Today I start yet another journey to learning more. Its not like I don't have enough to do right now...I recently changed jobs, am still trying to finish the process of buying a house that started in March and the kids are bigger.
Anyway, a few months ago I hear about CIT's Cloud Computing Degree and decided to inquire. After a bit of time it came up again and I found myself looking for more info and then all of sudden I'm in.
There is a mad amount of work to do, I have 60 Credits to gain in 18 months, but it looks like I might get some RPL for my work experience and certifications. The course is all delivered through the internet from Adobe Connect and Blackboard.
The college have VMware View VDI for the students to access the backend, where they have spoken about VMware, Hyper-V, OpenStack, iSCSI, FoE, Fibre and a load more.
So I have Java to learn by January....anyone got a quick learning method?
Interested in the course check out http://cloud.cit.ie/
They have BSc and MSc options.
Friday 9 September 2011
Friday 25 March 2011
Google call them 'Cloud Mechanics'
Was at a great presentation in one of the Google Engineering Buildings last night and again have had my head filled full of more dreams and goals by a Google Engineer/ Sysadmin/ SRE Dean called John Looney.
He has some amazing info, views and ideas on cloud computing - the how, where and why and it was real fun to hear it.
He mentioned something that has been mentioned to me before by Mark Minasi, Don Jones, Greg Shields and James Summerlin. Curt has mentioned it as well for the last 6 years I've known the guy.
If you want to keep your job as an IT person you need to get skilled up.
- You need scripting skills.
- You need networking skills.
- You need security skills.
- You need to get your A in Gear and be prepared.
What is coming?
- IPv6
- Wrapping traffic up in IPsec.
- Loosing firewalls and actually probing the headers/ applications/ traffic sources and god knows what else.
- Updates that add features not stability or reliability on a bi weekly basis.
John mentioned several things and I took notes for the whole time but will only post some of the snippets...mostly my words and opinions on the comments I heard and understood.
'THIS IS MY DATA, MIND IT, BUT I WANT IT BACK!'
Debugging Clouds....using what Winston Churchill said
...it is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma...
Debugging Clouds....using what Winston Churchill said
...it is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma...
SQL doesn't scale well, not a good cloud app.
50% of cloud admins complain system are 'too complex to understand fully' ( recent informal survey of 30 cloud admins)
Complexity+change+pressure= disaster
The two week release cycle.
A great excuse to ship something unfinished and fix it later.
All the failure models of old-school systems can be nitigated with scale.
(or the world is in big trouble)
50% of cloud admins complain system are 'too complex to understand fully' ( recent informal survey of 30 cloud admins)
Complexity+change+pressure= disaster
The two week release cycle.
A great excuse to ship something unfinished and fix it later.
All the failure models of old-school systems can be nitigated with scale.
(or the world is in big trouble)
Scale can't solve everything.
( wiped dns for 5 minutes - GOT A CALL FROM HOMELAND SEC)
Need a plan A, plan B, plan C and on and on.
( wiped dns for 5 minutes - GOT A CALL FROM HOMELAND SEC)
Need a plan A, plan B, plan C and on and on.
Use two factor authentications for change.
Use SSL wrappers
Use SSL wrappers
There was more, hopefully there will be more, but the notion of a well paid Engineer was mentioned.
The specs that were given for a Cloud Mechanic was impressive though
They add value to a company by getting extra from the software/ hardware/ cloud.
Comprehensive OS knowledge.
Networking.
Software engineering.
Can design efficiency at scale.
Can self project manage and do it well.
Good under pressure ( made the mistakes in some other company)
Never screws up (see above)
They have 15 or 16 of these people and are looking to get 100 to 200 of them.
Where do I sign up? ( I promise I'll learn the stuff)
If you want the full list mail me at mcglynnDOTjoe@gmailDOTcom
SBS 2011 and a locked out Domain Administrator
I did a silly....I changed the default domain policy and then locked out the only domain administrator account I had. I'd a lot of changes made to it and didn't want to have to redo it so dropped in ERD Commander 6 to reset the account. BUT its doesn't work on SBS 2011!
So what next, some googles, some posting into the minasi.com forum and I got a plan of sorts all culminating in the following steps to unlock the Domain Adminsitrator account on a SBS 2011 box.
Assuming you have the DSRM password, or if not a method to reset the local administrator password try the following.
