Keith Smith - My Blog

Error Solved 0x80070490 while activating product key win server 2019

Friday, August 23, 2019 - Posted by Keith A. Smith, in Microsoft

If you are getting error 0x80070490 while trying to active windows server 2019 in the gui try running the following command from an elevated command prompt

slmgr.vbs -ipk ABCDE-FGHIJK-LMNOP-DX3G-QRSTV <--(place your product key here)

It should be successful. As a side note, I have found parts of GUI in windows server 2019 don't function correctly. An example I've seen is that when installing windows updates after the updates have installed and you click the restart now button. It throws an error which causes the operator to restart the server from the start menu options. Maybe Microsoft will address these issues in the near feature via a patch of some type.

-End

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Escalations with the ManageEngine Servicedesk Plus

Thursday, August 22, 2019 - Posted by Keith A. Smith, in Automation

There is currently two ways to configure escalations with the ManageEngine Servicedesk Plus. One way is to configure SLA actions which you can do by watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6wAgjA5dGQ

What I'm going to focus on here is the way to create a manual escalation triggered by a technician in the ManageEngine Servicedesk Plus. The first thing you need to do is create a support group, e.g., Escalations - District technicians Tier2 then add the technicians you want to the group. Now you need to create a business rule with the following settings

The settings in this rule will execute during any request creation and edit at any time. Also, the criteria are to match all the group to perform action changes to the status on the request to "Escalated - In Progress" and set the level as "Level3".

Now to test this, you could use a requester account to login to the ServiceDesk then raise a request. Now logout of the ServiceDesk and login into the ServiceDesk with a technician account that is not in the Escalations - District technicians Tier2 group. Locate the request and open it, now change the group to Escalations - District technicians Tier2 and save your changes. You should see that the level was set to level3, the group has changed to Escalations - District technicians Tier2 and the status says Escalated - In Progress. If you have technician auto-assign setup, it will automatically assign a technician from the Escalations - District technicians Tier2 group. You can also confirm these actions by reviewing the history tab on the request.

That's it. I hope this helps out a few people.

-End

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Unitrends to Nakivo

Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - Posted by Keith A. Smith, in Network, VMware, Microsoft

Six years ago I was still using LTO tapes as a primary backup method with backup exec to backup several terabytes of data from various servers. Some of the backups would take days to complete; some would complete successfully while others would complete with errors and on the flip side the recovery of data would take even longer than the backups would conclude with the high chance that the one wouldn't be able to recover anything at all. It was well past time to move from tapes to a D2D for backups; I started performing bake off's between may products at the time.

The unitrends solution beat all the other D2D solutions by a wide margin, one of the many things that I liked about unitrends was that they didn't charge per client and they had an appliance that they had built and would support. As time had progressed the unitrends solution started to show it's age and has become very costly at renewal time, this is something that I've experienced multiple times as I've implemented the solution at many organizations.

The renewal costs have pushed many customers to go back to the drawing board (as a lot of customers had built their entire DR/BC plans around the unitrends solution) and evaluate other solutions. The unitrends solution had been a go-to for me for a long time when it came to designing DR/BC architecture; I now find myself saying goodbye to the unitrends solution in favor of the Nakivo for a D2D solution. The Nakivo backup and recovery solution is entirely web-based and comes as a virtual appliance, a package on a NAS or can be installed on a server you provision running *nix or windows.

I've found the transition to quite pleasant, the support has been very knowledgeable, and the administration has been straightforward to navigate.

-End

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Installing Python 2 on Mac OS X

Thursday, October 11, 2018 - Posted by Keith A. Smith, in Automation, Linux

OS X comes with a large number of UNIX utilities, those familiar with Linux systems will notice one key component missing: a decent package manager. Homebrew fills this void.

Homebrew is a package manager for OS X. A package is a collection of code files that work together. Installing them usually means running a script (a bit of code) that puts certain files in the various directories. A lot of the packages you will want are going to have dependencies. That means they require you to have other packages already installed on your computer. Homebrew will find and install dependencies for you AND it will keep them organized in one location AND it can tell you when updates are available for them. On top of all of that it gives super helpful instructions when everything doesn't go smoothly. You can read more about it at Homebrew's website. For now, install Homebrew using the following line of code:

$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

The script will explain what changes it will make and prompt you before the installation begins. Once you’ve installed Homebrew, insert the Homebrew directory at the top of your PATH environment variable. You can do this by adding the following line at the bottom of your ~/.profile file

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"

Now, we can install Python 2.7:

$ brew install python@2

Because python@2 is a “keg”, we need to update our PATH again, to point at our new installation:

export PATH="/usr/local/opt/python@2/libexec/bin:$PATH"

Homebrew names the executable python2 so that you can still run the system Python via the executable python.

$ python -V   # Homebrew installed Python 3 interpreter (if installed)




$ python2.7 -V  # Homebrew installed Python 2 interpreter




$ python3 -V  # Homebrew installed Python 3 interpreter (if installed)

-End

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Powershell add A resource records to DNS

Tuesday, September 18, 2018 - Posted by Keith A. Smith, in Microsoft

I wanted to take sometime to write up a quick how to for adding A resource records into a windows DNS server via powershell. In my case this is something that must take place before you use a product like observium because it requires all the network devices to have A resource record in DNS. To create these records it's best to do it in via scripting, in this case powershell using the below 3 cmdlets:

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA

Add-DnsServerResourceRecord

Get-DnsServerResourceRecord

For a single entry you can use the following in powershell

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -Name Device1 -IPv4Address 192.168.9.10 -ZoneName yourdnszonename.net-ComputerName ADServername

The command is broken down below:

Add-DnsserverResourceRecordA = This is the CMDLET used to add A resource record only

-Name = -Name of the A resource record

-IPv4Address = Is the ip address of the resource

-ZoneName = is the zonename you are adding your record to

-ComputerName = -ComputerName is the name for Dns Server

-CreatePtr = This is optional, if you want to create ptr (Reverse lookup record entry).

Note: To view the changes in DNS manager you will need to right click and refresh the zone, if you have already opened DNS manager.

For a multiple entry situation you would need to do the following in powershell

To add multiple resource record from csv file, Here is below step by step tutorial. I have saved excel file as csv. (and it is saved in c:\temp location)

Open up a spreadsheet program and name the first column Name (this is the name of the device) the next column should be named IPv4Address (here you would put the static ip of the device. You would need add all your devices in the aforementioned columns.

Once your csv file is completed fire up powershell and run the following (modified the below path as needed)

Import-Csv driveletter:\folder\DNSEntries.csv | ForEach-Object { Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -Name $_.Name -IPv4Address $_.IPv4Address -ZoneName yourdnszonename.net -ComputerName ADServername}

Note: To view the changes in DNS manager you will need to right click and refresh the zone, if you have already opened DNS manager.

-End

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