Jon-Moore.co.uk

So far, in my voyage of virtual discovery I’ve managed to get a couple of machines running Server 2008 R2 enterprise set up and connected to the SAN along with another server running SCVMM, having done that I’ve virtualised a couple of servers and set them running… no problems reported by users so far!

Then the problems started, I tried to virtualise our exchange server which happens to be use SCSI hard drives, now I’m not sure why it happens but when the P2V process gets to “Install VM Components” after the reboot I’d just get Blue screens with error 0×0000007b.

Turns out this was due to a certain registry entry being incorrect, unfortunately I couldn’t get the machine to boot to change the reg setting!

The solution was this, (I’m taking you from start to end here guys);

1. Run through the P2V wizard on SCVMM, set things how you like them but don’t complete the wizard.

2. When you get there click “view script”, save this as a .ps1 file

3. Cancel the wizard

4. Open the .ps1 file in notepad and add “-SkipInstallVirtualizationGuestServices” (without speech marks) to the end of the last line that starts with New-p2v (probably the bottom line)

5. Save your file

6. Open up SCVMM powershell and run your saved script

7.Wait for your machine to virtualise

8. log off your SCVMM and log on to your host machine

9. open up Hyper-V manager

10. Connect to your fresh VM and log in (you’ll have to do this without a mouse, this will be fixed later)

11. At the top of the window, click action and then click “insert integration services setup disk”

12. run through the setup (DO NOT REBOOT! or you’ll be back at the blue screen and have to start again)

13. Open up  the registry and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Wdf01000

13. modify “Group” so that instead of “Base” it says “WdfLoadGroup“

14.  Eject the virtual disk

15.  Reboot 

DONE! you should now have the mouse working and be able to manage your VM from SCVMM just like any other VM. Thanks to Jason Gauthier for posting this on TechNet.

In other news, I’ve started using twitter so follow me! my account is jonathonmoore.

Laters,

Jon

Virtualisation seems to be the buzz word when it comes to servers and to be honest, I’m not surprised. The benefits of virtualising your servers are far reaching indeed, the primary and in my opinion, most boring are fairly obvious; your physical boxes are utilised to their maximum potential, you have less machines running so you produce less heat and use less power and you server room has a lot more space.

Now, these are all great things, don’t get me wrong on that, reducing the number of servers needed from 50 to 10 might be reason enough for a large corporation to virtualise, I’m sure the electricity bill saves would be pretty amazing, but what I find really exciting is the resilience it can bring to your organisation. Imagine this, you have six virtual servers running on three physical boxes, it’s the middle of the day, everyone is working hard (or hardly working) and the motherboard fails on the box running exchange and another LOB server, instantly the entire company looses access to emails – MAJOR PANIC ENSUES.

But it’s fine – you log onto virtual machine manager and move the virtual servers to one of the other physical boxes, 10 minutes later everyone is working again and you can have another latte and feel good about how much of an awesome IT Manager/sys admin/tech support guy you are.

To me this sounds like a very good thing, which is why over the next few weeks I’m going to virtualise as many of our servers as I can. Currently I’ve identified seven servers that are prime for the switch, these include two domain controllers, an exchange server, a SQL server, an ISA server (running as an edge firewall… more on this later) and a couple of LOB servers. three of these servers run on pretty powerful boxes so I’m planning to simply beef up their memory and use those as my physical hosts.

My data storage will be taken care of by a Broadberry Cyberstore 316S DSS SAN, this will hold all of the virtual hard drives, I’ve identified this a possible single point of failure, so I’m going to put new, large, hard drives in the physical servers so that if the SAN ever fails I can restore the virtual drives from backups, right onto the physical servers.

For anyone looking to do something similar, I’m going to post up what I go through to get this working… job number one, buy the hardware and the licenses! This will be done on Monday, I’ll let you know how it all goes and give you a progress update on what I’m doing.

I’d love to hear from anyone else doing similar projects like this or anything else I’ve ever talked about on here (love, life, servers, etc) so get in touch!

