Couple of days ago I installed SCVMM  in order to test it out, since we are developing our IAAS solution. Everything seemed great until I found out that SVCMM doesnt have any API which can be used to create/turn on/off  new machines.  Yes, I know everything can be scripted thru Powershell, but it sucks that we need to create separate applicatons that will give us that feature. Imagine a solution where PRTG, Nagios or any other tools monitors your server… sees that the CPU load went up ( or any other condition) and starts up a new virtual machine  using API?

Its funny how the guys at MS fails to see the basic requirements for a modern cloud solution; do I have to mention that after years of HyperV being RTM-ed, we still dont have an option to limit a machines uplink speed!? Come on guys…SERIOUSLY!?!?

I know that you already have this  little piece of software created, release it…pretty please!? I know that Microsoft sees HyperV in some giant corporation where they dont have a need to limit the uplink of a virtual machine, but IMHO, hosters are having a bigger “market” share  than big corporations, think about us, pretty please with sugar on top .

Oh, what about promiscous mode for network cards? You  have no idea how much would I like to use SNORT on my HyperV virtual switch, but…I cant

What about the limit on only 4 cores per virtual machine? This is a VERY limiting factor. I’m in a situation where i have a 2x six core, 48 GB ram server which I want to turn into ONE virtual machine ( live migrations, scaling, etc…), but I cant…I can only turn it into a 4 core, 44 GB machine, effectively, wasting other 8 cores!?

I would really love to get in touch with someone from Microsoft Virtualization team and send them a list of must-have changes Someone knows some insiders?

Let me make one thing clear, I love Microsoft, but lets face it, there is lots of work that needs to be done. Admit it or not, the guys at the “Linux Camp” have much more options and features regarding virtualization. I really, really love HyperV, but some limitations are just plain unlogical/stupid.

Sorry for a bitter post, but I had to throw out my frustrations

Here you can download the files for fixing mysql issues ( deleting database ) on WSP 1.0.1.0, 1.0.2 , 1.1.0 and 1.1.2

INSTRUCTIONS :

Replace “websitepanel.providers.database.mysql.dll” file in “server\bin” folder with the one you downloaded. These fixes fixed my problem on all servers EXCEPT the one running mysql 5.0.27 version….ones runing 5.1 and 5.0.77 works fine. I Will update if I get this solved too…

Currently I am getting this error on 5.0.27 server: ERROR: ‘MySQL Server 5.0′ DeleteDatabase System.Data.EvaluateException: Cannot perform ‘=’ operation on System.Byte[] and System.String.

FIX for 1.0.1.0 version can be found HERE

FIX for the 1.0.2 version can be found HERE

FIX for the 1.1.0 version can be found HERE

FIX for the 1.1.2 version can be found HERE – UPDATED!!!

Hope it will be helpfull.

If you have any questions, just let me know.

Ofcourse, these fixes are provided AS-IS . I dont guarantee it will work on your machine, and I cannot take responsibility for any damages cause by it.

So…today I had a very interesting issue. All of a sudden Nagios went red with the message: CRITICAL : – total: 232.82 Gb – used: 212.67 Gb (91%) – free 20.15 Gb (9%) on one of our SQL server. I was like..”NO! It cannot be. I clearly remember that this machine had over 150 Gb of free space yesterday!”

I log in to the machine, and automatically go to the data folder of SQL server thinking that some customer has a HUGE! log file on his database; so, right click – Select All -> Properties… only 50 Gbs of data…hmm…not here!

At that moment I notice that the server isnt “jumpy” as usual, so I start Performance monitor and see that the Avg. Disk Queue is off the chart!  That definatelly isnt right…

Since that machine is using Windows 2003, theres no too good way to see what application is using so much disk I/O ( beside FileMon ) , I start the FileMon and se that the SQL service is writing HUGE amount of data to its ERRORLOG file.

By navigating to the folder, I see that the ERRORLOG file is over 120 Gb big so opening it in Notepad, Context or some other file was out of the question, since it would kill the machine completely.

So, lets turn to powershell once more. In order to be sure to not kill the machine, since its in production , I have moved the file to an empty machine to opened it there.

Powershell : cat errorlog +ENTER after that powershell started to list the entire content of the file, and it took about 15 mins until it reached the end. AMAZING

By examining the log, I notice ( it was hard to NOT notice it ) litterally millions of these entries:

Could not allocate space for object ‘dbo.tblComments’.'tblComments’ in database ‘DATABASEname’ because the ‘PRIMARY’ filegroup is full. Create disk space by deleting unneeded files, dropping objects in the filegroup, adding additional files to the filegroup, or setting autogrowth on for existing files in the filegroup.

