Thank goodness, it was only a backup system. Meanwhile there is a solution for this problem. However, this incident also significantly increased my respect for this Service Pack. Especially this new “lazy Interrupt Request Level (IRQL) handler” seems to have some bad influence on otherwise diligent servers. Hence, we won’t be too hasty to deploy it to our servers. We will wait for some weeks to see what other bugs it contains.

If you deploy service packs with WSUS, you don’t have to worry that it will be installed on your servers without approval. You have to explicitly accept the SP2 Eula. You can make sure that the service pack is not accidently installed by using the SP2 blocker tool to “temporarily block delivery of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2“.

If you want to deploy it anyway, check out the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 application compatibility list first. I am not sure, though, how much you can trust this list. ISA 2004 was tested, too! It seems they didn’t test it on multiprocessors systems. Maybe they thought that this “lazy handler” wouldn’t affect the more vigorous servers, anyway.

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Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, mostly because of its VSS support, and Windows Server Virtualization certainly will change the virtualization landscape drastically. You probably know that WSV will become highly integrated with Windows Server Longhorn. I’ve been reading quite a few articles about it, but since I wasn’t able to test it myself it is hard to say what it will mean for Windows administrators. One thing is for sure, though, it will change a lot. Check out page 9 in this PowerPoint presentation if you want to get an idea how important virtualization will be in Longhorn Server.

By the way, it seems that the release date of Longhorn is approaching rapidly now. I’ve been asked to take part in a Microsoft workshop for journalists about Longhorn in Rome at the beginning of May. If Microsoft starts promoting a product this way, it usually means that the ship date is not too far away. It is probably only a matter of days until the Beta 3 will become available. So, I think, it’s time to get occupied with the next era in Windows administration.

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Microsoft released another compatibility update for Vista. Aside from computability issues, it should also fix problems with the Adminpak (Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Administration Tools Pack). However, it seems that one still needs this workaround to install the Adminpak under Vista.

This update is only recommended, so you won’t probably get it automatically. You can install it thru Windows Update (Control Panel – System and Maintenance) or download it manually. I tried both ways, but I still had problems with some of the Adminpak afterwards. For example, the DNS snap-in worked, but when I started “Active Directory Users and Computers” tool, I got the message “MMC could not create the snap-in”. Only after I followed the workaround, did it work without problems.

Perhaps, this compatibility update will fix other problems concerning Vista and Adminpak. Some commented here that the workaround didn’t help in their case. If you are lucky, this update will solve your problem.

The two posts, I wrote, about this issue are currently the most often viewed posts on 4sysops (see right sidebar). Together they have already about 50,000 page views. Obviously, there are many sys admins out there struggling with this problem. I really wonder why Microsoft is still not able to offer an update for this.

By the way, who is this joker trying to manipulate my ranking? Someone is trying to push some articles here. What’s the sense of this? I deducted those counts.

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So, from a system administrator’s point of view, this might be good news because that means deploying Windows Server SP2 won’t be as problematic as with SP1. We’ll install it as soon as possible on our 25 Windows Server 2003 systems. I always like to keep my servers up-to-date, not only for security reasons (we use WSUS to patch our servers), but because new server applications usually only can be installed if you have the latest service pack.

I installed the SP today on a test server, and so far I didn’t encounter any problem. But somehow, I still can’t get used to the fact that one has to reboot the system after installing a service pack. I don’t know much about system programming, but installing updates which leave the kernel untouched shouldn’t be such a big deal.

If you want to know about the new features you can check out Microsoft’s Top 10 Reasons to Install Windows Server 2003 SP2, the new list of all updates can be found here. And here are the download links for Windows Server 2003 SP2:

• SP2 (32-bit x86)
• SP2 ISO-9660 CD Image (32-bit x86)
• SP2 for x64 Editions
• SP2 ISO-9660 CD Image x64 Editions

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Network Level Authentication If you enable this feature, RDC 6.0 will ask for your credentials before you connect to a Terminal Server. This requires fewer resources on the remote computer. It also improves security since it prevents you from connecting unintentionally to a remote machine that was setup for malicious purpose.

