Thanks Brad for the post "Windows Management with MDOP" to bring awareness to the Advanced Group Policy Management and DaRT pieces of MDOP. If you are in IT and not using it in your Windows network, you're missing a great tool set in MDOP.
Archive for May 2010
Categories : Uncategorized
The Third Thursday webinar that Wayne Small did on Hyper-V has finally been posted in the Third Tier Store for download. We apologize for the delay in getting this webinar posted as it has been one of the most asked-about sessions we have done.
Third Tier staff members Eriq Neale and Steve Banks are attending the SBSMigration.com conference in New Orleans and will be speaking in various sessions this weekend.
Steve will be moderating and leading a discussion on “right-sizing” servers Friday afternoon from 3:00-4:15pm.
Eriq will be doing a demonstration of the Kerio Connect group collaboration solution Saturday morning from 9:15-9:45, then leading a panel discussion on monitoring and remote access form 9:45-10:45. Eriq will also be posting summaries of the various conference sessions over at his MVP Blog.
If you’re at the conference, be sure to stop them and introduce yourself!
0 Categories : Eriq Neale, Events, Steve
May
27
27
by amy
The other day I was staffing the community table at Microsoft’s Office 2010 launch event. With me at the table were several developer MVP’s that run local usergroups. There was 1 ethernet cable provided. One of the guys volunteered to go home, pay for parking again (we were in downtown Detroit, cha-ching), fight city traffic and return with a router and bunch of cables. Just then I remember something that Dana Epp taught me and we turned the Windows 7 computer into a WiFi Hotspot. I publicly thanked Dana for making me look smart and Jason picked up on it with a twist. “I can see myself configuring my blackberry to tether to my laptop virtual wifi to reduce my device data in favour of using wired service when it’s available. Kinda the reverse of my usual tethering manoeuvre where I’m using the handset for laptop internet…”
There are two methods for accomplishing this task. We can create an ad-hoc network or if full functionality is desired we can use the command line to create a fully functional wireless access point.
To create an ad hoc wireless shared network:
- Open Network and Sharing Center and chose setup a new connection or network
- Next chose Setup a wireless ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network
- Enter a name for your SSID and type in a security code that your friends are going to use to connect to you
-
- Next Click Turn on Internet connection sharing press Close and you are done.
***Don’t forget to disable this network when you are finished using it***
To turn your computer into a fully functional Wireless Access Point:
This option is new in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This is a command line maneuver, which is documented on TechNet http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755301(WS.10).aspx in the article Netsh Commands for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) in Windows Server 2008. This article lists all of your command line options for the WLAN you are about to create. I’ll mention a couple of those in a minute. First let’s get the network going.
This is direct from Dana Epp.
“To set it up, open a cmd window as Administrator and issue the following commands:
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=YOURFRIENDLYSSID key=SOMEPASSWORD
netsh wlan start hostednetwork
At that point, if Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) is setup, anyone can connect to your SoftAP (if they know the PWD of course) and the traffic will be sent through whatever adapter you want. You can actually bridge it across an entirely different adapter… or the same one a different wifi LAN.”
At this point we have something that is not that different than the ad hoc network above functionally but there is so many more options here because what we’ve just done is enable a software access point with all the bells and whistles. There’s a lot more we can do from here. MSDN has a nice article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd815243(VS.85).aspx
From the article:
The wireless Hosted Network is a new WLAN feature supported on Windows 7 and on Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Wireless LAN Service installed. This feature implements two major functions:
- The virtualization of a physical wireless adapter into more than one virtual wireless adapter sometimes referred to as Virtual WiFi.
- A software-based wireless access point (AP) sometimes referred to as a SoftAP that uses a designated virtual wireless adapter.
These two functions coexist in a Windows system together. Enabling or disabling the wireless Hosted Network enables or disables both virtual WiFi and SoftAP. It is not possible to enable or disable these two functions separately in Windows.
