Opalis 6.3 Operator Console Installation Made Easy!

For anyone that has had the pleasure (and heartache!) of installing Opalis 6.3 from scratch, then you will know it is a long and arduous process that involves first installing the Opalis 6.2 Management Server, Database, importing the Licence, installing the Operator Console, upgrading to Opalis 6.2 SP1 and then upgrading to Opalis 6.3

The hard part was when you wanted to install the Opalis Operator Console and this involved the following:

• download a number of pre-requisite Java and JBoss installers (approx 200MB worth of them!)
• copy these files to a directory on the C:\ drive
• ensuring that you had set the 'Path' Environment variable set to %JAVA_HOME%\bin
• run the java executables from a command line
• open powershell and run the Opalis console operator installer script (installopconsole.ps1)
• starting JBoss by running 'run.bat-b 0.0.0.0 from the <JBOSS>\bin folder

If all of these steps were followed exactly to the letter, then the Powershell script would run through a number of installation steps, prompting for user intervention to eventually finish the installation of the Operator Console!!

See below link for a more detailed step by step installation:

http://systemcenterblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/installing-opalis-part-i-opalis-622.html

Once this was completed, you then needed to updgrade Opalis 6.2 to Opalis 6.2.2 SP1

http://systemcenterblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/installing-opalis-part-2-upgrading-to.html

Finally, you then needed to copy an MSI file containing the Opalis 6.3 binaries to the install location and run an upgrade patch to complete the Opalis 6.3 upgrade.

http://systemcenterblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/installing-opalis-part-3-upgrading-to.html

Talk about going around the block for an installation!!!

In fairness, we really enjoyed doing this installation as it brought back memories of long winded legacy application installations from a few years back and lets you really get into the nuts and bolts of the Opalis install structure.

So, how is that 'Made Easy' (see blog post title above!) you might ask?

Well, I came across an entry last night on the System Center Technet site from Adam Hall - Snr Technical Product Manager for Opalis - about a new 3rd party tool that pretty much automates all of the hard part of the installation of the Operator Console that I have outlined in my steps above.

The product is from a company called 'Kelverion' and I downloaded it last night and ran it against a new test VM with no previous Opalis installation to see how it compared to our first attempt at Opalis 6.3 installation (which took us nearly 2 hours by the time we figured out all the steps and read the documentation last month!).

The results are amazing and I managed to get the whole Opalis 6.3 installation including the Operator Console installed in just under 30 minutes! The reason it is so quick is that Kelverion's Configuration Utility for OpConsole is nearly 200MB in size and contains all of the Pre-Requisite software such as Java and JBoss inside the MSI file. It runs through a nice handy wizard prompting you for all of the required information including creating and naming the new directories to place and run the Pre-Requisite software from. The best thing about this is that it is free too!

You can read more about this utility here:

http://www.kelverion.com/news/2011/1/26/kelverion-configuration-utility-for-opconsole-released.html

You need to register for your free download from here (you will get an email within a minute with the download link):

http://www.kelverion.com/utility-for-opconsole-download/

You can view a really quick 5 minute video of the utility in action here:

http://www.kelverion.com/utility-for-opconsole-demo

I most definitely recommend that you use this utility for any future Opalis Operator Console installations that you are deploying -although the orginal long way is worth doing for the fun at least once!.

Instant Recovery of Hyper V using dBeamer

I came across this application on the web yesterday that I thought was worth a mention in relation to DPM.

It is called dBeamer and is available from a company called Instavia.

The main purpose of this product is to maximise uptime whilst performing a recovery of a replica from DPM. This product enables you to allow access immediately to a Hyper V VHD that you are restoring from DPM to your Hyper V host and the end user sees very little downtime from the time the recovery job has been initiated within DPM.

If you have ever performed a full Disaster Recovery test of yours or a clients Virtual Environment using DPM and Hyper V, then although it is a perfectly seamless recovery and it enables you to have the whole virtual environment back up and running exactly how it was, you cannot get away from the fact that the DPM server still needs to recover this data from the DPM server to your newly commissoned Hyper V host and this could take anywhere from 1 hour to 10 hours depending on data size.

dBeamer allows you to get around this issue by enabling access to the VHD immediately and allows administrators to achieve a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of near zero!

Here's the link to Instavia's site and I would recommend downloading the 64 bit client onto your DPM server, requesting a trial licence and testing away!

http://www.instavia.com/dbeamerdpm-for-it-administrators

Download MAP 5.5

The new version of Microsoft's Assesment and Planning Toolkit has come available with some nice new features added to enhance the previous versions capabilities. You can now simplify your move to the cloud with MAP 5.5 by identifiing and analyzing web application and database readiness for migration to Microsoft Azure. There is also support for migrating to Internet Explorer version 9 too along with all of the usual assesment and inventory options based around virtualization analysis.

Download from the link below:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=67240b76-3148-4e49-943d-4d9ea7f77730

World IPv6 Day is announced

On 8 June, 2011, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour "test drive". The goal of the Test Drive Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.

