Ran into this one today… Client’s BlackBerry Professional server 1 user license and I had to remove the user from the configuration. After several minutes I attempted to add the user back in and was told that I was out of licenses. The status page showed that a total of one user(s) was configured, while the user page showed zero. I restarted all services and attempted a few other things before running into the following commands which worked immediately.
1. Open a command prompt on the BES/BPS database server and run osql -E
2. Next, enter the following commands one line at a time, pressing enter after each command:
-a. use BESMgmt
-b. select DisplayName from UserConfig
-c. go
3. You should get a name(returned) by the database.
-a. use BESMgmt
-b. delete from UserConfig where DisplayName="name-to-remove"
-c. go
You can now open or refresh the BlackBerry Manager and check the number of licensed users which will not be minus one.
–Himuraken
Happy New Year! Just dropping a quick one in case anyone has run into this simple issue.
I recently installed Blackberry Professional Server / Blackberry Enterprise Server on a new system for a client of mine and everything went well but for one exception. Upon opening the Blackberry Manager and checking the status I noticed that the SRP Status was “Not Connected”. A quick check of my firewall showed blocked connections originating from the BPS/BES server on TCP port 3101. After creating an allow rule for that port outbound, I restarted the Blackberry services and everything is working properly.
–Himuraken
Of course the first thing that I did tonight after receiving my 3ware 9650se was to install it in my ESXi 4.0 server and get it going. There are a few caveats that I expected and a few that I didn’t. Hopefully this post will help a few of you out there.
Here are the steps that I performed:
1. Physically installed card and drives.
2. Built the logical unit / volume on the card.
3. Booted ESXi and noticed the card / array not showing up.
I expected #3 from my pre-sales madness research, yeah I’m that bad about pre-sales. There is a driver for ESX 4 that enables the hypervisor to be installed onto the array. For the rest of us with ESXi 4.0 however, the array can only be used as a datastore. This isn’t an issue anyways since the critical files are on the array not the single disk or USB device that we install the ESXi OS onto.
This led me to 3ware’s support site to find the exact article regarding this. You can find the article titled “I need support for VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0 and ESX/ESXi 4.0 update 1 for 9650SE and 9690SA. Is a certified driver available?” here. Basically, the top half of the document applies to ESX while the lower portion is dedicated to ESXi.
First off, the fact that 3ware has this and other great articles is excellent, they seem like the “get it”. On the other hand I found something difficult to do, and not for technical reasons. They instruct you to find the file “offline-bundle.zip” on the included driver CD. I searched all over the provided driver CD and had no luck locating it; I couldn’t help but think that there ought to have been a download link as well***. After locating the file I proceeded down the list of the well written how-to. Unfortunately for me, after running the perl vihostupdate.pl -server x.x.x.x -username root -password "" -b c:\offline-bundle.zip -i command I received zero feedback from the CLI. I restarted the ESXi server per the documents recommendations and upon reboot, no RAID array. Hrmm, I didn’t get any errors or feedback. After shorting the name of the original file to offline-bundle.zip and re-running the command, I did get positive feedback in the form of this message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective. Delicious! Now were are working the way we ought to. Restart the ESXi server and enjoy.
*** – Clarification and special note: At the bottom of the page you will see a download link for a file named: vmware-esx-drivers-scsi-3w-9xxx_400.2.26.08.035vm40-1.0.4.00000.179560.iso.. This ISO image contains the offline-bundle folder. The file that you need for the upgrade/upload is named: AMCC_2.26.08.035vm40-offline_bundle-179560.zip. The process would not succeed until I renamed AMCC_2.26.08.035vm40-offline_bundle-179560.zip to offline-bundle.zip.
Happy virtualizing!
–Himuraken
Looks like Christmas is coming a little but early this year in the RighteousHack household. I just ordered a new netbook for my significant other. After much research and being thoroughly disappointed by Dell’s “new” offerings, we decided to look at HP. From the looks of things that I found on the HP Mini 311 in text and live video on YouTube, it seems like the little netbook with Nvidia ION graphics will be a solid performer considering that its a netbook. Better yet, the system runs DDR3 and the Intel N280 chip so it should be as fast or faster than most netbooks out there.
Next up in my ever increasing list of hardware is the 3ware 9650se PCI-E RAID controller. I have a need for a modern / high performing RAID card that won’t totally break the budget. This card will be used as a datastore only solution for my ESXi 4.0 server. All of the reviews led to two cards: 3ware 9650se and the Areca 1210. I have had more experience with Areca controllers than 3ware, but the reviews and ESXi compatibility issues pushed me towards 3ware. In addition to the tech stuff, 3ware support is reportedly awesome whereas Areca’s is nowhere to be found.
–Himuraken
When working with virtual machines, it is often advantageous to over allocate and under utilize resources. When it come to virtual hard disks, this is even more common place. On low use or low demand servers, I always use thin provisioning. This saves disk space by only using physical disk space when the guest actually uses the virtual disk. But what about those disks that were created using the thick option, or brought over as thick automatically during a P2V conversion? Time to convert your thick virtual disk to thin.
As always, I recommend backing up all of your data and knowing what you are doing. Test this in a non-production environment.
Converting disks from thick to thin is actually quite easy and can be accomplished using these steps:
1. Log into your ESX host using SSH and cd into the VM directory that contains your virtual disk.
2. Shutdown the VM so that we can get exlusive access to the virtual disk.
3. Run vmkfstools -i yourthickdisk.vmdk -d thin yourthindisk.vmdk
4. Edit the settings for your VM and remove the existing drive. Add a new hard drive and choose the existing drive option.
5. Boot the VM and enjoy.
Note: Dont forget to go back to ESX server and remove the old .vmdk and -flat.vmdk files once you are sure that your VM is operating normally off the thin disk.
–Himuraken
Text from the main/only page:
Maintenance
We will be back as soon as possible, but this will probably be a prolonged downtime.
Thank you for your patience
September 26
Status
The site will return as soon as possible, but there was a problem that caused data loss and the person who can help us get the data back is not able to help at this moment. The site will return when we can get his help
A loss of a some months worth of activity including registered users and torrent submissions is to be expected because the backup we are hoping to get back is not up to date, so please be prepared for it
This came to me via email and is worth noting if you are a Kaseya user.
–Himuraken
Kaseya Agent & Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Important Notice:
For planning purposes, please be advised that the Kaseya Agent for the Mac OS X is currently incompatible with the new Mac OS X Snow Leopard release. Apple has announced that Snow Leopard will be available on Friday (28-Aug-2009). We have confirmed that Kaseya Agents cannot be successfully deployed to Snow Leopard. In the case where an Agent is installed on a Leopard system, and that system is subsequently upgraded to Snow Leopard, the Agent will be non-functional after the upgrade. We are working on a resolution and will advise when available.
