tfrederick74656's questions

I'm putting together a new image, and looking for a way to suppress showing the "Sign in to set up Office" licensing nag screen on Office 365 Build 1808 and newer. This dialog appears when an Office product is first opened, and can be dismissed by the user, but reappears on subsequent runs until the product has been licensed.

I've looked through the policies provided by the GPO pack for Office, and played around with some registry keys from prior Office versions, but nothing has stuck. Any ideas?

Today I ran into the issue described on this Veeam Community Forum post. Under specific circumstances, Veeam inadvertently marks a legitimate tape as a cleaning tape, removing it entirely from view in VBR console. There's no user-accessible way to remove it from the catalog, nor does erasing, re-scanning, or inventorying the tape have any effect.

Symptoms:

You will see the following entries in your logs:

:: TapeDrive alert: The tape drive is due for routine cleaning:.  Wait for the current operation to finish. Then use a cleaning cartridge. Check the tape drive user manual for device specific cleaning instructions. 
:: TapeDrive alert: The last cleaning cartridge used in the tape drive has worn out:.  Discard the worn out cleaning cartridge. Wait for the current operation to finish. Then use a new cleaning cartridge. 
:: Marking tape <TapeName> as a cleaning cartridge 

And you will notice a slot in your tape library has magically disappeared. The missing slot will correspond with the location of the tape Veeam believes is a cleaning cartridge.

I recently spun up a new Server 2012 R2 VM to use as a PPTP VPN server. The machine is fully patched, and has only the Remote Access role installed. Per standard configuration, the machine has two NICs (the first intended for internal traffic, and the second intended for incoming VPN traffic; both sit behind a hardware firewall; 10.1.1.22 and 10.1.1.23 respectively).

I walked through the RRAS configuration wizard selecting the following "Remote access", "VPN" only, Enable security on adapter #2, "Automatically", and "No". No further configuration was performed. Testing from within my network (i.e. no NAT funniness to deal with), I can connect just fine to the #1 IP, but connections to #2 fail. If I remove all of the inbound static filters on interface #2 from RRAS, connections to #2 work perfectly.

I've tried clearing all of the inbound filters out and just putting in TCP 1723 and IP 47 (GRE), and connections still fail, despite confirming via WireShark trace that these are the only ports/protocols being used in the exchange. I'd easily be able to accept that something is screwed up with RRAS if I was doing something funky, but these are the 100% out-of-the-box stock settings from the wizard and they're not working. Anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

We have a 2x Server 2003 DC's, and manage group policy using the administrative tools on a couple Windows 7 workstations. We've just started using the domain central store to ensure that we're all seeing the same settings. I'm just slightly confused about how the administrative templates work when dealing with multiple versions of a product.

Am I correct in assuming that if I copy the the newest (Server 2012/Windows 8) templates in to the central store, I will have available all of the settings for Server 2012/Windows 8 as well as any settings specific to preceding operating systems, such as Server 2008/7/Vista/XP? Or do I need to add the set of ADMX/ADML files for each OS, in which case there are name conflicts?

Also, how does this work for templates for other MSFT products, such as IE or Office? Do you need the set of templates for each version?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

I have a Linux server running CentOS 6.4 that is used as an iSCSI target. The server is multi-homed with two NICs, both on the same subnet. iSCSI multipathing takes care of the load-balancing/failover, so all I need is for each NIC to operate independently. How do I configure this system to avoid all the weird routing and ARP issues that always come along with a multi-homed setup, such as traffic being returned on a different interface from the source, or one interface accepting traffic sent to the IP of the other. The bonding solution is not an option, as it has issues with the iSCSI connection.

The important stuff:

• eth0: IP 10.1.1.242 / SN 255.255.252.0 / GW 10.1.1.254
• eth1: IP 10.1.1.243 / SN 255.255.252.0 / GW 10.1.1.254

I bring up, yet again, the ever-present question of how to best optimize disk structures. In my organization, we have a 14TB Linux software RAID array dedicated to storing backups made using Symantec Backup Exec. These are large files, 10GB - 100GB each, with some supporting metadata files a couple KB in size. Long story short, we have to recreate the array, and I would like to know the optimal array chunk size for this use case.

Details of our setup:

A Netgear ReadyNAS Pro, running a clean & updated install of CentOS 6.4.

6 x 3TB consumer (SATA II, 7200 RPM) hard drives from assorted vendors (identical in size).

