Jonathan Rioux's questions

I created a dynamic distribution group named "#All" and I would like to allow only some high users to send to this group.

I know I can add separatly each user into the distribution group from the Exchange admin center, but what I want to achieve is to permit only a security group to send to #All and then I add the users I want into the security group.

I know I can add a distribution group into the allowed senders for #All, but I can't find a way to allow a security group. Is this ever possible? If not what is the best practice for doing what I want to achieve?

Using PowerShell, how can I get the currently logged on domain user's full name (not only its username) without the need of the ActiveDirectory module?

I have an Exchange 2010 server listening on a couple of different domains. So it receives and sends emails destinated and originating from several domains.

Now we want to get rid of a specific domain gradually and what I would like to do now is get a list of all the emails received or sent using that specific domain that we wants to get rid of. So we can figure how this domain is still getting used before getting rid of it.

Thanks.

I have a PowerEdge 2950. I have one 1TB drive with critical data on it that has been running alone for months, and I want to add a second 1TB drive and make a RAID1 out of these 2 drives, but without losing the data on the first 1TB drive.

From PERC, is this something that can be done without having to make a complete backup of the data and restore it into the new RAID1 drive?

I am trying to add a new local user from vCenter. I could not find how to do it.

I dont have the "Users & Groups" tab.

Important note, I do not want to join the vCenter to the domain. I really want to create a local user.

EDIT: I use vSphere 5.1

I issue this command to export the mailbox of a user:

New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox "user" -FilePath "\\server\share\user.pst"

After 2 minutes or so, this file have been generated:

Notice the size of the export file, and now this is the actual size of the mailbox on the server as seen from outlook:

Where does this extra ~100MB in the export file comes from?

We have just deployed a couple of Linux server. Each sysadmin will have his own account on the server (i.e.: jsmith), and will connect using SSH with a certificate which will be put into the "authorized_keys" file in their home directory. Once connected on the server, if they want to issue an elevated command, they will do like:

sudo ifconfig

They will then enter the root password.

What I would like to know now are the best practices in managing that root password. Should I change it periodicaly? And how do I share that new password with the sysadmins?

**Of course I will disable the root logon in SSH.

I'v looked through all the settings in the Automatic Approval menu, but it could not find anything about automatically approve only the needed updates.

Because if I check, for instance, to auto-approve only the "Definition updates", it will approve any Definition updates, whether they are needed by my workstations or not.

This is because I dont want my WSUS server to download and store updates that are not needed by any of my workstations.

Also we are a lazy SMB, and we dont want to waste time to manually approve updates and stuff.

Is this even possible ?

I would like to know how can I accomplish the following:

When I join a workstation (with Windows 7) in the domain, I want that computer to be put into a specific OU. Only when its a workstation with Windows 7. This is because I have GPOs that must apply to all workstations in the domain.

Can I only accomplish this using a script? Or can I set a rule like if the computers has Windows 7, put that computer into this specific OU.

I have 4 ESXi hosts with 1 vCenter.

I manage the whole 4 hosts with the vCenter interface. How can I block access to specific hosts within vCenter based on the Active Directory user logged on the vCenter interface?

For instance I would like to create an AD group called "SuperUser vSphere" and another "User vSphere", and only the "SuperUser vSphere" group members should be allowed to view and manage all the hosts within vCenter.

I have a couple of VMware ESXi hosts with a couple of VMs on each hosts. The total amount of size of all these VMs are in the order of the TBs.

I want to make backups of these VMs. But here is not the problem. I already make backups using ghettoVCB on a network share. But in the event of a disaster in the office, like a fire, I would lose all these backups kept in the office.

We cannot transfer these backups on another location over the internet because its too large.

What are traditional best practices in externalizing extra large backups like this?

I had this weird wondering once.

If I am using CloudFront as my CDN, I pay per requests made on my static files.

So here comes the wondering. Can one keep requesting the same file in a non-stop fashion (with a script or something), in order to make your bill high? It seems to me to be a pretty fair question, isn't it?

I have a Subversion server and into one of the Subversion repositories, I got this directory under the db directory:

txn-protorevs

which contains the following files for me

119M    1-4.rev
0       1-4.rev-lock

What is the purpose of this directory inside an SVN repository?

I make a backup of my Debian webserver on a daily basis. A full backup on Sunday, and differentials each other day of the week.

The backup is made with Tar. I backup the whole system into the Tar file.

If the HDD on my webserver dies, I got all my backups in a safe place.

But what would be the best way to do a Bare Metal Restore on a new HDD with a differential backup make the previous day? Can I boot with a boot cd, and then format a new HDD and untar the backup file into it? How do I do that exactly?

