Cluster Help

CoMo Error - You must update your version of Communicator Mobile

So, long story, short version: I was trying to hook up Communicator Mobile 2007 on my HTC S710 running WM 6.1. I downloaded the latest version from the Microsoft download site and installed it. So far so good.

I then entered all of the important information in the client, you know, like the address info and my log on info. I clicked on sign in and after a couple of minutes, I got this ugly error message that said:

"You must update your version of Communicator Mobile before you can sign in..." Well, I just downloaded the latest and greatest. How could I have too old of a version?

A little research gave me the following steps to fix it.

1. Check the Client Version Filter defined in your OCS environment
 - Expand Standard/Enterprise Edition Servers node
 - Right Click on the pool or server name. Choose Application Properties > Client
 - Select the Application Properties and then Client Version Filter
 - Click on the line for CPE
2. Update the version number to block a lower number than the current version

Repeat the process on the Access Edge. You may need to restart the RTCSRV service, but I didn't seem to need to take that step.

Upcoming Mindsharp Summits and Unified Communications

We have been working really hard these last few weeks completing our courseware for Unified Communciations. OK, it is really just the first round.

Our first course will focus on Core Technologies in Office Communications Server 2007. In this course, we will talk about how OCS fits into Unified Communications, the different server roles, and how to implement basic instant messaging as well as conferencing and voice.

The second course will be focused on using OCS 2007 and Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging to provide Enterprise Voice. I am really excited about the voice side of it all as we will get to play with media packs and set up routing rules. I can't wait!

I love this technology stuff!

New MVP Award

I received the formal announcement this morning that I am awarded the MVP again for my work in Windows High Availability (Server Clustering). No, that is not the title, but that is the way that I try to treat the subject.

As an contributor to the different communities around the world, I try to provide some objective information to questions and issues. One of the hardest things for me to respond to are those that want to implement Failover Clustering (that is the term in Windows Server 2008), but they don't want to invest in good hardware, or enough hardware, to do it well. However, my real pet peeve is that too many people think that High Availability is just putting together a cluster and then magic happens.

OK, it is true. Magic does happen. Failover clustering is so much easier today that it has ever been, and it is also much less expensive than ever before in the past. However, we have to remember to stick to the basics. Don't forget change control. Don't forget your backout plans. Don't forget your DR plans. Most importantly, don't forget to test everything.

Anyways, I spent my last plane flight working on several blog ideas. I hope to refine them and get back to giving you more and more information about some of the topics that came to mind Monday morning while I was flying to the office.

Free Live Meetings at Mindsharp

One of the things that we do at Mindsharp is host free Live Meetings so that you can hear a little bit about the courses and get a chance to ask some questions about our courses and what is covered.

Most of the Live Meetings provide an introduction about a product. For example, Unified Communications is a topic that very few people understand. So, I will host a Live Meeting talking about UC at a fairly high level to explain what it is and what its value is to our organizations.

I would love to hear your questions about Unified Communication, too. I may not be able to answer them all right away during the Live Meeting, but I promise you to answer all of you questions even if I have to do it via email.

http://www.mindsharp.com/Default.aspx?top=TRAINING&left=FREE%20LIVE%20MEETINGS

Best Practices SharePoint Conference

Virtualization and Exchange Server 2007 Support

Buy.com and Extremely Poor Customer Service

John Anderson and Bamboo Solutions

John Anderson is a pretty well known person in the blogging community. and he is very active in the SharePoint arena.

His recent blog posts have really reinforced in me why I am glad that I now work for Mindsharp!

Here are the links for his posts on the first two days of one of our Mindsharp classes on SharePoint. 

Certifications - They Really Are Not as Scary as Thought

Harold Wong recently posted about his recent certification experiences. It is an excellent example of what I have been saying for years: Certification is not all that and a bag of chips.

Microsoft certification is focused on proving minimal skills required to perform a job/task. Minimal skills are possessed by most of the administrators in the world that have been working with the product for a significant amount of time. If you know your stuff, passing an exam should be easy.

So, what does certification prove? Again, see above, nothing but minimal skills.

What does a High School diploma prove? Minimal skills.

What does a College Degree prove? Minimal skills.