Boot into DSRM
Then enable DSRM password to login while AD is running.
Edit the registry as follows;
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA\DsrmLogonBehavior
Default is set to 1
Change to 2 to allow DSRM Administrator to logon when AD is running.
0 is DSRM Administrator can logon only in DSRM.
Then get a copy of the Windows 2K3 Resource Kit tools copy the tools folder to the C Drive of the SBS Server. Use the following to add a service called EnableAccount
instsrv EnableAccount c:\tools\srvany.exe
Edit - One of the lads on minasi.com has mentioned that it may be possible to use sc create as opposed to loading the W2K3 Resource Kit tools. The syntax would be
sc create EnableService
I have not tested this, but I don't see a problem
Then open the registry again
Navigate to our newly created service:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EnableAccount
Create a key called Parameters
Inside the new key, create a new string value with name Application and set it to C:\reset.cmd
Open notepad and put in the following line to get an output of all accounts.
dsquery user -name * DC=SBS,DC=local > c:\accounts.txt your domain name will be different (DC=domainname,DC=local/loc/ etc)
Save the notepad file as reset.cmd and the file type as all types.
Now reboot the server.
Login as the DSRM user and open the accounts.txt
Get the full account domain admin name you have locked out
"CN=ABC Admin,OU=SBSUsers,OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=abcsbs,DC=local"
and put it into the following dsmod queries in the reset.cmd file.
dsmod user ......... -disabled no
dsmod user ......... -pwd Pa$$w0rd
dsmod user ......... -pwdneverexpires yes
In my case something along these lines
dsmod user "CN=ABC Admin,OU=SBSUsers,OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=abcsbs,DC=local" -disabled no
dsmod user "CN=ABC Admin,OU=SBSUsers,OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=abcsbs,DC=local" -pwd Pa$$w0rd (In my case here, Pa$$w0rd)
dsmod user "CN=ABCC Admin,OU=SBSUsers,OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=abcsbs,DC=local" -pwdneverexpires yes
Save the reset.cmd file and restart the enableaccount service in services.
Logoff and try logging back into the domain, remember to use your SBS domain name and user account as opposed to the DSRM which may be different.
So what next, some googles, some posting into the minasi.com forum and I got a plan of sorts all culminating in the following steps to unlock the Domain Adminsitrator account on a SBS 2011 box.
Assuming you have the DSRM password, or if not a method to reset the local administrator password try the following.
Boot into DSRM
Then enable DSRM password to login while AD is running.
Edit the registry as follows;
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA\DsrmLogonBehavior
Default is set to 1
Change to 2 to allow DSRM Administrator to logon when AD is running.
0 is DSRM Administrator can logon only in DSRM.
Then get a copy of the Windows 2K3 Resource Kit tools copy the tools folder to the C Drive of the SBS Server. Use the following to add a service called EnableAccount
instsrv EnableAccount c:\tools\srvany.exe
Edit - One of the lads on minasi.com has mentioned that it may be possible to use sc create as opposed to loading the W2K3 Resource Kit tools. The syntax would be
sc create EnableService
I have not tested this, but I don't see a problem
Then open the registry again
Navigate to our newly created service:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EnableAccount
Create a key called Parameters
Inside the new key, create a new string value with name Application and set it to C:\reset.cmd
Open notepad and put in the following line to get an output of all accounts.
dsquery user -name * DC=SBS,DC=local > c:\accounts.txt your domain name will be different (DC=domainname,DC=local/loc/ etc)
Save the notepad file as reset.cmd and the file type as all types.
Now reboot the server.
Login as the DSRM user and open the accounts.txt
Get the full account domain admin name you have locked out
"CN=ABC Admin,OU=SBSUsers,OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=abcsbs,DC=local"
and put it into the following dsmod queries in the reset.cmd file.
dsmod user ......... -disabled no
dsmod user ......... -pwd Pa$$w0rd
dsmod user ......... -pwdneverexpires yes
In my case something along these lines
dsmod user "CN=ABC Admin,OU=SBSUsers,OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=abcsbs,DC=local" -disabled no
dsmod user "CN=ABC Admin,OU=SBSUsers,OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=abcsbs,DC=local" -pwd Pa$$w0rd (In my case here, Pa$$w0rd)
dsmod user "CN=ABCC Admin,OU=SBSUsers,OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=abcsbs,DC=local" -pwdneverexpires yes
Save the reset.cmd file and restart the enableaccount service in services.
