503 Eror When Configuring CRM 2016 Using PowerShell

When configuring claims / certificates using CRM and PowerShell I was getting the following error:
The remote server returned an error: (503) Server Unavailable
AND
Fail to configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM to use the specified certificate.


I noticed that the Application Pool Service CrmDeploymentServiceAppPool had stopped.


Turns out the service account had Log on as Service enabled but not log on as a batch! Rookie mistake but CRM was working fine (with the AppPool started) so I hadn't noticed it!

Hint & Tip: Rename Networking Adaptors

When renaming network adaptors you can press Tab to skip to the next adapter and rename it instantly!!!!!! No F2 needed! Wowzer!

DPM 2012 R2 Won't Backup System State or Bare Metal Recovery

If you can't backup the system state or bare metal recovery using DPM2012, try installing windows server backup on the affected client :)

Office 365 User Not Syncing to Portal / Duplicate Attributes

Office 365 User Not Syncing to Portal / Duplicate Attributes

If a user isn't syncing to Office 365 (hereby known as O365), the user probably has duplicate attributes. e.g. same e-mail address / proxy address etc

To find the offending item run the following in command prompt:

ldifde -f filename.ldf -d "CN=username,OU=users,DC=domain,DC=com"

open the file and look for objectGUID e.g. yv3teZPLCRijv1MhJ9BeHP==

 

Now open up Azure Powershell and run: connect-msolservice

log on

run

get-msoluser -userprincipalname username@domain.com |fl > c:\sources\username.txt

Open this TXT file

Look for

ImmutableID

This is the O365 version of objectGUID

 

If they are the same, this is probably not causing the sync problem. Investigate other reasons.

If they are different......

 

Open up DirSync (FIM Sync Engine) on the DirSync server

C:\Program Files\Windows Azure Active Directory Sync\SYNCBUS\Synchronization Service\UIShell\miisclient.exe

Go to MetaVerse Search

search for

Source Anchor and the enter the GUID - to see which user is syncing...

Now, on prem, run the following LDIFDE domain dump (yes the whole thing):

ldifde -f domaindump.ldf -d "DC=domain, DC=com"

it may take a long time!

 

Open this file when its completed downloading using notepad++ - normal Notepad will probably crash if you have a large directory.

Now do a search for the objectGUID which is synced to O365, this will show you the offending account that probably has a duplicate mail address.

DPM 2012 R2 Only Administrator Has Permissions to Open DPM Console

DPM 2012 R2 - I had an issue where the only Administrator could log on to the console. There were MMC errors saying the snap-in could not be loaded. I added the appropriate users in to SQL with access to the DPM SQL Database...and it now works! Easy!

DPM 2012 R2 Replica Creation Failed - VSS

To cut a long story short, I had to re-setup a File Server in DPM. The server had been backing up fine before, but when I set up the protection again, the Synchronization Failed with

 

The replica of F:\ on %servername% is inconsistent with the protected data source. All protection activities for this data source will fail until the replica is synchronized with consistency check. 
DPM failed to synchronize changes for  F:\ on %servername% because the snapshot volume did not have sufficient storage space to hold the churn on the protected computer.

 

 

 

I checked the disk space on the server - it has 7TB free!
I ran the usual VSSadmin commands, checked the VSS settings via the GUI, changed the sizes to unlimited etc.
The backup still failed with the same error.



As the server had been in production some time I had a thought...when the server was first set up, Quotas were not configured and they are now.  So I turned off the Quotas and the backup worked!

Broken Windows Server 2012 Cluster

Had fun today with a Server 2012 Cluster.

The Cluster had lost all of its storage. There were errors starting the storage using PowerShell, such "Remote Server has been paused or is in the process of being started."

start-clusternode  -fixquorum is described as a last ditch attempt at getting the Cluster on-line, but it worked.

Now I have the fun task of fixing the storage :)