Nick_Parker

That's not a bad idea... Could you elaborate a little more on the running a script from a webserver bit please? The one thing that keeps niggling at me is that I need to just bite the bullet and do it properly using vbscript + odbc, i'm just worried about the ODBC availablility to connect to mysql on each client

Using the VBS Script to access databases directly, you would use an ODBC connector rite? Seeing as this is a logon script run from a network share, would that ODBC driver need to be installed on each client?

It is to do with the .net securities... bugger It's starting to look like I may have to rewrite it all as a vbscript, which is a pity, cause I was so proud of my little .exe

Correction: It does run now when you log off, turns out I had a mistake in my logoff script... *oops* Still, any suggestions as to how to get the exe to run from a network drive?

LAME! I spent most of yesterday writing a console application in C# to handle the talking to a DB, you pass it the parameters such as username, IP address, computer name. It then looks up from a mysql db all the current sessions for that username, adds a new one if appropriate, logs off if necessary etc. First problem: Can't run the EXE from the netlogon folder... all sorts of permission errors blah blah... So for testing, the logon script now copies the exe to the local machine then runs it. that seems to work fine, but still not ideal. second problem: The logoff script doesn't seem to run the exe... when you log off, the desktop dissapears and you get that little status thingy, "windows is logging you off", "closing network connections..." etc... that stuff, then it does the "running log off scripts" and I think at that point its not capable of running an .exe and doing the whole mysql bit. Any suggestions?

You may be right about the sessions method, will have to look into it a little more, but I'm beginning to lean towards the MySQL method, do you read/write to the MySQL DB from the logon/logoff script?

Ta for your suggestions guys, I've been a bit sceptical of LimitLogon after Google'ing it and seeing pages of "problems installing" and we are about to move our DC/AD to Server 2008, does LimitLogon work on 2008? None of you have tried the 'Sessions' route? I'm asking because I have no idea how to go about it myself

Hi All, I've been looking around at solutions to restricting users to only one logon, I've looked at cconnect (which I'm still trying to track down - need Server 2000 tools or something) and the other option is a fairly expensive UserLock software. Other people have come up with clever ways of doing it using logon scripts to write to text files, or create folders or write to an SQL DB, but... If you goto the domain controller, and right click 'My Computer', go to Manage, then under 'Shared Folders' you go to 'Sessions'. I would assume that's a fairly accurate way of determining who is logged on where? (Please feel free to comment on just how accurate this is?) Next question, is it possible to query the 'Sessions' from a vbscript startup script? Any suggestions would be greatly recommended?

Perfect, thanks so much!!

Hi Jonathan, thanks for this, I've been looking for something like this for a while! I've setup the Policy, however, I'm not certain about the last part: I'm not sure where to check if it's running and would also like to check where it sends the report to. Thanks!!

A bit off topic of ironing tips, I'm in South Africa and will sadly not be attending BETT, is there any chance this book of tips can be turned into a PDF or something similar so I can have copies printed for staff here? Thanks!

Hi All, Does anybody know anything about Load Balancing 2x ADSL Lines? We currently have a 1MB ADSL line for Internet & a 512K ADSL line for EMail. I'm thinking about getting the 512K line increased to a 1MB line and then using some sort of load balancing router to link the 2 lines. I understand that this won't give me a 2MB line, but it will balance the load across the 2 lines as well as provide a fail-safe should one line go down. I've been looking at 2 Edimax Routers: EDIMAX Technology EDIMAX Technology Does anybody have any experience with load balancing ADSL lines? Or any better ideas/suggestions? Thanks!

Good thinking, I'll have a look, they will most probably be Dell Poweredge Servers, must just check what will be compatible

Raid 10 it is, thanks so much! Regarding the network issues, all the servers come with dual gigabit network cards, if we assume 2 VM's per Server, I can split one gigabit connection to each VM, and the host will have to use one of those. Not ideal, but considering 95% of our network is still operating @ 100MB/s, we shouldn't notice any issues I hope?

