Jeffreys Ruminations - Network Blog

This is from a mailing list that I am on:

So, without further adieu, we are proud to present you with our “ExtraOutlook” tool that allows you to launch as many Outlook instances as you want. All you have to do is configure the profiles you want, and then type: ExtraOutlook.exe “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE” (after you download it, of course).
Attendees of past Microsoft Ninjitsu classes have been using it for some time now (as all attendees get special access to the Hammer of God Member’s Site) and we’ve not heard of any catastrophic failures (you know, like having all mailbox data destroyed without any hope of recovery).

I’ve wanted this for a while now and have bugged it in Office 10 and Office 11.  I have both a personal exchange account and a work exchange account and have not liked having both.  Thusfar, I have coped by using my smartphone for my personal account (as the office does not provide me with cellphone service) and use Outlook for work email.

Click here for more information.

I want to post a quick update.  As some of you noticed, the site had a bit of downtime late last week.  I’m sorry that I was unable to post a notice before hand, but I had to undergo emergency server maintenance and I needed to recreate all of my websites from scratch.  In the process, I optimized everything and I hope that the site will run much faster for you.

Besides that, I want to wish all of you a happy new year and may this year shower with good fortune (and no server crashes).

I have been spending the past few weeks playing with Windows Home Server, Hyper-V virtualization, and finalizing my Windows Server 2008 beta testing.  I also have deployed a CentOS based Voice-over-IP system, created a website for work, and a whole host of fun and not-so-fun activities.  I’ve also resumed being active in the newsgroups, primarily around Vista networking and DFS-Replication.

Whats on tap in the near future?  I want to review two Linksys router firmware packages - my new all-time favorite Tomato and a new public access point firmware known as Coova.  I’m implementing Tomato at home and have used Coova as our new wireless guest portal at the office.  Second, I need to update my pfSense review - actually give a 1 year overview.  Finally, I want to discuss some of the issues with Samba and Windows Vista.

Again, I would like to thank you for visiting the site.  If you have comments, questions, etc, feel free to contact me via any of the mechanisms listed at the top of the site.

As I said in my first weekend roundup, I was going to install a copy of Windows Home Server this past week. Well, I ended up doing so, using VMWare Server on my “real” home server that runs Windows Server 2008 RC0 beta (and I will reserve the future rant of VMWare NOT SIGNING the kernel drivers for VMWare Server, thus causing me nothing but pain) and dedicated two physical drives to the virtual machine. Everything is up and running after I got the setup driver issues figured out (VMWare SCSI support).

My first thoughts:

• Lack of x64 Connector support! This rules out two of my machines. Actually, what I would prefer is the ability to add the computers running x64 to the “Computer” list so I can get the RWW-like Remote Desktop feature to work. But alas, I couldn’t hack it to get this support.
• The enforcement of what MS considers to be strong passwords. I can disable password complexity for normal computer accounts, but not for any that are accessible remotely. My password is as secure as I want it to be, but WHS is demanding that I change it to work remotely and even to use the computer. There should be a way to relax the password requirement from the current requirement to something that is a bit more reasonable.

I’m still playing with it, but it is a good product, even with these limitations….

This week, I’m a day late, but I have some new links to some interesting software products, a virus warning, and more news:

New Applications:

•  ”Open Data Center Network Management System” - Late last week, I got an email asking me to evaluate and comment on this new application.  I haven’t had a chance to install or look at it yet, but I wanted to throw it out to everyone until I have time to review it myself.

  This appears to be an ideal solution for documenting network data centers, racks, patch panels, routers, etc. - especially for those of us who have to maintain a frugal IT environment (like my office).

• This one isn’t new, but I just found it for the first time today.  “Royal TS“.  This is a good replacement for the “Remote Desktops” MMC applet that isn’t available (at least not easily available) on Windows Vista.  It allows you to organize your Remote Desktop sessions in a nice console list.

Exploit / Virus Warning:

• This item was more tailored for delivery on Friday, but it doesn’t hurt to reinforce the importance of making sure that your Adobe Acrobat software (either the reader or the creator) is up-to-date.  Last Friday, there was an open exploit using PDF files of the Adobe Acrobat (or Microsoft Windows, if you prefer) flaw that allowed your computer to run exploited code.   I noted two attempts of this virus emailed to my office early morning Saturday morning, but my spam/virus gateway was updated to filter it out.

