Posts Tagged ‘server’

axon IT wins the Business of Lucas Credit Services

Posted by Anna on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

IT solutions provider axon IT is celebrating after securing a new account win with Lucas Credit Services – an innovative new debt collection company based in Bradford.

axon has provided Lucas Credit Services with an on-premise virtual solution through the provision of two new physical servers – one of which runs a virtualised version of Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) which is accessed remotely by staff working on thin-client terminals.

Graham Fern, Technical Director at axon IT explained; “Thin clients, contain no physical storage space. Employees access their company data virtually via a secure remote network connection, and all the company’s sensitive information, applications, databases and emails are now stored safely on the virtual server. This increases security by maintaining network integrity and makes the information employees are handling more secure as data is no longer stored locally.”

Nick Ramsden, Director for Lucas Credit Services added; “As a new business in the financial services sector, we need to be able to demonstrate to our clients that our security provisions for dealing with their sensitive customer data are completely robust. We needed a solution that provided us with the best network integrity together with the latest technology to enable us to deliver a first-class service to our clients.

“Our core business system – CollectR™ – is a completely new collections platform developed in-house integrating compliance and best collections practice into the latest technology. Developed exclusively from Microsoft products, it is written in .NET framework 4 with the industry standard SQL Server as its database and CollectR™ integrates with the outside world through web-services. So, as a Microsoft Gold Partner with expertise in Microsoft technologies axon IT was a natural choice to support our needs. The solution recommended and provided by axon IT is based on Microsoft’s Small Business Server 2011 and protected by their Forefront Threat Management Gateway which completely meets all of our requirements to secure our client’s data and be PCI compliant.”

Press Information:-
For more information, photography or an interview with the senior management team please call Anna Nicholls at axon IT on 0845 313 0025 or email alnicholls@axon-it.com.

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Unable to start the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service after uninstalling F-Secure PSB e-mail/server anti virus

Posted by Richard on Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

I while ago I made the mistake of installing F-Secure PSB E-mail and Server security version 9 on the messaging server of a Microsoft EBS 2008 installation. Although compatible with Exchange 2007, it transpired that F-Secure had not been tested in an EBS 2008 set-up and was therefore not officially supported. The software appeared to install, but it did not function as it could not verify the key and critically it stopped mail from flowing. F-Secure recommended deleting various registry keys to get mail flowing, but the program remained installed. All reference to fellow F-Secure was finally eliminated by finding the remaining F-Secure data fellow registry keys.

However, after a server reboot the mail once again stopped flowing because the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service would not start. I turned to Microsoft for help. The fix was as follows:

1. Entries of F-Secure were present in the agent.config file located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\Shared folder on the Messaging Server.

2. I ran the command reinstallDefaultTransportAgents from Exchange PowerShell from the location C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts.

3. Next, I changed the ObjectName from Adminstrator’s Account to LocalSystem for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeTransport.

4. I then started the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service.On performing these steps we were able to send and receive emails successfully.

On performing these steps we were able to send and receive emails successfully.

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Symantec Backup Exec 2010 DLO Desktop Agent Failed to Connect to the Media Server

Posted by Mohammed on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

A desktop or laptop user might get a Desktop Agent pop up message prompting them to enter their username, domain and password.

When the user’s details are entered, it may fail and the following error could appear:

“Desktop Agent failed to connect to the Media Server “SERVERNAME”. Please enter a valid username and password below”

This is because the desktop agent cannot access the user data folder on the server. So you need to check that the user can browse and access DLO agent share from the desktop or laptop they are working on.

To test this;

Go to “Start”, “Run” and type \\”ServerName” (this is the Backup Exec Server name).

Then, browse and open the User DLO backup Folder.

If this fails, you need to check the folder security options, and you may need to give the user read/write permissions.

This should resolve the problem and desktop agent should now work correctly.

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Cannot Access a CNAME network share from a Windows XP PC

Posted by Mohammed on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

We recently faced a problem whereby a customer’s database server stopped working due to a hardware failure. The server was running on a physical box, and XP and Windows 7 users had a mapped drive which pointed to a share on the database server in order to run the application from their PCs.

The solution was to build a new server, restore the database and connect users to the new server. However, this would have had a major impact on the business due to the fact that a new server would need to be purchased and delivered to site and then rebuilt. This process would have taken at least 2-3 days, meaning serious downtime before users could work on the system again.

axon IT had implemented a Hyper-V solution for the customer a few months previously, so we were in fact able to rebuild a new virtual server (Windows 2008 Standard) to host the database server straight away. The process of having a server ready in the production environment took less than an hour, which then allowed the administrator to restore the database on the virtual the server by around lunch time the same day, saving valuable days of downtime.

We then had to use the DNS entry (CNAME) to point the old server name to the new virtual server. This worked fine for Windows 7 users who were able to connect to the new share on the virtual server and then launch the business application. XP users on the other hand, could not connect.

We carried out some diagnostics on the XP clients and found that we could successfully ping the DNS record, but when trying to access the share on the new server, it failed.

I did some research online and found that this is a known issue with SMB share via CNAME alias. Windows 2008 and Windows 7 will work fine, Windows XP will have issues.

This fix for this problem comes in two stages;

1.Add a registry key “DisableStrictNameChecking” as explained on Microsoft KB 281308, (Connecting to SMB share on a Windows 2000-based computer or a Windows Server 2003-based computer may not work with an alias name):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281308/en-us;

2. Run the following set on the domain controller:
SetSpn -A HOST/<ALIAS> <Hostname>
SetSpn -A HOST/<ALIAS>.<Domain>.<ext> <Hostname>

This should effectively resolve this problem.

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Posted in IT Blog | Small Business Blog | 2 Comments »

SBS 2003 DHCP Server Not Working

Posted by Mohammed on Monday, July 5th, 2010

It is an administrator’s worst nightmare – he walks into the office in the morning and everybody is waiting for him as the users have no access to the internet, company data or emails. All eyes will be on him while he tries to sort the problem out and get everyone back up and running. The pressure will start to mount when he realises that the problem is not straight forward to resolve and further troubleshooting is needed.

This describes one occasion recently when I went to a client’s office after users logged a call advising that nobody had access to shared data or the web.

After doing some troubleshooting, I found out that the client PCs were not getting IP addresses from the server. This could have been caused by a physical issue on the network i.e. cabling, a faulty switch or even a faulty NIC on either a client PC or the server itself. After doing more tests, I concluded that everything was fine on clients PCs and the LAN, and the issue was with the Small Business Server box itself. I then setup all PCs with static IP addresses to get everyone on the network, while I tried to establish the cause of the problem.

Checks on the server showed that the DHCP server was fine, and there were no errors in the event log to indicate a problem with DHCP service.

Eventually, I discovered that ISA was blocking DHCP server from giving out IP addresses. This was caused by a deny rule (used to block users accessing some social networking websites) that was added to the ISA firewall policy a while back. The deny rule was placed above the “SBS Protected Networks Access Rule” ISA Rule (Rule No.18 or 19), which has “All Protected Networks” for both Source (from) and Destination (to).

To resolve the issue, the deny rule was moved down and placed above the “SBS Internet Access Rule”, so the deny rule would only filter banned websites.

The reason client PCs continue to work for a while after the deny rule was added to the ISA firewall policy, is that the IP address lease was still valid on client PCs and when client PCs lease expired, the IP address renewal failed.

Problem solved!

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