Reinstall WSUS and keep downloaded content

June 3, 2015 8:37 PM / 1 Comment /

Our scenario was that we wanted to upgrade our WSUS running on Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2012 R2 and changing the database to WID. The database wasn’t that important for us, as all computers placed in one group where all patches are approved. But we wanted to keep the content of 800 Gigabyte without redownloading all that stuff.

A huge advantage is if you have the data on a seperate drive or partition. Before you start, shutdown the WSUS Service and rename the WsusContent folder or move it to a different location.

Then you’re good to go. Reinstall or setup a new machine and install WSUS. During the initial configuration wizard its important that you choose “synchronize manually” and do not trigger a sync before or at the end of the wizard. Then copy the previous saved WsusContent folder to the location you’ve chosen in the wizard and replace everything. After that you can manually start your synchronization and WSUS is reindexing the whole content without downloading a huge amount of data. It should take around 3-4 hours, depending on your hardware and disk. You can see the status on synchronization tab.

Good luck!

Posted in: Microsoft, Windows Server / Tagged: , , , , ,

SSLLabs A+ rating with nginx without breaking compatibility

February 4, 2015 5:09 PM / Leave a Comment /

Update 05.03.2015: This configuration is not vulernerable to POODLE, BEAST, HEARTBLEED or FREAK Attack. Proof: SSLLabs.com

After a lot of searching on the internet I found the perfect setting for nginx to get an A+ rating on ssllabs without breaking compatibility. There are some guides, but quite old.

nginx A+

Removing TLSv1 is easy but breaks compatibility to everything lower Android 4.4, Windows 7 IE11 and most search engine crawler.

The following settings are requitred to get A+ rating as of february 2015.

        ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/nginx/dhparam.pem;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
ssl_session_timeout 5m;

ssl_ciphers ‘kEECDH+ECDSA+AES128 kEECDH+ECDSA+AES256 kEECDH+AES128 kEECDH+AES256 kEDH+AES128 kEDH+AES256 DES-CBC3-SHA +SHA !aNULL !eNULL !LOW !MD5 !EXP !DSS !PSK !SRP !kECDH !CAMELLIA !RC4 !SEED’;

# HSTS (ngx_http_headers_module is required) (15768000 seconds = 6 months)
add_header Strict-Transport-Security max-age=15768000;

resolver <trusted DNS Server>;

After restarting nginx you will see the result above with the following ciphers:

Ciphers

 

If you’re interested in even more compatibility Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator may help you to suit the configuration your needs.

Note: A+ can only be reached with SHA2 certificate or higher. Best you can reach with SHA1 is A rating.

Posted in: Webserver / Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Can’t reach NAS4Free after configuring LAGG

August 27, 2014 9:49 AM / Leave a Comment /

After configuring LAGG (Failover) your NAS4Free instance is not reachable.

This can happen if you assigned an ip address to a network adapter (bce0, bce1, …) prior you switched to LAGG. You can simply fix this by opening /etc/rc.conf and removing all assinged ip addresses to single adapters.

Remove ipv4_addrs_bce0=”0.0.0.0/0″, … and reboot. Thats it.

Posted in: FreeBSD / Tagged: , , ,

JBOD with HP Smart Array P410i

August 27, 2014 9:26 AM / 1 Comment /

I was trying to install NAS4Free (FreeBSD) on a HP ProLiant DL380G7. I entered Configuration Utility for the RAID Controller (HP Smart Array P410i) and removed all logical drives, as there is no need for a hardware raid if you’re going to use ZFS. I assumed no logical drives = JBOD but I was wrong.

The HP Smart Arry P410i does not support JBOD Configuration. HP seems to be aware of this so they created a…hmm… kind of a workaround. Simply boot up the latest smartstart package and start the smart storage configuration utility. In there you can create an array with RAID0, there is even a button for it.

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Press “Create Array with RAID 0”.

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Select all available disks.

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After that you created a RAID0 on each physical drive.

Thats it. Its no pass-through but works like jbod.

Good luck.

 

Posted in: Hardware / Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Error during install of Microsoft Workflow Manager 1.0 Refresh

June 30, 2014 1:34 PM / Leave a Comment /

Installing the Workflow Manger 1.0 Refresh can be tricky.

During Installation process with the web platform installer 5.0 (only way to install it) the setup of Microsoft Windows Fabric V1 CU1 fails. When you open the log it says 1603.

So lets see what 1603 means. Open cmd prompt and type net helpmsg 1603.

C:\>net helpmsg 1603

Fatal error during Installation.

Not very expressive. But there is a simple solution, install Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4.

