AWS

Windows Activation on AWS fails

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Sometimes it may happen that a Windows Server fails with the Windows activation when this virtual machine runs on AWS. I’ve stumbled across this issue from time to time, and with some research and trial & error, I was able to fix it. I haven’t been able to figure out what is causing this problem yet. But at least there is a solution that works. The solution is to activate Windows manually, and maybe “force it to its luck”. The following steps should help you to solve such a Windows activation issue.

Activate Windows manually

NOTICE: This guide is for Windows Server 2016 and later.

Reset Windows Activation

  1. Start the Windows Registry Editor as administrator (right-click → run as administrator)
  2. Navigate to the following location: 
    Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform
  3. Go to the right panel and right-click on SkipRearm
  4. Select the Modify option and a dialogue box Edit DWORD 32-bit folder should appear
  5. Here set the Value Data to 1 and click the Ok option
  6. Restart the server now
    It is important to restart the server at this step. Otherwise, the next steps will not work.

Reset Windows Activation timers

  1. Now go to the Start menu, and search for Powershell
  2. Select the run as an Administrator option
  3. Type the following command and press Enter: 
    slmgr.vbs /rearm
  4. Restart the server now
    It is important to restart the server at this step. Otherwise, the next steps will not work.

Finally activate Windows

  1. Now go to the Start menu, and search for Powershell
  2. Select the run as an Administrator option
  3. Run the following commands:
    1. Press enter after each command 
      Import-Module "C:\ProgramData\Amazon\EC2-Windows\Launch\Module\Ec2Launch.psd1"

Add-Routes

Set-ActivationSettings

slmgr /ato
  4. It might be needed to add a Generic Volume License Keys (GVLK) here. To get the key for the correct operating system, you may visit this Microsoft article.
  5. Enter the following command and press Enter 
    slmgr.vbs /ipk N69G4-B89J2-4G8F4-WWYCC-J464C
  6. Set the KMS server to the AWS KMS server with the following command: 
    slmgr.vbs /skms 169.254.169.250:1688
  7. Run the next command to activate Windows: 
    slmgr /ato

Information sources

The following guides and articles have been used to write this troubleshooting guide.

driftar.ch is now serverless

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wordpress serverless

Some of you, my fellow readers, have probably noticed some downtime on my website yesterday. I migrated my blog to another hosting provider. That’s the only reason. You’re asking why? Well, I like a certain level of consistency in some areas of my interests. But in technology, especially in IT, the only consistency is constant change. So i decided to move my website (again).

How it all started…

It all began on Twitter when I joined a discussion about where to place the search bar or search field on a website:

That led us to the conclusion that a website should have no clutter and no word / tag clouds. I agree with that, since it’s not up to date anymore. But hey, that’s just my personal opinion.

And the discussion finally ended at the performance of a website.

I did some testings on my “old” website / provider and i wasn’t very sad about the results, but also not very happy. There is always room for improvements. So i did some research on the topic of using WordPress as content management system but providing static websites. Delivering static content like HTML files and images is way faster then delivering dynamic content. Even if you’re working with caching plugins and all that stuff. At least some of the content is still dynamic, thus generated when you’re accessing the website. Please don’t blame me if i’m not 100% correct, i’m not a professional web developer, but at least i know some basics here.

When you look at these tweets, you will find at least two solution which generate static content out of dynamic content, gohugo.io and jekyll. I think both solutions are great, if you know basic stuff about frameworks, programming languages and some more stuff. I tried it, i really tried it. But i failed. In my eyes both solutions are complex to setup and maintain. As i said, i’m not a pro web dev. And if you’re used to certain content management systems like WordPress, then it’s hard to switch.

I moved on with my research. As my employer is using various cloud solutions, like Amazon, i thought why not going (back) to Amazon?

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Veeam – Using Starwind VTL with AWS S3 in Veeam

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StarWind Cloud VTL

I wanted to test this use case for a long time. Now it’s finally done and i’m happy that everything worked at the first try. Or should i be worried? Well, as Veeam always says “It just works (TM)”. So it did also during the write up of this guide.

Most of you will know this kind of backup media type. And some of you will not only have good memories of them. I’m talking about tapes. Tapes we’re once used for backups. Daily incremental and weekly full backups. It took ages the more data you had. You’ve been happy if a full backup fitted in a 8 hour window throughout the night. You know that. But tapes are coming up more and more again. If you heard about the recent ransomware WannaCry then you know what it means to airgap your backups. Even Google has it’s tape backup system. Yes, Google. And there are reasons why some companies still invent and develop new tape technologies like new LTO standards, new drives and libraries.

To be honest, most of us homelabbers don’t have a tape drive nor a tape library neither. And that’s the point where a Virtual Tape Library comes in very handy! You can emulate a complete tape library with software and even use this emulation in a availability software like Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Availability Suite! But that isn’t awesome enough. We want more awesome and that’s the reason we go to the next level.

To make it clear, i’m not only talking about homelabbers. This software is not a beta or alpha or something other. It’s a rocksolid production version which is available on the market. This guide will show you how to install and configure StarWind VTL for AWS and Veeam.

With StarWind Cloud VTL for AWS and Veeam you can leverage your backup data for the usage with a virtual tape library to archive your backups to Amazon S3 storage in the cloud. If you want you can even go further and archive your archived data from the Amazon S3 buckets to Amazon Glacier. Isn’t that awesome?

So let’s do this now! I’ll show you how to install and configure this solution, and how to make it work.

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