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 :)

Adding a new Tree Domain to Your AD Stalls on Preparing AD Schema

Had a fun one today.
Wanted to add a tree domain to an existing AD Forest.
Installed 2012 R2, AD DS, put in all the details...
and the install stalled for hours...nothing happened, just

error 1908 Could not find domain controller for this domain

 

 

Made sure we followed this KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2737935/en-gb

 

 

- but it turns out we did all of this in the first place. Some sites even mentioned putting stuff in the hosts file which was worth a shot, but did not help. Still could not find the domain controller.

 

To fix the problem, reboot.

Log on. Remove the machine from the tree domain you just tried to create and add to a workgroup.

Remove AD DS. Reboot. Remove the computer from AD Sites and Services on your Forest.

 

Now when the machine is back up, add the server to your existing forest. Install AD DS. Run through the set up again. It works. You now have a Tree in a Forest!!!

 

FYI - Part of the setup removes the server from the forest domain (!!!!!!!!!)

.Net 3.5 Installation on Server 2012 (Prerequisite for SharePoint 2013)

I've worked with computers for a long time.
I cut my teeth on NT4. Windows 95.
Then Windows 2000.
Windows 2003 was a game changer, a polished OS that we installed here there and everywhere. After each installation I would copy the CD (I386 files) to the C drive. There would always be one server you were working on that didn't have it (and I would protest that I did not install that one!)
I remember hearing that in Server 2008 those days were gone. Setup would copy the DVD to the C drive for you. Brilliant....

Today I was installing SharePoint 2013 on a Windows Server 2012 box. All RTM versions.

The prerequisite check kept failing for installing the IIS Role. No problem. I can do it myself. It worked. However the prerequisite check STILL failed on IIS.

I then thought, I bet it needs .Net 3.5. Add it in as a Feature. It failed. Turns out, you need to "Specify (an) Alternative Source Path"

 

 

Which actually means you have to type in %dvddrive%\sources\SxS - not even inserting the ISO would sort this one out.

 

Innovation. One step forward. Two back.

 

(oh and don't forget the reboot) :)