Microsoft technologies and what I do for fun: April, 2007

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April 24

SERVERENTERPRISE or SERVERENTERPRISECORE?

One of the options that you will encounter when you setup Windows Lonhorn Server CTP is to choose between SERVERENTERPRISE and SERVERENTERPRISECORE. But what is really the difference between the two? Administrators can choose to install only the core server functionalities without the additional overhead using the SERVERENTERPRISECORE option. This limits the roles that can be performed by the server but can improve security and reduce management. Imagine a stripped-down version of the server product with this option. You can consider this as a subset of the Longhorn full product package. This is useful for large organizations with many servers performing very specific roles like DNS, DHCP, Terminal Service, etc. Choosing the SERVERENTERPRISE option gives you all of the features that you may want to run similar to that of Windows Server 2003. This is for small to medium sized organizations with few servers running many services in a single machine.

Listing Running Web Applications in IIS 6.0

Identifying which web application is eating up your server resources is troublesome as the Task Manager will only show you the w3wp.exe process with its corresponding process ID (PID). Good thing that Windows has a script named iisapp.vbs which is stored in the systemroot\system32 folder which you can execute to identify the web application your w3wp.exe process is associated with. Best practices tell us that a web application should be assigned an application pool and identifying the application pool on which a web application runs is just a matter of running the iisapp.vbs script. A full details of the script can be found on the Microsoft TechNet site

A sample output of the script is shown below

W3Wp.exe PID: 1234 AppPoolID: AppPoolNameYouCreated

W3Wp.exe PID: 5678 AppPoolID: DefaultAppPool

This will identify which application is eating up your server resources, probably caused by a bug or inefficient code. This is of course just part of solving the problem of performance issues with web applications. Different platforms behave differently - PHP, JSP, ASP, ASP.NET, etc. the important thing here is we've already narrowed down which one to debug

April 09

Uninstalling SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition

I thought I was just seeing things when I saw this in the Services applet - SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition(MICROSOFT##SSEE). This is the version of SQL Server 2005 that Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 installs on your server if you simply choose all the defaults. The problem with this is that there is no way for you to manage it from the SQL Server tools we are all familiar with (I tried it with Management Studio and sqlcmd but with no luck as it just throws an error saying that the server instance does not exist). Besides, if you want to scale up your database, you would have to migrate it to either Standard or Enterprise Edition. This renders this instance useless. Most of us will simply recommend uninstalling this version. The problem is, you won't see this in your Add/Remove Programs applet in Windows. It's an invisible instance that the only way to uninstall this is to uninstall Windows Sharepoint Services as well (unless you want to go through the process, I suggest not doing a complete reinstall). So how do you uninstall SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition? I found it through this website.

1. Start Registry Editor, and then locate the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

2. In the left pane, click each GUID. For each GUID that you click, look for a display name in the right pane that matches “Microsoft SQL 2005 Embedded Edition…”.

3. When you see a display name that matches the name, copy the value of the Key named “UninstallString”
4. Open a Command-Window (Start->run->cmd)
5. Paste the Copied string. It should be something like this: MsiExec.exe /X{BDD79957-5801-4A2D-B09E-852E7FA64D01}
6. Append “ CALLERID=OCSETUP.EXE” at the end of the MsiExec.exe eg “MsiExec.exe /X{BDD79957-5801-4A2D-B09E-852E7FA64D01} CALLERID=OCSETUP.EXE”

7. Run the command. This will go through the process of uninstalling SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition

8. Reboot.

To verify, you can check the Services applet and see if the SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition (MICROSOFT##SSEE) service is no longer there

April 07

It Is Screwed (IIS) v6- Installing Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007

I was playing around with Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 and installing it on a virtual machine running Windows Server 2003 R2. I followed the Microsoft documentation on installing MOSS 2007 as a stand-alone server, installing the prerequisites - IIS, .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0. Installing MOSS2007 went fine until the time that I needed to test the installation by accessing the website. To my surprise, I had a Service Unavailable error on my browser. I checked the Event Log for some clues, restarted a few services, re-installed ASP.NET 2.0, and all sorts of stuff but to no progress. The only option I have left is reinstalling from scratch. Good thing about my virtual setup is that I have a base image of Windows Server 2003 R2 which I am ready to startup anytime. While I was getting ready to re-install, my gut feel prompted me to test IIS before installing .NET Framework 2.0. That's when I found out that it was my IIS that wasn't installed properly. I ran a few tests like creating a simple ASP and HTML pages to view. Re-installing IIS did the trick. After I am sure that IIS is working fine, I went through installing MOSS2007 quick and easy. Installation is one thing, managing is another. I'll work on that in a couple of hours.

11:45 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | Windows administration

April 03

Configuring a static IP in Windows Vista (also works in Windows Longhorn Server)

Running a stand-alone Windows Vista means you will be responsible for the IP address of your machine. In my case, I created a Virtual PC image of Windows Vista which I use for testing. I assign the network card of the virtual image to be either local only or the physical network card of my host machine. The problem with this is that in order for me to communicate well with physical machines across our network, I have to manually assign static IPs every now and then.

To assign a static IP on a Windows Vista machine, right-click Network from the Start button and select Properties. This opens the Network and Sharing Center which is your central location for anything pertaining to networking or sharing resources. On the left hand column under Tasks, click on Manage Network Connections.

This will open up the Network Connections window which you will find similar to Windows 2000/XP. It will list all of your NICs or Wireless Connection. Right-click the NIC you want to configure and go to Properties. You will be prompted for an administrative password. This is part of Microsoft’s new User Account Control (UAC) which will help unauthorized changes to your systems (although a lot of end-users find this annoying). Once you are authenticated you will see the properties of the selected network connection.

The screen is very similar to what Windows 2000/XP has, but one thing you will probably notice is by default Windows Vista supports Internet Protocol Version 6. Choose this option if your network is running IPv6. Otherwise, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click Properties. Now you will be able to enter in your IP address and all related information, and click OK. Close the Network Connections window and test whether the new IP you assigned is now working. In my case,I usually do a ping test from the Vista machine to another machine on the network or run Remote Desktop (assuming I already enabled it on the Vista machine) to connect to it.