Upgrades Complete (Mostly)

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I did my Mailflow upgrade. Keith and I also patched more than 50% of our servers. we will try to get a bunch more done after 12AM when the office officially closes for the day.

i ordered my extra data t-1 for our office finally. we will use it to send VOIP traffic over to our Kingston office. It should take 30 – 45 days to get it up and running.

We spec’ed out a design for our Biztallk deployment. We will be putting a new fulfillment system in place in the next few weeks. We will deploy Biztalk server, MSMQ, and some other neat products. I have concerns because MSMQ needs to be loaded on a domain controller in its 2.0 version that we will be using. We need to move quick so we picked servers to use that we have onsite already. I had to bump 2 other projects to get the gear but both of them are lower priority. We will just buy new gear and earmark it for those projects. We are pretty much standardized on Supermicro for our Windows servers. If I get these 2 new box’s that brings my total of supermicro box’s to 8 we have gotten in the past 6 months. I really like there serial ATA 1U servers. They make a dual xeon version of it that looks fantastic. All for under 3K. We still use compaq for our high end database box’s and anything we need that uses SCSI. We just got a ML380 2 weeks ago, but nothing beats several inexpensive servers that you can get for the price of 1 bigger box.

I also started relying more on ROBOCOPY utility from Microsoft. In addition to regular tape backups I am replicating using robocopy some specific data on some file server to have an online backup also. I also used it for my first web site deployment. We have a large (300 gig) site that I needed to setup on a 2nd server. One of our dev staff setup the IIS site and configured it, and I am robocoping the contents to the new box. if it works we will do it more frequently. We had a plan to do that over the summer, but other projects took precedence.

The Review

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As with any company my company does annual reviews of each employee. My review was supposed to happen in early September. We started to do it and then it got delayed. 6+ weeks later it looks like it will finally be completed. I am not too worried about it, but anything like that gives you cause for the jitters. And that is all I will say on the matter. Some things are just not discussed openly.

Windows 2000 And 2003 Domains

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I ran a test in our testing domain we call MIS. I took a new 2003 server and added it to the existing 2000 Active Directory Domain. I learned you have to run 2 tools for it to work correctly. I did it and everything seemed to work ok. This is in preparation for me to begin upgrading our existing 2000 domain with 2003 domain controllers. Since I don’t like upgrading OS’s I will probably demote a DC and rebuild it with 2003 server and then add it back to the domain. To not loose a DC during this transition I will probably take a old machine or a desktop even and use it as a backup DC while the real one is being reconditioned.

This is not a top priority project, and it is in no way a glamorous project, but it solves a bunch of issues we are having and positions us to use some new tools that are out there. I will write more about it as testing continues.

Kai is also beginning to look at SMS 2003 server. It is supposed to be launched officially in the next few weeks. We are trying to get a demo copy to see if we can get it to do what we need. No work has begun on that project yet.

I have a stack of hardware requests sitting on my desk for me when I get to work today. We need a few servers for one project, a router, and other misc. items. I need to get them approved today so I can get the ball rolling on getting this stuff.

Yet More Exchange 2003 Stuff

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I read a powerpoint last night that was part of a MSDN webcast on RPC over HTTP for Exchange. It looks like I have done everything I need to do. I can only see 1 or 2 thinks that may not be right, but I am being told they should be. 1: I don’t have a valid SSL ID. I am using one that posts an error when you bring up the site in HTTPS. The power-point vaguely mentions ssl has to work without errors. Also a checkbox in outlook 2003 is grayed out. The problem is the option is checked but grayed out. I need it checked, but I don’t know if it is bad that I cannot modify the option. All the documentation says I should be able to.

If I cannot get this working by the end of tonight I will put up an Exchange 2000 server until I can figure out this mess. I feel defeated right now:(

Tired, But Couldn’t Sleep

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Thankfully I do have my sleeping habits back almost to normal. Unfortunately last night I didn’t sleep very well. My pager kept going off about a problem that keeps correcting itself before I even get the page. (the delay in the page getting to me is short, but in this case long enough for the system to check itself again and find that everything is in fact working fine). Then I woke up at 4am and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Now I am yawning all the time and I haven’t even got to work yet. As long as I don’t get a head ache I will be grateful.

Rain And Delays

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The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) is delayed again today for unmentioned equipment problems. This is the second time this week that I have been delayed due to them. Monday I left work an hour later than normal. I was happy with myself since I got on an express train to my stop. Of course literally 1 minute after we left penn station we stopped in the tunnel. We had a bad train. First the door lights wouldn’t work so they crew couldn’t tell if all the doors were secured. Then the breaks were not working correctly. We sat on the tracks for 20 minutes until we started moving. then we sat outside Woodside for another 20 minutes. they didn’t say why but from the amount of trains passing us very fast the LIRR wanted to clean out their congestion of trains before they let us off at Woodside to get on another train. That train of course was a local. My normally 50 – 60 minute commute door to door took almost 2 hours. Thanks LIRR.

It is raining today so delays are expected. I don’t wish to speak to soon, but we are moving along at a decent clip right now. it is always a crap shoot with these guys.

Poker Again, Maybe

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Dan wants to do poker thursday. We shall see if anyone gives the ok to doing it. I am in, unless I am wiped out from the Wednesday late night upgrade. I think we may also have a party at work that day so we may have a conflict.

Other Updates

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Today I ran through some test upgrades to see if a DB upgrade I am going to do tomorrow will work ok. My problem is that I have been unable to truly simulate the current environment so my tests failed. I am working to correct the problem tomorrow.

I am also trying to get a fix for some phone monitoring software we had installed last week. we got this software and it just doesn’t work. thankfully we haven’t paid for it yet.

I got install dates for my new voice T-1 that we are getting. I also got final pricing on new data circuits we need for our VOIP traffic.

Tomorrow will be a late night to run software upgrades at work.

Still No Exchange

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I stayed up late last night working on getting Exchange 2003 to work correctly. So far I have not succeeded. Howard put me in touch with David at idealab. He has done the deployment before and he was very helpful. Thanks to him I have an idea of what needs to be done. I went through all the documentation he sent me. I got further along in the process than I did before, but still nothing. I am now going over all my settings to verify I did everything correctly. so far it looks like I have done everything expected of me. I am getting frustrated with being unable to get this to work. I have a few more things to try tonight when I get home.

The Holy Grail

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The holy grail for me the past 4 days has been configuring Exchange 2003 to use RPC over HTTP and getting it to work. So far nothing. I have gotten 2 exchange servers to work, but I need to be on the LAN in order to get mail via outlook 2003. I can use the web interface but that isn’t good enough. I can use a vpn connection, and that wont work either. I am so close but it still wont work.

I would like to thank Microsoft for their totally lack of a support selection on this topic. I have all 3 documents regarding the topic printed out. they barely mention how to install the dam service. You would think that would be an important part of the process.

I am just burnt out right now. I have been taking all of my spare time this weekend to get this to work. I am just frustrated because I am so close to getting it to work.