EDIT:

This is my backup script:

#!/bin/sh
# Backup script

BACKUPDIR="/backups"
BACKUPFILE=$BACKUPDIR/backup_$(date +%y-%m-%d).tgz

if [ ! -d $BACKUPDIR ]; then
        mkdir $BACKUPDIR
fi

if [ -f $BACKUPFILE ]; then
        echo "Backup file already exists and will be replaced."
        rm $BACKUPFILE
fi

apt-get clean

tar czpf $BACKUPFILE --same-owner \
--exclude=$BACKUPDIR \
--exclude=/boot/grub/menu.lst* \
--exclude=/home/error.log \
--exclude=/proc \
--exclude=/media \
--exclude=/dev/* \
--exclude=/mnt \
--exclude=/sys/* \
--exclude=/cdrom \
--exclude=/lost+found \
--exclude=/var/cache/* \
--exclude=/tmp / 2>/home/error.log

The following scenario is weird. Please be advised.

I have created a GPO on an OU containing workstations like this:

This GPO purpose is to make the Backup Operators group a member of the local Administrators group on all the workstations inside the OU.

Here is the content of this GPO:

Then when I check if the GPO is applied using gpresult on a workstation inside the Organisational Unit (OU) on which the GPO is applied, I can see that it is correctly applied on that workstation:

But when I go check in the local group on the workstation, in the local Administrators group, I should see the Backup Operators group inside it, but no:

Even after a gpupdate /force followed by a reboot, I end up with the same result.

Have I done something wrong?

EDIT:

This is what I get in the Event Viewer after I do a gpudpate /force:

Security policies were propagated with warning. 0x4b8 : An extended 
error has occurred.

For best results in resolving this event, log on with a 
non-administrative account and search http://support.microsoft.com 
for "Troubleshooting Event 1202's".

I have Exchange 2003 on a DC.

Here are the metrics which are available to me in order to make a graph out of them, or simply monitor their status:

EXNG: Inbound Connections Current
EXNG: Local Queue Length
EXNG: Local Retry Queue Length
EXNG: Memory Available Bytes
EXNG: Memory Pages\sec
EXNG: Messages Received/sec
EXNG: MSExchangeMTA Submits
EXNG: Page File Usage
EXNG: Pickup Directory Messages Retrieved/sec
EXNG: Remote Queue Length
EXNG: Remote Retry Queue Length
EXNG: Service State - Event
EXNG: Service State - IMAP4
EXNG: Service State - Information Store
EXNG: Service State - Management
EXNG: Service State - MTA Stacks
EXNG: Service State - Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
EXNG: Service State - POP3
EXNG: Service State - Routing Engine
EXNG: Service State - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
EXNG: Service State - Site Replication Service
EXNG: Service State - System Attendant

So which of these should I keep monitored and why ?

I am trying to transfer a 10GB file to test my network. But when I transfer from Workstation 1 to Workstation 2, it takes 8 minutes (which is fine). But from Workstation 2 to Workstation 1, the transfer takes 50 minutes or so.

Here is the scenario:

10GB file transfer:

Workstation 1 -> Workstation 2 = 8 minutes
Workstation 2 -> Workstation 1 = 50 minutes (and flickering)

When I try with another switch between the 2 hosts, both side transfers are fine. So the problem resides on the Linksys Switch itself?

How can I diagnose this issue?

EDIT:

The switch is NOT the issue, iv changed the switch and the issue is still there. Here is a graph taken during the transfers. Red is TX and Yellow is RX. So basically, Workstation 1 is receiving data (YELLOW) very slowly, and transmits (RED) fine. And the transfers are always between the same 2 hosts. Also, Workstation 2 is RXing and TXing fine, iv tested between Workstation 2 and another Workstation other than 1. So Workstation 1 has the issue I think. How can I diagnose this?

• Note that the network cards are set to Auto Negotiate on both workstations and both are GigaEthernet.

EDIT 2:

I did an iperf between WS 1 and WS 2 with the -d option:

This is clearly showing an issue with network RXing (receiving) on workstation 1, so the disk i/o is NOT the issue here. Please help me :(

We are experiencing file transfer issues. I try to troubleshoot this problem but it is really hard.

Here is a screenshot I took while transferring a file from my workstation to another server. The screenshot was taken from the workstation (source):

• The whole graphic was taken during the file transfer, there was no pause on the transfer or anything.

It doesnt stop to flicker like this. And the ETA of the transfer always changes from 10 minutes to an hour or so, and then gets back to 9 minutes, then back to 100 minutes, so on so forth.

Here is the iperf result:

How can I troubleshoot this issue?

I have a Dell PowerEdge with a RAID 5 array of 3 disks, and I want to add a fourth disk to it to expand the capacity of the volume.

I don't want to reinitialize the whole RAID 5, because I want to keep all the data on it and just expand it.

Can I do this with OpenManage while Windows is live, or do I have to do this on the boot menu while the OS is not mounted?

Here is a screenshot on OpenManage Server Administrator:

And also please tell me how to achieve this. Thanks!

Currently, I have Debian installed on a desktop computer with an Intel P4. It is a web server. As my website starts to be more and more popular, I want to migrate to a real server.

So I bought a new server (IBM eSeries 235) and I want to migrate the whole debian system into the new server.

The new server has 2 CPUs (sockets) instead of 1 in the old server. Can this cause issues?

I would just backup the whole old system using tar and then install Debian 6.0.3 on the new server, and then untar the backup onto the freshly installed OS on the new server. Is this a good way to migrate? If not, what should I do.