The final piece of my Stationery fix for my GTD arrived yesterday… The Rhodia Meeting Book..

Now I can use this for both meetings and concept planning. I got in in A4 so that I wouldn’t be cramped for room. I love the Action column on the right side of the page so I can separate the Action items from the rest of the notes. While I had though of keeping my note-taking electronic and using my laptop or Netbook, I realised that my typing is not anywhere near fast enough or is it even close to being accurate enough….

So now I have everything set…. Diary, Notepads and the Meeting Book.  My Pen is still just a Bic e.3 – a combo Pen, Pencil (using 2B) and Stylus. I don’t see any real need to move away from that at this stage… cheap, reliable and it fits well in my hand.

Now comes the two hardest bits… the clean-out… My Pack-rat habits have been formed over a looong time and have unfortunately been reinforced by saving my butt a couple of times. time to get critical in my review on what needs to be tossed and what needs to be filed…

the other difficult one is maintaining the process. A bit like my attempts to move from look-typing to touch-typing… It needs dedication to the process and the ease and speed will come. I just hope it is a lot more successful than my typing transition.

I am slowly getting it together with implementing a GTD system that works for me…. The increased amount of inputs during our Infrastructure Virtualisation Project as well as an Office 2010 upgrade that rendered my previous email inbox management next to useless has finally ushered in the inevitable. Having an expert GTDer start working with us certainly helps (although his palm slaps to the forehead  while willing us forward won’t be helping).

My desk is (relatively) tidy from what it was and now I have my latest wepaons in the battle against overload – My Rhodia NotePads.

I purchased numbers 11, 13 and 16. That is an A5, A6 and A7 for the un-initiated. I had planned to order them online at NoteMaker or even had fancied the possibility of ordering them Yoda-Style. Last night I was idly wandering through Borders in Chermside Shopping Centre and sure enough, a brief flash of Orange grabs the corner of my eye.

Sure enough, just the very notepads I was looking for… and for a very competitive price. I was surprised, I didn’t realise that Borders Australia was a supplier so I’m sure glad they are. The only other one that I had considered was the A5 meeting pad. I can just rule some lines in my Number 16 so that one will do…

So now I have the 16 for my meetings and to have on my desk, my Number 13 to have in my bag and my Number 11 to carry around with me..

Next up in my GTD plans is to re-do my Mailbox and then adapt Office 2010 views to facilitate my Inbox processing. Whether or not I can get to Inx Zero remains to be seen..

As everyone is probably now well aware, Sydney and Brisbane got hit with a Dust storm today. Sydney had a Martian-style red dawn (without the commies) and Brisbane copped it around lunchtime. What people may not realise is that these two cities are about 1000 kilometres (or 621 miles) apart and it was the same storm…

By now it should be somewhere over New Zealand. This storm has been dumping up to 75,000 tonnes of dust per hour into the Tasman Sea. 

These photos show how it came across Brisbane which as you can see,the dust gets more red..

This shot was around 12:30pm and it has fully closed in. I hope the lads on the Gateway construction took the day off…

Network Load Balancing – NLB – also known as Windows Load Balancing – WLB – has always been a little like living on the edge.  It does the job but you are always wondering when and where the next issue is going to come from and what will you need to do to fix it pronto. We have had that issue a number of times in the last 6 months from a variety of causes, some even seeming unrelated changes messing everything up.

Our existing pool of TS Servers has 8 machines in it, using Multicast with IGMP to stay converged. This means loads of traffic everywhere and isn’t the most-recommended solution. So as part of the pre-testing for the Virtualisation, we have P2V’ed the Terminal Servers into a Virtual Sandbox and then created 2 NICs for the VMs and changed them to Unicast mode.

Boom… the WLBS query command showed them as Converged but the GUI management tool wasn’t able to add them. Considering we need the GUI for some of our lesser-skilled staff, we were racking our brains to work it out.. eventually, the light-Bulb went on.

Turns out in creating the VM’s, the automatic DNS registration was left on and the NIC designated as the NLB NIC (as opposed to the Management NIC) was being added to DNS. With the NLB IP being used by DNS, the TS Servers cannot communicate amongst themselves (hence the management NIC) and could not load the NLB GUI Tool.

All I had to do was uncheck the Register this connection’s Addresses in DNS checkbox (as shown on the left – taken from the production pool, not the test one) and then do an ipconfig /flushdns on the TS boxes and it was all good.

Now that this works, we are ready to go live on our Virtual TS pool for all. A simple problem but one that wasn’t readily obvious to us as we were all focusing on the NLB hosts and the Unicast/Multicast.