What happened here?

The site that was using that database is poorly written and was allowing everyone to post comments on the articles without any security check, so it soon reached the size limit set on the database.  By further digging on the issue, I saw that the bots are posting about 4-5 comments each second which comes to about 18000 comments/hour…multiply that by 15-16 hours it took to fill the error log to that size, we roughly come to 280000 comments…that’s A LOT of comments!

After disabling the site and sending the email to the customer, situation on the machine looks like this :

The big drop on the green line is the moment where I disabled the problematic web site.

Well…in the very beginning, my answer is pretty much simple : yes AND no!  Why you ask?  Just keep reading…

Compression, regardless if its the compression of static or dynamic content is using CPU – that is a fact we can all agree upon.

Lets say compression is a tradeoff – CPU for bandwidth..use more cpu to “burn” less bandwidth.

The big question here is how to decide if you will benefit from turning on compression or not.

Most of us have “multi-purpose” servers which run various roles at the same time ( database server ( MYSQL , MSSQL, etc…) , mail server, web server, etc.. and all of those services are spending a certain amount of CPU time.

By turning on the compression, you will automatically “lose” some CPU time which could have been used for faster execution of some database queries i.e…

This is the key problem in our case. Is your machine powerfull enough to handle all the services it is already running + compression? Because in the end, you could end up with an even slower server!!!

If you have a small server ( 1 x quad core cpu, 4-8 gb ram ) which is under heavy or moderate load and you want your applications to be “jumpy” ( i.e : fast editing of some articles in your favourite CMS system ),  or you have lots of queries on your database service: DONT use compression, save your CPU time.  If you have some CPU time to spare,  turn on compression of static content which doesn’t change a lot or only needs to be downloaded every once in a while ( browser cache expires )

In case you have a big machine ( 2x quad core nehalems, 24 gb ram, 4x enterprise level hdd’s with hw raid controller, etc…)  and you have CPU time to spare, by all means, turn on the compression of both static and dynamic content. You will notice great improvements on your bandwidth costs

In my experience, the biggest bottleneck on 99% of the server is the disk system. Ofcourse, in my case we are talking about some small RAIDs with 4-8 disks.

Great example of that case are these two pictures:

CPU usage on a 2xQUAD core server with 16 gb of RAM.

As we can see, the server peaks out at 28% of cpu usage, which means it has lots of CPU time to spare for compression.

However, lets have a look at its disk system:

As we can see on the graph, average DISK FREE TIME is 64%, which is a bit low for my personal taste. I would be much more comfortable that this number is around 70 -75% .

This machine would definatelly benefit from turning on compression, since it has lots of CPU time to spare.

But I own a small server…is there any hope for me???

NEVER FEAR IIS 7 IS HERE!!!

One great feature in IIS 7 and IIS 7.5 is that it  offers CPU roll-off function.  When CPU usage goes  above certain level you set,  IIS server will stop compression and when usage drops below the level you have set up, it will start compressing content again.  This function is controlled by the staticCompressionEnableCpuUsage and dynamicCompressionDisableCpuUsage attributes.

For the owners of smaller machines, this function is just AWESOME! It will save you from unpleasant suprises like getting a call at 2-3 AM with a complaint that the SQL server is very sloooow.

In the end; you be the judge. Will you turn on compression on your server or not? Let me know…

Found an awesome post on DotNetPanel blog so I had to repost it

One of the things you want to avoid when deploying an ASP.NET application into production is to accidentally (or deliberately) leave the <compilation debug=”true”/> switch on within the application’s web.config file.

Doing so causes a number of non-optimal things to happen including:

1) The compilation of ASP.NET pages takes longer (since some batch optimizations are disabled)

2) Code can execute slower (since some additional debug paths are enabled)

3) Much more memory is used within the application at runtime

4) Scripts and images downloaded from the WebResources.axd handler are not cached

This last point is particularly important, since it means that all client-javascript libraries and static images that are deployed via WebResources.axd will be continually downloaded by clients on each page view request and not cached locally within the browser.  This can slow down the user experience quite a bit for things like Atlas, controls like TreeView/Menu/Validators, and any other third-party control or custom code that deploys client resources.  Note that the reason why these resources are not cached when debug is set to true is so that developers don’t have to continually flush their browser cache and restart it every-time they make a change to a resource handler (our assumption is that when you have debug=true set you are in active development on your site).

