Instance does not have a volume attached at root (/dev/sda1)

Error :Instance does not have a volume attached at root (/dev/sda1) 

The error occurs when either a boot volume is missing or mapped to wrong device name. In this case EC2 instance is expecting the boot device name /dev/sda1 to be connected to the EC2 instance and unable to find it

The step is valid for EC2 instances is backed by EBS volumes i.e EBS is used for boot volumes rather than Instance Store

Note: To Understand more about Instance backed store and EBS backed store
refer this article Amazon EC2 Root Device Volume




To attach a root volume follow these steps.

• Create   a new EBS Volume. Click on Volumes when in EC2 Instance page

• Once EBS volume is created , right click and select Attach Volume

• Select the EC2 instance in second textbox and enter the device name as "/dev/sda1"

• Click Attach and restart the EC2 instance 

 Do leave comment if the solution works and even if it doesn't work . Thanks!

node -v ReferenceError: node is not defined

Trying to make node.js work with command node -v and end up with an error 

node -v ReferenceError: node is not defined 

You are probably trying to run the command in REPL  virtual environment

In order to check node.js version go to the folder with node.js files and run command from command prompt 

About REPL 

REPL ( Read- Eval-Print -Loop) is an virtual environment that comes with Node.js. It is tool to test simple Node.js javascript code. 

Learn more here about REPL

AWS Costing

If you ask any AWS geek , what is the biggest change they have noticed after moving On-Prem workloads to Cloud, you will mostly hear typical well known answers "better management" , "Less Operations overhead "...so on ..

One important trait which they aquire but will not acknowledge as they are not aware either is acquiring  a  "Mulah mindset" . [ for those who are wondering what mulah is, let me make it simple. mulah ~ money"]

Be an  Architect , IT manager, Developer one thing you need to be good at when working with AWS is costing. I know its hard , never had to deal with costing before so frequently  as old school style only involved painful money discussion during the budget cycle  when capital investment needs to be budgeted during initial stages of planning. 

Good part is, you don't need to have a Phd to understand costing but do need to spend some effort to get used to calculation. [ Paradigm shift is good thing]

AWS provides some good tools and lots of information to make life easier . Below are some useful links

Simple Monthly Calculator 

AWS TCO  

AWS Free Tier 

AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs AWS CloudFormation

One question , i get in most of sessions when talking about Elastic Beanstalk is
"difference between Elastic beanstalk and CloudFormation"

I would like to keep this explanation very simple.

Use  Elastic Beanstalk when you want to deploy the application from supported developer tool and don't want to worry about provision of infrastructure prior to deployment. Elastic beanstalk framework will provision the infrastructure and deploy the code to servers.

Use CloudFormation  when you want a framework to define collection of related AWS resources and provision them in an orderly and predictable fashion


Important to Note 

AWS CloudFormation supports Elastic Beanstalk application environments as one of the AWS resource types


Detailed Information :

CloudFront 

Elastic Beanstalk

DIY vs AWS

Came across a very good , simple to understand comparison between AWS and DIY (Do-It Yourself)

DIY	AWS
Scale Up	Elastic Service(On-Demand/ When needed)
Assume Reliable Infrastructure	Assume Infrastructure Failure
Diverse Technical Expertise	Application Based Expertise
Application Unaware of Infrastructure	Application aware infrastructure
High Upfront Cost	Usage Based Cost
Design, Build, Operate	Limited Knowledge/ Shared Support
Showback , charge back challenging	Showback , Chargeback can be achieved by granular monitoring of usage

AWS vs Azure

Age old question .....

Check this comparison matrix

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/campaigns/azure-vs-aws/mapping/

Polyglot Solution - Database Scaling

I keep getting question around database scalability and generally seasoned architects have a good idea about scaling the Databases by providing the polyglot solution.