Laters

Jon

Well for those of you who can remember that far back, about 18 months ago I posted a youtube video of my new HTC touch dual… well after 18 months I thought it about time to trade her in for a newer model, and after much hype and consideration, I eventually settled on the new iPhone 3gs – available online here iPhone 3gs apparently it’s meant to be the fastest iPhone yet and comes with quite a few new features, one of which is a compass, which is pretty cool.

I’ve gone for the 16GB as I just don’t think I’ll ever have the need for a phone with 32GB of data storage (I understand that this may be quite similar to a Bill Gates quote from the 80’s – “640K should be enough for anyone!” so I’ll add..) at least for the next 18 months, which is my contract length.

I bought it on the first day of release and so far I love it, I’m a true apple convert. I still regard myself as a ‘PC’ to quote the adverts, but apple’s are pretty… which for home and personal use is fine – but for business you just can’t beat MS W2k8 and Exchange 2007 (apple fan boys – don’t even bother complaining about my opinion, just accept that it is my opinion and you can have your own)

As a side note, Sarah and I have now been together for a whole year! woo! Our relationship is great and we’ve now looking for an apartment together.

Anyways, check out this brief fairly long youtube clip of the iPhone 3GS… then buy one… sorry it’s a bit corny.

Laters,

Jon

Once again I have changed my web host and web server, a change that was not really planned this soon after the last move in March.

There is one major reason for the latest server move - SUPPORT! My last host was rubbish at it, now I’m not going to name and shame here… (UKHOST4U – DON’T USE THEM!) but I will tell you about the situation which lead me to this conclusion. It all started with a DNS problem in the office. I arrived at work last Wednesday to find that the entire company was no longer able to recieve emails, to cut a long story short, our ISP had messed up and deleted our DNS records, during this period of down-ness I used my personal email address to send a number of test emails to my office address, they came through eventually, once the DNS records had been recreated.

The problem was, all of my personal emails had been marked as SPAM by our content filter, I allowed them through so that they would be delivered but then exchange and outlook also categorized them as SPAM. Now I saw that as a big problem, if two separate applications were marking my email out to be SPAM I’d wager that many of my emails may be blocked by other people who I was sending to. When I typed the IP address of my mail server  into a browser, the content filter struck again and informed me that the IP address was blacklisted as… ahem, an adult category.

I was blown away, someone who was sharing my IP address must be hosting something pretty nasty which had resulted in everyone on that server being tarred with the same brush. “Oh well, no problem” I thought, as I sent off my findings to the tech support forum of my host, expecting the IP address to be changed or for my content to be moved to another server with minimal fuss.

Ohhhh nooo, after many emails back and forth with my host taking no action to resolve the issue, the final straw came. An email from my host informed me that as SPAM filtering was opt-out I could work around the issue by contacting people who I wanted to email to ensure they switched off their SPAM filter first!!!

Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I see phoning everyone in the world that I might ever email and asking them to turn off their SPAM filter seems like a pretty pathetic response. I was even more annoyed when they wanted £10 + VAT per domain to transfer away from them, well there was no way I was paying that, they have had all the money they’re ever getting from me! So I went to nominet and for £11.50 was able to transfer all of my domains in one go to my lovely new host EUKHOST check out www.eukhost.com for a good hosting deal, I’ve gone for the gold package, I’ve also paid for a dedicated IP address to ensure there is never a repeat of this problem.

I took this opportunity for a bit of a redesign and so here it is, my new look website. I’ll probably tweak it a little over the coming weeks, I’m going to try and add a few more pages too – about me, contact form, gallery, etc. Anyway, drop me a comment and tell me what you think!

Jon

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to implement Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R1 in work. The initial install went well and I rolled out the client software to the IT department with not too much trouble at all, the problems were with the integration with our phone system – A Mitel 3300 ICP with 5340 IP phones and Live Business Gateway.

Over the next few weeks or so I’ll post some screen shots and instructions on what Ive done so far and keep you up to date with what I’m doing and how I’m getting on.

