Yet Another IT Professional Blog

Server 2016 is out and although it's still a baby, I've decided to slowly put it in production as a secondary storage/backup server. I was testing on a Dell PowerEdge T320 server with 10GB & 1GB nics and other than some iscsi configuration, everything else was at default settings on the system. Please note that this is a physical machine and not a VM! Server 2016 is great and I have to admit, the experience has been really good so far... I'm sharing one of the difficult issues I had

I've been experimenting with Microsoft's new cloud services, Windows Azure. The service is very versatile and practical. Basically, it's an online platform (or Portal as Microsoft calls it) you can create virtual machines, virtual networks, highly available redundant storage, databases, cloud services, web sites, web apps, active directory and the list goes on... So how and why would you use it? It was the first question I asked to myself and when I got my answer and experimented with it, I was totally blown away by the easy usage of it. You can instantly create a Lab environment to test new products. Takes about 10-15 minutes to create a couple of virtual machines connected together. So yeah, if you don't have a Hypervisor machine at home, go ahead and create your lab. But it's meant to be used by enterprises!!! Because all these resources are highly available and redundant. Microsoft spreads out it's datacenters pre...

I guess we all heard about the Java security breach . I don't know about you but I've heard about it and decided to take action like a good IT Professional. :)  We decided to deactivate the Java add-on on our Terminal Server which is running Windows Server 2008 R2. I realized that if I turn off the add-on manually from the Internet Explorer settings, the action is only takes effect only for the user account that your are logged in. But, what do you do for a Terminal server or on system that multiple user is using? I've found the answer on Microsoft TechNet forums and I wanted to share it with you guys because the answer wasn't easy to find at all. First, here is the forum thread that I'm talking about; http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverTS/thread/fe5b7fb6-bbda-42ac-87d2-a64f57f5d6a0 Here is the original article from Microsoft (even though it says Windows X...

WMI filtering is a very neat tool. I personally find its syntax a little complicated. Recently I came across with this 2 line article. How to WMI Filter with computer name. Here is an example. select * from Win32_ComputerSystem where Name = ‘Computer Name’ If you are looking for more WMI Filter examples, this article has it all… http://blog.enx1.com/2011/07/03/wmi-gpo-filters-for-operating-system-types/ Here is another example of how to target Windows 7 by its architecture type (X86 or X64). This is great while deploying applications through Group Policy. Not all the applications are compatible both 32 and 64 bit, so you can target only 32bit or only 64bit computers with the help of this WMI query. Here is how it looks like to target only Windows 7 X86 Systems select * from Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version like "6.1%" AND ProductType="1" AND NOT OSArchitecture = "64-bit" Targeting Windows 7 X64 Systems select * from Win32_Operatin...

Lately I have been working on a new Remote Desktop (formerly Terminal Services) server and I’ve seen a couple of problems related to the printers. Windows Remote Desktop Services is a great technology and for some organizations out there is the ultimate solution! Especially, with some new features like “RemoteApp” and “App-V”… It’s a great technology for users and from IT when your server is configured properly and it’s a big headache if you don’t know what you are doing. For everyone out there who is looking into “Remote Desktop Services”, I highly recommend to spent a little time on Microsoft forums and read as much as you can because there is a lot to know before you go ahead and install the roles on your server. In this article, I’ll only cover print features in Remote Desktop Services. Let me tell you what the problem was before giving out the solution. We have a plotter printer to print out plans for electricians and engineers. I had no problem installing the printer on the...