Jean-Pierre Paradis's Blog

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Hi Cluster Fans,

We have some great webcasts to share with you created by one of the team’s Most Valuable Professionals (MVP), John Savill. (What is a MVP? Visit: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com) John has shared some of his clustering work from website, SavillTech.com.

The Microsoft Office team has changed the way that it delivers hotfixes for reported problems. This change comes in the form of cumulative updates and critical on-demand hotfixes.

The detail of August Cumulative Update (CU) for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 can be found here:

Source : blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint

Excellent post on 4sysops blog about CCC. This tool (in fact it’s a batch) can help you configure Windows Server 2008 Core.

Could be also an alternative to CoreConfigurator (great GUI tool) witch is no longer available.

Yesterday we learn that the Canadian’s Grand Prix was not on the calendar for 2009.

As a Formula one fan and a Canadian Grand Prix lover for more than 20 year (grandstand 34) I’m really sad.

Read F1-Live.com article «why the Canadian GP was cancelled» to learn more.

I really hope that someone would come up and save «my» Grand prix.

So, how do you wrestle back control of iTunes so that you’re not installing unneeded and unwanted junk?

Excellent post by Ed Bott showing how to get rid of the uneeded junk.

Source : Ed Bott's Microsoft Report

Excellent post by Steven Ekren at Clustering & High Availability blog about cluster.log in Windows 2008.

Source : blogs.msdn.com/clustering

I’m so excited about this release I had to commandeer Paul’s blog for the day and write about it. My name is Tawanda Sibanda and I am the lead program manager for Network Monitor. The team put a lot of effort into this version, adding many of the requests we heard from our customers, while simultaneously fixing bugs and stabilizing the product. We hope you enjoy this release! Please feel free to leave feedback on Paul’s blog or participate in our Network Monitor survey
Now, let’s deep dive into some of the details of Network Monitor 3.2

Source : blogs.technet.com/netmon

Matthijs ten Seldam has produced a very cool tool that enables you to import your existing virtual machines from Virtual PC and Virtual Server in Hyper-V

Source : blogs.technet.com/matthts

The SharePoint Best Practices Resource Center on TechNet highlights the different best practices for IT Professionals and Developers and helps you navigate through the resources. IT Professional topics include Operational Excellence, Team Collaboration Sites, Publishing Portals, Search and My Sites. Developer topics include Common Coding Issues, Using Disposable Objects, Search SQL Syntax Queries and Customization Best Practices. We will continue updating and publishing new Best Practices based on real-world experience.

Source : blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint

Hi all, this topic is an area that has caused me much pain and work. My goal for this was to follow the recommended SQL guidelines while minimizing the impact that these maintenance jobs have on Crawling and Queries. We know from the SQL Monitoring an I/O post that Search is extremely I/O intensive . As it turns out so is all of the regular maintenance that SQL recommends, so finding the right balance between the two is an interesting scheduling task.

Read the complete post : blogs.msdn.com/enterprisesearch

I received the following trying to detach the msdb database in SQL Server 2005 :

Cannot detach an opened database when the server is in minimally configured mode

I was trying to move msdb according to kb224071. I finally found why.

When I opened my query in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) I was connecting to msdb database by default. Event if I do a use master; after that, it was too late, I always got an error doing a sp_detach_bd 'msdb';

So here's the trick :

Click new query on the tool bar of SSMS
Click on the Options >> buton in the Connect to Server dialog
Select the Connection Properties tab
Type master in the Connect to database field
Click Connect

Et voilà ! You will now be able to detach the msdb database.

Note : Of course this will only work if you follow kb224071 and start SQL Server with the -c -m -T3608 startup options.

Last night I spent a few hours trying to follow the kb224071's instructions to move the MSDB system database but was always getting the following error trying to connect with the -c -m -T3608 startup options :

Login failed for user '******'. Reason: Server is in single user mode. Only one administrator can connect at this time. [CLIENT: *.*.*.*]

But nobody else was using the database !

