Keith Sirmons's questions

I have a SQL 2000 SP2 instance (version 8.00.760) that is on a drive that gets regular shadow copies.

Can a shadow copy be used to restore the database?

It seems possible to stop the SQL service, restore the Data folder from the shadow copy (includes msdb, master, model, temp, and the user databases, then restart the service.

Would the files be in a crash consistent case in the worst case? If so, when restarting the service wouldn't it recover as if the power were pulled from the server?

Thank you, Keith

I am working on a backup plan for TFS 2010. I found this site http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms253070(VS.100).aspx that details a complex backup solution.

Has anyone tested these procedures and can confirm they are accurate?

There are a couple of steps that violate the SharePoint rule "Do Not Modify the Database!"

Thank you, Keith

Let's run this idea by the group here.

I am thinking about using VMWare Server in production to host

• a 2008 Domain Controller with DHCP and DNS,
• a 2008 member server with WSUS, some virus software, and other "management" utilities
• a second 2008 member server with SQL, IIS, and File Shares for a medium business of 50-100 desktops.

The reason I am leaning toward Server vs ESXi is for backup purposes.

Using ESXi, if I want to backup the VM's, I would need a second server in the office with enough storage availability to hold a copy of the vmdks.

I am wondering if putting this virtual environment on top of a basic 2008 server install will allow for easier backups to both tape and/or to offsite storage using JungleDisk. Can a snapshot be triggered easily via a scheduled job?

I know this doesn't necessarily handle file level restores, but I want to make sure in a DR situation, we can restore production servers quickly.

Does this concept hold water? Would a very minimum install of the 2008 Host remove too many resources from the actual production machines?

This would be a new Dell 410 server with 12 GB ram and (6) 600 GB 15K in a RAID 6, Dual Intel Xeon 2.26GHz procs.

I have several erros in the system event log of my single Windows 2003 SP2 domain controller.

Multiple member computers on the domain are listed in these errors.
I am seeing two similar errors for each computer one second apart in the event log.

Event ID 7
Source KDC
The Security Account Manager failed a KDC request in an unexpected way. The error is in the data field. The account name was [email protected] and lookup type 0x8.

followed by

Event ID 7
Source KDC
The Security Account Manager failed a KDC request in an unexpected way. The error is in the data field. The account name was MEMBERNAME$ and lookup type 0x8.

The Lookup Types are also different, I have 0x8, 0x28, 0x0, 0x20.

I am also receiving other authentication errors in the same time frame as all of the KDC errors

Event ID 5722
Source NETLOGON
The session setup from the computer MEMBERNAME failed to authenticate. The name(s) of the account(s) referenced in the security database is MEMBERNAME$. The following error occurred: Access is denied.

I have run dcdiag /v to see if there was something wrong with Active Directory, but all tests passed. I also ran netdiag /v and it appers all of those tests ran.

Any ideas on where to start for this issue?

Thank you,
Keith

I am planning system upgrades at several Group Practice doctor offices.

I am asking them questions concerning what their RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) may be so I can balance their budget with those objectives.

What I am wanting to know from ServerFault, does HIPAA have rules concerning the RPO and RTO for patient medical data?

I understand that if an office is audited and a patient was billed for a procedure, but the medical record is missing, the office could be fined up to $10,000 per patient. I do not know if that is a real fine, but it does lead me to include in the calculations potential fines and not just the potential loss in revenue a typical business may have.

Thank you,
Keith

How do you add a site to the Internet Explorer Trusted Zones through GPO in server 2003?

If you do push a site through a GPO does it erase other Trusted Sites that may have been entered on the end users computer?

Thank You,
Keith

I am looking to deploy LogMeIn to several clients. I am using LogMeIn Central with LogMeIn free.

Central allows me to create an install URL to send to a client, but I want to create a GPO to deploy the LogMeIn to the entire domain of computers.

None of the local users have local Admin rights to their workstations, which is why I want to deploy LogMeIn through AD instead of installing via the Deployment Link.

