Migrating datastores with eagerzeroedthick disks

When you migrate a VM with one or more disks that are eagerzeroedthick from one datastore to another the disks will no longer be eagerzeroedthick. This is especially relevant if you have an Exchange server which is under heavy load because a lazy zeroed disk will have an I/O penalty.

Exchange 2010 management shell not connecting to local Exchange server

We've had a couple times with the local Exchange Management Shell would not connecting to the local Exchange server and would give us an error related to the Windows Management Interface (WMI). We found the solution is simply restarted the WWW Publishing service.

Warnings after promoting 2008 R2 to domain controller

When promoting the first Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 domain controller in our 2003 domain we saw 1181, 1182, and 1185 information events, and 1153 warning events. These all appear to be normal and part of the promotion process and initial synchronization process for the new DC.

Exchange 2010 EMC errors out after demoting domain controller

We demoted one of our domain controllers and the Exchange 2010 EMC started erroring out on start up because it couldn't find the domain controller. We tried setting it to another DC but it wouldn't allow it since it couldn't call up the domain list from the now decommissioned DC. We ended up deleting the configuration file for EMC which allowed it to rediscover the active domain controllers. The configuration file, along with other MMC configuration files, can be found in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roamin\Microsoft\MMC.

1083 and 1955 NTDS replication warning in Directory Services log

On two of our 2003 domain controllers we were seeing an intermittently 1083 warning followed immediately by a 1955 information event in the Directory Service long at a rate of once or twice on month. Neither DCdiag nor repadmin return any errors. After working with Microsoft support they confirmed this is an expected transient error which can be safely ignored.


Event Type: Warning
Event Source: NTDS Replication
Event Category: Replication 
Event ID: 1083
Date: 4/15/2013
Time: 8:44:57 AM
User: NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON
Computer: <DC>
Description:
Active Directory could not update the following object with changes received from the domain controller at the following network address because Active Directory was busy processing information. 

Object:
<Object>
Network address:
<Address> 



Event Type: Information
Event Source: NTDS Replication
Event Category: Replication 
Event ID: 1955
Date: 4/15/2013
Time: 8:44:57 AM
User: NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON
Computer: <DC>
Description:
Active Directory encountered a write conflict when applying replicated changes to the following object. 

Object: 
<Object>
Time in seconds: 
0  

Event log entries preceding this entry will indicate whether or not the update was accepted. 

A write conflict can be caused by simultaneous changes to the same object or simultaneous changes to other objects that have attributes referencing this object. This commonly occurs when the object represents a large group with many members, and the functional level of the forest is set to Windows 2000. This conflict triggered additional retries of the update. If the system appears slow, it could be because replication of these changes is occurring. 

User Action 
Use smaller groups for this operation or raise the functional level to Windows Server 2003.

Veeam SureBackup scripts for Exchange 2010

Veeam's SureBackup is an excellent tool to verify the viability of your backups, and is able to run test scripts against your backed up VMs. This is a test script which runs against an Exchange 2010 mailbox server and checks whether the Information Store, System Attendant, and Service Host services are running or not. Just put your relevant IP in the script.


REM Start-Sleep -s 60

# Start Exchange servers on Mailbox servers

Start-Service -InputObject $(Get-Service -Computer 192.168.0.1 -Name MSExchangeIS)
Start-Service -InputObject $(Get-Service -Computer 192.168.0.1 -Name MSExchangeSA)
Start-Service -InputObject $(Get-Service -Computer 192.168.0.1 -Name MSExchangeServiceHost)

REM Start-Sleep -s 60

# Check Exchange services Status

$ExchSvc = (get-service -ComputerName 192.168.0.1 -Name MSExchangeIS -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)
IF($ExchSvc.status -ne "Running"){$host.SetShouldExit(1)}

$ExchSvc = (get-service -ComputerName 192.168.0.1 -Name MSExchangeSA -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)
IF($ExchSvc.status -ne "Running"){$host.SetShouldExit(1)}

$ExchSvc = (get-service -ComputerName 192.168.0.1 -Name MSExchangeServiceHost -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)
IF($ExchSvc.status -ne "Running"){$host.SetShouldExit(1)}

Exit



SureBackup can't run a Power Shell script directly, so you need to call the script from a batch file. In this situation the PS script is saved as exchangembx.ps1 in the root of C.


powershell.exe -noninteractive -noprofile -command "& {C:\exchangembx.ps1}"
EXIT /B %errorlevel%

Veeam SureBackup errors out after changing Veeam server IP address

After changing the IP address of your Veeam server you might receive an invalid datastore path error upon powering on the first VM in a SureBackup job. To fix this you need to recreate the NFS volume on the host running your SureBackup. In vSphere Client go to the configuration tab of your host and select storage. Have it rescan all your storage, and you should see the VeeamBackup datastore disappear. Once it's gone select add storage and then NFS. Enter the IP or FQDN of your Veeam server, for the folder enter "/VeeamBackup_<server name>" where <server name> is the name of your Veeam server, and enter "VeeamBackup_<server name>" for the datastore name. Do not check "Mount NFS read-only". Once that's done SureBackup should work correctly again.

9782 errors on Exchange 2010

When performing a Veeam backup of an Exchange 2010 mailbox server you might find the following errors in the application log:


Log Name:      Application
Source:        MSExchangeIS
Date:          4/2/2013 8:57:54 PM
Event ID:      9782
Task Category: Exchange VSS Writer
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      <FDQN>
Description:
Exchange VSS Writer (instance 4763eabf-a53b-4686-a94e-afb456c3d5da:182) has completed the backup of database '<DB>' with errors. The backup did not complete successfully, and no log files were truncated for this database.

This happens when you perform an application aware backup using Veeam but have set it not to truncate the transaction logs. This appears to be normal behavior and can be safely ignored.

Event ID 8220 when performing VSS backup of Exchange 2010

When you perform a VSS compliant backup of Exchange 2010 you might get an 8220 information alert in the application similar to this:


Event ID:      8220
Task Category: None
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      <FQDN>
Description:
Ran out of time while deleting files.

This is perfectly normal and presents no issues per Microsoft:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee264207(v=ws.10).aspx