Northtech Consulting Limited

03 Aug 2015

Outlook fails to send emails after Windows 10 upgrade

I have recently upgraded a number of machines to Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro editions and noticed that for some strange reason Outlook 2010/2013 stops sending emails instead they are just held in the Outbox folder and never get sent. After doing some troubleshooting I found the answer. It looks like a system file has become corrupt and by running an SFC /SCANNOW resolves this issue. Click on the search icon, search on cmd when you find the application (Command Prompt) run as administrator (i.e. right click it and click run as administrator). You will then see a…

09 Jul 2015

By Yendis Lambert

VMware vSphere 6 Metro Storage Cluster Recommended Practices

VMwaremetro cluster, replication, storage, vmsc

VMware vSphere® Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) is a specific configuration within the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). These configurations are commonly referred to as stretched storage clusters or metro storage clusters and are implemented in environments where disaster and downtime avoidance is a key requirement. This best practices document was developed to provide additional insight and information for operation of a vMSC infrastructure in conjunction with VMware vSphere. This paper explains how vSphere handles specific failure scenarios, and it discusses various design considerations and operational procedures. For detailed information about storage implementations, refer to documentation provided by the appropriate…

22 Jun 2015

By Yendis Lambert

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.0

VMwareconverter, VMware

vCenter Converter supports many source physical machines, including Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Server and Linux. It also supports third-party disk images from Microsoft Hyper-V, Virtual Server and Virtual PC; Parallels Desktop; Symantec System Recovery; Norton Ghost; Acronis and StorageCraft. Multiple simultaneous conversions enable large-scale virtualization implementations. Quiescing and snapshotting of the guest operating system on the source machine before migrating the data ensures conversion reliability. Hot cloning makes conversions non-disruptive, with no source server downtime or reboot. Sector-based copying enhances cloning and conversion speed. Support for cold cloning (conversion that requires server downtime and reboot) is available, in addition…

20 Jun 2015

By Yendis Lambert

Deployment and Design Considerations for VMware Mirage

VMwareMirage, VMware

This paper describes best practices for planning a VMware Mirage deployment. It addresses the primary phases of a Mirage deployment, including sizing, design, and the gathering of environmental data. System Architecture Mirage provides centralized image management for physical desktops and VMware Horizon® 6 with View virtual desktops. Mirage provides enhanced endpoint backup, recovery, updates, and hardware and operating system migration. These functions centralize endpoint content in the data center for management and protection, download images to endpoints, and optimize the transfer of data. Interactions between the data center and managed endpoints are as follows: Each endpoint has a Mirage client installed, which…

04 Jun 2015

By Yendis Lambert

Adobe Flash 18 – Citrix known issues

Citrixadobe, flash, receiver

Citrix is committed to ensuring compatibility with the latest Adobe Flash releases. Flash 18(presently in beta) is the latest offering by Adobe. Our tests have found Flash 18 to be not compatible with already released Citrix products. This article contains information about known issues of Adobe Flash 18 with Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop in conjunction with the following listed Citrix products and known workarounds for respective issues: Citrix Receiver for Windows versions up to 4.2.100 Citrix Receiver for Windows (Enterprise) versions up to 3.4.400 Note: For issues that do not have feasible workarounds, Citrix provides reasonable effort to supply hotfixes…

21 May 2015

By Yendis Lambert

Cisco UCS firmware update bug

CiscoFirmware, ucs

Just received an email from a peer in the industry (Gabrie van Zanten) which identifies an issue when upgrading UCS firmware. I thought I would share as many companies I know run Cisco UCS. The Issue When upgrading the UCS firmware of your environment, some B200M4 blades may reboot spontaneously. Cisco Bug: CSCut61527 – B200M4 could reboot on shallow_chkpt when BMC returns invalid FRU data. This is the Cisco article. Affected firmware: 2.2(3) and 2.2(3a)A according to the KB. My upgrade was from 2.2(3c) to 2.2(3f). Resolution According to the KB this issue should be resolved in 2.2(3g)A.

07 May 2015

By Yendis Lambert

The DRA server is already registered” ERROR of Azure Site Recovery Provider Setup

Microsoftazure, site recovery

I have recently been running a POC of Hyper-V 2012 R2 experimenting replicating several VM's to Windows Azure (Site Replication) in the East Asia region. During the POC I was receiving connection issues from the Hyper-V host so I decided to remove the Azure Site Recovery Provider agent from the Hyper-V host and the configuration settings from within Azure so that I could start again. Once I configured the Azure settings I then re-installed the agent but on this occasion I received the following error which I'd not seen before Upon going through various troubleshooting steps I found that the uninstall had not…

18 Apr 2015

By Yendis Lambert

Enable SSH on VMware ESXi 5.5 via vSphere Client

VMwareESXi, SSH

To enable SSH on your VMware ESXi 5.5 host you can do this directly on the host or alternatively you can do this using the VMware vSphere Client. Using the vSphere client click on the "Configuration Tab" Now click on the "Security Profile" option in the Software pain (on the left hand side) Now click on the "Properties" tab which will open up Remote Access Select the SSH Service (which is currently stopped) and click on the options button. Now select the startup policy you require and then click on the Start button. You should now be able to access your VMware ESXi host…

17 Mar 2015

By Yendis Lambert

RVTools Version 3.7

Toolsrvtools, tool

RVTools is a windows .NET 2.0 application which uses the VI SDK to display information about your virtual machines and ESX hosts. Interacting with VirtualCenter 2.5, ESX Server 3.5, ESX Server 3i, VirtualCenter 4.x, ESX Server 4.x, VirtualCenter 5.0, VirtualCenter Appliance, ESX Server 5.0, VirtualCenter 5.1, ESX Server 5.1, VirtualCenter 5.5, ESX Server 5.5. RVTools is able to list information about VMs, CPU, Memory, Disks, Partitions, Network, Floppy drives, CD drives, Snapshots, VMware tools, Resource pools, Clusters, ESX hosts, HBAs, Nics, Switches, Ports, Distributed Switches, Distributed Ports, Service consoles, VM Kernels, Datastores, Multipath info and health checks. With RVTools you…

06 Mar 2015

By Yendis Lambert

VMware VCS to VCSA Converter

VMwareconverter, fling, tool, vcs, vcsa

The VCS to VCSA Converter Appliance is the winning idea from the 2013 Fling Contest. It allows customers to migrate from Windows vCenter Server with an External Microsoft SQL Server Database to the vCenter Server Appliance with an embedded vPostgres database. The Fling migrates the vCenter database, roles, permissions, privileges, certificates and inventory service. The target appliance will run at the same IP address as the source vCenter. System Requirements vCenter Server running on Windows - vSphere 5.5 or greater The Windows vCenter Server and the vCenter Server Appliance should be running the same version (e.g. vCenter Server Windows 5.5u1…