This one is for the newbies who would like to understand more about database scaling, mainly in today's cloud world wherein just using one type of database is not good architecture strategy for prime time rollout of applications for larger audience with huge data exchange potential

If you do a google search "Polygot Persistence" you will get a large number of document detailing the definition

If you are looking for document more technical in nature , download  this document
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=40327

Hope you have fun with Polyglotting!!!

Error connecting to the workflow manager: Undefined . Nintex Workflow for Office 365

If you are getting this error while creating a Nintex Office 35 workflow. Check this out

https://community.nintex.com/community/support/blog/2014/10/29/error-error-connecting-to-the-workflow-manager-operation-is-not-valid-due-to-the-current-state-of-the-object

Pre-Requisite

- Powershell 3.0 

  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34595

- Sharepoint Online Management Tool

  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35588

Export Term Set to Excel - SharePoint Metadata Services - Powershell Script

# Add SharePoint PowerShell Snapin
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

 # File and Directory Location
$dirLocation = "D:\temp\TermStore\"
$date = get-date -Format yyyyMMdd
New-Item ($dirLocation + $date) -Type Directory | Out-Null
$file = New-Object System.IO.StreamWriter(($dirLocation + $date) + "\Terms.csv")

# Connect to site with MMS service connection
$taxonomySite = Get-SPSite -Limit 1
 
# Connect to Term Store in the Managed Metadata Service Application
$taxonomySession = Get-SPTaxonomySession -site $taxonomySite
$taxonomyTermStore =  $taxonomySession.TermStores | Select Name
$termStore = $taxonomySession.TermStores[$taxonomyTermStore.Name]

# Ampersands are stored as full width ampersands within the MMS database.
[Byte[]] $amp = 0xEF,0xBC,0x86

# CSV headers
$file.Writeline("Term Name,Id,Owner,CreatedDate,LastModifiedDate,TermSet,TermSetOpenStatus,GroupName")

# Term counter
$i = 0

foreach ($group in $termStore.Groups) {
    foreach ($termSet in $group.TermSets) {
        foreach ($term in $termSet.GetAllTerms()) {
            [Byte[]] $amp = 0xEF,0xBC,0x86;
            $file.Writeline("""" + $term.Name.Replace([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString($amp), "&") + """" + "," + $term.Id + "," + $term.Owner + "," + $term.CreatedDate + "," + $term.LastModifiedDate + "," + $term.TermSet.Name + "," + $term.TermSet.IsOpenForTermCreation + "," + $term.TermSet.Group.Name);
            $i++
            Write-Host -ForegroundColor Cyan  "# Exporting TermSet: " -NoNewline
            Write-Host -ForegroundColor White $termSet.Name -NoNewline
            Write-Host -ForegroundColor Cyan  " Term: " -NoNewline
            Write-Host -ForegroundColor White $term.Name -NoNewline
            Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green " - Done"        
            }          
        }              
    }
$file.Flush()
$file.Close()

Write-Host
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Cyan  "# Exported " -NoNewline
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green  $i -NoNewline
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Cyan  " terms"

Microsoft Azure..wondering where to start????

These are good starting point

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Windows-Azure-DevCamps/Windows-Azure-Dev-Camp-Online

http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/product-training/microsoft-azure

http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/colleges/windows-azure-deep-dive

Deploying SSL in multiple web application in same Server

I keep getting question on how to deploy SSL to multiple web application in same server. Found this great article to achieve the same

https://www.digicert.com/ssl-support/ssl-host-headers-iis-7.htm

Error while crawling MySite users wherein MySite Web application is set up with SSL

Error Message:

sps3s://www.domain.com/site$$$people/bucketid=1/itemid=539

An unrecognized HTTP response was received when attempting to crawl this item. Verify whether the item can be accessed using your browser. ( WebExceptionStatus: TrustFailure The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.; SearchID = 22908598-2E57-4053-96F5-FBB55B029959 )


Solution:

Ensure the SSL cert is registered under "Manage trust" in SharePoint central Admin


Step 1: Export the SSL Certificate

•  Open the cert from browser. Click on the lock  in address bar 
• Go to the tab called “Certification Path”, select the root CA certificate and click “View Certificate”
• Select the “Details” tab and click on “Copy to file”
• Save the file in your machine

Step 1: Import it in SP Central Admin

• Go to SP Central Administration  / Security / Manage Trust. Click on “New”, add the root CA certificate from the local machine 

This should do the trick

User Profile not showing up with proper domain name: User profile sync issues

User are showing up with  different domain name after full profile sync.

