Ports for Joining a Windows 2008 R2 Domain

Here's a list of TCP ports required to facilitate a computer joining a Windows 2008 R2 domain:

88 - Kerberos

139 - NetBIOS

389 - LDAP

445 - SMB

49152 - 65535 RPC

The dynamic range is a bit on the large side. Refer to the following to narrow it:

How to configure RPC dynamic port allocation to work with firewalls

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154596

Service overview and network port requirements for the Windows Server system

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832017

Ports discovered empirically. Your mileage may vary.

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Windows SharePoint Service SQL Connection

I needed to connect SQL Server Management Studio Express to Windows SharePoint Services databases. Here's the server name:

\\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query

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Exception of type vmomi.fault.nopermission was thrown

I was setting up a user with permission to migrate a VM in VirtualCenter. I created a custom role and thought I had all the permissions set correctly, but the user kept getting a 'vmomi.fault.nopermission' exception message at the screen to select the destination datastore. Solved it by creating a custom role with the following privileges:

Virtual Machine - Inventory - Move
Resource - Assign Virtual Machine To Resource Pool
Resource -Migrate
Resource - Relocate

Assigned that role to the necessary Group on the applicable clusters
Assigned the Read Only role to the same Group at the Datacente level

It might help someone else!
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(Also posted here)

Azure in a box?

On reading some articles, you might have thought that Microsoft would never release Azure "in a box". However, Steve Ballmer seems to be coming around to the idea:

"...it will be many years before many government organizations will grow comfortable with the notion of their data or citizen data living outside of the jurisdiction ... [for example] this company is not likely to build part of our public cloud in Slovenian [sic] anytime soon. So, somebody should be able to implement a Windows Azure cloud in that country."
Source - Steve Ballmer: Cloud Computing

Worth watching.

The Big Switch...

(...the book on cloud computing- not the Bord Gáis campaign that runs in the cloud.)

I've finished reading The Big Switch. It's an interesting read. Carr doesn't get bogged down in the detail but rather provides the reader with a bird's eye view of the topic. This gives the book a pacy feel - so much so in fact that by the time you've finished the book, you might think the world has moved on and your competitors are already running their entire business in the cloud!

There's no doubt that cloud computing is having an impact and is here to stay, but there are a number of issues which are still being ironed out. Carr uses the ubiquitous analogy of electricity companies in his book. However, while you can plug an electric lamp into any socket in your home and buy your electricity from any one of a number of providers, you can't quite do the same with your IT application or infrastructure - yet.

Yes, there are barriers to be overcome e.g. data protection, technical limitations etc., but they will be overcome. (Microsoft are even alluding to Azure in a box to overcome some of the data protection issues.) Then you'll be able to move your infrastructure and/or application at the push of a button.

If you're not already thinking about cloud computing and what it means for your business - time to start.

Perfmon Edits

If you gather a lot of data in a perfmon log (which I do from time to time for troubleshooting purposes) you'll know that vertical bars are displayed on the screen when you view the data. Also, values in the thousands can be difficult to read without the comma separators. To change this behaviour, merge the following registry settings:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\SystemMonitor]
"DisplaySingleLogSampleValue"=dword:00000001
"DisplayThousandsSeparator"=dword:00000001

Happy perfmoning.

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IIS May Break After Installing KB973917

I got called to look at an IIS Server first thing this morning. Websites were simply saying "Service Unavailable". Looking at the System log, I could see that IIS's Rapid-fail protection was kicking in i.e. five Source W3SVC Event ID 1009 warnings followed by one Source W3SVC Event ID 1002 error. Unsurprisingly, disabling Rapid-fail protection had no positive effect. The logs revealed that a number of patches were automatically installed at 3am, including 973917 which "implements Extended Protection for Authentication in Internet Information Services (IIS)". At the time of writing, 973917 is still at revision 1.0 with no reported known issues. However, I found this blog post on MSDN which points to this KB article (Internet Information Services 6.0 may not function correctly after installing KB973917) which describes the issue.

Moral of the story? In an ideal world, test before patching. In a less than ideal world, be sure you have a known good backup before you patch. And if you have to patch and be damned, I wish you the best of luck.

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PS Test first or patch asap? Each to their own.