Disable ATS Heartbeat
KB ID 0001529 Problem After ESX 5.5 Update 2, VMware added ATS Heartbeat.Some vendors, (like HPE SureStore and VSA) recommend that this is disabled. I can’t find any info about whether it’s safe to do this in production, so to be on the safe side I placed the hosts in maintenance mode first. Enter Maintenance Mode Use the following command; vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter Disable ATS Heartbeat Use the following...
Exchange: Create a PFX Certificate and Import a Private Key
KB ID 0001528 Problem On my test network I have an Exchange server (Exchange 2016). As it’s publicly available and connected to Office 365 it needs a digital certificate. Because its my test network, I don’t want to spend a fortune on a certificates, so I buy the cheapest one I can find. I replaced it last week with a 2 year certificate for about $5.00. When the certificate came I had certificate-name.crt, and a CA bundle,...
Exchange: Can’t Delete a Database
KB ID 0001414 Problem Every iteration of Exchange comes up with some new system/hidden mailbox type that stops me deleting mailbox databases! This mailbox database contains one or more mailboxes, mailbox plans, archive mailboxes, public folder mailboxes or arbitration mailboxes, Audit mailboxes. To get a list of all mailboxes in this database, run the command Get-Mailbox -Database <Database ID>. To get a list of all mailbox...
Virtual SAN: Suppress ‘Datastore Usage on Disk’ Alarm
KB ID 0001527 Problem While deploying a HPE StoreVirtual VSA this week. We noticed all the local Datastore were showing an ‘Alarm’. If you are unfamiliar with Virtual SANs, then you give all the LOCAL Storage to them, which then gets ‘aggregated’ and provided back to the host(s) as fault tolerant clustered storage, like so; Which is great, but the VMware hosts just see that their LOCAL Datastore(s) are full,...
Deploying a ‘Nano’ Webserver (IIS)
KB ID 0001526 Problem We’ve had Server Core for a while now, and I’ve never really seen it deployed in anger. Now we have Nano Server. You don’t install this like normal Windows Server distributions, i.e. it’s not an option when you run the install DVD. Originally you have to create the image with Powershell, but now you can use ‘Nano Server Image Builder’. Nano Server is a tiny distribution, and...