With this feature, a Windows computer can use a single physical wireless adapter to connect as a client to a hardware access point (AP), while at the same time acting as a software AP allowing other wireless-capable devices to connect to it. This feature requires that a Hosted Network capable wireless adapter is installed in the local computer. The driver for the wireless adapter must implement the wireless LAN device driver model defined by Microsoft for use on Windows 7
The possibilities are endless for this useful but little known feature. If you find a creative use for it, let us know.
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2 Categories : Amy Babinchak, Networking
A rare chance to talk directly to the Microsoft SMB Team in Australia along with Jeff Middleton aka the King of the Swing Migration.
Nick King, Senior Product Manager in the Windows Server Business Group & Adrian Maziak, Senior Program Manager in the Home and Small Business Server team are coming to present, listen and take feedback on the Microsoft SMB Server products.
Jeff Middleton, the master of the swing migration will be presenting a session on how to migrate from existing SBS environments to SBS 2008 to any combination of Windows 2003, 2008 and Exchange 2003, 2007 or 2010 platforms.
You will also be able to find out more about your local SMB IT Professionals group and understand the benefits of being involved in the growing SMB IT Professionals community here in Australia.
This invitation is a rare chance for you to talk directly to two key members of the Microsoft SMB Team when they visit Australia in June. Make sure you register now using the link below. Note due to timing, Nick and Adrian will only be presenting at the Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne events. Jeff Middleton has volunteered to be at all four events (thanks Jeff).
Registration is a must and attendance is free.
Brisbane – June 16th 5:30pm – Register here
Sydney – June 17th 5:30pm – Register here
Melbourne – June 21st 5:30pm – Register here
Adelaide – June 22nd: 5:30pm – Register here
This event is being hosted by Microsoft and your local SMB IT Professionals group. If you have any question about this event, please feel free to email me direct.
To find out about other events like this and information relevant to the SMB IT Professional Community sign up for the SMBFocus Newsletter here
Reprinted from: http://www.sbsfaq.com
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0 Categories : Uncategorized
Yesterday I finally ran into my first failed SBS 2008 install, not one I had picked up from someone else, but one of my own where I’ve managed the source server for years and did all the prep work myself. It was both a good thing and a bad thing: good because we got to finally troubleshoot one where we knew the entire environment up front so we could immediately eliminate several potential causes, bad because we were on a really limited migration timetable for this particular customer and we’ve ended up losing more than just a day on the project.
But the interesting thing about this migration is why it failed, and the blame lies right at the feet of Dell. Short story: the Dell PowerEdge R310 server does not allow you to individually disable the on-board NICs in BIOS. In BIOS, you can choose to disable both NICs, but the individual integrated NIC options include “Enabled,” “Enabled with PXE,” and “Enabled with iSCSI.” No “Disabled” option at all.
I’ll be perfectly honest, this was not a scenario I tested when working on the migration documentation with Microsoft and researching for the SBS 2008 Unleashed book. Since the SBS 2008 requirements list a single NIC only, that’s all the testing that I did. So when I went through with the migration install yesterday, I knew I was taking a bit of a chance, but hoped that since I only had one NIC connected to the network it wouldn’t be a problem.
Well, it was.
During the setup, the SBS portion of the install tried to do a WMI query against DNS for the existing domain. The query succeeded on the connected NIC, but the installer performed the query again on the disconnected NIC and failed. That failure led to the dreaded cascading failure of Exchange and everything else that followed. We were able to get the source server back online quickly since we followed best practices and took a System State Backup immediately prior to launching the SBS 2008 installer on the destination server, but then we faced the dilemma of how to proceed. After discussing the issue with a Microsoft contact, we thought the setup might complete if we connected both NICs to the network, but the better option is to disable the unused NIC in BIOS and do the migration setup the way it’s supposed to be done.
After a 3.5 hour call with Dell, it basically cannot be done on the R310. Apparently someone decided that an all or nothing configuration on the NICs on that particular server was the better solution than letting each NIC be individually disabled as done on every other Dell server I’ve worked with for a decade. The issue has been escalated with the engineering team, but we don’t yet know if there will be a fix or how long it will take to get one if it can be done.