More News:

• I’m posting in the Microsoft Newsgroups once again (primarily in Vista Networking, Server Networking, DFS, and DNS).  It’s about time that I got back to my “roots”.
• I had the joy of helping someone install Leopard this weekend.  It seems nice and quick, but I don’t know if I could stand using the Mac OS X user interface long enough to use it.  Also, Parallels was not working properly on the machine I saw, so that would preclude me from using it in an office situation (AutoCAD doesn’t exist in Mac OS X, nor will it ever).

That’s it for today.  Have a great week if I don’t post again this week.  I’ll try to be more active than that..  And feel free to send comments.  I’m open to criticism… 

This is the first of (hopefully) a continual series of what is new in the Networking and IT World for the past week:

• MS Internal use of Network Access Protection Channel 9 Video - Jeff Sigman (of the NAP team) and Brent Atkison (of MS-IT) talk about how NAP is implemented on the Microsoft network.
• Ubuntu 7.10 (GutsyGibbon) has been released, both in Desktop and Server releases. For the benefit of others at the office, we have implemented some of our public web servers on Ubuntu (although I am more a Centos or BSD dude…). Downloads are still rather slow due to the Slashdot effect.

Weekly Wishlist:

• x64 version of PageDefrag for my servers.
• A working version of Veridian on two of my AM2 systems that should support Virtualization, but are disabled due to processor stepping level.

Task List for the week:

• Installing the RTM build of Windows Home Server at home…
• Upgrade my Trixbox installation and implement OpenWingo softphones…

Last week, I attended the “Winstock 07″ tour/seminar held on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA. Although we weren’t allowed to take any pictures during the event due to our non-disclosure agreements, I did take some pictures of campus, Seattle fall colors, and some nice views of Mt. Rainier. If you are so interested, these are posted on my personal blog photo gallery here.

While there, we learned much, shared much, and everyone mutually benefited from the experience. Thank you to Wendy and Jessep for getting everything setup for us and to the presenters for sharing information with us and for listening to us for our suggestions and constructive criticism. My highlight sessions? The NAP and the PNRP/IPV6 presentations. Jeff Sigman is an “energetic presenter” and the IPV6 presentation reinforced some of the things I am currently using/deploying with Vista and Windows Server 2008. Thank you to the Windows Home Server team for the awesome reception.

While at Winstock, I started to think about communication. I’m not very good at it. I’m trying to improve on it, though. I will set that as my “Halloween” resolution (since New Years resolutions never seem to stick past January 4). So in that vein, I do want to mention that you can communicate with me via any of the following methods:

• Twitter - jeffreycentex
• AOL IM - jeffreycentex
• Yahoo IM - jeffreycentex (notice a pattern here?)
• MSN Messenger - jeffrey at jeffreyrandow dot com (you know what to correct)

I won’t always be available to talk, but I’ll try to be accommodating when possible.

Also, please pass on any suggestions, tips, or leads. Thanks for reading!

Jeffrey

I have upgraded this site to the last development version of Wordpress.  This is in preparation for the (hopefully) simple upgrade to 2.3 on Monday (if I had to update during the week, it would never happen…)

This is a sanity test posting. 

Wow… My last post was a holiday ago.

A few items of interest:

• The wireless WAN problem I mentioned a few months ago has been solved using about $8 of supplies from my local Lowes store. The problem was due to the extreme heat that we have down here in Central Texas (and to tell you the truth, this has been a pretty cool year). My solution? Build a mesh shelter out of storage cubes and patio screen fabric. My problems are now gone. Of course, the point would have been made moot in another month or so, but it felt good to get it solved.
• Cisco’s TelePresence room is cool.. If you haven’t seen the TelePresence rooms in one of the local Cisco office, try to make it a point to see it in the future. This room is like a virtual conference room (which isn’t that special), but there implementation is excellent (with surround sound, similar furniture, etc).
• Sysprep and Mass Storage Drivers suck. Actually, that is being too kind. I spent over a week fighting with Sysprep and getting the 5 different type of Mass Storage devices working on a Windows XP image. Why Windows XP? Our LOB applications still do not work reliably under Windows Vista (ESRI, Bentley/Haestad Methods, and Oce Archiving).

More soon..

Site Note:

I have started locking some of the older posts due to spam problems. These spam postings never make the public side of the site, but are VERY annoying on the administrative side of the blog.

From a mailing list that I am on:

This chart provides information regarding security breach notification legislation which has been enacted in U.S. jurisdictions. The pioneering statute on this issue, California’s Security Breach Notification Act (Senate Bill No. 1386), is used as the baseline for comparisons herein.

Link (Perkins Coie)

It’s been out for a while now (March 2007), but somehow I missed it in my security browsing.