dualboot, encryption, Enterprise, flexible workspace, flexible workspace environment, Hyper-V, hyper-v server, mac, Microsoft, personalized desktop, removable, removable disk, SanDisk, SanDisk Extreme, Server 2012, test, USB, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, usb boot, USB Flash Drive, USB stick, Windows, Windows 8, Windows 8 Enterprise, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012, Windows To Go, WTG
In yesterday’s post I described that for my purposes it was still necessary to run VMware Workstation sometimes despite having Client Hyper-V installed on my Windows 8 machine.
What you have to keep in mind though, is that you’re already running a hypervisor when you have Client Hyper-V installed in Windows 8. Installing and running VMware Workstation might cause problems. So unfortunately you cannot run them at the same time. This is also true for other virtualization products like by example virtualbox.
As a workaround you can either uninstall or (temporarily) disable Hyper-V. When you want to switch between Hyper-V and VMware Workstation it is ofcourse best to just temporarily disable Hyper-V.
In this forum post, a couple of methods are described to (temporarily) disable Hyper-V. It includes creating a seperate boot menu entry to boot with Hyper-V disabled and modifying the setting either through registry or a command. All methods do require a reboot however.
PS:
- This kind of configuration is ofcourse not supported and should only be used for testing purposes in non production environments.
- Depending on both your hardware and what your planning to do, you might also want to consider:
- Running VMware ESXi from a USB stick
- Running Windows 8 from a USB stick with Windows To Go (WTG).
- It should also work on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 and up, but I haven’t tested it.
Tags: Citrix, Citrix XenServer, Client Hyper-V, ESXi, home lab, Hyper-V, Hyper-V 3.0, hypervisor, Microsoft, multiple hypervisors, nested esxi, nested hypervisor, Server 2012, test lab, virtualbox, virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware ESXi 5.1, VMware Fusion, VMware vSphere, VMware vSphere 5.1, VMware Workstation, VMware Workstation 9, Windows, Windows 2012 Server, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows To Go, workstation, WTG, XenServer
On a regular basis Microsoft and its partners host Free IT Camps. In the past I’ve blogged about them because I really think they’re a good way to quickly get up-to-date on products and technologies. Besides that it’s also a good way to get to know other people.
On the Microsoft Events website you can see which future events are available and not just IT Camps events.
Also should you not be able to attend an IT Camp, for Server 2012 you can also use IT Camps On-Demand.
Tags: Event, Events, Free, IT Camp, IT Camps, IT Camps On-Demand, Learning, Microsoft, Microsoft Events, Microsoft IT Camp, Microsoft IT Camps, MS IT Camp, MS IT Camps, study
In a previous blog post I’ve already shown this script that use PowerCLI to get the percentage of physical and virtual servers from your VMware environment for each Virtual Center server. This script however only took into account ESX hosts and VM’s in each Virtual Center server separately.
This means that:
- The UCS blades weren’t taken into account as physical servers.
- No percentage was being calculated for each physical location.
This new script automates determining for each location the number of physical and virtual servers in VMware vSphere and Cisco UCS.
PS: You can get more detailed information from the script, but it has been disabled using comments by default.
Tags: automation, Cisco, Cisco UCS, Cisco Unified Communication System, corporate social responsibility, CSR, Green IT, Microsoft, PowerCLI, Powershell, Script, Scripting, UCS, virtual center, virtual infrastructure, virtualcenter, virtualisation, virtualization, VMware, VMware vSphere, vSphere, Windows
blog.bjornhouben.com 