How Microsoft need to get Surface right to make an impact on the tablet space

I'm excited about the release of Microsoft's Surface (tablet) as it could make a real difference to me and become the most popular tablet in the enterprise space.


Working as an IT engineer/manager I need a tablet that I can install all my usual support apps such as RDP (via gateway), putty, Cisco VPN client etc. I've considered an android tablet and played with the Samsung Galaxy Tab.  Apart from the fact the Samsung takes so long to charge, doesn't last any time on battery and is a bit bulky there are other reasons I'm not going to purchase an android tablet.  They're good as a more casual device for games, apps and browsing but when it comes to using in an existing Microsoft infrastructure its not all plain sailing.  


Yeah sure you can find apps that do RDP, but to be honest I don't trust where my traffic is going and no-one seems to offer an RDP client that can connect to a RD Gateway.  Also VPN clients, there are various options available but once you're connected your tablet isn't part of the domain so you have to re-authenticate every time you want to access something different.  I know there are various apps which allow telnet and ssh connections so that one isnt really a problem.


As for the Ipad, I just don't want one. So restrictive, and Apple deciding what apps they allow is frustrating.  Also whilst you can introduce a business app store its just something else to install and manage.  


So why do I think Microsoft could get it right.  Well people like what they're used to. If you could have a Windows tablet, which can be part of the domain and where can use all your existing apps then it should be a real winner for use in the enterprise.  You can secure it as you would any Windows PC, you can configure with group policy, SCCM and the like, everything would just work.  This could be a real winner for Microsoft.  


There are though a couple of things they need to get right.  I don't see a place for Windows RT in the enterprise, its just too restrictive.  The Windows 8 pro model would be ideal but the price needs to be below the £400-£500 mark otherwise it wont get good adoption. I've seen comments that it could be upwards of £600 - this just isn't going to work for Microsoft. Also the metro style should work well on Surface, unlike with Windows 8 on a desktop - there's just no place for that but thats another story.  


Also I think Microsoft have got to realise that people aren't going to continue to pay hundreds of pounds for things like Windows or Office, the prices need to come down significantly and Office should be installed by default on the Surface (I'm not expecting full blown office but at least Word,Excel and Outlook.  If they can realise they need to reduce prices then that brings the cost of the Windows 8 Pro Surface down to match other popular tablets.  If they did this I could see a real case for introducing in my workplace - sales people would want them, execs would want them, and use mere support type people would definitely use them.  It would make being on-call a whole lot easier :-)

Unable to send to recipients who use Messagelabs following Exchange 2010 Service pack 2 update

Just installed Exchange 2010 SP2 on our hub server and all hell broke loose.

We use Messagelabs' email antivirus and antispam and had Messagelabs configured on our send connector.

Set the send connector to send directly using MX records and all was ok except any domain which was also using Messagelabs' services.

It looked like Messagelabs had gone down because I kept getting 451 4.4.0 Primary target IP addresses responded with: "421.4.4.1 Connection timed out"

Set the SMTP protocol logging level to verbose and in the logs it was obvious what was going on :

2012-04-05T10:30:11.657Z,SMTP to Internet,08CEE1280B00A50C,2,10.0.0.16:59759,85.158.139.19:25,<,220 server-3.tower-178.messagelabs.com ESMTP,

2012-04-05T10:30:11.657Z,SMTP to Internet,08CEE1280B00A50C,3,10.0.0.16:59759,85.158.139.19:25,>,EHLO xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com,

2012-04-05T10:30:11.688Z,SMTP to Internet,08CEE1280B00A50C,4,10.0.0.16:59759,85.158.139.19:25,<,250-server-3.tower-178.messagelabs.com,

2012-04-05T10:30:11.688Z,SMTP to Internet,08CEE1280B00A50C,5,10.0.0.16:59759,85.158.139.19:25,<,250-STARTTLS,

2012-04-05T10:30:11.688Z,SMTP to Internet,08CEE1280B00A50C,6,10.0.0.16:59759,85.158.139.19:25,<,250-PIPELINING,

2012-04-05T10:30:11.688Z,SMTP to Internet,08CEE1280B00A50C,7,10.0.0.16:59759,85.158.139.19:25,<,250 8BITMIME,

2012-04-05T10:30:11.688Z,SMTP to Internet,08CEE1280B00A50C,8,10.0.0.16:59759,85.158.139.19:25,>,STARTTLS,

2012-04-05T10:30:11.719Z,SMTP to Internet,08CEE1280B00A50C,9,10.0.0.16:59759,85.158.139.19:25,<,220 ready for TLS,

2012-04-05T10:30:11.719Z,SMTP to Internet,08CEE1280B00A50C,10,10.0.0.16:59759,85.158.139.19:25,*,,Sending certificate

The server was trying to negotiate a TLS session.

