Archive for July, 2009
Presentation: Understanding Social Media
Posted by: | Comments<This is not an official Third Tier event.>
In this presentation, I will not be demonstrating how to use Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan pages, LinkedIn and Blogs but rather I will show how other businesses are using social media and provide a general introduction to the terminology and the technology. Hopefully in a manner that is not geeky but rather easily understood.
I have allocated an hour for this event. My discussion will not take up the entire time. There will be time available at the end for Q&A.
When: Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Scheduled to Occur: Once
Duration: 1:00
Amy Babinchak has invited you to present an online meeting using
Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=9FFTG5&role=present&pw=c7%7BP8QC%60b
Meeting time: Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
When: Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Scheduled to Occur: Once
Duration: 1:00
Amy Babinchak has invited you to present an online meeting using
Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=9FFTG5&role=present&pw=c7%7BP8QC%60b
Meeting time: Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Add to my Outlook Calendar:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/meetingICS?id=9FFTG5&role=present&pw=c7%7BP8QC%60b&i=i.ics
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Third Thursday Taking a Summer Break
Posted by: | CommentsDue to a variety of factors (travel, vacation, other summer projects), the Third Thursday webinars will be taking a well-deserved vacation for the remainder of the summer. Look for us again in September when we pick back up with current topic sessions.
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So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
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WARNING:the CID values for both test machines are the same
Posted by: | CommentsOne unique incident occurred to me while trying to troubleshoot a MS DTC communication issue between SQL Server instances. A client of ours requested for assistance to fix a distributed query that uses MS DTC. Apparently, communication between the two SQL Server instances is not happening. My usual round of troubleshooting started with a series of network connectivity tests, ranging from PING to TELNET to NETSTAT to whatever is necessary to make sure that communications between the servers are working fine. That led me to look for ways to check for connectivity specifically with MSDTC. One tool from Microsoft is DTCPing, a utility to help troubleshoot MS DTC firewall issues. While I know for a fact that firewall is not an issue in this particular case, I've decided to give it a shot. Running the DTCPing utility on both servers gave me this error message in the log
WARNING:the CID values for both test machines are the same
A quick Google search led me to this blog post and made me think that the servers might have been cloned. Sure enough, when I asked the customers about the history of the servers, they were indeed cloned VMWare images. They didn't use Sysprep to prepare the images after the cloning process, hence, the reason for having the same CID values. There's nothing wrong with VMWare here. It's just the process that's pretty screwed up. What are the chances of two machines having the same GUID values which are supposed to be globally unique across the enterprise? Very slim unless they are inappropriately cloned.
I followed the steps outlined in the blog post to fix the CID values
- Use Add/Remove Windows Components to remove Network DTC.
- Run MSDTC -uninstall in the command-line
- Delete the MSDTC keys in in the registry
HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/MSDTC
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CID
- Reboot the server
- Run MSDTC -install in the command
- Use Add/Remove Windows Components to add the Network DTC back.
- Restart the Distributed Transaction Coordinator service
Testing Exchange Connectivity
Posted by: | CommentsI was reading TechNet Magazine and it prompted me to remember about an excellent tool for testing exchange. Until I read the TechNet article, I actually didn’t realize that the tool belonged to Microsoft. It’s http://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com and it is now officially called the Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer – Beta. They’ve upgraded a few things since I first used it.
Here’s what you get:
When the results come back for each test you get a nice listing of the path it took to perform the test and a listing WITH explanation of any failures including links to support and technet articles describing how to resolve the issue that was discovered.
Here’s an example. In this example, I asked that the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Connectivity Test be performed with AutoDiscover. The results are detailed and below is an example of an error condition that it discovered including the link for information tips on resolving the problem. In my case, I do not allow port 80 connections to my server, so this error is expected.
The Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a well thought out tool that is excellent for verifying an installation or troubleshooting a problematic one. Keep this one in the toolkit.
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So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
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Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner
Posted by: | CommentsMicrosoft has renamed and retooled the Essential Business Server Preparation and Planning Wizard to indicate exactly what it really is – a AWESOME network health scanner. Not only does it scan but it helps you solve the problems it detects by providing links to support and technet articles on the resolution. It will check for about 150 health indicators and functionality of domain communications on your network. It’s great when you are preparing to install an additional domain controller, perform a migration or just walked into a new network and need to get a handle on what’s going on. Definitely add this one to your toolkit.
1) The link to the download site: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dd7a00df-1a5b-4fb6-a8a6-657a7968bd11&displaylang=en (aka http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=155170 )
2) The link to the blog that describes the new tool: http://blogs.technet.com/essentialbusinessserver/archive/2009/06/29/microsoft-it-health-scanner-released.aspx
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So who wrote this blog and what do they do for a living anyway?
We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
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Extending your Active Directory Schema
Posted by: | Commentsregsvr32.exe schmmgmt.dll
After that, you can now open up the Microsoft Management Console and add the Active Directory Schema snap-in. You can now add new attributes to the objects as you wish, although, updating the existing ones is definitely not recommended
Creating Active Directory Users with Windows PowerShell
Posted by: | Comments# define constants
$domainstr = ",dc=domainName,dc=local"
$domainnb = "domainName" # domain netbios name
$domain = "domainName.local"
$ADs_UF_NORMAL_ACCOUNT = 512 # Disables account and sets password required.
# Remember to enable the account before logging in
# Prompt user to enter the default passsword for the users
$defaultPassword = Read-Host "Please enter default Password:" -asSecureString
# Read the list of users from the CSV file
# Include other user properties in the CSV file as necessary
Import-csv users.txt | foreach
{
# Create user name based on FirstName and LastName column in the CSV file
$strUser = $_.firstName + " " + $_.lastName
#Form the LDAP string based on the OU column from the CSV file
$strLDAP = "LDAP://OU=" + $_.OU + ",OU=domainName Domain Users" + $domainstr
$target = [ADSI] $strLDAP
$newUser = $target.create("User", "cn=" + $strUser)
$newUser.SetInfo()
#Define a naming convention for the login based on your corporate policy
#This one uses the first letter of the firstname and the lastname
$userID = $_.firstName[0]+$_.lastName
#Define the other user attributes based on the columns defined in the CSV file
$newUser.sAMAccountName = $userID.ToString()
$newUser.givenName = $_.firstName
$newUser.sn = $_.lastName
$newUser.displayName = $_.firstName + " " + $_.lastName
$newUser.userPrincipalName = $_.firstName[0]+$_.lastName + "@" + $domain
$newUser.mail = $_.Email
$newUser.physicalDeliveryOfficeName = $_.Location
$newUser.title = $_.Designation
$newUser.description = $_.Designation
$newUser.SetInfo()
$newUser.SetPassword($defaultPassword.ToString())
#Normal user that requires password & is disabled
$newUser.userAccountControl = $ADs_UF_NORMAL_ACCOUNT
Write-Host "Created Account for: " $newUser.Displayname
}
