joeware - never stop exploring... :)

Information about joeware mixed with wild and crazy opinions...

10/31/2012

Writing changes to only one ADAM/ADLDS instance

by @ 4:15 pm. Filed under tech

Since ADAM first came out I have received a similar question from several admins and developers (at least double digit but definitely not triple digit numbers) asking how they could make it so changes could only be written to a single ADAM instance so they could control the flow of replication better or always know they had at least one place they could always go for the absolute latest info like, for example, with the PDC and user account passwords in Windows Active Directory Domains. That way if an auth failure occurs, they can manually implement a PDC Chain like functionality. But this could be for other needs as well when you MUST know the absolute current answer to a given question and can’t trust that replication has occurred since the last change.

I wanted to go back to those folks to see how many actually implemented the process I described and if so, what issues they may have encountered with it and possibly what changes they made to the basic model to make it work more efficiently for them. I started searching my email and was not able to track any of them down which is certainly a failure on my part to properly archive my emails all in a nice clean single location (some day that may be the case…) combined with the destruction of I don’t know how many desktop and laptop machines since ADAM came out.

Anyway, I am hoping that one or more of those people may see this blog post and respond to me with feedback on the method. Basically that method involves using local IDs on a single ADAM instance machine.

So if anyone is using this method, please send me feedback (email or comment is good) on how it is working out. If I told you about it either through direct email or responding to a post in a newsgroup, please indicate that, if you got that solution from someone else (I am curious how many people invented this same solution) please indicate that as well. Or if you are just interested in hearing about how to set this up, please let me know that as well.

   thanks!

           joe

Rating 4.00 out of 5

10/29/2012

Running AdFind in an iterative script

by @ 1:00 pm. Filed under tech

If you find that you are running AdFind in an iterative script, say digging up some given attribute for some large list of objects, try using the -DLOID switch. This tells AdFind NOT to download parts of the schema to help with decoding various attributes. You should notice a pretty decent speed increase since you will have less work and less traffic between the DC and the client. Of course if what you are doing depends on that decode. Well then you get to live with it. 🙂

Rating 4.00 out of 5

10/18/2012

Forcing replication of SYSVOL via NTFRS

by @ 2:08 pm. Filed under tech

I have been asked this question something like four or five times by different people in the last three days who say they can’t seem to google the answer so here it is…

ntfrsutl.exe forcerepl DestinationDC /r "Domain System Volume (SYSVOL share)" /p SourceDC.domain.com

 

So if I have a PDC of JoePDC.joe.com and I have a DC named DC1.joe.com and I want to force replication of sysvol from the PDC to the DC, the command would be

 

ntfrsutl.exe forcerepl DC1 /r "Domain System Volume (SYSVOL share)" /p JoePDC.joe.com

or

ntfrsutl.exe forcerepl DC1.joe.com /r "Domain System Volume (SYSVOL share)" /p JoePDC.joe.com

 

That is all…

 

   joe

Rating 3.33 out of 5

10/5/2012

11 years and still going strong…

by @ 2:28 pm. Filed under general

IMG_5674

Rating 4.60 out of 5

1AM – 6AM AD Support Call Handling 101: I will find you and I will kill you…

by @ 12:09 pm. Filed under humour

A friend sent me a humourous email today, I felt I should share…

 

From: SomeADDude 
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2012 12:01 PM
To: joe
Subject: Was it wrong of me to answer an AD support call last night like this?

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for a local member server change, I can tell you I don’t have the permissions to do that.  But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career.  Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.  If you withdraw your ticket now, that’ll be the end of it.  I will not look for you, I will not pursue you.  But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Rating 4.67 out of 5

10/3/2012

AD Wiki RFC

by @ 7:06 pm. Filed under general

Require registered user ids to add/edit content or no?

Try it anonymous first and see if it goes pear shaped and then lock down if necessary?

Comments or emails is fine, you know the drill. 🙂

 

     joe

Rating 3.50 out of 5

9/29/2012

Chardonnay…

by @ 2:32 am. Filed under quotes

Stuart: Hmm. Nice not to drink alone.

Raj: Amen to that. Sometimes I pour a little chardonnay into my dog’s water bowl.

Stuart: You’re kidding.

Raj: She’s kind of a mean drunk, but what are you gonna do?

Stuart: Cheers.

Raj: Cheers.

 

   – Big Bang Theory

Rating 4.00 out of 5

In the beginning…

by @ 12:37 am. Filed under quotes

The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

  – Douglas Adams

Rating 4.25 out of 5

9/26/2012

Wiki update…

by @ 10:10 pm. Filed under general

I haven’t forgotten… I am playing with the MediaWiki software actually right this second (well 2 minutes ago) and have decided to read a book on MediaWiki on Books24x7 so I understand it a little more. I don’t want something out on my webserver that I don’t have a fairly decent understanding of – especially something that allows anonymous updates. 😉

dswiki_logo_mistral_black

Rating 4.00 out of 5

9/24/2012

Tracking Applications in an Enterprise and their Infrastructure Requirements

by @ 9:52 pm. Filed under general

If you had to set up a system to track applications in an Enterprise and their Infrastructure Requirements, say like they point to a specific DC or use specific domain IDs or a specific SMTP server or other things like that, what would you use? This would be something that Application owners/specialists could get into and update their application info and admins or others could perform searches to look for specific requirements etc when you know you need to say shut down a server for maintenance or something like that.

I am hoping to see a wide range of solutions people would use or are using. Preferably this would be some sort of modular solution that didn’t have requirements on a bunch of existing infrastructure itself.

I am asking as I had someone ask me. I have never solved this problem though I have heard of it peripherally many many many times. My initial thought has always been to set up some sort of simple PHP Web pages with a very simple MySQL or even folder based data storage method. PHP since it could run on any OS/Platform that may be available (or quickly set up) and MySQL or folder based storage since there is no heavy backend knowledge/requirements.

Thoughts?

    joe

Rating 3.00 out of 5

[joeware – never stop exploring… :) is proudly powered by WordPress.]