When <compilation debug=”false”/> is set, the WebResource.axd handler will automatically set a long cache policy on resources retrieved via it – so that the resource is only downloaded once to the client and cached there forever (it will also be cached on any intermediate proxy servers).  If you have Atlas installed for your application, it will also automatically compress the content from the WebResources.axd handler for you when <compilation debug=”false”/> is set – reducing the size of any client-script javascript library or static resource for you (and not requiring you to write any custom code or configure anything within IIS to get it).

What about binaries compiled with debug symbols?

One scenario that several people find very useful is to compile/pre-compile an application or associated class libraries with debug symbols so that more detailed stack trace and line error messages can be retrieved from it when errors occur.

The good news is that you can do this without having the have the <compilation debug=”true”/> switch enabled in production.  Specifically, you can use either a web deployment project or a web application project to pre-compile the code for your site with debug symbols, and then change the <compilation debug=”true”/> switch to false right before you deploy the application on the server.

The debug symbols and metadata in the compiled assemblies will increase the memory footprint of the application, but this can sometimes be an ok trade-off for more detailed error messages.

The <deployment retail=”true”/> Switch in Maching.config

If you are a server administrator and want to ensure that no one accidentally deploys an ASP.NET application in production with the <compilation debug=”true”/> switch enabled within the application’s web.config file, one trick you can use with ASP.NET V2.0 is to take advantage of the <deployment> section within your machine.config file.

Specifically, by setting this within your machine.config file:

<configuration>

<system.web>

<deployment retail=”true”/>

</system.web>

</configuration>

You will disable the <compilation debug=”true”/> switch, disable the ability to output trace output in a page, and turn off the ability to show detailed error messages remotely.  Note that these last two items are security best practices you really want to follow (otherwise hackers can learn a lot more about the internals of your application than you should show them).

Setting this switch to true is probably a best practice that any company with formal production servers should follow to ensure that an application always runs with the best possible performance and no security information leakages.  There isn’t a ton of documentation on this switch – but you can learn a little more about it here.

So, dear developers, keep on eye on debug state…it will make you and the server happier

ALL CREDITS OF THIS TEXT GO TO DOTNETPANEL BLOG!

Source : DotNetPanel Blog

Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Express is a free edition of SQL Server that is ideal for learning, developing and powering desktop, web and small server applications, and for redistribution by ISVs.

Top Features

First, we need to have a query that will backup all databases to one folder… Well, here it is


DECLARE @name VARCHAR(50) -- database name
DECLARE @path VARCHAR(256) -- path for backup files
DECLARE @fileName VARCHAR(256) -- filename for backup
DECLARE @fileDate VARCHAR(20) -- used for file name
SET @path = 'E:\sqlbackups\' --path to the backup folder
SELECT @fileDate = CONVERT(VARCHAR(20),GETDATE(),112)
DECLARE db_cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT name
FROM master.dbo.sysdatabases
WHERE name NOT IN ('tempdb')
OPEN db_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM db_cursor INTO @name
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
SET @fileName = @path + @name + '_' + @fileDate + '.BAK'
BACKUP DATABASE @name TO DISK = @fileName
FETCH NEXT FROM db_cursor INTO @name
END
CLOSE db_cursor
DEALLOCATE db_cursor

This will backup everything except the “Temdb” database. So, lets take a look at the current state of our backup folder.

As we can see, only the backups from 21.11.2009 exist. So, what happens when we run the query using SQL Management Studio.

Here’s the query pasted in “New query window”.

Sooo…if everything went smoothly, we should get a message similar to this one :

Awesome! Now, lets take a look at our backup folder, are there any changes? Sure hope there is, because this post will totally suck if the backup didn’t complete

As we can see, this post will not suck after all Notice the new files, created on the 22.11.2009 . IT WORKS! All we have to do now is to automate the backup, so we don’t have to run the query everyday by hand.

We will do that using Task Scheduler (or Scheduled tasks in Windows 2003). We have to add a task to execute everyday in 3 AM.

The command we have to run is:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\SQLCMD.EXE” -i “c:\pathtosqlquery\sqlbackup.sql”

Where “sqlbackup.sql” is the name of the file you have pasted the code mentioned before.

Here are a couple of pictures so you can see how to do it:

Now, click on “Create task”. That will click will start the task wizard. Enter the name of the task ( i.e “SQL Backups”.

After entering the name and choosing the option “Run wheneter user is logged on or not”, click on “Triggers”.

