Last week at ISOutsource

This is my last full week at ISOutsource and it feels a little odd. Of course, starting it out with three inches of snow on the ground makes just about any day a little wierder. I've only been as ISO for about three and half years but in a lot of ways, it seems longer. I guess it's because I've been so busy that seems longer. I'm going to working this week to write down some of the SOP and normal things I have running around in my head. Hopefully, it will help the guys who are hanging around.

17 days and counting...

Crunch time

My wife and I have been plowing through the list of all of the things we need to do over the next three weeks and it's kind of daunting. Even though she will be coming back to Seattle and staying for a couple of months, there is still so much to do. I'm below the two week mark at ISOutsource, too so there's even more to do at there. I really want to make the transition as easy as possible for everyone involved and that's kind of tough.

No one called on the PT Cruiser. There is a guy at ISOutsource that is interested, though so hopefully I can sell this quickly. Something else to worry about....

22 days until the flight out...

Anyone need a car?

http://seattle.craigslist.org/sno/car/546994381.html

I have my 2003 PT Cruiser up for sale and I need to find a buyer soon. If you know anyone looking, have them call or e-mail me at matthew.damp@sbworks.com.

23 days... and counting...

It's official - I got the visa

I picked up the visa from the Japanese consultate this afternoon. Everything is on track for my departure on February 14th. I've got to say that when I picked "late February" back in November, it felt a lot farther away. Now I've got a ton of stuff to do in the next three weeks.

27 days...

Visa is being a little slow

Assuming that the visa clears... 31 days to flight out.

Unfortunately, I haven't heard from the consulate yet and I was supposed to today. It's always unsettling when a governmental organization doesn't call you back when they were supposed to. Makes you wonder what's broken...

Is SharePoint really ready for prime time?

Assuming that the visa clears... 34 days to flight out.

I spent a lot of time today arm wrestling with a SharePoint installation today and it struck me again how main pieces seem to have to work together to have the site function correctly. The site was running on a domain controller and the system was having AD problems so I had to demote the box and move the site. Even before I could move the site I had to change:

• Modify the local security policies to allow the SharePoint service account to logon as a service and batch job
• Re-enter the passwords for the applications pools in IIS
• Re-assign the SSL certs (Why? What does that have to do with being a DC?)
• Logon to the administration website and re-designate the search server for the site

That's a lot of moving parts that can break. A lot of this was not really covered in Microsoft articles or Microsoft KBs. I had to dig through a lot of generic ASP and .NET 2.0 articles and try to figure out if they would actually apply to SharePoint.

I hope that there isn't a radical difference between the current v3.0 SharePoint and whatever comes with Windows 2008 so that 3rd party documentation can keep up with it.

The countdown starts

I have 35 calendar days to go until I hop on a flight to Japan. Boy, I've got a lot to do.

Visa preparation

I've started to work through the visa process for entering Japan. There is a strange disconnect between a couple of the governmental organizations that handle immigration that's kind of interesting. The consulate systems offer two ways to get a visa as a spouse of a Japanese national: either via a Tokyo-based pre approval process or through a Seattle-based one-time approval. Since we're not in Tokyo, we're interested in the Seattle-based process. However, when my wife called the central immigration office, they insisted that the Tokyo-based approval process (Certificate of Eligability) is the only option for obtaining a visa. But the consulate disagrees.

All this back and forth makes me a little uncomfortable. If there is a SNAFU that comes up and delays my visa, I hope that the company that offered me the job doesn't get scared off.

There are times I hate dealing with the government - any country's government, really.

Looks like I'm going to Tokyo

After a couple of back and forth questions, I think I'll be taking this Tokyo position. It will be a bit of cultural shock but it's a hell of an opportunity. Pretty solid pay and benefits, too.

Microsoft's Exchange group has a odd view of scale

If you look at Microsoft’s install documentation for Exchange 2007, they seem to have an odd sense of scale.
Planning for a Standard Exchange Organization
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124367.aspx
…Other distinguishing characteristics of the standard Exchange organization include:

• The Service Delivery Location (SDL) and Client Service Location (CSL) reside on the same local area network (LAN).
• There are more than 1,000 mailboxes in the organization.
• There are fewer than five routing groups, and between one and five Active Directory directory service sites. Multiple locations and Active Directory sites introduce the multi-site routing protocol and role discovery algorithms, as well as a requirement to use IP site links.

Standard = 1000+ Mailboxes? I don’t think I have a single STANDARD installation, then…

This also explains the lack of support and tools for smaller companies.

VBScripts

I've decided to post some of the VBScripts I've built over the past couple of years. I'll try to organize them as I go along but here's some:

• Clear temporary AutoCAD files from a Server
• Clear temporary AutoCAD files from a Workstation
• Setting the AutoCAD Flex License Server
• An example of a multi-purpose logon script that maps drives only if servers are pingable, sets internet favorites, and configures zone settings.

