Bauer-Power Media

May 20, 2011

Renaming A Windows Domain With Rendom

1:00 AM

Paul B

Here is yet another gem from my new gig. One of the things I walked into was a very strange Microsoft Active Directory topology. I am fairly certain that the admin that set it up didn't really know what they were doing, but they tried real hard. You see, they set up three domains on the network, under three different forests using the same FQDN! By that I mean, they are all named exactly the same! Who the hell does that?

Not only that, but the FQDN of the forests and the domains are technically in sub-domain format. For example, a top level domain would look like domain.com right? If they want to create child domains under the same forest then they would use the sub-domain format like hq.domain.com. Well they named the forest hq.domain.com. Again, who the hell does that?

Well, yesterday I decided that it was time to fix it, so I broke out a command line tool called Rendom.exe. If your network is a Windows 2003 functional level domain, you can download the tools here (Domain Rename Tools For 2003). If your network is a 2008 functional level or above, then your DC has Rendom built in under the System32 directory.

Anyway, it works the same in both. Here are the steps to rename your domain:

Run rendom /list to create a Domainlist.xml file with your current forest and domain configuration.
Open Domainlist.xml with Notepad and make your domain name changes
Run rendom /showforest to check your future configuration
If everything looks good, run rendom /upload to upload your changes
Run rendom /prepare to prepare AD for the changes
Run rendom /execute to make your changes. You will be required to reboot your DC.
After the DC reboots, run the included gpfixup tool to fix your GPO's as follows:
gpfixup /olddns:hq.domain.com /newdns:domain.com

and if you changed the Netbios name as well...

gpfixup /oldnb:domain /newnb:dm
FInally run rendom /clean to cleanup the changes

After you are done with all of that, you will need to reboot all the hosts on your network once or twice to get everything syncing again. You may also have to manually make changes in DNS.

One thing to note in my environment is that I do not have an Exchange server, so this change was rather easy. If you have Exchange in your environment, do some more research before changing your domain.

Have you ever had to do this yourself? Why did you need to change your domain's name? Let us know your story in the comments!

del.icio.us tags: how to change domain name fqdn netbios windows 2003 2008 r2 active directory

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May 17, 2011

My New Favorite Free Open Source Monitoring System

1:00 AM

Paul B

I love when I start a new job, or major project. It almost always gives me good fuel for stuff to write about here on Bauer-Power. This new job is no different. Since I am coming into a smaller company that was built on a shoe string budget, I have to find a lot of new ways to get things done. Well, I should say, things I knew about, but never really used a lot.

You see in bigger companies with a decent IT budget, you can afford software the costs a few thousand dollars a pop. When your budget is under 100K though, you probably should spend your money on hardware, and not so much on software. That is where Open Source is very handy, and really shines.

One of the things my new network was lacking was a monitoring system. There aren’t a lot of servers on the network per se, but it is still nice to know when there is a problem. At first I stood up a VM running Nagios, and I was all rearing to go with that when a former colleague of mine (Thanks again Dave!) reminded me of another Open Source solution called Zenoss Core.

Here are some highlights from their page:

Single Integrated Product - to monitor your entire IT infrastructure
Open Source CMDB - a single repository for your IT assets
Easy To Use Browser-Based GUI - no Linux skills needed, access from anywhere
Enterprise-Ready Architecture - tiered architecture that scales to thousands of nodes
ZenPacks Framework - packaging system for Zenoss plugins, skins, etc...
Open Source - free and open source

Installation was really easy in Ubuntu Server edition, and once I had my Windows nodes configured for SNMP it discovered them without a hitch. Plus with the help of free ZenPacks or plugins, I can easily monitor other things like VMware, and Windows event logs using WMI.

