July, 2009

Utility Spot Light - RichCopy

I was looking for the download to RoboCopyGUI as I was going to setup a mass copy of data from one server to another, and I stumbled upon this… RichCopy, see the insert for more info…

RichCopy is a free utility that comes to us from Ken Tamaru of Microsoft. The tool was first developed in 2001 and has been updated regularly to keep pace with evolving needs. Trust me when I tell you, this is the answer to all your file copying needs. What you’ll find most striking the first time you take RichCopy out for a spin is that it’s a multithreaded copying tool. That means that rather than copying one file at a time in serial order, RichCopy can open multiple threads simultaneously, allowing many files to be copied in parallel and cutting the total time required to complete the operation several times over. You can also pause and resume file copy operations, so if you lose network connectivity at any point, you can just pick up where you left off.

Go here to read the whole article and download the application.

RAID Levels Pros and Cons

Have you ever wondered what the pros and cons of every raid level is? Well look no further, I stumbled upon this website which describes all forms of RAID Levels and the pros and cons of each, along with a nice description. So the next time your talking with your fellow techies, you can sound a little bit smarter

Check it out here, I have also included an insert below from the website for a quick read.

“RAID 50 should have been called “RAID 03″ because it was implemented as a striped (RAID level 0) array whose segments were RAID 3 arrays (during mid-90s)

Most current RAID 50 implementation is illustrated above

RAID 50 is more fault tolerant than RAID 5 but has twice the parity overhead

High data transfer rates are achieved thanks to its RAID 5 array segments

High I/O rates for small requests are achieved thanks to its RAID 0 striping

Maybe a good solution for sites who would have otherwise gone with RAID 5 but need some additional performance boost”

NS

DynDNS.com

Does it bother you when your home IP changes or you just can’t remember what it is and you want to connect to your router, RDP, or FTP. What can you do? Not much until you get home and check whatismyip.com…

Well there is something you can do, its called DynDNS.com they offer something called Dynamic DNS Free, just create an account, pick a hostname, ie nathantheitguy.homeip.net (this doesn’t exist btw), and save it. Now you only have to remember the name you created, this wont stop the IP from changing and you would have to continue to update it from time to time, unless you have a router like my Linksys which has a section in the setup where you can specify a DYNdns username and account, when the external IP changes, the router logs into DYNdns and changes the IP for you, sweet! Now all you ever need is just your name, nathantheitguy.homeip.net.

I will warn you though that DYNdns is free and as such you must login from the web once a month to confirm that there is a human managing the account. failing to do so and DYNdns deletes your account. The router login does not actually hit the website. A paid account, 15$ US, will eliminate the need for you to login, Dynamic DNS Pro adds a variety of enhancements and additional features to Dynamic DNS Free which are detailed on the Dynamic DNS Pro page. Please check out the links for full details, they have alot to offer.

vSphere 4 and Windows Server 2008

Here is another quick one for you all…  When creating a Windows Server 2008 Virtual Machine, do not enable paravirtualization, I know you want to, but whilst using vSphere, you will not be able to install the PCI Memory Controller Interface(you will be prompted to find drivers for this device, if you enable paravirtualization in the virtual machine settings). Its is only supported by certain Operating systems… now if you are using Hyper-V enabling paravirtualization will work. Just an FYI.

NS

Installing Exchange 2003 on Windows Server 2008

Here’s the deal, Exchange 2003 will not work and cannot be installed on Server 2008, although if you have a Server 2008 Domain Controller, you can have an Exchange 2003 Forest. I hope that clears up some issues quicker then, say… Nathan installing Server 2008, attempting to fulfill the prerequisites of Exchange 2003 and not able to…

NS

Blackberry Curve 8900 Smartphone

Well, I said I was going to be one of the guys that bought a Palm Pre, but fate stepped in and dealt me a Blackberry Curve 8900 Smartphone, and what a beauty she is, with its crisp and clear screen(480×360), to its speedy WI-FI connection, and its awesome camera (3.2 MP), I am very happy man. I have had the phone for less than a month, but its truly is an amazing phone. I had unplugged it from the charger yesterday am at about 3am(don’t ask me why I was up at 3am on a Saturday night and not out!) and haven’t plugged it in yet and its 10:15pm on Monday evening. WI-FI and Bluetooth were also on the whole time. One of the things I did was turn the brightness down on the Curve 8900 from100% to 20%, you barely notice a difference yet, apparently it nets you 25+% battery life… if you interested in reading about the full specs check it out here.

