afokkema Microsoft

Manage Mozilla Firefox With a Active Directory (GPO)


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Helaas word er bij Mozilla Firefox standaard geen ADM files meegeleverd. Deze ADM file heb je nodig om via een GPO, op een centrale plek, standaard instellingen te kunnen doorgeven aan de clients op je netwerk. Gelukkig is er een team begonnen met het ontwikkelen van een Custom ADM file voor Mozilla Firefox. Deze ADM files kun je downloaden vanaf hier: Sourceforge.net. Voordat je begint met het importeren en configureren van de ADM files, raad ik je aan om de volgende pdf eerst te lezen: ADM_Deploy.pdf.

Na het lezen van de pdf weet je waarschijnlijk al hoe het deployen van de ADM files in zijn werk gaat. Ik ga het toch nog even kort beschrijven:

  1. Je pakt de zipfile uit.
  2. Je importeert de ADM files
  3. Je plaatst de login/logoff scripts (diverse *.vbs scripts) op de juiste plaats en voegt deze toe.
  4. Je maakt de instellingen, waarvan jij denkt die nodig zijn.

 

Zodra je de ADM file hebt toegevoegd, zie je de nieuwe node Mozilla Firefox Default Settings verschijnen. In deze node kun je dus bijvoorbeeld de proxyserver configureren.

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afokkema Microsoft, Windows

Scalable Networking Pack Rollup Released


De rollup package vind je hier: KB950224

Meer informatie over SNP vind je hier: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/network/snp/faq.mspx

Verder kwam ik de volgende quote tegen:

As more companies deploy Windows 2008 and Vista, it is crucial, or in my opinion, critical that this hotfix be applied to all Windows 2003 servers that may communicate with these operating systems. One of the main reasons is a new feature called TCP auto-tuning which makes use of RSS to expand and shrink the sizes of your TCP window to increase/decrease throughput based on current network load. This feature greatly increases throughput on your network, but if there is an underlying problem with the network card driver or any of these features between disparate systems, you may experience slower than normal network performance. The good news is that the Chimney feature is disabled by default in Vista/Windows 2008.

Bron: http://blogs.technet.com/mikelag/archive/2008/08/28/scalable-networking-pack-rollup-released.aspx

afokkema Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualization, VMware, Windows

Microsoft: New licensing Flexibility


Microsoft heeft eindelijk de licentie voorwaarden aangepast voor het haar software m.b.t. virtualisatie.

New Licensing Flexibility

Microsoft is updating its software licensing terms for 41 server applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products. With the new terms, the company is waiving its previous 90-day reassignment rule, allowing customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed. For many customers, the change will reduce the number of licenses they need to support their IT systems, increase agility, and simplify the tracking of application instances or processors because customers now can count licenses by server farm instead of by server.

 

Expanded Technical Support

Microsoft has updated its technical support policy for 31 server applications so that customers can receive technical support when deploying those applications on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server or any other third-party validated virtualization platform. Now customers can get the same level of product support in a virtualized environment that they are accustomed to with nonvirtual environments. More information is available at http://support.microsoft.com.

To enable this support policy, Microsoft launched the Server Virtualization Validation Program in June 2008. The program is open to any software vendor to test and validate its virtualization software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of Windows Server. To date, Cisco Systems Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Virtual Iron Software Inc. are participating in the program.

“Technical support of virtualized images is an industrywide challenge,” said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of open platform solutions at Novell. “Novell and Microsoft continue to collaborate to optimize bidirectional virtualization between Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise with Xen. Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program provides customers with additional peace of mind when they run Windows as a guest in a validated environment such as SUSE Linux Enterprise.”

 

Lees het hele artikel hier: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/aug08/08-19EasyPathPR.mspx

afokkema Active Directory, Microsoft, Windows

LDAP Query


In mijn omgeving werken we nu nog met twee verschillende loginscripts. Ik wilde graag weten welke gebruikers die nog enabled waren het oude loginscript aangekoppeld hadden. Dit kun je doen door de volgende LDAP query uit te voeren in Active Directory Users and Computers.

 

De onderstaande query geeft alle users weer met het loginscript login.bat en de accountstatus op enabled

(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)(scriptPath=login.bat))

 

De volgende LDAP query doet bijna hetzelfde als de bovenstaande alleen geeft deze de personen terug met de accountstatus op disabled

(objectCategory=Person)(objectClass=User)(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)(scriptPath=login.bat)

 

Een LDAP query ziet er dan als volgt uit:

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Geholpen door het volgende KB artikel: KB827754

afokkema Microsoft, Virtualization, VMware, Windows

Full backups of virtual machines and Windows VSS


Tim Jacobs heeft op zijn blog een super artikel geschreven over Full backups of virtual machines and Windows VSS.

One of the new features that is appearing in backup products that take backups of an entire virtual machine, as opposed to using an agent inside the guest operating system, is the ability to cooperate with Windows VSS (Volume Snapshot Service) inside the guest. For example, the recently released version of VMWare’s Consolidated Backup 1.5, now supports VSS quiescing for Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 2008; vizioncore’s vRanger Pro backup utility has been supporting VSS for Windows 2003 for some versions already.
Several opinions exist on whether this is in fact a useful feature or not; for example, not so long ago the developers of esXpress talked about not including VSS quiescing into their product at that time because it adds additional complexity and does not offer any significant benefits in their opinion (see here). This discussion is still alive as you can see for example here, and the big question is indeed: can you rely on live backups of database virtual machines?