After I fixed it, I did a search on all the instructions and fault-finding stuff that I usually check and not one mentioned it as a potential “gotcha”. Either we were really unlucky or it is something that is just presumed…

So, if you you come across the same issue, those of you that are still using Windows 2003 NLB, check the DNS of your Terminal Servers.

So I have had my Laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate for a couple of weeks now. So, how have I found it in the last couple of weeks? Bear in mind that this is not a test of all the features and functionality, just what I have found in regular usage so far.

Fantastic

Good

Not So Good

So our new Hardware is in place… This half a cabinet is what is replacing our previous 7 racks of equipment spread over two datacenters. The hardware is as listed below

• Dell PowerVault TL4000 Tape Library (obscured)
• Dell PowerEdge M1000e Blade Chassis
• 6 x Dell PowerEdge M710
• 2 x Dell PowerEdge M610
• 1 x EMC Clariion CX4-120

It is due to be loaded with 6 x VMware vSphere 4.0 hosts and 2 x Windows 2008 Servers and using a bucket-load of disks to host all of our servers virtually. We also have a small amount of hardware at our Head Office that will provide a warm backup of our retail application ready ti bring online as well as backup data for our non-core systems.  The Head Office Systems will consist of the following:

• Dell PowerVault TL2000
• 2 x Dell PowerEdge R710

One Server is and ESXi Host and the other Windows 2008 Server that we call the FLOD server. This stands for a F***load of disk as it currently hosts 6 x 1Tb Disks internally.

We are currently in the process of installing vSphere on the hosts now with vCenter Server and the Navisphere monitoring is all set up and waiting.

It truly is an exciting time to be at work… all the new things we dreamed of are really happening at long last.

Now that the RTM is out and looking all good. I have re-imaged my Laptop and built it with W7 Ulitmate. I did a clean install as there wasn’t anything that I needed to bring across that couldn’t be installed.

before starting however, I did take the precaution of backing up my PC with our Windows Home Server that we run here at work. It is only a Virtual machine running on our ESXi host, more for Proof of Concept than anything. I did a full image which was an overnight process 9due to it being the first backup) and once I came in and got the laptop, there was a full backup image from which I could grab a single file or completely build my laptop if I so desired

The build was bloody quick. I had already prepared a USB boot Image. I did cheat a little and used the BootUSB program to create the Install Disk rather than doing it myself. It took about 15mins to install and another 5 mins to do the post-config setup and I was in… This was the first time that I had actually had the full Aero effects. My Windows 7 RC experience had been on 2 lower-spec laptops at home and also on VM’s here at work. Seeing Aero really broguth home how much improvements have really gone into this interface.

Now I am up and using Office 2010 as well and in conjunctions with Windows 7, it is truly a delight to use. Over the last week or so I have been refining my usual work processes so I can make full use of the simplified interfaces between Windows 7 and Office 2010. The only drawback is the fact that VMware are still to release a version of vSphere Client that will allows me to connect to VCenter Server. Disappointing since we are under way on a migration to vSphere 4.0 right now…

All in all, it has been a great success with no problems with my laptop as yet. I would recommend this upgrade to anyone and everyone… As soon as the renovations are finished and we can unpack all my other home machines (the laptops, the Media Center and the Home Server) I will be doing the others as well…

Are you having trouble with trying to get the vSphere client running on Windows 7? Do you think that dolts who reply with such helpful posts as

“windows 7 is not yet released so don’t expect a fix…..” and “just use XP mode…”

Well, you can stop tearing out your hair because a dodgy fix is here, courtesy of a VMware Communities thread:

1. Obtain a copy of %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.dll from a non Windows 7 machine that has .NET 3.5 SP1 installed.
2. Create a folder in the Windows 7 machine where the vSphere client is installed and copy the file from step 1 into this folder. For example, create the folder under the vSphere client launcher installation directory (+%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\Lib+).
3. In the vSphere client launcher directory, open the VpxClient.exe.config file in a text editor and add a <runtime> element and a <developmentMode> element as shown below. Save the file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
...
<runtime>
<developmentMode developerInstallation="true"/>
</runtime>
</configuration> 
4. Create a batch file (e.g. *VpxClient.cmd*) in a suitable location. In this file add a command to set the DEVPATH environment variable to the folder where you copied the System.dll assembly in step 2 and a second command to launch the vSphere client. Save the file. For example,
SET DEVPATH=%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\Lib
"%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe"
5. (Optional) Replace the shortcut on the start menu to point to the batch file created in the previous step. Change the shortcut properties to run minimized so that the command window is not shown.

You can now use the VpxClient.cmd (or the shortcut) to launch the vSphere client in Windows 7.

Note that this workaround bypasses the normal .NET Framework loading mechanism so that assembly versions in the DEVPATH folder are no longer checked. Handle with care.

Thanks to Fernando for his diligent work….

