GurdeepS's questions

In PowerShell ISE, I would like a default script (Template) to open every time I open Powershell ISE.

Is there a way this could be achieved?

Thanks

I am building out a sharepoint environment, which would have dev/prod domains. However, I will also be hosting a number of infrastructure servers in the network such as WSUS, DHCP, WDS, etc.

I am thinking that I can create two child domains under a parent domain called say INFRASTRUCTURE, which comprise of the respective dev and prod sharepoint environments.

Is there any flaw in this design? It's either this or 3 seperate flat domains under the forest.

Thanks

I run some windows 2012 servers with my host, softlayer. Now they have a public and private network adapter. I want to disable RDP to the public IP. For server 2008, the steps are as follows:

http://knowledgelayer.softlayer.com/procedure/disabling-remote-desktop-your-public-network

I need to exactly the same thing in 2012, but for a start, tsconfig.msc is apparently removed. What can I do? Can Windows Firewall block RDP to the public IP? This has to exclude TMG etc.

Is it possible to find out in Windows what the last restart time of a windows service is?

I am trying to get my head round server certificates. Am I right in saying:

A certificate binds to the requester (ie client), to prove their identity. The certificate at the time of creation is for a certain security so if the name of the server changes, the certificate is invalid. So for an SSL cert, SSL can not be used.

Is this how a certificate works? How does it improve security for both server and client?

How can I enable just machines in one subnet (i.e. my home PC and the home network as a whole) to rdp to my servers and nothing else?

I have an AD domain (2 dcs single domain) and a number of member servers. I need to configure time synchronisation so that everything is in sync.

There is a lot of fluff on this topic. Does anyone have a simple list of commands to run? And I've googled this but so many people are at odds about the best way to go on doing this.

My servers are all VMWare VMs (and I am aware of the debate about whether DCs should be virtual or physical....).

I am using a cloud hosting provider, which uses dedicated servers. They let you "image a disk" and then cancel the server. To image the disk, they use software which is similar to Clonezilla (no name known). However, would there be any problems with doing this on a dedicated server which is hosting a domain controller (or a dedicated server running a hypervisor with a vm which is a DC), or on a server (either the physical or virtual childs), hosting VSS-aware applications?

Why is the Console view on the vSphere client so slow? It's a real shame because it's a shame to have to establish an RDP session every time you work on one of the VMs because of the speed of the console (I saw a tool to right click and open an RDP session to a VM in vSphere Client/ESX but this was not reliable).

The Workstation console view is very smooth so I'd expect the vSphere Client console view to be very smooth.

I have noticed at my place of work that there is an attitude that backups are not very important (certainly, development/testing happens before any form of backup strategy is in place).

Because the rest of my team are not system admins/lack system admin knowledge like me, backups/disaster recovery considerations are talked about but don't get implemented. There is an attitude that because nothing has gone wrong (but an overlooked thing is accidental deletion), then we don't need to worry too much about backups.

How do you tackle this culture? I'm sure it must be common?

Thanks

I have seen some backup software advertise the ability to restore an image of a physical machine to completely different hardware. Is this really possible? Also, is this easily done with sysprep?

Thanks

Some system admin apps like Data Protection Manager can manage/backup an entire virtual infrastructure. When installing such an app, they use SQL Server and Windows Server and thus are run in a VM. But is it a bad idea to run apps like this (which both run on Windows Server and use SQL Server) inside the hypervisor server?

E.g. VMWare vCenter Server is managing to ESX servers, hostnames "a" and "b". Would it be a bad idea to install vCenter Server and its SQL Server in a VM(s) in either "a" or "b"? Or would it need to be installed on a hypervisor outside of these two servers? If I add a HyperV server, with the hostname "c", but this time I am installing Data Protection Manager 2010, I would want to backup both servers "a" and "b", fine, but now also the server where DPM 2010 is sitting on ("c"). How would I get out of this deployment trap? Likewise if DPM or vCenter Server is installed on a physical server...

Apologies for the naivety.

Thanks

Active Directory is very tightly coupled to DNS. DNS relates the IP to a hostname.

If the IP is always changing on a machine, by way of a dynamic IP, would this make it a very bad idea to join a machine to a domain?

A DC is also recommended to have a static IP. Is this for similar reasons (ie it would be hard to resolve the IP to hostname if the IP is always changing).

For example, in the enterprise, for machines to be joined to the domain, we are always given a block of static IPs so I guess I must be on the right tracks?

Thanks

Is backing up a SQL Server via doing a complete backup of the VM image rather than backing up individual databases a bad practise?

I can imagine that backing up the entire image looses the granularity of having several tlogs of each db for each day. Is this generally a bad thing?

Thaks

I want to make a user on vSphere Client for ESX 4, but when I do so, I can only assign either no access, read-only access or admin as the roles, were admin has full access to change everything. I am trying to limit what this user can do to only his virtual machines, as opposed to other team member's VMs and the host config stuff.

How could I achieve this level of security?

As a virtual infrastucture admin, what metrics would you tend to be interested in to deduce whether a server virtualisation project rollout is successful/saving the company money? So whether it saves the company money over the purely physical approach, etc.

So the metrics need to be giving business information, as opposed to technical information (e.g. memory % used).

Thanks

I have backupassist and I attempt to run a backup, with VSS service running. However, I get this error in Windows Event Log:

The backup operation that started at '‎2010‎-‎04‎-‎30T01:51:15.601000000Z' has failed because the Volume Shadow Copy Service operation to create a shadow copy of the volumes being backed up failed with following error code '2155348129'. Please review the event details for a solution, and then rerun the backup operation once the issue is resolved.

Code: 521.

The error in backupassist is:

The backup operation stopped before completing. Detailed error: ERROR - A Volume Shadow Copy Service operation error has occurred: (0x80042336) The writer experienced a partial failure. Check the component level error state for more information.

Log of files successfully backed up: C:\Windows\Logs\WindowsServerBackup\Backup-29-04-2010_18-51-15.log
Log of files for which backup failed: C:\Windows\Logs\WindowsServerBackup\Backup_Error-29-04-2010_18-51-15.log

A Volume Shadow Copy Service operation failed. Please check "VSS" and "SPP" application event logs for more information. ERROR - A Volume Shadow Copy Service operation error has occurred: (0x80042336) The writer experienced a partial failure. Check the component level error state for more information.

Any idea how to fix this? I work in a company with server engineers, they all state of having no problems with 2008 and VSS (though in the company we use predominantly 2003). Without VSS working, I assume no backup application will work?

I have installed Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter x64 as my host (dual boot system), and installed Hyper-V manager (next is Virtual Machine Manager).

Do I need to download and install Hyper-V Server R2? Why would I need this when Win Server has Hyper-V? Is the separate download a newer version?

This is a very basic question so please excuse me, but is a domain equivalent to an Active Directory Organisational Unit?

Thanks

I am a certified .NET Developer, and I do a lot of Sharepoint development at work. Adding/editing/deleting users requires using AD and of course, anything to do with the site structure in Sharepoint has a relation to IIS.

As a developer, what do I need to know about IIS/AD and Windows Server as a whole? One of the things I am wondering is how can I make a user be included in several groups?

Thanks