Lees de rest van het artikel hier: http://timjacobs.blogspot.com/2008/07/full-backups-of-virtual-machines-and.html

afokkema Microsoft, Powershell, VI Toolkit, Virtualization

VMware: VI Toolkit Presentations


Ik kwam de volgende twee presentaties tegen op http://www.slideshare.net. Klik op het plaatje om naar de presentatie te gaan.

De presentatie van Carter Shanklin bevat de volgende onderwerpen:

  • What is the VI Toolkit (for Windows)
  • The top 3 ways your life gets easier with the toolkit
  • Interactive demos
  • Resources to help you use the toolkit
  • How to get the toolkit

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De presentatie van Hal Rottenberg bevat de volgende onderwerpen:

  • Introduction
  • Feature overview
  • Demo 1: new providers
  • New Cmdlets
  • Demo 2: “wiki deploy”
  • Demo 3: Creating a VM
  • Demo 4: Access VI SDK

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    afokkema Backup, Microsoft, Virtualization, VMware, Whitepaper, Windows

    Whitepaper: VMware and VSS: Application Backup and Recovery


    Veeam schrijft het volgende:

    More and more organizations are choosing VMware Infrastructure to virtualize their mission‐critical applications (Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server) to create a flexible, easily administered virtual infrastructure.
    Virtual machines (VMs) and any applications they contain must be protected against failure. Typically, in the virtual world, this is done by performing an image‐level backup of the whole machine (for instance, using VMware Consolidated Backup). This method results in what is known as a crash‐consistent image. Restoring a crash‐consistent image is essentially equivalent to rebooting a server after a hard reset. For operating systems, this has not been an issue, since they can easily handle this type of activity. For database applications as well as for applications featuring replication, however, such a restore will often result in lost data, data corruption, or application failure.
    To illustrate this concept, let’s review the consequences of using different VM disaster recovery methods for one of the most common mission‐critical applications: a Microsoft Active Directory domain controller (DC). Depending on the solution used, the following results will be achieved:

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    Download de PDF hier: VMwareandVSS-ApplicationBackupandRecovery.pdf

    afokkema Microsoft, Windows

    Windows: Network Access Protection (NAP)


    In deze post vind je allerlei informatie over Network Access Protection.

     

    De Product website: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/nap-product-home.aspx

    De NAP Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/nap/default.aspx

     

    Introduction to Network Access Protection

    Network Access Protection (NAP) is one of the most desired and highly anticipated features of Windows Server 2008. NAP is a new platform and solution that controls access to network resources based on a client computer’s identity and compliance with corporate governance policy. NAP allows network administrators to define granular levels of network access based on who a client is, the groups to which the client belongs, and the degree to which that client is compliant with corporate governance policy. If a client is not compliant, NAP provides a mechanism to automatically bring the client back into compliance and then dynamically increase its level of network access.

    NAP includes an application programming interface (API) for developers and vendors to create complete solutions for health state validation, limitation of network access or communication, and ongoing compliance. This paper describes the scenarios for NAP, the components of NAP, and how NAP works for the different enforcement methods included with Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows XP Service Pack 3.

    Included in This Document

    •Introduction

    •Components of NAP

    •How NAP Works

    Meer informatie en de whitepaper vind je hier:  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/network/nap/napoverview.mspx

     

    Network Access Protection Platform Architecture

    Network Access Protection (NAP) is a new platform and solution that controls access to network resources based on a client computer’s identity and compliance with corporate governance policy. NAP allows third-party software vendors and system integrators to create complete solutions for validating and enforcing system health requirements for network access or communication.

    This white paper describes the architecture of the NAP platform and the details of how NAP works for enforcement methods that are provided with Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows XP Service Pack 3.

    Included in This Document

    • Introduction

    •NAP Platform Architecture

    •NAP Client Architecture

    •NAP Server-side Architecture

    •How NAP Works

    Meer informatie en de whitepaper vind je hier: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/network/nap/naparch.mspx

     

    Step by Step Guides for creating demo / test labs

    • Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate IPsec NAP Enforcement in a Test Lab

    •Step By Step Guide: Demonstrate 802.1X NAP Enforcement in a Test Lab

    •Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate VPN NAP Enforcement in a Test Lab

    •Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate DHCP NAP Enforcement in a Test Lab

    afokkema Microsoft

    RTM: Microsoft SQL Server 2008


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    Keith Combs schrijft het volgende op zijn blog:

    Transparent Data Encryption – Enable encryption of an entire database, data files, or log files, without the need for application changes. Benefits of this include: Search encrypted data using both range and fuzzy searches, search secure data from unauthorized users, and data encryption without any required changes in existing applications.

    Auditing – Create and manage auditing via DDL, while simplifying compliance by providing more comprehensive data auditing. This enables organizations to answer common questions, such as, “What data was retrieved?”

    Enhanced Database Mirroring – SQL Server 2008 builds on SQL Server 2005 by providing a more reliable platform that has enhanced database mirroring, including automatic page repair, improved performance, and enhanced supportability.

    Automatic Recovery of Data Pages – SQL Server 2008 enables the principal and mirror machines to transparently recover from 823/824 types of data page errors by requesting a fresh copy of the suspect page from the mirroring partner transparently to end users and applications.

    Hot Add CPU – Dynamically scale a database on demand by allowing CPU resources to be added to SQL Server 2008 on supported hardware platforms without forcing any downtime on applications. Note that SQL Server already supports the ability to add memory resources online.

    Meer informatie vind je hier: SQL Server 2008

     

    Bron: http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2008/08/06/microsoft-sql-server-2008-rtm-s.aspx