Backup Exec 2012

Exciting times! This time around Symantec actually has added a few features I’ve previously been missing!

In no particular order here are my favourites

• Backup to virtual machine. With option to convert existing backupset to virtual machine. both vmware and hyper-v
• Autoupdate for remote agents when central server is updated
• Support for powershell commands
• Simplefied disaster recovery. No longer the need to have exactly the right version of OS on disc when performing recovery
• Improvements on the vwmare-agent, which provides the ability to redirect restore to newer hardware-versions. For example redirect to “Hardware Version 8”. Great for migrations hopefully!
• Improvements on the exchangeagen, which provides ability to restore mailbox or public folder items into PST-files. This is a great one! This never worked well when you had to restore directly into the active exchangedatabase. Hopefully this will remove our need for third party software to do exactly this!
• When backing up virtual disks, only used space is transferred. Goes for both hyper-v and Vmware.

On the negative side they seem to have overhauled the old system of using policies to create jobs, which I’ve been forcing everyone around me to use. It’s gonna be interesting to see if the new methods are scalable like before…

Remote Desktop Services in Workgroup mode

I had a case where a customer wanted to run RDS on singleserver. The idea was to run DC and TS on the same server to save hostingmoney. A bad practice and not really optimal to run on a virtual host with limited memory. The thought struck me if we could manage without the DC the system might run much smoother.

While googling for information a noticed that it was sparse with info for this scenario on the net. It did however work splendidly.

What you need to do

1. Install Server 2008 R2

2. Install server server role Remote Desktop Session Host and Remote Desktop Licensing

3. Configure Per User Licensing mode

4.  Add these policies to make life easier

Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components> Remote Desktop Services> Remote Desktop Session Host>Printer Redirection>Specify RD Session Host server fallback printer driver behavior> = default to PCL if not found

Computer Configuration>Windows Components>Remote Desktop Services>Remote Desktop Session Hos>Connections>Sets rules for remote control of Remote Desktop user sessions = enabled, with user permissions

5. Create users from Computer Management> Users and Computers and add these to Remote Desktop Users group.

For a single server environment this method might sometimes be justified, otherwise it’s a DC-environment that is recommended.

Don’t use time.windows.com

At a seminar I once learned that we shouldn’t use the default ntpserver time.windows.com. Which is preconfigured in all Windows installations. This server is apparently under quite a big load. I can imagine, seeing how usually people don’t look twice on this settings.
To change it, change time and date settings, choose Internet Time and change to a less travelled ntpserver. In sweden we can use one of the following:

            server 0.se.pool.ntp.org
    server 1.se.pool.ntp.org
    server 2.se.pool.ntp.org
    server 3.se.pool.ntp.org

The Internet Time tab won’t be visible if the computer is member of a domain. then this settings is being handled by the domain controller.

Great week for WinPhone and Windows

This week we got both Skype for WinPhone and much sought after upgrade for Skydrive!

Skype has been in the works for months! Now I can finally call people from my phone when Im at home in my mountain lair with incredible bad cellphone reception!

Also updated is the Skydrive services. New this time is a clientapplication which makes skydrive available through Windows Explorer, just like an ordinary folder. What’s nice with this is that you can also add your skydrive folders to your Windows Libraries. My Lumia 800 autouploads all taken pictures to my Skydrive, so taken pictures now magicly turns upp in my Windows Picturelibrary!

I’ve previously been trying to make this work through a myriad of third party applications and hacks but they can now all pass into the past. Good thing too, since they’ve got nothing on the MS Skydrive app! Im curious though, too if MS will merge Skydrive and Mesh in the future. Now they’re both active in the activity field and other than it looks a bit messy with all these extra icons it’s probably not very memory effective.

As of now my mesh is eating up:

MSOSync.exe 4MB, WLSync.exe 23MB, MOE.exe 47MB. Totalt 74MB.

Skydrive.exe 10MB .

Hmm, they could probably trim the Mesh-services a bit I think, though Skydrive most likely only connects to online webservices and doesn’t “think”. Hopefully this will all sort itself out in Windows 8.

Here’s MS promovideo of the new skydrive:

SkyDriveVideo.mp4 , can also be viewed on blog below, since this link probably doesn’t work…

References:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/23/the-next-chapter-for-skydrive-personal-cloud-storage-for-windows-available-anywhere.aspx

Can’t delete folder because thumbs.db is in use

To get rid of the annoying “Can’t delete folder because thumbs.db is in use” error, do the following

1. Open gpedit.msc

2. In User Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components>Windows Explorer

3. Enable “Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files” .

Now, you loose some functionality doing this, by the error is far to annoying to keep.

Great tool for cleaning up on Terminal Servers

Got to use ICSweep today to clean out user tempfiles on a Terminal Server. Very effective. In my case server was loosing all diskspace due to a printer spooler gone awry. Lost 4GB in 3 minutes… a bit distressing…
Check out site below for details
http://www.conetrix.com/Blog/post/Utility-to-Delete-Temp-Files-on-a-Terminal-Server.aspx
http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com.au/CAD_TSUtils.htm

Error while accessing datasheet-view in SP2010

Some of our customers have run into a problem while trying to access datasheet view of a list when using Office 2010 64bits version.
 
A common solution to this is to install the 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components (x32).
Link to download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=7554F536-8C28-4598-9B72-EF94E038C891&displaylang=en
Link to MS information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2266203

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