Dedicated Dump File in Vista and Server 2008

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2010/04/02/how-to-use-the-dedicateddumpfile-registry-value-to-overcome-space-limitations-on-the-system-drive-when-capturing-a-system-memory-dump.aspx






Page file configuration are not so necessary and with the disk space issues foreseen on these servers.


Memory Dump  = Pagefile = Size of RAM  + free disk space equal to the size of the RAM present on the disk

or

Memory Dump = Dedicated Crash Dump  file .

This would be good idea for troubleshooting the systems which has the very large RAM .



By Default the Crash dump always write the files to %systemroot% memory.dmp if you have choosen an alternative location this will be writing to that file after the server reboots.


So you should also consider the free space on that destination drive..

Managed Heap

Link to get more information about managed heap.



http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alejacma/archive/2009/07/07/managed-debugging-with-windbg-introduction-and-index.aspx

Fixing Unlic mode in powerpath

We had experience this situation on  server with the dual paths showing the unlicensed mode. We had to execute the following to fix the errors.

Note: symptoms are after you upgrade the power path / the license key might have been removed / license wouldn't have taken into effect if its already added , then we need to try the below.  if you add the license key and reboot the server should pick its optimal policy automatically, if doesn't we need to try the below.  


1.    powermt check_registration
2.    powermt set policy=so dev=all  (eg so is for symmetric device , co is for clarion for other                       storage system its ad .)
3.    powermt display dev=all 
4.    powermt save  (Save configuration.)

Required valid host name when logging FTP

Last week we had an issue with the users who were actually trying to get to our newly built FTP sites which were currently migrated from iis6 to iis7

user were getting they need to use the valid hostname inorder to login

Later found from the team that there is special way to login these

When you are using FTP virtual hosts you need to specify the host name as part of the login; for example:

c:\>ftp sitename.com|username

this should work.

List the PID tied to website in IIS

Today there was a website which was running with almost 99% of CPU , there were many websites running on the server. To list the PID along with the website . We got to use iisapp.vbs which is located on the system32 folder of the os . Executing the vb script from the command line tell all things about it

iisapp.vbs

ESX host commands

Shutdown -h now "will halt the system"
vmware-cmd -l "will list the virtual machines vmx path"
esxtop "will list the top process running on the esx host "

msg.hbacommon.outofspace

I am getting an error msg on this server

msg.hbacommon.outofspace:There is no more space for virtual disk server_1-000008.vmdk. You may be able to continue this session by freeing disk space on the relevant partition, and clicking Retry

After investigating , the datastore got filled up coz of the snapshots of the virtual machine.
so we decided to delete it and After deleting the snap shot , the system doesn't boot up and was searching for the vmdk file which no longer exist.the failed.

After looking at the below found that the snapshots grow with its size on datastore with the changes that it has undergone

The server died and we got to point the vmx file to the old base disk .

Later found that from forums that

1.we can power down the VM and so that we will get get free space equal to the amount of RAM allocated to the VM. You can them do a storage vmotion to another Datastore with large enough space.

2. After powered down the VM, do a manual snapshot, then chose to "Delete All" snapshots. That cleared everything up for me.

3. Just clone VM to another storage using VMware Converter.