Another quick post/reminder to myself. I’ve been experimenting with the idea of using Cacti to monitor the performance of my Hyper-V servers, so i needed SNMP on my HyperV machines. However there is no UI to add that feature into the core installs. So, to install SNMP on HyperV R2, use the following command line
start /w ocsetup SNMP-SC
That’s it!
Just a quick post. Today i’m transitioning from my old win2k3 domain, to a new Windows 2008 R2 Domain. In moving my HyperV servers, i found i could not disjoin them from the domain, but found this quick tip to force it off the domain
netdom remove %computername% /domain:%userdomain% /force
Thats it!
An update on my previous posting about the Adaptec 3805 and my troubles with getting compatible drives.
I’ve been running a RAID-5 with the 3085 using 4 Samsung SpinPoint F3’s for about 2 weeks, and two days ago it started to give problems. The fourth disk in the array just dropped out, with no visible SMART issues or physical defects.
So, after waking up to this news I added it back into the array (probably not a great idea, but usually its fine). The moment the full initialization completed, something occurred that caused one of my Virtual Machines running from that RAID array to stop functioning (it was a mail server). There was another machine on there with much lesser activity, that kept running without a problem – but it did all but destroy the other virtual machine. Luckily, i have backups.
Not only did it knock off one of my virtual machines, it kicked out a different disk from the array, and started complaining again. So then I broke down, and ordered 2 ES.2 disks from Newegg which are on the HCL for this controller. However, 8hrs later, the controller barfed up completely and started giving timeouts to the host to the logical drive – even with 3 perfectly useable drives. The host became very unstable, i had to shut down the virtual machines, and reset the machine (thank god for Lights out control).
Upon reboot, the logical raid-5 array was unusable, and had to be forced online. I copied the two files that i absolutely had to have, and finally destroyed the array. When i go up to the data center again, I’m removing this card and burying it. Going to go back to my trusty Highpoint RR2224 which I’ve had for over 5 years now, without a single glitch.
Done.
Hello, a quick post / announcement that the Adaptec 3805 SAS Raid controller has compatibility issues with Western Digital Caviar Black drives. I don’t know if its an issue with all capacities of the Black series, but the ones i had were the 1TB ones, model number WDC-WD1001FALS-0.
After doing some research, it appears that the WD Blacks are NOT on the HCL for the Adaptec 3805 controller, but it took me some time to find this. I hope this post helps anyone who was going to go down this route.
Since i’d already gotten the WD Blacks, I ended up using Samsung Spinpoint F3’s from some of my servers. The WD Blacks work fine on Intel ICH Raid. I think next time, I’ll stick with these Samsungs. Cheap, good warranty, and FAST.
Now in general, why can’t Western Digital make standards compliant drives? I could easily blame Adaptec as well, but in this case, i think it has to be WD’s fault. They are known to make ATA drives that don’t work the same way as everyone else. How hard can it be? Even Samsung got it right.
Update, see my second post on this
My friend pointed out to me that Googles, gone Gooooooooall!
Search for world cup, and look at the bottom! Less than 24hrs to go!
A quick post on how to enable xp_cmdshell on Sql 2005/2008/2008R2
EXEC sp_configure ’show advanced options’, 1
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO
EXEC sp_configure ‘xp_cmdshell’, 1
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO
EXEC sp_configure ’show advanced options’, 0
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO
Done.
*Yawn*. Its good to stretch once in a while, get some blood to some relaxed muscles.
Waking up at 5.30am on a Saturday is normal behavior for me now. Get up, brush my teeth, and wonder downstairs and turn on the telly. You know its early when the cats ignore you, while you stumble across the dark floor to the sofa and fumble around for the remote.
Regardless, turned on the telly. Its June 5th, 5 days before WC2010 starts, 5.30am. I press the two power buttons, one for the TV, one for the dish network receiver. After about 5 seconds of eye rubbings, i hear a familiar voice. A very soothing, familiar voice. Martin Tyler.
At first, i make sure its not a rerun of a EPL game on Fox Soccer Channel. Then slowly, i realize that his color commentator, is John Harkes. Instantly I’m satisfied with something. I feel that ESPN got it right.
It was 5.30am on June 5th, and Australia were playing a pre world cup warm up against the USA, and it was being shown live from a tiny stadium in South Africa with less than 7,000 people in the crowd – on a pitch that looked like an empty field in the middle of the African jungle.
ESPN got it right. The commentary pairing of MT and JH was good, it wasn’t boring – even during the boring parts of the game. They weren’t even talking down to me as a viewer, they were just commentating. That was sweet.
Well done ESPN.
But wait! There’s more! After the game, ESPN showed a nice little piece on the Robben Island soccer league in South Africa. A very nice 30 minute segment about how the comings of a new government were practiced in the form of a full on “professional” football league within a prison.
