tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38374112484561827432011-11-27T15:33:13.266-08:00A twisted look at the daily life of a Windows SysAdmin. The daily IT news distilled for the Windows Professional. Plus of course, what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, and just how pointless most of it is.Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.comBlogger251100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-58659044335985472452010-09-20T18:16:00.000-07:002010-09-20T18:16:09.554-07:00

Finally, I've made time and found energy to concentrate on updating my IT certification.  I'm in sore need of it - my MCSE is in NT4, My CCNA has been out of date for god only knows how long, and the Citrix was Metaframe XP2.  Ye-es, I'm out of date.  And what I have been conscious of is that the tech knowledge that I have on tap is not perhaps all it should be, and because of that I enjoyed my

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-71587945125522263692009-08-11T16:24:00.000-07:002009-08-11T16:41:13.881-07:00

So I got the go-ahead to add another VMWare node to our infrastructure. This makes sense in lots of ways - I've only got two nodes at the moment and they're oversubscribed really - I couldn't run all my VM's on one box if the other fell over. I've also got another reasonably powerful, new box sitting around from our stalled Email project, so my only cost right now is in licences.So I went to

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-26048600271049549982009-08-11T14:27:00.000-07:002009-08-11T14:43:35.304-07:00

The latest dictat from up high is that we, the IT department, are to start selling laptops to students. This is because that another institution, revered by our CEO, does so.Well, not quite. They actually provide a room for their hardware supplier to knock out stuff to students. That's it. Us being small, provincial, and in a different county from their supplier, our CEO reasons we can do the

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-29070167278733533482009-08-10T16:14:00.000-07:002009-08-10T16:24:01.943-07:00

A long time since I posted last. It's been a long time too, since I last built a Citrix farm, but even though the name's changed and we're three versions on from the last time I built one, the good bits about the install are still good and the bad bits are still crap. Although I think we can add the main GUI for the install list to the bad pile: it looks like Mr Citrix's three year old got hold

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-80149894477985085162009-03-04T16:49:00.000-08:002009-03-04T16:57:16.355-08:00

I haven't blogged for a while, mostly because it's just been utter chaos here : all the fun associated with the start of a new academic year and some fairly major moves and changes. I'm still having fun with my accounting application via citrix, and I'm now just about ready to give up on it and install a VPN solution instead for the affected users, rather than carrying on with NFuse. This of

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-12098533783779775512009-02-09T21:24:00.000-08:002009-02-09T21:33:59.146-08:00

Solved the networking weirdness that had befallen some of our servers since upgrading our networking infrastructure. We'd implemented HP's LACP solution,understanding that it would work with the HP server NIC teaming thing to give us a really high-speed, fully teamed solution. Apparently not, for some reason. The 802.whatever that the NICs would have been picking up automatically - the team

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-75352901076255775682009-02-04T16:58:00.000-08:002009-02-04T17:09:17.662-08:00

Trying to sort the routing this morning for the new exchange server, with the help of our friendly local firewall guy. I've never learned any PIX, and on the evidence of this morning I think I probably got the good end of the deal there. It's a bit of fun, eh? Anyway, the upshot is it's sorted now, and I've learned a valuable lesson: When you make a change to your firewall - TAKE OUT THE

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-43262343264551243322009-02-03T22:03:00.000-08:002009-02-03T22:12:22.457-08:00

I've got one of those weird ones today. We've installed a new network infrastructure - all shiny new HP Procurve stuff. Yesterday morning, one of our servers didn't back up, with BackupExec reporting that it couldn't see it. RDP'd to the server fine, and I could ping the backup server, and ping the errant server from the backup server. I could also, from either server, open an UNC share on

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-65993134057911811472009-02-02T15:30:00.000-08:002009-02-02T15:52:47.239-08:00

How I love sysadmining while surrounded by morons. Today's a prime example. We have an accountancy application which is, like most of these things, just about OK when used in the environment which it was designed for. Local domain, fat client, normal, networked printer. Even then, it's needed a fair bit of tweaking to get it right - it prints from an environment variable, for example, because

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-54022722146316971182009-01-28T13:18:00.000-08:002009-01-28T13:26:55.062-08:00

I'm in the middle of upgrading our organization to Exchange 2007 from 2003, and I'm currently "enjoying" the effects that adding a 2007 server to our Exchange organization's having. Not only does it screw our existing global address list, but helpfully, it's also "updated" it so that I can no longer administer it from the Exchange 2003 box. Marvellous.I've also discovered that I've got a few

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-48760584221964046832009-01-22T11:59:00.000-08:002009-01-22T12:08:11.085-08:00

Every week or so something fun gets tossed onto my brimming plate, and today it's the turn of password management. It's a pain in the ass, full stop, and now I'm to look at smoothing troubled waters by implementing some kind of solution that'll enable our users to reset their own passwords: memorable question kind of thing. It's the kind of thing that even a year ago would have had me in a cold

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-27299615873027679042009-01-21T13:22:00.001-08:002009-01-21T13:41:47.910-08:00

I talked before about Citrix being a company in need of a new killer app. Virtualization, it seems, is where Citrix are putting their money on their new future being.They paid out $500m for open-source virtualization company XenSource, and have been aggressive in pushing their new baby. They've also got an interesting take on the cloud / no cloud thing. They reckon companies need internal

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-16927367459174842152009-01-20T13:12:00.000-08:002009-01-20T13:27:30.660-08:00

