Lewan IT Solutions Technical Blog

Managed Services Customers: Capturing error messages for submitting tickets to the help desk

bmorgan42 — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:18:48 +0000

If you’re one of our Managed Services customers and you submit a helpdesk ticket because an error message popped up on your screen, it is generally very helpful for us to be able to see the full text of that error message. Rather than writing down the entire message which can sometimes be very lengthy, you can capture the information and send it to us using our management agent.

In your system tray (the lower right corner of the Windows task bar), there is an icon for our agent which looks like a little blue ball with white stripes.

If you click on this icon, a menu will pop up and one of the options will be Screen Capture.

Clicking on this option will send us a current capture of your screen, complete with whatever error message is on screen at the time.

Then when you submit the helpdesk ticket by calling us or emailing support@lewan.com, just mention that you sent us a screenshot. We’ll be able to find it in our management interface.

Enable Alt+Tab Application Toggling in a Citrix XenApp Desktop Session

phillipgmartin — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:58:48 +0000

I recently had a request for a user to be able to toggle between different applications inside their Citrix desktop session with alt+tab. The Citrix receiver provides this functionality with a registry change. There are a couple ways to send the hot key combo of Alt+tab to the Citrix session, but below I will show how to pass the physical hot key combo of Alt+tab from the client workstation to the Active Citrix session window (non-fullscreen mode).
This work will be done on the Client workstation and I am assuming the client has Windows 7 with Citrix receiver installed.
My background information was found here:
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX118974
http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/ica-settings/ica-settings-transparentkeypassthrough.html
1. Open regedit on the client device to edit the registry
2. Navigate to the key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\Citrix\ICAClient\Engine\Lockdown Profiles\All Regions\Lockdown\Virtual Channels\Keyboard\
3. Open Key: TransparentKeyPassthrough
4. Set the value to: Remote

5. Exit the Citrix receiver if it is started and log back into your Citrix desktop.
6. When the Citrix desktop session is the Active window, you will be able to toggle between the applications in that session with Alt+Tab

What’s Your Cloud Strategy (Ft. Collins Event June 27, 2013)

scottpelletier — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 21:34:34 +0000

You’re invited! Please join us for an informative discussion followed by beer and appetizers.

Are you ready to leverage the cloud for a variety of uses? Join us to discover the cloud strategies and best practices our team of experts has developed for both Lewan and our customers. Lewan’s CTO, Scott Pelletier, will discuss the technology and areas of potential benefit:

What the cloud means to you.
The offerings we’ve built utilizing cloud solutions.
Common use cases for cloud technology like mail, IaaS, SaaS, data protection and DR.
The next steps to get your cloud strategy started.

Cyber Liability Event – Denver, June 12, 2013

scottpelletier — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 21:30:58 +0000

JOIN US FOR BEER EDUCATION AND TASTING with Andy Brown, Wynkoop’s Master Brewer, as well as an educational talk on Cyber Liability presented by Van Gilder, Lewan and Ciber

Who Should Attend? CEOs, CFOs or Anyone Considering Cloud Services

LabTech Reboot Messages

bmorgan42 — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:10:59 +0000

If you are one of our Managed Services customers, one of the services provided to you is scheduled patching of your computers . Microsoft releases patches on a regular basis as do some other application vendors and our remote management software (LabTech) will apply these patches to your machines as needed and as approved by our staff.

Once patches are applied to your machine, if those patches require a restart of the computer you will be prompted by LabTech to reboot your computer with the dialog box below.

If it is inconvenient for you to restart your computer at the time the reboot is requested, you can simply dismiss the dialog by clicking the No button. The dialog box will count down from 90 seconds and if no response is given during that time the dialog box will dismiss itself and not restart the computer. This is to prevent loss of unsaved data should you be away from your computer and not able to answer the question in a timely fashion.

If the dialog box is dismissed it will pop back up hourly to remind you that a reboot is needed. Since the patches will not be effective until after the restart, it is a good idea to save any unsaved work and allow the reboot as soon as possible.

Cisco AnyConnect vs. Internet Connection Sharing in Windows 8

danpmartin — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:22:15 +0000

Having recently installed Windows 8 on my laptop to take advantage of the Client Hyper-V, I’m working through the kinks that come with a new OS on my daily driver. Hyper-V leverages the built-in Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) to provide NAT and DHCP for internet access for VM’s running on the hypervisor. This isn’t quite as intuitive as the network implementations in VMware Workstation or Oracle’s VirtualBox, but that’s a different discussion.

I recently had some trouble establishing the VPN connection, and set about re-installing Cisco AnyConnect as a result. During the install, a notification box popped up numerous times to warn me: “The VPN client agent was unable to create the interprocess communication depot.”

