HP ML110G5 Unknown device

Having recently setup a Proliant ML110 G5 Server with Windows 2003 SBS we encountered an unknown device in the Device Manager. The reason for this was that we prefer to blow away the OEM setup and rebuild from scratch. That way we get the server exactly the way we want it. This is a bit of a pain since you need to reload all the drivers manually. Everything seems OK except there is one item in Device Manager with Unknown Device Properties. The details of this item have a Device Instance ID of ACPI\IPI0001\0 and Hardware IDs of ACPI\IPI0001 *IPI0001.

Turns out that this is for the Remote Lights Out board (RILO) even though one isn’t install in the server. Even better, there isn’t a driver listed for the device on the HP drivers page for the ML110G5! Turns out you have to go back to the ML110G4 page where the RILO driver is located. You can also get there directly by clicking here

Boy, they certainly make it hard don’t they?

The very last version of Small Business Server

As most techie types salivate over the imminent release of Small Business Server 2008 I will contend that this will in fact be the last version every produced.

What do small business customers want? Simple. They want access to their “stuff”. What is their stuff I hear you ask. Well, it is probably “stuff” they create as well as “stuff” other people send them. In more technical terms “stuff” they create are documents and “stuff” other people send them is emails. Why do they need a server to access their “stuff”? They don’t. Managing a server for their “stuff” has become way too complicated and way too expensive for most small businesses. They have to firstly buy the equipment, next they have to run it up and get it all working. Next, they have to keep it secure and so and so on. If they can’t do this themselves they pay someone else to do it for them but it still pretty expensive just to access their “stuff”.

Customers don’t care about servers. They also don’t care about software. They just want something that will allow them to do their job – i.e. get access to their “stuff”. It seems that things like servers and software are simply getting in the way of this. I reckon more and more are going to be migrating to “cloud computing” since it all far easier to access their “stuff” here.

Look, Small Business Server (SBS) has been a great product over the years. It really has. It has been an extremely cost effective method of doing much that a small business needs but not any more in my books. Everything that SBS can do is now begin done in the “cloud”. As a customer, why would you ever want to maintain your own mail server? Put it in the “cloud” and let someone else manage the problems of spam a smart operator will say. If you really think about it there isn’t really much that SBS has over “cloud” computing.

Now sure, many clients aren’t comfortable with the the idea of accessing their “stuff” somewhere on the Internet but hey if I tell them that they can do it for half the cost, guess how long it will take most to change their attitude? Half a nano-second I’ll bet! So no customer really cares about SBS and all the technical gee-whiz. If they can find a cheaper and easier way to get their “stuff” they go for it.

The second front on which SBS faces annihilation is from Microsoft. Microsoft seems clearly to moving towards the concept of “medium” rather than “small” business servers with its release of Essential Business Server (EBS) which basically is similar to the current SBS but allows all the software to run on multiple machine (unlike SBS). Why? Businesses that are going to run EBS are bigger and far more likely to spend far more dollars on IT than “small” businesses who buy SBS. For those clients even Microsoft is pitching its own “cloud” computing solution, which is even evident in the upcoming version of SBS 2008. The way I see is that SBS is being “stripped” down and “consumerized” so all it does is simple store “stuff”.

Since it has been 5 years now since the last version of SBS was released (and SBS 2003R2 doesn’t count as a “new” release). I can’t see that in another 5 years we’ll have SBS 2013. I’m sorry, but I think it will be gone. If you are selling and supporting SBS then I reckon your time left to make money with the product is fast dwindling. You have either to move up market with EBS (which will be tough for one man bands) or embrace “cloud computing” (but if everything works right why do customers need you?).

So maybe it is not only the end of SBS as we know it. Maybe it is also the end of the SBS only reseller?

Not that there is anything wrong with that

(stolen from www.vladville.com)

HP ML110G5 hanging on array utility (F8)

So you want to configure the embedded RAID array on a HP ML110G5? Well, first thing you have to do is go into the BIOS (via F10 at boot) and select the Advanced menu. From Advanced menu item select Advanced Chipset Control. Then set the Serial ATA field to Enabled, select SATA Controller Mode Options -> Enhanced field and set the SATA RAID Enable field to Enabled. Press F10 the Yes to save and the server will reboot.

Now as the server is booting you should see a message about the SATA RAID controller and how you must press F8 to configure. Ok when I did that I received the message:

Utility found, Loading wait ….

and the server hung. Bugger! Reset, try again, disconnect some things, try again. Still no luck. Bugger x 2! Ok, the BIOS Build date was 1/11/08 and as it typically turns out there is a later version (2008.04.03 (A) (18 Apr 2008)) that fixes the problem although it doesn’t appear to be noted in the release notes. You can download it from here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=3577708&swItem=MTX-c97c6477ae454b5289fd5a7011&prodNameId=3577715&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=5

So you download the file, unpack the files to you workstation hard disk and run the utility that allows you to create a bootable USB device (anyone know what these things called floppies are? I can’t remember ever seeing one ). Insert that into the server, the server boots to the device, runs some updates, reboots, finishes updating and when I now press F8 at the RAID controller config I can finally get in and configure my drives for RAID.

Generally, it is always a good idea to update all the firmware prior to the installation of any new server. Why? Simple. It’s the first thing the manufacturer is going to ask you to do if there are problems and I’d sure as heck rather do it on a system I’m running up rather than a production server if I can avoid it!

Networking basics course starts tomorrow

It’s not too late to sign up for my latest Networking Basics course to be held at Macquarie Community College on Marsden Road Carlingford from 7-9 pm over the next three weeks.

