JamesC

There is a great guide with forfiles.exe available for download here: JJClements.co.uk » Delete files older than certain number of days

There hasnt been a virus yet that I couldnt remove with the help of: autoruns process explorer rootkitrevealer task manager With those three tools you can identify active viruses and locate them before removing them. Have a go, you dont have anything to lose and will save yourself hours of hard disk scanning.

Thanks srochford. I'll have a quick play. I'm probably gonna script a scheduled task on the exchange server to export email and archive it for users. Best way to do it I think.

Does anyone have any methods of archiving old email from exchange? Id rather not get users to do it manually through outlook and then try and save it to a server - possibly to fiddly for them. I also don't fancy installing outlook on the server and setting permissions to do it manually myself. There must be a better way of archiving old email!

How about considering VMWare ESX and running what ever you want? Hardware spec permitting of course :-)

I've experienced this same issue. I map my home dirs like so: \\servername\homes$\%username% but I have also seen instances, especially on RM networks where each user has their own mapped drive - instead of being mapped to a folder within a mapped drive (as described by \\SERVERNAME\User$). I have found that for some reason users seem to have their home dir mapped to: \\servername\homes$ instead of \\servername\homes$\%username% so they can see every other students homedir! NTFS permissions obviously stop them from browsing another students homedir but it is a real pain. Luckily I haven't rolled out SP3 and happened to notice this whilst testing. Hope this saves a few people problems!!

Hi bio. Im using Dell powerconnect 5224 switches. I've been looking at this and it seems that the problem is that I am using 'Route based on the original virtual port ID' as the load balancing option on the virtual switch. The way I understand it is that I have to use 'Route based on ip hash'. Apparently this can cause switch problems unless the switches support 802.3ad link aggregation because packets could come appear to come from the same source, but be bound for different destinations. The switches I have appear to support 802.3ad. Here's the config for the switch: no spanning-tree vlan database vlan 2-3 exit interface range ethernet g(1-5) switchport access vlan 2 exit interface range ethernet g(6-8) switchport access vlan 3 exit interface vlan 2 name iSCSI exit interface vlan 3 name VMotion exit voice vlan oui-table add 0001e3 Siemens_AG_phone________ voice vlan oui-table add 00036b Cisco_phone_____________ voice vlan oui-table add 00096e Avaya___________________ voice vlan oui-table add 000fe2 H3C_Aolynk______________ voice vlan oui-table add 0060b9 Philips_and_NEC_AG_phone voice vlan oui-table add 00d01e Pingtel_phone___________ voice vlan oui-table add 00e075 Polycom/Veritel_phone___ voice vlan oui-table add 00e0bb 3Com_phone______________ iscsi target port 860 address 0.0.0.0 iscsi target port 3260 address 0.0.0.0 interface vlan 1 ip address 192.1.1.24 255.255.255.0 exit username admin password xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx level 15 encrypted snmp-server community Dell_Network_Manager rw view DefaultSuper

Hi Guys, I have a small problem regarding VMWare and the load balancing of physical nics on my esx servers. I have attached a diagram of how I have setup the network(ing) for my esx hosts and SAN (VMWare Physical Setup.pdf). I have 2 switches and have followed guidelines from VMWare white papers and forum users for the configuration of my setup but I seem to have a problem with the load balancing of physical nics on my esx hosts. All network cards are gigabit and I have 1 dual port card used solely for iSCSI traffic on a seperate port based vlan to keep the traffic off of the default vlan which our computers reside on. I also have another dual port card used solely for vmotion traffic, again on its own vlan. I then have a quad port card which is used for all virtual machine traffic and is plugged into the default vlan that all of our computers sit on. I have attached a diagram of the setup for this (networking.png) which shows how I have the networking configured on each esx host. http://hydrogen.chfs.org.uk/clem/Images/vmware/Networking.PNG The problem I have is with the load balancing of physical network cards on the server. I first noticed this when I was on an esx host and realised that each esx host server could only see 2 targets on my SAN (not 4 as per the 4 nics in the SAN). I remember in my test environment I could see all 4 targets but I was only using one switch with everything plugged into it. So I logged into the service console and tried pinging all 4 ip's of each nic on the SAN. I only got replies from nic 1 and nic 3. At first I thought it was a problem with the second switch (because after tracing the path back from the 2 iscsi nics on the esx host one routes through one switch and one through the other) but after pulling the network lead that joined the esx host to the first switch I discovered that I could now ping nic 3 and nic 4 on the SAN! So it seems to me that the 2 nics being used for iscsi traffic on the esx host server are actually configured for fail over and not load balancing. I had a quick look in the performance monitor for the nics and sure enough of the 2 nics assigned for iscsi traffic only one seems to be in use (no load balancing). Similarly and more worrying is that I have 4 nics assigned for virtual machine traffic and according to the performance chart (attached as performance.png) only one of the four nics is being used for ALL virtual machine traffic. http://hydrogen.chfs.org.uk/clem/Images/vmware/Performance.PNG I cant believe this is the case because I have read on the vmware website that nic teaming provides load balancing as well as failover! The link is here (NIC Teaming heading): Creating a Virtual Networks (VLAN) in a Virtual Infrastructure - VMware I have had a look at the Virtual Switch configuration (Switch Config.png as below) that connects physical nics to virtual services like the console/vmkernel and load balancing is configured for 'Route based on the originating virtual port ID'. I assumed that this as the default setting would be fine for load balancing. However nic load balancing just doesnt seem to be working (but nic failover does). http://hydrogen.chfs.org.uk/clem/Images/vmware/Switch%20Config.PNG As a side note, I have read that load balancing in ESX only applies to outbound traffic. To set up inbound load balancing, I need to enable VLAN trunking. I've googled this, but it doesn't strike me as the solution for my problem. Has anyone had a similar experience or is there some simple configuration setting that I'm missing here? As a result of the load balancing problem I believe we are experiencing performance problems, especially at peak times when the VMs are under load. Im sure that load balancing the nics would greatly improve performance, especially between the esx hosts that are running the virtual machines and the SAN where connectivity is currently limited to a single gigabit cable for iscsi traffic. Thanks guys, James VMWare Physical Setup.pdf

localzuk, do you use the NSClient++ for windows client reporting?

