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Category Archives: ICT

Sample ICT troubleshooting process flowchart

14 Aug

Troubleshooting can be very difficult and there are many different approaches and personal preferences. Also the chosen approach can even differ based on the situation.

Even though there is no troubleshooting process that is  best in all situations, it is considered a good practice to troubleshoot in a structured manner.

This is why I’ve created a sample ICT troubleshooting flowchart in Visio for companies that:

  • Have separate dedicated management teams for various IT disciplines like Windows, Linux/Unix, Database, Backup, Storage, Virtualization and Applications.
    • Have both offshore and onshore IT personnel where all tickets are initially routed to the offshore team.
  • Uses a ticketing system:
    • To log events, incidents, changes, problems, etc.
    • To route tickets to various disciplines.
  • Use a CMDB.
  • Use a change calendar.

Keep in mind that this is a sample troubleshooting flowchart that was only created to provide some structure or inspiration for troubleshooting.

I hope it is useful. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please leave a message.

PS: If you don’t have Visio, you can download Microsoft Visio Viewer 2013 from Microsoft.

 
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Posted by on August 14, 2013 in ICT, Microsoft

 

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Home LAB Setup guide – 07 Make your lab available over the internet

04 Aug

In the first part of this LAB setup guide, I described the hardware selection process.
In the second part, I described the hypervisor selection and installation.
In the third part, I described VM guest considerations and preparations.
In the fourth part, I described Configuring Server 2012 VM as DC with DNS and DHCP using PowerShell
In the fifth part, I described easily creating (many) proper AD users with PowerShell
In the sixth part, I described creating a local PowerShell v3 Help Repository with PowerShell

In this post I will describe how you can make your lab available over the internet.

When you’ve created your home LAB, you want to be able to use it anywhere. Depending on your situation, one of these options probably best meets your needs.

Examples include the use of:

  1. Remote desktop connection to your server
    + Easy to configure (enable on server and configure NAT forwarding if appropriate)
    – On many enterprise or public networks TCP3389 is blocked by the firewall.
    – Connects only to specific server. Even though you access the rest of the network from there.
  2. VPN connection to your network
    • Using your hardware router
      + Connection to network, not just a server.
      – No dependency on Windows Server
    • Using Windows Server 2008 / 2012
      + SSTP VPN (TCP443), is generally not blocked on enterprise/public networks.
      + Connection to network, not just a server.
      – Dependency on Windows server.
      – Requires more configuration.
      – The root CA certificate for the certification authority (CA) that issued the server authentication certificate needs to be into the store Local Computer\Trusted Root Certification Authorities. For a self-signed certificate, this means that you need to have local admin permissions to add it.Note: DirectAccess is a great feature, but it requires the client to be a member of the domain. And in my case this would limit where I can connect from, therefore I don’t plan to use it. For other situations it might be a better solution though.
  3. Using 3rd party tools like logmein, teamviewer or VNC
    + Connects only to specific computer.

Since I want to be able to connect from within enterprise environments as well, I chose to use SSTP VPN in Windows Server 2012. The basic steps you have to perform, include:

  1. On the server, you have to install and configure the VPN service.
  2. On the server or your own PKI, you would want create and install a machine certificate. You can create a Certificate Signing Request and request a 3rd party public certificate. Alternatively you can create a certificate using your own Certificate Authority, or you could create a self-signed certificate, For creating the self-signed certificate you can use the great PluralSight SelCert tool.
  3. On the client, you have to make sure the created certificate will be trusted. This means you have to add the certificate to local system\trusted root certificate authority if you’re using a self-signed certificate, which requires local administrator permissions on the client.
  4. On the client, you have to set-up the VPN connection to the server. Preferably you want to connect by DNS name. For your home lab you can also utilize dynamic DNS services like by example no-ip.com or alternative solutions.

For some more information, you can also take a look at this:

 
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Posted by on August 4, 2013 in Automation, Cloud, ICT, Microsoft, Powershell, Private cloud, Tutorials, VMware, Windows 2012

 

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PowerShell – Reverse strings and reverse file names

30 Jul

With PowerShell it is relatively easy to reverse a string:
$str = “gnirtsdesrever”
$str[-1..-($str.length)] -join “”

Some of you might ask: Why would anyone want to do this ? Well, since the start of the year Usenet DMCA takedowns have begun to occur automatically, very quickly and very often. This means many movies and TV series on Usenet / News Groups are being taken offline very quickly.

