Something that I have been meaning to write up for some time now...

In nearly every environment I have worked in I have always come across some type of issue with Broadcom NICs.

In my most recent bout, it was determined that the network wasn't always (seemed to swap between having link negotation issues and invalid IP addresses) 100% initialised in WinPE before a task in the unattend.xml started executing. In our particular case we were working with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit which builds a custom WinPE image as part of deployment point synchronising.

Sample boot.bat

@echo off
echo.
echo INFO: Executing Sleep
echo.
cscript //nologo "%systemdrive%\sleep.vbs" 10
echo.
echo INFO: Renewing IP Address
ipconfig /renew
echo.
echo INFO: Executing Sleep
echo.
cscript //nologo "%systemdrive%\sleep.vbs" 10
echo.

Sample sleep.vbs

If Wscript.Arguments.Count = 0 Then
   ' Print Usage then quit
   Wscript.Echo "Usage: cscript sleep.vbs <Number>"
   Wscript.Echo " <Number> - Number of seconds to sleep."
   Wscript.Quit
Else
   ' Print how long we are sleeping for
   Wscript.Echo "INFO: Sleeping for " & Wscript.Arguments.Item(0) & " seconds"
   NumSeconds = Wscript.Arguments.Item(0) * 1000
   'Sleep
   Wscript.Sleep(NumSeconds)
End If

Unattend.xml Extract

<RunSynchronous>
   <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
      <Description>CommandBreak WINPE Customisations</Description>
      <Order>1</Order>
      <Path>X:\boot.bat</Path>
   </RunSynchronousCommand>
   <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
      <Description>Lite Touch PE</Description>
      <Order>2</Order>
      <Path>wscript.exe X:\Deploy\Scripts\LiteTouch.wsf</Path>
   </RunSynchronousCommand>
</RunSynchronous>

Last week I was configuring a lab server with Hyper-V RC0 when I came across this error after creating a Virtual Switch with VLAN ID enabled:

Switch set up failed, name='3742d220-e73d-4ae5-bf0c-429ca168dc41', external port='d02dcb9e-76d4-496a-9c17-ea808e5ce125', internal port='375e5f91-b1fb-415d-8717-cd3ea36c9753', NIC='{165929BF-5BA2-4887-BC54-1D52C1A6BE61}', internal name='07b53c30-5d56-4a2d-a542-146773d39299', internal friendly name='Virtual Network Connection (VLAN Trunk)', error=2147749896, mof code=0.

Located in the Hyper-V application log this error resulted in a failed switch configuration and without a supported way to remove Virtual Switches (doesn’t seem right does it?) prevents you from creating any other network using that interface.

Turns out that this error occurs if you are creating a new network (with VLAN ID enabled) on a physical interface that doesn’t have a default VLAN ID specified, see example image below.

Hyper-V Networking
Hyper-V provides many networking improvements and the Virtual PC Guy’s has put together a great blog post explaining the changes, worth while reading for those making the move from Virtual Server.
Understanding Networking with Hyper-V

Last week I had the "pleasure" of configuring a Dell PowerConnect switch. Not a bad piece of kit, just not a Cisco, the PC6224 is a Layer 3 switch with 24 x GB Ethernet (GBe) ports and 4 x GB Interface (GBIC) ports.

Once racked and powered the real fun started – CONFIG....

> en
> sh run
Oops apparently I meant
> show running-config
> conf t
Again, oops I apparently meant
> configure
....
> wr mem
Doh - I mean
> write memory
No, humm
> save
Where is that !@#$ing command line reference manual!@!@!

The commands are fairly similar to those on a Cisco and with tab complete and in-line help it doesn’t take much to work out the differences. But beware there are a few gottya’s that I found and decided to share:

• Trying to wr mem maybe you should try copy running-config startup-config. What are we five! At least let me save my changes easily.
• The PowerConnect IOS doesn’t use alias, anywhere. Be sure to use that TAB button to complete your command before you execute it.
• No VTP, instead PowerConnect switches use GRVP (same thing just a different standard), so if you have to trunk between a Cisco and PowerConnect you have to enable GRVP on the Cisco first.
• It is only a 24 port switch. By purchasing the optional SFPs and installing them in the any of the GBIC ports you lose one of the GBe ports.
• No way to manually set the time and date on the switch. Clock is only configurable via an NPT server.
• Unable to set management IP on a routable VLAN. If you try and set the management interface to a routable VLAN you receive and error; luckily I managed to find this article which details the work-around.