Windows Volume license Activation Key is Not Working!! …..Try phone activation

If you want to activate over phone any machine that doesn’t have internet connection.

Here is the steps to do it….

 

– First to Change Product Key Number in a Command Prompt Open an elevated        

   command prompt. In the elevated command prompt,Run in the command below.

      >>>>> slmgr.vbs /ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

 

– Type slui.exe 4 to access the phone activation screen and follow the steps to  

   activate over the phone.

 

–  If the phone number you are is not working find you local Volume license

   Activation Center from the Table Below.

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012 R2 (((Basics)))

In This post we will go through the very basic definitions and concepts  SCOM  , if you are new to scom this post is definitely for you, every thing in this post is from TechNet (Best reference ever) …     lets start.

 

What is SCOM?

Operations Manager is a part of Microsoft System Center 2012 family, SCOM is software that helps you monitor services, devices, and operations for many computers from a single console.

 

What Operations Manager Does

We all agree that IT departments need to know when there is a problem, identify where the problem is, and figure out what is causing the problem, ideally before the users of the applications encounter the problems. The more computers and devices in the business, the more challenging this task becomes.

Using Operations Manager in the environment makes it easier to monitor multiple computers, devices, services, and applications. The Operations console, shown in the following image, enables you to check the health, performance, and availability for all monitored objects in the environment and helps you identify and resolve problems.

VMware vSphere Console – Unable to connect to the MKS: Failed to connect to server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:902

while trying to connect to any VM console on my  VCenter 5.5 server using the VSphere client I got this error …

 

 

After some digging about this issue I found that there is couple reasons might cause this  like the port being blocked or name resolution .so… I don’t have any fire wall that might block the connection….and it was pinging fine, so I added the “VCenter and ESXI” 

IP addresses to my lab that has the Vsphere client .

DPM Is Not Writing On Tape !!!

Hi … today we are going to discuss some of the problems you might face while tacking backup using DPM 2012 on tape library..

First error I faced not too long ago is access denied error

Error: The operation failed because of a protection agent failure. ID 998 Details: Access is denied (0x80070005)

DPM 2012 Tape Erase is taking TOO LONG !!!

last week I faced this issue while I was erasing tape on IBM Tape library from DPM Console so it moved to the Drive and 

 

 Erasing …. Erasing……Erasing …. Erasing   for more than 2 hours

 

 

after some research I found out that there are two types of erase ,long and short

 

Though short erase is much faster than long erase, it does not completely erase the data from the tape “Only mark it as free”. If you have a policy that all data from the tape must be erased and unrecoverable, do not enable short erase.By default, when you erase a tape by using System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) , DPM performs a long erase.

 

Enabling Short Erase

First make sure that your tape drive supports short erase, then you can enable it on the DPM server by creating the DWORD UseShortErase under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Agent.

 

Set the value of the DWORD to 00000000.

After this value is set, all erase operations on the DPM server will be short erases.

 

To revert to long erases, remove this registry key.

 

 

Hope this was helpful ….Thanks for reading

SCCM 2012 Client Push fail with error code 0x800706ba

when pushing the SCCM clients behind fire wall you may get this error:

CWmi::Connect(): ConnectServer(Namespace) failed. – 0x800706ba

This error is  because the SCCM Client uses Dynamic RPC connections for WMI (the DCOM RPC uses callback for the event receipt which chooses random ports 1024-65534.)

you need to open the following ports :

Description	UDP	TCP
Server Message Block (SMB) between the site server and client computer.	—	445
RPC endpoint mapper between the site server and the client computer.	135	135
RPC dynamic ports between the site server and the client computer.	—	DYNAMIC
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) from the client computer to a management point when the connection is over HTTP.	—	80
Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS) from the client computer to a management point when the connection is over HTTPS.	—	443

check  this …Windows Firewall and Port Settings for Client Computers in Configuration Manager

sooooo you need to open the Dynamic ports on the firewall 1024-65534 which  is not very good idea …. since you only need them for client push you can coordinate with you security admin to open them on branch per branch or subnet by subnet basis for a day or so and close these ports again as soon as you finish pushing your client “at least this is how it worked for me ”

System center configuration manager 2012 R2 (Part 12) Operating System Deployment 2/2

During the last part we have seen how to prepare our environment for OS deployment and how to capture OS we are using as reference image for the deployment .

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NOTE:

Configuration we did during the last part of our series is only the SCCM related configuration

there is others related to DHCP and Network

DHCP:

Options 66 and 67 must be configured so that a PXE client can locate the PXE point and boot into Windows PE using our boot images

Option 66 is the PXE server name or IP

Option 67 is the file name “SMSBoot\x64\wdsnbp.com”

Network:

If your PXE Client “booting computer” and the PXE enabled DP are not in the same subnet , you have to configure IP Helper on your switch

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Will continue by creating a new device collection for which the operating system is going to be deployed., Right click on Device Collections, click Create Device Collection.

    

System center configuration manager 2012 R2 (Part 11) Operating System Deployment 1/2

During this first part of SCCM2012 R2 OSD we will see how to prepare our SCCM for OSD an how to capture our customized OS to use it in the next post as a reference image.

System center configuration manager 2012 R2 (Part 10) Migration from SCCM 2007

You already know that there is no in place upgrade from the old SCCM2007 to 2012 what if you had an existing SCCM 2007 …simply you will build your new SCCM 2012 as we did during the last 9 parts and then migrate you data from the 2007 SCCM.

 

 

 

In Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager, the built-in migration functionality replaces in-place upgrades of existing Configuration Manager Infrastructure by providing a process that transfers data from active Configuration Manager 2007 sites. Migration can transfer most data from Configuration Manager 2007.

Data That You Can Migrate to Configuration Manager 2012

Migration can migrate most objects from Configuration Manager 2007 to System Center 2012 Configuration Manager. The migrated instances of some objects must be modified to conform to the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager schema and object format. These modifications do not affect the data in the Configuration Manager 2007 database.

You can migrate the following types of objects:

·         Collections

·         Advertisements

·         Boundaries

·         Software distribution packages

·         Virtual application packages

·         Software Updates:

o    Deployments

o    Deployment packages

o    Templates

o    Software update lists

·         Operating System Deployment:

o    Boot images

o    Driver packages

o    Drivers

o    Images

o    Packages

o    Task sequences

·         Desired Configuration Management:

o    Configuration baselines

o    Configuration items

·         Asset Intelligence customizations

·         Software metering rules

System center configuration manager 2012 R2 (Part 9) Adding Distribution Points

Distribution Points are helpful when you have a branch office that has number of clients “less than 500 client” connected through WAN to your HO. You can distribute OS images and software packages through a DP which will reduce latency and bandwidth consumption. Packages will be distributed to the DP over the WAN once and the clients pull it from the local DP over the LAN.

First we need to add the SCCMAdmin account and the SCCM Site Server account to local administrators group on the machine that will be a DP, and open the required ports.