The upcoming Networking Basics course will provide you with a solid foundation to understanding the technologies around things like TCP/IP, Windows Network and Internet programs and protocols. Each attendee will have access to their own machine to work with and the sessions are highly interactive with a focus on understanding the concepts through questions and hands on work.

For more information about this course (or any others that I run at Macquarie Community College visit :

http://www.macquarie.nsw.edu.au/index.php?action=course&course_action=list&cat=IT+TRAINING&subcat=NETWORKING

I am also happy to announce that from term 3 I will now be presenting networking courses at Chatswood, also through Macquarie Community College. More details on these courses as the time nears.

If you would like to know the content of any of my courses and whether they would suit your needs, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

SQLVDI and Shadowprotect errors

Do you have ISA 2004 and Shadowprotect installed on your SBS2003 server? Seen these types of errors in the logs?

VSS 6013
Sqllib error: OLEDB Error encountered calling ICommandText::Execute. hr = 0x80040e14. SQLSTATE: 42000, Native Error: 3013 Error state: 1, Severity: 16 Source: Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server Error message: BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

SQLVDI: Loc=SVDS::Open. Desc=Open(control). ErrorCode=(2)The system cannot find the file specified. . Process=1908. Thread=8372. Server. Instance=MSFW.

It would appear that the MSDE database used by ISA2004 for logging (as demonstrated by Instance=MSFW) isn’t very VSS compliant! Worse still given the right set of circumstances the ISA Services would fail and the whole server would be brought to grinding halt.

The best solution seems to change the logging in ISA2004 from MSDE to text file. To do this:

1. In the Microsoft ISA Server Management console click ‘Monitoring’ -> ‘Logging’ tab in the centre pane.
2. In the right pane, click the ‘Tasks’ tab, and then click the appropriate task:

- To log the Web Proxy service data to a file, click ‘Configure Web Proxy Logging’.
- To log the SMTP message screener service to a file, click ‘Configure SMTP Message Screener Logging’.
3. On the ‘Log’ tab, click ‘File’.
4. In the ‘Format:’ field, ensure that ‘W3c Extended log file format’ is selected.
5. Click ‘Options’ to confirm or to modify the following parameters: (This step is optional.)
- ‘Store the log files in’
- ‘Log file storage limits’
- ‘Maintain log storage limits by’
- ‘Delete log files older than’
- ‘Compress log files’

Hopefully that way when Shadowprotect runs, since nothing is being logged to the MSDE database, hang ups won’t occur. The general result I found on the Net is that logging of ISA 2004 should be set to text file only as it is more stable.

The Great Game

Did anyone else out there ever play Spycraft: The Great Game? I did, probably 10 years or so ago now but I still remember not eating or sleeping until I finished it! Now. I have played plenty of fantastic computer games over the years but Spycraft must rank as in top three.

So what is Spycraft about? Well you can look it up on Wikipedia but basically you are a CIA operative having to solve a case that leads you through a maze of twists and turns, requires complex solutions and choices. Best part is the outcomes change depending on what decisions you make. Thus, you can play the game over and end up with a different result. Even better the game plays like a movie because it is extensively filled with video interaction which back then was truly amazing. Don’t be fooled, this was a quality production that included many top listed actors of the age.

Anyway, I could drone on and on about how great this game is but I will refrain. After playing the game, I lent it to a friend who also loved it but promptly lost it after playing (isn’t that always the way?). That was until recently when it turned up during a clean up. Now, as everyone knows the world has moved on and we have Windows XP as the standard PC platform these days. Guess what? Spycraft won’t run on XP. DAMM. Since my friend couldn’t get it running they returned it to me.

Now I am not that easily defeated. So I tried it on my XP machine and sure enough, no go. The problem has something to do with the video drivers. Back then Spycraft needed a pretty flash graphics card so it could do the videos and perhaps that ability has been removed now in XP. Who knows? Bottom line is it won’t run. I checked the Internet and had my worst fears realized, Spycraft and XP = no go.

Hmmm…I wonder. The games was designed for Windows 98/95 so my next idea was to use Windows 98 in a Microsoft Virtual PC. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a Windows 98 Microsoft Virtual PC at the ready. I wonder if it run in Windows 2000 Professional which I did have at the ready? Guess what? It does!

So the solution is to download Microsoft Virtual PC , which is free, install that on your XP machine, then install Windows 2000 Professional into Microsoft Virtual PC, which you didn’t hear from me, doesn’t need activation but hey you are only evaluating it right? Next, install Spycraft. Sure you get a few warnings during the install and one when the game runs but from what I’ve seen so far everything WORKS! Magic. If you need help with Virtual PC see my Youtube clip on Microsoft Virtual PC.

Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend? Reliving my Windows 98 gaming days. They just don’t make ’em like this any more.

Lean and mean

Now that I have one of my Windows XP workstations running full time on a Microsoft Virtual PC I decided that it was time to reduce the amount of RAM that it consumes. Nearly everyone knows there services in Windows that you can turn off to save memory and generally improve performance. What most people don’t know (including me) was exactly what services you can and can’t disable.

That is now all solved with the Black Viper site. You can choose any current version of Windows and see which services can be disabled. You’ll find a table that gives you options for each version and allows you to customize your settings based on what type of system you want to run ( i.e. minimal, power user, etc).

After using the information on the Black Viper site, I was able to reduce my Windows XP RAM usage from 415MB down to 305MB. Sure 100MB of RAM may not sound like much but that is greater than a 25% reduction! Best part was that after a reboot the system didn’t complain and everything I needed ran.

So if you are looking to pare down the amount of RAM Windows is using take a look at the Black Viper site.