Bottom line, I cannot recommend installation of SBS 2008 on a Dell PowerEdge R310 server until (or if) Dell resolves the issue of disabling the NICs individually in BIOS. I can almost guarantee that a migration setup will fail on this platform, but I don’t know if a clean install will have a similar issue or not. If anyone has successfully installed SBS 2008 on an R310 server, I’d love to hear from you. Since this is a relatively new model from Dell, however, I may well be one of the first to attempt this particular configuration. And I hope that our pain can save someone else from the same…
Categories : Eriq Neale, SBS 2008
Third Tier welcomes Team Bradley to our webinar series. Back in the day, smaller businesses were exempt from most regulation, but not in the new era of information security. Are you making the right recommendations to your clients? Do you need to get up to speed on the new regulations and laws that effect nearly every business? This webinar is for all of us that need to educate our clients on security and information privacy.
Join Team Bradley – Susan Bradley and Bradley Dinerman – from the hotbed states of California and Massachusetts, as they discuss the impact to small firms of recent privacy, security and disclosure legislation. From PCI data security standards (DSS) to the Massachusetts data security law to the upcoming FCC "red flag" rules, they will discuss and answer your questions regarding security and compliance issues. Come listen to what you need to do to be compliant, including taking steps such as the development of a written information security policy (WISP), implementation of encryption systems, firewalls, antimalware, employee training and much more. We will even touch on the security of social networking sites and how they can affect your organization, for better or for worse.
Brad Dinerman is the founder and president of the National Information Security Group (NAISG, www.naisg.org) and the president of Fieldbrook Solutions LLC (www.fieldbrook.net), an IT, MIS and security consulting firm based in Ashland, MA. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), a Microsoft MVP in Enterprise Security as well as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and a Certified SonicWall Security Administrator. He also earned a Ph.D. in physics from Boston College to help him calculate how long it would take to launch his frozen computer across the local highway. Brad is a frequent contributor to various online TechTips sites and gives user group/conference presentations on topics ranging from spam and security solutions to Internet development techniques. He also published numerous articles in international physics journals in his earlier, scientific career.
Susan Bradley is frequent speaker at SMB conferences, most recently SMBnation East. She writes the Patch Watch column for Brian Livingston’s Windows Secrets, and was one of the authors of Windows Server 2008 Security Resource kit, and Small Business Server 2008 Unleashed. In real life she’s the IT wrangler at her firm, Tamiyasu, Smith, Horn and Braun, where she manages a fleet of Windows Servers, an Exchange Server, desktops, a few Macs, several Windows mobile and iPhones and tries to keep patches up to date on all of them. In addition, she provides forensic computer investigations for the litigation consulting arm of the firm. She blogs at www.sbsdiva.com on the topics of small business server, tech topics and whatever she stumbled over that day.
Third Tier has invited you to attend an online meeting using
Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/harborcomputerservices/join?id=968BJF&role=attend&pw=N%60%2Fm%3E_z6K
Meeting time: May 13, 2010 12:00 PM (EDT)
Add to my Outlook Calendar:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/harborcomputerservices/meetingICS?id=968BJF&role=attend&pw=N%60%2Fm%3E_z6K&i=i.ics
0 Categories : Friend of TT, Security, Webinar
SharePoint 2010 has already been released. So, whether you want to try out SharePoint Foundation or the full-blown SharePoint Server 2010, you can now download the RTM versions - be it via MSDN, TechNet or the trial version.
Check out this article on how to install SharePoint Foundation 2010. I did highlight the purpose of each component and why we need to install them. Installation is pretty straightforward for a singe-server deployment so understanding what's under the hood can prove to be insightful
Check out this article on how to install SharePoint Foundation 2010. I did highlight the purpose of each component and why we need to install them. Installation is pretty straightforward for a singe-server deployment so understanding what's under the hood can prove to be insightful
Categories : Edwin Sarmiento
In 2008, I was privileged to be a part of a project to write a chapter for a book that was for a good cause. SQL Server MVP Deep Dives became an avenue for a lot of the SQL Server MVPs to share their expertise for the benefit of not just the technical community but of the beneficiary.