Each drive has 3 identical partitions which form 3 software RAID devices:

• /dev/md0: 6 x 32GB for / in a RAID6
• /dev/md1: 6 x 4GB swap in a RAID10
• /dev/md2: 6 x 2.7TB storage in a RAID5 for ~14TB total useful storage

Additionally, there is an integrated 128MB flash device set up as /boot

/dev/md2 is the array I'm focused on. It is made available as drive "R:" to a Windows Server 2008 R2 box running Symantec Backup Exec via multipath iSCSI over dual gigabit NICs on both machines (also running 9k jumbo frames).

On the Server 2008 box, R: is formatted as NTFS with a 64k cluster size, and is dedicated to storing backup files. The average file is generally between 40MB and 5GB, depending on the current proportion of full vs incrementals/differentials present. Disk usage is about a 50/50 split between read and write, as we mirror backups from this drive to tape as well.

Overall, given the hardware, I've think optimized this setup fairly well, however I'm not a storage expert, and the implications of the RAID chunk size are slightly beyond me. I know the default mdadm chunk size is 512KB. Is this optimal for my scenario? Should I adjust this to match NTFS cluster size? Or is there some magic formula I've missed?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Edit: Benchmark results below. Not all combinations were tested.

##########   4K Chunk##########
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :   111.551 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    96.759 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :   107.033 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :    56.770 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     9.500 MB/s [  2319.2 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     5.042 MB/s [  1231.0 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :   101.717 MB/s [ 24833.3 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     8.237 MB/s [  2010.9 IOPS]

  Test : 1000 MB [R: 0.0% (0.1/13791.8 GB)] (x5)
  Date : 2013/07/12 13:10:31
    OS : Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (Full installation) SP1 

[6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

##########  32K Chunk##########
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :    91.276 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    11.119 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :     0.000 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :     0.000 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]

  Test : 1000 MB [R: 0.0% (0.1/13791.8 GB)] (x5)
  Date : 2013/07/12 14:37:05
    OS : Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (Full installation) SP1 

[6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

##########  64K Chunk##########
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :   111.968 MB/s
          Sequential Write :   103.318 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :   105.047 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :    48.321 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :    10.373 MB/s [  2532.5 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     5.180 MB/s [  1264.5 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :    95.106 MB/s [ 23219.3 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     9.108 MB/s [  2223.6 IOPS]

  Test : 1000 MB [R: 0.0% (0.1/13791.8 GB)] (x5)
  Date : 2013/07/12 12:47:37
    OS : Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (Full installation) SP1 

[6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

########## 128K Chunk##########
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :   111.908 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    94.305 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :   104.772 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :    43.821 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     9.247 MB/s [  2257.6 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     4.929 MB/s [  1203.3 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :   101.764 MB/s [ 24844.8 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     7.949 MB/s [  1940.6 IOPS]

  Test : 1000 MB [R: 0.0% (0.1/13791.8 GB)] (x5)
  Date : 2013/07/12 13:52:01
    OS : Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (Full installation) SP1 

[6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

########## 512K Chunk##########
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :   110.237 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    93.149 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :   104.892 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :    41.407 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     6.760 MB/s [  1650.3 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     3.539 MB/s [   864.0 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :   101.139 MB/s [ 24692.3 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     7.166 MB/s [  1749.6 IOPS]

  Test : 1000 MB [R: 0.0% (0.1/13791.8 GB)] (x5)
  Date : 2013/07/12 12:22:58
    OS : Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (Full installation) SP1 

[6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

##########1024K Chunk##########
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :   112.327 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    92.353 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :   107.015 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :    39.793 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     9.536 MB/s [  2328.0 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     3.671 MB/s [   896.3 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :   101.990 MB/s [ 24900.0 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]

  Test : 1000 MB [R: 0.0% (0.1/13791.8 GB)] (x5)
  Date : 2013/07/12 14:17:08
    OS : Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (Full installation) SP1 

[6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

My company is running Exchange 2007. From time to time, we need to open a user's Mailbox to to various tasks. Until now, we've been logging is as them and using Outlook directly. I'd like to give Full Access permission for all mailboxes to an "IT" security group in active directory, that way we can simply open their folders/mailbox in Outlook under our accounts. I understand the syntax to do this from PowerShell, but Exchange won't find the "IT" group name.

 Add-MailboxPermission -Identity 'IT' -User '*' -AccessRights 'FullAccess'

The command stalls on the Identity parameter. It works fine when another exchange user is specified, but not for AD groups. I CAN add the permission through the GUI, but only one account at a time. I've tried this in every configuration I could think of, including 'DOMAIN\IT' 'CN=IT,etc..', but no dice. Any help?

Thank you!