Thank you,
Keith

Possible Duplicate:
Can you help me with my software licensing question?

I have a small (50 seats) office domain that needs to have Office 2007 available to the users.

The cost to purchase volume licenses seems quite high at about $350/seat. Not all of the users will be using Office at the same time and most users do not sit at a desk, but roam around the office using different computers throughout the day.

Would it be more cost effective to setup a Terminal Server on 2008 and install Office there? Would Office have a concurrency license instead of a per user license?

Thank you, Keith

When trying to connect to a ESXi server using the VMWare vShere Client I get an error:

Error parsing the server "server" "clients.xml" file.
Login will continue, contact your system administrator.

Followed by:

The type initializer for 'VirtualInfrastructure.Utils.HttpWebRequestProxy' threw an exception.    

Any clues to fix this?

Windows 7 x64 RC Build 7100
vSphere client from ESXi 4.0.0 ReleaseBuild-171294

Thank you,
Keith

I need to know if a USB dongle that is required as a license key for a piece of software will accessible from the physical host machine.

This will be a small vSphere 4 installation targeting the quick backup and system restore capabilities of VMWare, not specifically HA, so I am not to worried about the virtual machine automatically failing over to another physical machine and the dongle not being accessible.

Does ESX have the capability to map a physical USB port or device to a specific Virtual Machine?

I believe this is the dongle: Sentinal Superpro USB Dongle by Rainbow Technologies

Thank you,
Keith

We are looking to publish a ClickOnce application to a large Active Directory network which has to abide by the FDCC (Federal Desktop Core Configuration) which is an OMB-mandated security configuration.

Does anyone have experience with this security configuration and ClickOnce applications? The application requires the ability to read a file the logged in user has access to.

We are also concerned with extra security setting being placed in the future that may stop the ClickOnce application from working.

How robust is the ClickOnce method for deployment when you start to lock down the computer?
What settings must be in place for a ClickOnce to function?

Thank you,
Keith

edit: I am also asking this on stackoverflow since it kind of rides both sides.

So, I have a series of questions into ServerFault about LeftHand SAN's (Questions 1441 and 4478). One of the responses I received questioned the throughput of the iSCSI data returning from the SAN being restricted to the 1GB network card.

I think it is a very good point to look at.

Now to see if this would be an actual bottleneck for my purpose I should perform some benchmarks on the current production server.

What utilities should I use for profiling?
If there are special metrics I should be reading, what are they? IOPS?, Disk Read/Write B/sec?, etc...

Thank you,

Keith

I previously asked this ServerFault question: Does anyone have experience with lefthands VSA SAN

The general consensus looks like it does not perform well enough for a production SQL server even at a light load.

So the new question is, How does LeftHand's SAN perform on the HP or Dell dedicated Hardware boxes?

We are looking at the Starter SAN with 2 HP nodes in a 2-way replication, 2 ESX servers hosting a total of 2 Active Directory server, 1 MS SQL server, 1 File Server, and 1 General Purpose Server for things like Virus Scan (All Microsoft Server 2005 or 2008).

The reason I am looking at LeftHand is for the complete software package. I plan to have a DR site and like how the SAN can perform an Async Replication to the offsite location without having to go back to the Vendor for more licenses.
I also like the redundancy built into the Network Raid architecture.

I have looked at other SANS and found different faults with them.

For example, Dell's EqualLogic: Found that although the individual box is very redundant in hardware, the Data once spanned across multiple boxes is not redundant, if a node goes down you have lost the only copy of the data sitting on that hardware (One thing is certain, all hardware fails... When? is the only question.).

I have used an XioTech SAN as well.. Well worth the money BTW, but I think it is overkill for the size of the office I am targeting. The cost to get the hardware redundancy in the XioTech makes it a little out of reach for the budget I am working in.

Thank you,
Keith

I am wanting to get my feet wet with the Windows 7 x64 RC before I need to start supporting it. Has anyone run the RC on their MacBook Pro with bootcamp?

Also, Have you pulled the bootcamp partition into VMware Fusion?