Multi Architect

                       It is quite often that we host websites initially as HTTP sites in IIS and suddenly one day, the IT security geek comes and say that the website needs to be run in HTTPS. There are a few methods by which this could be achieved. The one method I'm gonna share with you in this blog is the redirection using URL Rewrite Module. This is an IIS module which will be available for download from this Microsoft site . Once installed, the plugin will be available under the options of a website.

          W henever someone asks me ' What is SysVol ?', my answer would be - the folder which stores group policy.  But is it just a folder ??..Let us find it out. What is Sysvol ? Sysvol is a special folder which is available in C:\Windows\SYSVOL directory in all domain controllers within the domain. This special folder contains the domain's Group Policy settings, default profiles and logon/logoff/startup/shutdown scripts. 

T his is a simple but elegant tool. A tool which is known to all system adminstrators, but still not used as often as it should be. PsExec is a tool which comes as part of PsTools suite from Microsoft which is used to execute programs in machines remotely.  PsExec lets you execute processes on remote systems and redirects the output to the local system without having to manually install client software.  Are you wondering why it is different from Microsoft Telnet ? Of course, no client required on the remote machine as in case of Telnet.

S cenario You have a single vmdk file of 200 GB and it has two logical volumes C & D with 100 GB each. Suppose you need to add another 100 GB to the D drive making it 200 GB. What would you do ? The steps are simple and straight forward.

               T he memory usage of SQL servers is always a hot topic among the system administrators. Any system administrator who handles a SQL server in their environment would have definitely faced this issue. Before going on to the memory monitoring of SQL, we should have answers to the below questions : What does SQL do with the memory ? Does it handle memory in the same way as other applications do ? SQL server uses memory for :

                                    A s a system administrator it is quite often that you would experience disk space issues in OS. Most often, the culprit would be Recycle Bin space. When a user deletes a file, it is moved to Recycle Bin (Unless this is done with Shift key pressed). Recycle Bin is specific to user profiles and therefore when we empty recycle bin, all the contents of the particular user's recycle bin gets emptied. How can we empty recycle bin of all users ?

F ocus: Active Directory Recycle Bin Active Directory Recycle Bin This is a new feature of Windows 2008 R2 which is disabled by default. This feature will be available only if your forest functional level is Windows 2008 R2 and above. Once you enable this feature, it cannot be disabled. How to enable? There is no GUI to enable AD recycle bin Open powershell execute the below: Import-Module ActiveDirectory Enable-ADOptionalFeature -Identity "Recycle Bin Feature" -Scope ForestOrConfigurationSet -Target "globomantics.local" -whatif

F ocus:  Active Directory Tombstone, TSL, Tombstone reanimation Active Directory Tombstone When an object is removed from Active Directory, it is said to be tombstoned.  Tombstone is something which a Domain Controller uses to notify other Domain Controllers about an object deletion.

F ocus: Authoritative and Non Authoritative restoration Non Authoritative Restore Non-Authoritative restore brings back the DC to its state at the time of backup. After the restoration, other DCs will replicate with the newly restored DC with the changes occurred after the backup. This method is mainly used when a DC fails due to hardware/software issue. Non-Authoritative restore is performed in Directory Service Restore Mode (DSRM).

F ocus: USN, USN Rollback, DSA GUID and Invocation GUID Unique Sequence Number (USN) USN is an AD database change tracking number. Any change or transaction made in a DC is represented by a USN increment. The USN of DCs in the same domain need not be same.

F ocus: Active Directory Replication, USN, HWMV and UTDV                                    Intrasite replication replicates changes made in one DC to all other DCs in the same site. AD replications are generally  pull  operations. For example (A site with two DCs : DC1 & DC2) , If a change is made on DC1 then DC1 will inform DC2 about the change.

How to take backup of a database Full Backup This backup includes mdf and ldf files. BACKUP DATABASE  <Databasename> TO DISK = ' <Destination path> '

T his can be done in 2 methods Assigning Publishing

T he content of the system state backup includes: Registry COM+ Class Registration database Boot files, including the system files

G PO, GPC & GPT GPO - Group Policy Object : Refers to the policy that is configured at the Active Directory level and is inherited by the domain member computers. You can configure a GPO at the site level, domain level or OU level. GPO stores policy settings in two locations GPC and GPT

            S ince I was mainly into Windows AD and VMware administration, I was very much reluctant in learning MS SQL administration (Eventhough it comes under the task of a Windows administrator). But now I think it is high time for me to learn at least some of the basics of SQL administration. This blog covers some of the basic SQL stuffs. I myself consider this blog as an incomplete blog and I will be updating this blog when I get something new and interesting.

                  Y ou often ends up with a scenario where you need to use a particular user account to access a network share which was using another account. The below steps cleans up the network shares and remove cached credentials.

C ached credentials in Windows machine can be managed using the below command: rundll32.exe keymgr.dll,KRShowKeyMgr In Windows 7 and above, this can be easily managed using Credential manager.

Stub Zone: Stub Zone is a copy of zone which contains the following records, SOA - Start of Authority record NS - Name Server record - Authoritative DNS servers of the zone A - IP address mapping for the Authoritative DNS Servers of the zone.

Issue When you boot your Windows 2008 R2 OS, the machine gets halted with a blue screen error. The error will have the below information: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Technical Information: *** STOP: 0x000000D1 ( Some address values ) *** tcpip.sys – Address information