AD Replication and Career Advice

AD Replication
I read a fantastic article in Windows IT Pro today and don't want to forget where I read it and what I need to do. . so here goes. Sean Deuby wrote a really great article on troubleshooting ad replication, and what made it so great was that even a newbe admin like me understood most of what he had to say. Here are the steps I need to take to make sure AD is replicating here at our location:

1. Check the OS on the server (DC server that is)
2. Check the health of the directory service.
3. Check the communication between other DCs
4. Verify protocol of direcotry services and determine whether the DCs are authenticating correctly.

For all the details, check out "Troubleshoot AD Replication: Magic wand no required" in the June, 2007 edition of Windows IT Pro.

Career Advice Worth Noting

In that same edition of WITP, there was another really good article, this time one on getting ahead in the career game. Ben Smith breaks career advancement into 5 easy steps, some I am doing and others are goals. Really good take-aways for me are:

1. Find mentors and have them make suggestions on goals
2. Go after jobs to develop needed skill sets, like budgeting and management
3. Track and Qualify Achievements; Make list of accomplishments

List of Things to Do

Programming Language
I think that it is because I have been so unsuccessful at it so far, but for some reason, a couple of times a year, I get the bug to learn a programming language. So, here I am today, scouring the internet, looking for an easy way to learn. I think this time I will include my teenagers, as perhaps they can keep me motivated at this task which I continually put off. Couple of sites I like today are:
http://nostarch.com/frameset.php?startat=wcj_rev for books to read
http://www.mindview.net/ great reference tool

Packet Analysis
I also realize every now and again how little I know, and how much I need to learn about packet analysis. I have installed Wireshark on PCs I use, but am promply intimidated after one packet capture by the information there. I found a book (Practical Packet Analysis by Chris Sanders)today online that I would really like to buy, but I have promised myself that I will not purchase anymore books until I have finished some of the ones I already own and never have read. But in case I forget all about this book, this post.

Monday Musings

Family Time
I have to find a way to cut out more time for my family. I leave the house around 6:30 am or 7 am and don't get home until 6 pm. After a long day at work, I find I have to spend at least 30 minutes running/working out and then have to cook dinner. If I am lucky, I can sit down to enjoy a book, take a motorcycle ride, or hang out with hubby and the kids around 8 pm, leaving only 2 hours of fun time! This can't be right. . .can it?!

Back to Networking
I am headed back to the books today. I got away from them last week as I had so much to do here, but it seems this week will be a good time to catch up on my CCNA studying. I also still have that pesky switch that will no longer let me log in.

Salesforce.com
It seems I need to download and install this, as our sales folks have decided they can't live without it. I am hesitant, but hey, one more thing to add to the resume is always fun.

Reflections

The more I read other peoples blogs, I realize that even the very good technical ones occasionally get a bit. . .off target. People like to muse sometimes, so I am going to also.

When I got this new gig, I thought it was the perfect move for the direction I had decided I was heading in. . and it is. But I also thought that all workplaces were mostly the same. . .and they are not. I have really only worked for 4 companies is my short little 11 year career, and they have been the small business flavor, or the big educational institution. Both have their advantages and disadvantages I am finding. . but I think I prefer the educational institutions. Generally speaking, people are more friendly, honest, and believe it or not, hard working. I also realize that the benefits one receives from a college or university can't be matched in the small business world. Additionally, as an IT person, I LOVED the free flow of money that goes on in College IT departments, I really like being able to test new toys and products.

Furthermore, as I sit here and feel sorry for myself and prowl the internet for job openings at nearby colleges, I am thankful for having those jobs in the past. While my kids were little and growing, I averaged 4 weeks of vacation a year, which is nothing to sneeze at I now realize. I would give much to be in that position again, but until I can be, I will concentrate on being thankful for the years of great benefits in the past, and will rest secure in the knowledge that I will unashamedly look for those benefits in my next position. After all, I love my work, why not enjoy it even more?

How Hard Drives Work

As I continue my search for the backup/data storage solution for my company, I find myself going back and reading again how hard drives work, and new developments in hard drive technologies. I am still reading the Holy Grail book and since this is where the book goes, I am going there also. It never hurts to re-read what you thought you knew.

I found a pretty decent website for information on how hard drives work that I want to note at this time.

Wireless Specs

I have been out of the wireless "loop" for about 2 years now, as I have not really had to deal with routers or cards much. At home, DH has setup our network, so short of finding the connection, I haven't played much at all.

I had one of my customers ask today about 802.11n and had to sheepishly admit that I had not even heard of it. 802.11g was new the last time I was trying to connect wireless cards. He needed to know if he paid the extra $30 for an 802.11n card if it would work in his 802.11g router. I assumed it would, but did double-check for piece of mind and of course it does.

There was a very good article posted on the Wireless & Mobile page in NetworkWorld that helped me understand the new specification. Looking around their site a bit, I see that 802.11n has been in the news for a bit now. I guess I need to add Network World as one of those sites I check first thing in the morning for IT news and information.