Seems that I was wrong. When I looked again at my error log I saw this line :

Login succeeded for user 'NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM'. Connection: trusted. [CLIENT: *.*.*.*]

Then I tried the same thing in virtual without a cluster and everything worked fine, so I got a little suspicious about the cluster service.

So here's what I've done and it worked :

Put all SQL Server resources offline in the cluster (except the storage of course).
execute :
NET START "SQL SERVER (instance)" /c /m /T3608
You will now be able to connect to your database in single-user mode.
When your finished, execute the following command and restart all SQL Server resources in the cluster :
NET STOP "SQL SERVER (instance)"

I'm not an SQL engineer but it looks to me like the Cluster Service opened a connection to the SQL Server.

Hope this could help someone else.

I misted that news, but looks like FastCGI has bean released to manufacturing.

First Problem : DatabaseMail90.exe connection

Looks like DatabaseMail90.exe is trying to connect to SQL using Localhost or ComputerName as it's SQL Server name. In a cluster you can't do that, you should use the Virtual SQL Server Name as define in your Cluster resources. Can we change that ? Not really.
But there is a workaround. Microsoft added a new feature in SQL SP2 to allow you to send mail from a remote server. We are going to use that feature to make DataBaseMail90.exe connect to the Virtual SQL Server (Cluster).
First we have to create the text file DataBaseMail90.exe.config in the \MSSQL\Binn folder of your SQL Instance (ex: \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Binn). with the following content :

Replace VirtualServerName\InstanceName by the valid names from your environment.
Don't forget your are in a cluster, so you should copy that new file on every node of your cluster.
Next we have to modify the DatabaseMail config to tell SQL Server to use the new file. We'll do that by running the following code in SQL Server Management Studio :

USE msdb;
GO
INSERT INTO [msdb].[dbo].[sysmail_configuration]
   (
   [paramname]
   ,[paramvalue]
   ,[description]
   )
VALUES
   (
   N'ReadFromConfigurationFile'
   ,N'1'
   ,N'Send mail from mail server in configuration file'
   );
GO

Second problem : the 'sp_sysmail_activate' stored procedure

'sp_sysmail_activate' is the procedure that launch the DatabaseMail90.exe process. Normally when you updated your SQL Server to SP2 that procedure got updated to support the new DataBaseMail.exe.confg file. Don't ask me why but when you are in a cluster this is not the case (thanks FreemanRU for the tip).
So you'll have to update it by yourself. I have taken a copy of the 'sp_sysmail_activate' procedure from a working SQL server (non-cluster) SP2 with CU8 (build 3257). You can simple run the code in SQL Server Management Studio :

USE [msdb]
GO
/****** Object: StoredProcedure [dbo].[sp_sysmail_activate]    Script Date: 08/13/2008 11:59:49 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
-- sp_sysmail_activate : Starts the DatabaseMail process if it isn't already running
--
ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_sysmail_activate]
AS
BEGIN
    DECLARE @mailDbName sysname
    DECLARE @mailDbId INT
    DECLARE @mailEngineLifeMin INT
    DECLARE @loggingLevel nvarchar(256)
    DECLARE @loggingLevelInt int
    DECLARE @parameter_value nvarchar(256)
    DECLARE @localmessage nvarchar(max)
    DECLARE @readFromConfigFile INT
    DECLARE @rc INT
    SET NOCOUNT ON
    EXEC sp_executesql @statement = N'RECEIVE TOP(0) * FROM msdb.dbo.ExternalMailQueue'
    EXEC @rc = msdb.dbo.sysmail_help_configure_value_sp @parameter_name = N'DatabaseMailExeMinimumLifeTime',
                                                        @parameter_value = @parameter_value OUTPUT
    IF(@rc <> 0)
        RETURN (1)
    --ConvertToInt will return the default if @parameter_value is null or config value can't be converted
    --Setting max exe lifetime is 1 week (604800 secs). Can't see a reason for it to ever run longer that this
    SET @mailEngineLifeMin = dbo.ConvertToInt(@parameter_value, 604800, 600)
    EXEC msdb.dbo.sysmail_help_configure_value_sp @parameter_name = N'ReadFromConfigurationFile',
                                                  @parameter_value = @parameter_value OUTPUT
    --Try to read the optional read from configuration file:
    SET @readFromConfigFile = dbo.ConvertToInt(@parameter_value, 1, 0)
    --Try and get the optional logging level for the DatabaseMail process
    EXEC msdb.dbo.sysmail_help_configure_value_sp @parameter_name = N'LoggingLevel',
                                                  @parameter_value = @loggingLevel OUTPUT
    --Convert logging level into string value for passing into XP
    SET @loggingLevelInt = dbo.ConvertToInt(@loggingLevel, 3, 2)
    IF @loggingLevelInt = 1
       SET @loggingLevel = 'Normal'
    ELSE IF @loggingLevelInt = 3
       SET @loggingLevel = 'Verbose'
    ELSE -- default
       SET @loggingLevel = 'Extended'
    SET @mailDbName = DB_NAME()
    SET @mailDbId   = DB_ID()
    EXEC @rc = master..xp_sysmail_activate @mailDbId, @mailDbName, @readFromConfigFile,
    @mailEngineLifeMin, @loggingLevel
    IF(@rc <> 0)
    BEGIN
        SET @localmessage = FORMATMESSAGE(14637)
        exec msdb.dbo.sysmail_logmailevent_sp @event_type=3, @description=@localmessage
    END
    ELSE
    BEGIN
        SET @localmessage = FORMATMESSAGE(14638)
        exec msdb.dbo.sysmail_logmailevent_sp @event_type=0, @description=@localmessage
    END
    RETURN @rc
END

