dayzd

So, technical people, once again I need some help. I need some more storage space for backups at my job. We can't afford to go to a named vendor for a proper SAN, so I'm looking to build a Samba/SMB-based 50+TB storage device to hold block-level VM backups (from Veeam, if anyone cares to know). I can probably afford to buy either 24x 4TB disks or 18x 6TB disks, but not 24x 6TB disks. With these I'd have 96 or 108TB of raw storage that by default, my brain wants to use in a RAID10 equivalent to get me 48/54TB-ish usable space. What I'm looking for is advice on how to set up the disks. I don't want to use Windows and ideally there'd be no hardware controller requirement - I'd prefer the array was portable if I ever need to connect it up to a different machine or change hardware. I'm relatively familiar with Linux (mostly Ubuntu) and have a little experience with ZFS, so I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty... Should I consider a different filesystem/array layout? Is ZFS a good choice for long term, backup storage? I've heard people talk about Ceph, but I know little about it. Should I look at it for this purpose? I'm not fully versed in Unraid, either. Would that make sense here? Given a pile of relatively large disks, how would you get the most out of them, when all-out speed is not your priority and reliability and longevity is? Thanks in advance or your suggestions!

I've had similar sound difficulties in the past, but with files rather than folders that I can't take ownership of. If I recall, renaming and moving still works, but I can't reset permissions. With those files, I've copied them to an external USB drive or a non-domain file share then back again, and the permissions difficulties vanish. Are you able to copy the folder to a different drive?

Total cost will depend how much you put in the cloud. My provider currently charges £55/TB.

Hi, people who are more experienced with Exchange that I am! I'm testing out some scripts to search all my users' mailboxes and have come up wanting. I've sent myself a few emails with a few attachments in, each containing a keyword I'd later search for. Some of these have been returned correctly, but a few have not. In particular, Excel .xlsx files. To test further, I emailed myself a second spreadsheet called 'testexcelthesecond.xlsx' and it contains two words: 'helicopter' and 'discombobulate'. I've run the following search, but the ResultItemsCount is 0: Search-Mailbox -Identity dayzd -SearchQuery "(kind:contacts OR email OR journals OR meetings OR notes OR posts OR tasks) AND (attachment:testexcelthesecond.xlsx) OR (attachment:discombobulate) OR (attachment:helicopter)" -EstimateResultOnly However, if I search for this email's subject, it is found. If I search for other words I know exist in other Excel attachments I have (real data, not test), they are discovered. It's just not reading this particular Excel file. Are there any tricks I'm missing?

Dear people from the future, finding this long-abandoned post through an obscure Google search, I fixed this problem by running my scripts from a machine that was not my Exchange server. I'd always run my calendar-based scheduled tasks on the Exchange server because it made sense - server with calendars + script querying calendars = run scripts here. I guess one of the security changes introduced in CU22 that affected EWS functionality was where it would accept requests from. I now have all my scripts working again, simply by installing EWS on a different server and running them there, instead.

I've recently upgraded my Exchange 2013 server with CU22. Since doing so, any Powershell scripts I have that use EWS all fail with '401 Unauthorized' errors the first time the script tries to bind to a folder. I understand 401s are normally caused by credential problems, but I've checked I'm using the correct details and I can log in with OWA. EWSEditor can also connect to the mailboxes I need. I'm so confused. Nothing has changed, other than the CU update (which was a mare to install). All my scripts, user accounts, permissions and passwords have not been touched. Is there much in the way of configuration or permissions I can look at? Can anyone spot what might be set up badly in the below script? # Modified from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/powershell-script-ews-working-calendar-items-using-managed-chauhan Param( $EmailAddress, $cred, [system.URI]$fullEWSUrl ) $searchStart = (Get-Date).AddDays(-31) # The EWS API can only return a max range of 2 years. $searchEnd = (Get-Date).AddDays(699) # Set Start to one month ago, and end to 23 months from now $itemsView = 5000 $userName = $cred.UserName $password = $cred.GetNetworkCredential().password $dllpath = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\2.2\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll" Import-Module $dllpath $ExchangeVersion = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeVersion]::Exchange2013 $service = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeService($ExchangeVersion) $service.Credentials = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WebCredentials -ArgumentList $userName, $password $service.url = $fullEWSUrl # Take out this impersonation line, and we can search our own mailboxes. This will work for the schedule accounts, as we use them directly with their own credentials already # $service.ImpersonatedUserId = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ImpersonatedUserId ([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ConnectingIdType]::SMTPAddress,$EmailAddress) $Folderid = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId ([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::Calendar,$EmailAddress) $cal = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service,$Folderid) # Define the calendar view $CalendarView = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.CalendarView($searchStart,$searchEnd,$itemsView) $findCalItems = $service.FindAppointments($Cal.Id,$CalendarView) $findCalItems | Select Start,End,Duration,AppointmentType,Subject,Location,Organizer,DisplayTo,DisplayCC,HasAttachments,IsReminderSet,ReminderDueBy The script is run by a domain admin, but used the password for each mailbox it accesses as it is run. I've rebooted everything, reset account passwords and used known good details throughout, reset the EWS virtual directory... I'm no Exchange specialist, and I've run out of things to try! Help!?

