lysdexic's questions

Just a quick question. Does changing the DNS servers in the network settings on Windows server cause any interruption of network connectivity? I am pretty sure the answer is no and I have tested on my workstation. I need to change the internal dns entries from one IP to another, but wanted to confirm that it should not interrupt network activity (doesn't restart nic).

Links to sources would be appreciated. Mostly I just need to prove that this change should not cause any downtime and I am having a hard time finding the right answer on here or on the internet.

I appreciate your input.

Thanks!

I have a MS Sql server 2008 SP1 running on a Windows server 2008 SP1, I would like to get these upgraded to the latest service packs. Specifically we are seeing performance issues related to "Full text indexing" and upgrading the service pack level of Sql and applying some cumulative updates should fix it.

My question is: I want to make a full image backup of the whole server before updating and just wanted to get some input on the best method to achieve this. We are already taking regular sql backups but I would like a full image to roll back to if the updates make something go sideways.

Can I use Windows Server Backup Services to make this image? I have made many images this way, but never for a server that also runs Sql, any caveats or considerations here? I am also considering Acronis, but would prefer a quick free solution.

The only caveats that I know of is that I should shut down the sql service and any related sql services... anything else?

Many thanks!

I've been banging my head against the wall on this problem for a few days, please help.

I just installed a new fileserver, (Windows Server 2008 R2), And replaced a few users laptops (Windows 7 Pro 32bit).

I am seeing incredibly slow response times between this server and the Windows 7 laptops. Only between these two types of systems though. The laptops can access file shares on Server 2003 boxes with no problems. Older Windows XP machines can access files on the Server 2008 R2 box with no problems.

Specifically, if a user tries to open a Excel file from the network share, it will open right away but Excel will be frozen and become nonresponsive for at least 30 seconds. It is not just Office files, pdfs, jpgs and other file types as well.

I ended up testing this out with others servers as well with the same results, always with Win 7 and Srv 08 R2. On the laptops, I have tried:

disabling "autotuning" disabling IPv6 disabling Remote Differential Compression reinstall network drivers disable antivirus (network threat protection) disable firewall various other fixes found around the internet.

Ping is 1ms response time, transferring a file exhibits erratic transfer speeds, 22MB/s down to 130kb/s and back up and back down or it just locks up. Wired or wireless

On the server I have tried

disabling "autotuning" disabling IPv6 disable antivirus (network threat protection)

This server is also the Domain Controller and DNS server as well as a file server. I know this really isn't the desired config, but this is for a branch office, I had no options.

Nothing in the event logs on the clients, and nothing relevant in the event logs on the server.

More details: when a user opens an Excel file for example; the file opens right away but Excel becomes unresponsive. During this time while it's frozen, the green progress bar starts again in the address bar of Windows Explorer. Once the progress bar is done loading then the file becomes available for editing.

About the only thing I haven't done is install Wireshark on the laptops and server and watch the traffic.

Any thoughts? What technologies are in Win 7 and Srv 08 R2 that is causing this type of network slowness?

As always, thanks to anyone who reads this and/or responds.

Lys

Anyone use or know anything about Axway Validation Authority Suite? I am currently googling the heck out of this and not finding an answer. It looks like I will have to read the Administration documents to figure this out (if I can find them).

Here's my problem, I'm using a valid ssl domain certificate on a website. Secure.domain.com from GoDaddy. I know their certificates are kinda cheap, but still.

The problem is with the Tumbleweed Desktop Validator saying that it can't validate the certificate.

This is on my clients network, not mine, so I don't know anything about this Tumbleweed tool.

My guess is that this is something that will need to be taken care of by my clients IT department or whoever manages that tool.

My client thinks it's my problem, something wrong with the certificate, but I can't figure out what could be wrong with it.

Anyone know anything about this Axway software??

Thanks to anyone who reads this and responds.

Okay serverfault, please help me figure this one out...

I have four locations, each connected to each location with Juniper Netscreen point to point vpns.

I have a file server in the main office, my main production file server.

About once a month one of my locations cannot get to this server, and it lasts for about 2 or 3 hours. No ping, no rpc, no remote desktop, no shares, no nothing! And it's only this one server. They can still get to all others servers, all other shares.

The office where the server is and the other two locations can still get to this server (file shares), no problem.

The only thing that fixes it is rebooting the server, not ideal as the other locations need to get to it at all times. Restarting the server service doesn't help, I've tried restarting some of the other services too, nothing.

There is absolutely nothing in the log files to explain this, I have been over and over them. Nothing shows up in the log files of the machines at the remote location either. And, of course, nothing in the firewall logs.

A tracert, gets to the server, then times out.

About the only thing I haven't done is set up netmon, or other packet sniffer on this machine. It couldn't be the network interface could it? I'm about ready to just replace the server...

I am notorious for not being able to say the words, "I don't know", but I am saying it now.

Any thoughts?

Thanks to anyone who reads or responds to this!

I know this has been asked before, but I'm trying to understand this better.

I traditionally used Backup exec to backup sql servers, but I now have two sql servers that are off-site and of course I don't want to back them up across the vpn. I have created maintenance plans for each of them. First I did a full backup, then changed the plan to do differential. I do not need to back up transaction logs for these servers because of the nature of the databases, at least not yet.

My question is this, I thought the differential backups would simply append the latest differential. But it's creating new files every night. If some of the databases don't change everyday, then I don't want all of these duplicate backup files.

Do I just need to set expiration of these differential files, will that actually delete the expired files?

Basically I'm just trying to come up with a solution to just have one full backup, and daily backups after that.

I'm reading more and more about it, but not really finding the right answer on google, and waiting for my SQL book to come in.

Am I missing anything?

Thanks to anyone who reads or responds, I appreciate it.

SQL2005, Server 2003, 32bit/64bit

I've been tasked with figuring out how to do a large scale deployment for a high availability, high traffic, dynamic, flash based web application. There is a good possibility that this application can grow to 2 million users or possibly a lot more.

Of course when the time comes to actually do it, I will likely bring in an expert to help me. For now, this is all theoretical, and I just wanted to get a good idea about how to do it.

Here is my current thinking:

• Get a 1 or 2 gigabit internet connection.
• 2x HA Proxies / load balancers.
• 12x physical servers (2x quad cores, 32GB of ram) to run 25 Virtual Machine Apache web servers - 300 VMs total.
• 2x memcached Servers (2x quad cores, 32GB of ram)
• 2x Master Mysql DB servers, 3x read only slave mysql BD servers
• 2x 6TB SAN RAIDs
• All 10GbE or fiber connected...

My job is mostly to figure out the hardware, and how to deploy and maintain it.

As for maintaining this beast, I'm looking into Slack, Rightscale, Landscape, VMware.

I am also looking into just deploying it on Amazon EC2, but I would prefer to rack it myself as it looks like it would be much cheaper in the long run. I may start out with this rack and add EC2 instances if more is needed.

What do you think, is this overkill? Not enough? Have I got it figured out, and is there anything I'm missing?

Thanks to anyone who reads and responds!