Well done ESPN.
But wait! THERES MORE! E-60 had another segment on “saacker”. 3 short documentaries. The first was about Clint Dempsey, the 2nd was a great emotional piece about the U17 girls national team from Haiti after the quake, and finally a 3min segment on the craziest par 3 19th hole in South Africa, where the Tee is at the top of a mountain, and the green is a thousand feet below.
Well done ESPN.
With the World cup only 15 days away, i thought its time to put out my views before the tournament starts. Thoughts on the coverage of this magnificent tournament in the United States of America. The worlds largest, most loved event.
Football has been a hated sport in this country for all 16 years I’ve been here. But there is change coming. I can feel it. Something has happened over at ESPN that’s making me think this. All of a sudden, we’re getting High Definition broadcasts of games, real commentators commentating on games, and a heck of a lot of advertising for the world cup on ESPN.
During the 98, 02 and 06 world cup’s, you’d not have known it was coming on ESPN as they hardly mentioned it. For 2010, they’ve had a campaign going since 2008 to tell people that the world cup is coming, and you can see it on ESPN/ABC. That’s a 2 year long campaign. That’s a change to what I’ve seen in the past. That’s a good change.
I should have noticed this change in 2008 when ESPN showed every game live in High Definition of the European Championship. You know, something that the USA doesn’t, and can’t participate in. To have the final shown on network TV was even more of a blessing. 4 years prior to that, the entire tournament was PPV only.
Not only did ESPN show Euro 2008 in High Def, they threw out all of the rubbish American commentators and used real class commentating. It was a great tournament to watch. I took it for granted. I thought i was back in England for those 3 weeks.
So what have i noticed for 2010?
ESPN will be boasting a British only commentary personnel line up for all 64 games, that’s incredible given that it was all American (except Derek Rae and Adrian Healey for some of the games) just 4 years ago.
Martin Tyler and Andy Gray for USA v England ? *yum*
They’ve added my buddy Klinsmann to the panel of personalities to review the post games.T
hey will all be on site in South Africa (apparently) to cover the games.
So, this all sounds good for the football fan in America, so why do i say its “almost” there?
Simple. I think there will be a tendency for someone like Bob Ley or Anthony Hopkins to try and teach the audience the game. I hate that. I think that needs to go away *now*.
ESPN has to know by now that you cant teach an old dog new tricks. You cant make a left hander, a right hander. So why bother? The only audience watching these games, will be the open minded person who cares about the world and wants to watch it. Or has an interest in it. Everyone should completely ignore the ignorant Americans who *hate* the sport. I really don’t give a toss about the Americans who hate the game. They don’t even know *why* they hate the game, its just something they were brought up with. You know, like the English hating the Germans. We don’t know why we hate them today, we just do! Ok sure, there might be something about WWII in there someplace, but that was 80 years ago. Who cares now right?
If ESPN can get through this world cup without Bob Ley telling me that England vs Germany is like the Dodgers vs the Yankees, that’ll be a huge step for mankind. I swear I’ll slit my wrists if i hear some crap like that – Ok maybe not.
But really, its time for ESPN to let go of trying to convince “America” that “soccer” is a good game. There is just no need for it. Come to think of it, if John Motson tried to tell me that Yankees vs Dodgers was like Germany vs England, I’d switch channels – immediately.
My thought process here is, show the game as its meant to be shown. If there is a brain cell in any NFL loving American, he’ll be interested and may enjoy the next 2hrs. If not, it doesn’t matter. There are 6billion football lovers around the world. we don’t need anymore.
It probably turns the American audience off when they hear comparisons between the peoples game, and their game.
Football is a different game, built on different principles. Its a game designed by people, for people. Its not a game designed by advertisers for people. It has a different flow, a different feel, a different language.
Done.
Quick Reminder to myself on how to fix this time speedup issue with Centos 5.4 and HyperV
nano /boot/grub/grub.conf
append
divider=10 clocksource=acpi_pm
to the end of the current kernel (or all of them actually)
Hello,
Quick post to remind myself of how to fix volume shadow copy having no writers. Turns out this is a common problem when using the newsid utility on templated servers/computers. The fix is relatively simple.
1. Stop the Microsoft Shadow Copy Provider & Volume Shadow Copy Service
2. Export the contents of the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\EventSystem key to a .reg file (as a backup).
3. Delete the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\EventSystem\{26c409cc-ae86-11d1-b616-00805fc79216}\Subscriptions key. (Just delete the Subscriptions subkey; leave the EventClasses key.)
4. Restart the server.
5. Run the “VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS” command.
Thanks to Rhys Winter on his post in technet.