If it helps, I used version 1 of https://www.classroombookings.com/ in my old job (about 10 years ago, now) and got on well with it. If you desperately need reports from it, I daresay if you've the inclination you could write something that queries the SQL yourself...

Do either do any reporting?

Hey there, elite squad of Windows 10 deployers who undoubtedly know a lot more than me! Does anyone know if there's a way by which Windows 10 1809's 'the user can install fonts to their own workspace' feature can be disabled? I'd like to have some of my network users able to use it so that I can get rid of a script I wrote a few years ago and streamline the process, but I don't want every user to have the functionality... I've installed and inspected the 1809 ADMX files, but can't find that this is a controllable option. Apologies if this has come up before, but the few quick searches I did before writing this came up a little short. Have I missed something, or is this not something I can restrict?

That's an interesting idea. I'll keep it in mind for the next time it gets reported to me. Thanks!

Thanks. Yeah, it's external queries that have been failing. The most prominent is to Adobe services - Adobe Fonts (ex Typekit) stops working and that's typically when I get reports of problems. DNS is all set up as it should be. Each of my two DNS servers have their IP4 settings point to themselves and then the other. What exactly do you mean by 'check your forwarders'? It's a bit vague to me! You mean set my machine to use each of those in turn (rather than my internal ones) and check I can resolve the domains I'm looking for? I'm not sure that will prove much - I use the same forwarders for my corporate network as I do my public wifi, and the last time I checked that, it was still working when my corporate was not. I've not had to touch DNS since I upgraded my network from Server 2003 to 2012R2 about 5 years ago. I really hate such difficult problems, where something is definitely wrong, but there are no indicators as to why!

So I've been having a weird DNS problem for a few months that I can't quite figure out. What happens is, for short amounts of time, DNS queries to a very small number of domain names time out when querying my local DNS servers (2012R2). During this time, other queries will be provided with an accurate and timely response - it's just the one or two that I've been told about that cause Chrome to produce an error stating the DNS lookup failed. The only thing I've been able to do to resolve it is restart the DNS services. If I don't do this, occasionally queries to affected sites start working again after a few minutes, but often this does not happen. It isn't the internet connection or router, as the affected domains work properly directly by IP or via our public wifi which uses a different (non-Windows) DNS server, and I've been unable to find any errors being recorded anywhere that would explain this. For a time, I thought this was being caused by having turned on 'Enable DNSSEC validation for remote responses' on my DNS servers a few weeks before the first complaint, but having disabled this again not long after, it is still going on. Does anyone have a clue what this might be or what I could look at for more clues?

PM sent

I can upload the 10.10 installer app somewhere later today (once I've grabbed it out of my backup this morning), if you still need it.

It's missing a trailing '}' $ComputerName = "name" Get-WmiObject Win32_MappedLogicalDisk -ComputerName $ComputerName | Select SystemName,Name,ProviderName,SessionID | ForEach { $disk = $_ $user = Get-WMIObject Win32_LoggedOnUser -ComputerName $ComputerName | Where {($_.Dependent.split("=")[-1] -replace '"') -eq $disk.SessionID} | ForEach {$_.Antecedent.split("=")[-1] -replace '"'} $disk | Select SystemName,@{n="MappedTo";e={$user}},Name,ProviderName }

I'm glad it does - I wish it would for me, too!