There's only one final step, you should restart the mail process with the follwing SQL command :

EXEC msdb.dbo.sysmail_start_sp;

You could always restart the SQL Server if you prefer.
You should now be able to send a test email from the Database Mail object in SQL Server Management Studio from your SQL Server 2005 SP2 in a cluster.

December 2008 update :

I missed something, in the ‘Second problem :’, ‘sys_mail_activate’ is not the only stored procedure that you have to update. There is a few others :

dbo.sp_ExternalMailQueueListener
dbo.sp_RunMailQuery
dbo.sp_send_dbmail
dbo.sp_sysmail_activate
dbo.sysmail_delete_mailitems_sp
dbo.sysmail_delete_profile_sp
dbo.sysmail_update_account_sp
dbo.sp_ProcessResponse
dbo.sp_validate_user

I’ve created a script to update those procedures to the same level as SQL Server 2005 SP2 with Cumulatives Updates 8. You can download my script here.
May I suggest you backup the msdb database before playing with dbmail procs.

Oh dear. The Chicken Little contingent is out in full force. Break out your Kevlar helmets, everyone, because the sky is falling on Windows! At last week’s Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, researchers Alexander Sotirov and Mark Dowd presented a paper that outlined some new attack vectors they had discovered targeting some security features introduced in different versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista. It’s a fascinating paper, rich in technical detail and hewing to the Black Hat tradition of providing clues that others can follow to discover, exploit, and ultimately fix vulnerabilities in widely used computer code.

Read Ed Boot's article at blogs.zdnet.com

As a tech writer, one of my biggest pet peeves is the plethora of bad advice littered across almost every web site dedicated to system tweaking. Besides the tweaks that simply don't work, some of them will actually cause your computer to run even slower—or worse. Let's examine some of the most offensive myths out there regarding PC performance tweaking, and debunk them once and for all.

Read the complete article at lifehacker.com

These days application virtualization is a hot topic. Michael Pietroforte form 4sysops blog has produce a list of advantage and of disadvantage for the new technology :

For a few days I'm not able to check for new updates from my WSUS server, I always get an error 8024400E. Strangely if I check for updates from Microsoft Update I've got no error.

A few computers (and servers) at my location got the same problem.

Today I've tired the workaround published by Cecilia Cole (WSUS Program Manager) and it WORKED !

Many thanks Cecilia,

Source : Client/Server Synchronization issues

Jean-Pierre Paradis's Blog

First Problem : DatabaseMail90.exe connection

Second problem : the 'sp_sysmail_activate' stored procedure

December 2008 update :

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