Category: Windows 2008 R2

  • Pass the Hash

    When you create a new forest or new domain, you use the Domain Admin credentials. Through the use of the “Administrator” account you can control each and every workstation and server. You can install Exchange, System Center products and much much more. But Microsoft is probably thinking twice now about the framework they have chosen…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Cross Forest Authentication NTLM

    So we’ve seen how a trust is setup, and how we can manipulate the domain controllers involved, can we do the same for authentication traffic? The answer would be yes, but why is it a yes, and how is the main question. While many believe WINS or LMHOSTS can help us on external (non-forest) trusts,…

  • Creating trusts (as follow up to…)

    So I was wondering the following, how do all the domain controllers know that the trust is established, since (see previous post) we cannot accurately say which domain controller is being used.. When we have the same problem with user passwords, the PDC gives the vote whether the password (just changed) for the user is valid. The…

  • Cross Forest Authentication part 2 – Creating trusts

    In part of the the forest authentication blog post, we’ve seen that a particular path is used depending on Kerberos or NTLM authentication. We’ve also seen that domain controllers rely on other domain controllers of the forest to find the right domain (and thus object in the AD). The question now is, which domain controller…

  • 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…

  • Group Policy Preferences & Drive Mappings

    When using GPP’s to map drives, some of you will notice that some drives are not correctly mapped on the clients. Some users will receive other network mappings (they “sort of” never heard of before) and some network connections are there, but will not be re-attached (device name is already in use).

  • New Active Directory 2008 Forest Recovery Documentation

    So you have implemented Active Directory 2008 .. I hope you did some investigation in backup/restore and offcourse you must update your disaster recovery documentation now.. to help you on your way Microsoft has released a new whitepaper on Forest Recovery for Windows 2008… read before and while fixing your AD.. (preferably before ) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=326C8A7A-DCAD-4333-9050-A6303FF3155C&displaylang=en

  • Poor man's iSCSI

    If you want to implement iSCSI it’s best to keep the normal network traffic and the iSCSI traffic apart from each other. And that usually means buying a 2nd switch capable of reaching high speeds and jumbo frames. Off course for production systems I recommend spending a few bucks.. however if you only want iSCSI…

  • Windows 2008 SystemStateBackup

    With the release of Windows 2008, the backup mechanism of Windows has also changed. No more NTBackup, but Windows backup, available to your 2008 system as a feature. Also part of that feature is the systemstate backup, you know the one that is utterly Important to restore Domain Controllers. Now the GUI will not let…