JamesC

Ive got 2x Dell PowerConnect 5448's and have defined an ip address on VLAN1 [i think!] so that I can access the web interface (this is working fine). I'm trying to change this ip now but cant seem achieve this through the web interface, ive also tried using CLI but cant find where it is configured. I've looked under vlan settings and ip settings in the CLI but cant for the life of me change the ip. In the web interface I tried assigning another ip to the vlan1 but I got an error message basically saying that you can only set one ip per vlan. Anyone know how to change the ip through the web interface or using CLI? All ports on the switch appear to currently belong to vlan1 which was the default out of the box.

I use a kixtart startup script to add a scheduled job to all computers to shut them down at 10pm. ;=============================================== ; Shutdown All Computers at 22:00 ;=============================================== Dim $ExcludedWorkstations[4] $ExcludedWorkstations[0] = "R0125" $ExcludedWorkstations[1] = "R1525" $ExcludedWorkstations[2] = "MBassant" $ExcludedWorkstations[3] = "Maintenance" IF ASCAN($ExcludedWorkstations,@WKSTA)="-1" and NOT EXIST("c:\WINDOWS\Tasks\At1.job") SHELL ("at 22:00 shutdown -s -f -t 300 -c " + chr(34) + "Your computer is shutting down for the night. You have 5 minutes to save your work. If you wish to carry on using your computer you can turn it back on after it has shutdown." + chr(34)) ENDIF

Id be interested to see what motherboard [chipset] that computer has in it for that money. SATA HD - I actually read that as not being SATAII as well. Just my opinion.

I just found another utility to do this. Information can be found here: http://telnetport25.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/exchange-2003-change-mailbox-folders-permissions-in-bulk/ The application can be found here: http://www.fnds.net/html/downloads.html

I just needed to do the same thing (set calendar permissions). I didn't want to go visit the user. Downloaded 'pfdavadmin' and it worked a treat!!!! Thanks for sharing that, id never come across it before!

Thanks for this. Looks like it could be useful

Or you could use Vista's 'Server Ping' side bar gadget: http://download.gallery.start.com/d.dll/1~2~110~10610/LARGE.jpg http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=ca5fc597-58cf-4c73-864a-3bd021a2a570&bt=1&pl=1

Try accessing your WSUS server like this in your browser: http://servernamehere/wsusadmin/ James

I took 7 exams in total: 1 client os exam - I took Windows XP 4 core windows server exams (the link I provided previously) 2 elective exams - I took ISA server and Designing Security for a Windows Server 2003 Network. The first exam I sat (Windows XP) qualified me as an MCP, because of the order of which I took my exams my last exam qualified me as MCSA and more importantly MCSE.

I highly recommend 'AB Tutor Control'. It can be found here: http://www.abconsulting.com

I haven't read the whole thread here but I cap TV on a regular basis for myself and a private TV Torrent site and this is the tuner I use: http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4BF4 Awesome card, and just incase anyone wondered I use the free version of DVBWebScheduler which isn't publicly available anymore. They charge for it now and the version you pay for can be found here: http://www.bluebit.com.au/

Yep - I have an 'All Users' group as well, and like you it is a security group which I use for permissions and so on. Its the way I've always done it and I've never had a problem.

Can you not just change a group policy to set the interval at which the policies are refreshed for both users and the computers? I believe for computer policies the setting can be found here: (off the top of my head) Computer configuration -> administrative templates -> system -> group policy the name of the setting is: Group policy refresh interval... the default is set to 90 mins with a 30 min random offset. Obviously for larger networks this may not be advisable as network traffic will increase. The policy setting for users should be in a similar place within the user configuration.

"Anyway I was wondering if it's possible to restrict use of it to certain users only..." It sure is. Make sure you perform this on a computer with the exchange tools installed, of course they will be installed on your exchange server by default so probably advisable to do it on there. right click the security group -> properties -> exchange general (tab) -> message restrictions set this to: accept messages only from now populate the list with names you want to be able to send emails to the All Users group and then only these users will be able to send messages using the group.

Sure is. I use a standard config and it never changes.

Is there anything at all in the event log on the clients that this is happening with?

Indeed sounds like it could be a HDD issue. Any more specifics on the bsod error message?