I wrote a chapter for the book based on this blog post some three years ago and one of the recommendations I did was to convert the VBScript scripts to Windows PowerShell. So, here it is.
I've converted the VBScript that does the checking of the folders containing my latest LOG backups and restoring them in NORECOVERY mode to Windows PowerShell. What is fascinating is he fact that if the process I've outlined in the blog post is followed thru, adding another database to be configured for log shipping was as easy as creating regular LOG backups via TSQL scripts or database maintenance plans - no need to add an entry for every database that will be configured. How cool was that?
So, here's the Windows PowerShell version of the custom restore LOG backup command
$logBackupFolder="your LOG backup location here or a parameter variable"
##Variable for time duration - the amount of time you need to generate and restore LOG backups
$1HourOld = [DateTime]::Now.AddHours(-1)
##Retrieve folders and files in the specified directory
foreach ($databaseName in (Get-ChildItem $logBackupFolder Where { $_.PsIsContainer }) )
{
foreach ($logName in (Get-ChildItem $logBackupFolder\$databasename where {($_.CreationTime -ge $1HourOld) -and ($_.Extension -eq ".trn")} SELECT name))
{
$logBackupPath = [System.String]::Concat("'$logBackupFolder\",$databasename,"\",$logName.Name,"'")
$restoreSQL = "RESTORE LOG $databaseName FROM DISK=$logBackupPath WITH NORECOVERY" Out-File D:\$databaseName.sql
Invoke-Expression "osql.exe -SYourSQLServerInstanceHere -E -iD:\$databaseName.sql"
}
}
You might be wondering why I am using osql.exe instead of sqlcmd.exe. Well, it's still there even if you have SQL Server 2008. Which means this script will work even for SQL Server 2000 instances as long as you install Windows PowerShell on the machine running SQL Server.
And all of that for a mere 17-liner script. I could write it even less than that but I'm a big fan of script readability. Now, that's a good enough reason to dig deeper on what Windows PowerShell has to offer
I wrote a chapter for the book based on this blog post some three years ago and one of the recommendations I did was to convert the VBScript scripts to Windows PowerShell. So, here it is.
I've converted the VBScript that does the checking of the folders containing my latest LOG backups and restoring them in NORECOVERY mode to Windows PowerShell. What is fascinating is he fact that if the process I've outlined in the blog post is followed thru, adding another database to be configured for log shipping was as easy as creating regular LOG backups via TSQL scripts or database maintenance plans - no need to add an entry for every database that will be configured. How cool was that?
So, here's the Windows PowerShell version of the custom restore LOG backup command
$logBackupFolder="your LOG backup location here or a parameter variable"
##Variable for time duration - the amount of time you need to generate and restore LOG backups
$1HourOld = [DateTime]::Now.AddHours(-1)
##Retrieve folders and files in the specified directory
foreach ($databaseName in (Get-ChildItem $logBackupFolder Where { $_.PsIsContainer }) )
{
foreach ($logName in (Get-ChildItem $logBackupFolder\$databasename where {($_.CreationTime -ge $1HourOld) -and ($_.Extension -eq ".trn")} SELECT name))
{
$logBackupPath = [System.String]::Concat("'$logBackupFolder\",$databasename,"\",$logName.Name,"'")
$restoreSQL = "RESTORE LOG $databaseName FROM DISK=$logBackupPath WITH NORECOVERY" Out-File D:\$databaseName.sql
Invoke-Expression "osql.exe -SYourSQLServerInstanceHere -E -iD:\$databaseName.sql"
}
}
You might be wondering why I am using osql.exe instead of sqlcmd.exe. Well, it's still there even if you have SQL Server 2008. Which means this script will work even for SQL Server 2000 instances as long as you install Windows PowerShell on the machine running SQL Server.
And all of that for a mere 17-liner script. I could write it even less than that but I'm a big fan of script readability. Now, that's a good enough reason to dig deeper on what Windows PowerShell has to offer
Categories : Edwin Sarmiento
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