Server Authentication This feature is related to Network Level Authentication. You can tell your RDP client to warn you or deny connection if authentication failed.

Resource redirection Plug and Play devices which support redirection can now be redirected to the Terminal Server session. This didn’t work with my USB stick. I guess, it doesn’t support redirection. Of course, you can access your local memory stick thru a drive letter on the remote computer. This was possible before. But now, you can select each drive separately before you connect.

Terminal Services Gateway (TS Gateway) This feature enables RDC to tunnel RDP over HTTPS. As far as I know, this only works with Terminal Services in Longhorn Server. Since HTPS uses port 443, you can close the RDP port (3389) on your firewall. TS Gateway might make VPN superfluous in cases where only an RDP connection is needed. Also check out David Wang’s post about TS Gateway and Vista Server.

TS Remote Programs If you know Citrix Metaframe (Did Citrix change the name again? They do so every month or so.) then you know this feature for a while already. It allows you to start a so-called published application on the remote computer. Users can only access this program. It seems for them, as if the program was started on the local computer. I suppose, it is also a Longhorn Server feature.

Monitor Spanning If you are so lucky to have multiple displays, then you can use this feature to span your terminal window across them. Since I don’t belong to those lucky guys, I wasn’t able to test this feature.

Font smoothing If you have a LCD display, you probably know that you can smooth edges and fonts (display properties, appearance, effects). This feature is disabled in a Terminal Server session which makes your desktop look quite ugly if you are used to smoothing. RDC 6.0 now supports smoothing, but it doesn’t seems to work with Windows Server 2003. I could enable Clear Type on a Longhorn Server beta 2, but I didn’t see any effect, though.

32 bit color The old RDP client only supports 24 bit colors, RDC supports 32 bit. It didn’t work in my test with Windows Server 2003 and Longhorn Server beta 2. Maybe that only works with the next version of Longhorn Server.

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A while ago, I liked to an article that explains how to install the Adminpak on Windows Vista. Meanwhile I found out that there is a much easier way.

After downloading the Adminpak (Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Administration Tools Pack or Windows Server 2003 R2 Administration Tools Pack), you have to register the DLLs properly. Just copy the list below to a command prompt, you opened with Administrator privileges. (Right click and select “Run as Administrator”.) regsvr32 /s adprop.dll regsvr32 /s azroles.dll regsvr32 /s azroleui.dll regsvr32 /s ccfg95.dll regsvr32 /s certadm.dll regsvr32 /s certmmc.dll regsvr32 /s certpdef.dll regsvr32 /s certtmpl.dll regsvr32 /s certxds.dll regsvr32 /s cladmwiz.dll regsvr32 /s clcfgsrv.dll regsvr32 /s clnetrex.dll regsvr32 /s cluadmex.dll regsvr32 /s cluadmmc.dll regsvr32 /s cmproxy.dll regsvr32 /s cmroute.dll regsvr32 /s cmutoa.dll regsvr32 /s cnet16.dll regsvr32 /s debugex.dll regsvr32 /s dfscore.dll regsvr32 /s dfsgui.dll regsvr32 /s dhcpsnap.dll regsvr32 /s dnsmgr.dll regsvr32 /s domadmin.dll regsvr32 /s dsadmin.dll regsvr32 /s dsuiwiz.dll regsvr32 /s imadmui.dll regsvr32 /s lrwizdll.dll regsvr32 /s mprsnap.dll regsvr32 /s msclus.dll regsvr32 /s mstsmhst.dll regsvr32 /s mstsmmc.dll regsvr32 /s nntpadm.dll regsvr32 /s nntpapi.dll regsvr32 /s nntpsnap.dll regsvr32 /s ntdsbsrv.dll regsvr32 /s ntfrsapi.dll regsvr32 /s rasuser.dll regsvr32 /s rigpsnap.dll regsvr32 /s rsadmin.dll regsvr32 /s rscommon.dll regsvr32 /s rsconn.dll regsvr32 /s rsengps.dll regsvr32 /s rsjob.dll regsvr32 /s rsservps.dll regsvr32 /s rsshell.dll regsvr32 /s rssubps.dll regsvr32 /s rtrfiltr.dll regsvr32 /s schmmgmt.dll regsvr32 /s tapisnap.dll regsvr32 /s tsuserex.dll regsvr32 /s uddi.mmc.dll regsvr32 /s vsstskex.dll regsvr32 /s w95inf16.dll regsvr32 /s w95inf32.dll regsvr32 /s winsevnt.dll regsvr32 /s winsmon.dll regsvr32 /s winsrpc.dll regsvr32 /s winssnap.dll regsvr32 /s ws03res.dll

