Benjamin Guinebertière : KB

How to expand a VHD disk

benjguin — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:42:00 GMT

NB, MAR 2009: It was brought to my attention (thanks Fernando) that utilities like VHDResizer (http://vmtoolkit.com/files/default.aspx) may do the job in a simpler way. I did not check myself.

I was working on a Virtual PC 2007 virtual machine with a dynamically expanding disk of a maximum of 16 Gb.

This disk was the C: system drive on the virtual machine and I was running out of virtual space (I had enough space on the hardware host disk).

A dynamically expanding disk can only grow to its predefined maximum size. The name comes from the fact that if you store 10Mb in a 16Gb dynamically expanding disk, vhd file size will only be ~10 Mb. You'll find much more at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825092/en-us

So the virtual guest machine had a 15.5 Gb system drive for a maximum of 16Gb.

Here is what worked for me.

Let's call C.vhd the file of the 15.5 Gb C: drive.

shut down the guest virtual machine
Create thru the Virtual Disk Wizard a new dynamically expanding disk with a max size of 100 Gb => this creates Cbis.vhd with an initial size of a few Kb.
close Virtual PC 2007
use VHDMount (installed it on my Vista machine from the Virtual Server 2005 SP1 installation) to issue the following commands
(if prompted to format a disk, don't do it, if X: or Y: drives don't get created, don't worry)
1. vhdmount /m /f C.vhd X
2. vhdmount /m /f CBis.vhd Y
go to Disk Management (Computer, Manage, Disk Management) on the real Vista machine
1. assign X: to the disk corresponding to C.vhd if it's not already done
2. format the disk corresponding to CBis.vhd. NTFS, quick formatting is OK
3. assign Y: to the disk corresponding to Cbis.vhd if it's not already done
Copy all the files from X: to Y:
1. robocopy X:\ Y:\ /E /COPYALL /R:5
2. Fix any remaining copy issues (for instance ACL not authorizing administrators group to read)
go to Disk Management (Computer, Manage, Disk Management) on the real Vista machine
1. Mark Y: partition as active
Unmount X: and Y:
1. vhdmount /u All
Change the virtual machine .vmc file (with notepad) and replace C.vhd by Cbis.vhd
Restart virtual machine

Then you can delete C.vhd and keep CBis.vhd.

MSDTC transaction to a SQL cluster on a different domain

benjguin — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:12:47 GMT

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/827805/en-us explains how to test a distributed transaction scenario between 2 SQL Servers without the need to install DTCPing.

Here is a scenario.

BTS1 server initiates a distributed transaction on VSQL, a SQL instance hosted on a Windows Cluster having the following characteristics:

SQLN1 is the first node of the cluster
SQLN2 is the second node
The cluster has at least the following two cluster groups
- SQL group
  - Network Name: VSQL
  - SQL Server instance resources (disks, SQL, etc.)
  - other resources like IP Address
- Cluster group
  - Network Name: VCLUST
  - MSDTC resource
  - other resources like IP Address, quorum disk etc.

BTS1 and the cluster are on two different domains. Among other things, they don't share the same DNS. For instance, BTS1 is BTS1.domain1.net and VSQL is VSQL.domain2.net

In order to be able to ping VSQL, you can add an entry in BTS1, in its %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. file like

<ip address> VSQL

If you only do that, you might end up with an error like

The transaction has already been implicitly or explicitly committed or aborted

In order to have the distributed transaction working, you need the following to be true (this can be done with the hosts. file):

BTS1 can ping VSQL
SQLN1 can ping BTS1
SQLN2 can ping BTS1
BTS1 can ping VCLUST

NB: names must be the netbios names.

Additional information:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/899191/en-us (New functionality in the Distributed Transaction Coordinator service in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and in Windows XP Service Pack 2)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/827805/en-us (MSDTC fails to mutually authenticate when computers do not run in the same domain)

ISA Server 2004/2006 would prevent local Windows Update

benjguin — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:10:24 GMT

From an ISA Server computer, when you try to check Microsoft or Windows Update from IE, you get the initial page, but when you want to check updates you get a 0x80072EFD error.

To avoid that, configure Internet Explorer proxy to the local ISA Server on the Internal IP Address

Exemple: your ISA Server has an internal address of 192.168.1.1, go to IE LAN Settings and use 192.168.1.1:8080 as web proxy.

Sample Behavior of BizTalk Server 2004 SP1 with .NET Framework 2.0 installed

benjguin — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:05:30 GMT

On a test environment, we had this exception on one of the two BizTalk Server 2004 SP1 nodes:

Ticks must be between DateTime.MinValue.Ticks and DateTime.MaxValue.Ticks. Parameter name: ticks

This was a BizTalk Server 2004 event in Application event log

On the other node, they were .NET Framework 2.0 and BizTalk events (meaning that some code was not correctly written from a multithreading perspective).

In fact, what happened was that BizTalk Server 2004 was running on top of .NET Framework 2.0 on one node and on top of .NET Framework 1.1 on the other node. So, an orchestration dehydrating on none node and rehydrating on the other node was just serialized with a Framework and deserialized with another Framework.

