Exchange 2010 Transaction Logs Rapidly Filling Disk Space

Recently we migrated a relatively small company from a POP3 email service  to their own Microsoft Exchange 2010 server. Over the course of two days we imported approximately 25 mailboxes which grew the message store database to around 16GB. On the fifth day we noticed that the disk drive on our brand new mail server was completely full. We discovered that the Exchange transaction logs had grown to an astonishing 189GB in just three or four days!

The first step was to immediately remedy the storage issue by dismounting the mailbox database and using the eseutil /mh command to verify that the database had shutdown cleanly and that there were no more log files to be played into the database. This turned out to be true which didn't really help us come to a conclusion.  We decided to move the massive amount of logs to an alternative storage location just in case.

With the database mounted and the storage situation taken care of (for now) it was time to begin monitoring the logs. I began checking on the server every few hours over the weekend and to my delight it appeared that the logs had settled down and all was well. As users began to trickle in Monday morning I quickly found out that I was very wrong. I watched transaction logs be created at the rate of one log file every 1 to 3 seconds!  After doing a little research I was pointed in the direction of ExMon. This is the Exchange User Monitoring utility that was written by MS guys a few Exchange versions back but it continues to be supported to this day. Armed with the user monitoring tool, I was able to watch performance activity as the various mailboxes were accessed and manipulated.

A few patterns became evident and two very important columns in the tool helped me resolve our problem.  One column being CPU% and the most important being Log Bytes. CPU% is the store CPU percentage consumed by the user. This can reach very high numbers upon opening Outlook and during a send/receive action but it should not constantly be in the 90%-100% range for a single user. The other tipoff was the Log Bytes per user. As a user receives a message or takes action on a message by moving it to a folder or deleting it etc., Exchange will create a transaction of this event and store it in a log file.  If a user has an excessively large number of log bytes written along with an excessively high CPU% over several refresh periods, you can be sure that they are your trouble mailboxes.

It turns out that four of our users had some imported messages that were corrupted and therefore stuck on synchronizing to the database. Each time the message begins to sync a transaction is recorded. Since the message failed to synchronize it attempts again and again which creates a constant loop. We determined that all of the necessary mail had already completed the import process so the resolution was simple. We rebuilt each problem users Outlook profile which downloaded all of the "good" mail that was successfully synchronized after the initial PST import.

Tips for using the ExMon tool can be found here.

Adam Jones - Systems Engineer

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

DNS? Registrar? Web Host?! All I want is a company web page!

Although the Domain Name System used on the internet is as old as the internet itself, it's still a very confusing technology for many businesses.  Understanding all the different hosts and services necessary to create a presence on the web can be confusing and overwhelming.

Most people understand that they need to register a name for their business on the web (referred to as a domain name) and host a website, but beyond that, they're unclear on what they might need.  In fact, there are several layers and different hosts who coordinate to make sure everything goes just right.  Just like when buying a cell phone, there are many parts to the equation to ensure everything works as you expect.

The Registrar

The registrar is the place you start; they are the service which officially creates and maintains your chosen domain name (e.g. terminal.com).  Using our cell phone analogy, this is much like choosing your carrier and cell phone plan.  Initially, Network Solutions was the only registrar, but some years ago law changed to allow other companies to act as internet registrars. Now there are hundreds, such as GoDaddy, Verisign, Tucows, and many others.  They all work essentially the same, though costs can vary quite a bit.

The Domain Host

Once you've registered your domain name, you need to host it somewhere.  Again, going back to our analogy, you need more than just a cell phone plan, you need to get a phone number as well, so people know how to reach you.  The domain host provides directions on the internet for anyone trying to reach your internet services, whether they be email or web or even remote access or corporate VPNs.

The Service Hosts (email, web, etc.)

If the registrar is the cell phone plan in our analogy, and the domain host is the phone number, the service host would be the cell phone itself.  The service hosts are the endpoint that your users are trying to reach.  This can be a web page, or email, or many other business services.  Some companies choose to host these services inside their own offices, while others choose to have other companies host them.  Traditionally, many small and medium businesses have relied on web hosting companies to host their web pages and sometimes their email, as well.  As companies grow in size, they will frequently host their own email and may even host their own web pages.  These days, as cloud computing becomes more popular, companies often host many services with third party service hosts.

While it's entirely possible to choose different companies for each of these categories, many companies offer some or all of these services together.  I often encourage clients to try to stick to as few companies as possible, as it helps keep a handle on recurring costs and creates a central contact point for service-related issues.

