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General Resources · Cluster Team Site: Clustering Technical Resources · Guide: Failover Clustering Deployment · Guide: Validating Hardware for a Failover Cluster · Guide: Migrating Cluster Settings · Guide: Configuring the Quorum in a Failover Cluster · Guide: Configuring Accounts in Active Directory · Guide: Configure a Service or Application for High Availability · Guide: Modifying Settings for a Failover Cluster · Guide: Installing a Failover Cluster · Guide: Creating a Failover Cluster · Guide: Cluster Requirements · Guide: Validating a cluster · Guide: Managing a Failover Cluster · Guide: The Failover Cluster Management Snap-In · TechNet: Support Policy · Webcast: Top 10 Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering Enhancements over Windows Server 2003 Clustering, Based on Best Practices (Level 300) · Webcast: Failover Clustering 101 · Webcast: Achieving High Availability with Windows Server “Longhorn” Clustering (Le...

These step-by-step guides help IT Professionals learn about and evaluate Windows Server 2008. Creating_and_Deploying_Active_Directory_Rights_Management_Services_Templates_Step-by-Step_Guide.doc Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services in an Extranet Step-by-Step Guide.doc Deploying Active Directory Rights Management Services with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Step-By-Step Guide.doc Deploying SSTP Remote Access Step by Step Guide.doc Server Core Installation Option of Windows Server 2008 Step-By-Step Guide.doc Server Manager Scenarios Step-by-Step Guide.doc Step-by-Step Guide for Configuring a Two-Node File Server Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008.doc Step-by-Step Guide for Configuring a Two-Node Print Server Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008.doc Step-by-Step Guide for Windows Deployment Services in Windows Server 2008.doc Step-by-Step Guide to Deploying Policies for Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.doc Using Identity Fe...

With Storage Manager for SANs, you can create and manage logical unit numbers (LUNs) on Fibre Channel and iSCSI disk drive subsystems that support Virtual Disk Service (VDS) in your storage area network (SAN). This guide provides server and storage subsystem requirements, an introduction to managing LUNs, and step-by-step walkthroughs for creating and assigning LUNs using Storage Manager for SANs in Windows Server 2008. Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=06556478-838c-450e-9173-9851378271ad&DisplayLang=en Thanks Aresh

Cluster validation wizard is used to check pre-requisite\best practices before building the cluster. While playing with my lab, I came across a issue under Network Test. Error: Found duplicate IP address fe80::100:7f:fffe%14 on node node1.vodka.com adapter Local Area Connection* X and node node2.vodka.com adapter Local Area Connection* X.   Resolution: It turns out that this is the result of the Teredo, an IPv6 Tunneling Protocol. Teredo allows IPv6 communications to pass through IPv4 NATs and IPv4 servers. However Teredo gives an identical IPv6 address to its network interfaces, which Failover Clustering flags as an error since it require unique IP addresses. So how do you fix this? There are 2 ways, some details are provided here: http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/91d35c9f-3049-44f4-b711-743dc152c7c31033.mspx?mfr=true 1) Disable Teredo through command line a. Open ‘Command Prompt’ and ‘Run as Administrator’ b. Type: ...

Note the error message (Sometime the error message is very specific ) Login to the machine using local admin account Check the system Date and time / Time zone – Make sure they are similar to authenticating DC Check DNS – Make Sure they are pointing to Right DNS (DNS which is alive and doing the name resolution) Check DNS records with the help of NSLOOKUP Ping the DC – IP, Netbios Name and FQDn Ping the DC to DC with 1500 MTU Run Netdiag and check DNS and Trust and Kerberos test Make sure NIC card is enabled of “register me in DNS” Check event viewer for any know errors like Userenv, Kerberos, netlogon Enable netlogon log and do the further troubleshooting   Don't forget to post your comments :) Thanks, Anang Kumar

What is PowerGUI ? PowerGUI is an extensible graphical administrative console for managing systems based on Windows PowerShell. These include Windows OS (XP, 2003, Vista), Exchange 2007, Operations Manager 2007 and other new systems from Microsoft. The tool allows to use the rich capabilities of Windows PowerShell in a familiar and intuitive GUI console. PowerShell is built-in feature under Windows Server 2008 Download PowerShell for Windows Vista, Windows 2003 and Windows XP http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx Download PowerGUI Power Packs Active Directory: http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=46 Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM): http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=49 Virtualization: http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=290 Microsoft Exchange: http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=47 Network: http://powergui.org/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=48 SQL: http://powergui.o...

