Vinko Vrsalovic's questions

My bare knuckles networking understanding led me to believe that if I set an IP address of, for example, 10.0.2.25 with netmask 255.255.0.0 on a machine, it should see all hosts in the subnet 10.0.1.0/24 (and many others on the whole 10.0.0.0/16 subnet)

I just tried it, but the machine with 10.0.2.25/16 didn't see at all 10.0.1.0/24 addresses.

Two questions:

1. How to set up such a network simply?
2. What's the mistake in my understanding?

I've found a common subject in forums asking about using VPNs to reduce latencies between the gamers and the game servers. I've even found some blog posts confirming this.

From my understanding, using a VPN shouldn't reduce latency at all, unless routers somehow treat encrypted packets differently.

What's the truth here? Does the type of VPN make a difference?

SUMMARY OF COMMENTS/ANSWERS: While in the ideal net neutral world latency over a VPN should be greater or equal to latency over a public network, in the real world with crappy ISPs latency could actually be reduced by using a VPN. Pity! Especially because it leads to a "try it an see" approach on each particular ISP.

Unless we are talking about something like ISP provided VPNs (MPLS or similar) that can have a different routing and priority characteristics. But if you get one of these you are usually aware and paying for it. Not very likely in casual gaming scenarios.

Scenario:

• Windows 7 Pro client

• Windows Server 2k3 Domain

  1. Client tries to access \\Machine\share and gets permission denied
  2. Client tries to access \\IP\share and is allowed access.
  3. Client CAN access \\SomeOtherMachine\share, this only fails with a specific Machine
  4. net use reports no other connections to Machine (or anywhere else for that matter)
  5. This behavior persists between reboots.

Causes? What further info is required to debug this?

What are relevant Windows Policies to secure access from the Internet to Remote Desktop?

I'm thinking about things like failed login attempts and similar.

Is it sane to build a machine with RAID 5 expecting to hold around 5 Tb (and able to grow) with 1.5 or 2 Tb SATA II disks?

It will be used as audio and documents storage. I already have chosen a chassis with 16 3.5" hard drive bays. Now I'm thinking about what to put on those bays.

Pros I see:

• Cheaper per Tb
• Greater extensibility per chassis (3 times max capacity using 1.5 vs. 0.5)

It's the cons I'm wondering about. I expect using big disks to be slower, but is this really the case? I don't know about failure rates between small and big drives, are big ones expected to fail more often?

So, two questions:

1. What are the cons of building a 5Tb RAID5 with big disks?

2. Any particular drive model you'd recommend for either big (2Tb) or small (0.5Tb)?

I have the following routing table

10.0.1.0/24 dev eth0  proto kernel  scope link  src 10.0.1.151
10.0.10.0/24 dev eth1  proto kernel  scope link  src 10.0.10.151
default via 10.0.1.1 dev eth0

I have two links, one goes through a LAN and, through 10.0.1.1 out to the Internet. The other is a ADSL router (10.0.10.1) directly attached to eth1.

If I connect from the outside to the external IP address of 10.0.10.1 I get a timeout. If I change the default route to 10.0.10.1, connecting from the outside to the external IP address of 10.0.10.1 works. So this looks like a routing problem (packets come from 10.0.10.1, but go out of 10.0.1.1, being the default route), but I'm not sure how to solve it.

I actually want the default route to be 10.0.1.1, I just want to answer requests to the external IP of 10.0.10.1 via the same interface.

I have a Comtrend ADSL router that routinely fails to sustain connections via NAT (I try HTTP and SSH) to a machine in its internal network.

I can connect for, say, half an hour and then the connection is dropped. Later connection attempts time out until some time passes and I can connect again. Sometimes this times between being able to reconnect is 30 minutes, sometimes is a day.

So, besides attributing this to a crappy router, what other options are there?

EDIT: I was using WI-FI to connect. Changing the connection to a cabled one made the Win 7 to join the domain successfully. (Have no clue as to why though).

I have a windows 7 professional (spanish, 32-bits) laptop trying to join a Windows Server 2003 (english, 64-bits) domain. The Win7 correctly detects the SRV record, finding the proper domain controller, but then the join fails with the error message (snippet, because the error is in spanish)

An Active Directory Domain Controller for This Domain Could Not be Contacted

The DNS is correctly set, and client can ping by name and IP the server, the server can ping the client by IP. I've tested with the FW down to no avail. A host of other XP Pro clients are connected to the domain. I've restarted Net Logon and checked that Windows Time is up. Also the times are in sync between the server and the client. I'll put below diagnostics output.