Another thing to mention is “BlackBerry App World” if you haven’t installed it yet, you should do so now… check it out here.

The Curve 8900 is a GSM(non 3G) phone, for you CDMA(EVDO) people, there is a new smartphone that has already shown up in Canada, its called the BlackBerry Tour, check it out here. Judging from the specs it seems that it is 3G capable, so I am guessing that there will be a GSM “3G” version that we could just swap out our SIM cards and start using the new “Tour” also.

NS

Virtualization in General

Hey there folks, well I know 80% of the worlds population have an idea of what virtualization is, what it does, and why we all should get on the bandwagon… but there are some out there that still do not have a clue what VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix are doing with virtualization. Since there are those with questions, I thought I would provide some links for those people.

The first link I am providing is from one of my favorite resources in the world. Petri IT Knowledgebase by Daniel Petri, I wont get into why this is an important resource as many of my readers will already know. The link is for an article that David Davis wrote about Server Virtualization, here’s an insert from the beginning of the article…

“There are many types of virtualization- server, network, storage, and more. In this article, we will demystify these complex terms, explain what they can do for you, and name specific products that provide these functions. So prepare for the smoke to be cleared…” read the rest here.

The second link is a to a video that might be helpful to some readers, and maybe a waste of 3 minutes for some, hey at least its only 3 minutes! “Information Technology Explained in 3 Minutes of Less : What is Virtualization” check it out here.

Anyways, if I help shed some light on virtualization for at least a couple people I’ll be happy!

NS

Sysinternals Updates

There have been a lot of updates since i last blogged about this awesome set of tools, among those are updates to ProcDump, Autoruns, and PsLogList. The full details are here.

Another thing to mention is that Mark and David released the 5th Edition of their book, titled, “Windows Internals 5th Edition” You can check out the details herealso. Here is a small insert from their site.

Delve inside Windows architecture and internals:

• Understand how the core system and management mechanisms work—from the object manager to services to the registry
• Explore internal system data structures using tools like the kernel debugger
• Grasp the scheduler’s priority and CPU placement algorithms
• Go inside the Windows security model to see how it authorizes access to data
• Understand how Windows manages physical and virtual memory
• Tour the Windows networking stack from top to bottom— including APIs, protocol drivers, and network adapter drivers
• Troubleshoot file-system access problems and system boot problems
• Learn how to analyze crashes

Mcafee 8.7i Install/Upgrade Failure

Okay, so you have a server/workstation and your upgrading McAfee on it manually… when installing the app, the services decide to fail to start… you see these(just below) in event viewer, what do you do? Well its pretty easy… just scroll down for the resolution…

Log Name: Application
Source: McLogEvent
Date: xxxxxxxxxxx
Event ID: 5004
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: SYSTEM
Computer: xxxxxxxx
Description:
Could not contact Filter Driver.
Error = 0×7d1 : The specified driver is invalid.

This issue is caused by a bad value in the registry.  Basically, in the old NAI installers, for some unknown reason, the entries in the registry point to the wrong locations, well not wrong, but imcomplete as far as the NAI 8.7i installer is concerned.

The fix? Easy.

run REGEDIT

Navigate to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\mfebopk* then
Navigate to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Mfeapfk* then
Navigate to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Mfeavfk*

* Modify the ImagePath to be the full path to the driver– for example change:
“system32\drivers\mfebopk.sys” to “C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\mfebopk.sys”

The service should now start.

NS

WSUS and Me

Well today I had quite the fight with WSUS, maybe i just wasn’t full focused today or something, either way, I finally got it working, the Default Domain Policy was over-riding my Organizational Unit “Domain Controllers” I basically blocked inheritance from Group Policy and set up a specific Group Policy Object specifically for my OU “Domain Controllers”

There was one website which helped me out in ‘forcing’ WSUS detection, normally one would type “wuauclt /detectnow” but at the time it didnt seem to work, so i utilized a tool called WSUS - DETECTNOW 2.0 which basically performs the same thing except you can also trigger detection for approved updates and can reset SusClientId too.

One wouldnt normally have to force a WSUS Detection if the companies Group Policy was configured properly though, this just speeds up the process

NS