Simple explanation to Win2003 AD groups

Reference: _h_t_t_p_://www.computerperformance.co.uk/Litmus/universal_groups.htm

Amateurs: Use only Universal Groups and never Global or Domain Local

What are the two TYPES of Groups in Windows Server 2003? Hang on Guy, I thought there were three, Global, Domain Local, and Universal? Microsoft are playing games with words, the two TYPES of groups are Security and Distribution (as in Distribution List).

Microsoft have introduced the Scope attribute to explain the capabilities of groups. If you are brand new to groups it makes sense, but for old timers it takes a while to get your head around the scope concept.

Active Directory Training

As an MCT trainer, I can thoroughly recommend TrainSignal because they provide practical hands on training. In particular, I like the way that TrainSignal cover all learning methods, instructor lead, video and of course text material. You can either take one module, for example Active Directory or go for a combination of modules. See more about Active Directory training
Domain Local Groups (These used to be plain Local groups).

Think of domain local groups as great hosts, literally anyone can be a member, users, Global groups, Universal groups, even computers can join a domain local group. Local groups are bad travellers and only operate in their own domain.

Best practice is to use local groups to assign permissions to resources like databases and printers.

Global Groups

These are great travellers, they can wander the entire Forest. The key point is that global groups are poor hosts and can only contain members from their own domain.

Best practice is to make global group your default group, and for starters, make a group to represent each of your departments.

Universal Groups

Another question for you, why is it sometimes the radio button against create Universal group is greyed out? The answer is when the Domain is in mixed mode you cannot create universal groups (NT 4.0 BDC's would not understand them). You need to 'raise domain level to Windows 2000 native before you benefit from universal groups. Think of universal groups as the ultimate container for nesting groups. They are good hosts and great travellers.

Best practice is make it rule to only include global groups inside Universal groups, no individual groups.

Global Catalog Implications

As you would expect, domain local and global groups are listed in the global catalog, however the individual members are not listed. So changes in global group membership have zero impact on global catalog replication traffic.

Universal groups on the other hand, not only are listed in the global catalog but also the individual users or nested groups are also listed. Now you can see that adding users to a universal group will generate replication traffic. That is why Guy says only put global groups inside universal groups, the individual members inside the global groups are not replicated.

In Windows 2000 the situation is that one change of membership to a universal group causes the whole list to be replicated, thankfully that changed in Server 2003, now only incremental changes are replicated not the whole list.

My & my lovely wife's baby

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjoCHCoO_qo

20 weeks.......

connect to windows share from ESX Server

you need to be in the 'bin' directory to run this

First you need to enable samba services on your ESX server’s firewall:

(from the ESX server console)

esxcfg-firewall -e smbClient

Create location on the esx server to mount the share to.

for e.g. mkdir /home/test

enable netfs – netfs is a file system interface to the networking stack of the ESX OS

chkconfig netfs on
service netfs start


mount -t smbfs -o username=,password= //servername/sharename /vmimages/iso
user domain\username format if need be.

Open two excel sheets and split them across two monitors

Thanks to...
http://blog.drewery.net/2006/08/29/utilising-dual-monitors-with-microsoft-excel-2003/

Folder options -> File types tab ->
Select XLS -> Advanced -> Select OPEN -> add space and "%1" at the end of the string in
'Application used to perform action' field.
UNSelect USE DDE.... ok out of everything.

The above steps should enable you to split excel files across two monitors.

WIN 7 does not have FILE Types tab..... Win 7... this was not my idea... ;-)

Cheers

VMcopy

http://www.vladan.fr/plug-in-the-external-usb-drive-to-esx-server-directly-to-backup-or-copy/

Sometimes you would like to use your external USB drive to backup (transfer) your VMDK files directly from your ESX Server external USB drive. VMDK files are files with extention *.VMDK and those files are virtual hard disks of your virtual machines. You can also mount VMDK files directly into your Windows PC.

When you plug-in external USB drive to ESX host you need to enter some commands at the console. For those of you who don’t really know linux, there is some commands to remember. But they are not many…. -:) .

First of all you should know that not all filesystems are supported. For the supported ones there are those here:

* FAT32 read/write.
* Ext3 read/write
* NTFS read only (that means that you can’t use NTFS formated USB drives to copy your VMDK files, but you should create a partition with EXT3 or FAT32)

Now how-to copy data from Service Console to a USB device:

1. Plugin the external USB drive to your ESX host.
2. Run this command to find out to which device name the kernel assigned to it:

tail /var/log/dmesg

3. Now you will have to Run the following command to create a mount point (A mount point is a directory which a device or partition is attached to):

mkdir /mnt/usb

esx-how-to-mount-usb-drive

4. Run the following command to mount the drive ( When mounting, you must tell the mount command what is the device or partition you want to mount and what is the mount point. The mount point must be a directory that already exists on your system.:

mount /dev/[device_name] /mnt/usb -t [filesystem_type]

Please Note that you must:
* Replace [device_name] with your device name found in step 2
* Replace [filesystem_type] with vfat (FAT32) or ext3

5. After your copy(backup) you can type this command to unmount the device:

umount /dev/[device_name]

You might also want to export you VMDK files. Vmkstools is VMware ESX Server file system management tool. It is a program for creating and manipulating virtual disks, file systems, logical volumes and pyhsical storage device on the VMware ESX Server. Now what you need to do to export the VMDK (virtual disk)? You will use a command ‘vmfkstools’:

vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/[datastore_name]/[vm_name]/[vm_name].vmdk /mnt/usb/[vm_name].vmdk -d 2gbsparse

And how-to import the VMDK (virtual disk):

vmkfstools -i /[path_to_USB_mount]/[vm_name].vmdk /vmfs/volumes/[datastore_name]/[vm_name]/[vm_name].vmdk

You might also want to copy the configuration files for a virtual machine. Those files are files with following extentions: *.vmx *.log *.nvram *.vmxf *.vmsd (you will not only copy the configuration files, but at the same time you will make a zip file in tar.gz format:

cd /vmfs/volumes/[datastore_name]/[vm_name]
tar -czvf [vm_name].tar.gz *.vmx *.log *.nvram *.vmxf *.vmsd
cp [vm_name].tar.gz /mnt/usb

Now you will be able to extract the configuration files of a virtual machine:

tar -xzvf [vm_name].tar.gz /vmfs/volumes/[datastore_name]/[vm_name]

Services.exe using up all your memory ? and windows hangs after launch?

I have faced an issue today, where one of the servers kept showing 100% CPU usage and after investigation it turned out to be services.exe taking up most of the cpu time.

After reading few forums, followed a suggestion by someone, to delete all logs from event logs.

This is the reasoning:

Whenever Windows recognises any failure either software/Hardware it makes a entry in the system log. And when you start your machine again this system log entry will be checked and Windows will try to search for a possible solution / or try to analyse the causes of failure.How to check this..

Click ctrl + alt + del – Open your task manager and click processes. And see how much memory the process services.exe is using, If it exceeds say 10%, you can be sure you are having the diagnostic problem.In the below picture the services.exe is running normally.

I did try the above option. and it did make a difference to the performance.
However, before i deleted the logs i found lot of the below warnings under app logs.

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: EvntAgnt
Event Category: None
Event ID: 3006
Date: 5/03/2010
Time: 10:17:13 AM
User: N/A
Computer: PRDSVRMGS
Description:
Error reading log event record. Handle specified is 691944. Return code from ReadEventLog is 87.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


Cheers

Rahul

IIS Related issues... contact this guy....

IIS issues? Contact the guy at this website.

http://www.iis-aid.com/