The actual question is:

Is there anything special to be done on either the server or the client to have a Win 7 Pro join a 2k3 R2 domain, or it should work right out of the box?.

Of course if you can point out a mistake or some alternatives they'd be welcome.

The following diagnostic information follows:

• netdiag /q for the DC
• dcdiag on the DC
• ipconfig /all on the Win 7 client

netdiag /q on the DC:

..................................

    Computer Name: HI-X2
    DNS Host Name: hi-x2.hi.local
    System info : Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 (Build 3790)
    Processor : EM64T Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10, GenuineIntel
    List of installed hotfixes : 
        KB923561
        KB924667-v2
        KB925398_WMP64
        KB925902
        KB926122
        KB927891
        KB929123
        KB930178
        KB932168
        KB936357
        KB938127
        KB941569
        KB942830
        KB942831
        KB943055
        KB943460
        KB944338-v2
        KB944653
        KB945553
        KB946026
        KB948496
        KB950760
        KB950762
        KB950974
        KB951066
        KB951748
        KB952004
        KB952069
        KB952954
        KB954155
        KB954550-v7
        KB955069
        KB955759
        KB956572
        KB956802
        KB956803
        KB956844
        KB958469
        KB958644
        KB958869
        KB959426
        KB960225
        KB960803
        KB960859
        KB961063
        KB961118
        KB961501
        KB967715
        KB967723
        KB968389
        KB968816
        KB969059
        KB969947
        KB970238
        KB970430
        KB970483
        KB971032
        KB971468
        KB971657
        KB971737
        KB971961
        KB971961-IE8
        KB972270
        KB973037
        KB973354
        KB973507
        KB973540
        KB973687
        KB973815
        KB973825
        KB973869
        KB973904
        KB973917-v2
        KB974112
        KB974318
        KB974392
        KB974571
        KB975025
        KB975467
        KB975560
        KB975713
        KB976662-IE8
        KB977290
        KB977816
        KB977914
        KB978037
        KB978262
        KB978338
        KB978542
        KB978601
        KB978706
        KB979306
        KB979309
        KB979683
        KB980182
        KB980182-IE8
        KB980232
        KB980302-IE8
        KB981332-IE8
        KB981350
        Q147222



Per interface results:

    Adapter : Local Area Connection

        Host Name. . . . . . . . . : hi-x2.hi.local
        IP Address . . . . . . . . : 10.0.1.199
        Subnet Mask. . . . . . . . : 255.0.0.0
        Default Gateway. . . . . . : 10.0.1.1
        Dns Servers. . . . . . . . : 10.0.1.199



        WINS service test. . . . . : Skipped


Global results:
    [WARNING] You don't have a single interface with the  'WorkStation Service',  'Messenger Service',  'WINS' names defined.


DNS test . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Passed
    PASS - All the DNS entries for DC are registered on DNS server '10.0.1.199'.

IP Security test . . . . . . . . . : Skipped


The command completed successfully

dcdiag on the DC:

Domain Controller Diagnosis

Performing initial setup:
   Done gathering initial info.

Doing initial required tests

   Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\HI-X2
      Starting test: Connectivity
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test Connectivity

Doing primary tests

   Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\HI-X2
      Starting test: Replications
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test Replications
      Starting test: NCSecDesc
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test NCSecDesc
      Starting test: NetLogons
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test NetLogons
      Starting test: Advertising
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test Advertising
      Starting test: KnowsOfRoleHolders
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test KnowsOfRoleHolders
      Starting test: RidManager
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test RidManager
      Starting test: MachineAccount
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test MachineAccount
      Starting test: Services
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test Services
      Starting test: ObjectsReplicated
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test ObjectsReplicated
      Starting test: frssysvol
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test frssysvol
      Starting test: frsevent
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test frsevent
      Starting test: kccevent
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test kccevent
      Starting test: systemlog
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test systemlog
      Starting test: VerifyReferences
         ......................... HI-X2 passed test VerifyReferences

   Running partition tests on : ForestDnsZones
      Starting test: CrossRefValidation
         ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation
      Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
         ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom

