Category: Other

  • Geo-Clustering

    Geo Clustering exists in many options, and dependent highly on the requirements and technical capability. This post is to discuss some options and things to consider before deploying any geo-cluster. Data GEO- Redundancy The first dependency in clustering is storage capability. Data from the workload in the cluster will be written to disk and that…

  • Data Offloaded Transfers – ODX

    As we are seeing more and more Windows 2012 based Clouds and services.. I wanted to alert you to the following technology which is becoming more and more available in backend storage systems (and Windows 2012): ODX   If you are implementing Hyper-V, File services or any other Windows Server 2012 with a backend SAN…

  • Mitigating attacks on your Active Directory network

    Microsoft released a new whitepaper this week that gives an insight in why you should protect your privileged accounts. One of the techniques described is the PassTheHash attack which is a sophisticated attack but fairly easy to execute. These attacks have been seen in the “field” and are being used today. If you work with…

  • MBAM – Install guide – tips

    So as promised.. the install guide.. or at least some small tips as the installation is not that hard.. First of all, we are going to use a three server architecture. One server for the databases, one for the administration and monitoring and a group policy server. To start, we need to create some groups…

  • Microsoft BitLocker Administration & Monitoring – intro

    Why we should BitLocker (or any other drive encryption) should be clear. A stolen laptop is only worth as much as the retrievable data on it + the value of the laptop. In large enterprises this could be millions of dollars, but for personal use this could lead to embarrassment or worse. But enterprises seem…

  • 2FA via the cloud – Cryptocard

    So many of you probably have been wondering what type of 2FA I am using for my tests. Instead of setting up internal servers, dealing with encryption keys and various tokens, I stumbled upon a cloud service that handles all of this for you. Now before we dive into the “commercial” part (although I did…

  • Office 365 – Exchange interaction Design

    Office 365 is booming.. everyday new companies decide to make the switch to easy online messaging and collaboration services on the cloud. While the cloud should make life easier for administrators, setting up the co-existence environment seems a bit harder. Although Microsoft has tons of help material available .This post is to clearify the interaction…

  • SharePoint to retrieve data from two LDAP directories

    So no posts for a long time, been busy though.. and the latest addition to this blogpost is about SharePoint. Who would have thought.. In my case the customer wanted to enrich the User profiles that came from Active Directory with Novell attributes that where in a central identity store. While SharePoint is capable of…

  • Windows Firewall through policies + SCM

    So everybody should enable firewall policies in order to keep their environment secure. Best practice is to manage the firewalls through policies.. keep a default policy to enable the firewall and do not allow incoming connections.. then based on server role add exceptions and ports. That way, each server added to the domain is secured…

  • Whoopsie, here we go again.. antivirus kills Windows

    Once in a while, antivirus companies create a new signature file that kinda stops the entire system instead of just the virus.. It’s like the docter amputates the heart of the patient, just to cure a brooze Congratulations McAffee this time: Problem Blue screen or DCOM error, followed by shutdown messages after updating to the 5958 DAT…

  • FIM RC1 U3 and admin rights

    So I tried to install the FIM RC (u3) in a demo environment, and what a hush hush was that.. My setup was fairly easy, all (except SQL) on a single box.. offcourse reading is not my best skill, but the install went fine.. and the portal was ready for the administrator account (installed it…

  • Best Practices Analyser + MOSS

    When installing MOSS in an 2008R2 environment, you will notice that the Best Practices Analyser for Sharepoint will not run.. now this is not only to the fact that the BPA is running on the 2008R2 environment, it’s when the entire sharepoint farm is running on 2008R2. One  option is to have a single 2008/2003…