I have no idea why, but Telnet is disabled by default in Windows 7. Here are the steps to enable it:

- Go to the Control Panel
- Select Programs And Features
- Select "Turn Windows features on or off"
- Check the box next to "Telnet Client"
- Click OK

I recently wrote a blog titled "Set Your Own Default Document With ASP.Net 4.0" but in reviewing it, the title wasn't quite accurate. Yes, in my example I set the default document in Visual Studio, so it was ASP.NET related, but the actual feature is an IIS7 feature, not an ASP.NET feature. So, here is a better title and link to the original post for people interested in setting their own default document in IIS7 - without administrative access to the server.

Every once in a while I write these huge blocks of code to do something really cool only to find out .NET has already got that built in.  Take my post from yonder days about validating an IP address…

http://www.orcsweb.com/blog/james/fun-with-powershell-testing-whether-an-ipv4-address-has-a-valid-structure/

It turns out .NET has already got that built in and all those lines of code can be condensed into this:

$ipAddress = “192.168.1.100”
$ipObj = [System.Net.IPAddress]::parse($ipAddress)
$isValidIP = [System.Net.IPAddress]::tryparse([string]$ipAddress, [ref]$ipObj)
if ($isValidIP) {
   Write-host “$ipAddress is valid”
} else {
   Write-host “$ipAddress is not valid”
}

I saw a sales question come through recently that I think would be good to answer and clarify here...

Do OrcsWeb's Cloud Server solutions support PCI Compliance?

The answer is: Yes, absolutely!

Please read this blog post about PCI Compliant Hosting for additional information on the factors involved to assure you are fully in-line with PCI Compliance guidelines. As a managed hosting client of OrcsWeb we can help you through that process and handle the hosted infrastructure needs - yes, even on our Cloud Server solutions.

If you aren't familiar with the IIS7 Remote Administration Tool, you might want to start by referring to these two earlier posts:

IIS 7 Manager For Remote Administration - Installing and then connecting to a site

How to use the Remote Administration Tool to recycle your application pool

Another nice feature of the IIS7 Remote Administration Tool is that it will let you convert a folder on your website to an "application" so that it can have its own web settings and configuration.

Read more...

Have you heard about HTML5?
According to W3C: "HTML5 defines the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML."

What's the big deal?
The new standard is still being worked out, but some of the features working into the standard are a canvas object to allow drawing, video streaming without a plug-in (like Flash or Silverlight), offline data storage, drag-and-drop standards, and more.

Read more...

Here is a good post by Scott Hanselman for you to read before you perform your application upgrade to ASP.NET 4.0.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ASPNET4BreakingChangesAndStuffToBeAwareOf.aspx

What is PCI?
From Visa: "The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a comprehensive set of international security requirements for protecting cardholder data. The PCI DSS was developed by Visa® and the founding payment brands of the PCI Security Standards Council to help facilitate the broad adoption of consistent data security measures on a global basis."

Read more...

SCVMM is an excellent product for managing your Hyper-V environment. The Self Service Portal (SSP), a component of the SCVMM install, allows end users to manage and deploy VM's remotely. However, but sure to read the fine print when installing.

During the installation process, you will be prompted to select what ports the VMM Agent will use when communicating with the Hyper-V host. The default ports WinRM and BITS use are 80 and 443 respectively. If you plan on running the Self Service Portal from the same host system, you will either need to change the ports the VMM Agent uses or change the ports the Self Service Portal uses.

Since browsers and IIS always default to 80 and 443 for HTTP and HTTPS, I would recommend making the change to the VMM Agent. Port 8080 for the VMM Agent control port (WinRM) and 8443 for the VMM Agent data port (BITS) are nice alternatives. Note that using a different IP for the SSP is NOT an option, as WinRM and BITS will self-configure to listen on all IP addresses thereby hijacking the ports.

A quick note, changing the default ports is recommended if you are planning on running ANY website on the same box. For instance, we had initially installed SCVMM on the same box running Operations Manager. It wasn't until our VM migrations began failing that we realized the default installation of SCVMM was being interfered with the Operations Manager Console which was also running on the same system.

Lastly, you may not even receive an error of any type when having this issue - rather, the SSP simply won't install. You may see behavior similar to this:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/virtualmachinemanager/thread/bba52f08-7b95-4a74-9c9b-ceaf0499e29c/#1dbef478-f896-48e4-af4e-b455d120c10b

One error you may receive while backing up a Hyper-V VM with DPM 2007 is the generic "DPM encountered a retryable VSS error. (ID 30112 Details: Unknown error (0x800423f3) (0x800423F3))." There are a couple of different things that could cause this error. The two most common are:

1. You are running a Windows Server 2008 SP1 Hyper-V host and do not have the appropriate pre-requisites installed. Specifically, the hotfix described in KB959962.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347840.aspx

2. There is a VSS error of some kind inside the VM causing the Hyper-V VSS writer to fail.

One of the most common VSS errors inside a Server 2008 VM I have seen, is event id 8193:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        VSS
Date:          <DateTime>
Event ID:      8193
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      <ComputerName>
Description:
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine ConvertStringSidToSid.  hr = 0x80070539.

• Delete unresolvable SIDs in the 'Administrators' group on the VM.
• Open regedit and locate 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList'
• Under the ProfileList subkey, delete any subkey that is named SID.bak

This has resolved the issue in most cases where I have seen that DPM error occur. Some other suggested troubleshooting tips that have solved this problem for me in the past:

• Re-install the Integration Components and reboot the VM
• Resolve issues for any VSS writers not listed as stable from the "vssadmin list writers" command on the host or inside the VM. You can restart the following services to resolve some problems
  • System Writer - Cryptographic Services service (doesn't affect the system)
  • IIS Metabse Writer - IIS Administrative service (will reset all of IIS)
  • SqlServerWriter - SQL VSS service (doesn't affect SQL)
  • WMI Writer - Windows Management Instrumentation service (WMI will be unavailable during the
    service restart)
  • BITS Writer - BITS service (BITS will be unavailable during the service restart)
• Re-register VSS components as described in KB940032
• Ensure there is sufficient space inside the VM for shadow copies