Storage Learning Fun

I have to delve into the world of storage now, and I have to say that it is all VERY confusing. I have a book, The Holy Grail of Data Storage Management, by Jon William Toigo that seems to cover most of what I am looking for, but I need to find the time to actually read the book!

We have about 300GB of data that we need to backup, but we also need to be able to restore that data quickly, and also keep some snapshots.

A consultant we have been working with has recommended an external Apple XServe array, but I have to say that I am VERY hesitant to go down that lonely Apple road. Everyone I know has Windows based systems, and God knows I often need to call those I know for help/advice when I get stuck here. Bottom line is that in the business world. . Apple still has a long way to go.

Today, I worked on the switch

I hardly know which of my issues to attack. . they all seem so darned overwhelming. How is one to learn all of this anyway? I keep reading and circling and reading. . .neverending circle this is.

Anywho, I enabled Spanning Tree on the Graphics switch today, as it had lots of collision errors. I need to watch it for a couple of days and then see how things are going, but no one is crying that it brought down the network or anything so that is good I guess.

I turned this on, because the manufactuers book of instructions lists it as the first thing to try if the network runs slow, processes fail or users can't access servers or devices. Sounds like us eh? So why not? No new immediate errors yet, so will keep watching it and see what happens and try to run a test to see if files transfer any quicker with this feature engaged.

Issues I need to resolve

I need to post for a while about some issues I am having on the network and the steps that I take to try and figure them out/solve them.

DNS Issues
To tell the truth, I am not sure I am having DNS issues, but something smells odd. Here is what I see that worries me:
1. Can no longer get to the DNS mmc on my server (this may be a permissions issue)
2. A tracert on my PC to anything offnetwork fails EVERYTIME (have tested another PC here on same subnet and see the same behavior)
3. NSLOOKUP returns a non-authoritative answer everytime and doesn't find internal addresses ever

Switch Issues
Suddenly this week, I can't access my main switch. I have tried the web interface and telnet. I used this a couple of months ago to update the software, but now I can't get into it for anything. It seems to be working normally.

What is THIS?
I have an unknown device, which I have to assume is our second router on our network, that no one knows anything about. We had a consultant come and he wanted to know what this was, I couldn't tell him. What I do know is that traffic that travels from our 10/1000 subnet to our 10/100 subnet is SLLLOOOOWWW

Manager Fun

Today I needed to help one of my users get data from our customer management db on a unix box to an excel doc she could then browse and send on to the customer. Here are the steps involved, which I found on my own (again...right now the small victories count)
1. log into Manager and 4bl
2. Type RUN"QUERY" and hit enter
3. Enter MANAGR or the db name and volume
4. type in CLEAR FIND SHIP-TO FOR ALL and hit enter
5. type in SORT CUST-NUM,BRANCH
6. type in FILE filename (where "filename" is the new name for your file.)
7. type in the following and hit enter
EXPORT CUST-NAME,NAME,SHIP-NAME,SHIP-ADDR(1),SHIP-ADDR(2),SHIP-CITY,SHIP-STATE,SHIP-ZIP
8. Exit the program

To copy to a floppy:
1. Put a floppy disk in the Manager Server
2. In Manager, hit CTRL T to get a QNX prompt
3. type in cp /4BL/filename /dos/a/filename.txt (use your filename)

Then just open the file in Excel on your desktop to edit out the customer names you do not need.

Painful Lessons

It has been a long week, yet I believe a productive one. This week marks my 3 month anniversary at the new company. Therefore, a review was setup. On that very same day, I decided to add some Windows network monitoring components to our main server, and uninstall every other Windows component. Yes, disaster ensued.

It will be a long time before I forget the sheer terror. . .yes that is the word I have been searching for all week. . I felt pure. . full-blown terror as soon as I realized what I had done. . .uninstalled IIS from an Exchange Server. I knew immediately that I was in really deep do-do. . .and had no idea what to do.

To make a long story short. . .a friend walked me through it. What had to be done was that IIS had to be completely removed and then reinstalled. After that, we found that the Exchange Routing Engine Service would not start, so a reinstall of Exchange and the most recent service pack was necessary (based on KB323672). After an intense 3 hours, all was back to normal for the most part.

I learned much from this experience. . .
1. Good friends really are there for you at all times, and it is our job to do all we can to keep them.
2. Most testing and "playing" with servers should really not be done on production boxes.
3. Most mistakes can be recovered from.
4. Good bosses, like good friends are really hard to find. Once you find one that gets it, do all you can to keep them happy with you and your work.

Follow-up Issues

I now get the following error on my Exchange Server:
MS ExchangeMTA
Event ID 9318
An RPC communications error occurred. Unable to bind over RPC. Locality Table (LTAB) indes: 233, Windows 2000/MTA error code: 9297. Comms error 9297, Bind error 9297, Remote Server Name S4IMAGE [MAIN BASE 1 500%10] (14)

Exchange and Blackberry Tips

Exchange Distribution Lists
To allow employees to send to the global distribution list here, the steps are as follows (and I figured this out all on my own):

Under the domain, go to the Distribution lists and look for the one called All S4 employees. Right click and go to properties. On the Exchange General tab at the bottom there is setting about Message Restrictions where you can allow all or some or none to send from the list.

