Hyper-V and SCVMM Blog – Page 3 – Just another Microsoft MVPs site

Tip – How To Take System State Backup In Server Core

There is no GUI tool available in Windows Server 2008 Server Core edition to take the System State backup. You need to depend

Inside Exchange Cluster Setup and Troubleshooting Tips (Part 6)

Hopefully, this is the last part of the article series I have written for Exchange Server Setup.

In the 6th and final part of this article series we look into the actual creation of Exchange Cluster Resources. We also go through the different setup log files and summarize the type of information available from here.

Creating Exchange Resources Types and Registering with the Cluster Service

After setup processes all INS files, ScSetupExchangeVirtualServer is executed. This function is responsible to create all the Exchange Resources in the cluster. Let me tell you one thing, this function is completely dependent on the CLUSTER_SERVER.INS file. Only if setup executes CLUSTER_SERVER.INS successfully can Exchange 2007/2003 resources be created. The reason is simple…..

All the parts of this article series can be found at here:

Part 1
http://www.exchangeinbox.com/article.aspx?i=116&t=6

Part 2
http://www.exchangeinbox.com/article.aspx?i=117

Part 3
http://www.exchangeinbox.com/article.aspx?i=118

Part 4
http://www.exchangeinbox.com/article.aspx?i=119

Part 5
http://www.exchangeinbox.com/article.aspx?i=121

Part 6
http://www.exchangeinbox.com/article.aspx?i=122

Tip – Block Write Access To Run and RunOnce Registry Entries – Rectified.

Blocking write access to Run and RunOnce registry entries for malware or other unwanted programs running in the system.

Your system becomes unstable because of the malware programs running in the background. You identify these programs and kill them in the Task Manager but these programs will re-appear in the Task Manager after you reboot the system. This is because these programs will run again from the below mentioned registry keys:

Tip – Block Write Access To Run and RunOnce Registry Entries.

Blocking write access to Run and RunOnce registry entries for malware or other unwanted programs running in the system.

WinInstall LE, MSI Creator and Configuration Builder

This article explains the advantages of tool WinInstall LE (a tool from Veritas software, which ships with Windows Server CD) and how to use this tool to convert EXE applications to MSI packages.

About Active Directory and Group Policy

You have, no doubt, heard about Active Directory. Active Directory is Microsoft’s answer to Novell Directory Service. Active Directory is a big repository of objects. It contains objects such as users, groups, shared printer information and network objects. Active Directory was first introduced in Windows 2000.

There is a tool or snap-in called Group Policy. Group Policy is meant for administrators who want to have a better control over systems running in network. Group Policy is used to control the behaviour of desktop computers and member servers from a central location. There are couple of settings you can deploy using Group Policy on remote computers. Group Policy comes with pre-defined administrative templates. Administrative Templates are the configuration unit as shown in Figure 1. You use them to control the behaviour of a specific setting, such as Start Menu and Taskbar, Internet Explorer Options settings, Registry Keys, Services and so on.

Tip – How does Windows Server 2008 resolve Domain Controller Load Balancing problems?

This article discusses a new Group Policy setting which solves the Load Balancing issues with the domain controllers.

The DC Locator Service has been re-designed in Windows Server 2008 to include a new mechanism. When a client computer finds a preferred domain controller, it sticks to this domain controller unless that domain controller stops responding or the client computer is restarted. This is generally called Domain Controller Stickiness.

Tip – A Quick Tip to configure Group Policy settings in Workgroup Security Model.

This article will show how you can quickly configure Group Policy in Workgroup Security Model. This article applies to Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003.

The Group Policy can also be deployed in Workgroup security model but there is no central tool available to configure all computers in one go. For example, you have 20 computers in your network. You need to configure the same Group Policy settings on 20 computers.

Tip – How To Delete System Blocked Files

How to delete Files/Folders which are being blocked by the processes running in the background.

Inside Exchange Cluster Setup and Troubleshooting Tips (Part 5)

Today we continue our walk through the internals of the Exchange Cluster setup installation. We look at the cluster specific modules. How these are installed, the important role they play in a cluster environment and more troubleshooting tips.

Exchange Cluster Installation Process

After setup detected that it is going to install the Exchange in a cluster environment, it executes theScSetupExchangeVirtualServer function as shown in figure B.15. The cluster setup process for Exchange starts from here. The procedure contains a set of functions that are used to make an Exchange Server cluster ready.

Setup Entering into ScSetupExchangeVirtualServer procedure

FIGURE B.15 – Setup Entering into ScSetupExchangeVirtualServer procedure.

It executes and sets the install type to cluster. Setup copies the binary files from x:\Setup\Roles and X:\Setup\Common directories as shown in the main figure B.

Tip – Command Line Tips, Windows Server 2008 Server Core

Microsoft has released Windows Server 2008 in various editions. One of them is Server Core. There is no GUI included in the Server Core. You must perform all the commands by using the command-line tools supplied with the Server Core. Here are few important ones.