Enabling & starting Dedup

To Enable dedup on a volume: sis on path

where path is the complete path to the FlexVol volume, ie. /vol/vol1.

To start dedup operations: sis start [-s] [-f] [-d] [-sp] /vol/volname

• The —s option scans the volume completely and you are prompted to confirm if deduplication should be started on the volume.
• The —f option starts deduplication on the volume without any prompts.
• The —d option starts a new deduplication operation after deleting the existing checkpoint information.
• The p option initiates a deduplication operation using the previous checkpoint regardless of how old the checkpoint is. Note: This option should be used along with -s only. This is applicable if checkpoint data is corresponding with the gathering stage.

Creating a dedup schedule

Command: sis config -s schedule path

schedule lists the days and hours of the day that deduplication runs. The schedule can be of the following forms:

• day_list[@hour_list] - If hour_list is not specified, deduplication runs in at midnight on the morning of each scheduled day.
• hour_list[@day_list] - If day_list is not specified, deduplication runs every day at the specified hours.
• A hyphen (-) disables deduplication operations for the specified FlexVol volume.
• auto - Deduplication runs automatically when the number of blocks added or changed since the last deduplication operation (performed either manually or automatically) exceeds approximately 20 percent of the total number of blocks that deduplication has already processed.

path is the complete path to the FlexVol volume.

Example
The following command starts deduplication operations at 11 p.m., Monday through Friday.

• sis config -s mon-fri@23 /vol/vol1

How to give access to SQL 2005 Activity Monitor

To view the Activity Monitor the user needs VIEW SERVER STATE permission on a SQL Server 2005 server.

Permission to KILL a process default to the members of the sysadmin and processadmin fixed database roles, and are not transferable.

References: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175518(SQL.90,printer).aspx

Creating MetaLuns

Good link to step by step for setting up EMC MetaLuns.

Reference: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/10/23/how-to-create-a-metalun/

Sharing a picture on Flickr

Somewhat off topic, but just wanted to blog it for my own notes...

To share private pictures from a Flickr account, you can do a "Share This" and email a guest pass to someone. To allow "guest" to be able to download "all sizes", you can change the Copyrights to something other than "All rights reserved".

Another way is to use this:
http://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/downloads/

But, this applies to your whole photostream. If you mark your pictures all private, others still won't be able to download unless you give them a guest pass.

How to SSL enable SQL 2005 Reporting Services

This assumes you have received the required CERT to enable SSL on IIS.

1. Install SSL cert to IIS and enable SSL and required 128-bit.
2. Open Reporting Services Configuratioin tool to configure the Report Server Virtual Directory.
3. Select Require Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection checkbox.
4. Select level 3.
5. Enter certificate name which is (usually) the DNS of the webserver.
6. Click Apply.
7. Using Notepad, edit RSReportServer.config and modify the UrlRoot to use "https:" and the full DNS (certificatename) of the webserver.
   https://certificatename/reportservervirtualdirectoryname

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345223(SQL.90).aspx

Netbackup Restore Jobs

I was trying to do a SQL database restore job and in the Netbackup (NBU) Admin Console, the job showed that it successfully completed. However, on the SQL agent client console the job status showed that it failed.

The solution was that the MAXTRANSFERSIZE had one value "0" in the backup script and a different value "6" in the restore move script. Once I changed the "6" to "0", the job worked.

For more info on this, see Netbackup SQL Administrator's Guide at http://support.veritas.com/docs/290212

Reference: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/311524.htm