CJM's questions

We have a couple of servers acting as VM hosts (ESXi v5.1) and they are connected to a Dell MD3220 SAS Array (2 cables each, split across 2 controllers).

We've just noticed that multipath wasn't working, and digging deeper it turns out we'd not mapped the second Port Identifier in each server's HBA card to a Host in the array management software (MDSM).

Mapping these Port Identifiers to a host has enabled a second path in ESXi, however this current configuration differs slightly from near-identical system that we have already configured. In this reference system, the two paths are marked as Active (I/O) and Active, whereas in this current system, the paths are described as Active (I/O) and Standby.

We've tested this current configuration and it works fine - the standby path is switched to Active (I/O) as soon as the original path is broken.

However, I'm curious to know the difference in behaviour and how to make the systems match.

FYI: The original system only differs from the current system insofar as the server model is slightly different; they are connecting to identical array and are running identical versions of ESXi v5.1. The only difference (I assume) is the configuration.

In this SF question, I asked how to determine which DC a server was talking to. We are doing some resilience testing and need to demonstrate to the client that if a DC fails, there are additional DCs available to take the strain.

With nltest, I can determine which DC I'm talking to at any given time. But if we fail the current DC, how do we force the server to re-evaluate which other DCs it can talk to and then connect to one... such that 'nltest' will reflect the new DC?

Ideally I've like some sort of operation I can run within the same Windows session, but thus far we logged out and back in again. My concern with logging in/out is that cached credentials might complicate the picture.

In short, in the event of a DC failure, what is the simplest/quickest/safest way of making the server connection to a secondary DC?

I'm preparing for a battery of resilience tests on a new network (which will be hosting a mission-critical application).

As part of it, I ought to confirm the resilience of the domain controllers. We have 2 DCs in this environment, and I need to be able to confirm that when I pull the plug on one, the remaining DC takes up the slack.

What is the simplest test I can do to confirm DC2 is successfully covering for DC1?

Would something as simple as gpupdate /force suffice? Or is there a better, simple test? We've got a lot to test so the less we need to do, the better.

A colleague is trying access a particular SQL Server over a remote link. He can login to the server (via SSMS) with the SQL Server credentials I supplied, but although he can view tables/etc in the Object Browser for one database, he can't view them in another.

The login I provided was added to the db_owner role for both databases, and so I expected access to be the same.

If I login locally, from a neighbouring server using the same login, I can see everything fine. An obvious difference here is that I am inside the same network and am accessing the server via NETBIOS name. [It occurs to me that I should try using IP address, as he does]

I've tried creating an alternate user with the same permission - no improvement, as expected.

However, if he creates a new query window, he can access both databases and run queries against them.

Can anyone suggest why he might be struggling to see the expected objects in SSMS?

I'm testing the resilience of one of our test systems. We have 2 x DB (SQL 2008 R2 on Server 2008 R2, running in ESXi VMs) arranged in a Failover Cluster.

Shutting down the Active SQL Server service doesn't do much - the service is not restarted and no failover occurs; I under stand this is by design - the system assumes that the admin had good reason to turn off the service and so will sit quietly.

However, we can simulate a failure in a number of ways - I found the simplest was to just kill the SQL service in Task Manager. Our cluster is set to allow one failure in 6 hrs, so after this first failure, it tries to restart the service - which succeeds. Kill the service a second time (within 6 hrs) and the cluster manager will decide to fail the DB over to the passive server. So far so good...

If will kill the service on the second server, it restarts again. But when we kill the service for a second time, it doesn't fail back over to the first server.

I'm assuming that this is also by design; it makes sense, in that why fail back over to a server that itself wasn't stable enough only minutes earlier? This sounds logical, but is it true? And if so, does to obey the same timeout period (i.e. 6 hrs), and can this be reset?

Basically, before I tell my colleagues the failover features are working, I just want to confirm/clarify my understanding and assumptions.

I'm debugging a call to a Stored Procedure in SSMS (2012). Frequently, and various random points in the code, a dialog pops up:

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio:
Unable to Step. Invalid Operation.

Once I dismiss the dialog, it appears that debugging CAN continue... I can continue to step through the code to the end, without any apparent problems. So far....

I ran the Export wizard to output some data to Excel, and I saved the package to run agan later. I now want to edit the SQL used to generate the Excel, but it is not clear how I do this.

The package is visible (in Stored Packages > MSDB) in SSIS, and I can execute it again, but I don't see a means to edit it. I also opened Business Intelligence Studio, through which I could see how to open a package stored as a file, but not how to open a package automatically stored in MSDB.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I have two very similar ASP Classic apps that both use Windows Authentication and run on the same development PC (Windows 7/IIS 7.5).