For what its worth I know how your probably feeling right now - relief! But I also use Desktop Authority MSI Studio. I've packaged a hell of a lot of apps over the last 4 years and although it is an awesome tool it is littered with bugs and problems. Of all the different versions over the years that I have tried I find that an old version called Installer Design Studio 3.01 is the best. This was followed by a 3.02 version (absolutely terrible - always giving .net framework errors!) and subsequently renamed to what you now call Desktop Authority MSI Studio. If you can get your hands on that 3.01 version you will save yourself a lot of headaches because that version is the only one I use now and seems to have the least number of bugs/issues in it!! James

I want one!!!!!!!!!!

Yes Geoff you are dead right. You could install the nagios windows client into the virtual machine running windows and have it monitor the virtual machine as though it is a physical server. I think dhicks was talking about monitoring a virtual machine state i.e. is it online, are there snapshots available etc. For what its worth I would probably use your method and install the client into the virtual machine and have it monitoring services/processes/disk space etc

LOL Sorry mate! I didnt read the word Xen in your post

@dhicks- without throwing this topic off track I wasnt sure if you were aware of the getstate command for vmware? You can check the VM state by typing: “vmware-cmd //server.vmx getstate” should return: getstate() = on This could be handy for a script to check virtual machines. Thinking about it now ICMP could also be enabled within the os of the virtual machine and a ping could be used to verify the server is 'up'.

Thanks for the quick reply! Im looking at Nagios now. Can I ask what methods it uses to alert you to a problem? Email, txt message perhaps?

I was wondering what software people use to monitor servers. Namely- services, disk space, virus definitions, network card bandwidth, event log errors. I have seen a product by a company- Nimsoft called NimBUS which monitors servers for all of these aspects. Ideally I want a lightweight agent that runs on the servers and reports to a central server and would notify me of any problems. I'm not really looking for an app that I would have to run manually to generate a report for each server, I already have a utility for this that generates a report about absolutely everything on that workstation/server. I want something that monitors realtime

I have implemented it, and I know for a fact it is used by hotmail servers. When I have tested it and it blocks email fine. Perhaps you misconfigured your spf record?

RDP all the way. I hate installing unnecessary applications on my servers. Why bother with the likes of logmein and vnc when microsoft have provided a perfectly functional tool (RDP) for you anyway? Plus the likes of vnc are EASILY exploitable, believe me

@FN - The dongle isn't detected as a mass storage device, so ghost wouldn't detect it as being a device that could be copied. @Syn - That's a nice looking device, I haven't seen anything like that. I'll have a look to see if I can find anything like it in the UK. Although the USB over IP solution that VMWare approve of looks very similar. I will probably try that first to be honest. I cant believe that software vendors haven't recognised that people will want dongleless software for this reason and worked a solution for it yet.

Hi guys, I'm just wondering if anyone else is using multiple VMWare ESX servers in a High Availability cluster - running virtual machines with applications that require USB Dongles for serialization/licensing? The problem I have is that we have 3 physical esx servers. I have one server with a virtual machine running an application that requires a usb dongle for its license. Without the dongle the application stops working. If the physical server were to go offline then the virtual machine running the application would be restarted (using the high availability feature) on a different physical server. Herein lies the problem. We only have one dongle and if it is plugged into the server that is offline then when the virtual machine is restarted on another server or infact vmotion'd onto any of the other servers it cannot contact the dongle and verify its license and so it stops working. As far as I can see I have 4 options: 1) ask the software vendor if they sell a copy of the software that does not use a usb dongle. (Tried this and got told 'NO') 2) buy another 2 dongles and infact another 2 full copies of the software. I could then plug one dongle into each esx server and whatever phisical esx server the virtual machine was on it would always detect a usb dongle. (considered this until I heard the price of another 2 licenses, also don't like the fact that we would have 3 dongles altogether and would only ever be using one of them). 3) use dongle emulation apps. from what I have read there are 3rd party apps that dump the contents of the dongle to a file and then an emulator is used to emulate the dongle being plugged into the machine. (I have tried this and it didnt work, the application didnt detect the dongle as being plugged in). 4) consider a usb over ip solution. I found this white paper and it details a product by a company called 'DIGI' called anywhereusb. I am about to purchase this device to test it out. http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx_anywhereusb2.pdf Does anyone do this in a different way? I also have one application that uses a serial port to communicate with the electronic door entry system, so I guess I'm going to need a serial over ip solution as well. Thanks guys, James

Hi MicrodigitUK, have you tried the Windows File Server Migration Toolkit? Its available here and will do everything you need: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/upgrading/nt4/tooldocs/msfsc.mspx More info on its use can be found here: http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2005/09/26/Using-the-File-Server-Migration-Toolkit.aspx James

My first though was to create a GPO that points to run the script on computer startup/shutdown (or how ever you need it) and then use a wmi filter on that GPO for the hardware requirements of your choice.

If you have a line of sight you could use the infrared option for data

Ok I worked out how to do this through the CLI. Incase anyone stumbles across this thread heres how: Console (config)# interface vlan 1 Console (config-if)# no ip address Console (config-if)# ip address Console (config-if)# end Console# copy run start

Id like to recommend IPCop