May 2009 - Posts
Directly from the official SBS Blog:
We are investigating an issue with certain Intel PRO/1000 EB with I/O Acceleration network card drivers on Windows Server 2008 that can cause the BITS service to become unresponsive after a few hours to several days of operation. When that happens, the entire Network Service hosting service (SVCHOST) also goes unresponsive causing the COM+ EventSystem to also become unresponsive. This can cause issues with the following services:
- BITS
- IAS/Network Policy Server
- This can cause VPN and RWW login failures
- VSS
- This can cause backup failures and shadow copy failures
- VSSADMIN /ListWriters will be empty
- RRAS
- WMI
Note: This issue will disappear after a reboot only to return a while (hours to days) later.
The current resolution is as follows:
- Update network card's firmware
- Update network card's drivers
Note: If this NIC is an onboard NIC, you may need to search on your Motherboard Make/Model to find the updated drivers. Use drivers from 2009 or the last half of 2008. Here is a link to some or the more popular motherboards with this adapter.
- Install hotfixes KB959816 and KB961775 (Will be included in SP2 for 2008)
- Disable RSS and Offloading on the network card's advanced features
- Set the following values on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters:
- EnableRSS = 0
- EnableTcpa = 0
- DisableTaskOffload = 1
- Reboot
If for any reason you must disable BITS as a temporary solution, follow KB922330 to prevent WSUS from losing functionality.
Note: The third-party product(s) that are discussed in this post are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.
Strange as the title might sound, it is indeed possible to get into this scenario with a bad installation of the APC Powerchute 7.0.x software on Windows Small Business Server 2008.
We recently deployed the APC Powerchute 7.0.5 software to a Small Business Server 2008 site, and the software functioned for a few days without issue. We still received good server reports, including the backups, until on closer inspection during a spot check things did not quite appear ok. This is the mail received on the 15th May 2009, can you spot the issue?
Yes, there it is…. even though we have a nice GREEN check, the backup has in fact not run since the 4th May 2009! Quite a shocking discovery because the end user was simply looking at the green check and presuming that everything was ok. Frankly, so were we!
This was quite a worrying development so I asked the SBS team to take a look. It turns out that the Powerchute 7.0.5 software had caused a problem with the UPS driver and the server thought that it was on battery power! Because of this, the scheduled tasks did not run, and that included the backup.
I then spoke to APC whom initialy said to me over the phone that it should work, then told me that in fact only version 8.0.1 and above were supported. (Though I cannot understand then why it worked for a few days, but there you go).
The outcome of this will be (if I have my way):
- The SBS Best Practices Analyzer will be updated to spot Powerchute 7.0.5 software installed and recommend removing it as it is not supported by APC on 2008 based servers. It will recommend installing the new, simpler APC Powerchute 8.0.x agent only (web based control).
- We’ll get an updated report on the codeplex site that will trigger alerts if the backup scheduler does not run / the server is on battery power. (As a temporary solution to my next point)
- I hope that the backup report, vital as it is, will be changed as part of a SBS 2008 update rollup to give a yellow or red if the scheduled task did not run.
For what it is worth, and this is directed at the SBS Team management, not the technical folks whom help us and the community out…..
PLEASE can you get those codeplex unofficial report updates in one of the SBS 2008 rollup packages! Then, can you PLEASE get the reports to be as good as the SBS 2003 versions!
Lets hope for a response on the Official SBS Blog
An update from Tom in AVSIM for the community.
There is a temporary forum here that is reporting the status of updates for the rebuild of AVSIM.
Good Luck!
PRESS RELEASE:
AVSIM Hacked – www.avsim.com
Tom Allensworth, CEO and Publisher of AVSIM, today issued the following announcement; “We regret to inform the flight simulation community that on Tuesday, May 12, AVSIM was hacked and effectively destroyed. The method of the hack makes recovery difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. Both servers, that is the library / email and web site / forum servers were attacked. AVSIM is totally offline at this time and we expect to be so for some time to come. We are not able to predict when we will be back online, if we can come back at all. We will post more news as we are able to in the coming days and weeks.
My own comment on this however is how such a large site, which is a business, could not have a good backup and recovery solution in place. It fails comprehension.
Terrible news for the community.
As posted on the official SBS blog, you may have noticed that since installing SBS2008 UR2 that your documents are opening in read only mode.
The solution is documented here
If you search the iTunes store for “iLinX” you will find a product that simply changes the way Netstreams DigiLinX functions in your home. This product simply is the cherry on top of the DigiLinX system and is a must!
Here are some screenshots from the application. Essentially it does pretty much everything you can do at a TouchLinX device, with some exceptions (Like the Door control at this time). Of course that is not to say that won’t come later!
EDIT: More on www.ilinx.info !
Sorry about the overload of images! but it is the only way to get across just HOW good this product is. If I get a chance I will do a video!
Cheers!
Nick
How Microsoft could make such a catastrophic error is beyond me…. but there you have it.
I can simply welcome Steve to msinfluentials.com!