I’m excited about all of the functionality that OCS will bring to our offices, so far I’ve got the enhanced presence working so the clients report us as being ‘on a call’ when ever we answer of desk phone and we’re able to dial with the client software too. I’m having a little trouble with ending calls, the software has a tendency to miss the end of the call – that is, I hang up manually by putting down the receiver and my computer keeps my status as ‘in a call’ and continues to count up the call time.

That’s a bit of a snag and I’ll get it sorted out later, the thing that I really want to get working next is the Microsoft exchange integration. Ever since I went to the Microsoft EVO roadshow with my friend Will when we were both working for PriceMaurice, I’ve wanted to have my emails read to me by the exchange server when I call it from my mobile.

Unfortunately it seems that to enable a user for Unified communications you need an enterprise exchange CAL, so I’m going to have to see if I can get hold of a few of those for development purposes.

To recap;

I’ve got enhanced presence working along with click to dial, next I want voice email and voicemail working and call forwarding to work.

In other news, my last post had a clip from Les Miserables, which at the time may have seemed quite random. Well the reason for this was my last trip to London, Sarah and I dropped in for a night just to grab some dinner and see a show or two; this time it was Wicked on the Friday night (what else!) followed by the matinee of Les Mis the next day. The Mis was amaaazing. We bought £20 each tickets from the box office about an hour before the show, then went to the Costa across the road whilst we were waiting.

Our seats were really, very good. They were classed as “slightly restriced” just due to the fact that they were so close to the stage, but really I don’t think they could have been better, the actors were sooo close, sometimes it was quite scary when they were shouting.

Wicked was great as expected, although I was slightly disappointed that Kerry Elis wasn’t playing the lead of Elphaba, the understudy was brilliant though which made it matter less.

I’ll get the pictures from the weekend up in the gallery once I’ve got it fixed… which brings me onto my next subject – the website redesign, those of you who frequent these pages may have noticed a slight change, I’d had my old layout for about 3 years and really wanted something a bit different so I’m trying this out for now. I’m not totally convinced this is how it’s going to stay but I like it so far. Anyways, that’s your lot for now – if you haven’t already then check out the video from my last post.

See you soon,

Jon

Yes yes…. it’s been a long time coming, but here it is. An update!

Well… A short one, but one at least.

I’m going to be re-writing much of the content of the site over the next few weeks as most of it is now out of date. 

For now I’ll leave you with a picture of my new car (called zeeta) and a video from youtube.com

Zeeta the zetec

 This is ”At the end of the day” and “One day more” from Les Miserables. Make sure you watch it all, the second song is by far the best of the two.

Anyways, this is just a intermission post really.

More content coming soon!

Jon

Wow, What a start to the new year it has been. We’re only two thirds of the way through January and I’ve already make a couple of significant life changes and further decisions which will, I’m sure, have life changing impacts upon their realisation.

The first of these major changes is of course “the new job”, yes, that’s right. As of 5th February 2009 I will no longer be employed by PriceMaurice Limited. After a brief and frankly unexpected conversation with Si, a friend of mine from uni, I was told I should email a copy of my CV to J.H. Austin who were looking for a new “Systems Development Manager”, a couple of emails and about half and hour later and a job interview was arranged. Out came the suit and off I went for the meeting, upon arrival I was met by two nice chaps who would be conducting my initial grilling, Alan and Glenn both seemed very friendly and made me feel quite at ease, which I’m sure helped with the interview. Later I would meet Jonathan, the M.D, we only talked for a short while but I found him to be very interesting and look forward to meeing him again.

J.H. Austin sounds like a very interesting place to work and it looks like they’ve got a good couple of exciting projects lined up for me. I’ll be sorry to leave my place at PriceMaurice as it’s such a nice place to work and I’ll be forever grateful to Matt, the MD, for giving me my first real I.T position and the opportunity to gain all of the experience that’s helped me so much. That all being said I’m also really excited to get into a larger network environment and really get my teeth into something a bit more complex than the type of work that is available at PM.

I’m as of yet unsure of whether I’ll be starting to fix peoples computers in my spare time as I did before I worked for PriceMaurice, but I think it’s a distinct possibility. That little bit of extra money is always nice, so bare me in mind.

