When introducing the Group Policy Preferences in your organization, you need to make sure all your systems have the Client Side Extensions software installed. This CSE package can be distributed by WSUS but can also be deployed separately. But for GPP to work you must also have XMLLite installed if your IE version is below 7.
While browsing I stumbled upon a nice video explaining the trick the get a command prompt during the loginscreen of a user.. and that command prompt is in the system security context. They say physical access is full access and without bitlocker they are right.. take a look at the short video below.. http://www.offensive-security.com/movies/vistahack/vistahack.html
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 you perform a single systemstate backup (only full backups including everything) and backups can be stored on a network share. But let’s say we want a systemstate backup only?!
Lots of us install Exchange (what ever version) in our infrastructure.. do you know what Exchange does to your Active Directory.. make a statement order the shirt 😉 Link
DHCP is the mechanism that gives most client these days the tools (ip address) for connectivity. Most companies however do not realize the importance of the DHCP service and do not cluster nor have another server as standby when the DHCP server fails. If the DHCP server fails, most clients will not receive a new ip address and will seize to work on the network. While clustering is improved in Windows 2008 and sort of made easy for administrators, most of them are reluctant to implement a failover cluster for DHCP. In Windows 2008 R2 we have Split-Scopes, remember the 80-20 rule for DHCP servers, it kinda the same, but then made easy. For this article we have a single domain controller and two Windows 2008R2 servers.
<update> The links are now actually working.. you can download them again </update> My previous studiographic.nl website was not too great.. so I moved everything over to the blog.. if you are looking for the Visio Stencils for Virtualization.. check Visio Stencils….. _R
I am one of the few people using Safari next to IE(7/8) as their standard browser during day to day internet surfing. Many try to get me into Firefox with all the new applets and plugins like password and URL sync between hosts.. but nothing beats the new Safari 4.0 is my humble opinon… finally […]
When you have servers in the DMZ that are members of your internal AD (not best practice ok.. ) .. you find yourself shooting holes in the firewall to allow RPC, SMB and other protocols. In that case perhaps an IPSEC tunnel can help you out.. when you use a tunnel between your internal and DMZ hosts, the firewall only has to allow UDP 500 and ESP protocol (protocol 50). No high ports required. To set it up use the following guide.
When you use Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2 or Vista / Windows 2008 you almost always have to type the domain name during logon.. eg Type your username as ROOTDOMAINUser… annoying: yes.. go to the following group policy to specify the default domain logon: ComputerAdministrative TemplatesSystemLogonAssign a default domain for logon  and set your default logon […]
Organizing a free training can give your business new customers, thats probably the idea behind free trainings seminars from Twice IT; you can follow a short course in exchange for some feedback on a blog.. So out of curiosity I attended the 3 hour Powershell course, and here’s my feedback ..