   Running partition tests on : DomainDnsZones
      Starting test: CrossRefValidation
         ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation
      Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
         ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom

   Running partition tests on : Schema
      Starting test: CrossRefValidation
         ......................... Schema passed test CrossRefValidation
      Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
         ......................... Schema passed test CheckSDRefDom

   Running partition tests on : Configuration
      Starting test: CrossRefValidation
         ......................... Configuration passed test CrossRefValidation
      Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
         ......................... Configuration passed test CheckSDRefDom

   Running partition tests on : hi
      Starting test: CrossRefValidation
         ......................... hi passed test CrossRefValidation
      Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
         ......................... hi passed test CheckSDRefDom

   Running enterprise tests on : hi.local
      Starting test: Intersite
         ......................... hi.local passed test Intersite
      Starting test: FsmoCheck
         ......................... hi.local passed test FsmoCheck

ipconfig /all on the Windows 7 client:

Configuraci¢n IP de Windows

   Nombre de host. . . . . . . . . : hi-p6
   Sufijo DNS principal  . . . . . : 
   Tipo de nodo. . . . . . . . . . : h¡brido
   Enrutamiento IP habilitado. . . : no
   Proxy WINS habilitado . . . . . : no

Adaptador de LAN inal mbrica Conexi¢n de red inal mbrica:

   Sufijo DNS espec¡fico para la conexi¢n. . : 
   Descripci¢n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN
   Direcci¢n f¡sica. . . . . . . . . . . . . : 00-22-FB-63-47-A0
   DHCP habilitado . . . . . . . . . . . . . : no
   Configuraci¢n autom tica habilitada . . . : s¡
   Direcci¢n IPv4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.1.42(Preferido) 
   M scara de subred . . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Puerta de enlace predeterminada . . . . . : 10.0.1.1
   Servidores DNS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.1.199
   NetBIOS sobre TCP/IP. . . . . . . . . . . : habilitado

Adaptador de Ethernet Conexi¢n de  rea local:

   Estado de los medios. . . . . . . . . . . : medios desconectados
   Sufijo DNS espec¡fico para la conexi¢n. . : 
   Descripci¢n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
   Direcci¢n f¡sica. . . . . . . . . . . . . : 00-1E-33-1F-35-B1
   DHCP habilitado . . . . . . . . . . . . . : s¡
   Configuraci¢n autom tica habilitada . . . : s¡

Adaptador de t£nel isatap.{8926581E-09AC-4123-906B-DA6386AD2D60}:

   Estado de los medios. . . . . . . . . . . : medios desconectados
   Sufijo DNS espec¡fico para la conexi¢n. . : 
   Descripci¢n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Adaptador ISATAP de Microsoft
   Direcci¢n f¡sica. . . . . . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
   DHCP habilitado . . . . . . . . . . . . . : no
   Configuraci¢n autom tica habilitada . . . : s¡

Adaptador de t£nel Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

   Sufijo DNS espec¡fico para la conexi¢n. . : 
   Descripci¢n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
   Direcci¢n f¡sica. . . . . . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
   DHCP habilitado . . . . . . . . . . . . . : no
   Configuraci¢n autom tica habilitada . . . : s¡
   Direcci¢n IPv6 . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:5ef5:73ba:1cec:3883:f5ff:fed5(Preferido) 
   V¡nculo: direcci¢n IPv6 local. . . : fe80::1cec:3883:f5ff:fed5%13(Preferido) 
   Puerta de enlace predeterminada . . . . . : ::
   NetBIOS sobre TCP/IP. . . . . . . . . . . : deshabilitado

I have the following scenario:

Two machines, say NODE1 and NODE2, have Windows Server 2003 installed in a failover cluster, say CLUSTER. On this cluster SQL Server 2005 was installed successfully, say the virtual server is DATABASE. Then, SSRS 2005 was installed on NODE1.

The problem is that the application that's going to use this setup assumes that the reporting services runs on http://DATABASE/reports but, given the only possible installation (as far as I could tell) you can only get http://NODE1/reports.

The application cannot be modified, what would the proper way be?

I'm thinking about setting IIS up on the cluster (and have it run as the virtual database server) and install the reports and reportserver webapps on it, making the problem to go away, but I'm not sure if this is really feasible nor if this is the best option.