Exchange 2010 Backup-Less Configuration

How would you like to never have to do another backup of your Exchange 2010 environment again? Well if you are using or intend on implementing DAG within your Exchange 2010 environment, then read on to revolutionize your backup strategy!!

When Exchange 2010 was in Beta I heard the rumours that if configured properly you could do away with traditional tape or disk based backups and use the High Availability functionality of DAG to achieve maximum up time. In fairness, since then I then thought nothing else of it and never looked into how exactly you could go about creating this type of solution - until now!

I received a request from a customer to investigate the possibility of implementing this within their existing DAG environement and I am very impressed with the information I found and the process involved in implementing it.

Here's a quick summary of whats involved in implementing the solution:

The requirements needed for a backup-less implementation of Exchange 2010 DAG are as follows:

• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise on all Exchange 2010 servers
• Exchange Server 2010 Standard or Enterprise Edition
• Circular Logging Enabled
• A minimum of 3 DAG copies of each active mailbox database within the DAG environment spread across different geographical locations for disaster recovery
• Lagged copies of each database preferably stored on a separate Exchange 2010 server within the DAG environment that has DAG Activation disabled
• Deleted Item Retention Policies to be reviewed
• Single Item Recovery Enabled on either each entire mailbox database or the top priority mailbox users within the organisation – i.e. Senior Management mailboxes
• Public Folder Replication Policies need to be in place if Public Folders are in use

The most comprehensive and intuitive source that I found on this topic comes from the guys over at msexchange.org. Exchange MCM and MVP Henrik Walther has created an excellent four part guide on this exact solution and you can view the entire postings from the links below:

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/high-availability-recovery/eliminating-traditional-backups-using-native-exchange-2010-functionality-part1.html

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/high-availability-recovery/eliminating-traditional-backups-using-native-exchange-2010-functionality-part2.html

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/high-availability-recovery/eliminating-traditional-backups-using-native-exchange-2010-functionality-part3.html

http://msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/high-availability-recovery/eliminating-traditional-backups-using-native-exchange-2010-functionality-part4.html

Now, time to throw away those backup tapes...................................!!!

Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions

The guys over at the Exchange Team in Microsoft have come up with an initiative in conjunction with a number of hardware providers to create and test different solutions for Exchange 2010 deployments and then have produced white papers on each test environment.

For example, if you want to know how an Exchange 2010 installation running on 500 mailboxes in a single site based on Hyper V using Dell hardware is configured and operates, then you can download the white paper from the link below!

They have included a number of different scenario's incorporating different Exchange and hardware configurations and will be adding to this link some more white papers in the near future.

Download the white papers from here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg513520.aspx

Publishing Outlook Anywhere Using NTLM Authentication With Forefront TMG or Forefront UAG White Paper

Here's a brand new White Paper released by Greg Taylor - Microsoft Senior Program Manager on Exchange Server. It goes through all you need to know to publish Outlook Anywhere using either TMG or UAG.

I could have done with this white paper 7 months ago when I first deployed OA in UAG though!!!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=040b31a0-9a69-4278-9808-e52f08ffaee3

KMS Minimum Clients (Activation Thresholds)

I came across this issue during the week when I was reading into KMS licensing in a bit of detail and thought it might be something worth sharing as I hadn't realised there were a minimum number of activations required for KMS to operate. Here's the official text from Microsoft's website on the subject:


KMS requires a minimum number of either physical or virtual computers in a network environment. These minimums, called activation thresholds, are set so that they are easily met by enterprise customers.

For computers running:

• Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 you must have at least five (5) computers to activate.

• Windows Vista or Windows 7 you must have at least twenty-five (25) computers to activate.

• For Office 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 you must have at least five (5) computers to activate. If you have deployed Microsoft Office 2010 products, including Project 2010 and Visio 2010, you must have at least five (5) computers running Office 2010, Project 2010 or Visio 2010.

Full Microsoft Best Practice Analyzer List

Here's a full list of all the available Microsoft Best Practice Analyzers compiled by the Microsoft Premier Support Team here in Ireland. Use these tools on a regular basis to check for configuration and patching issues with your sites:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/premier_support_ireland/archive/2011/01/04/kick-off-2011-with-best-practice-analysers.aspx

HP Proliant Network Teaming for Hyper V White Paper

A new 'HowTo' White Paper has been released by HP on the steps needed to implement NIC Teaming in a Hyper V environment on HP servers.

The document is a must read for anyone considering teaming the NIC's using the HP Network Configuration Utility (NCU) and you must follow these steps in the exact order to ensure no loss of network connectivity:

• Install the Windows 2008 Operating System normally without using the HP 'Smart Start' DVD
• Install the Hyper V role into the Windows Server 2008 Operating System
• Download and install all of the latest Microsoft Updates and security fixes using Windows Update
• Download and install the latest version of the HP Proliant Support Pack (PSP)
• Configure the HP Team using the HP NCU version 10.10 or higher

If you install the HP NCU before adding the Hyper V role to the O/S, then you will need to uninstall the NCU and then re-install it once Hyper V is added.

The document goes through in detail the above steps and processes and also talks about using VLAN's in 'Promiscuous' mode from within the HP team.

Download the White Paper from here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01663264/c01663264.pdf