For e.g . I have all the users defined in ABC domain but after sync some users are showing up as different domain.

expected users in User Profile : ABC\user1
but showing up as : DEF\user1

Note: There is no domain with name DEF but it still shows up that way.

One of the possible reason is Domain netbios name is different than the FQDN of the domain

Check out article below , section Permission requirements: Domain netbios name is different than the FQDN of the domain

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/russmax/archive/2010/03/20/sharepoint-2010-provisioning-user-profile-synchronization.aspx

New-SPTrustedIdentityTokenIssuer Exception of type 'System.ArgumentException' was thrown

Error Message 

New-SPTrustedIdentityTokenIssuer: Exception of type 'System.ArgumentException' was thrown.

Solutions

Ensure:

• The name of the SPTrustedLoginProvider is not been using
• The length of the name is less than 50
• The certificate is not been using

Missing on {ServerName} Error even after patch is Installed

Are you getting an error "Missing on  {Servername}" even after installing the patch?

Something like this ?

Try running the powershell command  Get-SPProduct –local  in the server where the patch is showing up as missing  and if are having good day, it will take care of the issue and on refresh the message will go away


If running the command gives you Goose bumps, than dont worry its just a get operation. More here :
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607885(v=office.15).aspx

User Profile Service Synchronization Service Stuck in "Stopping" State

1.  stsadm -o enumservices > c:\services.txt - This will provide list of services

2.  stsadm -o provisionservice  -action stop -servicetype "Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ProfileSynchronizationService, Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" -servicename FIMSynchronizationService

User Profile Synchronization Service not Starting - SharePoint 2010

Started my task with lot of excitement to try out cross farm service publishing. Plan was to try  publishing the User profile service, so started configuration for user profile. 

---Tried to add new connection 

Boom...Errorr...User Profile Synchronization Service is not started. Ok. So that's not a big pain right. 

---browsed to services page and clicked on "Start" for user profile synchronization service....

Boom...service stopped. 

---Scratching my head for next hour , google google google ...bing bing bing....

At last one suggestion found , try restarting SharePoint Timer Services

--- Restarted timer services 

Boom ...service started :-)

 

SharePoint 2010 Site Inventory

If you keep on hearing the question

How can we get inventory of all the site collection/ subsites in a web application including the created and last modified date of these sites.

well you don't have to look for third party tool. Simple old fashioned powershell is  a saviour

Get-SPWebApplication  http://.contoso.com | Get-SPSite -Limit All | Get-SPWeb -Limit All | Select Title, URL, lastitemmodifieddate , created | Export-CSV C:\Inventory.csv -NoTypeInformation


Enjoy!!!

 

Object Expected JavaScript error in Start Page (start.aspx) - SharePoint 2013

Issue:

After creating new site collection when the user tries to browse main page, following error throws up and screen is stuck in "Working on it ....."  for eternity.....................

Resolution :
Browse to "Site feature" - > Look for "Minimal Download Strategy" - > [Deactivate the feature]


Browse to home page and the scripting error should have gone.....

Test host process exited unexpectedly - Failed to queue test run: Unable to start the agent process

Today i was taking session of developer group and talking about the Visual Studio 2013 Test tools. Well it seems they did tried using it and bumped into error("Test host process exited unexpectedly - Failed to queue test run: Unable to start the agent process")  on first trial. 

Well It was a easy fix. As the user was running 64 bit processor based VM, he was geeting an error as Test project setting were set to 32 bit. Just change the test project settings. 

Test-> Test Settings->Default processor Architecture ->Select x64