It's important to choose wisely, for this very reason; don't be stuck in the situation of not knowing just who to call when something breaks!  If you need help consolidating or making sense of your domain hosting, Contact Us today and a Terminal engineer can help you understand your domain configuration and simplify your management.

Brian St. Marie - Sr. Systems Engineer

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Install a SCSI driver for a VMware guest machine

When creating a new guest virtual PC in VMware, say a windows XP machine, you will find by default that the virtual hard disk is a SCSI disk. To make XP work in most cases, you will have to splice in a SCSI driver for your guest VM machine.  To do this, please follow the steps below:

All Windows Versions

To copy the appropriate disk controller driver from a working virtual machine with a Windows guest operating system:

1. Power on the source for the conversion. The source can be physical or virtual.
2. Download the VMware SCSI Disk Controller driver diskette at http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp.
3. If the source is virtual, attach the driver diskette to the virtual machine's virtual floppy drive.
   
   If the source is physical, use any of these methods to copy the files from the diskette image:
• Extract the disk image into files and copy them to the source.
• Attach the diskette to a virtual machine and copy the files from the virtual diskette drive to the physical source.
• Write contents of the image onto a floppy diskette and insert the diskette into the physical source.
  Note:  Image extraction software is required to use this method.
4. Access the floppy diskette or files on the source from My Computer.
5. Right-click vmscsi.inf and click Install. The VMware SCSI drivers are installed.
6. Restart the source to complete installation.
7. Perform another conversion with VMware Converter.

Dennis Foote - Systems Engineer

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Used Computers

This week I had a friend ask me for some computer help with a system he bought from Craigslist.  It wasn’t playing videos that he wanted, and it turned out to be a codec problem that was easy to fix.  However, that is not the part of the story that got to me, this was: 

He bought the computer for his nephew and thought he was getting a good deal.  It turned out that the computer was stolen - which they found out when the police turned up to reclaim it!

If you are going to buy a used computer, please be wary of where and who you get it from, as it can be quite the hassle to explain it all to the cops.

You might want to consider these tips below on buying a used computer: 

1. If you are not a tech-savvy, ask some friends to shop with you.  They can help you choose the right specs.

2. Search online for places that sell used or second hand computers. Don't be afraid to shop around!

3. If you are buying a used computer at a local computer store, make sure to give a good inspection. Insist on testing the computer yourself!

4. Make sure that the computer has the original system software disks, manuals, and driver installer disks.

5. Bargain the price with the seller.  It doesn’t matter how much the seller paid for the computer.

6. Do not buy used printers, scanners, or hard disks unless you are sure that they are working.

7. Make sure that the used computer is upgradable (like expansion slots, extra RAM slots, or the processor).

8. Ask if the computer parts have been replaced or repaired. That can add to the life of the system.

9. Make sure that the computer’s operating system is compatible with software you have.

10. Ask if the seller has a transferable warranty on the computer.

11. Please don’t get arrested!

Have a great weekend. 

Kristen Hewes - Hardware Technician

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Converting Physical PCs to Virtual Machines

Converting physical PCs into VM machines is starting to become part of normal life for technicians. There are a couple tools out there that I have come across to help you along if you are a novice user so you too can enjoy the utilization of all your hardware resources. 

First is Microsoft’s disk2VHD.  This software is very easy to use and creates VHDs that will work with Microsoft’s virtual machines. I have used this to create virtual machines for Microsoft’s Hyper-V and it worked very well.  

The next is from VMware which is called VMware Vcenter Converter.  This will give you an array of options.  Whether you want to create the VM machine across a network or turn a local machine that you are sitting in front of into a virtual machine, this software will do the trick. It’s very user friendly and has plenty of help guides on VMware’s website.

Dennis Foote - Systems Engineer

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Profile Migration Made Easy!

Once again on the subject of useful tools is ForensIT's User Profile Wizard. If anyone is familiar with the longhand method of migrating a user's profile, you will be very excited to get your hands on this gem!

Recently, we have been building a lot of domain environments from the ground up which requires us to migrate many user’s beloved local profile to their new domain profile. The User Profile Wizard has helped us slash the time it takes to do this and has improved the success rate at the same time. This tool completely automates the process of changing the various permissions on the local profile folders and registry keys, sets the default login name and even lets you join the computer to the domain all within one intuitive wizard. Using the migration tool preserves the user's custom settings, wallpaper, email configuration, internet favorites, shortcuts and desktop icons. It fully supports both Active Directory and Novell networks. When purchased, you will gain access to the deployment kit which supports scripting and customization and has the capability automatically migrate thousands of workstations at once! This is a solid tool that just works.

