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Once described by a colleague as 'incessant infrastructure and tech gossip', this blog comments on my daily encounters with technology and aims to share some of this knowledge with fellow systems administrators and technical architects across the 'net.

Allowing Remote Desktop connections to a server core computer in a workgroupToday

Over the weekend, I was trying to access a Windows Server 2008 server core installation using the Remote Desktop Connection client. I’d enabled remote desktop connections (and legacy connections) with:

cscript %windir%\system32\scregedit.wsf /ar 0
cscript %windir%\system32\scregedit.wsf /cs 0

and both times the system reported that the:

Registry has been updated.

Even so, I still couldn’t successfully connect. It seemed logical that this was a firewall issue. Reading Daniel Petri’s article on configuring the firewall on server core for remote management confirmed that installing roles does indeed open the associated ports and that for domain-joined machines the firewall profile allows remote management; however for workgroup machines it may be necessary to run:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=“remote administration” new enable=yes

Even though this returned:

Updated 3 rule(s).
Ok.

It still didn’t let me connect, but then I noticed that remote desktop has its own firewall group (i.e. it’s not included in remote administration) so I tried something more specific:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=“remote desktop” new enable=yes

The rule was updated:

Updated 1 rule(s).
Ok.

and I was able to connect to the server. I later found that

Capturing network traffic on a Hyper-V hostYesterday

I’ve been capturing some network data using a computer with Hyper-V installed this evening and it’s worth noting that I needed to sniff a physical network connection to get anything meaningful. Thinking about it, that makes sense (Hyper-V implements a virtual switch - not a hub - so the traffic on each vNIC is isolated until it reaches a pNIC) but it may be something worth remembering.

This blog post was written by Mark Wilson for markwilson.it. Except as noted otherwise, this work is ©2004-2008 Mark Wilson and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. (What is this footer about?)

Capturing network traffic on a Hyper-V host

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Book review: Active Directory Disaster Recovery, Florian RommelYesterday

A few months ago, I was asked if I would write a review of a new book about Active Directory (AD) disaster recovery (DR) and I was more than happy to do this - especially as I’d just finished writing an AD design for a DR infrastructure at my organisation. The book in question was Florian Rommel’s Active Directory Disaster Recovery book, which claims to offer expert guidance on planning and implementing Active Directory disaster recovery plans.

AD DR is an important topic. Stop to think for a moment about how many services are reliant on this critical piece of many enterprises’ infrastructure and then consider what would happen if the AD was corrupted and no-one could log on…

…and that’s why this book is potentially useful to so many administrators charged with the correct operation of Active Directory (including troubleshooting and recovering from any issues).

The book starts out by explaining why organisations need a DR plan for AD (rather than just relying on the multi-master replica

Unlocking the secrets of Windows 7November 20

Whether or not it’s true, ask people if Windows Vista was ready when it originally shipped and the response is generally a resounding “no”. It seems that Microsoft is not taking any chances with Windows 7 as it has been reported that the new operating system is being constructed in a modular basis and will only include components as they pass through the appropriate quality gates.

Those who have a pre-beta build of Windows 7 may be interested to note that there are some extra features in the milestone 3 build (build 6801) that are only available to permanent Microsoft employees using computers that are members of certain Microsoft Active Directory domains.

To circumvent this, Rafael Rivera has written a tool for Windows 7 called Blue Badge (named after the employee passes that permanent ’softies are issued with). Running this utility will grant access to incomplete features by patching the operating system.

If you do decide to try it (and why not?), bear in mind that there is a re

Microsoft after hours: the sequelNovember 19

A little over 18 months ago, I attended an event at Microsoft titled “Vista After Hours”. The idea was that, instead of showing us all the features of the Windows ecosystem that were relevant to daily life as an IT Professional, Microsoft would demonstrate some of the things that can be done in Windows apart from work - demonstrating that the world of Windows is not all about dull, corporate applications.

Earlier this week, I was back for more - as Viral Tarpara, Paul Foster and Jamie Burgess demonstrated some of Microsoft’s products aimed at consumers and hobbyists.

As is likely to become the norm around here for such events (so many blog posts, so little time), I won’t write it up in full but here are some of the highlights:

• Gears of War 2 - the latest big game for the Xbox 360 and phenominally successful (but I’m not a games guy).
• Viral took a look at Windows Live Services - Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft (MSN/Live) are all doing similar things (although each will claim that it has the best new features!) - taking a look at a few of Microsoft’s Windows Live Services:
  • New look live.com is on it’s way to the UK. Personally, I like it - and you can hover the mouse over certain positions on that day’s picture to see links to potentially interesting facts.
  • Windows Live Mail: with a new Outlook-like interface and the ability to connect to multiple mail services (and chose which send via); add own stationary (arghh!); and it will soon include photo e-mail capabilities (e.g. select 4 photos, all resized and embedded in e-mail - rather than as an attachment - then add a frame, or make it black and white, make contrast corrections, etc.).
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery provides a gallery view for resizing, viewing/adding metadata, tagging and editing photos (preserving the original) but publishing etc. is where the Live Services come in and pictures may be published to Flickr, Windows Live Spaces, etc. The end result is highly functional software on the desktop PC, plus services in the cloud.
  • Windows Live Writer is Microsoft’s blogging software and it: integrates with various platforms (WordPress, Blogger, etc. - even SharePoint); applies the site’s stylesheet to the posts as you write; allows insertion of pictures, videos (YouTube or Soapbox), etc.
    Windows Live Maps: whilst many people use Google Maps - Microsoft claim that Live is superior for business requirements (I prefer the Google mapping view) and it now features: a 3D view using an Internet Explorer/Firefox browser plugin (and no more page refreshes - zoom in and out - very impressive, although it’s a lot smoother on Microsoft’s Internet connection than on mine); a bird’s eye view which uses a Photosynth-like effect to select high resolution images; a free API to use and expose in own applications; collections of public or private searches (e.g. a walk around 3D Manhattan) using public data to link to map (e.g. Times Square).
• Paul demonstrated Photosynth, which works out how pictures relate to one another in a four dimensional space to build up a complete picture. Because synths only show the data that this appropriate at this moment in time it’s possible to jump around and explore the environment at a reasonable speed. Using the example of Stonehenge, even though the photos were all taken at eye level, the synther can work out where the stones stand so that it is possible to view from above (or even below!). More images helps it to work out more points of view and speech synthesis technologies such as mousegrid can be used to navigate and scroll around.
• Even I (the non-gamer) was impressed by the new Xbox 360 experience that Jamie demonstrated (due for a worldwide release today for a phased deployment to all Internet-connected Xbox 360s):