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<20 Watt Home Server for Hyper-V and ESXi

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

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: ESXi, homeserver, hyper.v, Intel I217-V, Intel I217V, low consumption, low power, Power saving

ESXi Paravirtual Drivers (PVSCSI) ISO Image

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

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: Floppy, Image, PVSCSI, pvscsi-Windows2008, Server 2012, Server 2012 R2, VMWare

SharePoint 2013 – Zero Byte ULS Logs

February 26, 2014 1:42 PM / Leave a Comment / XeroX

Recently I stumbled over out ULS Logs on the Web Frontends. Suprisingly they were empty, 0 bytes. I checked the permissions for the account the tracing service is running with (Web Application Pool Account). Everything was fine, same permissions as on the other servers where it was working.

So I checked the local groups and found out the tracing account must be a member of the “Performance Log Users”. Add the account, restart the “SharePoint Tracing” Service and you will see the uls logs growing.

Posted in: Microsoft, SharePoint / Tagged: Empty, Logging, Sharepoint 2013, ULS Logs, ZeroByte

Operations Manager 2012 R2 – Data Warehouse can’t process performance data

February 4, 2014 4:26 PM / Leave a Comment / XeroX

We had the problem that our data warehouse can’t process all performance data being collected. To get rid of this problem you need to disable some performance collection rules in your opsmgr 2012r2 (preferable the ones you don’t need).

You may find out which one collect most data you can run the following queries against your dwh.

Performance insertions per day

SELECT CASE WHEN(GROUPING(CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), TimeSampled, 102)) = 1)
THEN ‘All Days’ ELSE CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), TimeSampled, 102)
END AS DaySampled, COUNT(*) AS PerfInsertPerDay
FROM PerformanceDataAllView with (NOLOCK)
GROUP BY CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), TimeSampled, 102) WITH ROLLUP
ORDER BY DaySampled DESC

To find the rules collecting the most Performance Signature data in the database

select managementpack.MPName, ruleview.DisplayName,
count(*) AS TotalPerfSig
from performancesignaturedata with (nolock)
inner join performancesignaturehistory with (nolock)
on performancesignaturedata.performancesignaturehistoryid = performancesignaturehistory.performancesignaturehistoryid
inner join performancesignature with (nolock)
on performancesignaturehistory.performancesignatureid = performancesignature.performancesignatureid
inner join ruleview with (nolock)
on ruleview.id = performancesignature.learningruleid
inner join managementpack with(nolock)
on ruleview.managementpackid = managementpack.managementpackid
group by managementpack.mpname, ruleview.Displayname
order by TotalPerfSig DESC, managementpack.mpname, ruleview.DisplayName

Good luck

Posted in: Microsoft, Operations Manager / Tagged: Data Warehouse, OpsMgr, Performance, SCOM, SCOM 2012R2, SCOM2012

SharePoint 2013 – Unknown SQL Exception 64

January 7, 2014 12:46 PM / Leave a Comment / XeroX

After a major network outage one of our server doesn’t want to connect to the database server anymore. The event log was spammed with the following message:

Error    07.01.2014 10:09:09    Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation    5586    Database    “Unknown SQL Exception 64 occurred. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below.

A transport-level error has occurred when receiving results from the server. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 – The specified network name is no longer available.)”

This message only appeared on one out of five servers. No reboot, no iisreset resolved the problem.

We resolved the issue by moving the database to another sql node (FailOver / Always On). When you move the database all connections will be forcibly closed. Seems that the sql server doesn’t allow the server to connect to the database as some connection was still established. If you can’t move the database to another node, simply restart the instance or put the affected database in single user mode to close the connections.

Posted in: Microsoft, SharePoint / Tagged: Connections, Exception 64, Sharepoint 2013, SQL Exception

Display ESXi health status of Dell Perc 5/i

January 5, 2014 3:31 AM / 2 Comments / XeroX

So how to display health status of a Dell Perc 5/i (LSI 8404E) in ESXi incuding battery and raid status?

Nothing easier than that. Most admins know the Dell Perc 5/i is a LSI 8404E with firmware and bootloader from dell.

Download the latest LSI MegaRAID SMIS Provider for VMWare from here: http://www.lsi.com/search/pages/Results.aspx?k=VMWare%20SMIS&v1=-write

Upload the VIB File to your ESXi and install via commandline.

esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/vmware-esx-provider-lsiprovider.vib –no-sig-check

Result should be:

Installation Result
Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
Reboot Required: true
VIBs Installed: LSI_bootbank_lsiprovider_500.04.V0.38-0005
VIBs Removed:
VIBs Skipped:

Simply reboot your ESXi and now you can view the health status on your server.