This is very funny XP machine as a domain controller 1) Create a share called SYSVOL on an XP machine 2) Try to unshare the directory you shared as SYSVOL. 3) You will get a nice warning stating: "This share is required for the machine to act properly as a domain controller. Removing it will cause a loss of functionality on all clients that this domain controller serves. Are you sure you wish to stop sharing SYSVOL?" Screenshot: But do not worry - unsharing SYSVOL on XP will not break your AD. This is just an example of code reuse that Microsoft does. Don't forget to post your comments :) Thanks, Aresh Useful Blog: Guy Teverovsky: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/guyt/archive/2007/09/06/XP-as-Domain-Controller-_3F00_.aspx

Accidentally deleted user, computer account or OU’s from Active Directory. Don’t worry, now you can get them back using ADRestore tool using GUI interface. Though there is a command line version of tombstone reanimation tool called adrestore - sysinternals, many people are not CLI savvies and having a GUI version of this functionality could really help them out. Insight on tombstone: Reanimating Active Directory Tombstone Objects - By Gil Kirkpatrick Gil Kirkpatrick's article at Technet Main features: Browsing the tombstones Domain Controller targeting Can be used with alternative credentials (convenient if you do not logon to your desktop as Domain Admin, which you should never do anyway) User/Computer/OU/Container reanimation Preview of tombstone attributes Here are some sceenshots: Enumerating tombstones Previewing the tombstone attributes Restoring a deleted user account Notice that if you delete an OU with accounts in it,...

One of the most useful videos I have found on the internet, for Hyper-V. Thanks to John Savill for his efforts and time. Hyper-V Architecture Overview http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/hypervarch/hypervarch640480sml.wmv Overview and configuration of Hyper-V Server http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/HyperVServer/HyperVSrv.avi Overview and configuration of Hyper-V Quick Migration http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/QuickMigration/QuickMigration.wmv Overview of Hyper-V Networking http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/hypervnetwork/hypervnetwork800600.wmv Overview of Windows Server 2008 R2 Live Migration http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/LiveMigration/LiveMigration800600.wmv SCVMM 2008 Physical To Virtual (P2V) http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/scvmm2008p2v/scvmm2008p2v800600.wmv SCVMM 2008 Virtual To Virtual (V2V) http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/scvmm2008v2v/scvmm2008v2v800600.wmv ...

Windows 32-bit Operating Systems implement a virtual memory system based on a flat 32-bit address space.  32-bits of address space translates into 4GB of virtual memory.  A process can access up to 4GB of memory address space (using the /3GB switch changes this behavior - and we'll cover that in a later post). You can't have a discussion of Memory Management basics, without distinguishing between Kernel-mode and User-mode memory.  The system space (aka Kernel space) is the portion of the address space in which the OS and kernel-mode drivers reside.  Only kernel-mode code can access this space.  User-mode threads can access data only in the context of their own process.  User-mode threads cannot access data within another processes space directly, nor can it access the system address space directly.  Kernel-mode drivers are trusted by the OS and can access both kernel and user space.  When a driver routine is called from a user thread, the thread...

Tired of parsing the Perfmon (*.blg) manually. Let PAL make your job easier, give you html output and highlight high thresholds. Website: http://www.codeplex.com/PAL Project Description Ever have a performance problem, but don't know what performance counters to collect or how to analyze them? The PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs) tool is a new and powerful tool that reads in a performance monitor counter log (any known format) and analyzes it using complex, but known thresholds (provided). The tool generates an HTML based report which graphically charts important performance counters and throws alerts when thresholds are exceeded. The thresholds are originally based on thresholds defined by the Microsoft product teams and members of Microsoft support, but continue to be expanded by this ongoing project. This tool is not a replacement of traditional performance analysis, but it automates the analysis of performance counter logs enough to save you time. This is a VBScript ...

One of the most useful videos I have found on the internet, for failover clustering. Thanks to John Savill for his efforts and time. Creating Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/clustercreate/ClusterCreate.wmv Configuring a Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster from the command line: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/clustercmd/clustercmd.wmv Understanding Failover Cluster Quorum: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/ClusterQuorum/ClusterQuorum.wmv Hyper-V Quick Migration: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/QuickMigration/QuickMigration.wmv Configuring iSCSI connections from the command line: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/iscsicli/iscsicli.wmv Failover Clustering with MELIO File System: http://www.savilltech.com/Videos/meliofs/meliofs.wmv Don't forget to post your comments :) Thanks, Aresh