Counter measures to prevent takedowns by uploaders include:

  • The use of encrypted links to NZB files.
  • The use file names that make it harder to find copyrighted files.

As you can probably guess, some just reverse the file names. The PowerShell script I’ve created will automate reversing the file names for files in the specified folder that match the specified file name filter.

I hope it is useful for you as well.

PS: Someone else on usenet had the same idea as me and created a VBS that will add a right-click menu option to explorer. I’ve added this in the same location as my PowerShell script as well.

 
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Posted by on July 30, 2013 in Entertainment, ICT, Learning, Microsoft, Movies, Powershell, Windows

 

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PowerShell – Cleaning folders containing temporary files

23 Jul

At the companies I’ve worked for , disk space on the system disk ran out on a regular basis for some systems and caused a lot of monitor calls. These kind of boring repetitive tasks are always the ones you want to automate.

So when I came across the great blog post “Weekend Scripter: Use PowerShell to Clean Out Temp Folders” on the “Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog”, I wanted to post it on my own blog as well. The blog post also describes the process of creating the script very well, which is very convenient for those who are relatively new to PowerShell to scripting and want to learn how to do it better.

If you want to take it even a step further, you could automate it even more. By example by automatically running the clean script when an event is generated that the disk is running out of space. You can configure this using by example:

Or you could use PowerShell remoting to do it on many systems at the same time. This could come in handy by example when after WSUS patching the content in “C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download” is not deleted automatically.

 
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Posted by on July 23, 2013 in ICT, Microsoft, System Center Operations Manager 2012, Windows, Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Windows 2012, Windows 8

 

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PowerShell – Manage printers

13 Jul

At work a colleague of mine was looking to modify printer permissions on a Server 2008 R2 terminal server using PowerShell. And to be honest, it was more difficult to do than I had expected.

So naturally, I started looking if someone had already created a script for this same purpose and eventually I found this great script created by Vadims Podans:
PrinterUtils.ps1 / Functions for advanced printer management

By leveraging this script, permissions were easily modified by adding the following lines:
$name = “Printername”
Get-Printer “localhost” $name | Add-PrinterPermission “corp\Domain Users” 0 “print”
Get-Printer “localhost” $name | Remove-PrinterPermission “everyone”
Get-Printer “localhost” $name

My modified script can be found here: http://bjornhouben-web.sharepoint.com/Lists/Scripts/DispForm.aspx?ID=22

Be sure to check Vadims Podans website for other great resources: http://en-us.sysadmins.lv/

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2013 in Automation, ICT, Microsoft, Powershell, Windows, Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Windows 2012, Windows 8

 

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Excel – Determine monthly payments for weekly activity with variable number of participants

08 Jul

For some time now, I’ve been playing indoor soccer with friends and colleagues on a weekly basis. To do so, we rent a location and split the costs. Because the people and the number of people vary, it is tedious work to keep track of who needs to pay how much. Especially because not everyone can/will pay at the same time.

Since I’m lazy, I’ve created an Excel spreadsheet to help with that:
http://bjornhouben-web.sharepoint.com/Lists/Files/DispForm.aspx?ID=18

Here’s what it looks like (click for full image):

It is easily customizable, so I hope it is useful to you as well.

 
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Posted by on July 8, 2013 in Excel, ICT, Microsoft, Office, Office 2013

 

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Windows 8.1 – Use windows store apps when behind an authenticated proxy

04 Jul

With Windows 8 one of the major issues especially when used in an enterprise was that the Windows Store and Windows Store apps wouldn’t work when you were behind an authenticated proxy unless you specifically allowed URLs to pass through the proxy unauthenticated.

I even created a blog post about this before and since it gets many views I believe it is an issue a lot of people are having.

As such I’m happy to inform you that with Windows 8.1 Preview you can configure your authenticated proxy to be used for Windows Store apps. Press Windows key + W and type “Change proxy settings”.

Win8.1_proxy

The settings from Internet Explorer are also automatically used, so existing configurations set using a GPO work as well.

