Distributed File Server (DFS) Reporting

Adam — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:19:05 +0000

Well, haven’t I been out of the loop for a while?! Thankfully, my unemployment lasted nowhere near as long as I would have expected in the harsh economic climate and I am adjusting brilliantly to corporate/enterprise life once again (like there would be any doubt!)

All bragging aside, I have been working on a Storage Craft disaster recovery (DR) solution combining Vmware and Microsoft Distributed File System. The basic structure is this:

Storagecraft takes snapshots/incremental backups of virtual machines in the existing infrastructure and places them into a folder on it’s local storage that is then replicated across the WAN to the DR site. The DR site, also a Storagecraft server and also having a standalone ESX 3.5 server, can restore images of these machines with a fifteen minute tolerance of when the machine failed. This is all reliant on the most recent incremental backups being transmitted across the wire successfully.

Of course, as a DR site, the client is extremely interested in as much reporting as possible and this includes DFS. There is a builtin reporting function in DFS that requires manual intervention to trigger. The client requires automated reporting, as you would expect.

After trawling the internet, I found a workable solution combining a script and task scheduling in Windows 2003 R2.

As an aside, there was this handy little reference that I stumbled across as well. Nothing too surprising, but definitely worth thinking about.

The solution for the reporting was a script ripped from:

http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/articles/437214.aspx

and it looks like this:
####### ## REM This script needs to run as a daily scheduled task by someone who has ## REM local administrator rights for all machines in reported RG. This script ## REM will generate a health report for all members of the replication group, ## REM with backlog based on a specified reference member. When reports are ## REM complete they will be saved to a specified share. When ALL reports are ## REM done, mail will be sent to the specified e-mail alias with links to the ## REM share. #######


@echo off
set CURRDATE=%TEMP%\CURRDATE.TMP

set CURRTIME=%TEMP%\CURRTIME.TMP
DATE /T > %CURRDATE%

TIME /T > %CURRTIME%
######

## REM This adds the date and time to the health report name and to the title

## REM of the e-mail.

######
set PARSEARG="eol=; tokens=1,2,3,4* delims=/, "

for /F %PARSEARG% %%i in (%CURRDATE%) Do SET DDMMYYYY=%%j-%%k-%%l
set PARSEARG="eol=; tokens=1,2,3* delims=:, "

for /F %PARSEARG% %%i in (%CURRTIME%) Do Set HHMM=%%i%%j%%k
#######

## REM Here you define the different resources by specifying the name of each

## REM replication group, server name and share name.  You can do this for as

## REM many replication groups as you want, but keep in mind that the script

## REM will wait until all reports complete before mail is sent out.

#######
set RG1_Report=\\Server_name\Share_Name\RG1_Name-%DDMMYYYY%-%HHMM%.html

set RG2_Report=\\Server_name\Share_Name\RG2_Name-%DDMMYYYY%-%HHMM%.html
@echo on
#######

## REM This generates the reports with Dfsradmin.exe (you can use help to see

## REM what else it can do.)  You need to set the name of the replication

## REM group, the name of the reference server for calculating backlog, the

## REM domain the RG is in, and a name for the report.  The time and date

## REM variables we defined earlier in the script

#######
dfsradmin health new /rgname:RG1 /refmemname:Domain_name\Server_Name /domain:domain_name.com /ReportName:%RG1Report%

dfsradmin health new /rgname:RG2 /refmemname:Domain_name\Server_Name /domain:domain_name.com /ReportName:%RG2Report%
echo RG1  %RG1Report% >  %TEMP%\healthMessageBody.txt

echo RG2  %RG2Report% >> %TEMP%\healthMessageBody.txt
#######

### REM You will need to obtain an email command line application for this

### REM next part.  You will use the program to send an email with links to

### REM the health reports to an alias of your choice.  You may want address

### REM this mail to a distribution group.

### REM

### REM The command below is an example of how to send the mail using a

### REM ficticious command line mail application.  You will need to reformat

### REM the command to be compatible with your command line mail application.

### REM

### REM You many need to give the sending alias the "Send As" right

#######

cl_mail.exe smtp server:my_smtphost to:some_Alias@domain.com from:your_alias@domain.com subject:"DFS Replication Health Reports %DDMMYYYY%" message:@%TEMP%\healthMessageBody.txt auth:sspi

The only potential problems are:

The requirement for a command line email utility
Only notification of the report’s location, not the report itself
Size over time. Each report generated takes about 60KB of disk space.
The format of the report ie. XML/HTML

Still, it’s better than nothing!!

Hyper-V Security Guide – Beta Release Now Available

Adam — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:15:00 +0000

For my first non-Vmware post in a while, this is kind of interesting!

As part of a select group of our key customers, you are invited to participate in the Beta Program for the Microsoft® Hyper-VT Security Guide. This guide is designed to provide guidance, instructions, and recommendations to help you elevate the security of virtualized Windows Server® environments to meet your business-critical needs.

The Hyper-V Security Guide provides the following information to address your security concerns around server virtualization:

Hardening Hyper-V: Prescriptive guidance for hardening the Hyper-V server role, including several best practices for installing and configuring Hyper-V with a focus on security. These best practices include measures for reducing the attack surface of Hyper-V as well as recommendations for properly configuring secure virtual networks and storage devices on a Hyper-V host server.
Delegating virtual machine management: Prescriptive guidance to help you safely and securely delegate administrative access to virtual machine resources within an organization.
Protecting virtual machines: Prescriptive guidance for securing virtual machine resources, including best practices and detailed steps for protecting virtual machines by using a combination of file system permissions, encryption, and auditing.
By participating in this Beta Program, you can provide timely feedback about the guidance to our team to help us ensure that it meets your needs when released!

What’s the timeline for the Beta review?
The Beta review period runs through March 4th, 2009. We need to receive your input during this period for your feedback to be included in the final release of the project.

Where do I download the Beta?
To download the Beta and submit feedback, please join the Program Connect Web site. After joining the Beta review program, bookmark this link to the program site to get the latest information about the project

How and where do I provide feedback?
To provide us your feedback please read the feedback instructions.

We look forward to hearing from you! Thanks for taking the time to review the Beta material. Please let us know if you have any questions.

I am really interested to see how Hyper-V stacks up against its’ quite formidable competition. The question that always springs to ming whenever I look at Microsoft’s Hyper-V is, “If I am an entirely Microsoft house, why not use a virtualisation product optimised for my environment?”

Interesting times …

invurted.com » Microsoft

Distributed File Server (DFS) Reporting

Hyper-V Security Guide – Beta Release Now Available