Sysprep Was Unable to Validate
KB ID 0001535 Problem While building a new Windows 10 machine to be used as a template, I ran Sysprep to generalise the installation, and got this; Sysprep was not able to validate your Windows Installation. Review the log file at %WINDIR%\System32\Sysprep\Panther\setupact.log for details. After resolving the issue, use Sysprep to validate yout Installation again. Solution What I did was Google the error, instead of looking at the log...
VMware: Fiber Channel HBA Reports Wrong WWN?
KB ID 0001534 Problem I was building some new ESX 6.7 U1 (HPE) servers this week, they had Emulex Fiber HBA’s in them. When it came to ‘allowing’ them access to the SAN, I went to get the Port World Wide Name; And was presented with this; Not only is that 19 Characters long, and not 16 characters, but BOTH VMHBA’s WERE THE SAME! Like MAC addresses they should be unique? So I’m guessing this is a bug....
Cisco IOS: Ether-Channel Trunks
KB ID 0001533 Problem This is a subject that every time I need to create an Ether-Channel I end up checking beforehand, so it’s about time I wrote it up. We are combining two different things, an Ether-channel, (an aggregation of links) and a Trunk (the ability to carry many VLANS). If you are NOT from a Cisco background then you might want to read though the following post first to avoid confusion about the world...
VMware: Change IOPS Limit From 1000 to 1
KB ID 0001532 Problem I got asked to do this by a client this week, HP has requested that this be set for connections to their Storevirtual VSA that had been having some problems. Solution I followed the instructions and was at first confused because I could not see the settings that needed changing? That’s because this only applies if you have MULTIPATHING enabled and set to ‘Round Robin’. So if your storage does...
Cisco ASA VPN to Cisco Router “MM_WAIT_MSG3”
KB ID 0001531 Problem While migrating a VPN tunnel from an ASA 5520 firewall to a new 5516-X I got this problem. The other end was a Cisco router (2900). As soon as I swapped it over, it was stuck at MM_WAIT_MSG3, and phase 1 would not establish; NUFC-ASA5516x(config-tunnel-ipsec)# show crypto isa IKEv1 SAs: Active SA: 6 Rekey SA: 0 (A tunnel will report 1 Active and 1 Rekey SA during rekey) Total IKE SA: 6 1 IKE Peer: 1.1.1.1 Type :...
Cisco ASA: “Wrong Serial Number?”
KB ID 0001530 Problem Cisco have done this for a while, the first time I saw it was years ago on a 5585, but all the NGFW models now have a ‘Serial Number” and a “Chassis Serial Number”. Normally you don’t care unless you need to log a TAC call online. So you issue a show version command, take a note of the serial number, and then it says, there’s no record of that serial number? Solution Just to be...
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,...