They've been around for years, and have 'travelled' with me as I've upgraded PCs through the years. One works fine, but the other doesn't - I can't say for sure whether it has ever worked on this particular PC, since it has been a while since I've had to work on it, but I think it has been working in the recent past.

My problem is that when I browse the site, I get the following error:

HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error
The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid
Cannot read configuration file due to insufficient permissions

The curious thing is that it claims to have insufficient privileges to access web.config - but there is no web.config!

In the application settings, if we test the connection, an error is reported:

Authorization: Application pool identity cannot access path

As far as I can tell, both applications are configured identically:

• Both use the same Application Pool
• The identity of the pool (a domain user) has identical permissions to the application folder (Read + Modify)
• Both are configured for Windows Authentication

I'm stumped! Any ideas?

EDIT: Full error information:

**Detailed Error Information**
Module  IIS Web Core
Notification    BeginRequest
Handler Not yet determined
Error Code  0x80070005
Config Error    Cannot read configuration file due to insufficient permissions
Config File \\?\D:\Projects\Scope2\web.config
Requested URL   http://myserver:80/scope2/
Physical Path   D:\Projects\Scope2\
Logon Method    Not yet determined
Logon User  Not yet determined

I've got a an ESX VM and the storage is provided by a decent SAN. On a physical server, I would ordinary install SQL Server across 3 drives; one for the OS + SQL, one for data, and a third for log files. It's a fairly common approach that offers good performance.

However, is there any benefit to this approach when installed on a SAN? If I were to create 3 virtual disks to mirror the physical server approach, I am not going to yield any extra performance because all 3 disks would be drawn from the same SAN, surely?

So what is the best configuration for SQL Server on a VM/SAN?

I have several Classic ASP sites that use Integrated Windows Authentication and Kerberos delegation.

They work OK on the live servers (recently moved to a Server 2008/IIS7 servers), but do not work fully on my development PC or my development server. The IIS on both machines were configured through an IIS web deployment tool package which was exported from an old machine; the deployment didn't work perfectly, and I had to tinker a bit to get the sites working.

When accessing the apps locally on either machine, they work fine; when accessing from another machine, the user is prompted by a username/password dialog, and regardless of what you enter, ultimately it results in a 401 (Unauthorised) error.

I've tried comparing the configuration of these machines against similar live servers (that all work fine), and they seem generally comparable (given that none of the live servers are yet on IIS7.5 (Windows 7/Server 2008 R2).

These applications run in a common application pool which uses a special domain user as it's identity - this user has similar permissions on the live and development machines. On IIS6 platforms, to enable kerberos delegation, I needed to set up some SPNs for this user, and they are still in place (even though I don't believe they are needed any longer for IIS7+ due to kernel-mode authentication),

Furthermore, this account is enabled for Kerberos delegation in Active Directory, as is each machine I am dealing with.

I'm considering the possibility that the deployment might have made changes/failed to make changes to the IIS configuration thus causing this problem. Perhaps a complete rebuild (minus another web deployment attempt) would solve the problem, but I'd rather fix (thus understand) the current problem.

Any ideas so far?

I've just had another attempt at fixing this issue, and I've made some progress, but I don't have a complete fix...yet.

I've discovered that if I access the sites via IP address (than via NetBIOS name), I get the same dialog, except that it accepts my credentials and thus the application works - not quite a fix, but a useful step.

More interestingly, I discovered that if I disable Kernel-mode authentication (in IIS Manager > Website > Authentication > Advanced Settings), the applications work perfectly. My foggy understanding is that this is effectively working in the pre-IIS7 way. A reasonable short-term solution, but consider the following explicit advice from IIS on this issue:

By default, IIS enables kernel-mode authentication, which may improve authentication performance and prevent authentication problems with application pools configured to use a custom identity. As a best practice, do not disable this setting if Kerberos authentication is used in your environment and the application pool is configured to use a custom identity.

Clearly, this is not the way my applications should be working. So what is the issue?

I'm finding my use of the Web Platform Installer somewhat muted by it's insistence on trying to install SQL Express when I already have a full copy of SQL Server installed.

Why is this happening? Is there any way to get WPI to recognise that I have SQL Server installed?

I've just rebuilt my development machine and installed IIS. I then installed the Web Deployment tool and used this to restore my previously-backed-up websites to the clean machine. Unfortunately the restoration didn't work correctly/fully.

I couldn't easily correct the problem, so I decided to uninstall/reinstall IIS and recreate the sites manually.

I uninstalled IIS and rebooted, but there was still plenty of stuff left around such as various files in /windows/system32/inetsrv/ which I tried to delete manually (with limited success!).