 

Source: Social MSDN

Posted in: Microsoft, SharePoint / Tagged: , ,

Change network profile of Windows Server 2012 R2

June 6, 2014 11:51 PM / Leave a Comment /

After installing Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 8.1 you will be asked if this is a home/work network or not. Based on that windows will choose your network profile.

Network ProfileI was some kind distracted and accidently clicked in the middle of the desktop and the sidebar disappeared. Windows decided that this is a “No” and you will be on a public network. I’ve no idea why but you can not change it through the network and sharing center, all settings you’re trying to set will be set back to default of public networks. Like network discovery. So how to change it? Quite easy, just open the registry and navigate to the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles

There will be at least one key in that list. Simply delete the one you want to reset and reboot your machine. After that you will be asked again. However I would only recommend that method if that happened to you right after the setup as I don’t know if some firewall rules will be reset or deleted.

Posted in: Microsoft / Tagged: , , , ,

Windows 2012 R2 Data Deduplication and ISOs

June 1, 2014 4:11 PM / Leave a Comment /

I’ve tried to install some machines on my Hyper-V. All ISOs were placed on the second drive where data deduplication is enabled. With deduplication enabled I ran into the problem that no serial/license number was accepted neither the AVMA Key nor the generic KMS Key or my own key. After hours of searching for solutions on the web and no solution in sight. I copied the iso to drive D again. Suprise it was working! One day later I tried to install a new machine and it wasn’t working again. No key accepted. After moving it to drive C where no deduplication happens its working again.

Conclusion: Never ever put windows installation media on a drive with data deduplication enabled.

Posted in: Microsoft / Tagged: , , , ,

<20 Watt Home Server for Hyper-V and ESXi

June 1, 2014 3:58 PM / Leave a Comment /

I’ve rented a lot of linux vps around the world for testing and hosting teamspeak and other stuff. Not every application runs on linux so I decided to build a small home server with a low power consumption.

I stumbled over the list of components in the hardwareluxx forums and build my system based on that components. ( Link )

Here is my list:

  • Intel Pentium G3420
  • ASRock Z87E-ITX
  • Crucial Ballistix Sport Kit 8GB ( DDR3-1600, CL9-9-9-24 )
  • EKL Alpenföhn Silvretta
  • be quiet! Pure Power L8 300W ATX 2.4
  • SanDisk SSD 128GB
  • Kingston SSDNow mS200 SSD 30 GB
  • Cooler Master Elite 130

First of all I removed the Mini PCIe Wifi card from the mainboard as its not needed and plugged in the mSATA at the bottom of it. The small SSD can be used for the OS (Server 2012 R2) or as Host Cache for ESXi.
After putting all components together I enabled all bios settings allowing power savings and switched of the soundcard etc. I also tried to undervolt the CPU with the VCore Offset and got it down to -0,235mV.

Here are the results (power measurement):

ESXi 5.5 U1 Windows Server 2012 R2
Idle 18.2 Watts 11.1 Watts
Load 39.6 Watts 35.8 Watts

Make sure all drivers are installed and no usb devices are plugged in. The usb devices may prevent reaching a package c-state of more than 80.

The network drivers are a little tricky. For ESXi 5.5 follow this guide  ESXi 6.0 includes drivers for Intel I217V and for Server 2012 follow this guide.

Good luck and post your results.

Posted in: ESXi, Hyper-V, Microsoft, VMWare / Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Office Web Apps via HTTPS are slow and you can’t open documents without an error

March 22, 2014 1:28 AM / Leave a Comment /

You’ve installed an Office Web Apps Server with HTTPS and its slow? We really had slow office web apps and an enormous amount of documents that failed to open with the following error message “Sorry, something went wrong”.  Make sure your SharePoint Web Applications are using https and  “AllowOAuthoverHTTP” is not enabled. You should not use AllowOAuthoverHTTP when using HTTPS.

$config = (Get-SPSecurityTokenServiceConfig)
$config.AllowOAuthOverHttp = $false
$config.Update()

More solutions to resolve your problem on TechNet

 

Posted in: Microsoft, OfficeWebApps, SharePoint / Tagged: , , , , , ,

ESXi Paravirtual Drivers (PVSCSI) ISO Image

February 28, 2014 10:45 AM / Leave a Comment /

As I’m to lazy to add a floppy drive to my VMs for adding the pvscsi drivers, I created an ISO from pvscsi-Windows2008.flp.

Simply dismount the windows install disk, mount pvscsi-Windows2008.iso, select the drivers and remount the windows install disk.

Download from here: pvscsi-Windows2008.iso

Posted in: ESXi, VMWare / Tagged: , , , , , ,