Well, We all love that time of the year when the call comes for submissions for the annual budget this year. So far we have worked out that we have a whole ton of stuff to pay in Maintenance this year.

Firstly, we’ve worked out our main projects for the year. They are as follows:

• SharePoint (or WSS v3) for Intranet
• Exchange 2007 upgrade and Stores using Exchange OWA for their mail
• Implementing a SSL VPN to replace dodgy IPSec offering
• Infrastructure upgrade. ( fortunately, this will be a CapEx cost…)

Other minor things will be finishing off the upgrade of the Desktops and laptops for the internal staff and organising all the annual maintenance costs, including renewing our MS eOpen License agreement.

Looks like I really need to get those Organisational skills worked out sooner rather than later…

As with a lot of people, I got tired of the beige, beige and beige colour scheme of our office so I decided to introduce some new colours into my area. As is suitable for a Geek, I got my most favourite Star Wars image and uploaded it to www.blockposters.com and converted into a multi-page PDF. I hit up the clolour copier and 18 Pages and a hobby knife later, I had this as my office decoration.

Now all I have to do is find somewhere for my matching Halo Generations Poster to go.

Coming into the Christmas period means new TV advertising for Betta Electrical. Here are two newer ones that advertise the Betta Electrical Gift Cards.

Of course these TV ads won’t be available in all areas as it is dependant on whether or not there is a franchise in the area. This is why I don’t see them in Brisbane very often. When I visit Mum and Dad on the Sunshine Coast, I am always surprised to see them pop up on their regional stations.

Anyway, enjoy these videos and remember, to find your nearest store, go to www.betta.com.au

Nothing ruins your day like problems with your Manager’s Laptop. When it was my turn to suffer through this, my Manager could not log into his Dell D630 Laptop. Sure enough, when i tested it out, it didn’t accept any local or domain password always bring up the same response – Unknown username or bad password. Now I checked the passwords and even two-finger-typed to ensure the passwords were entered in correctly. Still no success….

A quick Windows Live Search later and I cam across this article. Lo and Behold this described exactly the issue I was having… I followed the steps he described, listed below, and I was able to log in…

1. Press your Windows Key and type "Embassy Security Center" and press Enter (if you don't have this application, you probably have a different issue going on.)
2. Click on Windows Logon
3. Uncheck Enable Secure Windows Logon
4. Click Apply and close Embassy Security Center

We were able to log in… Of course, this only enabled us to gt in, it didn’t solve the issue with the fingerprint scanning. I logged a call to Dell and I received an email with the following steps to repair the issue.

1. Update the BIOS and the chipset first.
2. Then remove all finger print profiles that are saved under particular windows profile.
3. Then insert the Wave ESC CD into the CD drive.(I downloaded it from the Dell site)  If setup does not automatically start, navigate to setup.exe and double-click the file. Once reinstallation is done, click this link to re-setup the bios settings on Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and ETS under Security Management Software. http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd620/en/UG/security.htm#wp1113902

This certainly fixed the issue and enabled my manager to log in via his fingerprint.. Crisis averted

We have finally finished the next round of Betta Electrical TV Advertising. These are more Infomercial style ads with a narrative from one of our Buyers. These also star some of our Head Office Staff in the Background, Including my Boss and one of the girls form IT. Of course we have been giving them all sorts of curry since the release…

So I finally sat down and wrote out all the things that need to be down over the next few weeks. by the time I finished on the first pass, I had 30 tasks written down across 6 major areas

1. MS Exchange 2007 Migration
2. MS SharePoint 2007
3. Backups
4. Desktop Clients
5. AV Migration
6. Documentation

Holy Smokes, that’s some work that we (my offside and I) need to do… I was looking onto some options for setting up some kind of GTD stuff to document all this and possibly keep up with it all, otherwise I am going to get mired down in paperwork and tasks and emails and everything. I can never find one that suits me… There are plenty of them about but most seem to be either Desktop or Cloud-based, some look great, some not-so-great, some use email and work with Outlook, many do not. I still haven’t found one really suits me. I guess that search goes one..

In the meantime, we created a SharePoint site and list all the Projects and the tasks and cross-linked them as well as did up some quick custom views to keep us going for now… That does me for now, on the work side of things anyway… that still leaves all the stuff i need to do at home though….

For this, I am thinking of using MS OneNote combined with Live Mesh. That way i can access the OneNote file from both Work and Home as well as synchronise with my HTC TYTN II.  I am still only scratching the surface of OneNote and I look forward to putting more into the way it works and integrates with Outlook

Any tips on GTD Apps and also OneNote resources and tips would be appreciated…

Yikes, My Work Vista VM has just been completely done over... I had to reboot it for something elso and soon as i started up, it prompted me to activate it.. no probs, so i run through the wizard.. Error 0xc004e003 and it fails to activate.. dang.. Everytime it does this, it then logs me off. So i log in and so it again.. nup, failed ( and logs me off). So i try again manually.. damn, it does the whole manual thing and now i have the screen to call up and do an activation over the phone...BUT... there are no codes in the section required to be entered in the phone ( or to the operator..)

