Clipmarks | fuzzylogic181's clips

Where did the HP Way go?

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:59:24 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: The old HP coporate management mentality and the desire by some to get it back.

Some enlightening feedback in the comments section.

Clip Source: grenouille-bouillie.blogspot.com

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Where did the HP Way go?

Clip Source: grenouille-bouillie.blogspot.com

Recently, I discussed with some HP colleagues about the old "HP Way". This happens a lot, actually. I'd say that this is a topic of discussion during lunch at HP maybe once a week, in one form or another.

Employees who were at Hewlett-Packard before the merger with Compaq, more specifically before Carly Fiorina decided to overhaul the corporate culture, will often comment about the "good old days". Employees from companies that HP acquired later, most notably Compaq or DEC, are obviously much less passionate about the HP Way, but they generally show some interest if only because of the role it used to play in making HP employees so passionate about their company.

The HP Way
We have trust and respect for individuals.
We focus on a high level of achievement and contribution.
We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity.
We achieve our common objectives through teamwork.
We encourage flexibility and innovation.

Quiescing Databases for VMWare based Image Based Backups

Tue, 06 May 2008 07:14:29 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: Using VizionCore's vRanger Pro to quiesce databases prior to doing a full disk backup.

Clip Source: mcpmag.com

Hooray for Transactional Integrity!

Image-level backups are a great benefit gained when an IT environment moves to virtualization.

All this sounds fine and well until you start to dig a little deeper into the processes whereby image-level backups go about quiescing that server prior to a backup.

But there's always been a problem with transactional databases that ride atop that file system. Though any traditional backup tools could quiet the server, none to date could reach into that server to tell these databases they needed a time out as well.

Until now. I recently discovered that VizionCore's vRanger Pro v3.2 includes support for directly communicating with a Windows virtual machine's Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). This communication allows the backup engine to instruct the database to pause at the correct point in the backup so that the database will not return from a restore in an inconsistent state.

Tags: vizioncore, vmware, backup

Citrix XenSource vs. VMware ESX: A Heads-Up Comparison

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:53:08 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: Comparison of ESX vs CitrixXenSource - handy for those looking at a virtualisation option.

Clip Source: www.realtime-windowsserver.com

Citrix XenSource vs. VMware ESX: A Heads-Up Comparison

Also on the www.brianmadden.com website is a very recent presentation from BriForum in Amsterdam last October where Ron Oglesby presents a head-to-head comparison between VMware ESX and Citrix XenSource.

Watch the video here: http://www.brianmadden.com/blog/GabeKnuth/Xen-vs-ESX-Head-to-Head-video

A couple of interesting conclusions out of this presentation. First, taken from one of Ron's conclusion slides, "While the XenSource Enterprise and ESX VMs are fairly close one on one, and processor utilization is pretty close, Disk I/O lacks in XenSource Enterprise. And once multiple VMs are running the VMware scheduler seems to be more effective."

The big question Ron asks in this presenation is, "Are these features worth the cost of ESX?" In my opinion, the best answer is "it depends".

Tags: xensource, vmware, comparison

Core Configurator for Windows Server 2008 Core

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:26:50 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: Basic GUI configuration utility for Windows Server Core 2008

Clip Source: blogs.microsoft.co.il

Basic GUI configuration utility for Windows Server Core 2008

Features:

Product Activation

Configuration of display resolution

Clock and time zone configuration

Remote Desktop configuration

Management of local user accounts (creation, deletion, group membership, passwords)

Firewall configuration

WinRM configuration

IP configuration

Computer name and domain/workgroup membership

Installation of Server Core features/roles

See my blog post for more details about the tool.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Migration Tutorial

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:57:31 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: List of resources to assist in the migration of Exchange from 2003 to 2007

Clip Source: searchexchange.techtarget.com

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Migration Tutorial

Exchange Server 2007 migration webcasts and podcasts

NEW! Best practices for managing the Exchange 2007 migration process

NEW! Exchange 2007 migration plan considerations

NEW! An introduction to Exchange 2007 design and architecture

Exchange Server 2007 migration tutorials and tips

NEW! Tutorial: Planning an Exchange Server 2007 migration

NEW! Tutorial: Moving mailboxes and public folders to Exchange 2007

NEW! Exchange 2007 prerequisites and custom server role installation

NEW! Migrating resource mailboxes from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007

Tutorial: A primer on Exchange 2007 server roles

Preparing for Exchange Server 2007

What's missing from Exchange Server 2007

Exchange 2007 memory and hardware configuration best practices

Migrating antispam settings from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007

