Microsoft Certification - Second Shot is back till June 30th

Micrsoft and Prometric have been nice enough to bring back Second Shot for the first half of 2010. If you are new to this then what this means is that if you register for second shot before taking your exam you can retake the exam (should you fail the first time) for free as long as you take the first exam and re-take exam before the 30th June, 2010.


Second Shot provides a free retake when you fail your first attempt at an IT Pro or Developer Microsoft Certification Exam, reducing concern and fear of not passing your exam.

http://www.prometric.com/microsoft/ss_mcp.htm

SAP Backup fails with 'Error message from likeywlib', 'could not load SSF library libsapsecu.so'

When DataProtector attempts to backup SAP 7.0 with Oracle 10g, it fails with the following error messages as seen from a partial session report:

HP KB ID # Document ID: emr_na-c00796851-1

BR1301W Error message from likeywlib:
===...could not load SSF library libsapsecu.so .
BR1301W Error message from likeywlib: likey_init: Couldn't load SAPSECULIB ("libsapsecu.so") using function SsfSupInit (), rc = 10.
BR1302W Initialization of license key library likeywlib failed, return code 1
BR1304W Checking SAP license failed at location BrLicCheck-104
BR0602W No valid SAP license found - please contact SAP

The environment variable DIR_LIBRARY was needed to satisfy a requirement for SAP's brbackup so that brbackup could find the SAP library - libsapsecu.so. This variable was added to the environment with the following commands:

In order to resolve the error simply run the following commands as SIDadm
/opt/omni/lbin/util_cmd -putopt SAP SID DIR_LIBRARY '/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run' -sublist Environment

The command should output with the following : -
Configuration read/write operation successful.

Cluster Disk 0 does not support Persistent Reservation error with Windows 2008 and Symmetrix

This is the second section of dealing with errors running the Windows 2008 cluster validation test with an EMC Symmetrix. The next errors is: -

Validate SCSI-3 Persistent Reservation
Validate that storage supports the SCSI-3 Persistent Reservation commands.
Validating Cluster Disk 0 for Persistent Reservation support
Registering PR key for cluster disk 0 from node servername.domain.com
Failed to Register PR key for cluster disk 0 from node servername.domain.com status 1
Cluster Disk 0 does not support Persistent Reservation

This post has moved - http://iunite.com.au/wp/blog/index.php/2011/09/cluster-disk-0-does-not-support-persistent-reservation-error-with-windows-2008-and-symmetrix/

MPIO errors, Windows 2008 cluster validation test failing and EMC Symmetrix

If you have ever tried to configure a Windows 2008 cluster using an EMC Symmetrix then you have probably come across this issue. If not then you might want to read on.
Windows 2008 uses Persistent SCSI reservations. The SCSI Reserve command and the SCSI Persistent Reserve command are specified by the SCSI standards. Servers can use these commands to prevent HBA ports in other servers from accessing the LUN.

This post has moved - http://iunite.com.au/wp/blog/index.php/2011/09/mpio-errors-windows-2008-cluster-validation-test-failing-and-emc-symmetrix/

How to Create an ODBC Connection for 32-bit application on 64-bit Windows

Just a reminder post really. Had a colleague today that was installing a 32-bit application on Windows 2008 x64 that required an ODBC connection. The trouble with this is that the default ODBC (Data Sources) under Administrative Tools opens the 64-bit driver version of the ODBC tool.
Therefore even though he had created the connections correctly the 32-bit application could not see them. To make things a little confusing 64-bit Windows versions install the 64-bit ODBC tool under C:\Windows\System32.
The 64-bit version is installed under C:\Windows\Syswow64\. Therefore this fix was to run the following command at the Run line: -
c:\windows\syswow64\odbcad32.exe