Here are two KB articles related to that:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/907262/en-us (FIX: You receive an error message when you try to transfer data between an application that runs on the .NET Framework 2.0 and an application that runs on the .NET Framework 1.1)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841405/en-us (BizTalk Server 2004 requires the .NET Framework 1.1)

Excerpt from KB841405:

To run BizTalk Server 2004 on a computer that also has the .NET Framework 2.0 installed, upgrade the computer that is running BizTalk Server 2004 to BizTalk Server 2004 SP2. BizTalk Server 2004 is only supported on a computer that has the .NET Framework 2.0 installed if BizTalk Server 2004 SP2 is also installed.

Don't remember connection strings syntax? Use a .UDL file.

benjguin — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 01:37:00 GMT

Here is a tip I shared yesterday with a customer.

If you need to create a connection string and don't remember the syntax, here is a simple way of achieving your goal.

In a file folder or your Windows desktop, create a text file and rename it myCN.udl (only .udl extension is important)
double click the file
Enter the parameters in the UI
Close the UI
Open myCN.udl with notepad: you get your connection string

SAP .NET Connector must be installed for all users

benjguin — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:47:00 GMT

BizTalk Server 2004 and BizTalk Server 2006 SAP Adapter requires and uses the SAP .NET Connector which is distributed by SAP.

For BizTalk Server 2006, you need SAP .NET Connecter 1.0.3 Runtime.

It looks like only the user who installed the SAP .NET Connecter 1.0.3 Runtime can use it, and thus use SAP Adapter.

If user X installs SAP .NET Connector (thru setupruntime.msi) and user Y tries to generate a schema from Visual Studio 2005, Y gets an error:

Add Adapter Wizard
------------------------------------------------------
Unable to display adapter user interface.
SAP .Net connector is not installed
------------------------------------------------------
OK

In order to solve the problem, you have to install the SAP .NET Connector for all users. As option doesn’t show up in the GUI, you can do it that way :

msiexec /i SetupRuntime.msi ALLUSERS=1

Application Pool with a domain user account identity

benjguin — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 01:00:00 GMT

Context

Windows Server 2003 / IIS6
- Virtual Directory running under an application pool with a domain user account identity
- Virtual Directory security is set to Integrated authentication only
- Trying to access this virtual directory from a domain user account (same domain as app pool identity account)

Symptoms
From web server, no pb.
From another machine, domain user is challenged for user name and password and fail in 401. HTTP Error 401.1 - Unauthorized: Access is denied due to invalid credentials

Resolution
Using NTLM only solves the issue
This can be done with the following command (typically from C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts)

cscript adsutil.vbs w3svc/NtAuthenticationProviders "NTLM"

UpdateActivity check points are case sensitive

benjguin — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 21:11:00 GMT

While using BAM API (with BizTalk Server 2006, but I think it would be the same with BizTalk Server 2004), we received an exception like this:

Failed to execute event.

Exception type: BAMTraceException

Source: Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.EventObservation

Target Site: Boolean PersistNoBatches(System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection, Int32)

The following is a stack trace that identifies the location where the exception occured

at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.EventObservation.DirectEventStream.PersistNoBatches(SqlConnection connection, Int32 timeoutValue)

at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.EventObservation.DirectEventStream.Flush()

at (...)

Additional error information:

Parameter is not valid.

Exception type: BAMRuntimeException

Source: Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.EventObservation

Target Site: Void GetSqlScriptForActivity(System.IO.TextWriter, System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection, System.Data.SqlClient.SqlTransaction)

The following is a stack trace that identifies the location where the exception occured

at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.EventObservation.BAMTraceFragment.GetSqlScriptForActivity(TextWriter scriptWriter, SqlConnection connection, SqlTransaction transaction)

at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.EventObservation.BAMTraceFragment.PersistQueryable(SqlConnection connection, SqlTransaction transaction, Int32 timeoutValue)

at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.EventObservation.DirectEventStream.PersistNoBatches(SqlConnection connection, Int32 timeoutValue)

This came from the fact that we called UpdateActivity with a checkpoint name having a invalid case.

Ex: we called

es.UpdateActivity("myActivity", activityID, "myCheckpoint", myCheckPointValue)

while the name of the checkpoint was myCheckPoint (with an upper case P), not myCheckpoint (lower case p).

Changing to

es.UpdateActivity("myActivity", activityID, "myCheckPoint", myCheckPointValue)

solved the problem.

Could not reset IIS, IISAdmin wouldn't start

benjguin — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 19:44:00 GMT

When trying to start IISAdmin, I get

---------------------------
Services
---------------------------
Windows could not start the IIS Admin Service on Local Computer. For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vendor, and refer to service-specific error code -2147417831.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

Event log contains

Description:
The IIS Admin Service service terminated with service-specific error 2147549465 (0x80010119).

Killed inetinfo.exe with task manager

OK.