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Number 1 is, of course, that it includes all security updates and hotfixes. The number 2 reason is already that SP2 will update RIS (Remote Installation Services) to WDS (Windows Deployment Services).

It really is a major improvement over RIS. I wrote a review about WDS a while ago. However, you don’t need SP2 to get WDS since it is also available as part of WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit) which can be downloaded separately.

Kamil Bugra Rodoper, SP2 Program Manager, posted a Newgroup thread in the Windows Server Division Weblog. Who ever wrote this was quite satisfied with his/her test of Windows Server SP2. So it won’t probably take too long until we see the final.

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For me, a hypervisor was just a piece for software that runs directly on hardware partitioning CPUs, memory, etc. for guest operating systems. The only difference to a typical OS is that it runs other operating systems instead of applications. Well, I just learned that this only is half the truth.

Longhorn’s hypervisor still needs an instance of Windows Server running in the parent partition. However, Windows Server will run “on top” rather than underneath of the hypervisor. This basically seems to mean that the hypervisor just utilizes the device drivers of Windows Server. If I understand it right, then this is what is meant by the term “built-in-hypervisor“.

I also recommend reading the third comment of the article. An anonymous reader goes into more details there. If what “she” says is correct, then VMware ESX Server works in a similar way, just that it runs a light version of Red Hat Linux in the parent partition. This is similar to Longhorn’s hypervisor as it only needs Server Core which can also be considered as a light version of Windows Server Longhorn.

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So I decided to use server hardware for VMware Workstation. There, I have plenty of memory, hard disk space and CPU power for any testing scenario. I didn’t like having this server in my office because it sounds like a jet on take-off whenever it boots up. However, I was afraid that I would have to go too often to the server room if installed there. So my first idea was to use VMware Server (GSX Server) instead of VMware Workstation. VMware Server is supposed to have better remote management capabilities since it is designed for this purpose.

However, I found out quite fast that this was not a good idea. VMware Server lacks two important features which I need for my testing. I didn’t want to work without cloning and multiple snapshots. Besides, the better remote management capabilities of VMware Server proved to be useless for my purpose. Using a web interface to configure my test systems was simply too long-winded and the remote console of VMware needs greater bandwidth than RDP.

In the beginning, I had some problems working with VMware Workstation within a Terminal Server session on my server running Windows Server 2003. The mouse pointer was jerky and the graphical output of the virtual machine was sluggish. Please, check out this article about RDP and VMware Workstation to solve these problems. It is possible to connect to your host system by RDP and manage the virtual machines using the VMware Workstation console. It is even doable with a low bandwidth connection, if you follow the guidelines in this article.

The only exception is when running Linux in a virtual machine. My SuSE 9.0 didn’t even start KDE when VMware Workstation was running in a Terminal Server session. I tried to solve this problem by changing some KDE settings, like reducing the number of colors, etc. I was able to start it then, but it was not fun working in this environment, since some applications didn’t work properly, anymore.