Blackberry Fun
It seems that since the patches for DST have been implemented, folks here can't send email via their BlackBerries.

From different postings on the web, it seems that the besadmin account has to have "send as" permissions in order for users to send via their mobile devices, so we added that in for my account and that did the trick. I am now able to send via my Blackberry, wooohooo. It is a good thing to go home with today. . . I will take even the tiny victories at this point!

Things to take from this:
1. Try to find fixes myself, it was a simple Google search that brought this solution.
2. Go with my gut and what makes sense when seeking solutions.

Happy Friday!

Upgrading Switches

Switches

Today we decided to upgrade all of our switches here at S4. We have one HP PC 4000 series and two HP PC 2800 series.

We had to setup our PCs as TFTP servers first, then copied the old config files
(put 192.168.my.ip CONFIG annettecfg) then followed the instructions to download a new OS through the Telnet session to the switch. We have much to figure out yet, but it is amazing how
things start to make sense once the pegs begin to line up.

Also, the date was way off when telneting in, so I changed the Time Sync to SNTP, Unicast, 129.6.15.28, server version 3, 720 second intervals, and manual IP Config.

Blackberry Item

I did also find the other day that in order to synchronize calendar items in the Blackberrys here, we have to go into the calendar, click on the scroll button, go down to the second-to-last item on the menu there and choose "Options." The last item there is "Wireless Synchronization:" and that must say "Yes."

Blackberry Day

As we switch over to a BES, there are lots of questions right now about how to do things on the Blackberrys.

Move Icons
To move icons on the screen around, click on the button to get numbers and the scroll button at the same time to get a menu to move or hide or show all. Once you have chosen to move the icon, scroll to where you want, and click the scroll button again to release the icon. You can use this same menu to hide certain icons as well.

Add Bluetooth Device
Go into the Options menu and look for "Blackberry." Choose that, and once in the menu, push in the scrolling button to get a menu, and from there you simply choose to "Add a device." NOTE: You will have to have the bluetooth device on and in range of the Blackberry.

Sending Email, Minus Mouse

Email Quickie

Want to keep this tip from Lifehacker.com handy, so up it goes:
1. Use Alt + Tab to switch to Outlook
2. To get to the mail folder, click Ctrl + Shift + M to open a new message, or just Ctrl + N if
already in your in folder.
3. Type in your information or part and hit Ctrl + K.
4. Tab through
5. Spell check by using F7
6. To send, Ctrl + Enter

January 29, 2007

Plans. . .

General George S. Patton said. . .
"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect
plan executed next week."

A good thing for a perfectionist like myself to keep in mind. The plan doesn't have to be perfect, and I don't need to know every nuance of a situation before I begin workng on something. I just need to make a plan that is reasonable and then execute it well.

Switches

We are trying to upgrade our network, at least for the graphics department, so I am looking into switch options. It seems we have a GB connection from the graphics server to our switch there, and have cat6 cables running from the switch to each MAC with GB NICs. But you probably already guessed it, our switch is only 10/100!! Who the heck thought that was a good idea? I guess the good news is that a managed switch from HP is only about $350 which is probably in our budget.

I have been reading about the differences between a managed and an unmanaged switch. It seems that the managed switch just has an interface that allows you to setup features and to well. . .manage the connections. An unmanaged switch is a device that automatically detects and directs traffic.

Changes to Servers

Changes

I don't know where else to keep changes I make to the servers, so I am going to do so here. I need to speed up the connection between our 2003 server and the macs in graphics, so I made a change to the local security settings:

Local Security Settings -> Security Options -> Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (always).

Double-click on it and set to "Disabled". Then close the app and reboot the server.

DNSLint

I used this today for the first time on the main server. I have a log file that was generated that I need to go over, but here is what I ran:

dnslint /d (ipnumber of chi server) /s (AD server number)

List to Learn

As I sit here waiting for the server to do its backup, I wanted to make a quick list of things I need to look into.

VPN
I know how to use VPN, but how and where you set this up for others to use to access the network here is pretty new territory for me. We have one of the sales reps that would like to be able to do this, so I need to investigate how.

Disk Setups
As a friend of mine pointed out a while ago, I have a definite lack of hardware, both server side and really desktop side as well. I need to dig in and investigate and play with this a bit more. I definitely need to setup some RAID arrays at home so I can more fully understand how it works, and how to restore after a failure.

Secure FTP
They guys down south say we will have to add a server if we want to provide secure FTP, so I want to look into options and definitely understand how this is done.

Exchange
It goes without saying that I need to get up to speed quickly on this. I want to get the MS Press book and go from there.

AD
Have a book on this, just need to set aside time to actually read it. It needs to be a priority so that I am on schedule.

General Musings

Subnet Mask

I will never forget the first real technical question I had during an interview. I have worked in IT for a couple of years, but most of my interviews have been pretty informal so far.

Not this last one, and I found myself pretty unprepared. The first and last technical question I got was, "what is a subnet mask." Needless to say, I froze and could only point out that it divides the network. . which isn't quite right. A subnet mask divides an address into a network portion and a host portion.