Testing Exchange Server 2007 on a virtual machine

Top 10 Common Causes of Slow Replication with DFSR

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:41:10 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181

Clip Source: blogs.technet.com

Top 10 Common Causes of Slow Replication with DFSR

· DFSMGMT.MSC Health Reports

· DFSRDIAG.EXE BACKLOG command

· Performance Monitor with DFSR Counters enabled

· DFSRDIAG.EXE PropagationTest and PropagationReport

1. Missing Windows Server 2003 Network QFE Hotfixes or Service Pack 2

2. Missing DFSR Service’s latest binary

3. Out-of-date Network Card and Storage drivers

4. DFSR Staging directory is too small for the amount of data being modified

5. Bandwidth Throttling or Schedule windows are too aggressive

6. Large amounts of sharing violations

7. RDC has been disabled over a WAN link.

8. Incompatible Anti-Virus software or other file system filter drivers

9. File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) configured with quotas/screens that block
replication.

10. Un-staged or improperly pre-staged data leading to slow initial replication.

12 Reasons You'll Quickly Upgrade to Server 2008, Part 2 of 2

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:23:57 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181

Clip Source: www.realtime-windowsserver.com

12 Reasons You'll Quickly Upgrade to Server 2008, Part 2 of 2

Reason #7 - Domain Controller's Restartable Service.

By making Active Directory Domain Services a service, with all the benefits that arrive with such a change, it is now possible to do many kinds of off-line work on Active Directory without having to reboot into Directory Services Restore Mode.

Reason #8 - Terminal Services RemoteApps.

RemoteApps are the Microsoft realization of Citrix Presentation Server's Published Applications, and they're a welcome addition to Terminal Services.

Reason #9 - IIS Management.

With this upgrade comes the elimination of the Metabase in favor of an Apache-like file-based configuration mechanism.

Reason #10 - Installation.

you'll find that this version of Server is easier than any other to simply get installed.

Reason #11 - Fewer instances to upgrade.

there are often fewer server instances than desktop or laptop instances.

Reason #12 - Little Hardware Upgrades Needed.

12 Reasons You'll Quickly Upgrade to Server 2008, Part 1 of 2

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:18:29 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181

Clip Source: www.realtime-windowsserver.com

12 Reasons You'll Quickly Upgrade to Server 2008, Part 1 of 2

Reason #1 - Security.

One of the major priorities linked to Server 2008 is the idea of improved security.

Reason #2 - Management.

Server 2008 gains the new Server Manager console that aggregates many of the old consoles from previous O/S's into a single location.

Reason #3 - Group Policy.

One of the only major changes between Server 2008 RC0 and RC1 was the incorporation of Group Policy Preferences.

Reason #4 - Server Core.

Windows Server without the Windows. Server Core is a brilliant idea that will likely become a tool for specialized uses.

Reason #5 - Hyper-V.

Hyper-V is Microsoft's still-in-the-oven virtualization solution that bolts onto Server 2008.

Reason #6 - NTBackup.

A lesser known update, with Server 2008 the venerable NTBackup gets a host of new features that make it a serious backup solution contender

Powershell Tip: Formatting trick to make your search criteria stand out

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:54:04 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: Output format tip for Powershell

Clip Source: www.systemcenterforum.org

Powershell Tip: Formatting trick to make your search criteria stand out

This is quite easily done with a foreach loop and the Powershell equivalent of the if-then statement to change the color of the text based on the value of the ProxyEnabled status for each agent. In this case, if ProxyEnabled = false, text output will be RED. If ProxyEnabled = true, text output will be GREEN. I have commented the sample script below to clarify the meaning of each statement.

#Retrieve all agents and assign to a variable
$agents = get-agent

#For each agent in the $agents variable, execute the IF statement
foreach ($agent in $agents){

#If ProxyEnabled = TRUE, write agent Name and ProxyEnabled status to the console in RED.
If ($agent.ProxyingEnabled -match $true) {write-host $agent.name, $agent.proxyingenabled -foregroundcolor “red”}

else

#If ProxyEnabled = FALSE write agent Name and ProxyEnabled status to the console in GREEN.
{write-host $agent.name, $agent.proxyingenabled -foregroundcolor “darkgreen”}
}

Becoming NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM on Windows

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:12:45 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: Running a session as NT Authority\System

Clip Source: security.fnal.gov

Becoming NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM on Windows

There are rare cases when you might want to become user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM on a Windows 2000, XP & 2003 machine. But you don't know the password for the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM account, and it is not displayed in the user manager so you can change the password (which would be a VERY BAD THING if you could).

First, you need to be logged in as an administrator.
Next, open up a Command Prompt window.

