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With the help of the Virtual PC Master Brian Randell and my good pal Ken Getz I have learned about the beauty of what are called "Differencing Drives". Differencing Drives allow you to create a VPC with an operating system (in my case Windows Server 2003, activated, with the Virtual Machine Additions) and then use that as a starting point to branch out and install various other things without having to touch the core operating system installation.
I was able to create a great heirarchy of installations that will help me over the next several months. I created a differencing drive for a SQL Server 2000 installation that was based on the OS main virtual hard drive. I also created a differencing drive for SQL Server 2005 based on the same core OS hard drive. In addition, I created a differencing drive based on the SQL Server 2000 differencing drive to install Whidbey Beta 2.
The beauty of this set up is that I can still base other differencing drives on the same SQL Server 2000 differencing drive (which is, in turn, based off that original Windows Server 2003 hard drive) and save all the space that would normally be needed for the operating system and SQL Server, such as an installation of later Whidbey bits, Visual Studio 2003, or any other software that might be required. No matter what, I have a fresh, clean Windows Server 2003 installation that is activated and a fresh and clean SQL Server installation with SP3a applied.
When you depend on Virtual PC as much as we do for demos and talks at the various conferences we speak at or to play with beta software, it is important that you have the ability to burn these things to DVDs in case of emergency. That way, if your laptop dies or gets stolen you can simply copy the VPCs to a friend's laptop and you're up and running and you can do your sessions as if nothing ever happened.
Thanks to Brian and Ken for the guidance!
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So almost two weeks ago I had a power outage and my Active Directory got corrupted. I only have one server in my house that serves as my domain controller, Exchange server, and SQL server. That basically meant that I was a tad bit on the "extremely screwed" side. There are lessons to be learned, however. I shall attempt to explain the biggest one that I personally took home from this experience.
For the past six years I have always had what I would consider to be an extremely effective backup solution in place on my home network. I'd use Windows' built-in NTBACKUP utility to back up the network shares that contained user-created data (Word docs, development projects, pictures, journals, etc.). I took great comfort in the fact that at 2:00am every Saturday morning all of these shares would get backed up to a share on another computer - usually my own workstation. Once every three months I'd burn these backups off to CD (and eventually DVD) and send them off-site. This seemed like a pretty effective solution to me and indeed - it always proved to be reliable.
What I never knew is that the NTBACKUP utility can be used to back up what is called "system state". This basically translates to "all the vital stuff Active Directory needs to function properly". If you have a backup of your system state, you can recover from things like Active Directory corruption. In my case, the Active Directory files and the log files were both corrupted, so I was literally helpless. I needed to create a completely new domain, reinstall Exchange, recreate all my mailboxes, and the whole nine yards.
The moral of the story is that if you have a relatively quiet domain like mine here at home, you should be backing up your system state about once a month. If you have a domain where users and permissions are changing rapidly, a daily backup is more than warranted.
For those who are not familiar with the NTBACKUP utility, I think it's absolutely wonderful and you can access it by clicking Start | Run and then typing NTBACKUP (WinXP, Win2K, Win2K3).
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Hey everybody,
I was wondering if those who aggregate my blog wouldn't mind sending me an email at russ@nemhauser.com . I am in the process of creating a new blog and learning about aggregation and I'm hoping you all can help. No biggie if you don't want to make yourselves known!
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I arrived in Toronto today to speak at VSLive!. I'll be giving my "Creating Dynamic Themes & Skins in ASP.NET 1.1" talk tomorrow and my "Implementing Next-Level Search Capability in ASP.NET" talk on Friday. Those who attend (or who would like to learn more about these topics) can discuss them in my forums.
It was great to have dinner with Ken Getz, Rocky Lhotka, Fritz Onion, and Brian Randell at the hotel restaurant. It was better food than I thought it was and I thought it was very cool paying with canadian money that really looks like something I printed on my HP 7300 series All-In-One.
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Three years ago my wife and I lived in a neighboring town to Portland Oregon. Things are very different there than they are in the Los Angeles area, particularly the dependency on a steady flow of what we've all come to know affectionately as "electricity".
The power would blow out at least once every six weeks up there, and each time I swore that I'd purchase a battery backup unit. The next morning the power would always be back on and my server and workstation would always boot up just fine. I'd go directly to Amazon without passing Go (and without collecting my $200) and navigate directly to the battery backup units. Then I'd see how much they cost and I'd say to myself, "ok, you have a few weeks before this happens again, let's wait until you get the next check."
As I indicated, it's now three years later (long after we'd relocated back to Los Angeles) and last night when we were out to dinner at Frankie's the power went out or spiked or did something other than flow steadily. I arrived home to find that my active directory had become corrupt. Rather than fight with something I'm completely unfamiliar with I decided to use one of my PSS incidents and just get the problem solved. But this is the stuff of another blog entry to be made at a later date.
The point of the story is that after five power outages in the Portland area, where everything turned out fine, it took a corruption of my active directory and roughly 14 hours of labor (and my site being down) to make me order that battery backup unit.
Am I just thick as hell or do other people have stories like this?
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After much kicking and screaming (ok, that's an exaggeration) Ken has finally started a blog. I really enjoy Ken's writing and am happy that he'll be doing more of it.
Welcome Ken!
Visit Ken here: http://www.mcwtech.com/cs/blogs/keng
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I have, after a long wait, finally posted some of the code from my talk on how to develop applications for PocketPCs and SmartPhones using the Compact Framework. You can download the code from my forums at the following URL. Registration is NOT necessary to download the code - only to post to the forums.
http://www.nemhauser.com/cs/forums/8/ShowForum.aspx
The first application is a car lease calculator application for SmartPhones. If you don't have a SmartPhone you'll need to download and install the SmartPhone SDK.
The second is a shopping list manager application for PocketPC that requires SQL Server CE. It uses SQL Server merge replication to sync with a SQL Server 2000 database. This allows the shopping lists to be created and edited using an internal web site as well.
You can view a webcast of my talk by choosing the correct link from my home page at www.nemhauser.com.