Tuesday 30 April 2013

Exchange 2013 Crimson Channel Event Logs


Windows 2012 has two categories of event logs: Windows logs which includes the usual Application, Security and System event logs, and Applications and Services. Applications and Services logs are a new category of event logs that are used to store events from a single application or component, such as Exchange. This new category of event logs is referred to as an application's crimson channel.

Exchange 2013 makes use of this and logs events to crimson channels in the Applications and Services logs area. To view these channels:
  • Open Event Viewer;
  • In the console tree, navigate to Applications and Services Logs -> Microsoft -> Exchange;
  • Under Exchange, select the crimson channel HighAvailability or MailboxDatabaseFailureItems.

The HighAvailability channel contains events related to startup and shutdown of the Microsoft Exchange Replication service and other components that run within it, such as Active Manager or VSS writer for example. The HighAvailability channel is also used by Active Manager to log events related to Active Manager role monitoring and database action events, such as a database mount operation and log truncation, and to record events related to the DAG's underlying cluster.

The MailboxDatabaseFailureItems channel is used to log events associated with any failures that affect a replicated mailbox database.

Thursday 18 April 2013

VMUG (Virtual Machine User Group) London Tuesday 21st May 2013

Not to confuse yourself with VMUG (VMware User Group) this is a "Virtual Machine User Group" where they are independent from vendors. They basically talk about all kinds of virtualisation and cloud product which is good as you would be able to get a mixed group of people sharing their experience with different vendors.

The next event in London is on Tuesday 21st May 2013. Presentation for the day are:
Microsoft - Labs in the Cloud
VMware - Automation
York University - VDI Case Study
eG Innovations - VDI Performance
OGD - Virtualise AD
Verizon - The Next Gen Cloud
 
Go here for the full detail of the day event http://vmug.org.uk/index.php/london210513
 
The event is held at Double Tree by Hilton @ 7 Pepys Street, London, EC3N 4AF
 

Monday 8 April 2013

Veeam Management Pack for VMWare - Version 6

Last week Veeam announced the availability of the latest version of their Operations Manager extensions for VMWare. Veeam Management Pack for VMWare Version 6 builds on the previous versions of the product , formerly known as nWorks, and includes a number of new features that will extend the capabilities of System Center further. 

Some of these new features include:-

Capacity planning reports

  • Veeam MP offers four new capacity planning reports, built directly in Microsoft System Center:
    • Host Failure Modeling
    • Performance Forecast for Datastores
    • Performance Forecast for vSphere Clusters
    • Virtual Machine Capacity Prediction

Storage Monitoring Heatmaps
  • New heatmaps for datastore space and datastore performance usage provide an instant visual representation that uses color and graphics to show how rapidly your infrastructure is growing. You can see at a glance which VMs are the biggest, which are the fastest growing and drill down to find out why.

System Center 2012 Dashboards
  • Real-time performance views of critical vSphere systems are presented in new dashboard views—such as ‘Top 10 hosts for CPU’ per-cluster and ‘Top 10 VMs for Disk I/O’ per datastore—that leverage System Center 2012 Operations Manager widgets.

New model for Storage and Network
  • Separate topology views of distributed storage, network and compute environments allow you to quickly browse relationships and dependencies among your critical applications, services and supporting virtual and physical infrastructures. You can link from the topology view directly to real-time dashboards and monitor key metrics, such as latency, provisioning and utilization.

Performance Analysis and Correlation Monitors
  • Monitors accept input from multiple performance metrics and gather correlated data from other vSphere objects to help you solve problems faster. Dynamic correlated data is provided right in the alert description.

And support for Windows Server 2012

To find out more visit Veeam's website, http://www.veeam.com/vmware-microsoft-esx-monitoring.html

New Azure KMS IP and domain Addresses for activation

For Windows virtual machines deployed into Azure using marketplace images you may have created rules in your NSG or firewalls to allow the s...