Checked the settings on the SMTP connector in the EMC but not configured to use mutual TLS.

Used get-sendconnector powershell and also saw it was set to false. Then I spotted that the ignoreStartTLS setting was set to false. Messagelabs issues STARTTLS and so our server tried to connect using our certs which aren't quite right for TLS.

Ran set-sendconnector -id "SMTP to Internet" -ignoreSTARTTLS $true and all now working. This must have changed as part of the SP2 install because I didn't change it.

Am happy again now. Hope this helps someone else out there.

Sharepoint Search not working - Start address sts4://servername/contentdbid cannot be crawled

I've spent a lot of time with sharepoint and when it works it works well but we keep having search issues with one of our sharepoint sites.

In the eventlog and sharepoint log files I get the following error:

The start address sts4://servername/contentdbid={66e8aaa2-3335-40fb-a679-41731a41d83b} cannot be crawled.

Context: Application 'Serve_search_queries_over_help_content', Catalog 'Search'

Details:
The object was not found. (0x80041201)

There are lots of posts about disabling loopback checking, and rebuilding search indexes around but my scenario is slightly different and didn't fall into these categories, although I DID disable loopback checking as part of the work towards the fix so that MAY BE REQUIRED.

I tried browsing to the URL that it mentioned and it didn't work. I didn't expect it to but I thought maybe its searching an old sharepoint site so concentrated on trying to find out how to rebuild the index. I couldn't find anything.

So then there was some mention of Alternative Access mappings and thats where I found the solution.

Our server is running Sharepoint Foundation Server 2010

It also hosts a number of other sites. We're using host headers to point users to the right site.

We're using a different URL (the host header) for accessing the sharepoint site.

So when I browse to http://servername I get nothing - to be expected. Thats when it hit me, its trying to access the site using the wrong URL.

What had happened is that for some other reason we'd changed the default URL in the Alternative Access Mapping to be http://servername and set an internet URL of kb.abc.com

What I did to fix the issue was set the default to http://kb.abc.com (this is the host header used for the site) and set the intranet URL to http://servername (although this wont work because its not in the host headers - I guess I could have added that too).

Windows 2008 R2 Service pack 1 failing to install 0x800f0818

I've had a couple of installations of Windows updates fail recently especially when trying to install Service pack 1.


The last attempt was on a brand new virtual server, so I knew nothing else could be causing the problem except something Microsoft related.


When checking the event log I found event ID 8 - Service Pack installation failed with error code 0x800f0818


According to other blog posts some files in the packages directory have become corrupt.  


You need to install the System Update readiness tool which will give you a log to determine which files are corrupt.  The installer is available here : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947821


Sometimes the installation of the readiness tool alone will fix the issue. 


Open checksur.log file under %windir%\Logs\CBS. Look for something similar to :


Unavailable repair files:
 servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2483614_RTM~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.1.mum servicing\packages\Package_for_KB2483614_RTM~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.1.ca


If there are no errors then try the servicepack again otherwise you may need find the offending files take ownership and replace them with those from another server that works.

SCVMM P2V fails with VSS writer error

I've P2V'd many servers now with SCVMM without any problems.

I've got to one of our last servers and when I try to start the P2V job I get:

The snapshot creation failed because VSS writer {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220} on source machine machinename did not respond within the expected time interval.

I found many article which included re-registering DLLs, deleting registry keys and restarting services and it was only a combination of all of these that seemed to work.

Here is what I did for those that want to try:

I followed http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940184

Then I did:

net stop cryptsvc

net start cryptsvc

Hope this helps someone out there.