None of them prove that you are an expert in anything. They just prove that you have worked hard and have a certain minimal skill set. They each show that you know how to learn new things, that you know how to gather information, that you know how to read and write and apply your knowledge to certain situations. Each of them are great ways for a human resources representative to help identify candidates. Just as a degree or a diploma are not tickets to a job, neither is certification. A good employer will always interview the candidate to get direct proof of skills.

Think about it. If you were a HR representative and you had a stack of applications, and some of them were certified and some were not, which ones would you interview first?

So, why go through the certifcation process? See the above. It is the same reason that people graduate High School and College.

First Day at Mindsharp

Today is officially my first day at Mindsharp.

Many of you have heard of the company and most people immediately associate it with SharePoint. That is a good thing, but Mindsharp is going to be much more than SharePoint in the near future.

My job is to help complete courseware for Office Communications Server and help promote classes and consulting opportunities for OCS. I am excited about this opportunity. I get to work for a top-notch organization with a great reputation, and I get to help lead the company into new areas of technology.

Yeehaw... let the fun begin.

My focus, my time, and my odd dreams now include Mindsharp and the new logo. This week includes lots of paperwork and review of the current outlines and content to see what the next steps are oing to be in the next few weeks. 

I already had the question come up, "What does this mean for ClusterHelp.com?" Damn good question. We are talking with Mindsharp about selling the IP to them and then re-building the course for Windows Server 2008. It may take a good bit to make it happen, but it will not impact our current commitments. The next two classes (Pittsburgh and NYC) will still happen.

The Perfect Job

I don't know if it is possible to find the perfect job or not.

Over the last few weeks, I have been talking to several companies about opportunities. These conversations have been fun, and the interviewing has really been entertaining as well.

Interviewing - I bet you have all heard the basic questions, like, "What is your biggest weakness?" So, during the process, I put together my top 10 questions.

1. Why are you leaving your current position? Also, why did you leave your last job?
2. Can you describe a typical day at your last job?
3. How do you handle stress?
4. If you could change the last X number of years of your professional life, what would you change?
5. What major challenges did you face in your last position and how did you respond to those challenges?
6. Can you describe an occassion where you made a mistake and what you did afterwards?
7. What did you like/dislike about your previous supervisors?
8. How do you feel about travel?
9. How do you keep up on the constantly changing technology?
10. Why would you like to work for our organization?

My all time favorite question is, "What are your salary expectations?"

So, since I have all of these questions and appropriate answers memorized, the next step is always the initial technical screening. It is very unusual to have any issues with the technicals screen unless the interviewer doesn't know the right answer to their own questions. This has happened more than a few times with me which have resulted in me sending them email in the middle of the interview with the proof that my answer was right. Then the joy of salary negotiation, which I actually like doing.

OK, back to the perfect job for me. I thought about it long and hard. What were the things that I loved about previous jobs and what are the things that pissed me off most about previous jobs. The pissed off part was easiest. :)

So, what are the things that I like to do? So, another list...

1. Speaking at conferences
2. Helping others through newsgroups and blogging
3. Writing and technical reviewing the work of other offers
4. Researching new technologies
5. Train and help others learn new technologies
6. Consulting - By this, I mean indentifying issues, creating solutions, and helping to deploy fixes to existing and new environments
7. Be able to leave work at a reasonable time - the always missing work/home life balance which everyone claims to support

I looked at all of the opportunities in front of me, and it was real easy to eliminate a few companies.

So, the result? I accepted a position with a great company, Mindsharp. I will be working as a lead courseware developer as well as a technical lead for all things related to Unified Communications. The first project? Yep, finish the courseware and get it out into the market place. After that, I will be working as a trainer on the courses that I help develop and will also work as a consultant in UC.

I can't wait to get started!

Question of the day: What are they doing for Bill Gates last day?

Now, seriously, what are they going to do for him?

In some companies, they have a luncheon party, in others, they take up a collection and buy a parting gift.

So, what are they doing for Bill? Does he get a cake? Does he get a watch? A plaque? A handshake from Steve? A hug? A letter of appreciation? A fishing pole?

I really want to know.

Cluster Class in Pittsburgh

We have scheduled a class in Pittsburgh, PA. It is tentative at this point. What does that mean? Well, it means that there is no actual contract yet, but it looks like it will be a go.