Adam Jones - Systems Engineer

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Corrupt Compressed IIS Files

This week, I worked on MS Server 2003 (IIS) 6.0 static files that were compressed.  They became corrupted which gave me issues with my files on my VM Web server.  While this was happening, the page that I got was incorrect and I received an access violation. Along with this mess, problems with OWA starting happening - like hangs, page errors, etc.  I got the following error message often as well:

Line: 224
Char: 2
Error: 'g_flsMimeInstalled' is undefined
Code: 0
URL: https://FQDN/exchange/Administrator/Inbox/?Cmd=contents

I found to fix this, I needed a Hotfix 831464. This can be found on Google. This will require you to restart the server, but it should fix the issue. I also used the following instructions to delete the cached files that gave me the issues in the first place.

To delete the cached files on the server, follow these steps:

1. Open the IIS Temporary Compressed Files folder.
   The default path is %windows%\IIS Temporary Compressed Files.
2. Delete all the files in this folder.
3. At a command prompt, enter IISReset to restart all IIS services.

You may also need to delete the cached files on the client to make sure that the corrupted files from the cache are not used. To do this, follow these steps:

1. In Internet Explorer, click Internet Options on the Tools menu.
2. Click the General tab, and then click Delete Files.
3. Click OK.

Dennis Foote - Systems Engineer

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Mouse in the house!

All of us have computer mice in one form or another, but do we really USE them? Here are a few tips that may help you:

1.Shift key and mouse click

Many programs allow you to highlight all or portions of text using the shift key and the mouse.

2. The scroll wheel

A) It’s not just a wheel!  It is also a button and can be used to open and close tabs in web browsers. Just mouse over a link and click the mouse wheel and boom!  It opens the link in a new tab.  Also, if you mouse over the tab and hit the scroll wheel button it will close that tab.

B) If you are on a web page and the font is too small, hold down the Ctrl button and scroll the mouse wheel to zoom in or out.

3. Double and triple clicking the left mouse button

You can highlight any word by double clicking the left mouse button, but did you know that triple clicking that button highlights the whole paragraph? Try it!

4. The right mouse button

Most of us know that right clicking brings up a menu that has options like cut, paste, and copy. But when you hold the right mouse button down while dragging a file to a new place and then release the button, those options appear automatically.

5. Extra mouse buttons 

Not all mice have side buttons, but they are becoming more and more popular. There is a company called Razer that makes gaming mice (I use them) that makes a mouse that has 17 programmable buttons on the side of the mouse.

If you have a mouse with side buttons take a look at the software that comes with them to see what they can do!

See, not all mice are the type that keep you up all night, running around in the ceiling like the one in my house last night.  A mouse can be your friend.

Have a great weekend!

Kristen Hewes - Hardware Technician

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!

Configuring Symantec's Endpoint Protection Manager for Domain Logon

A personal pet peeve of mine is the required authentication to access the Management Console of Symantec's Endpoint Protection Suite.  Since it doesn't typically require logging in very often yet requires frequent changing of the password, it's very easy to forget the login information which delays troubleshooting when it's most important.

Just recently, I discovered that there is a way to configure the Management Console to allow domain logins, greatly simplifying management of Symantec's Protection Suite.

Inside the console, browse to the Admin tab.  On the bottom left of the new pane, click on the Servers sub-tab.  Select your management server and click Edit Server Properties and then Directory Servers on the resulting window.  Here, you can add external authentication servers for the Symantec software to use.  Click Add and enter the information for your domain controller of choice, as well as the name of the account you wish the software to use when connecting to the domain.

Once that's complete, you can specify any Symantec Endpoint Protection Administrator to use this domain server and account to log into the console.  Simply browse to the Administrators sub-tab, edit or create an Administrator account and specify Directory Authentication for Authentication.  You don't even need to have the same username in Symantec as you do on the domain, but you must use the same password.  The advantage to this is you never need to worry about independent or unmanaged passwords in the Symantec management system.  This improves security and manageability, allowing administrators to focus on keeping your network protected.

Brian St. Marie - Sr. Systems Engineer

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!