Primal Scream
After 3 hours of flattening my forehead on my desk, I’m just about ready to give vent to a soothing primal scream.
I can not get IIS 5.1′s FTP server to function when behind a firewall, regardless of what sorts of port forwarding I do. I can get close: I could connect and authenticate, but no directory listings. No pasv love.
I’m missing something obvious. Hope I find it before that bulging vein in my forehead pops.
More on Remote Desktop: Royal TS
Last week I mentioned the nifty ability of Remote Desktop to connect to the console on Windows 2003 servers. As part of that, I mentioned the command line option and a Vista gadget.
The neighbor and I were chatting earlier this week. Knowing that he spends a lot of time connecting to remote servers, I attempted to share my newly re-found knowledge with him. Not only did he already know about this, but he pointed me to a Remote Desktop client that I’d never heard of: Royal TS.
The code4ward folks say it best:
Royal TS allows you to organize and manage multiple remote desktop connections. Connect to any machine where terminal services are enabled. Organize connections in custom categories for quick access. Connect directly to the console session and find out who else is connected to the machine.
I have all my servers configured in it to run the “embedded mode.” There’s a tool bar along the left listing the servers and their respective sessions show up in the large attached window.
Each connection can be configured to optionally connect to the console. Or, you can just right-click on the connection and choose console from there if you don’t wish to always be on the console.
Connections can also optional have username / password / domain info saved as well. The password is encrypted in the saved settings file, but I’m not quite progressive enough to go that route.
Using “Smart Size Mode”, the session is sized to match whatever the Royal TS window is sized at. One of my favorite features, that is.
Free and definitely worth a look if you manage more than one remote windows system. Grab it just to see their application icon… Source code is available too, if you want a closer look.
I’ve only been using it for a couple days and it’s on the fast-track for my “must install” list.
Windows 2003 Remote Desktop to Console
Here’s a tip about something I “re-learn” every few months. Perhaps writing it down will help me remember?
If your job has you working with Windows Servers, you no doubt are well familiar with the Remote Desktop Protocol. Windows users have Remote Desktop Connection (RDC), linux users can use tsclient/rdesktop and I’m sure there are other options as well. Why get up and walk to the server room (or drive to the data-center) when you can just fire up RDC and get a session on the server?
Thing is, you may have messages, errors or assorted other dialogs on the server’s console. Traditionally, you’d never see those. Thus, I’ve always had a bit of a “belt and suspenders” approach for my servers and install UltraVNC as well, just so that I can keep an eye out for console messages.
With Windows 2003 servers, there’s a much easier way. From a command line, type:
mstsc /v:servername /console
and you’ll be connected to console of that server.
I remembered this, yet again, earlier today when I found the Remote Desktop gadget for the Vista sidebar. I spend most of my days in remote desktop sessions and this is nice little “accelerator” for me.
The gadget has two checkboxes. The rightmost is for full screen. The left one is for console (my mouse was hovering over it in the picture to the right). Very handy.
Oh, and if folks have already tied up the two “admin” sessions alloted per server, you can use this to grab that remaining console session without having to leave your seat.
If only there was a way to add the “/console” capability to Windows 2000 servers as well.
Things I Wish I’d Thought of Regarding Online Backups
Thinking about going to online backups for your home or office? I’ve been a Mozy user since last August and recently gained a lot more (unplanned) experience with the MozyPro service as well.
What follows are some things to consider. While all my experience is via the two Mozy services — and I’ve generally been very pleased — I think a lot of this applies to other services as well. If not, you can bet their corporate representatives will drop some comments to educate us!
Weigh the Pros and Cons
Going to an online service is a big change from the traditional tape or removable hard drive type storage that most of us are used to. It also tends to be a lot cheaper (especially when you factor in secure and controlled offsite storage facilities for tapes). But, there are some things to ponder.
For instance, if you suddenly need to recover 20GB of data, you’ll pay a bit for that cost savings.
Then again, need to just grab a handful of files? Online storage will be way faster than running through a tape.
You get the idea? Look over your business continuation plans, your disaster plans, and make sure you can still meet your goals.
Mix Options?
After noodling around the pros and cons, maybe it makes sense to mix in some hardware with the online storage? For instance, maybe pick up a large NAS unit? Have all that storage on the LAN, back up (or mirror) machines to that, then back it up to your online backup service.
Recent data is right there on the LAN, but older data is safely offsite yet still retrievable.
I thought I’d mention this as I’m currently mulling it over… Thoughts?