I am just so happy about this solution. It’s only been running for a day and already it’s telling me about disk space issues, network connectivity problems etc. Looks like I have my work cut out for me. I would have never known though until it was too late without Zenoss!

del.icio.us Tags: free,open source,monitor,server,wmi,snmp,vmware,zenoss

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May 16, 2011

Free Program To Manage Multiple ESXi Servers

1:00 AM

Paul B

I think I may have literally stumbled upon pure gold. I kind of feel like Jed Clampett who accidentally discovered oil while hunting rabbits! You see at my new gig we have a very limited budget so we can’t afford the full blown version of VMware Enterprise plus. In fact, our production environment only has VMware Advanced, then we have several other ESXi servers that handle stuff like QA, and Dev. After more than one or two ESXi servers though, management can become a pain.

Well I found a tool that will let me manage up to five VMware ESXi servers in one interface at the same time! Not only that, but it is absolutely free! It’s called Trilead VM Explorer.

This thing lets me power on, and shut down VM’s, manage snapshots, register and un-register VM's and browse data stores. Even better though is it gives me a method of backing up full VM's without the need for VCB scripts, or VMware Data Recovery! You can even set the backups up on a schedule for automated, hassle free DR goodness!

If you have more than five ESXi servers to manage, then you may want to fork over the dough for the pro version which is pretty reasonable at less than $800. Here is a breakdown on the differences from their site:

This is great news for me because the server room I inherited is a complete mess. I have a bunch of servers stacked on each other running on desktop computers, as well as a number of old G1 HP DL360’s. I would love to turn a couple of the servers into ESXi servers, bump up the RAM, get some shared storage and virtualize the rest using ESXi. With Trilead VM Explorer, I can do that and also have ease of management!

What do you think? Know of any other free third party tools to manage ESXi servers as easily as this? Think you will setup your own ESXi environment now that you can manage them all in one place? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Technorati Tags: free,esxi,vmware,management,tool,gui,multiple servers,backup

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May 11, 2011

How To Configure Your HTC EVO With Microsoft BPOS

1:00 AM

Paul B

I just started a new job on Monday, and luckily for me managing Microsoft Exchange is something that I don't have to worry about anymore. That is because since this company is so small, they opted to have their email hosted using Microsoft Online Services. Great news for me because although I like managing Exchange, and it is a great technology, it can also be a pain in the arse when issues arrise. Sometimes it is just nice to not have to deal with headache's like managing email and spam, and mailflow etc.

So since I am working at the new gig, and I still have my HTC EVO, I wanted to configure my business email for my phone. The problem is that Microsoft does not give any instructions for configuring android phones for Microsoft Exchange Online. Since Microsoft didn't have a write on it, i thought I would do the interwebz a favor and write up something real quick on how to configure your HTC Evo from Sprint with Microsoft's BPOS.

On your Evo click on Mail > Menu >More > New account
Don't enter any info, just click Manual Setup
Make sure you have set the following info:

Protocol: Exchange
Email Address: Your Email Address
Server: red001.mail.microsoftonline.com (For United States. Click here if not in the US)
Domain: Leave blank
Username: Your Email Address
Password: Your BPOS password

After you have the above information, make sure the checkbox to secure your your connection with SSL is checked

That's it, just continue with the rest of your setup, and everything should work out fine.

del.icio.us tags: how to, setup, configure, htc evo, android, sprint, microsoft, exchange online, bpos

May 10, 2011

New To SharePoint 2010? Here Are Some Free How-To's!

1:00 AM

Paul B

I got an email from my contact at Bauer-Power's newest sponsor TTR that they are sponsoring a new site that basically gives out free how-to's on designing and creating SharePoint 2010 Workflows. This is awesome news because if you called my last company, which happens to be a SharePoint consulting firm, they would literally charge you an arm and a leg to give you basic training on SharePoint 2010. What if you are just trying to figure out if SharePoint 2010 is right for you? Then free training is better! Am I right?

The site is aptly called SharePoint 2010 Workflow, and it is essentially nothing more than a blog with easy to follow video tutorials on different features of SharePoint 2010, and how-to perform various functions. For an example of one of the videos, here is one from Jason Keller, one of TTR's SharePoint gurus:

A cool thing about this site is that if you are learning a lot about SharePoint 2010, and how it can benefit your company, but you still aren't sure, or have no idea how to begin setting up SharePoint 2010 then TTR can help with that too. From their About Us page:

TTR will make your SharePoint migration project a success. TTR assists clients through the entire migration lifecycle from analysis through architecture, design, and implementation. We have partnered with leading software vendors to combine best-in-class migration tools and best practices.

