Convert MBR Partitioned Drives to GPT
KB ID 0001407 Problem I got asked if I’d ever had to do this today, I vaguely remember having this problem in the past, but I can’t remember how I solved it. You set the ‘Partition Table Type’ on a disk in Windows, when the drive is first initialised, like so; And the default is MBR, so that usually gets ticked, the problem is MBR only supports disks up to 2TB in size. Now if it’s just a new disk, with...
Remote Desktop Services – Securing By Group Policy
KB ID 0001211 Problem Note: This is not an exhaustive list, but it’s what I use when securing Remote Desktop Services, (Terminal Services) servers. Some of these settings are ONLY for Server 2012 R2 and later. If you have any settings you think are omitted, please comment below. Solution User Access To RDS If you want to create a Domain security group for RDS users than please do so. BE AWARE the ‘Remote Desktop...
Certificate Chain Incomplete
KB ID 0001570 Problem The certificate here at PNL expired over the weekend, I got a new one and installed it. All appeared to be fine until I did an online check to make sure it was OK. The server’s certificate chain is incomplete Solution I had this problem once before, back then I was using Apache and CentOS7, and things were a little different, (now I’m using NGINX and Ubuntu 18.04). Essentially you see this error...
Windows 10 & Windows Server Update Error 0x800705b4
KB ID 0001569 Problem I can’t remember Windows being so diabolically bad at simply updating? I built a new 2016 server, simply to create a VM template, and it would not update; There were some problems installing updates, but we’ll try again later. If you keep. seeing this and want to search the web or contact support for information this may help: (0x800705b4) Solution Well that’s a very polite but useless error!...
vCenter ‘Root’ Account Expired
KB ID 0001568 Problem Today I found I could no longer log in to the VCSA vCenter appliance; Exception in invoking authentication handler User password expired Solution Just because I can’t log into the web console, I could still log into the the appliance via SSH. Then invoke the shell command, and reset the root password with the passwd command; Now if you wish, you can Disable VCSA Password Expiration: Administration > Edit...
iLO: Java Error “Unable to Load Resource”
KB ID 0001567 Problem When attempting to connect to an iLO 3 remote console on an HP Server; General Exception Name: com.hp.ilo2.intgapp.intgapp ExitException: Unable to load resource https://{Server}/html/intgapp3_231.jar Solution Having added the URL to the iLO to the trusted sites in the the Java Preferences, I thought this all I had to do. Turns out I was wrong. Navigate to Administration > Security > Encryption >...
vSphere ESX: Replace / Update the VMware Tools ISO
KB ID 0001566 Problem On Experts Exchange this morning someone asked about how to upgrade the VMware Tools as a result of a security advisory that advocated updating Windows VMware Tools to version 10.3 So here’s how to replace / upgrade the VMware Tools distribution ISOs, that live inside ESX. Solution Firstly, you need to download the tools! It’s easier if you simply get them in .zip format. Download and extract them,...
vSphere: Cannot Change the Host Configuration
KB ID 0001565 Problem There’s always one! I had a single ESX host that refused to add a datastore? Failed to create VFMS Datastore {Name} – Cannot change the host configuration. Solution I already half suspected what the problem was, because I’d had a similar problem earlier on this week presenting disks to a Windows VM, there’s a GPT partition table on the dive/array. But without waiting an hour for the HP...
Exchange: Hide All Contacts From Global Address List
KB ID 0001564 Problem I saw this on EE this evening, so I thought I’d work it out, what if your Global Address List is full of external ‘contacts’, and you want to remove/hide them? Solution First take a look at them, to see you’re not about to cause any damage! Get-MailContact | Where-Object {$_.HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled -eq $false} If you are happy, to remove/hide them from the GAL, simply do the...
vSphere: Presenting Physical Disks to a VM
KB ID 0001563 Problem I’m doing some work presenting StarWind vSAN into VMware ESX. Because we also want ‘disk tiering’ it has to be ran from Microsoft Windows with Storage Spaces*. To do that I needed to present the physical disks in the ESX hosts, (HP DL380 Gen 10s) to the Windows Virtual Machines that StarWind will be running on. *Note: At present, ‘tiering’ cannot be done from the StarWind Linux...