I packaged BGInfo into an msi and deployed it. Then I have my kixtart script run it at logon for kids: IF INGROUP("Kids") AND EXIST("C:\Program Files\BackInfo\BackInfo.exe") RUN "C:\Program Files\BackInfo\BackInfo.exe" ENDIF

@DMcCoy - Thanks for all your help, it has been most useful. Seeing as I have the space for the VMs I'll probably create each at 50-80gb just to be safe. Thanks for letting me know about keeping the number of VMs per LUN to a minimum to avoid scsi lock problems, ill bear this in mind when creating VMs but in all honestly I wasn't aware of the problem before you mentioning it. @tmcd35 - Thanks for a quick explanation on how you have your virtualized environment configured. Userdata, applications, etc will be going on the SAS drives and the VMs will go onto the SATA. I have actually just ordered another matching disk for the 3 SATA disks so that I can use Raid 10 instead of Raid 5. I will still only get 1tb of storage for my VMs but hopefully there will be a performance increase for the sake of one extra disk. I think Raid 50 may be a little overkill for my needs to begin with although I may consider it in the future. I understand the 2 nics in the SAN are teamed/bonded. I too will store all my VMs on a single LUN although as mentioned but like I said to DMcCoy I will probably use slightly bigger sized VMs as I can afford the disk space. Thanks for all you help here guys, you've all definitely given me a better understanding of Virtualization. James

You could always buy the MCSE books like I did. Here they are: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Training-70-290-70-291-70-293-70-294/dp/0735622906/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203691387&sr=8-1

I actually agree with you there srochford. The way I interpreted the post though was that maybe something had changed since the RTM (not sure whether this is likely or not as once it has gone RTM id have thought that it was pretty much concrete) causing a problem which affected the selected products. Like you say it has been around as a beta for quite a while so if nothing has changed then more fool the vendors for not jumping on the bandwagon and testing or making their product SP1 compliant.

You'd have thought that they would have given the companies affected a heads up so that they could release updates for their own products.

@dhicks - thanks for the headsup regarding the storage of my VM's. I will try storing them on the 3 SATAII disks to begin to see how they hold up (using raid5). @DMcCoy - obviously my VM's need to be on the same vlan as my lan so that client computers can communicate with them. As far as the console portgroup is concerned I'd have thought that this needs to be on the same vlan as well so that I can telnet/ssh into it should I need to make configuration changes (like you mentioned) and so that Virtual Centre can use it (again like you mentioned). So the VMKernel can go on its own separate vlan as all traffic between HBA (be it hardware or software based) and iSCSI device can be isolated which is what I was going to do (thanks for confirming though!!!). As for the switches used, I have 2 Dell PowerConnect 5448 48 port gigabit managed switches, I have console'd into them and enabled the web interface which makes it kind of easier to configure the vlans. Out of curiosity DMcCoy how big do you size your virtual machine's when you create them? I was thinking 80GB for an OS install but I'm not sure whether this is overkill. If I raid5 the three SATAII disks I will have 1TB of storage. If I create 1 partition of 1TB and estimate that I will allocate 80GB per VM then I would be able to fit 12 virtual machines on the volume in a single LUN, although I dont anticipate that many VM's just yet. Does this sound ok? As for software HBA - this is where a network card is actually used inplace of a dedicated HBA like is used in FC sans. @sahmeepee - yes you are correct in saying an iSCSI initiator is used for a software HBA. I didn't think about actually cabling the two switches together. Now that I have thought about it I cant actually see any benefits of cabling them together either (although for the sake of a cable I will probably do it). Thanks for the link to the techrepublic article though, I hadn't seen that. Thanks for your help guys. I just have one more question though. This is gonna sound kind of silly but it was one of the first things I thought about when researching virtualization. I have all this storage in the san that I want to allocate to different vm's but I was always unsure about how to do it. Basically there are 2 ways I can see of doing this. The first is to create a VM with enough capacity (say 400gb for example) for both OS and all the data I would ever expect it to use. Then when installing the OS I could partition the disk space into 80GB for the os and leave the rest for data. Of course I would be left with 320GB for data and both the os and the data would be encapsulated inside a single vm. The second way I envisaged doing it was by creating a vm that was only ever going to be the size of the os. So I could create an 80GB vm and install an os into it using the full 80gb partition (with room to spare for apps etc). I would then create a raid 5 volume and make a 320gb partition in it using the other faster disks in my san. I would then create a single 320gb LUN on the 320gb partition. I would then guess that I could assign that LUN to a vm and that the vm would see the disk space as storage which I could partition up and do with as I please. I'm pretty sure that the second method of sharing storage is more correct than the first, but Id like to hear how you guys do it and make sure I get it right from the start. Thanks guys, James

I have read/studied from the MS Press books. They are very good. I've noticed that other sources of material tend to say 'go read this on technet...' but the MS Press books had everything I needed.

Sounds like it could be your IIS WWW Publishing Service that has a problem. I would create a .bat file with the following lines: net stop W3SVC net start W3SVC Save it somewhere on your c:\ and then create a scheduled task to run it every night at 4am. EDIT:/ of course you can and should test this first by waiting for the OWA problem to occur and then opening a command prompt and typing net stop w3svc and then net start w3svc and see whether it is working again. I would also suggest looking in the event log for errors, specifically relating to IIS etc because you should be able to resolve this without resorting to the .bat file above. The .bat should only be considered a temporary fix.