Script to update all Azure Powershell Modules

Use this script to update all your Azure Powershell Modules to their latest versions.

Troubleshooting Visual Studio Code: language client undefined

Recently I ran into the following problem when editing Powershell scripts using Visual Studio Code ;

vscode_error1

First I tried to remove the specific extension. Go to the extenstion tab and check for installed extensions using @installed :

vscode_error4

Click the action/config wheel to uninstall the specific extension and reload and reinstall it. In my case that wasn’t the solution. I found out that the specific extension wasn’t completely removed. My solution was after removing the extension in Visual Studio Code, checking for any leftovers in %userprofile%\.vscode\extensions :

vscode_error2

After deleting the specific folder and reinstalling the extension the error was gone!

vscode_error3

 

Troubleshooting Office (/365) made easy

A collegae asked me for my support with a strange problem using Outlook 2016 (Click 2 Run).. She randomly received errors containing running out of memory resources although there were more then enough resources available… After the default checks (update, scanpst, registry settings max cache value etc) I tried the Office 365 troubleshooting tool (C2R) and that found the solution (issue with video driver and Outlook acceleration).

In this blogpost I describe how easy it is to use this tool and why you want to make use of it! Go to https://portal.office.com/account and go to tools & addins :

Office 365 troubleshooting 1

Choose the first option to download (and install) the Microsoft support assistant.

Office 365 troubleshooting 2

You can use this tool for solving issues with Outlook, Office, Onedrive and other Office-apps (forgive the Dutch screenshots)

After installing the executable you can use the tool. Choose where the tool can help you.

Office 365 troubleshooting 3

I advise you to run the tool on the device you ran into the problem. The tool investigates your environment, specs, eventlogs etc. Depending on the issue the cool could ask you for your (O365) credentials. I choose for the Outlook option and my Outlook stops responding in the second menu. After 2 minutes the tool found the solution and asked me for my approval to fix the issue.

This tool could help you for the first stage of investigation!

Free Azure IaaS Webinar with Microsoft’s Thomas Maurer

Implementing Infrastructure as a Service is a great way of streamlining and optimizing your IT environment by utilizing virtualized resources from the cloud to complement your existing on-site infrastructure. It enables a flexible combination of the traditional on-premises data center alongside the benefits of cloud-based subscription services. If you’re not making use of this model, there’s no better opportunity to learn what it can do for you than in the upcoming webinar from Altaro: How to Supercharge your Infrastructure with Azure IaaS.

The webinar will be presented by Thomas Maurer, who has recently been appointed Senior Cloud Advocate, on the Microsoft Azure Engineering Team alongside Altaro Technical Evangelist and Microsoft MVP Andy Syrewicze.

The webinar will be primarily focused on showing how Azure IaaS solves real use cases by going through the scenarios live on air. Three use cases have been outlined already, however, the webinar format encourages those attending to suggest their own use cases when signing up and the two most popular suggestions will be added to the list for Thomas and Andy to tackle. To submit your own use case request, simply fill out the suggestion box in the sign up form when you register!

Once again, this webinar is going to presented live twice on the day (Wednesday 13th February). So if you can’t make the earlier session (2pm CET / 8am EST / 5am PST), just sign up for the later one instead (7pm CET / 1pm EST / 10am PST) – or vice versa. Both sessions cover the same content but having two live sessions gives more people the opportunity to ask their questions live on air and get instant feedback from these Microsoft experts.

Save your seat for the webinar!

Altaro_Webinar.png

 

Unable to connect to share (System error 1272)

I noticed that I ran into a system error 1272 error to connect to a share residing on my NAS.  In Windows 10, version 1709 and higher (also Windows Server versions 1709 and higher) SMB2 guest access is disabled by default.

SMBv2 has the following behavior in Windows 10, version 1709, Windows Server version 1709, and Windows Server 2019:
  • Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education no longer allow a user to connect to a remote share by using guest credentials by default, even if the remote server requests guest credentials.
  • Windows Server 2016 Datacenter and Standard edition no longer allow a user to connect to a remote share by using guest credentials by default, even if the remote server requests guest credentials.
  • Windows 10 Home and Professional editions are unchanged from their previous default behavior.

How to enable SMB2 guest access

If you want to enable insecure guest access, you can configure the following Group Policy settings:
Computer configuration\administrative templates\network\Lanman Workstation
“Enable insecure guest logons”
Note By enabling insecure guest logons, this setting reduces the security of Windows clients.