That First Backup is Going to Take a Long Time
Plan on it. Allow for it. You’re about to ship many gigabytes of data over the Internet. If you’re doing this from home, you might even have the added “feature” of upload caps slowing you down. From the office? You might want to have the backup client configured to throttle back on the bandwidth during business hours (no fun clobbering the office network!).
One of my recent new setups took over 5 days going full time, but throttled to 256Kbps during business hours.
Don’t setup up 10 servers all at once. Bring them on to the service in phases or waves.
Plan the Restore Carefully
Just had a disaster and need to get all the data back down? Think before you start (aka learn from my mistakes). Plan to make a few restore passes. For your first pass, just select the stuff you need the most.
Side Note: I only have experience with MozyPro. To do a restore, you select the backup set or drives/folders via their website. Once completed, they’ll bundle that up into a series of self-extracting archives and drop you an email when they’re ready.
In my case, 21GB took about 10 hours for the bundling. The final download was completed roughly 30 hours later. The final download had the files we needed first.
If I had marked that first, then went back and marked the rest for a later pass, I wouldn’t have waited nearly as long for the stuff I wanted first! Life would’ve been a bit calmer.
Don’t Set it and Forget It
The little backup client tells you it completed? Check the history or the logs. Make darned sure it completed. Look for errors. Just like any other automated process, get in the habit of checking up on it.
In my case, it said it was done. But really, it was “done” because it hit a file that caused an error so it had to stop. If I had paid closer attention (and perhaps the error was more obvious) I wouldn’t have missed several GB in my initial backup set.
As an aside, the MozyPro folks have been friendly and easy to work with — and I guess I can claim responsibility for a few new bug reports related to the whole “done isn’t really done” thing.
Closing
For home use, I couple the Mozy solution with my own patented Scattered Home Backups method. Works well for me.
For work, I think I like the MozyPro option, but am still getting the hang of it.
Anything you’d like to add to the above? Drop a comment — I’m all ears!
[image from NelgNL]
Panic, Chaos, Doom
Let me try to lay out this series of events that has culminated in way too much time at the office this weekend.
It all began…
Six months ago I converted a development application server (aka “the vault”) to a VMware virtual machine hosted on our dev server. Worked great that way and reduced the heat load in our server room (and the dependency on some really old hardware).
Still harmless…
Wednesday night, the dev server said it lost one of the 4 drives in a RAID 5 array. Not a major issue as I knew it was yet another loosened SATA cable and planned to fix it this weekend.
I purchased MozyPro online backup a few weeks ago and began setting up backups on the office servers. Since I’m moving multiple gigs of data over the internet (initial backups of around 20GB) I’ve been doing one at a time. They take a few days since I throttle the backup speed way low during business hours. The dev server said it finished the backup Friday morning.
MozyPro can’t handle open files when run on Windows 2000 (our dev server is win2k server), so I planned on powering down the virtual servers this weekend to get a backup of them. I was already coming in to do the cable swap, so no big deal.
Then disaster struck.
We had an odd (and unexplained) power issue Friday afternoon in the server room. Must be an issue with my UPS as all machines went down hard. Upon coming back up, the dev server magically discovered that previously “lost” drive and began to rebuild the RAID 5 array.
At some point during the rebuild, another drive went missing. Now 2 of 4 drives are gone and we’re sunk. Busted array. The sky begins to fall.
I spent an hour on the phone with Adaptec’s emergency/paid support. We recovered/rebuilt the array (several times) but couldn’t get to any usable data. Couldn’t seem to get to the right mix of drives.
Those VMware virtual servers are definitely gone. Time to swallow hard and move on with the recovery plan. (and choke back a sob).
I logged into MozyPro to get a restore going. I see 21.9GB of data, but one of the directories I had specifically setup for backups is not listed. A very, very important directory for the company. (Monday’s post may be a current resume!)
I called MozyPro support, but the after hours guys can’t see much beyond what I can see. I’ll have to try again during normal business hours to find out if that missing directory, that was allegedly backed up, can be found. In the meantime, I’ve started the restore of what’s listed.
SQL Server 2005 is a bit confused — it knows about a bunch of databases but those databases no longer have data files (they were on the now defunct RAID array). Tomorrow I need to delete and rebuild all those with the Thursday night off-site backups. Any little tweaks or special permissions will be lost. All of that was documented in our wiki…. but it’s gone too (backing it up had fallen completely through the cracks).
This is why IT guys might have a stiff cocktail in the evening.
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