The VPN client agent was unable to create the interprocess communication depot.

The install completed after clicking OK on the notifications, but would not establish a VPN connection, with a not so informative message “Unable to establish VPN”. A bit of searching later, I found that AnyConnect is not compatible with Internet Connection Sharing, which Cisco states in the AnyConnect VPN Client FAQ.

The solution is to disable the ICS service before installing AnyConnect. Subsequently, when trying to connect, I encountered connection failures:

AnyConnect was not able to establish a connection to the specified secure gateway. Please try connecting again.

The solution is again to disable the ICS service, establish the AnyConnect VPN connection, and then enable ICS. Oddly, it seems that after the first failed connection attempt followed by stop / connect / restart cycle of the ICS service, AnyConnect can be reconnected without any trouble. Tedious, but it works. Ping me back if you know a better way!

Using Asigra DS-Client Logs

dougoakes — Fri, 31 May 2013 17:28:13 +0000

How to understand backup operations using the DS-Client logs

For Lewan Managed Data Protection customers wanting additional information beyond what is available in the daily or weekly reports, the Asigra software provides the ability to look at the DS-Client activity logs. This post assumes that the user has installed or been given access to the DS-User interface and is able to connect to their DS-Client server.
A previous blog post (http://blog.lewan.com/2012/03/29/asigra-ds-user-installation-and-log-file-viewing/) addressed the installation of the DS-User along with some basics on the activity logs. This post will provide additional detail regarding the data provided by the activity logs.

Open the DS-User interface and connect to the appropriate DS-Client

From the menus select “Logs” and open the “Activity Log”

Set the parameters for logs desired

By default the system will display all logs for the current and previous days. For this exercise only backup activity will be required. The date and time range as well as specific nodes (backup clients) or backup sets can also be selected.
Once all options have been set, click the “Find” button to locate the specified logs.

Backup windows

For each set backed up, the start time, end time and total duration of the backup job can be observed. Each column can be sorted to assist in viewing.

On line Data Changed

The column labeled “Online” indicates to total size of changed files for the backup. That is the total amount of space used by all files which had any chage since the last backup session. For example a server with a 30 GB database which has daily updates and 4 new 1 MB documents would show 32,216,449,024 (30 GB + 4 MB). This is the amoutn of data copied from the backup client to the DS-Client.

Data Transmitted to the cloud

The column labeled “Transmitted…” shows the actual amount of data changed and copied to the cloud based device. This is the amount of data contained in changed blocks from all of the changed files, after compression and encryption. If, in the example above, the database file only had 1 MB of changes the Transmitted column would contain a number similar to 5,242,880 (roughly 5 MB).

Determining error and warning causes

In some cases a backup set will show a status of “Completed with Errors” or “Completed with Warnings”. In most cases the errors and warnings are inconsequential but should usually be looked at.
Select the line containing the backup set in question and click on the “Event Log” button

Backup Session Event Log

Each event in the backup session is listed in the log. Errors are flagged with a red ‘X’ and warnings with a yellow ‘!’. Selecting the event will show the detail. In the example shown above a file is stored for which the backup user does not have permission to read the file. Other common errors are due to a file being used by another process and a file which has been moved or deleted between the initial scan of the file system and the attempt to access it for backup.
In some cases there will be a large number of errors “The network name cannot be found.” These usually indicate that there is a problem with the network connection between the DS-Client and the backup target but could be caused by a reboot of the backup target or other connectivity issues.

For our Managed Data Protection customers, the Lewan Operations team checks backup sets for errors on a daily basis and will correct any critical issues.

Additional analysis

The activity log can also be saved to a file (text or Excel spreadsheet) for additional analysis. Right-click anywhere in the activity log and select “Save As”. Used the resulting dialog to configure the location and file type.

SAVE! SAVE! SAVE!

kerridyles — Thu, 30 May 2013 20:37:42 +0000

Have you ever been in the middle of an important document when your computer crashes or freezes and realize you didn’t save it? You are not alone! I think we’ve all been there a time or two…or three! But there may be hope for us yet! The Auto Recovery (AutoSave) feature is here to help!

Depending upon the Microsoft Office version that you have, AutoRecovery (AutoSave) is a feature that will recover a document if your computer loses power or if a program error occurs while working in a document.

This feature will create a file similar to “AutoRecover Save of .doc.” When the program is restarted, the application will search your system for any of these files. Some documents may not be recoverable especially, if you’ve never saved the document before. And even if you have saved the document, you may lose recent changes. Once the program you were working in is restarted, it will automatically attempt to open the autorecovery files. If it does so successfully, then you will be able to save the document.