I'm having fun with Outlook Address Books this morning. A couple of weeks ago I built and introduced an Exchange 2007 server, looking towards migrating our accounts over from Exchange 2003. I created connectors between the two servers, and they're seeing each other fine. I pulled over a test mailbox, which seemed to go smoothly although I haven't been able to fully check that out yet because I

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-45256144756150752782009-01-19T11:27:00.000-08:002009-01-19T11:43:26.274-08:00

So the antitrust thing's back. The EU says Microsoft's violated competition laws by continuing to include Internet Explorer with versions of Windows. Opera, the original re-complainant, is understandably delighted.So where's Microsoft go from here, other than back into the courtroom? Given that the fine dished out by the EU last time was 899 million Euros, it's a fair bet that someone's going

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-33030354510949406412009-01-18T14:39:00.000-08:002009-01-18T15:21:24.360-08:00

Our user accounts aren't, inexplicably, created within the IT team. That's a fight for another day, but right now I'm securing our Active directory, specifically against the people whose jobs it is to create our users, non of whom is anything else other than an IT part-timer. Unbelievably, they've been given full admin rights up to now, but today that stops.So what I've done instead is to: save

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-89964810259362774812009-01-18T11:59:00.000-08:002009-01-18T12:13:46.684-08:00

I got to work, opened my email, checked the web for news and found that the Downadup worm's causing untold panic, such is the rate of spread. F-Secure estimate that the worm had infected nearly 9 million PC's by Friday, up from just over 2 million on Monday. The worm's hitting a long-standing vulnerability in XP, 2000 and Server 2003 which Microsoft patched - with plenty of publicity - 3 months

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-78418480772078212662009-01-17T12:07:00.000-08:002009-01-17T12:30:56.090-08:00

Altiris has been around for a while now. It hasn't changed much since I first used it, in terms of functionality at least. It's under the Symantec jackboot now, and it'll be mildly interesting to see what becomes of it. I've got to admit to not always being the world's biggest fan of Symantec: my experiences with Norton AV haven't ever left me with anything approaching joy, and on the few

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-28004888808820102742009-01-16T13:24:00.000-08:002009-01-16T13:42:38.179-08:00

The downturn's hitting hardware makers too. AMD have just announced 1100 job cuts - 9% of its workforce. The pain's even reaching to the boardroom - AMD's CEO and executive chairman are each going to take a temporary 20% cut in their base salary, and other employees at the chip-maker will also have their wages cut by between 5 and 15%.That comes hard on the back of job losses at the number one

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-20644872536581017982009-01-15T21:55:00.000-08:002009-01-15T22:11:55.311-08:00

So, the seemingly impregnable Google's laying off workers. The guys and girls for the axe are 100 recruitment workers, so don't be hankering for that job at Mountain View any time soon. And the old company of new Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz (already labelled in some areas of the press as "foul mouthed", although personally, "friggin'" doesn't register on my radar unless it's uttered by a cheeky

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-85200535964879410112009-01-15T12:15:00.000-08:002009-01-15T12:46:34.954-08:00

I thought I'd expand on one of yesterday's postings; that which alluded to Citrix's killer app status slipping as the competition have caught up.I've always been a fan of the possibilities of thin-client computing. The picture that Citrix paint - and deliver, to be fair, in many places - of an IT infrastructure with a smaller TCO, a smaller carbon footprint and centralized administration: who

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-72275993244691186272009-01-14T17:26:00.000-08:002009-01-14T21:10:06.754-08:00

Linux, the Operating System of choice if you're the kind of person who'd get a kick out of building your own television set. It seems that every year there'll always be someone trotting out the "This is the year when Linux takes it to Windows" line. It seems that this year, or this week at least, it's the turns of the good folk over at ZDnet.comFirst up is their education guy, and I've got to

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-63739572255762567792009-01-14T16:24:00.000-08:002009-01-14T21:09:21.062-08:00

Steve Jobs is taking time out, as you probably know. I wonder where that leaves Apple? Even more so than Microsoft when Bill Gates was in charge, Apple is Steve Jobs. Apple's shortcomings and strengths are also, therefore, tied up in him. So what might be on the cards for Apple if the new hand on the tiller keeps their own lookout and doesn't simply use Steve's binoculars?I said yesterday

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-9499741029267845322009-01-14T13:25:00.000-08:002009-01-14T21:08:11.083-08:00

Fun and the command line aren't natural bedfellows, especially if like me you've spent most of the last few years doing those most important of Sysadmin functions: idle web surfing and scatter-gun character assassination. However, a change is as good as a rest and all that jazz, so just for a while I've foregone Wikipedia (the last internet refuge for the terminally bored) and plumped for a spot

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-81798575075098683752009-01-13T12:42:00.000-08:002009-01-14T20:55:39.246-08:00

Windows 7 seems to be all over the news this week, with the release of the first and probably final public beta before it goes RTM, probably somewhere around the end of this year. The uptake of Vista in the Enterprise has been woefully low for Microsoft. The jump in hardware requirements needed to run the new operating system, the plentitude of applications which either worked poorly or just

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837411248456182743.post-22647376347765285002009-01-12T14:58:00.000-08:002009-01-12T16:41:12.790-08:00

Welcome to my first venture into the blogosphere. People write for lots of different reasons, but I suppose one overarching reason is that most human of instincts: the desire to leave our mark on this earth.Fulfillment of this instinct, of course, presupposes two things. Firstly, of course, that the contents of the author's mind are in some small way worth anything (and I'm not saying that

Sihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02355326762626173792noreply@blogger.com0