Category Windows Server

So, you’re saying “Man, I don’t want to take a test for something I’m not prepared for… I don’t care that it is free!?” After you get past that little story, wait, a free beta exam AND a free voucher for Microsoft E-Learning? Where do I sign up!??!

Just visit this site: Get your skills up with Official Microsoft E-Learning!
This offer is good until June 30th, so act fast!

And after acting (fast) take another action in your benefit and go sign up for the:
Hyper-V E-Learning training!

At this point, you’ll be on the way to success in preparing yourself in ways you otherwise didn’t even think possible! After which point you’ll be on the road to success to becoming an MCTS in Microsoft Hyper-V Virtualization!

This pains all of us.
Which are the right drivers to use, download and install?

Constant complaints and gripes about what driver should we load, and what insane device is screaming with a yellow exclamation point – wanting to be installed!

Our good friends at Microsoft have (had) the answer!

The Microsoft Update Catalog!

Okay, so I’m here, and I have a search bar… So.. what do I fill in there?

This is where Device Manager comes into play. – Find yourself a driver or object which is suspect or in general you want to check out. – Wireless Drivers are always a challenge..

What you’ll want to do, is find the Hardware Id’s – this is where the cake is at!

At this point, take advantage of the shortest field available, and go as far as the first & – Such as:
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_4227

After searching, you’ll find it will return a large number of results. (21 results)

If you’re looking for a bit more granularity, try one of the slightly longer entries there.

By searching for PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_4227&SUBSYS_10108086 now, we’re able to 11 results.

This can be very beneficial if you’re trying to do things such as – Run Windows Vista 64bit, use Windows Server 2008 as a workstation, and a number of things. This will further enable you to take advantage of the hardware that may be present without having to rely upon the OEM hardware manufacturers to provide you media they tend to never get around to.

So, this is often a debated question – Is my machine capable of doing Hyper-V?

Well, let the doubt be cast to the wayside a bit.

AMD Processor Utility to Check compatibility
Intel Checker (by GRC) to check compatibility
As seen in this screen shot as well

This alone will not dictate whether you can support Hyper-V as a lot of it falls upon your BIOS and whether the features exist there to enable. However, just to get past that initial conversation of “Is my processor supported” we have the following link and table.

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor Specification

As you can likely tell, all things being equal – All things are NOT equal!

From a validation perspective, all of the rules which apply to Microsoft’s Hyper-V should also apply to Citrix XenServer.

More on this later…

So, for those interested in the Microsoft Hyper-V Virtualization Exam (71-652) which will eventually become (70-652). Here are some answers to some general questions I’ve been seeing.

Q: What do you mean I have to pay $125.00 for this exam?

A: So long as the voucher still has entries open, it is FREE!!! (For a period there, the voucher wasn’t working but it appears to be working again) – And that Promotional Code is 652HV

Q: How do I sign up for this exam?

A: If you do not have a Prometric account, you need to go to www.prometric.com and sign up! Register, etc!

Q: How do I prepare or study for this exam? I don’t know anything about Hyper-V?!

A: This is one of the best questions out there. For those of you who have experience with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, that part of the exam is taken care of. For those of you with Storage experience, that part is also taken care of. But the key differentiator is actually working with and playing with Hyper-V and the interfaces, building Virtual machines, etc!
There are a number of options available to you.

Online Training (E-Learning for a price $39.99 it looks like)
https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/courseDetail.aspx?courseId=84700
https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/courseDetail.aspx?courseId=92459

Read blogs about Hyper-V and Virtualization

Virtual PC guy’s Blog
Microsoft Virtualization Team’s Blog
Virtual Varia
John Howard – Hyper-V Team Lead
Mike’s Virtual Blog!
This blog as I document some of the details and the crazy In’s and Out’s in my spare time

And anywhere else as applicable.

So, I encourage you to sign up, give it a try, get out there and test! You’ll definitely have a better angle on what the future holds if you see what the exam is like, and see if this is something you want to pursue!

This is mainly for my reference, but if anyone else needs it, it is here as well.

If you do not know, by default MSDE 2000 (which is installed with a lot of applications) will by default eat up all of your available memory (up to 2gb). This is a very serious problem if you install an application with MSDE on an Exchange server, or other similarly shared servers. You’re best off limiting the memory. Some perfect examples are, on-box Anti-Spam Software, McAfee EPO, Blackberry BES Server, etc. So be aware.

DBCC SHRINKFILE(pubs_log, 2)

BACKUP LOG pubs WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY

BACKUP LOG pubs TO pubslogbackup

DBCC SHRINKFILE(pubs_log,2)

And if/when that does not work, you can also use…

DBCC OPENTRAN (database_name) – to check for open transactions.

DBCC SHRINKFILE (file_name, target_size)
DBCC SHRINKDATABASE (database_name, target_percent) – This works when shrinkfile hasn’t been working.

And to limit MSDE

Save as a .SQL File

USE master
EXEC sp_configure ‘show advanced options’, 1
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE USE master
EXEC sp_configure ‘max server memory (MB)’, MaxServerMemory
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE

USE master
EXEC sp_configure ‘show advanced options’, 0
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE

osql -E -S ServerComputerName\msfw -i Path\setchecksqlmemory.sql

*Update*

In the event that you need to do it all by hand using OSQL as a trusted connection, perform the following – Set to change it to 64mb of memory

————————————-

OSQL -E

USE master
EXEC sp_configure ‘show advanced options’, 1
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE

GO

USE master
EXEC sp_configure ‘max server memory’, 64
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE

GO

USE master
EXEC sp_configure ‘show advanced options’, 0
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE

GO

————————————-

That will drop the memory usage from 2gb down to 64MB almost immediately.
Disclaimer: the ‘max server memory’ keeps replacing the first single quote incorrectly, so it may need to be typed manually. Working on correcting.
INF: How to Shrink the SQL Server 7.0 Transaction Log

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256650/

INF: Shrinking the Transaction Log in SQL Server 2000 with DBCC SHRINKFILE

http://www.support.microsoft.com/?id=272318

You may experience high memory usage on an ISA Server 2004-based computer that logs messages to an MSDE database

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=909636

OSQL Syntax

http://www.di-mgt.com.au/osqlUtility.htm

Christopher Kusek

*Updated this post to appear in 2007 as it’s been used more often than I did in September when I first posted this*