Updating Veeam I/O filters on VMware hosts

Background

You have installed Veeam I/O filters on your VMware ESXi hosts but they are out of date, i.e. they are not running the same version as your Veeam Backup and Replication (VBR) Server. You have been tasked to update your ESXi servers.

Issue

When you run the update of ESXi, you would get the following message:

''vSphere ESX Agent Manager' service reported issue: Agency ########-############ is unable to determine required solutions from its configured offline depots", which suggests that you need to update the I/O filter from Veeam.

When you try to update the I/O filter on VBR, you would get the following message:

"Host <your ESXi hostname>: The agent's workflow is blocked until it's required solutions are re-mediated externally in vSphere Lifecycle Manager"

Solution

Follow these steps to destroy the stale agency via the Managed Object Browser (MOB).

1. Identify the Agency ID from the error message or the eam.log file (format: Agency:########-############).
2. Navigate to https://<vCenter-FQDN>/eam/mob/?moid=<Agency-ID>.
3. Log in with administrator credentials.
4. Select DestroyAgency.
5. Click Invoke Method.
6. Retry the cluster remediation task in the vSphere Client.
   

Proceed to update the hosts via Lifecycle Manager and then update the I/O filters via Veeam

Reference: Remediation for an Image based cluster failed due to ESX Agent Manager (EAM) - vSphere

How to setup Room Finder on Exchange

Room Finder is a feature in Microsoft Exchange Online and Outlook that helps users find and book available meeting rooms. It displays room availability, capacity, location, and other facilities, making it easier to select a suitable meeting space when scheduling meetings. Behind the scenes, Room Finder represents collection of rooms grouped together by Exchange Distribution Groups. This is however more suitable and useful for rooms spread across several cities.

Imagine you need to add the following rooms into Room Finder:

• City 1
• Building 1
• Room 1
• Room 2
• Building 2
• Room 3
• Room 4
• City 2
• Building 1
• Floor 1
• Room 5
• Room 6
• Floor 2
• Room 7
• City 3
• Building 1
• Room 8

Steps to configure Room Finder in your environment

1. List down all existing Room Resources in your environment and group them by City, Building and Floor as above
2. Go to Exchange Admin Console (EAC) --> Room Resource and update the City field of all the rooms your want to add into Room Finder. You may use Set-Place command for this purpose.
3. Additionally, you may also set the floor parameter for your rooms using Set-Place command. Ex: Set-Place room1@yourdomain.com -Floor
4. Run Connect-ExchangeOnline (Run this beforehand if you intend to use Set-Place for previous steps)
5. To group rooms from Building 1 located in City 1,  run New-DistributionGroup -Name "City 1 Rooms - Building 1" -RoomList
6. Take note of the UPN (User Principal Name) of the distribution group created above
7. To add a room to the above, run Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity city1rooms-building1@yourdomain.com -Member room1@yourdomain.com
8. Continue to add more rooms as required ex: Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity city1rooms-building1@yourdomain.com -Member room2@yourdomain.com
9. Create another group and add rooms into it ex: New-DistributionGroup -Name "City 1 Rooms - Building 2" -RoomList
10. Run Get-DistributionGroup -RecipientTypeDetails RoomList to verify the creation of those groups
11. It may take up to 2 days for the Room List to update on Outlook client 
12. To summarise
1. You set the City field using EAC or PowerShell, this is compulsory.
2. Group them into Distribution Groups by City and Building using PowerShell
3. You may add other details such as the floor and capacity by updating the individual room resource. This is optional.
4. Users will be able to filter rooms by city and building and additionally by floor and capacity if configured.

Windows 11 April 2026 updates - BootDevice Not Found

Recent Windows Updates broke some Windows 11 devices, preventing them from booting.

Background

The affected devices will showcase the following symptoms:

1. User initiates the updating process
2. At some point, a message appears on the screen 'Something didn't go as planned. No need to worry-undoing changes. Please keep your computer on'.
3. Device shutsdown/reboot
4. Upon reboot, the following message appears 'BootDevice Not Found, Please install an operating system on your hard disk. Hard Disk - (3F0)'
5. Device will continue to load into System Diagnostics page in BIOS

Solution

 

1. Boot to a Windows USB
2. Go through the prompts and select ‘Repair this PC’
3. Choose language
4. Select Troubleshoot -> Command Prompt
5. Enter BitLocker Recovery Key (if enabled)
6. Enter the following commands

1. diskpart

2. list disk

3. sel disk 0 (usually its 0, otherwise check which disk contains Windows from the previous command)

4. list vol

5. sel vol 1 (usually its 1, verify from the list vol command which volume is about 100MB and FAT32 format)

6. assign letter=Y (or any letter)

7. exit

8. bcdboot C:\Windows /s Y: /f UEFI

7. Close the command prompt
8. Select Exit and continue to Windows 11
9. Enter BitLocker Recovery Key (if enabled)

10. If Windows still doesn’t boot, repeat the above steps once more