Another option I've thought about is to install a reverse proxy, but then again I'm not sure about how to make it answer on http://DATABASE/reports without at least having to install IIS first anyway (and take additional steps.)

Advice?

I know the theoretical answer is "not possible". But theory and practice do not always match. So I'm wondering if you know any trick to recover something...

Is there any chance to recover anything from the remaining disk of a RAID 0 set, even if only the directory structure?

I'm totally aware that if I stored anything valuable in a RAID 0 set without backing it up I deserve punishment and to run around the ninth circle of hell and so on and so forth :-) It's not the case, by the way.

Context:

• Windows server 2003 x64:
  • On a VMWare ESX 3
  • member of a domain
  • has as primary DNS server the PDC, can see it (ping et al)
  • can access a shared folder (even to a shared folder on the PDC) using credentials from the domain when logged on as a local admin

Problem:

• logging on the machine with the same domain credentials gets me an invalid user/password error.

I'm at a loss about where to start debugging this.

Any clues?

UPDATE:

I checked to PDC logs and I get

The session setup from computer 'VM' failed because the security database does not contain a trust account 'VM$' referenced by the specified computer.

USER ACTION If this is the first occurrence of this event for the specified computer and account, this may be a transient issue that doesn't require any action at this time. Otherwise, the following steps may be taken to resolve this problem:

If 'VM$' is a legitimate machine account for the computer 'VM', then 'VM' should be rejoined to the domain.

If 'VM$' is a legitimate interdomain trust account, then the trust should be recreated.

So the actions to take now are clear. What's not clear to me is the cause for that and how to prevent further occurrences of it.

UPDATE 2: Yes, it is a clone, but I already had proceeded to part from and rejoin the domain.

Is there a Windows equivalent of the time Unix command?

time measures the time spent by a process in both user and kernel lands.

$ time for i in `seq 100`; do echo -n HI; done
HIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHI<... snip ...>
real    0m0.005s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.004s

The idea is for the script/program/command to be programmable/automatable.

I'm currently having trouble with a database server for a DB with lots of small writes and a few in comparison big reads. Read performance is more important because people is involved, writes are performed by automated clients. This database is currently 30GB and will grow up until a hundred or so.

The currently awful and ugly setup which underperforms is

• DELL Poweredge R300
• Quad Core Xeon X3353 @2.66GHz
• 14 GB RAM
• SAS 15k 146GB (two partitions, one OS, another Logs)
• SAS 15k 146GB (one partition, data and tempdb)
• No RAID (ugh)
• SATA 7k 1TB [via USB 2.0, external power supply, where daily backups are stored]

So, due to its many ugly points (underperforming, no RAID, external USB drive for backups) I'm planning to set up a new database server.

I've thought about:

• 4 SAS 15k 73GB RAID10 for logs
• 2 SAS 15k 73GB RAID1 for OS
• 4 SAS 15k 146GB RAID10 for data + tempdb
• 32GB RAM

So, three questions:

• Is this the best price/performance combination? Is this overkill? Is there a better combination? Is more information needed?

• Do you know of a reasonable priced single machine which can contain the 10 disks or must I go for an external locally attached storage right now?

• Any recommendations for getting something like this at a reasonable price/quality?

I'm aware this type of question has been asked many times before:

• How to Monitor Bandwidth usage in real terms
• Network monitoring
• application monitoring tools
• Network Traffic Monitoring
• Reporting tool for Performance Monitor
• Monitor ram and CPU usage

But my question has a twist, I want to monitor a system and correlate CPU - IO stats with SQL Server usage stats, I want to be able to say that at 13:45 the query "select * from bar where baz = 'quux'", ran on SQL Server 1, used up to 80% CPU for 6 seconds with an IO load of 6 and an average disk queue of 15.

I can do this now with a combination of perfmon, SQL Profiler and some custom scripts to correlate the data. I want some tool to do this all for me now.

Do I expect too much? Is there a tool which does things like this?

The usually mentioned candidates are:

• http://www.zenoss.com/
• http://www.paessler.com/support/kb/prtg7/features_networkmonitoring
• http://www.zabbix.com/
• http://www.nagios.org/
• http://www.spiceworks.com/
• http://www.cacti.net/

But, as far as I can tell, none of those have everything I want. Or does some and I've missed it?