Once the Task Scheduler is running, you need to schedule an AT job to open a Command Prompt window

Automatically Lock a Windows Session after Automatic Login

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:09:41 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: Lock a workstation after auto-login.

Clip Source: mblog.lib.umich.edu

Automatically Lock a Windows Session after Automatic Login

Recently an ITworld reader contacted me with an interesting question: Can you configure Windows XP so that it logs on automatically but into a locked state? In other words, if the AutoAdminLogon registry value found at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon has been set to 1 and the DefaultUserName and DefaultPassword values have been configured appropriately, is it possible to make Windows lock the desktop immediately after automatic logon occurs?

Wscript.Sleep 30000
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run "rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation",1,false

Remotely Unlock a Windows Workstation

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:02:47 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: A tool and code for accessing the console session of a logged-on user who has locked the workstation.

Clip Source: www.codeproject.com

Remotely Unlock a Windows Workstation

A tool and code for accessing the console session of a logged-on user who has locked the workstation.

In this article, I'll show a method/hack that allows you to "unlock" a locked Windows 2003, XP, or 2000 computer (see Figure 1) without knowing the logged-on user's password and without logging that user off. Along the way, we'll use some mildly-thrilling techniques such as DLL injection, remote Windows Service creation, and embedding and extracting other executable files in your EXE.

Download source and executable - 160 Kb

Usage

Simple: from a command prompt, (or, if you're on the bleeding-edge, from Windows PowerShell) just run:

RemoteUnlock.exe computername

If everything goes according to plan, you'll see a message telling you the remote machine has been unlocked. At this point, go wreak whatever havoc you intend to. Just remember to come back to your computer and hit Enter to re-lock the remote machine.

Documenting Active Directory Infrastructure the Easy Way

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:42:35 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: Using a couple of free tools to document the AD infrastructure including GPOs.

Clip Source: blogs.technet.com

Documenting Active Directory Infrastructure the Easy Way

Hi, Ned here. From time to time customers ask us what their options are to document their Active Directory environments – site topologies, domains and trusts, where group policies are linked and what their settings are. Until recently we didn’t have an easy way to do this and they were forced to invest a lot of manual labor in creating a map. Today we’ll talk about some free tools we can use to make this task very easy and accurate. I’m going to focus on the most common areas:

•    Domain and Forest information
•    OU Structures
•    Sites
•    Exchange
•    Group Policy settings and links

To do this we’re going to use two automation utilities that you will need to download and install:

• Active Directory Topology Diagrammer
• Group Policy Management Console

How to Ace the Technical Interview

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:35:12 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: Preparing for a technical interview

Clip Source: itmanagement.earthweb.com

How to Ace the Technical Interview

But it's a fact of life in this industry, so it's important to learn our ways around the tech interview, anticipate some likely questions (or types of questions) that we'll encounter, and understand what the technical interviewer is really looking for (contrary to what you may feel during the interview, most are not sadists who stay up nights thinking of new ways to torture job applicants with obscure and convoluted interrogatories).

The Purpose of the Technical Interview

Practice Makes Perfect

Clip Source: itmanagement.earthweb.com

The Personality of the Technical Interviewer

Be Politically Correct

Watch For Non-Verbal Clues

Reconnoiter the Joint

Clip Source: itmanagement.earthweb.com

Types of Questions Commonly Encountered in the Tech Interview

Why are Manhole Covers Round?

You Don't Have to be Correct to be Right

Treat the Interview Like an Exam

Answer to Fox and Chicken Dilemma

Clip Source: itmanagement.earthweb.com

Tips and Techniques for Surviving and Succeeding in the Technical Interview

Clip Source: itmanagement.earthweb.com

Telephone Interview vs. In-person Interview

Expect the Unexpected

Tags: soft skills, technical interview

Do you know where your processor spends its time?

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:33:25 GMT

clipped by: fuzzylogic181
clipper's remarks: Performance monitoring of CPU in Priviledges and User modes.

Clip Source: blogs.technet.com

Do you know where your processor spends its time?

There are two different states to be aware of when talking about processors executing instructions: Privileged mode and User mode. Some operating system threads and interrupts (including all device driver functions) as well as Kernel-mode threads execute in privileged mode. User mode is where program threads from applications and services execute. User-mode threads cannot access system memory locations and perform OS functions directly. So looking at this in the context of our post on Processor Bottlenecks, let's take a look at the relevant Performance Monitor counters.

Conversely, if the bulk of the time is spent in User mode processing, you should start looking at which individual processes are consuming the CPU. For Privileged mode processing, you may not find a clear relationship to any specific process.

Tags: perfomance monitoring, windows