Tag Archives: Windows Server 2016

Shutdown Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) or Azure Stack HCI Hyper-Converged cluster safely

Yes, we are building clustered solutions to keep as high uptime as possible but sometimes there is a planned or unplanned electrical outage or maintenance work on power lines when we are simply forced to shutdown our cluster – and in that situation we want to do it safely.

When we talk about Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) on Windows Server 2016 / 2019 / 2022 in a hyper-converged scenario (when hyper-v virtualization and storage are inside the same system) it is very important to take care of properly shut down such system not to get in problematic situations where data corruption or some other issues could emerge. Becouse of that Microsoft has a great article about how to safely and properly shutdown a node in S2D configuration.

I would like to share with you a concept that could help you with getting whole cluster safely turned off.

Scenario consists of 2-node S2D solution, standalone hyper-v (on which I run file share witness (for S2D)) and PRTG that by using SNMP monitors APC UPS 2200:

So first of all we need to get the information about Battery capacity by using SNMP query to APC Network management card – this will be the value that we will monitor and based on the current value we will trigger some actions.

Then we need to prepare Notifications templates where we define Powershell scripts to be executed.
I am using three scripts:
– First script will make a graceful stop of storage services and put S2D Cluster N2 in maintenance mode (all roles will be drained to S2D Cluster N1) after that it will shut down S2D Cluster N2
– Second script will trigger shutdown of all virtual machines on S2D Cluster N1 and after 180 seconds it will shut down the S2D Cluster N1
– Third script will shut down third hyper-v host (standalone)

With the action Execute Program on our Notification Template we define which script we would like template to use and username and password that will be used only to execute the script on local machine (PRTG) – credentials for powershell remoting that will do the shutdown jobs can be safely saved separately so you do not need to enter plain-text credentials to access the hosts anywhere.

After that we need to configure triggers – when scripts will be executed based on the battery capacity – so in my case I decided to set it up like this:

When battery is on 65% turn off S2D Cluster N2 (drain roles (VMs and cluster service roles to S2D Cluster N1), put the node in maintenance mode, shut down the physical node S2D Cluster N2).
When battery is on 45% turn off S2D Cluster N1 by firs shutting down all VMs, than wait 180 seconds for shutdown to complete and then shut down physical S2D Cluster N1.
When battery is on 15% turn off standalone Hyper-V host – where our Witness and PRTG VMs are running

If we check the scriptblocks inside our scripts:

Shutdown-N2.ps1 (the script that in my case we will run first):

In first part of the script we need to setup credentials that will be used to execute powershell remoting:
You can do this buy simply entering username and password into the script (Please do not do that! Powershell allows you to do it way more securely. Please read this article about securely saving encrypted password in separate file.

Invoke-Command -ComputerName S2D-N2 -Credential $credential -ScriptBlock {
$nodename = ‘S2D-N2’
Suspend-ClusterNode -Name S2D-N2 -Drain -Wait
Get-StorageFaultDomain -type StorageScaleUnit | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -eq $nodename} | Enable-StorageMaintenanceMode
Stop-ClusterNode -name S2D-N2
Start-Sleep -Seconds 10
Stop-Computer -Force
}

Shutdown-N1ps1 (the second script that will be executed – this will turn off VMs and finaly S2D Cluster N1):

Invoke-Command -ComputerName S2D-N1 -Credential $credential -ScriptBlock {
Get-VM | Stop-VM -Force -AsJob
Start-Sleep -Seconds 180
Stop-Computer -Force
}

Shutdown-HyperV.ps1 (the third script that will turn off stand alone Hyper-V host):

Invoke-Command -ComputerName StandaloneHyperV -Credential $credential -ScriptBlock {
Stop-Computer -Force
}

So the shutdown sequence will be:
– when electricity is turned off and PRTG gets the info by querying UPS that capacity of the battery is under 65 %:
S2D Cluster – N2 will bi gracefully stopped (by draining roles and putting it in maintenance mode and shutdown after that)
– when the battery is under 45 %:
S2D cluster – N1 will be gracefully stopped (by shutting down all VMs and finally shutting down)
– when the battery capacity is under 15 %:
Our standalone host (where PRTG and File Share Witness (needed for S2D Cluster)) will be shutdown.

The procedure to turn the system back on is the following:
– First we will turn on standalone host (and Files Share Witness VM)
– Please do not turn on PRTG server until UPS battery capacity is not over 65% (because PRTG will turn on the procedures again if capacity is below 65%)
– When you checked that standalone host has network connectivity and File Share Witness VM is working and has connectivity too we can proceed further by turning on S2D Cluster N1
– When S2D Cluster N1 is up we can turn on VMs* (as Witness is there and N1 is fully functional you are able to start your production VMs – there will be more data to resync so if you have time it is better to wait for N2 to get back online and put it out of maintenance mode.)
– We can now turn on S2D Cluster N2 and when it comes back online we need to bring it back into fully functional Cluster member state by executing the script:

$ClusterNodeName = ‘S2D-N2’
Start-ClusterNode -name $ClusterNodeName
Get-StorageFaultDomain -type StorageScaleUnit | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -eq $ClusterNodeName} | Disable-StorageMaintenanceMode
Resume-ClusterNode -Name $ClusterNodeName -Failback Immediate

After executing the script you can check the progress of storage re-synchronization by executing Powershell cmdlet: Get-StorageJob

When UPS battery capacity reaches over 65% you can turn on your PRTG monitoring system again.

