Logs of an SMS Administrator at myITforum.com

If you've ever wondered just how BITS works, this is a document you should pick up. It does a nice job of explaining what BITS does, where and when it does what it does and how it compares to other data transfer technologies. There is a handy Q&A section at the end of the document as well. Enjoy!

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/3/d/b3d8e8ea-8c3f-4962-8a01-478b33f44e15/BITS.doc

Advanced client roaming is a common confusion point for many individuals dealing with SMS 2003. This white paper is an excellent read and does a good job explaining both the functionality of advanced client roaming and the purposes of the various types of boundaries.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=37ac2246-453a-4418-b026-f7140a6fce3c&DisplayLang=en

We've probably seen all these before, but here they are collected for easy viewing.

http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-4505-1.html

Besides the normal sites which technicians use for researching vulnerabilities, this one might be handy to some.

http://securityvulns.com/

********************************************************************
Title: Microsoft Security Bulletin Re-Releases
Issued: June 26, 2007
********************************************************************

Summary
=======
The following bulletins have undergone a major revision increment.
Please see the appropriate bulletin for more details.

* MS07-022

Bulletin Information:
=====================

* MS07-022

-http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms07-022.mspx
- Reason for Revision: Updated this bulletin to advise customers
that are running Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 on NEC 98
systems that a revised version of the security update is
available.
- Originally posted: April 10, 2007
- Updated: June 26, 2007
- Bulletin Severity Rating: Important
- Version: 2.0

One of the drawbacks from pulling information from the WMI is that eventually, you will have a result set which is not very readable to the average person. If you are like me, average people review reports and they would prefer not to have “extra” information which makes a report appear cluttered. Consider the following data set from the fictitious table “Admins”:

Netbios_Name                 OS_Type              Administrator

ACCT324123DAL               Windows XP       TEST.COM/Corporate/Accounting/Texas/Dallas/Jone3423

ACCT324512DAL               Windows XP       TEST.COM/Corporate/Accounting/Texas/Dallas/Harb2512

ACCT324887CHI                Windows  Vista TEST.COM/Corporate/Accounting/Illinois/Chicago/Hern8231

ACCT325123KCM              Windows XP       TEST.COM/Corporate/Accounting/Missouri/Kansas City/Lidd4321

ACCT323482CHI                Windows Vista  TEST.COM/Corporate/Accounting/Illinois/Chicago/Bern2034

Earlier in the year, you were asked to “make SMS show us who the administrators are on all boxes,” so you adjusted the MOF and have been happy that your adjustment works! After doing this, you never heard another word until yesterday when someone in upper management wanted a report on the Midwest Accounting Division boxes. You began to do some test reports to see what would be produced and pulled the above data set.

Now, considering you’ve been producing reports for management for a number of years, you know that the record constituting “Administrator” is not going to be accepted as it is quite “messy.” A simple LAN ID is what your superiors are going to require for that particular column. Here is where the RIGHT function will make your life a lot easier.

The syntax for the RIGHT function is as follows:

SELECT RIGHT ([column_name], length)

FROM [table_name]

Luckily, LAN ID’s in your company are uniformly created from the first 4 letters of the user’s last name and the last 4 digits of their employee ID, resulting in an 8-character LAN ID. To pull the last 8 characters from this record, you’d construct a RIGHT statement as follows:

SELECT Netbios_Name , OS_Type , RIGHT(Administrator, 8)

FROM Admins

The result (first line only) from this query resulted in the following:

Netbios_Name                 OS_Type              Administrator

ACCT324123DAL               Windows XP       one3423

OH NO! Much to your dismay, you have discovered that there is a trailing space at the end of the record. For a basic report, this would not be a problem, as you could just increase the number of characters returned with RIGHT(Administrator, 9). But you know from experience that management is going to also want full user names to match up to the LAN ID’s. That trailing space will problematic later on when you try to JOIN the Admins table to the Users table. This is a situation where the SUBSTRING function can be quite useful.