If you are interested, please contact RiverHead Training in Pittsburgh by calling them at 412-224-2345 or by sending email to education@riverhead.com.

Philip Anderson is the point of contact.

Blog was Down

I am sorry, but this blog, as well as many others hosted on MSMVPS.com, was down for a considerable amount of time.

I really wasn't happy about it, but I also really can't complain because this server is supported by a couple of voluteers, and they do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

I will continue to host my blog here, for now. However, if there are continued issues, I will do my best to move to a new location. In the meantime, keep in mind that I copy many of my posts (not all) to another blog site that I use for personal stuff as well as geek stuff. You can get to it here.

Should I Deploy Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003 for Exchange Server 2007?

This is another question that came up many times during TechEd.

It was usually phrased, "Why would I go with Windows Server 2008 over Windows Server 2003 when deploying my Exchange Server 2007 environment next month?" Sometimes they also threw in that they were going to to CCR.

My point, which actually seemed to please some of the people is that we, as administrators, should try to avoid NT 4.0 situations that we are still paying for today.

What does that mean? Well, think about it, in 2000, we were deploying new servers. The options were to deploy NT 4.0 or Windows 2000. Windows 2000 was still new and there was fear about using it for critical environments. So, NT 4.0 was used. In 2003, the hardware reached the end of its warranty. So, we paid for an extended warranty for a year, or more, until it got too costly. So, last year, we had an OS that was 11 years old running critical systems.

Take it forward today. I deploy a new and extremely critical email environment that is supposed to last me between 4 to 5 years. So, if I use Windows Server 2003, I will find myself running Windows Server 2003 in 2013. Sound familiar?

I am willing to bet you money that not a single person will be wanting to upgrade the OS to Windows Server 2008 when the application and the OS are still working properly. We, as IT people, do not mess with what is working. So, we don't upgrade and we end up in a bad position where we are way past the end of life on the operating system on a critical server environment. This is especially true if we are deploying a high availability environment to support the application. You don't mess with it.

I am a big proponent of aligning application and hardware refreshes because it just makes sense. What we end up with is a cycle of every 3-5 years, we replace our out of warranty equipment with new equipment running the latest OS and the latest application version just so that when we hit the end of our planned life cycle, we are not in an unsupported state and trying to remember how to manage an OS and an application that we haven't touched in years because we are constantly moving forward.

Something else to consider. Let's say it is the year 2010, and you call Microsoft for support for your Windows Server 2003 environment. Who do you think you will get to help you? Well, the very best people have already moved on to the other teams. They are working on the 2008 platform, or they are working on Win 7 (whatever its real name will be then). The best support guys will not be stuck working on the 2003 team. 

I hope that is enough reason for you to do your best to convince management that it is better to go with Windows Server 2008.

Exchange Server 2007 and Virtualization

During my booth duty at the Failover Clustering booth, I must have heard questions regarding this topic about once per hour if not more.

The official stance: Microsoft does not support the virtualization of Exchange Server 2007 roles at this time. Why not? Well, Microsoft does not have a virtualization platform capable of supporting 64-bit virtual machines at this time. Hyper-V is not an RTM product. Whether Microsoft will change the stance once Hyper-V RTMs is another question, and I don't have an answer. Also, keep in mind, Microsoft is not about to support a third party's virtualization platform because they don't have the control over it to properly support it and fix problems that might be discovered.

My point of view: Why would you ever want to do that anyways? Exchange and SQL are two services that really do require top-notch resources and sharing them on a server with other virtualized servers just seems counter productive to providing the best performance possible for two key business services.

OK, now that I am off my soap box, can you virtualize Exchange Server 2007? Yes, you can. It make perfect sense to me for development and testing environments. It makes perfect sense for a proof of concept, too. It even make perfect sense in small organizations that won't push their Exchange implementation very hard.

Recently, I worked with a client that has a nice virtualization platform running Hyper-V RC1. They hosted mailbox servers, hub transport servers, and client access servers for their test environment. It ran wonderfully. They are considering doing it when Hyper-V RTMs because their expected load for 35 users isn't very large. 

UPDATED: Scott Schnoll posted the official stance in his blog post, Exchange Server 2007 and Hyper-V.