AQL and Asterisk Freepbx inbound IAX settings

After spending a lot of time trying to get my new freebpx installation working with inbound calls from AQL I thought it best to document my settings for anyone else out there.

IAX2 Trunk settings
Trunk desc : aql
Outbound caller id : {IAX Caller ID provided by AQL}
CID options : Allow Any CID
--Outgoing settings--
Trunk name : aql
PEER Details:
type=peer
auth=md5
username={username provided by AQL}
secret={outbound secret provided by AQL}
host=sip.aql.com
trunk=yes
--Incoming settings--
User context : {username provided by AQL}
type=user
username={username provided by AQL}
auth=md5
host=sip.aql.com
trunk=yes
secret={outbound secret provided by AQL}
context=from-trunk
;qualify=yes
requirecalltoken=no

The requirecalltoken and context bit kept catching me out.

Once I installed the Asterisk Log freepbx module it was blatently obvious what the problem was when I viewed the log.

[Mar 3 10:35:10] ERROR[3338] chan_iax2.c: Call rejected, CallToken Support required. If unexpected, resolve by placing address x.x.x.x in the calltokenoptional list or setting user username requirecalltoken=no

You'll need to setup an inbound route for the numbers you're expecting calls on and then these inbound routes need pointing at extensions or ring groups etc.

My inbound route settings
Description : Name of person
DID Number : {IAX Caller ID provided by AQL}
Set Destination : Select extension

HP DL380 G7 Memory failing temperature tests

I thought I'd write about the problems I've been having with 2 HP G7 servers because the problem doesn't seem to exist anywhere else.

We purchased 2 DL380 G7s with 48GB RAM. Unfortunately they arrived and both had a Dimm reporting an issue so we had those replaced. After being tested thoroughly we thought they were ok and shipped them to their respective datacentres.

A few weeks later we found one of the servers kept rebooting itself. In the windows eventlog there were some entries for WHEA_Logger saying correctable error encountered.

We narrowed this down to memory and ran the diagnostic tests offline from the smart start CD. We initially ran the complete test but it completed ok, then we ran all memory tests, still completed ok. Then we ran the custom test and found 2 additional tests which weren't included in the complete test.

When we ran these tests 2 Dimms were reporting errors one on the temperature test, and one with the SPD test (need to clarify this exact test).

Both Dimms were replaced and the SDP error disappeared but the temperature test still failed with:

Error DIMM Temperature out of range.
Device DIMM = PROC 1 DIMM 2D
expected temperature range 20 - 90
actual temperature 00 -
Bus:Address 08:32 Ran on CPU 0

We had the Dimm replaced again but still the same problem. Then they were swapped about and the problem moved to Dimm 3A.

Then we had 3A replaced and it moved to Dimm 5? Thats when we asked for all the Dimms to be replaced. The server was finally sorted.

Then on running the same offline test on the other server we had the same problem with the same slot.

Monday they sent out an engineer to replace 1 dimm. Same problem - same slot.
Tuesday they replaced 2 dimms. Same problem.
wednesday they replaced the motherboard. Still same problem.
I believe based on the previous server that if they replace all the Dimms that it'll be fixed. But HP being HP are reluctant to do that.

What I believe is happening is either the memory is faulty or the motherboard is causing them to become faulty. So we have a motherboard and potentially 12 faulty dimms. They replace the dimms but then they're now faulty because the motherboard is doing something to them. They replace the motherboard, but we still have 12 dimms. This sounds unlikely so my other suggestion is that the test only reports on the first occupied dimm which has a fault, and maybe the engineer didn't swap the right dimm (3 times? not sure about this either), but based on the last experience once one dimm is 'fixed' the next sequential dimm slot reports the problem until all faulty dimms replaced.


If this helps someone then it wont have been a waste of time writing this. If you are affected by it good luck, you're going to need it.

Update - 19/11/10
The saga continues - have been chasing HP for some action nothing has happened for nearly 48 hours. The server has been down for over 7 days and it supposed to be covered by 24x7x4 support. This is a joke. Have to seriously question whether we purchase any HP kit from now on.

Very late update
HP replaced all the memory in both servers that were purchased at the same time.  A few weeks later they advised that the memory was counterfeit and were trying to find out the source.  Gave them all the details of the company we purchased the memory from but didn't hear anything further.