塔洛牌 - 五、教皇 (The Hierophant)

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愚人遇到的第五個人-教皇。相對女祭師的神秘不宣、他是張開雙手向世人宣教的。他是神聖和智慧的、幫助世人解決紛爭和帶來和諧。他就像是一個慈祥的導師帶給我們心靈上的平靜。他腳下的兩把鑰匙是開啓知識和生命的大門，不像女祭師緊握密卷，教皇是歡迎世人來開啓的。當然作爲一位代表神的發言人、他的話語是不被懷疑的也是不能隨意更動的，他必須為世人樹立一個榜樣。你必須要有信念。當然另一面他也是固執的，爲了維護他傳統的象徵地位。

他右手的姿勢是祝福的手勢、用天上的靈來滿足人們心靈的需求。左手的三橫權杖代表基督教的父、子、靈。

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他的話語不是從天上來而是從地下來了。他的追隨者在教皇的上面反過來控制了教皇，鑰匙也可能不再是開啓生命和知識的大門，而是把這些秘密鎖了起來。

塔洛牌 - 四、皇帝 (The Emperor)

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愚人遇到了第四個人，國王。威嚴的臉孔、穩固的石座、刻有山羊扶手、白色長須、手握權杖。這是統治一個國家王者，擁有多年的經驗（白色長須），他像是一個父親的形象。很明顯看出他統治的國家一定僅僅有條、有強大的基礎但或許會很專制。山羊座是十二星座的開始，代表了領導、激進、衝動、魄力。這張牌主要是講“控制”。

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國王從寶座掉下來，失去了統治能力，無法再控制國家了。

塔洛牌 - 三、皇后 (The Empress)

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皇后，擁有慈祥的面孔。地上有一個心性的盾牌，上面有金星(Venus)的標誌，金星是浪漫之神，也是代表愛、美、女性。她身上滿是果實的圖案、地上遍地小麥，是豐衣足食的象徵。小麥需要撒種、灌溉、成長，道明凡事需要時間的醖釀，絕不是現在快熟面文化。遠處的瀑布代表她的愛是很大和有力的。她就像一個母親，供給我們所需的，用盾牌來保護我們。不知太多的水會不會汎濫？

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瀑布的水不再灌溉麥田，女皇和她的皇冠也掉了下來。麥田和樹木也連根拔起。可想而知接下來是一片荒蕪和死氣沉沉。

塔洛牌 - 二、女祭師 (The High Priestess)

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愚人遇到了第二個人、女祭師。相對魔法師，她顯得非常安靜和内斂。手中緊握一卷露出一半的密冊(tora)，猜測這是有關人生和精神的秘密。但我覺得她並不會傳授給愚人，因爲時候未到。她的腳下有個月亮、一根寫B的黑柱、一根寫J的白柱、背後是被一塊屏風遮住了。月亮的力量是神秘的，而她卻可以踩在腳下，我想她比魔術師擁有更強的力量。胸前挂著的十字架，古希臘認爲世界由四种物質組成 -- 空氣、水、火、土，也表示東南西北。B是Boaz, J是Jachin。它們是耶路撒冷第一座寺廟 - 所儸門廟的兩根銅柱(From wikipedia)。B柱代表一切負面的力量而J柱代表一切正面的力量，屏風卻遮住了之間的一切，這些秘密的知識只有女祭師知道。我們人類能知道嗎？

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黑白顛倒、女祭師沒有了支配月亮的力量、密卷也搖搖欲墜。

塔洛牌 - 一、魔術師 (The Magician)

