Today I tried to remove an orphaned DPM 2010 agent from my DPM console. But I couldn’t find how to do that.

I found out that there is a powershell script to do just that. It’s called “Remove-ProductionServer.ps1″, sweet

Just startup your DPM Powershell environment and run the script.

It will ask you for your DPM server and the server to remove. You could also provide these as parameters, like so:

.\Remove-ProductionServer.ps1 <DPM Server Name> <Protected Server Name>

That’s it….

Today I passed this exam with 815 points. So I can call myself:

Yeah, still adaptive enough.

Another great poster from the people of onlineschools.org

I found a great poster, with some very good and basic information of how the internet works. It covers tcp/ip, ipaddresses, DNS, Web Hosting and some more fun stuff.

Yesterday I started  installing DPM (System Center Data Protection Manager)  2010 on some test servers. My setup is a server acting as a domaincontroller with SQL server and another server acting as the DPM server. Some information I found on Internet states that DPM could not be installed on the following servers.

• Domain Controller
• System Center Operations Manager
• Exchange Server

Also I found that “Cluster Services” must not be installed on the DPM server.
In the final stage of the installation a got the following error.

The Data Protection Manager error logs says:
“[7/27/2010 4:44:44 PM] Information : Add user: *****\SA_DPM to local group: DPMDBAdministrators$DPM on server: *****
[7/27/2010 4:44:45 PM] Information : Adding local group DPMDBReaders$DPM on server *****
[7/27/2010 4:44:45 PM] Information : Deleting local group DPMDBReaders$DPM on server *****
[7/27/2010 4:44:45 PM] * Exception : Ignoring the following exception intentionally => An error occurred while trying to configure DPM.Uninstall DPM by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel, and then run DPM Setup again.Microsoft.Internal.EnterpriseStorage.Dls.Setup.Exceptions.BackEndErrorException: Exception of type ‘Microsoft.Internal.EnterpriseStorage.Dls.Setup.Exceptions.BackEndErrorException’ was thrown.
at Microsoft.Internal.EnterpriseStorage.Dls.Setup.Wizard.SecurityConfigurationHandler.DeleteLocalGroup(String serverName, String localGroupName)
at Microsoft.Internal.EnterpriseStorage.Dls.Setup.Wizard.SecurityConfigurationHandler.AddLocalGroup(String serverName, String localGroupName)
*** Mojito error was: DpmSetupConfigurationError; 2220; WindowsAPI”

It tries to add the domainaccount used for the installation to a “local group” on the server where the SQL server instance is located, huh…
In my testsetup the domaincontroller also has the “remote” SQL server role, and localgroups does not exists anymore on that server.

That’s probably the reason I get this error. I will try some other configuration and update this post with the results.

–UPDATE–

I used the option to install SQL Server with DPM and the install finished properly.
I want to test the option with the remote SQL Server instance to. Keep you posted.

You may know that kernel-mode authentication is faster then user-mode authentication. You also may know that when you have a webfarm, network service isn’t the “user” you can use for kernel-mode authentication. With thew following command you can configure that the application pool user is used for kernel-mode authentication.

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config -section:system.webServer/security/authentication/windowsAuthentication -useAppPoolCredentials:true

This wil result in the following configuration in the applicationHost.config

<system.webServer>
   <security>
      <authentication>
         <windowsAuthentication enabled="true" useAppPoolCredentials="true" />
      </authentication>
   </security>
</system.webServer>

You can configure this at the webserver/website/application level.

Friday I passed exam 70-667 Configuring Sharepoint 2010.  All of the aspects of configuring Sharepoint 2010 were covered in the questions. Nice to know I have adaptive skills / techniques…

.Net 4.0 has a nice improvement I want to share with you. Where in the past is was tricky to configure services with multiple bindings, now is become easier.

Just add the following to your application web.config:

<system.serviceModel>
  <serviceHostingEnvironment  multipleSiteBindingsEnabled=”true”>
<system.serviceModel>

And configure your IIS bindings on your site and your all set.

On june 8, I passed exam 70-501 “TS: Hosting Microsoft Products Using Windows Server 2003″.
On june 22, I passed exam 74-679 “Windows Server 2008 Hosted Environments, Configuring and Managing”

Tested my skills and passed. It’s always nice to confirm your skills once in a while.

After a few weeks of frustration I finally found the solution for my problem.
My Windows Mobile device name kept changing into HTCXX, where the XX were numbers. I blamed Active Sync, my bluetooth car kit, the phone itself. But eventually it was me.

It seems that when you have an underscore in your device name, Active Sync changes that into something random.

Solution: don’t use a underscore in your device name…!