So, off to 132058 option1, option3 to get a call logged. I was on the phone for an hour with this guy trying to assist.  no og.. we tried a System restore, no such luck.. I even did a repair install.. that seemed to fix it. Of course my previous installation and all the data was now in a folder called Windows.old but at least it was still there.

I start doing my updates and Service Packs as well as adding some essential applications that i need on my work machine. I had just gotten my profile back to normal and then i had all these errors trying to insall Office 2007. What the...? I tried a couple of different option and uninstalling and all that with no success. Then I rebooted and started up when i found myself in one of the dreaded Windows Update loops.. you know, where it says it is updating and then shutsdown over and over and over again...

In the end, i created a new HDD for my Virtual Machine and started again.. That was yesterday and today i ma finally back to where I was Wednesday lunchtime.. All I can say is thank god it was a Virtual Machine and I still had my Laptop Host to work off while i was rebuilding...

So I worked out this issue that was preventing the Exchange 2007 Installation from continuing. After all that, it was nothing more than a simple firewall issue. the two domains are firewalled from each other, hence why it couldn't connect. How embarrassing.

the way i worked it out was via using DCDiag to connect to particular DC's and checking that DNS test could be carried out. When i couldn't get to the same DC's that Exchange installation couldn't see, I finally twigged.. Duh.

Of course, since then, i have since broken it again, couldn't uninstall, tried a manual uninstall ( NOT Recommended  ). to recover i ran the command - Setup /m:RecoverServer - and it was failing halfway through in relation to the Microsoft Search (Exchange) Service. I browsed to the MSI file ( C:\program files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Mailbox) and then ran the msfte.msi /uninstall and restarted the setup. Bingo, it went through and reinstalled and Exchange was Working again. Woohooo..

I guess I have tested the Disaster recovery process enough now...

We are trying to install Exchange 2007 test intallation os we can check out the UC components to see if it will suitable replace our existing CTI installation. That doesn't sound too hard does it... noooo...

We try to run the setup, everyhting checks out, well sort of... So far we have the following issues:

• Single label domain

But the biggest issue that we have which to me, shouldn't be an issue at all. First off, a bit of background. We have a child domain that is does not contain Exchange in any way. It has 1 Windows 2003Sp2 DC and 2 Windows 2000 SP4 DC's. When we run the Exchange 2007 setup we get the following errors:

Extending Active Directory schema

Progress   .................. FAILED

Domain abc.xyz.com cannot be reached. Please verify the connection to this domain and run PrepareDomain for this domain again.

Why is it trying to contact the Child domain at all? I don't any part of Exchange in the child Domain. Everything else can see the child domain, what the hell? I added the preReq xml file that changes the requirements for the Ex2007 SP1 install and everything. the Parent domain xyz.com has had all the domain prep stuff run and i figured it would work just find.

Any tips would be appreciated..

So now the Server is all set up and hopefully ready to go. I am now testing the Boot PE image that i burnt to CD to test the setup. that way i can see if the image will connect to the deploy point.

Should that be successful, I shall then move the Boot PE image to the WDS Server and then test from there. Once that works OK, i will work on finalising the Image that i will deply. I am mkaing an existing XP one and will follow that up with a Vista one. All going well, i will look at a Windows Server 2003 and a Windows Server 2008 image that i can then deploy.

UPDATE: Automated boot was unsuccessful ( i think due to NIC Drivers) but Lite Touch Installation  is currently under way...

Here is a fantastic article from Aaron Parker on how to do Terminal Server Start menu re-direction. We currently have some archaic application called Startbuild that does it at the moment, for the most part. i will be rebuilding our TS servers soon and i can tell you that this will be the first thing i implement.

This is another great post in a long line of posts that i have found of great use for setting up my environment. Great work, keep it up.

How's this for a dodgy install. I am looking at installing the Microsoft Deployment toolkit and the Windows Server 2008 (and Vista SP1) AIK on a test server to see if it is useful here at work. So far i found the following odd things:

• MS Assessment & Planning  requires Word & Excel 2007, Word and Excel viewers are no good as substitutes
• It also requires SQL 2005 express, even though i already have SQL 2005 on there.

That is as far as i hae gotten so far... Why you wouldn't provide an option to use and existing SQL installation is beyond me. I can either download or use a previous download.

Perhaps i should just stick with Ghost...