One way to solve this is to go to the server room, boot up Linux on the server console, and then connect by RDP to this session. However, KDE will be a bit sluggish even with a 100 Mbit connection. I didn’t try Gnome, but I think it will be more or less the same. However, you can always connect directly to a virtual machine using VNC or if you don’t need a graphical interface by SSH.

Another problem was that I often need CDs to install software on my testing system. That would mean a too-often visit to the server room just to insert CD. This problem is easy, though. Just create and ISO image, copy it to the host system and mount it within the virtual machine using the VMWware Workstation console.

During the installation of my testing system, I created ISO images of all my important CDs on the host system. I have been using this setup for several months now, and I didn’t have to go to the server room, not once. You can create an ISO image with any CD burning software. If you don’t have one for your server, there are free burning tools available.

Often, I download the software I want to test from the web. For my test systems, I only use virtual networks. They are not connected to the internet or to our intranet. This way I don’t have to worry about anti-virus software, patch-management, firewall issues, etc. I download software only on the host system. Thus this is the only system I have to keep up-to-date. To access the downloaded file on a virtual machine, I use the Shared Folders feature of VMware Workstation.

All in all, I am quite content with my testing environment. My host system is powerful enough to even run performance tests. I can connect to my testing environment from my office, from home or wherever I am. In former times, I had four or five test PCs in my office. How much easier (and less noisy) is it nowadays to evaluate software.

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The official name for the so-called Adminpak is Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Administration Tools Pack. For earlier versions, the name of the setup file was admipak.msi, hence the name Adminpak. You will also often find Adminpack. It is a collection of free administration tools which allow you to remotely manage a Windows Server. Basically, they are the same management tools that are installed on a Windows server, the Adminpak just installs them on a workstation.

In former times I used them often, meanwhile I prefer to manage a server in a terminal server session. However, I know that many administrators still value them. The current version doesn’t seem to run on Windows Vista. On Windows Connected, you’ll find instruction how to install the Windows 2003 SP1 Admin Pack on Windows Vista Beta 2. By the way, there is a newer Adminpak, the Windows Server 2003 R2 Administration Tools Pack. I don’t know if the instructions also work for this version.

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Since we are currently moving our DHCP server to a virtual machine, we finally investigated this issue. I was a little surprised that Backup Exec 10.1 was unable to backup the DHCP.mdb file which contains the DHCP database, even though, we use the open file option.

However, my instinct about having backups of our DHCP server, was correct. After all, this should be a very common problem, and I never heard of a backup agent for a DHCP server.

Every 60 minutes Windows copies the DHCP settings to the %systemroot%\system32\dhcp\Backup\new directory. And these copies can be easily secured by any backup software since the files are not open. You can change this time interval in the Registry:

KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\services\ DHCPServer\Parameters

The minimum setting of “Backupinterval” is 5 minutes, the maximum 30 60 minutes.

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Sounds too good to be true? Well, it is not really true. Likewise only supports a few Linux apps. However, they are probably the most popular Linux applications. From a Windows server you can manage Apache, Samba (including Active Directory integration), Linux log files and network printers. Not too bad for version 1.0.

The bad news is, for you, my dear Windows admin, that you have to install an agent first on the Linux machines. This can be done from the Likewise console running on the Windows server. The problematic part is that the agent relies on several Open Source packages. If they are not yet on your Linux server, it will install them for you. However, Linux is not Linux. Depending on your distribution you can’t avoid touching, sometimes, the Linux system to install the missing packages yourself. Some Linux distributions like Mandrake or Debian are not supported at all.

I find this concept of Likewise interesting. It not only allows the integration of Linux machines in a Windows network but also helps typical Windows admins to get started with Linux. On the other hand, I am sure that many Linux purists will turn up their nose if you take away their configuration files. They will complain that not all settings are available with a GUI. Considering how many configuration options Apache supports, you probably have to agree with them if you take a look at this screenshot.

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