SMB03

Review Altaro VM Backup V8 2

In this blogpost I’m going to take a closer look to the latest version of Altaro VM Backup.  Altaro is a loyal sponsor of vWorld.nl for some years now and I’m using their product since version 6. Recently Altaro released their latest version (V8) and I thought that would be a great time to post about it!

When you have any questions please leave a comment!

Introduction

Altaro VM Backup was founded in 2009 and was one of the first with a VM Backup product for Hyper-V.  Now 10 years later…, the product has made several improvements and is now used by over 40,000 businesses all over the world. The product supports both Hyper-V and VMware Hypervisors and has backup integrations for Microsoft Azure offsite backup repositories (!). Especially the support for Microsoft Azure offsite storage is a nice feature! There are not many other backup vendors out there who offer this functionality.

More info about how to use Azure for Offsite Cloud Backup in Altaro VM Backup here.

You can find out more about the features of Altaro VM Backup here.

Why Altaro

Altaro simplifies the backup and recovery experience by removing the traditional complexity. The user interface is very easy to use. For example, adding backup repositories is a simple drag and drop process and running backup jobs has been designed so that you simply select the VM’s you would like to back up and click the red button “Take Backup”.

During the version upgrades and the several improvements, Altaro VM Backup keeps their easy to use GUI and doesn’t require extensive support & training. My experience is that any system administrator with simple backup knowledge has enough knowledge to install, configure and troubleshoot Altaro VM Backup.

When you need support, you can easily contact Altaro (telephone/mail/chat) and my own experience is that they respond quickly and adequate. I’m curious about your experiences, please leave a comment!

Pricing

Altaro has an interesting pricing strategy, offering a per host license and not the traditional per CPU license(!). This simplifies the licensing process making it easy for especially SMB customers. The overall cost is of note and could possibly be one of the most affordable backup and recovery products on the market.

  • Standard – per host, but limited to 5 VMs
  • Unlimited – per host no limit on the number of VM’s (Exchange item restore, deduplication, and boot from backup.
  • Unlimited Plus – access to Cloud Management Console, Backup to Azure, Continuous Data Protection (CDP), and WAN-optimized replication.

I’m using the Unlimited Plus license btw 😊😊

Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

One of the most useful features added to Altaro VM Backup is CDP. Since each VM has a different role in IT infrastructure, backing up once a day is not enough in many cases. By enabling t CDP for your ‘vital’ VMs, you can achieve better Recovery Point Objective (RPO) results. The options for taking a backup starts from 12 hours and can be reduced to 5 minutes. Although you can enable CDP for all VMs of a host, it’s best to use it only for those that need it.

Things to consider with CDP:

  • Maximum frequency depends on resource capacity and throughput.
  • Large amounts of change on a virtual machine could cause the CDP frequency to be reduced.
  • Enabling multiple VM’s on high-frequency CDP could result in Hypervisor performance degradation.
  • Storage should be considered when completing more frequent backups (CDP).

Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) Archiving

GFS now enables you to archive backup versions rather than deleting backups that pass a retention window.

With GFS Archiving enabled, Altaro VM Backup will keep:

  • 1 backup per week for 12 weeks
  • 1 backup per month for 12 months
  • 1 backup per year for 2 years

Point to note, you can still use retention policies, this feature has not been removed. Essentially, you are able to configure three separate backup cycles to store three new backup versions every week, every month and every year. This enables you to retain weekly, monthly and yearly backup versions outside of the retention policy. In previous versions, you were only able to delete old backups not “Archive Old Backups”

Change Block Tracking

The use of Change Block tracking reduces the backup time by scanning the virtual machine for any changes (on block level). This decreases the backup duration from hours to minutes. There have been many improvements resolving the challenge relating to rebooting hypervisors.

CBT v2 for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 leverages Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) on the hosts. VSS has been part of all versions of Microsoft Windows for over a decade and is extremely reliable in maintaining a point-in-time snapshot of a specific volume.

CBT v2 for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 no longer requires the installation of a kernel-mode filesystem driver to track changes. The previous method of using filesystem drivers in VM Backup may affect I/O performance on some systems, and this will now be completely avoided with CBT v2 for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2.

With CBT v2 for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2, change tracking keeps working reliably across host reboots, system upgrades etc. CBT v2 for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 also fully supports VMs migrating across cluster nodes and there is no longer the need to perform a full scan when a VM migrates or changes state etc.

Boot from Backup

This is an interesting feature… Through the boot from backup section, you can start a VM directly from the backup location without having to restore it using the normal procedure. In this case, there are two types, Verification Mode and Recovery Mode. Using this feature you can quickly be up and running with your VM.