Migration Services Offered:
SharePoint 2003 to 2010
SharePoint 2007 to 2010
Lotus Notes to SharePoint 2010
File Share to SharePoint 2010
WSS & SharePoint Foundation to SharePoint Server

New SharePoint implementations, and even upgrades from 2007 to 2010 can be very daunting. It's nice to know that companies like TTR are out there to provide free tutorials to get you started, or can even do the implementation for you at a reasonable cost.

If you want to know more about TTR and their practice, you can hit them up on Twitter or Facebook!

del.icio.us tags: free, sharepoint 2010, resources, training, video, tutorials

May 9, 2011

To Dual Boot, Or Not? That is The Question!

1:00 AM

Paul B

I just got myself a new Lenovo Ideapad Y560 laptop. This thing is a beast. It has an eight core Intel I7 processor, and 8 GB of RAM (After a quick trip to Frys that is). It also has a 500GB hard drive. I’m pretty happy with it.

When I got it I decided that since there was plenty of disk space, I would go ahead and dual boot it with Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, and Bauer-Puntu Linux 11.04. That way I can have the best of both worlds on the same laptop.

I know what you are thinking. Who the hell dual boots anymore? Why not just pick one operating system, and use some sort of desktop virtualization software? And there is the million dollar question right?

Although I agree that virtualization is friggin’ awesome, and it is great for testing out operating systems without blowing away everything you have installed, there are times when dual booting is a better idea. For instance, lets say you need Windows for something like video editing (Like I do for Tech Chop). Well, Linux video editing sort of sucks, so I like to use Windows. I don’t want to have a Linux based OS, and a Windows VM running Sony Vegas because I don’t want to share resources with the host OS.

On the flip side, I don’t want to have a Windows host, and a VM running Bauer-Puntu because the VM won’t see the wireless card and I can’t do any wireless hacking using Grim Wepa. Just like above, I also don’t want to have to share resources.

There are times though when using virtualization is ideal. Maybe you just heard about a really cool software you want to test out, but you don’t want screw anything up with your laptop or workstation. Installing the software on the VM can be a safe alternative, and when you are done, you can blow away the VM and spin up a new one for testing something else later. It’s really convenient.

So basically it comes down to shared resources. If it’s not a big deal, then virtualization is the way to go. If you absolutely need all of the features of more than one OS, and can’t possibly share the resources, then multi-booting is the way to go.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments.

del.icio.us Tags: Why,dual boot,virtualization,vmware,virtualbox,vm

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May 5, 2011

Bauer-Puntu 11.04 is Out! Start Downloading It!

1:00 AM

Paul B

I spent just about the entire day yesterday working on this, so I am extremely happy to let you know that the latest version of Bauer-Puntu Linux is finally ready for download! Even more happy than me is my wife because now I can start spending some time with her and stop spending so much time working on this.

Before I get to the nitty gritty though, you might find it interesting to know that this entire version was made using Oracle’s VirtualBox. I would have built it on my trusty Dell D620 like I did the last few versions, but Ubuntu 11.04 ran like crap on it. I decided to buy a new laptop because the D620 was getting old, and while I am waiting for the new one to show up, I figured I could do this using virtualization.

Since I built it using VirtualBox, it already has the VirtualBox guest additions installed. I also install open-vm-tools in case you want to run it in VMware like I did in previous versions.

I decided not to stray too far from the last version since it was such a big hit, but you should know that by default Bauer-Puntu 11.04 DOES NOT use Unity by default! Nope, I have it set to use Ubuntu Classic by default. You’re welcome! I also kept Google Chrome as the default browser because I love the built in sync feature.

Anyway, here is a list of apps that I installed: