Journey to Life: A Story Which Makes Sense

Today I had a debate with my team mate on what Disaster recovery is! This made me to think again on what I know about Disaster Recovery. By going through various sites; I conclude that I am in right direction and reached to define what Disaster recovery is in the context of IT Infrastructures: In my words, Disaster recovery is a planed way to recovery from a catastrophic event like Fire, earthquake, terrorist attack etc. It is also related Business Continuity Plan and called as a plan to maintain & run a Business or operation continually with a capacity to recover from any kind of known/unknown disasters. This specifically requires a Geo separated site to have off-line backups, data and documentation necessary to run a Business / Operation and is intended to plan protection on large losses. In Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disaster_recovery ) words: Disaster recovery is the process, policies and procedures of restoring operations critical to the resumption of business, i

If you are not getting your CD/DVD rom undermy computer even if Windows is dectecting it, try this: Access Registry and delete LowerFilters and UpperFilters here: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]

Yesterday I had an issue with a newly built Windows 2008 server. I was not able to RDP this server through my home internet connection. The server was on port redirection and it tries to bring the console but gave the following error: "Because of an error in data encryption, the session will end" After some research and google search I tried the following workaround and it worked!!!!!: I Went to: Show all Network Connections Local Area Connection -> Properties Pressed the Configure button (for the Chip) Advanced; and set the following disabled: Offload TCP LargeSend This was unexpected issue...

It sometimes happens (and it's not a good sign most of the time): you'd like to stop a Windows Service, and when you issue the stop command through the SCM (Service Control Manager) or by using the ServiceProcess classes in the .NET Framework or by other means (net stop, Win32 API), the service remains in the state of "stopping" and never reaches the stopped phase. It's pretty simple to simulate this behavior by creating a Windows Service in C# (or any .NET language whatsoever) and adding an infinite loop in the Stop method. The only way to stop the service is by killing the process then. However, sometimes it's not clear what the process name or ID is (e.g. when you're running a service hosting application that can cope with multiple instances such as SQL Server Notification Services). The way to do it is as follows: Go to the command-prompt and query the service (e.g. the SMTP service) by using sc: sc \\Servername queryex SMTPSvc This will give you the

You Can't Send a Duck to Eagle School by Mac Anderson A few years ago I had lunch with a top executive from a company known for their legendary retail service. My wife and I are both big fans, and over lunch I shared with him some of the great service stories his people had provided the Anderson family. I said, "With the service your people give...you must have training manual 2 inches thick." He looked up and said, "Mac, we don't have a training manual. What we do is find the best people we can find and we empower them to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer." Then he said something I'll never forget. He said, "We learned a long time ago that you can't send a duck to eagle school." "Excuse me," I said. He repeated... "You can't send a duck to eagle school." He said, "You can't teach someone to smile, you can't teach someone to want to serve, you can't teach personality. What we can do, howev

Today I was working on an issue where an local user account getting locked out with the following event ID: Event Type: Failure Audit Event Source: Security Event Category: Logon/Logoff Event ID: 529 Date: 5/17/2008 Time: 6:45:00 PM User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Computer: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Description: Logon Failure: Reason: Unknown user name or bad password User Name: XXXXXXX Domain: XXXXXXXXXXXX Logon Type: 4 Logon Process: Advapi Authentication Package: MICROSOFT_AUTHENTICATION_PACKAGE_V1_0 Workstation Name: XxXXXXXXXXXXXX Event IDs 528 and 540 signify a successful logon, event ID 538 a logoff and all the other events in this category identify different reasons for a logon failure. However, just knowing about a successful or failed logon attempt doesn’t fill in the

Last week my cousin came to me and said that he has problem installing Windows XP on his brand new Toshiba L40 notebook. I noticed that XP doesn't recognises its SATA drive. And then the project started: A USB floppy drive will not work in this case as setup doesn't recognise it. Finally I went for help to my loved one (Internet) and found really nice tool (I got fond of it); NLite which allow you to integrate any external or 3rd party driver to the inbox XP installation suite. Here are the steps I used: run nLite, Welcome Screen appear, click Next. Locating the Windows installation .. insert you original Windows XP Installation CD (which I use OEM version of Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2) to you optical drive, and click Browse. Pick a location on your harddrive (or make a new folder) to store your Windows XP Installation files befoe making ISO file . Click Next. Preset. delete all preset (if exist).. click Next Task Selection, Only select to options, Driver and Bootab

Last time when I had a hard time writing an ISO to a CD, I found two good resource kit utility (CLU); CDBURM.exe and DVDburn.exe. These are again two great tool (freely available) to burn ISO images to CD directly. Here is the command line syntax to use the tools: The cdburn.exe and dvdburn.exe Resource Kit utilities. (07-Apr-06)The cdburn.exe and dvdburn.exe Windows XP and Windows Server Resource Kit utilities will burn an ISO image to writeable media. When you type cdburn /?, you receive:Usage: cdburn -erase [image [options]] cdburn image [options] Options: -erase Erases the disk before burning (valid for R/W only) -sao Writes the image out in "session at once", or cue sheet, mode (default is "track at once") -speed Speed of burn, or 'max' for maximum speed -imagehaspostgap Use if your image already contains a 150 sector postgap The [image] must be provided unless the -erase flag is set. If both an image and -erase are provided, the media will be erase

Woohoo!!! Today I passed the 70-647 exam, Windows Server 2008, Enterprise Administrator. Now I get to add some more alphabet soup to my signature (MCITP 2008 Enterprise Administrator). My unbroken streak of passed exams continues! This MCITP certification is equivilent to the MCSE credential for Windows 2003.If you're interested in the certification path, see this link: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/windowsserver/2008/default.mspx .

Q. What is really new about Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008? No service account - now uses a local system account No support for Parallel Attached SCSI (PAS), this allows for better hardware control and failover 16 nodes if you use a 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Support for GPT disks, yes larger than 2TB disks are now supported natively Validate - ensure your systems are cluster ready and help you follow best practices 4 Quorum models, no more single point of failure for the quorum Majority quorum model Majority of Nodes Witness disk File Share Witness Improved IPSec, no more 7 minute timeout when failed over! Stretched clusters can have nodes in different network segments with various speeds Cluster Migration Tool - to help you migrate MMC 3.0 snap-in, no longer a seperate application Setup/install 2003 was 23 steps, now 3 steps. Yes I said 3 steps

This is the good one I found on one of the MVP blog: Clustering terms made easy Clusters are Highly Available and should never be considered Fault Tolerant. Highly Available = is when I come anytime my wife calls me. Fault Tolerant = Marriage. You don't want to be married to you SQL/Exchange Cluster :) You do want it around whenever you need it though. Active/Active = when your cluster is too busy for its own good. Active/Passive = one worker, one manager, you decide which is which. Node = Clustered computer, could also be the worker who sits in a cube, not to be confused with Dude. Virtual Server = this is kind of like be on a telecom at work, only you are calling in from Hawaii and nobody knows. Quorum = Cluster=Quorum, Quorum=Clustering. Failover = the only time at work that you can fail and still be a hero. Failback = great way to get fired, let your server failover without you controlling it (Don't confuse with the above term). Cluster = when it fails, also known as a Clus

Last week for a small project to pull system info from 500 server, I used the following vbs script (found on google search as I not good in writing scripts) to pull WMI info for OS version, SP, Processor, Memory: On Error Resume Next Const ForReading = 1 Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile("c:\computers.txt", ForReading) 'Check the location of the file. strComputers = objTextFile.ReadAll objTextFile.Close arrComputers = Split(strComputers, vbCrLf) Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") For Each strComputer In arrComputers strComputer = arrComputers Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _ & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2") Set colSettings = objWMIService.ExecQuery _ ("SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem") For Each objOperatingSystem in colSettings Wscript.Echo "OS Name: " & objOperating

Yesterday I install Exchange 2007 for a single domain and got an experience to a truly new messaging and colloboration solution. The administration and configuration doesn't match with Exchange 2003. I shall say its really different. There are lot of features which are new or enahanced to give a better messaging solution. This enable Mobile, desktop, remote, web, intranet and Internet users to colloborate and share message and emails in a well secure (Forefront securety come with Exchange 2007) manner. This was a long project initiated by one of my friend where he was not able to configure Exchange 2007. He called me for the help and I pulled out some time to reach him. I found few mistakes which he was doing in configuring SMTP traffic on his router and then creating send and receive rules in Exchange hub transport configuration. Overall I found it easy and installed and configured the product in less them 2 hrs of time. Nice experience again with a well built product by Microsoft