This is a truly valuable feature that Microsoft Office offers. But in order for it work, it must be enabled. To view instructions on how to enable this feature, go to: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/automatically-save-and-recover-office-files-HP010140729.aspx.

Lewan & Associates is now Lewan Technology

scottpelletier — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:47:56 +0000

LEWAN DEBUTS BRAND REFRESH HIGHLIGHTING TECHNOLOGY EXPERTISE

May 9, 2013, Denver, CO—Next month will mark 41 years of Lewan delivering great products, solutions, services and technologies to businesses in the Rocky Mountain region. In conjunction, we are excited to announce a brand refresh to compliment our growing business.

Lewan & Associates is now Lewan Technology.

This is an exciting time at Lewan as we continue to grow and expand our technology offerings to further support our customers’ needs. As our solutions grow, we also want to continue growing the Lewan brand to remain current and fresh. Part of this growth will pair the highly recognized and respected Lewan name with another word that represents our present breadth and width of solutions. With that, welcome to today’s Lewan: “Lewan Technology”. We will say goodbye to the “& Associates” part of our branding and usher in clearer picture of what we do best: technology.

“Lewan Technology is dedicated, as we have always been, to world class products, world class services, and a world class customer experience. Our name now emphasizes our commitment to technology leadership as well.” Fred Cannataro, CEO & President of Lewan Technology.

About Lewan
Rely on Lewan Technology to manage your print and IT solutions so you can focus on core business. As a subsidiary of Xerox, you can depend on our 40+ years of providing local service and support, backed by the trusted Xerox name. With regional Rocky Mountain offices and a national network of long-standing partnerships, you have a single point of contact for all of your technology needs.

Contact Information:
http://www.lewan.com
1.888.LEWAN11
solutions@lewan.com

Gaining user acceptance for your desktop virtualization project

Mike Garner — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:27:18 +0000

So proud of Lewan’s own Kenneth Fingerlos who will be speaking next week at Citrix Synergy. A link to his session overview is available on the Citrix Blog: Gaining user acceptance for your desktop virtualization project | Citrix Blogs. Well done, Kenneth! Read his post to the Citrix Blog below:

Gaining user acceptance for your desktop virtualization project
By Kenneth Fingerlos

With the IT press being dominated with articles on the pitfalls of BYO, MDM, MAM, mobile data and cloud-based services it’s clear that enterprise IT and end-users are thinking about different things. When we look at the OS on our compute devices it’s clear that more and more end-user concerns are driving the decisions which go into the design of the devices.

When IT takes on desktop virtualization we focus on costs, security and efficiency. We assess our users to help us determine what is needed for them to do their jobs. With that knowledge we optimize our designs to minimize costs and provide just what every user needs. We focus on single image management and questions of if MCS or PVS might be a better way to deliver our unified images. Do we need a 3rd party personalization manager or can we make due to with roaming profiles or perhaps we can drop personalization all together.

Meanwhile our users are purchasing iPads and Androids at an alarming rate.

It’s common for IT to focus on securing our borders, centralizing our data and developing the most efficient infrastructures we can. It is after all what good IT people are trained to. We read the design guides and perform our Assess Design Deploy process faithfully. We know who our user groups are and what applications they need. We’ve created pristine template images, with all of our corporate graphics and the approved list of applications pre-installed. In short, our design is textbook perfect we’ve addressed all of IT’s project goals and we’re ready to begin roll-out.

Why then do our users balk at adopting virtualized desktops? Often stalling or delaying projects indefinitely?

Often when projects reach the user testing phase we find that users are reluctant and frequently actively resistant to adopting new virtualized desktops. When presented with the new “IT Optimized” desktop paradigm our users blatantly refuse to use it. And the project stalls.

Let’s explore why users are resistant, and what we (IT) can do to help ease them into a new model. We’ll talk about easy use cases and end user wins. We’ll talk about marketing desktop virtualization to our users. We’ll talk about some not-so-easy scenarios that we may want to put off and tackle after the project has some steam and victories on the record. We’ll talk about gold images, RemotePC, personal vDisk, personalization and dedicated desktops. But most importantly we’re going to talk about what users are looking for and how we bring them on-board with the project.

Come join me Friday, May 24th in SYN216: Gaining user acceptance for your desktop virtualization project at Synergy Los Angeles to talk about these issues and learn how to not only drive user adoption but to convert your users into your project’s largest promoters.

Kenneth Fingerlos has been working in IT since 1996 in various roles including systems admin, IT manager and IT consultant with a focus on all aspects of datacenter and end-user computing. Kenneth currently holds certifications from VMware and Citrix and works as a systems architect with Citrix Platinum partner Lewan & Associates. Twitter: @Kfingerlos