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聖杯(cups)代表愛情和情緒上的事
權杖(wands)代表事業，也有人說是創意、行動、熱情。
錢幣(pentacle)代表錢財和健康，是實在的物體。
寶劍(sword)代表人緣，也有人說是智慧、意志、挑戰。
愚人遇到魔術師，魔術師是非常正面和有力量的。他頭上有一個無限的符號，手握魔棒，一手指天、一手指地。表示他擁有各種支援，有通天地和改變的無限能力。魔術師腰纏蛇咬尾表示他有誘惑人的能力，所以需要分辨是真或假，而不是凴口說白話；這也表示永恒。花也表示他願意和人分享。我想愚人此時擁有了四种最基本的能力。

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你會看見他失去各種支援，桌上的東西都掉下來了。通天地也好像變成顛倒是非了。

Veritas NetBackup - SAN switch migration activity

This post is to summarize the SAN switch migration activity I performed for Telekom Malaysia.

Some background information : TM has more than 150 media servers and running their master server in AIX environment. I involved in the netbackup portion when customr is actuallly perform the SAN switch migration for their ACS tape library which has 44 FC tape drives.

Tasks performed and the useful commands:
1) Gather the existing nbu information. De-activate policies and make sure no jobs are running.
2) freeze the Netbackup cluster group persistent.
    - haconf -makerw
    - hagrp -freeze -persistent
    - haconf -dump -makero
    - hastatus -sum
3) remove tape devices from master server.
    - nbemmcmd -deletealldevices -machinename -machinetype master
4) bring down netbackup services.
    - bp.kill_all
    - kill remaining nbu processes.
5) customer perform SAN switch migration
6) Perform AIX scan after SAN switch migration.
    - /usr/openv/volmgr/bin/scan (to check whether all drives serial number are detected)
    - found some drives are missing, after confirm the SAN zoning is done correctly. reboot the AIX server and re-run the cfgmgr again.
    - lsdev -Cc tape, /usr/openv/volmgr/bin/scan
    - other commands like: lscfg -vl , /usr/openv/volmgr/bin/scsi_command -d /dev/rmtxx -inquiry, odmget -q "/dev/rmtxx" CuAt, etc are also helpful to verify the drives.
7) verified the cluster is in partial status now. Unfreeze the cluster and bring up the netbackup service group.
   - you may hit "unable to initialize device mapping, status=1" error if running scan command. This is due to the virtual IP and netbackup services are not up.
8) Launch the NBU console and use the device configuration wizard to scan the robotic/drives for master server only.
9) Once master server have all drives configured in NBU. Then you proceed to use device configuration wizard to scan for other media servers too. But please run the nbemmcmd -deletealldevices in advanced.

Email archiving - how to deploy Symantec Enterprise Vault? Part 2

What's next after setup the SQL database and Vault service account?
Then you should start to check whether the Enterprise Vault is ready to be installed on the server. The easiest and faster way to check is to use the Enterprise Vault Deployment scanner.

Login the server using Vault service account. Browse into your EV software CD and access the folder called deployment scanner. Then just run the msi file inside to install. (Normally I install into D: drive) Once installed completed, Launch the deployment scanner and fill in the SQL server full name and the EV server name.
Rest assured, the deployment scanner will tell you what is lacking and you just try to fix them up until all necessary items are passed.

Common items that you need to fix
1) MSMQ location - use add or remove program to add this windows components (you will need i386 to install it). Check "application server" and then the IIS, ASP.net, and message queuing inside. (refer installation guide for detail how to do it). Once you install MSMQ, then right-click "My Computer" and select "Manage". Expand the tree and you see the icon called message queuing, right-click it and select properties. So you may change the location now to SAN disk and it will ask to reboot.
2) .NET - you require .NET 1.1 SP1 & .NET 2.0 SP1. Both are needed, Enable IIS first then install .NET. For E-Discovery deployment, you also need to install .NET 3.0.
3) Registry entries - you no need to fix it right now. you will able to fix it easily during installation.
4) IIS - Access the IIS manager and see the web extensions, you must see both .net 1.1 & .net 2.0 are allowed.
5) Exchange full admin rights - if you are doing Exchange archiving, most of time customer will forget to give you "receive as" & "send as" permissions. Grant the permissions in exchange server using system manager.

