Coniston IT Blog

3 for 2 offer on V1810 and V1910 Smart Managed Gigabit Switching

AndrewDorrian — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:22:38 +0000

HP are offering 3 switches for the price of 2 on V1810 and V1910 Smart Managed Gigabit Switches

V1810-8G (J9449A)
V1810-24G (J9450A)

V1910-16G (JE005A)
V1910-24G (JE006A)
V1910-24G-POE 365W (JE007A)
V1910-24G-POE 170W (JE008A)
V1910-48G (JE009A)

• This offer is valid from 1st June through 31st July 2011 inclusive
• Promotion is only valid in EMEA through authorised EMEA HP Networking distributors

• This offer cannot be combined with any other HP Networking promotion or discount
• This offer is subject to availability
• 3 for 2 only applies for the same SKU

Up to speed on the latest HP Networking promotions? Bookmark www.hp.eu/networking/promotions

HP Half Price Tape Drive Offer

AndrewDorrian — Fri, 13 May 2011 07:35:16 +0000

Claim 50% cash back on your Tape Drive when purchasing any of the qualifying Top Value ProLiant Servers

Purchase a qualifying Top Value Tape Drive together with a qualifying Top Value ProLiant Server (as outlined in the qualifying products), between 14^th March and 31^st May 2011, complete the claim form and you will receive 50% cashback from HP on your selected Tape Drive.

This offer is limited to ONE claim per customer. Terms and qualifying products apply.

For further details please refer to the following site : http://h40059.www4.hp.com/halfpricetapedrive/

Buy 2 HP Blades And Get The Enclosure for Free!

Andy ONeil — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:18:27 +0000

Another superb offer from Coniston and HP

How to qualify

Make your choice from the range of blades on offer and then purchase a minimum of two qualifying servers with the BladeSystem c3000 enclosure or four with the c7000 enclosure, together with any other required infrastructure between 1^st February and 30^th April 2011, then complete, then complete the claim form and HP will refund the cost of the enclosure.

Please refer to the qualifying product table for further details.

This offer is limited to ONE free enclosure per customer. Qualifying products and Terms apply.

VMware error on HP Proliant “Host Baseboard Management Controller status”

PeteLong — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:10:18 +0000



Problem
Saw this today on a HP Proliant DL380 G7 Server.
Solution
1. It’s a simple one to solve, the server was built with the HP ESXi build, and the management agents are complaining because the iLO is not connected to the network. 2. When you connect the iLO socket to the network the alarm should change as shown below. 3. Once you have connected or disabled it you can reset the alarm. 4. Take the opportunity to log in and configure the iLO. Access via an internet browser (it will get a DHCP address by default, you can set a static IP address by entering the iLO setup at boot (see disabling iLO section below)). 5. The user name is Administrator (capital A) and the password will be either on a pull out tab on the front of the server, or a brown cardboard label tied to the front of the server (you did keep that didn’t you!), or on a brown sticker on top of the server chassis. On certain models HP also stick this information under the server lid. 6. Then you can log in and configure. Disable the iLO 1. If you do not want to use the iLO then you can disable it (I cant think why you would want to, because its a handy piece of kit, but heres how to do it.) 2. Reboot the server, and when prompted press F8 to enter the iLO setup. 3. Settings > Configure. 4. These are the default settings, use the cursor keys to select and the space bar to enable/disable the options. 5. All disabled.

Original Article

Problems attaching a U320 SCSI Tape Drive to VMWare ESXi4.1

AndrewDorrian — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:35:30 +0000

If you are attaching a U320 SCSI tape drive (Particularly LTO3 Drives) to a VMWare ESXi 4.1 Host you may experience the problem where the tape drive does not show up when you try to attach a SCSI device to the Virtual Machine Guest Server (even though it is detected during the server boot process).

To resolve this issue, follow this process.

Using the VI Client, attach to the ESXi Host server

Close down all running Virtual Machines.

Then go to the physical console and enable Remote Support on the ESXi Console

Next, go to the command line interface and type in the following command

esxcli nmp satp deleterule –satp VMW_SATP_ALUA –claim-option tpgs_on

then press

Go back to your VI Client, and put the host server into maintenance mode.

Using the VI Client, reboot the host server.

When the server is up again, reconnect your VI Client to it and take the server out of maintenance mode.

Edit the server you wish to attach the tape drive to.

Select ADD and choose SCSI Device.

Your tape drive should now be listed as an available device.

Microsoft Make Schools Licensing More Affordable

Andy ONeil — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:53:25 +0000

Coniston have long been a Microsoft Authorised Education Reseller (AER) and so have provided schools, colleges and charities with educational pricing for many years. For Schools this has often been in the shape of a Schools Agreement which provides a subscription to the latest Microsoft products on a yearly basis – thus keeping down purchase costs.

From March 1st 2011 Microsoft have superseded the Schools Agreement with the new Education Enrollment for Schools (EES)

The EES is based upon the School’s Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employee count rather than the number of PCs. FTEs are anyone who works for the School for more than 200 hours a year and uses the IT equipment as part of their job (thus dinner supervisors etc are exempt).

Schools then license products based upon the FTE number for enterprise wide platform products (Windows Enterprise Upgrade, Office Professional Plus, CAL Suites) and add additional products as required (such as Windows Servers, Exchange Servers etc)

The savings of EES over a Schools Agreement can be significant for most schools – on average a school will have around one third number of FTEs as compared to number of PCs that needed to be counted under the old scheme. Although the unit cost has gone up slightly so the correlation is not direct this shows just how much schools can save.