Logoff and try logging back into the domain, remember to use your SBS domain name and user account as opposed to the DSRM which may be different.
Monday 14 March 2011
W7/ Server 2008/ Server 2008R2 SP1 service pack issues.
Microsoft have a KB out on the issue that appears to only be effecting OEM installs of W7/ Server 2008 and Server 200R2. The KB is http://support.microsoft.com/KB/975484 and has in the last 2 days had several re-writes already, so expect more!.
The fault appears to cause the machines to stop booting or get stuck in a failure to apply the new settings.The error message is 0xC0000034. If you get it, please pass on the info to the NOC/ IT Admins as quickly as possible so they can make changes to the WSUS server on site to limit the effects.
The fix for the time being is to apply the full service pack to machines and not the WSUS deployment of SP1.
Please be aware there are issues with editing the pending.xml file as discussed in the second link, so please read both before performing a repair.
Info on the issue and repairs;
The repairs;
The issue with editing pending.xml
Will always look for more info on this, email me on mcglynn.joe (at)gmail.com
Monday 31 January 2011
Unexpected error refreshing Server Manager: Attempted to read past the end of the stream.
Got the following error on a Server 2008R2 machine I was trying to build.
Unexpected error refreshing Server Manager: Attempted to read past the end of the stream.
This appeared whenever I tried to open Roles or Features or tried to add a feature.
Some searching led me to an older version of a Microsoft product
Well the new one is here and its better;
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947821/en-us
No need to download anything other than the program update and run it. It pops off, finds the errors and downloads them.
10 minutes later all over and done with.
Direct link for those busy people.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=c4b0f52c-d0e4-4c18-aa4b-93a477456336&displaylang=en
Hope it helps someone.
Unexpected error refreshing Server Manager: Attempted to read past the end of the stream.
This appeared whenever I tried to open Roles or Features or tried to add a feature.
Some searching led me to an older version of a Microsoft product
Well the new one is here and its better;
System Update Readiness Tool for Windows Vista, for Windows Server 2008, for Windows 7, and for Windows Server 2008 R2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947821/en-us
No need to download anything other than the program update and run it. It pops off, finds the errors and downloads them.
10 minutes later all over and done with.
Direct link for those busy people.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=c4b0f52c-d0e4-4c18-aa4b-93a477456336&displaylang=en
Hope it helps someone.
Tuesday 18 January 2011
New Microsoft MAP Toolkit 5.5 released
Microsoft have release the latest version of the MAP Toolkit 5.5 after the Beta trial.
http://www.microsoft.com/map
Handy program for a lot of things;
What servers have I on my network?
What Clients have I on my network?
What software have I on my network?
What can I virtualise on my Network?
All in all very cool.
So what do you need?
Note: MAP will run on either x86 or x64 versions of the operating system. Itanium processors are not supported. MAP will not install on Home or Home Server editions of Windows.
What else do you need?
.NET Framework 3.5SP1 (3.5.30729.01) (download from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=129686)
Windows Installer 4.5 (download from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=129687)
Microsoft Office Word 2007 SP2 or Word 2010
Microsoft Office Excel 2007 SP2 or Excel 2010
Microsoft Office Primary Interop Assemblies For Microsoft Office 2007 you will need to install these from the Microsoft Office 2007 setup files.
Installation of all updates for the operating system and Microsoft Office. Note: In some cases updates may not install automatically. To download updates for your computer manually, go to http://update.microsoft.com.
By default, the MAP Toolkit will download and install SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Edition during setup. You may also use an existing installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 if you create an instance named "MAPS" before running the MAP Toolkit installer.
http://www.microsoft.com/map
Handy program for a lot of things;
What servers have I on my network?
What Clients have I on my network?
What software have I on my network?
What can I virtualise on my Network?
All in all very cool.
So what do you need?
Well for an OS, here's the list;
- Windows 7
- Windows Vista® Ultimate, Enterprise, or Business Editions
- Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 or later
- Windows Server 2008 R2
- Windows Server 2008
- Windows Server 2003 R2
- Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or later
What else do you need?
What else?
If you have feedback try here, to the MAP team: MAPfdbk (at ) microsoft.com
MAP team Blog :http://blogs.technet.com/
I'll get some screen dumps next time.
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