OK. to be continued...

塔洛牌 - 零、愚人 (The Fool)

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可以看出這個旅人正興致勃勃踏上旅途。太陽和黃色表示充滿新希望，而紅色表示熱忱也暗示危險，因爲他的前方就是深淵。好在有貴人相助，白狗在警惕他。遠方險峻的高山也表示不要小看將來的挑戰。手握白色的花意指他單純想分享他的一切。小小的紅色包裹内就是他有的經驗和本事。所以看得出其實他並沒有充分的準備，就隨便上路了。儅他遇到魔術師時，到底是魔術師幫包裹變成杯、錢、杖、劍；或是旅人原本就有而魔術師蠱惑了他。就不得而知了。。。旅人之所以被稱爲愚人，也許是因爲太單純、經驗淺，比較容易被諞吧。

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可以看出旅人這時已經掉落深淵了，連白狗都沒法救他。太陽在下表示希望被壓抑了。

Tarot 塔洛二三事

Ta = 王者，rot = 道路
塔洛共有22張大牌(major arcana) 和56張小牌(minor arcana)
從大牌的面來看，可以看成是一個旅人的經歷(The Fool card)。
I - V 他看到的五個人
VI- XI 他遇到的狀況
XII - 開始進入另一種情況
XIII - XVI - 是嚴重的情況
XVII - XXI - 又進入開心的境界

玩Tarot有四個規矩
Rule #1 - 沒有一張牌可以預測。至少3張牌
Rule #2 - 和宗教沒有衝突。
Rule #3 - 心靈整合的工具，用於找出人的問題和其可能性。
Rule #4 - 跟命運無關。

塔洛屬於一種意象治療(visual therapy)，通過圖像來發現内心的世界，然後引導做出適合自己的選擇。嚴格來説，它並不是占卜。
正牌和反牌有不同的含義，所以我會貼兩個圖。我會用維特牌(waite deck)為准，尤其是初學者，因爲它接近古早的牌。每個人對牌的解釋會有不同，不同時候看的牌也會不同。所以我的解釋也僅限於我感覺的，你可以有自己的看法。

命中注定？還是事在人爲？

有些人會好奇去尋找一些關於命運的事，嘗試去預測未來。有些人會嗤之以鼻，認爲是無稽之談。看不見、摸不着的難道就不一定存在嗎？怎樣去證明？
我也不能在這裡證明什麽，至少現在沒有能力。我只是奇怪爲何數千年來，人類總是去預測一些什麽，動機是什麽？從2000年的末日到最新的2012。。。林林總總、眼花潦亂。
我想應該是人類以生俱來一種追求幸福的天性，大家都想過的越來越好。
我不是要在這裡探討哲理的問題，反而我對“林林總總、眼花潦亂”有興趣。西方有佔星朮、塔洛牌、諾斯預言；東方有四柱八字、紫微斗數、推背圖。數量太多沒法一一列出。
志在分享所見所聞，大家來給給意見。

Enterprise Vault - how to manually create audit database if the selection is missing from the admin console

Normally we enable audit for enterprise vault by right-clicking the directory icon in the admin console. However, I face a problem that the selection "enable audit..." is not shown after I re-install the EV software. Worst thing is I also deleted the EnterpriseVaultAudit database from SQL server. I can't find any document or technote how to create back the audit database.

1) Shutdown all EV services.
2) Manually create a database called 'EVaudit'. and select the path you want to locate the database and transaction log. Click 'OK'.
3) Explore to the \Enterprise Vault. Search for the file called 'audit.sql'. Double-click to open it.
4) In the SQL management console, Execute the audit.sql for 'EVaudit'. This will create required tables in the database. (This script will fail if the database name is not 'EVaudit'.)
5) Open regedit and verify HKLM\software\KVS\admin\auditing is available or not. If not, rename the file audit.reg.txt (in EV installed folder) to audit.reg and double-click to run it.
6) Now open the ODBC (from start -> administrative tools) and go to systemDSN tab. select the EVaudit and click 'configure'. click 'Next' Until you see "change database default to" and select the 'EVaudit' this time. click 'Next' again until finished.
7) Start all the EV services.