I’ve also bought a car! woo! Bertha the MK4 1.6 litre 8 valve red VW Golf has been a lot of fun over the last couple of years, but with a new job and an ever increasing maintenance bill I’ve decided to splash out a bit and go for something a bit newer, and here it is;

New ford focus

A new shape 2008 Ford focus Zetec oooooh (but mine is black)

I’m hoping to keep this new car for at least the next four years – mainly that’s because that’s how long I’m going to be paying for it, but hopefully those years will pass mostly mechanic free and it’ll be a great car. If I’m lucky it’ll be as good a car as Bertha has been.

The final change, well, this one is more of a decision to change, is that this year I am determined to move out (as I have previously mentioned) but I’ll keep you posted on that one.

In all, 2009 couldn’t be looking better. I’ve been with Sarah for over 6 months now and couldn’t fell better about it, I feel so lucky that our chance encounter occurred when I think about how easy it would have been for it not to have happened. I really do love her and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever felt like this about anyone before… yes, yes, cliche I know but I find myself trying to spend as much time as I can with her, which isn’t really something I’ve done for anyone else before.

So as Lilly Allen put it; “That’s what makes my life so sexy-fantastic” …well in the radio edit anyway.

Jon

Wow! what a christmas!

It’s certainly been a busy one this time, that being said it was also one of the best Christmases that I’ve had for a long time, probably since one of those childhood christmases that always seem perfect in memories.

I had a great time and recieved lots of really awesome presents, my Christmas day consisted mainly of driving actually; I started off at my house with the traditional christmas morning opening of presents followed by the normal hugh turkey lunch. After dinner I was off to the Wirral to deliver Sarah’s presents and collect a few more myself (well – I say a few, but there were loads!) We had fun there for a few hours before heading back to mine so that sarah could open her present from my mum and dad. We spent the rest of the evening watching christmas TV and having a few drinks, boxing day was just as hectic with more driving and yet more eating and after that it went quite for a couple of days.

It didn’t stay quiet for long, on the 28th I was on my way to the lake district with Sarah, Hattie and Tom – and Grace and Mike we stayed for a couple of nights and our time there mostly consisted of chinese food, drinking, drinking games and a small amount of walking.

New years eve was AWESOME, one of the best I’ve had. We went to a James Bond themed house party to see in the new year which included all of the singing in the street and fireworks at midnight normalities. I’ll try and get a few pictures into the gallery if I can find some. If you’ve got me on facebook they’re already on there so take a look…

The new year has so far been great, I feel like 2009 is going swimmingly and can only see it getting better, hopefully I’ll let you know more about that in the future but for now I’ll leave you with my new years resolution (sorry this post has been written in quite a rush by the way) – It’s the same as last year;

To Move Out.

Laters,

Jon

Yes, well I just couldn’t resist linking to this…

Great performance by Brian May and Kerry Ellis on the Royal Variety Performance 2008 which was broadcast last night!

EPIC

After a hard couple of hours work yet another blog enters the world of the internet.

I’m talking about http://www.sarahlevy.co.uk

Sarah and I registered the domain last night and got the start of a blog set up, It went live this morning. There isn’t much content yet but I’m sure sarah will change that soon enough.

The creation of Sarah’s new blog has got me thinking about jon-moore.co.uk, my external links bar is getting pretty full now so I’m considering the creation of a new page to put them all in. I’ll leave it as it is for now but if anyone has any thoughts on this matter send me a comment and I’ll decide later.

Anyways, on to other news… wow! it’s december already, christmas is now fast approaching! Of course I’ve done very little in the way of Christmas shopping and am now starting to feel a bit paniced by it all. Basically, everyone who I’m giving to still requires something to be bought for them.

So the excitement is rising, Sarah and I are planning to get away to London for a day or two over the christmas break so I’m looking forward to that too.

Hmm this blog post seems to have been a bit sporadic and not really gotten off the ground in the way that I had hoped… so I think I’ll leave it at that for now.

I’ll post again soon,

Jon