Tech-Ed and the High Availability Pre-Conference Session

I have learned over the years that a successful presentation depends on solid planning, good input from many sources, and preparation. So, what do you do when things go wrong despite all prepartions going right?

What do you do when:

1. Three computers fail during the presentation and one of the three catches fire
2. The computer used for displaying the PowerPoints reboots five times during the presentation
3. The rack holding demonstration equipment makes tons of clacking noises as power spikes hit the PDU and force it to reset continuously
4. The spot lights flicker on and off continuously
5. There are seven to nine technicians on stage trying to fix everything during the presentation
6. There are technicians replacing hardware during the presentation
7. Demos have to be copied multiple times between computers because of hardware failures

Yes, it was challenging. Would you believe that it was still a great deal of fun and everyone that I saw during the rest of TechEd that was in the session said they still learned a great deal of information?

I am shocked that I didn't burst out in a tirade of obscene statements.

Somebody asked me if I would do it again knowing that the same circumstances would come up, and I said that I would.

Really, I had a great time, and it appears that the attendees were still happy despite all of the facility issues.

Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering - Microsoft Official Courseware

Microsoft has released its first Windows Server 2008 course based on the RTM version. Lucky for us high availability geeks, it happens to be the coruse on Failover Clustering.

The course will be available May 15th, 2008. In the meantime, I strongly suggest everyone take a look at the syllabus for the class. You can find it here.

"Save XP" Campaign Discussion

I have been pretty busy lately, but I just couldn't ignore the "Save XP" campaign being promoted by InfoWorld.

I have many issues with this entire campaign, so I will summarize them here:

What is InfoWorld doing? I wasn't aware that it was suddenly an opinion magazine and had given up on being a news reporting organization. It is like NBC doing a "Help Elect Joe Snuffy" campaign. It it totally inappropriate. Read the story here on their site.

I can't imagine that the world expects time to stop and technology to stop advancing.

Hardware support is halted all the time as computer hardware ages. Other companies with technology based products also stop support after products reach their end of life. Why not software? Wait, software companies also stop support of their older products, especially as newer ones are released to replace them. So, why should Microsoft be treated any differently?

Bharat Suneja, a good friend of mine, has been heavily involved in this debate regarding the "Save XP" campaign. His latest contribution to the discussion can be seen here. Bharat has pretty much nailed the topic down. To paraphrase Bharat's point of view, XP is far from dead as support won't end until next year, extended support won't end until 2014, and downgrade rights are available for everyone that buys Vista, so it is still technically possible to buy more XP licenses.

You can see my comments there, but for the lazy, I have posted them below as well.

I have been following this entire exchange on both this site and on InfoWorld.

I really get a kick out of it as I see history clearly repeating itself. I remember the same whining regarding XP when it first came out. I remember people upset because they felt that Win 95/98 was fine and they hated the new architecture of XP. They hated the performance, they hated the lack of drivers, they hated that lots of applications did not run properly on XP, and they just also seemed to hate it because it was new and it has always been trendy to express hate when it comes to Microsoft and its actions.

Well, now the griping is about Vista and XP is what people don't want to give up. I imagine the same whining and crying will come up when a new product is released to replace Vista.

What bothers me is that so many people are against change when change has led to some fantastic technological improvements that have made many companies more efficient.

Implementing Vista will lead to many improvements in business effectiveness as users are able to do more with less and support staff will have to spend less time and money to keep client computers running and secured.

My opinion? That is easy, I hate Vista on my old laptop. I absolutely love it on my new laptop, which was built with Vista support in mind. I can move from work to home and back without having to screw with my wireless network settings as Vista automatically finds everything and connects me without any special effort on my part. I love that I can put my laptop to sleep while I commute and it springs to life when I need it, again, without special effort on my part. I love that I can hibernate whenever I want and I can be confident that it will start up right where I left off again when I need my laptop.

Microsoft, like all companies, has a clear right (and a duty to its shareholders) to stop supporting old technologies as they reach then end of their lifecyle. XP has clearly reached the end of its life, and I can't see any benefits in trying to keep it on life support. Businesses, both small and large, will benefit greatly from the improvements in technology. While there is no need to go around and uninstall XP on older equipment, there certainly isn't any benefit to retrofitting it on new hardware which is more than capable of supporting Vista and providing users with a much better computing experience.