“Poor man” monitoring of creation/enablement and addition and removal to/from security group of an account in Active Directory (part 2)

“Poor man” monitoring of creation/enablement and addition and removal to/from security group of an account in Active Directory (part 1)

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If you want to implement “poor man” monitoring of important events that can happen in your Active Directory like – creation of an user or in case if someone enables or disables an user account or if user is added to a security group (for example in domain admins) you can do it by using out-of-the box solutions that Windows Server provides.

Without touching any additional auditing (by using Group policy or Local policy) you can simply attach a task to events:

Event ID: 4720 – A user account was created.
Event ID: 4722 – A user account was enabled.
Event ID: 4725 – A user account was disabled.
Event ID: 4728 – A member was added to a security-enabled global group.

I find these events very important because if they are not triggered by an intentional creation / modification of an user in Active Directory it might mean that someone is making some unwanted and potentially dangerous changes (and we all know how devastating for our infrastructure can be if privileges escalate to Domain admins level).

So let’s use out-of-the box solutions to get information if such event happens.
We will use:
Event Viewer and the option to trigger an action of out the event id by using Task Scheduler and some Powershell scripting to get alert e-mailed to administrator.

On DC I have created a folder on c:\ps in which I have placed PS1 script called: NewUser.PS1
In the script I have some lines that parse newly created Event with ID 4720.

$EventMessage = get-winevent -FilterHashtable @{Logname=’Security’;ID=4720} -MaxEvents 1 | fl TimeCreated, Message

$eventmessagetstring = $EventMessage | Out-String

$EventMessageAccountNameTextAdmin = $EventMessagetstring | Select-String -Pattern “Subject:\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+” -AllMatches | Select -ExpandProperty matches | Select -ExpandProperty value

$EventMessageAccountNameTextNewUser = $EventMessagetstring | Select-String -Pattern “New Account:\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+\s+\S+” -AllMatches | Select -ExpandProperty matches | Select -ExpandProperty value

$EmailTo = “me@domain.com”

$EmailFrom = “alert@domain.com”

$Subject = “New user in Active Directory!”

$Body = “New user created by: `n $EventMessageAccountNameTextAdmin `n `n `n New user username: `n $EventMessageAccountNameTextNewUser”

$SMTPServer = “YourSMTPServer”

$SMTPMessage = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage($EmailFrom,$EmailTo,$Subject,$Body)

$SMTPClient = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($SmtpServer, 25)

$SMTPClient.Send($SMTPMessage)

This script is saved.

After that we run Task Scheduler and create new Basic task where Trigger is When a specific event is logged on next screen we chose as Log: Security then Source: Microsoft Windows security auditing. and we insert Event ID: 4720.

After that we need to chose Action: Start a program as Program/script: Powershell and in Add arguments (optional): -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -File c:\ps\NewUser.ps1

on Finish screen we can check checkbox Open the Properties dialog …

On General tab of task properties we can chose radio button: Run whether user is logged on or not and then checkbox Do not store password. The task will only have access to local computer resources.

If you try to create new user in AD in couple of seconds you should receive e-mail with alert where you get the user that created new user in AD and the actual username of the newly created user.

new user

In the video you can check the tasks described above.

Enable IPSec between Windows 10 client and Windows server 2016 – simple video tutorial

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Today I tried to implement IPsec for certain protocols (in my example for TCP port 80 from Windows 10 client to Windows server 2016 running IIS and ICMP just to show it is possible to enable IPSec on per-protocol basis).

In my environment I have setup a simple domain with 2 servers, 1 DC and 1 member server with IIS, 1 Windows 10 domain joined client and one Windows 10 with Wireshark just to sniff the traffic (by using Hyper-V port mirroring).

You can check a 6 minutes video tutorial here.

So steps to enable IPSec by using Windows Firewall with Advanced Security (introduced in Windows Vista) are the following:

1. First thing you need to do is to create a security group where you put servers and clients you want to have IPSec policies enabled.

2. Then you need to create a group policy object on top of computers / servers OU (in my case I have created GPO on a domain level – in a production environment I suggest that you put it somewhere lower on top of your computers and servers OUs.
Remove authenticated users from GPO security filtering and insert your IPSec security group

3. Then you need to edit the GPO on the location: Computer configuration / Policies / Windows settings / Security settings / Windows Firewall with Advanced Security / Windows Firewall with Advanced Security / Connection Security Rules
Here you create a new rule:
– I choose Custom rule option
– I left Any IP address selected on both Endpoints (so it will work for all IP addresses)
– I configured the second option on next screen so – Require auth for inbound (so all inbound connections will require authentication – Warning! No access from workgroup or not domain joined computers) and reqeust authentication for outbound (www.google.com does not care about your IPSec policy :))
– On the next screen I used Computer (Kerberos V5) authentication method
– On protocols and ports – in my first example I used TCP 80 on Endpoint1 (so “server side” will require authentication for everyone who would like to access web server on port 80)
– I applied policy on all profiles and I gave a name to my policy.
After creation of the policy you should run: gpupdate /force on both – server and client – I did a reboot just to be sure it will do it – but most of the time gpupdate /force will be enough. You can see your policy on server and client if you open Windows Firewall with Advanced Security and you click on Connection Security Rules

I used another Windows 10 machine with Wireshark software just to monitor the functioning of IPSec – I used Hyper-V port mirroring to send copy of all traffic from my domain joined Windows 10 so you can see from captured traffic that policy was applied correctly and that traffic (opening the http://srv1 and later on pinging srv1) is encrypted.

How to monitor storage replication after Storage spaces direct node reboot (ex. after updates)

Luka Manojlovic

Luka's technical blog