The syntax for the SUBSTRING function is as follows:

SELECT SUBSTRING ([column_name], starting_position, length)

FROM [table_name]

What you will do in this case is pull the first 8 characters from the right-hand 9. Here is the full SELECT statement using this nested method:

SELECT Netbios_Name , OS_Type , SUBSTRING(RIGHT(Administrators, 9), 1, 8)

FROM Admins

Resulting in the following:

Netbios_Name                 OS_Type              Administrator

ACCT324123DAL               Windows XP       Jone3423

ACCT324512DAL               Windows XP       Harb2512

ACCT324887CHI                Windows  Vista Hern8231

ACCT325123KCM              Windows XP       Lidd4321

ACCT323482CHI                Windows Vista  Bern2034

I hope with this information, people will gain some benefit from the SUBSTRING function. Personally, I find it to be very handy at times.

For anyone who has ever had to sit down and figure conversions without access to the internet or a fancy calculator, you may find this conversion chart somewhat handy. It is something that if you memorize the patterns, you can reproduce on-the-fly. If you are figuring out subnets, just remember that the left-hand side represents the left four binary digits of an octet, while the right-hand side represents the right four binary digits of an octet.

I've attached a zip file which contains the chart in .XLS format.

Enjoy!

There are several variations of this concept. It only works on chipset version 4 or previous - version 2 being the best option. If you are into dinking around with things and getting a boost in performance, check this out.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/ddwrt.php

Microsoft® Windows PowerShell™ Step By Step

http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/10329.aspx

Introducing Windows Server® 2008  

http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/11163.aspx

This just in from Microsoft: (http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/upgrade/ws2003/offer/default.mspx#LONGHORN)

Windows Server 2003 credential holders will have the most efficient path to Windows Server 2008 (formerly code name "Longhorn") certifications. As a benefit to our customers who are certified on current Microsoft technology, we are offering a 40 percent saving voucher (available worldwide) to help Windows Server 2003 customers get a head start on our next release. As a Windows Server 2003 customer with an early certification on Windows Server 2008, you will be well placed to support early adopting organizations that will require skills on both platforms. To receive your voucher, you must satisfy the following two requirements.

This voucher will apply to your upgrade exam; if an upgrade exam is not available for you, this voucher will apply to the first exam in your Windows Server 2008 certification path. You will receive your voucher when the exam becomes available (within calendar year 2007).

Register for your voucher by June 30, 2007  (if link doesn't work - https://profile.microsoft.com/RegSysProfileCenter/wizard.aspx?wizid=ebcc3e66-b782-486d-8031-0d4242d7c034&lcid=1033 )

This issue has come up a few times within our environment and I saw it posted this morning on the forums so I thought I would share this information. On occassion, you may see the volume on which your SQL instance is installed have a drastic space reductions. Many times this is due to the temp database exploding in size, generally due to excessive queries to the SMS database. In our case I had been creating, adjusting and testing many large SQL reports within Enterprise Manager. Needless to say, Ops gave me a call to let me know our server "was full."

Here is a nice article on how to move both the master and temp databases. (I've only moved the temp.)

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3379901

When dealing with Active Directory machine accounts within SMS 2003, you will eventually have to deal with accounts which continually turn up as non-clients. In many cases, this is due to the machine not actually being valid any longer, but still being listed within Active Directory. AD System Discovery will still pick up the account and attempt to resolve it and, not being able to, will throw it into the non-client collection (if you have one.)

I have found it beneficial to periodically go through the non-client collection and run AD Janitor against the exported list to get statistics on those accounts. With this utility, an administrator can determine whether the account can be deleted by reviewing the scan report. So, if your Active Directory is "less than clean," pick up this tool and make your coverage numbers look better.

 http://www.specopssoft.com/products/adjanitor/

In a recent post on the forums there was a question concerning program requirements:

http://www.myitforum.com/forums/Custom_Web_Report_%2D_Finding_the_right_View%2FColumn/m_158306/tm.htm

Mark Carriere gave some very good information on where to find the mappings on various OS versions. I thought it might be useful for others if that information was in Excel format. I've attached a zip file.

This from Microsoft: (it's dated April 25, but I just received the email)

"The next generation of the Windows Server operating system gives you more control, greater flexibility, and increased protection for your server infrastructure while reducing time and costs. And when you download or order the beta software, you're automatically registered to access valuable beta resources assembled in one convenient Beta Central location.

Please review Windows Server 2008 system requirements and compare editions before you proceed. Actual requirements and product functionality may vary based on your system configuration."

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/beta/lhs/default.mspx