Managed Services Archives - Page 13 of 16

Active Directory and Morphed Folders

August 6, 2009 by Daniel Ihonvbere

I recently came across a cool tool from Microsoft called Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner which runs more than 100 checks to help you assess the overall health of your Active Directory and network infrastructure, including the configuration of Active Directory Domain Services, DHCP, DNS, Exchange Server, network adapters, and domain controllers. If the tool detects problems, it links to Microsoft Knowledge Base articles and other Web content for resolution information. I got the tool, installed it and ran it against a client’s network and it exposed some issues in the Active Directory and network environment that could create problems during server deployments, infrastructure upgrades and migrations.

A good example of what the tool found is the exposure of what is called “Morphed Folders” in the domain controllers. Microsoft describes morphed folders as “…folders and files that have replicated to other servers and are exact copies of one another. When the File Replication Service (FRS) cannot determine which of two folders is most recent, it creates a duplicate folder. These folders are named FolderName_NTFRS_GUIDname, where FolderName is the name of the original folder and GUIDname represents a unique GUID for the morphed folder.”

Automation and Small Business Owners

June 30, 2009 by Daniel Ihonvbere

Small business owners are usually forced by budget constraints to do every thing they can to save cost. In order to save on software licensing costs,for example, a small business owner may install the free version of a critical application like a firewall or anti-virus on the business computers. The task of updating these applications then falls on each user to run periodic system scans and updates.

One thing that is not common in small business environments is process automation. Most processes are manually carried out. What we have to realize is that as hard as we try, at some point, somebody forgets to run a system scan or the backup program. Occasionally, someone could accidentally turn off or stop a backup application before the process is completed.

How to repair a corrupt MBR in Windows Vista

June 14, 2009 by Daniel Ihonvbere

I tinker with Linux a lot and in many cases, have computers that dual-boot with Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003, and Server 2008. What always happens is that sometimes I remove the hard drive containing the Linux partition and the GRUB boot loader. This inevitably leads to the error 5 message – “boot loader not … Read more

Outlook 2007 and Gateways

June 8, 2009 by Daniel Ihonvbere

I recently got a call from a client who was having a hard time connecting to their Exchange 2003 server. They kept getting a “disconnected” error. I told them to ping the exchange server and other computers on the network to see if they would get a response, they did and everything looked fine. I … Read more

Backup Options for Small Business Owners

April 6, 2016May 26, 2009 by Daniel Ihonvbere

You’ve heard it a thousand times: backup your data. But I still find it rather amazing to walk into a client’s environment and ask, “so what do you do for backup?” and get a blank stare or “oh, we are doing ok”.

The “it will never happen to us” syndrome is prevalent in the small business environment. The result is a constant break-fix scenario that ultimately turns out to be very costly.

The cost of hard drives has fallen so dramatically that it is inexcusable for a small business owner not to have at least, a removable USB drive for backing up critical data. There are even “cloud” offerings that are pretty reasonable, although they tend to be very slow especially if you have multi-gigabyte files to backup.

For example, Carbonite will back up any amount of data you have for about $55 a year, while Mozy (owned by Iomega/EMC) offers 2 gigabytes of free storage for those who purchase an Iomega external drive.

I know where you are!: Mobile devices and GPS

May 20, 2009 by Daniel Ihonvbere

The other day I was in Houston for a seminar and as usual, got lost, despite the fact that I had a printed map and directions to the venue. I called the hotel I was going to stay at for help and they hung up on me. Oh well. After taking a few more wrong turns, I suddenly remembered that my G1 has a built-in GPS. I pulled over and opened the “Maps” application hoping to use it get new directions. The menu had an entry called “My Location” so I tapped on it and lo and behold, it brought up a street map of my exact location.