ESXI5i

UPDATE: LSI was aquired by Avago and Avago was aquired by Broadcom.

You may find the correct download here: http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/dt_esxi50_lsi_2108_v534/dHRAYnRqZWRiZHAlZA==

Posted in: ESXi, VMWare / Tagged: Dell Perc 5i, ESXi Health, LSI 8404E, Perc 5i, Perci 5/i

iOS – Flashlight is greyed out in Control Center

November 21, 2013 8:44 AM / Leave a Comment / XeroX

Yesterday I came home and wanted to use the flashlight on my iPhone 5S. So I flipped up the control center and…flashlight was greyed out. I didn’t remember that I disabled that, so I thought it had something to do with the accessibility setting “LED Flash for Alerts” and switched it off. Still no flashlight.

So how to get it working again? Its rly easy, just take a photo with flash “on” and there you go, flashlight isn’t greyed out anymore.

Posted in: iOS / Tagged: flash, flashlight, iOS 7, iPad, iPhone

Office Web Apps 2013 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2012 (R2)

November 8, 2013 12:20 PM / 13 Comments / XeroX

Update 17.08.2015:

Official answer from Microsoft USA. It’s been finally decided that the Management Pack is discontinued. Disappointing.

However, feel free to use my fixed Management Pack.

 

Update 16.10.2014:

I’ve unsealed the Managemant Pack and added the missing strings. You cannot upgrade the existing one as I don’t have the signing keys. Good luck!

16-10-_2014_16-58-11Download: Microsoft.OfficeWebAppsServer_Custom

 

Update 12.02.2014:

Apologies for the delay.

It’s been finally decided that Office Web Apps Server MP will be released by the Web Apps Server team.

My team is working on getting this out the door as soon as possible, but there will be official release.

Update 18.12.2013: Our support engineer told us the development of this management pack has been discontinued for now. 🙁

In most case Microsoft offers a management pack for operations manager shortly after release within a few weeks or month.

This is not the case for Office Web Apps 2013 for Exchange/Lync/SharePoint. The Guide was released more than a year ago. As stated in the Document, Management Pack “Microsoft.OfficeWebAppsServer.mp” + “MicrosoftOfficeWebAppsServer.Config” is needed to monitor Office Web Apps Server 2013. So where to find it?

There is a link on technet forums and this is exactly the same that we received from the support engineer. You can download the management pack from the link at the end of the thread.

This is a buggy version of the management pack but it works. I will update the post when I get a release date.

Missing displaynames

HealthExp

 

 

Guide – http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34594

Management Pack – http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/9/E/49EA21D0-CDF9-469F-805D-AC31527A55F2/microsoft.officewebappsserver.mp

 

Posted in: OfficeWebApps / Tagged: Office Web Apps, OpsMgr, SCOM, SCOM2012, System Center 2012, System Center Operations Manager

SharePoint 2013 on Windows Server 2012 R2

November 7, 2013 12:53 PM / Leave a Comment / XeroX

Not long ago Microsoft released Server 2012 R2 to the public. So what most administrators do? Lookup the support of their software.

Is SharePoint 2013 supported on Windows Server 2012 R2?

Sadly Microsoft announced that its not supported yet. Microsoft will add support with SP1 which is not announced as of today. – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2891274

Anyways you may can get the prerequisite installer with installing the packages manually and go on with the setup but its not a supported system state. Same workaround applies to SharePoint 2010.

 

Posted in: SharePoint / Tagged: Server 2012 R2, SharePoint, Windows Server

SharePoint 2013 – Active Directory Security Groups do not work

September 2, 2013 8:29 AM / Leave a Comment / XeroX

Last week we created a new Site Collection and published it to our company. We added an active directory universal security group to our visitor group in Sharepoint.

After some time the first users complaint that they have no access to the site collection. Really strange was that all users without sid history had no problem.

Finally we found this article: KB2722087

“Each SharePoint service application must run the C2WTS locally. The C2WTS does not open any ports and cannot be accessed by a remote caller. Further, the C2WTS service configuration file must be configured to specifically trust the local calling client identity.”

Its mandatory that the Claims2WinowsTokenService runs on ALL WebFrontends and Backend Servers! (don’t think its necessary on real Backend Server without user interfaces like search server)

 

 

Posted in: SharePoint / Tagged: Active Directory, Authentication, Claims, Permissions, SharePoint

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