I rebooted again and tried to reinstall IIS - it reported an error (no meaningful message) and requested another reboot. The event log includes the following errors:

The World Wide Web Publishing Service (WWW Service) did not register the URL prefix http://*:80/gallery for site 1. The site has been disabled.

and

Unable to bind to the underlying transport for [::]:80. The IP Listen-Only list may contain a reference to an interface which may not exist on this machine.

I'd like to avoid another rebuild. Can I completely remove IIS, such that I can reinstall it from scratch? Or can I 'fix' the current setup so that IIS will reinstall over what is already there?

I've just transferred the websites on my old development machine to my new one using the Web Deployment Tool (which did Ok but didn't work perfectly).

I'm starting work on one of the web application that runs off the root of the Default Web Site. Seemed to be running OK at first but I'm adding some links in to images in a couple of location (one set in application subdir, another in a virtual directory below the application), but I'm having a problem where a relative path (i.e. /images/myimage.png) is not being linked in correctly:

Rendered url should be:

//MyServer/MySite/Images/MyImage.png

Actually rendered as:

//MyServer/Images/MyImage.png

It is as if the server doesn't recognise the application, but the application is configured as an application and the Global.asa is being read (i.e. DB connections, application variables etc)

I'm guess that this is a quirk of the Web Deployment Tool... Anyone any idea what I need to do to achieve the expected behaviour?

I'm trying to export the results from a query in SQL Developer into SQL Server. I'm sure I've done it once before, though my route may well have been convoluted - I can't remember. I may have used a '2-hop' solution (i.e. export to XML or CSV or other intermediary format) in the past, I'm not sure.

The query returns around 5000 rows, and although I may want to repeat this exercise occasionally at some point in the future, I don't mind a 'quick & dirty' solution.

I can easily generate Insert statements for a table, but I can't see a similar way of doing it for a multi-table query.

I did start to look at an Integration Service project and SQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle, but fell at the first hurdle in each - which I presuming is because I don't have the necessary software (either a full Oracle Client or OO4O). I probably regard these solutions as overkill for my current needs - but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise.

The oracle version is 10g and my sql server version is 2008 SP1 (running on Windows 2008 x64).

Thanks in advance...

I have a maintenance plan setup for all my user databases on a particular server, which does all the usually things at various intervals.

The 7th and final subplan is a two stage cleanup plan; firstly old full backups are deleted, then old transaction log backups are deleted. These tasks appear to run successfully - the subplan's job history reports that the plan was run on time, and runs xp_delete_file twice - but clearly files are not deleted.

The task settings are:

• Backup Files
• Search folder and delete based on extension - .bak
• Include subfolders
• Delete files older than 2 weeks

and

• Backup Files
• Search folder and delete based on extension - .trn
• Include subfolders
• Delete files older than 5 days

Any ideas?

...at least I think so.

I recently revamped my backup routine on my development server. I created a maintenance plan for user databases that did some weekly cleanup tasks, daily full backups and transactionlog backups at key points throughout the day.

All has been working well until today, when a received an email notifying me that the lunchtime backup had failed. The log viewer didn't reveal much, other than that a certain number of DBs were backed up success fully, before ending the log entry with:

[snipped] Source: ...  The package execution fa...  The step failed.

Not exactly revealing

It occurred to me that the only change to previous attempts was that I'd created a new (small and unremarkable) database this morning.

I restarted the SQL Server Agent, and tried manually re-running the (transaction log backup) step but it failed again.

However, running the full backup step (thus creating the first full backup for my new DB) worked - furthermore, re-running the transaction log backup step again also worked.

It appears that the transaction log backup struggled because of the lack of a full backup or previous transaction log backup.

Is this the expected behaviour? On the one hand, at a primitive level this sort of makes sense, but really, I'd expect it to handle such a scenario more gracefully.

If so, is there a way to automatically handle this? It won't happen that often, but I can't be relied to remember to backup the DB when I create it, especially since it's only in the early stages of development.

If not, what is the likely cause of this behaviour? Can I avoid it?

I've knocked up a simple web application that lists all files or a particular type in a particular folder and renders them as a series of LinkButtons in a ListView control - when the user clicks on a LinkButton, the relevant file is streamed to the user. I've done this a dozen times in ASP Classic, but this is a new ASP.NET version.

When I run this on my development machine, it runs fine - but now I've set it up on the live server I'm experiencing problems:

"Access denied to 'X:\mydir\'. Failed to start monitoring file changes"

The application is configured (currently) to use Anonymous Authentication, but eventually it will use Windows Authentication.

Having looked at the permissions situation, I can confirm that the ASPNET user and the IUSR_ServerName users have permissions to the parent of the application (and everything underneath).

The host server is Windows Server 2003 R2.

Any ideas?