I don't think what you're looking to do is going to be possible. Unless I've been doing it wrong for a long time, Powershell won't be able to get details like that from another user's session. Whenever you query another computer with Powershell (Invoke-Command, Get-WMIObject, Get-CimInstance etc.), you're doing it under your login, in your user context. You're not logged in to the client and have no drives mapped, so it returns nothing. I've tried running your commands in a script I have that will check each online computer in my AD, and the only one that returns results is the computer I'm actively logged in to: ...snip... ZZ-PC-xx2 ZZ-PC-xy2 ZZ-PC-xxx-001 SystemName MappedTo Name ProviderName ---------- -------- ---- ------------ ZZ-PC-xxx-001 dayzd A: \\host-01\dayzd$ ZZ-PC-xxx-001 dayzd B: \\host-01\Depts ZZ-PC-xxx-001 dayzd X: \\host\www ZZ-PC-xxx-001 dayzd Y: \\hostTheThird\Backups\D\__prev ZZ-PC-xxx-001 dayzd Z: \\host4\c$ ZZ-PC-xx-002 ZZ-PC-xyx-001 ...snip...

Baffling. It might be something you've checked already, but is your network NIC listed above your rack NIC in System Preferences?

You can do it with a little bit of Powershell. Just change the paths below for where your shortcuts are (line 2) and where you want to save your CSV (last line): $shell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\*.lnk" | ForEach-Object { $shortcutData = [PSCustomObject]@{ shortcut = $_.FullName target = $shell.CreateShortcut($_.FullName).TargetPath args = $shell.CreateShortcut($_.FullName).Arguments } $shortcutData } | Export-CSV -Path "C:\Users\username\Desktop\Shortcuts.csv" -NoTypeInformation

You know what? That does look like fun!

I don't know if you can remove Settings completely, but you can control with a reasonable level of detail what settings it actually shows via GPO: Computer \ Policies \ Administrative Templates \ Control Panel \ Settings Page Visibility How to use: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/configure-windows-10-settings-visibility-hide-select-settings Strings: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/launch-resume/launch-settings-app https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-open-various-settings-pages-directly-in-windows-10/

I have notes about a registry key for this: I don't recall that I've tested it, though, so it may not actually work. I'd say the chances are slim, given that post is over 2.5 years old!

To update, I never solved this problem. After pulling my hair out for days, I gave in, removed the disk from the Protection Group then re-added it (at great cost to my storage pool!) . It's been a bit more than a week now, and it seems to be running just fine. I'm still playing whack-a-mole with this thing, though - I'm forever getting shadow copy volume size errors, failed files and online recovery point failures... To the point I'm now investigating Veeam, even though I'm already over budget this year! Thanks for the assistance!

Yeah, I'd read that too. I looked a bit further in to it and read that the reg key trick doesn't work on 2012 R2 servers, and that better management of process exclusions will be coming in the next version of Sophos Enterprise Console (5.5.1). Have you tried using the reg key on an 2012 R2 machine? I suppose I've got nothing to loose by trying it! I'd found something like this before, too. There's a 'FailedFiles.dat' (or similar) that used to be accessible in the volume path you've described. Sadly for me, this implementation of DPM keeps a tight grip on those volumes, and I can't see their contents, even using your Explorer/Administrator trick. I did manage command line access one day last week as SYSTEM, but I couldn't find a FailedFiles log anywhere.

I'm crossing my fingers that someone can help/advise, here, as I'm pulling my hair out with this one. I've recently deployed Microsoft Azure Backup Server (DPM 2016 in disguise) and I'm struggling with a very persistent error. I have one volume that constantly failed to keep it's replica consistent. The message I keep seeing is this: The replica of Volume D:\ on .local is inconsistent with the protected data source. All protection activities for data source will fail until the replica is synchronized with consistency check. You can recover data from existing recovery points, but new recovery points cannot be created until the replica is consistent. For SharePoint farm, recovery points will continue getting created with the databases that are consistent. To backup inconsistent databases, run a consistency check on the farm. (ID 3106) DPM failed to clean up data of old incremental backups on the replica for Volume D:\ on .local. Synchronization will fail until the replica cleanup succeeds. (ID 30134 Details: Cannot create a file when that file already exists (0x800700B7)) This may happen if the replica volume is being accessed from outside of DPM. Please see the detailed error, resolve the issue with respect to the replica volume path, and retry the job. Otherwise, DPM will synchronize with the changes during the next scheduled synchronization job. Now, having Googled this I've found very little, but I've done whatever I could: chkdsk the source volume, look for VSS errors, pruned old shadow copies (with 'pruneshadowcopiesDpm.ps1'), but nothing has worked. Every time I run the suggested synchronisation job, within seconds it fails again. The only thing I've not done is remove the entire Protection Group and start over, since I've got other volumes in the same PG I don't want to lose the backups for... Does anyone have any suggestions?