Hi David I was going for a minimum of 4GB of Ram and all servers as 64Bit Servers I need to setup: 1. DC (AD/DHCP/DNS) - Server 2008 2. Exchange - Server 2008 with Exchange 2007 3. Internet/Cache - Server 2003 with ISA Server 2006 4. PrintServer - Server 2003 with PaperCut 5. WebServer - Server 2003 with IIS 6 (Intranet + Joomla) 6. GhostServer - Server 2003 with Symantec Ghosts Solution Suite 2.0 7. AntivirusServer - Server 2003 with F-Secure 8. Possible UpdateServer - Server 2003 with WSUS (Although WSUS doesn't allow you to save the updates on a remote server i.e. the NAS, so still thinking about a solution for this one) *There will be another server in another building running as a replicated DC (AD/DHCP/DNS) just in case* *I know alot of these functions could be handled by one server, but I like the security of knowing I can restart one server to install something without taking down everything* Regarding the NAS Server, I've been looking through Dells offerings, very nice, but also pricey, Intel does one, the "McKay Creek", 12 SAS or SATA Bays, it's not as expensive as the Dell and available from a supplier in the area. I can certainly try load it up with 12x 500GB SATA disks and look at RAID Cards to give me RAID 10, this would give me 3TB Storage right? The other option would be 4 sets of 3x 500GBs in RAID 5. Or start off with 1 set, then add another over time...

Wow, thanks so much for all your input, I've been reading through what you've said and have also been looking at pricing and like you said SANS are expensive. Unfortunatly I don't have much funding to work with (does anybody ever?) So what I might try is the following: NAS Storage Server with +- 3TB of storage space - Will use this for storing Pupil & Staff folders, cd images, backups etc etc... 3x Reasonably powerful servers each with 2x SCSI HDDs HDD #1 : Virtualizing Environment (maybe Server 2008 with Hyper-V?) HDD #2 : Virtual HDDs for VMs running on HDD #1 and then ensure that the Virtual HDDs are backed up on the Storage Server @ least once a day. I'm going to try for at least 2 VMs per Physical Server, this would give me 6 potential servers. Should a physical server fail, I can copy the VHD from the storage server onto one of the physical servers and load up the VM on there until the broken machine can be fixed. What do you think? Any suggestions?

Awesome, thanks for your help guys. What I'm going to do is a Virtual Machine for the DC/AD/DHCP/DNS a Virtual Machine for Exchange Server (FYI - When I was asking about Virtualizing DB's, I was thinking in terms of Exchange's storage being one massive DB) Thanks for the warning regarding Terminal Servers & VMs, I had thought about setting up a Virtual Machine Terminal Server, I'll put that off for now. I hear Win2k8's Hyper-V is now RTM so I was thinking about giving that a try... I have some questions regarding SANS etc, I'm afraid I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to this side of servers. I understand the concept of a NAS server, a server with alot of HDDs, shared and connected to the network. You're obvious bottleneck here is the LAN speeds? What exactly is a SAN/How does it work? What other options are there? Thanks!

Hi All Regarding Virtualizing Servers, which I think is an excellent way to get the most out of hardware as well as safety if a machine should fail, is it a good idea to virtualize servers such as the DC or the exchange server? I read somewhere that MS doesn't recommend virtualizing DC machines and somebody else mentioned something about servers with DB's on them because of the amount of HDD read/writes? What do you guys think?

No luck, it works as a port forwarder, but it needs to actually NAT the connection. With port forwarding, I connect from mail.domain.co.za and it connects to the RRAS server no problem, but then tries to forward it onto 192.168.10.1, which isn't an external IP, if that makes any sense?

I will give it a try as soon as I can! thanks!

Hello all, I have attached a picture explaining the current network setup. Is there anyway of setting up the RRAS server so that people from outside the network are able to access the OWA server? OR, is it going to be easier to setup and install ISA Server and publish the server? Thanks!

I've been setting up a 2008 Server to play with, and I chose to use the 32bit version mainly because It may become a print server in the near future and I don't feel like finding 64bit drivers for all the printers. I decided to play around with the DC roles and to test drive Exchange Server 2007 on it. So far: ISA Server 2006 will not work on Server 2008 and apparently, ISA 2006's replacement, is only going to work on Server 2008 64bit. Exchange Server 2007 will not install either, I'm in the process of downloading Exchange Server 2007 with SP1 (5.6GB!) but I see that is also only available in 64bit. and lastly, Hyper-V will only be available on Server 2008 64bit editions. So... why have they even bothered with 32bit versions if you're not going to be able to run any actual server software on it?

I've been having exactly the same problem, I can't connect it via network as there is only one network point in that office and it's being used for the computer. I will try disabling the bi-directional setting and let you know.

in both cases, all you do is rename the file from .txt to .php and run it on a webserver on your network that has PHP installed.

I did, all credit needs to go to christhack & especially to webman from Bishop Barrington! attached is my index.php file renamed to index.txt index.txt