Concurrent Backup and Restore Operations

Parallel backup and restore operations have been added preventing queuing jobs like an offsite backup copy. You can now take offsite copies and restore backups without the delay of any scheduled backup or CDP operations.

WAN-Optimized Replication

Version 8 of Altaro VM Backup introduces WAN-Optimized Replication enabling users to replicate

VM’s (ongoing copy) to a remote site. This allows It admins to failover mission-critical systems to a remote site. This new feature enables businesses to be back up and running with minimal downtime if a disaster strikes or major incident occurs, hence reducing the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) as much as possible.

Things to consider with Replication:

  • You need to have the same version Hypervisor at both the local and remote site.
  • The maximum replication frequency is 5 minutes.
  • You can only use local disks for replication, network shares are not currently supported.
  • 2008R2 Hyper-V hosts are not supported.
  • If the last successful replication version is not equal to the last successful backup version, then recovery is required.

WAN Optimized Replication is currently only available with Hyper-V (VMware support is coming soon)

Summary

Altaro VM Backup has clearly listened to the industry’s backup and recovery pain points and challenges. They have created a product that is simple to use, effective and used by many. The product is feature rich and offers three simple tiers for pricing (Standard, Unlimited and Unlimited Plus).

I have found some product limitations, however, this does not impede the product’s ability to back-up the majority of SMB businesses Hyper-V & VMware infrastructures. Altaro clearly invests heavily into development and I do look forward to seeing features like cloud replication in 2019.

You can download Altaro VM Backup and enjoy forever free backup for your VMs. Any questions, please use the comments box below….

More information

Altaro 10 min setup & configure

What’s new in Altaro VM Backup V8

An Introduction to Altaro VM Backup V8

How to locate your missing emails (IPM_subtree)

Today I ran into a little problem. For some reason I moved all my emails from a particular folder into a unknown other folder. I could find the email(s) using the search option and found out that the specific files were located in the IPM_Subtree folder.

After some investigating I found out that it was quite easy to locate these files and move them back again to their old location.

First download MFCMAPI here.

Assuming the missing emails are in the IPM_SUBTREE folder, do the following.

  1. Download the MFCMapi program above, and run it from the client PC that the user connects from (no installation necessary). MFCMapi uses Outlook profiles to get server information and connect. You can connect directly using your Outlook profile.
  2. Go to the Session menu, then “Logon”.
  3. Choose the Outlook profile and click OK.
  4. Locate the main mailbox to open, and double-click it to open.
  5. Expand “Root Container” and locate “IPM_SUBTREE”.
    subtree1
  6. Right-click on “Top of Information Store” and select “Open Contents Table”. Note: You may see an entry called “IPM_SUBTREE” instead, this is the same folder as “Top of Information Store”.
    subtree2
  7. A new window will open, and will show any messages in the “IPM_SUBTREE” folder. Select all that show up, and right-click and select Copy.
  8. Navigate to the Inbox (or alternative folder), under the Root Container / Top of Information Store / Inbox. Other folders will appear here as well.
  9. Right-click and select Paste to move the messages found in to the Inbox folder.
    You can choose to move the emails instead of copying them.
  10. The messages should now show up in Outlook once again.

 

How to check for (and remove) Global Admins in your O365 subscription

In this post I’m going to describe how you can easily identify your Office 365 administrators and how to remove them.

You now get a overview of your Global Admin users in your O365 subscription.

It’s easy to revoke the Admin rights from a specific user using the Remove-MsolRoleMember command 

How to force the Windows 10 1809 Update

Yesterday Microsoft enabled the 1809 Windows 10 update again after some minor issues. Windows 10 shall automatically download the Windows 10 update, but this is how you can speed things up 🙂 :

Go to the Microsoft Support website here.

Download the Microsoft Upgrade Assistant.

Execute the Assistant and click next. After some time you have to reboot and your version of Windows will be upgraded :

Windows 10 1809

PatchMyPC to the rescue!

Recently I looked into PatchMyPC for Microsoft SCCM purposes (more info about that in another blog post). But I found out that the Home Edition of PatchMyPC did a hell of a job also!

This version is free to download and use and it instantly updates all your installed programs like Notepad++, Winrar etc.

PatchMyPCHome

The program supports hundreds of programs. Great tip: selecting a program you currently have not installed automatically installs that program (latest version!) for you!

I found this tool a great addition to keeping my device updated!

More info here