December 16th, 2008 by Gabriel

If you try to run the Netdom.exe query fsmo command or if you try to run any remote procedure call (RPC)-based tool on the ISA server, you may receive the following error message :

“RPC server Unavailable”

Here is a quick fix for this error message :-

Configure the EnableRSS registry value and the EnableTCPA registry value

1. Click Start, click Run, type in regedit, and then click OK.

2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters

3. On the Edit menu, point to New, click DWORD Value, and then type EnableRSS.

4. Double-click EnableRSS, type 0, and then click OK.

5. On the Edit menu, point to New, click DWORD Value, and then type EnableTCPA.

6. Double-click EnableTCPA, type 0, and then click OK.

7. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the server.

Configure the DisableTaskOffload registry entry

If you continue to receive RPC errors, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters

3. In the details pane, make sure that the DisableTaskOffload registry entry exists. If this entry does not exist, add the entry. To do this, follow these steps :

#. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value
#. Type DisableTaskOffload.

4. Double Click DisableTaskOffload, type 1, and then click OK.

5. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the server.

December 10th, 2008 by Gabriel

Simple steps to configure PHP with Windows

Suppose you have installed IIS and PHP say at C:\PHP on your Windows server then to configure PHP in IIS you can follow the below mentioned steps :-

Open up Internet Information Server(IIS) :-

Click on “Web Service Extensions”, on the left side you will find a green arrow near to “Add a new Web service extension…” click on it.

A pop up window will be appeared. Enter Extension name say .php and for the Required Files put “C:\PHP\php.exe”, enable the check box of “Set extension status to Allowed” at bottom :-

Now to add extension for the web site if its not there, right click on web site in question and select Properties >> Home Directory >> Configuration >> Add >> here you can add the extension shown as below :-

December 8th, 2008 by Gabriel

Basic SQL Statements :

SQL is used to query the database which are almost same for SQL Server, MS Access, Oracle and MySQL.
There are four types of basic queries :-

SELECT
INSERT
UPDATE
DELETE
ORDER BY

Different combination of parameters can be passed to a query.

1] SELECT :-

its the most common SQL statement using which data can be selected from database and the output is returned to user.The result is

stored in a result table, called the result-set.SQL is not case sensitive. SELECT is the same as select.
Here is a simple example -

select name, bdate from user;
this will return all names and bdates from the table user.

select * from user;
this will return all records of user table.

select * from user where name=’john’;
this will return all records in which name = john

select * from user where name=’john’ OR name=’paul’ OR bdate=01012007
this way you can add multiple filtering using “OR” , “AND” clause.

2] INSERT :-

it is used to take the data input from user and insert it into table of the database. Data can be taken from any form or it can be

directly inserted using query.It is used to insert a new row in a table.
Simple example-
Insert into Table1 (FirstName, LastName, Phone) Values (’Gabriel’, ‘R’, ‘1112222′);

3] UPDATE :-

Using Update, we edit / modify any exisiting table. Either all the rows can be updated, or a subset may be chosen using a condition.
Simple example -
Update Table1 Set name=@FirstName, LastName=@LastName, Phone=@Phone where id=@ID

WHERE clause us very important in Update query. If you don’t use WHERE then it will update all existing records in the table.

4] DELETE :-

It is used to delete rows in a table. It also uses WHERE claue. The WHERE clause specifies which record or records that should be deleted. If you omit the WHERE clause, all records will be deleted.
Here is an example of a Delete statement-

Delete From Table1 where ID=10

it will delete all records in which ID = 10

5] Order By Clauses :-

It is used to sort the output returned by a query. Using this clause, you can sort by any field in the table.
Example -
Select * from Table1 Order By name

This will list all returned records sorted by Name alphabetically.

‘ASC’ (ascending order) or ‘DESC’ (descending order) can be included in Orderby query to sort the output in ascending or descending order respectively.
Like -

Select * from Table1 Order By name DESC

December 6th, 2008 by Mithil

Hi

Their are lots of misunderstanding/confusion in Quorum Disk working and its size required.

I will try to sort out this Confusion in this discussion

This post will help, to understand those people who know what Cluster’s are. However, going in this discussion we must know how cluster work.

Cluster is a service which is used for Fault tolerance of an application, it is not for Load balancing as one server is in Active mode and others are in Passive mode. All resources are owned by one [Active] node in cluster. So when Active node is owner of resources it will serve all the request coming to it.

Now if this Active node goes down then all the services that this server is running will be transferred to other node [Passive], and then Passive node become Active  node.

Now how does the Passive node comes to know that Active node is down and I should start working as Active node.

Now here comes the involvement  of “Quorums Disk” .

When you configure Cluster for very first time, all Cluster configuration Database information are stored in this “Quorums Disk” in \MSCS\quolog.log. The quorum is also referred to as the quorum log. Quorums has to perform two most important jobs, those are, it lets the cluster service know which node should be active and be owner of resources. Node that is owner of the resources can only be in Active Mode. QUORUM is the main interpreter between all Nodes of cluster and help other node to take ownership when Active node goes down.

In some cases if internal communication of Cluster node fails, Say “Heart Beat” link goes down, Passive node will consider Active node has gown down, and start querying Quorum disk that Active node has gone down and request to transfer all the resources to him, but this is not the case as Active node is still functioning, so again Quorum disk play important role to reject Passive node request.

Disk size

Recommended Size is just 100mb, I would suggest to give 300-500mb.

Hope this post will help you

In my next post i will let know what pre-cluster node configuration to check before configuring Cluster.