 
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Posted by on July 4, 2013 in ICT, Microsoft, Windows, Windows 8

 

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VMware – PowerShell script to get (storage)vmotion history

03 Jul

Even though I’ve always liked VMWare vSphere, I thought the events and informational messages weren’t always as helpful as they could be.

One of the common things I want to know are the vmotions and storage vmotions that have taken place. Luc Dekens has created a great script that shows the (s)vmotions that have taken place including details about them.

Be sure to take a look at his website for the PowerShell / PowerCLI script including a detailed explanation:
http://www.lucd.info/2013/03/31/get-the-vmotionsvmotion-history/

 
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Posted by on July 3, 2013 in Automation, ICT, Microsoft, Powershell, VMware

 

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PowerShell – Getting Started with PowerShell 3.0 JumpStart July 18

02 Jul

I’m a big fan of the Microsoft Virtual Academy JumpStarts. Recently a PowerShell JumpStart has been announced as well that will be hosted by Jeffrey Snover and Jason Helmick. For more information and to register for July 18, take a look at : http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/liveevents/PowerShell-JumpStart. Apparently it’s even a 2 part series.

Also if you won’t be able to join the JumpStart live, the sessions will be recorded so you can view them whenever it suits you.

For those who missed it, this month there will also be JumpStart sessions for For Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2. For more information and registration take a look at this blog post.

Hope to see you there.

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2013 in Automation, Cloud, Hyper-V, ICT, Learning, Microsoft, Private cloud, Public Cloud, System Center Configuration Manager 2012, System Center Operations Manager 2012, Windows, Windows 2012

 

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Windows 8 – My view on the re-added start button in Win 8.1 and 2012 R2

01 Jul

As you may have read already, with Windows 8.1 Preview (and Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview) the start button has been re-added:

win8.1_start

Basically by left clicking you will switch between the modern/metro interface and the desktop (similar to pressing the windows key). By right clicking you will get the menu shown in the image above (similar to pressing windows key + X). For more information and tweaks take a look at:
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/shutdown-restart-sleep-hibernate-windows-8-1

Another often requested feature was to be able to bypass the metro/modern interface start screen. This boot to desktop is now also possible: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/boot-to-desktop-windows-8-1

A lot of people have been complaining and discussing the absence of the start button and the start menu and that the shutdown/restart options where too hard to access.

Personally I simply press CTRL+ ALT + DELETE, click the power icon and choose the action to perform. Or I press the physical power button on my laptop, pc or tablet.

I also don’t really need the start button/start menu. I added my most used apps on the modern/metro start screen and/or added them to my desktop and taskbar. Other apps  I simply search for by starting to type on the modern/metro start screen.

The lack of a start button does irritate a lot when you’re accessing Windows 8/2012 through RDP or any other remote method. Trying to access the hot corners to switch between the metro/modern start screen and the desktop can sometimes be hard, especially on laggy connections (ILO/RSA/DRAC). The same is true for accessing the charms bar (which you use to restart/shutdown).

The re-added start button does solve the switching between the metro/metro start screen and the desktop I described above,but the charms bar is still an issue. You can use the start button for restart/shutdown though.

What I hate most though, is that the start button is simply a button. It doesn’t include the start menu people want to access their programs and settings in a way to are accustomed to. To make it even worse the re-added official start button makes it harder to use some 3rd party start button/menu replacements that were working well (but this will probably be sorted out soon since 8.1 has only been released a couple of days). Classic shell still works well though: http://www.classicshell.net/

Even though I think Microsoft has been doing a lot of great things lately, the way they’re handling the start button/start menu isn’t one of them in my opinion. People want the start button and the start menu they’ve grown used to and that has been available for many Windows versions. This start button without the start menu will probably lead to more disappointed users because they expect the start menu to be included with the start button. I think this will also hurt adoption in the enterprise. All in all I think it’s a missed oportunity

The preview version with this start button is not the final version. While I don’t expect Microsoft to re-add the start menu before the finl release, I sure hope they prove me wrong. If you want to have the start menu back, be sure to voice your opinion. This did work for the Xbox one, where Microsoft changed course with regards to Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Even though the start button isn’t what many people have hoped for, there are a lot of other great improvements to Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 though. I’ll try to post more about it in the next couple of weeks.

 
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Posted by on July 1, 2013 in ICT, Microsoft, Windows, Windows 2012, Windows 8

 

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