The whole "Save XP" campaign is a joke. Somebody needs to pop up and say, "April Fool's" really soon.

CCR and Multi-Site Environments

 I have been hearing more and more people talk about the virtues of using CCR with a node in each site. This talk has escalated now that Windows Server 2008 has released to manufacturing. With Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster environments now have the ability to have nodes in multiple sites without having to use Virtual LANs (VLANs) to provide the networking support.

On the surface, CCR and Windows Server 2008 in a multi-site cluster sounds like the answer to many organization needs. Obviously, I am setting up the argument against this kind of implementation. OK, maybe it wasn't obvious to some of you. <G>

Anyways, here is a rough sketch (this means that lots of non-discussed components are not shown, i.e. CAS, DC/GC, DNS, etc.) of how this would look if you had two physical locations with them both being in the same AD site to support CCR. In the drawing, Node1 is the active node and replication traffic flows over the WAN link to Node2 which is the passive node. If you look at the drawing, you should immediately see some issues.

Consideration number 1. Where should you put the FSW? In this drawing, it is in the site on the left. Well, what if that is the site that goes down in a flood, tornado, meteor strike, or whatever? If the FSW is lost along with one of the nodes, there will not be an automated failover. OK, this is fixable since we can manually force the cluster to start, but it will impact life in the real world if there is a major disaster, especially if you lose your administrators along with the site. Make sure you document the process in your DR documentation as somebody else might need to perform the task.

Consideration number 2. How do you know which Hub Transport to use for the transport dumpster in order to back fill the surviving node? After all HT1 and HT2 are in the same AD site, which means that they would be used in a load balanced manner, so it is not possible to use one of them to provide full replay of lost transactions. Yes, you can hard code which HT to use, but that makes no sense to me in an HA environment as if you did that, you would lose the redundancy/load balancing functionality gained by having multiple HTs in a site. Of course, you might even have two in the same physical location. Also, let's say you hard code HT1 for the CMS and it is active on Node1. If you do that, then you lose the transport dumpster along with the location in the event of a major disaster. OK, so let's say you hard code HT2 for the CMS which is active on Node1. That would mean all of your traffic would be going across the WAN link, which is not exactly a good idea.

Consideration number 3. What about the use of the Wide Area Network (WAN) and its uncontrolled use by many different services? After all, if both physical locations are in the same AD site, will you have issues with clients logging on and authenticating across the WAN link? Will you have problems with the Clustered Mailbox Server (CMS) using the Hub Transport (HT) on the other side of the WAN link? What about the HT using the wrong Domain Controller/Global Catalog server and thus all of its queries being run over the WAN link? Again, you can hard code some of these settings for some applications and services, but even if you do that, there is again the issue of potentially losing redundancy/load balancing.

Consideration number 4. Using Windows Server 2008 and its multi-site improvements impacts DNS and resolution. For example, when Node1 is active, its VIP address is registered with the CMS name. If there is a failover, then the other VIP (for the physical location of Node2) must be registered within DNS and DNS updates needs to be replicated to all DNS servers in the organization. During the time of the updates and shortly after, there will be clients that have the old VIP address in its cache, so it will resolve incorrectly until the cache is updated on the clients. This is not an Exchange issue, but something else that should be considered.

So, what do I recommend? I am glad you asked that question. If you didn't, too bad, I will answer it anyways.

I highly recommend using CCR within a single physical site that is also an AD site. For disaster recovery reasons, I recommend using Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) to copy transactions to a remote site's Exchange mailbox server.

FYI, I updated based on some of Scott Schnoll's comments to me. Scott had some excellent points regarding my concerns listed above. I won't go through them one by one, but it basically came down to my making the assumption that CCR in a multi-site (stretched AD site) environment would be configured for automatic failover. I did make this assumption because if we were looking for a manual process that would require administrator intervention to get it up and running, then we should be talking SCR, not CCR. High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) are very different in my mind. HA means that processes are automated to reduce downtime to a minimal amount. DR is something that is done when there is a major disaster that requires steps to be taken to recover the environment. CCR is an HA technology and SCR is a DR technology, in my opinion.