I've made the majority of my scripts with a help menu available from a /? command line call

Change the Version History page in SharePoint v3.0 to show metadata for all versions

I did a lot of experimenting today and found out that the following change:

If you want to change the view so that is shows the full metadata for every line, perform the following steps:

• Logon to the server hosting the SharePoint site
• Create a backup of the Versions.aspx page at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\versions.aspx
• Open the Versions.aspx page
• Delete lines 528 through 533:
  528 object val = itemcurr.GetFieldValue(field); <% object val = itemcurr.GetFieldValue(field); %>
  529 object valprev = null;<% object valprev = null; %>
  530 if (itemprev != null) valprev = itemprev.GetFieldValue(field); <% if (itemprev != null) valprev = itemprev.GetFieldValue(field); %>
  531 if (((val != null) ? val.ToString() : String.Empty)<% if (((val != null) ? val.ToString() : String.Empty) %>
  532 != ((valprev != null) ? valprev.ToString() : String.Empty))<% != ((valprev != null) ? valprev.ToString() : String.Empty)) %>
  533 {<% { %>
• And delete line 558:
  558 }<% { %>
• Save the file and then all sites will have this view of the version page:
• Repeat the process on all front end servers.

Now, I'll go back and see if I can get it to bold the changes...

Microsoft support was correct this time

After the long and painful process of moving 1.2 terabytes of badly organized data from one server to another, I found out that Microsoft Business Critical Support was right this time. In my last post, I was wondering if they were full of it when they said it had to be a hardware issue. However, after destroying and re-building the external array, the DFS sync worked perfectly.

If you're wondering why it took so long to move data, it was because this client regularly exceeds 256 character file names and command line copy utilities like XCOPY and RoboCopy fail routinely. I have to use BackupExec or NTBackup to do a full backup and restore.

Oddball problems with DFS and hardware

I moved an external arry from one server to another and suddenly have a bunch of DFS problems. I opened a case with MS critical support we walked through a ton of options to figure out what's wrong and they finally settled on a hardware issue. I think they might be blowing smoke but we'll see later this week.

It's over a terabyte of data so I'm not looking forward to this migration process.

DFS doesn't scale well

After working with DFS for several clients now, I've decided that DFS just doesn't scale well. The problems of what happens when replication breaks down across a WAN is just too ugly with large amounts of data.

At one client with 400 gigs on the DFS, the replication broke down and took two weeks to iron out all of the kinks. At another, it was 1.2 gigabytes of data and I had to ship the server back to get that working again.

I've also noticed very odd peformance when someone VPNs in, too.

I think I'll revise my earlier post and recommend using DFS for just application installation.

Let's get serious

I've been trying to get serious about this blog and I just read How To Achieve Ultimate Blog Success In One Easy Step http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000983.html and I'm going to try and stick to a three per week schedule.

Wish me luck.

Long time between postings

August? That's way too long between postings. Well, a lot has been going on? I guess I can use that as an excuse, even if it is pretty lame.

I did manage to take all of the tests and wrap up my Microsoft Certified IT Professional for SQL 2005. And, about a week later, they annouced the release date for SQL 2008. I just looked at the documentation for '08 and it looks like SQL 2005 Service Pack 3. I'm just not seeing the big advantages. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Offline address book

The Exchange 2007 migration process is an enormous pain in the ass. In all three I've done so far, the Offline Address Book completely fails for all Outlook 2003, XP, and Outlook 2000 clients. It causes so much pain and suffering and there is almost no technical documentation as to possible causes. Why can't some of this stuff be documented somewhere....

Exchange 2007 Anti-Spam

As part of this Exchange roll out, I've experimented with the built-in anti-spam features of Exchange 2007. I expected it to be horrible and it wasn't as bad a I feared.

The good:

• Simple, easy to understand interfaces
• Easy setup

The bad:

• No manual sender whitelist
• Not much control over whether the mail gets dropped or redirected
• You have to have an Edge server to get the best benefits.

That's right - to get the best benefits of the built in anti-spam, you have to sacrifice a whole server license of Exchange 2007 to get the half the functionality of ORF or any of a half dozen open source RBL filters. I am shocked that is sucks that badly. I really don't get it...

I found the Exchange 2007 error

I finally opened a business critical support issue with Microsoft and found the problem. The KB that I got pointed to was both right and wrong. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936907

The description of the issue was 100% accurate

If you copy and paste the LDAP query string exactly as shown, you're install will fail because there is a typo in the KB.

That was a first for me. The string shown for the All Users query has an extra space in the last portion of the string. The correct string is:

(& (mailnickname=*) ( (&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(!(homeMDB=*))(!(msExchHomeServerName=*)))(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)((homeMDB=*)(msExchHomeServerName=*))) ))