My IT Blog

The Trouble with Names For those who missed my past columns ("Name Resolvers: WINS vs. DNS," November 1996; "NetBIOS Names and WINS," January 1997; and "Inside a NetBIOS Name Resolution," March 1997), you can find them on the  Windows NT Magazine  Web site at http://www.winntmag.com. The articles show that NT and TCP/IP have a problem: names. We want servers to have nice, human-friendly names such as, in my network, Aldebaran, Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Elnath. (They are the brightest and second-brightest stars in the Orion and Taurus constellations. The brightest are the primary domain controllers--PDCs, and the second-brightest are the backup domain controllers--BDCs.) Those names are easier to remember than IP addresses such as 198.34.57.44, 198.34.57.11, 198.34.57.90, and 198.34.57.26. To satisfy both us and the computers, networking software converts the human-friendly names into IP addresses. The term for that conversion is  name resolution,  and it ty

What do WINS and DNS do? Windows NT 3.5 offered the Windows Internet Name Service (WINS). Most of us had no idea what it did, but we soon figured out that we pretty much needed it. The rest of the Internet world seemed to be using something similar, but incompatible: the Domain Name System (DNS). What  is  WINS, and, well, why  isn't  it DNS? The short answer is that WINS and DNS have somewhat different jobs. Consider the two following commands, both issued to the same server: ping server01.bigfirm.com and net use * \\server01 \mainshr The ping command refers to the server as server01.big firm.com. The net use command calls the same server server01. The difference is important. Why Two Different Names? The ping command is a platform-independent, TCP/IP/Internet kind of command. It's valid on UNIX, VMS, Macintosh, and MVS--so long as the machine is running a TCP/IP protocol stack. On any of these platforms, you can issue a ping only if you're running TCP/IP. The command

T he Active Directory Database is Stored in  %SYSTEM ROOT%\NDTS  folder. The file is called as ntds.dit.  Along with this file there are other files also present in this folder. The files are created when you run  dcpromo.  The list of files and use of those files are listed below 1.  ntds.dit :  This is the main database file for active directory. 2.  edb.log :  When a transaction performed to ad database, like writing some data first the data will be stored to this file. And after that it will be sent to database. So the system performance will be depends on how this data from edb.log file will be written to ntds.dit. multiple .log files will be created according to the requirement. 3.  res1.log :  Used as reserve space in the case when drive had low space. It is basically 10MB in size and created when we run dcpromo. 4.  res2.log :  Same as res1.log. It is also 10MB in size and the purspose also same. 5.  edb.chk :  This file records the transactions committed to ad data

Introduction Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) is a feature of Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD). FSMOs are specialized domain controller (DC) tasks, used where standard data transfer and update methods are inadequate. AD normally relies on multiple peer DCs, each with a copy of the AD database, being synchronized by multi-master replication. The tasks which are not suited to multi-master replication, and are viable only with a single-master database, are the FSMOs. The FSMO roles are also called Single Master Operations or Operations Master, FSMO is sometimes pronounced as “fizmo”. What is the need of FSMO roles? Active directory is multi master replication model. Meaning clients can register their records to any available Active directory domain controller and have access to resources within active directory NTDS.DIT database. The purpose of having FSMO roles is being cause by Multi master replication model. In this model there has to be a way of preventing the c

Here are the pre-requisites for a HA VMM server installation: 1. Failover clustering feature added, cluster created and configured (Windows Server 2008 R2 is the minimum OS version supported as node servers) 2. Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 installed on all nodes that will be used as VMM servers  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=696dd665-9f76-4177-a811-39c26d3b3b34&displaylang=en 3. Server and instance name of a SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 cluster or remote SQL server (best practice to use clustered SQL Server with HA VMM servers) 4. For our DKM (Distributed Key Management) requirement, either logged on, installing VMM with an account that has “edit” permission on the Active Directory container (can be a lower level container doesn’t have to be the root) or DKM group pre-created on Active Directory and its name available to provide at setup (more on DKM requirement later) HA VMM Installation Steps When we were designin

Article  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb808814(TechNet.10).aspx  describes how to install DPM on to a 2008 Server. However I have found that this article is incomplete. The following is how to install DPM onto a 2008 Server. After the 2008 Server setup has finished perform the following: 1. Click Start, point to  Administrative Tools , and then click  Server Manager . 2. Expand Server Manager to the  Features  node, and then select  Features . 3. In the  Features  pane, click  Add Features. 4. Select  Windows PowerShell , and then click  Next . 5. On the  Confirm Installation Selections  page, click  Install . 6. Click Start, point to  Administrative Tools , and then click  Server Manager . 7. Expand Server Manager to the  Roles  node, and then select  Roles . 8. In the  Roles  pane, click  Add Roles . 9.  In the  Add Roles Wizard , on the  Before You Begin  page, click  Next . 10. On the  Select Server Roles  page, select  Web Service (IIS) . 11. In the  Add features re

Ipconfig Displays all current TCP/IP network configuration values and refreshes Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Domain Name System (DNS) settings. Used without parameters, ipconfig displays the IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway for all adapters. Syntax ipconfig [/all] [/renew [Adapter]] [/release [Adapter]] [/flushdns] [/displaydns] [/registerdns] [/showclassid Adapter] [/setclassid Adapter [ClassID]] Top of page Parameters /all : Displays the full TCP/IP configuration for all adapters. Without this parameter, ipconfig displays only the IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway values for each adapter. Adapters can represent physical interfaces, such as installed network adapters, or logical interfaces, such as dial-up connections. /renew [Adapter] : Renews DHCP configuration for all adapters (if an adapter is not specified) or for a specific adapter if the Adapter parameter is included. This parameter is available only on computers with adapters

You need to compile kernel only if: => You need custom made kernel for specific task such as embedded kernel. => Apply third party security patches. => You need to apply specific patch to Linux Upgrade of the kernel in Red Hat enterprise Linux version <= 4.x If your system is registered with Red Hat Network (RHN), then you can use the up2datecommand as follows: # up2date -f kernel For SMP kernel (multi core or multiple CPU) use command: # up2date -f kernel-smp Upgrade of the kernel in Fedora Linux / CentOS / RHEL 5 Use yum command to upgrade kernel: # yum update kernel If you have downloaded RPM file use rpm command: # rpm -ivh kernel* Upgrade of the kernel in Debian or Ubuntu Linux Use apt-get command. First find your kernel version: $ uname -r Next find available kernel images: $ apt-cache search linux-image Now install kernel by explicitly specifying version number: # apt-get install linux-image-x.x.x-xx OR $ sudo apt-get install linux-image-x.x.x-xx