You may verify it by
1) Perform some action in the admin console.
2) Launch the auditviewer.exe to perform the search.
3) If the search fail, check the settings whether point to correct SQL server.

Note: You still need need to rename the Database from "EVaudit" to "EnterpriseVaultAudit" Due to the EV reporting services required the database name as such.
How to do it?
1) Shutdown all EV services.
2) Open SQL management studio and rename the database name to "EnterpriseVaultAudit".
3) In the EV services, Open the ODBC wizard. Select the System DSN entry 'EVAudit' and click configure.
4) Follow the instructions but only change the databasename point to "EnterpriseVaultAudit".

Email archiving - how to deploy Symantec Enterprise Vault? Part 1

Email archiving becomes popular recently in malaysia. Many organizations face challenges in maintain their MS exchange servers efficiently and start to looking for archiving solution. Symantec Enterprise Vault is one of the leader product (6 years in a row in gartner quadrant). By implementing Enterprise Vault allows customer to move rarely used emails into lower tier storage. Meanwhile provide seamless experience to the end user (mailbox user). This will significantly save the capacity in first tier storage and hence reduce the load on MS exchange servers. After some times, IT department may find that they able to reduce number of exchange servers in their environment, and end user will forget when is the last time they need to perform housekeeping due to overquota. :) Win-win situation, isn't it?

So... how can i bring joy to the technical engineer? I will show how to deploy this Symantec EV in a neat guide thus save your life in reading manuals. What is the first thing you need to do is to create the Vault service account. Vault service account is used to run EV services and access target servers, and it has the most powerful permission rights. I will call it VSA.

Bear in mind that Symantec EV is running on windows environment with Active Directory.
1) Create a domain user account (Domain admin account will also work)
2) Assign VSA into local admin group in EV server, MS SQL server and target exchange servers. (Please do this even customer has already give domain admin account sometimes)
3) Assign VSA for Exchange Full administrative rights (this is for exchange server archiving).
4) Assign dbcreator and sysadmin rights for VSA in MS SQL server. (please refer installation guide if you don't want to assign sysadmin rights)
5) VSA account must be enabled and password never expired.

Yeah. I did mention MS SQL server. It is required to save the EV configuration data and metadata. I will normally install the SQL software with reporting services and workstation component.

Then you require a system mailbox in the exchange server.
1) one exchange server require one system mailbox.
2) system mailbox must have unique name.
3) system mailbox cannot be hidden.

To be continue....

Save your life in IT territory

All started by the onions show, a guy who was con by the sales guy and bought the BATES 4000, a PC that means future and nothing better, then found out this fancy 4000 becomes a rubbish when he just try to hook it up. Fortunately he able to kill the bates guy in the show.

This is a comedy show of coz. In IT world, this is really what I experience. Being an IT engineer for 10 years, I have met many customers and do many projects. All about these is just to cover their own ass. Sales over commit, consultant given the wrong design, project manager just care about his timeline, even customer don't know what they want. End up engineer had to work day & night to get the things work, is just like playing the puzzle. However, engineer is the one who getting the less paid among all.

I still believe this world has good guy, maybe somewhere so i haven't met them.
I know technical guy will sometimes being push to corner & everyone just simply put all the hopes on him and pray that he can make the miracle to solve all the technical problem. This is the purpose I open this blog and try to help them. At least bring some joy to this world.

I am specialized in systems infrastructure. If you have any problem about backup & archive, cluster, storage, SAN, server, UNIX... please share your burden with me (or maybe someone who see this blog). I will do the best to guide you out from the dark tunnel.