Click on “New”. It will bring up a new window

Choose the “Daily” option, and set the time when you want the task to run. I have set it to 3 AM .

ONE IMPORTANT THING!!! Dont forget to check the “Enable” checkbox , otherwise, you will end up scratching your head and cursing Microsoft and uncle Bill hehe.

After that, click on “Actions”, where we will define the program that should be runned… Click on “New”…

Paste this into the “Program/Script” box.

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\SQLCMD.EXE”

NOTE! – path to the “SQLCMD.exe” may be different on your system!!!

All that is left to do is to “Add arguments”

-i “c:\pathtosqlqueryfile\sqlbackup.sql”

Click on “OK”, enter the system password and thats it. Enjoy your daily backup.

HINT!!!! If you’re lazy like I am, you can use a powershell script to delete backup files older than X days. I have also covered that with a blog post. More info about that on this link.

Bye bye!

Back by popular demand part 3 of the “setup my web server” tutorials

In this post we will cover the instalation of MySQL on a Windows 2008 R2 based server. The process is the same if you would have a Windows 2003 machine also.

At the beginning, lets see what MySQL is.

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS)^. MySQL stands for “My Structured Query Language“. The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.

The project has made its source code available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements. MySQL is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, now a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems. As of 2009^[update] Oracle Corporation began the process of acquiring Sun Microsystems; Oracle holds the copyright to most of the MySQL codebase.

MySQL is often used in free software projects which require a full-featured database management system, such as WordPress, phpBB and other software built on the LAMP software stack. It is also used in very high-scale World Wide Web products including Wikipedia, Google and Facebook^.

Many web applications use MySQL as the database component of a LAMP software stack. Its popularity for use with web applications is closely tied to the popularity of PHP, which is often combined with MySQL.

So, what is the process of installing MySQL on a Windows machine? Well, it’s pretty straight forward so there is no need to write step-by-step tuturial..look at the video rather than reading

Dont forget to choose HD and the “full screen” option.

Song in the video is from Thievery Corporation. Song name is : Lebanese Blonde

Hi again, found an video that could be very interesting….its about how to migrate Windows XP to Windows7 ….

Click on the picture and enjoy!

Note: open the link in Internet Explorer…there’s no sound in Firefox

Hello there…

In order to  install SQL 2008 Express, we have to download it first . Fire up your favorite browser and point it to http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/ . After that, find the box with the SQL 2008 Express, and click download.

On the next step you have the option to register with Microsoft or download the software without registration.  I will choose the “no registration part”.

In the new window, choose the version you would like to install. Personally, I will choose “Runtime with advanced services“. By clicking on install, Microsoft will ask to install the Microsoft Web Platform installer. If you dont have it installed, click on the picture to install it.

Choose “Run”, and after the download, again, choose “Run“. Wait for the installtion to finish and look at the top of the browser, a little bar will pop up and ask us if we want to run Active X control.  Make sure the publisher is “Microsoft Corporation”. Click on “Run“, and then on Allow.

Now, look at the video of the installation I have made for you. The video will show you the process of installing SQL Server 2008 Express.

After that, all you need to do is run the “SQL Server Configuration Manager” under “Configuration Tools” and configure it the way you want it.

BTW, the track used is La Noche by Coca & Villa .IT’s AWESOME!!!

Have fun…bye!

Today, me and my collegaue managed to configure ISCSI on some backup server we had at the office. Iscsi target is based on OpenSolaris and ZFS . ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z and native NFSv4 ACLs. ZFS is implemented as open-source software, licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). The ZFS name is a trade mark of Sun.

Requirements for running any OS in HyperV that will be stored on Iscsi server are:

1. Iscsi target, obviously

2.Iscsi initiator software ( bundled in Windows 2008 Server)

3. High speed network, atleast 1Gbit.

4. Drive that you connect to the HyperV machine MUST stay in offline mode.

5. Tons of time to configure it

Will you will be able to read more details about configuring OpenSolaris and ZFS on my collegaues blog : toic.org  – linux geek blog

So, like we already know, the disk on that we want to install the OS has to be offline  ( hint: disk2 ).

Next step is the creation of the virtual machine that will use the disk.  I have recorded that process, so you can see how simple it is .

All that you have to do is to install the OS…I didnt do that to the end in the video.

Tommorow we have planned to create a failover cluster with two Windows 2008 servers and see what will happen when one server suddenly get disconnected..ups

Bye, Alesandro