#2012 Archives - MARKSWINKELS.NL

How to check what features are installed on your SQL environment

When you need to know more information about your SQL environment or cluster, you can check every SQL server separate from each other. This is time consuming to do, definitely if you have a big SQL cluster or environment.

You can use also automate this steps, to use this very simple command!

Go to your SQL environment and browse to the following directory (it depends per SQL version)
* SQL Server 2012 (110)
* SQL Server 2014 (120)
* SQL Server 2016 (130)
* SQL Server 2017 (140)
* SQL Server 2019 (150)
’%programfiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Setup Bootstrap\SQL2012” from the command prompt. Run the command:
’setup.exe /ACTION=RunDiscovery’

By default, there will be created a new file called ‘Summary.txt’, with the configuration of your SQL environment, cluster or AOAG if you’re using Always-On Availability Groups.. Not very usefull and readable. Not very readable, so now Powershell comes in!

Start Powershell and run the following command:
Get-Content “<location of your summary.txt file>. Now you get a report!!

Microsoft Server Posterpedia Windows 8.1 App

Microsoft released an update in the Windows App Store for their Server Posterpedia App, including the new Hyper-V 2012 R2 posters and some design changes.

Server Posterpedia is an interactive app that uses technical posters as a reference for understanding Microsoft technologies. This app includes all the reference posters from different Microsoft Server Technologies such as Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, Exchange or Windows Azure. The great thing about this App, you can not only checkout the different posters and zoom in, if you click on a specific topic for you get directly linked to the right TechNet article. This can help find some TechNet references really easy and fast.

Download the Posterpedia App in the Windows Store.

WIM image has deployed to wrong partition using SCCM 2012

When you’re deploying an WIM image using System Center Configuration Manager 2012, by default the installation is done on the D:\ partition of your system. Huh….D:\ partition?? But my task sequence say C:\?? Yes indead!! During the task sequence you’ll see “applying image 1 to C:\”, but after rebooting the system, there is no C:\ drive!! Only a D:\ drive!!

To fix this problem, you’ll need to add a new task within the task sequence.

1.) Open the System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Console
2.) Navigate to the task sequence and click Edit
3.) After the partition task, add a new task named Set Task Sequence Variable
4.) The name of the Task Sequence Variable is: Disable Disk Drive Letter (this can be anything you want!)
5.) The Task Sequence Variable will be: OSDPreserveDriveLetter
6.) The value will be: False
7.) Just PXE boot the machine again and watch te result!

Error “Cannot edit the object, which is in use by Site P01” in SCCM 2012

Today I want to edit an task sequence within SCCM 2012 and I received the following error message: “Cannot edit the object, which is in use by site P01”. Mmmm….that’s strange!! I’m the only Sysadmin with an ConfigMgr 2012 Management Console. To unlock this object, I’ve used an query within SQL.

1.) Open the SQL Management Console and navigate to the ConfigMgr database
2.) Open a new query
3.) To view all the locked objects, type the following query:
select * from SEDO_LockState
Execute the query and watch te results
4.) We see one object that is locked
5.) Note the ID of this specific object
6.) To unlock this object, type the following query:
delete from SEDO_LockState where ID=’ID of the object’
Execute the query and watch the results
7.) Now the object is succesfully unlocked and you’re able to edit the task sequence

Passed the 70-246 and 70-247 exams. Now officially MCSE 2012 Private Cloud

Yesterday and today I passed the 70-246 and 70-247 exams! Right now I’m officially Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert 2012 Private Cloud (MSCE 2012). After a couple of months preperation, reading books, reading blogpost and building, building and again building some lab environments, the big day was there!! After two hours, I hit the the final button….YES, passed the first exam! Today I also passed the second exam!

With the upcoming TechEd Europe 2013 event in Madrid, it’s a great timing to have the MSCE 2012 Private Cloud status in the pocket. Do you know where I’m going to dream about this night….right, my own private cloud!! 😉

How to: Create multiple boundaries in ConfigMgr 2012 within a few seconds

When you’re installing and configuring a new ConfigMgr 2012 environment, one of the steps is to configure the right boundaries for your environment. Sometimes there’re only a few boundaries you have to create, but what if there’re several boundaries to configure. Are you gonna click that much….Let’s create some Powershell command to do the job for us.

1.) First of all we are going to import the ConfigMgr 2012 Powershell module. Use the x86 Windows PowerShell, bacause x64 is not supported!!
Import-Module “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Configuration Manager\AdminConsole\bin\ConfigurationManager.psd1”
4.) Make a connection to your Primary Site server
Set-Connection P01
3.) Now we are going to create some new boundaries. In this example a whole IP subnet (172.16.10.0 and 172.16.11.0)
New-CMBoundary -Name “Client VLAN1” -Type IPsubnet -Value “172.16.10.0”
New-CMBoundary -Name “Client VLAN2” -Type IPsubnet -Value “172.16.11.0”
5.) Create a new boundary group. In my example “Main Building”
New-CMBoundaryGroup -Name “Main Building”
6.) The next step is to add the boundaries to the right boundary group
Add-CMBoundaryToGroup -BoundaryName “Client VLAN1” -BoundaryGroupName “Main Building”
Add-CMBoundaryToGroup -BoundaryName “Client VLAN2” -BoundaryGroupName “Main Building”

Now the job is done. How easy and fast was that…

Windows 8 Client Hyper-V copy/paste

A new feature within Windows 8 is Client Hyper-V. So within our Client OS you can run Hyper-V, that’s cool!! When you want to copy and paste some text, for example a script, this is not that easy as drag and drop or copy/paste! Is it possible? Yes, absolutely!!

The thing you need to do is copy the text on your local system, navigate back to your quest machine (VM), select the clipboard tab and hit Type clipboard text. Now you text is copied from the local machine into your quest machine!

RES Workspace Manager 2012 Recent Files not vissible in start menu

A copple of months ago I have configured a new Citrix XenApp 6.5 with RES Workspace Manager 2012 environment. Within this environment I have configured mandatory profiles, added to Workspace Manager as a custom resource.

When the user are opening some documents, the Recent Files folder is filled up with the last opened document. The save location is C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent.

I’ve created a new User Setting to save the content within this folder. Now there is something strange happening!! The content is saved within a UPF (User Preference File) correctly, but its not vissible in the user session from the start menu.

When I open a commandline and browse to my user profile, the content is there! Huh…?!? After some troubleshooting, I have figured out that I had to change one setting within my custom resource. The folder AppData\Microsoft\Windows\Recent was marked as Read-Only. That’s the problem! After disabling the Read-Only, the recent files are vissible from my start menu.