If you want to speak to one of our Microsoft Licensing Sales Experts (MLSE) then contact us

HP P2000 G3 MSA – £1000 Cashback Offer

admin — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:57:58 +0000

Claim £1000 Cashback on an HP P2000 G3 MSA!

Purchase a qualifying P2000 G3 MSA from Coniston and claim £1000 Cashback…it’s as simple as that!

Coniston specialise in SAN solutions and this is a perfect opportunity to contact us to discuss your storage requirements and save money thanks to the HP offer on their latest entry level SAN product.

Ideal for a virtualisation project the P2000 G3 MSA is available as FC, iSCSI or SAS connected – suitable for everyone’s environment and budget!

How to qualify

Purchase one of the qualifying P2000 G3 Modular Storage Array Systems, between 1st March and 31st March 2011, then complete this form and HP will refund £1000 cashback! Please refer to the qualifying product table for further details.

Terms and qualifying products apply.

Dropbox – Windows, Linux, Apple and Dropbox Portable (USB) Installation

PeteLong — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 11:42:18 +0000


Dropbox – Windows, Linux, Apple and Dropbox Portable (USB) Installation

Dropbox, is a service that lets you keep files in “The Cloud” and synchronise them across multiple machines and platforms. It’s one of those things that once you start to use it you wonder what you did before you had it. Simply put it’s like having a USB drive that you don’t need to carry around with you, and even if you still carry your USB drive, you can run Dropbox portable on that as well. Sign up for a free Dropbox account.
Sync Files From Windows <> Linux <> Apple

Running Dropbox Portable from your USB Drive
Download DropboxPortable.
Original Article

All credit for the Dropbox Portable version used above (DropboxPortableAHK) should go to user against t for taking the time to create and support it – Thanks

McAfee Virusscan 8.7 / 8.8 : Failed to read the repository list. Error fffffffc

AndrewDorrian — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:27:31 +0000

McAfee Virusscan 8.7 / 8.8 : Failed to read the repository list. Error fffffffc

Issue :
You may experience the issue where McAfee Virusscan does not Auto Update correctly, and if you try to edit the Autoupdate Repository List you get the error “Failed to read the repository list. Error fffffffc”
Solution :
On a working machine, use Windows Explorer to browse to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\McAfee\Common Framework (or C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Network Associates\Common Framework)
Copy a SiteList.xml file

Go back to the affected machine.
Note – As you will need to stop the McAfee Services prior to carry out this procedure you should open the Virusscan Console, Double Click Access Protection, and untick “Prevent McAfee services from being stopped”. Close down the Virusscan Console
Then click on START RUN Type in Services.msc
Locate the “McAfee Framework” service and stop it. Also stop the “McAfee McShield” and “McAfee Task Manager” Services
Paste the SITELIST.XML that you extracted from another machine into either
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Network Associates\Common Framework
or
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\McAfee\Common Framework
depending on which exists.
Then restart the PC and test an update.

SBS2008 SSEE Reducing the size of SharePoint_Config Database and Logs

AndrewDorrian — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 11:21:09 +0000

We have encountered this issue a few times now with SBS2008. Even though it is not used, the SharePoint Configuration Database and Log file will grow in size, filling up the C: drive (as this is the default path).

To shrink the files down, follow these steps.

Open SQL Management Express (Install if required)

Connect to \\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query

using windows authentication

Expand Databases, select “SharePoint_Config_ ” database

Right Click the database, Tasks, Backup

On the destination section, select DISK and click on NEW

Enter a file name and path on a disk with sufficient space (eg E:\SQL-BACKUP\SHAREPOINT-CONFIG.BK)

OK This (a full backup)

Repeat this, but change the type to “TRANSACTION LOG”

Right Click the database again,

Select Task, Shrink, Files

Change File Type to LOG

Select “Reorganise pages before releasing unusued space”

Enter a reasonable file size (such as 512MB)

Then on a spare data area (in this case E: ) create a folder called BACKUP-SQL

Using the SQL Studio Manager,

Right Click the ‘SharePoint_Config_’ database, and select NEW QUERY

*** replace SharePoint_Config_29c26fca-17b8-48c1-9704-b869932abcb6 with the exact name of your SharePoint_Config database ***

In the right hand pane, type in

BACKUP LOG [SharePoint_Config_29c26fca-17b8-48c1-9704-b869932abcb6] TO DISK=’e:\backup-sql\config.bk’

Now click on the Blue Tick (PARSE)

In the bottom Right pane you should see “Command(s) completed successfully’

If you don’t – check the syntax of the command you have entered.

If you do – click on EXECUTE

You should get a response such as :

Processed 19637 pages for database ‘SharePoint_Config_29c26fca-17b8-48c1-9704-b869932abcb6′, file ‘SharePoint_Config_29c26fca-17b8-48c1-9704-b869932abcb6_log’ on file 1.

BACKUP LOG successfully processed 19637 pages in 5.399 seconds (29.794 MB/sec).

Clear the text in the top right pane, and replace with :-

BACKUP LOG [SharePoint_Config_29c26fca-17b8-48c1-9704-b869932abcb6] WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY

USE [SharePoint_Config_29c26fca-17b8-48c1-9704-b869932abcb6]

PARSE the query, and if OK, EXECUTE the query.

You should hopefully see : “Command(s) completed successfully.”

Clear the text in the top right pane, and replace with :-

DBCC SHRINKFILE (N’SharePoint_Config_29c26fca-17b8-48c1-9704-b869932abcb6_log’,50)

PARSE the query, and if OK, EXECUTE the query.

You should hopefully see : “Command(s) completed successfully.”

Now check your file sizes. They should have reduced.