YuvaTips

Invalid Boot.ini Error in Windows

2012-06-19T00:02:00.003-07:00

To resolve this issue, start the computer from the Windows XP CD, start the Recovery Console, and then use the Bootcfg.exe tool to rebuild the Boot.ini file
.
To do this, follow these steps:
1. Configure the computer to start from the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive.
2. Insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart yourcomputer.
3. When you receive the "Press any key to boot from CD" message, press a key to start your computerfrom the Windows XP CD-ROM.
4. When you receive the "Welcome to Setup" message, press R to start the Recovery Console.
5. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you have to use from the Recovery Console.
6. When you are prompted, type the administrator password, and then press ENTER.
7. At the command prompt, type bootcfg /list, and then press ENTER. The entries in your current Boot.ini file appear on the screen.
8. At the command prompt, type bootcfg /rebuild, and then press ENTER. This command scans the hard disks of the computer for Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000, or Microsoft Windows NT installations, and then displays the results. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen to add the Windows installations to the Boot.ini file. For example, follow these steps to add a Windows XP installation to the Boot.ini file:

a. When you receive a message that is similar to the following message,

press Y: Total Identified Windows Installs:

1 [1] C:\Windows
Add installation to boot list? (Yes/No/All)

b. You receive a message that is similar to the following message:

Enter Load Identifier

This is the name of the operating system. When you receive this message, type the name of your operating system, and then press ENTER. This is either Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition.
c. You receive a message that is similar to the following:

Enter OS Load options
When you receive this message, type /fastdetect, and then press ENTER.

Note The instructions that appear on your screen may be different, depending on the configuration of your computer.
9. Type exit, and then press ENTER to quit Recovery Console. Your computer restarts, and the updated boot list appears when you receive the "Please select the operating system to start"message.

How to perform a Primary Restore of Active Directory

2012-06-17T22:07:00.000-07:00

1. Reboot the domain controller.
2. During startup, press F8 when prompted, and then select Directory Services Restore Mode (Windows DCs only) from the Windows Advanced Options menu. Press Enter.
3. Choose the operating system that should be started. Press Enter.
4. When the Safe Mode logon prompt appears, enter the appropriate local administrator account information, and then click OK. Click OK when a message appears, advising that Windows is running in Safe Mode.
5. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then click Backup.
6. On the initial page of the Backup or Restore Wizard, click Next.
7. Ensure that the Restore files and settings option is selected on the Backup Or Restore page. Click Next. 8. On the What to Restore page, choose the backup which you want to use for the Primary restore process. Click Next.
9. Click Advanced.
10. On the Where to Restore page, leave the default setting of Original location, unchanged, and then click Next
11. On the How to Restore page, choose the Replace existing files option. Click Next.
12. When the Advanced Restore Options page appears, enable the When restoring replicated data sets, mark the restored data as the primary data for all replicas checkbox. You can leave all other default settings on the Advanced Restore Options page unchanged.
13. Click Next.
14. Click Finish to start the Primary restore of Active Directory.
15. Reboot the server.

How to perform an Authoritative Restore of Active Directory

2012-06-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

1. Perform a Normal Restore of Active Directory.
2. When prompted to restart the server, click No and then close the Windows Backup Utility.
3. Click Start, Run, and enter cmd in the Run dialog box. Click OK.
4. To open the Ntdsutil command-line utility, enter ntdsutil.
5. Enter authoritative restore.
6. To specify Active Directory, or components of Active Directory as authoritative, use one of the following methods:

Enter restore database; this sets the domain and all configuration containers as authoritative.
Enter restore subtree, together with the distinguished name of the Active Directory object you want to mark as authoritative.
You can use the verinc option with either of the above commands, to explicitly set the version number. The option is useful when a different Authoritative restore needs to be performed on an existing Authoritative restore.

7. When the Authoritative Restore Confirmation dialog box appears, asking whether the Authoritative restore should be performed, click Yes.
8. Enter quit, and enter quit again to close the Ntdsutil command-line utility.
9. Proceed to reboot the server

How to perform a Normal Restore of Active Directory

2012-06-05T02:46:00.000-07:00

1.Reboot the computer
2.During startup, press F8 when prompted to, and then select Directory Services Restore Mode (Windows DCs only) from the Windows Advanced Options menu. Press Enter.
3.Choose the operating system that should be started. Press Enter
4.When the Safe Mode logon prompt appears, enter the appropriate local administrator account information, and then click OK.
5.Click OK when a messag e appears, advising that Windows is running in Safe Mode
6.Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then click Backup.
7.On the initial page of the Backup or Restore Wizard, click Next
8.Ensure that the Restore files and settings option is selected on the Backup Or Restore page. Click Next. 9.On the What to Restore page, choose the backup which you want to use for the restore process. Click Next.
10.Click Finish to immediately start a normal restore of Active Directory. If you want to configure advanced option settings, click Advanced, and not the Finish button.
11.When the Where to Restore page appears, choose one of the following optios from the Restore files to list box

Original location, this default setting restores files to their original locations
Alternate location, if selected, you can specify a different location to which the files should be restored.
Single folder; this option restores files to a single directory.

12.Click Next.
13.Click OK if a message is displayed, warning you that a restore of system state data overwrites existing system state data.
14.When the How to Restore page opens, choose between the following options:

Leave existing files (Recommended); select this option if you do not want the restore to overwrite any existing files.
Replace existing files if they are older than the backup files; if selected, files older than the backup files are replaced.
Replace existing files; this option replaces all existing files with the backup files

15.Click Next.
16.When the Advanced Restore Options page is displayed, you can select the following options

Restore security settings; is enabled by default. If you disable this checkbox, all files would be restored without any permissions.
Restore junction points, but not the folders and file data they reference; when selected, the restore process is able to restore information on mounted drives.
Preserve existing volume mount points; when selected, existing mounts are protected on the volume. Restore the Cluster Registry to the quorum disk and all other nodes; if applicable for this domain controller, the cluster quorum database is restored.
When restoring replicated data sets, mark the restored data as the primary data for all replicas; this option should be enabled if you are performing a Primary restore of Active Directory.

17.Click Next.
18.Click Finish to start the Normal Restore of Active Directory.

INSTALLING A VIRTUAL OPERATING SYSTEM(HYPER-V) IN WINDOWS 2008

2012-02-29T05:38:00.001-08:00

Open Server Manager and then navigate through the console tree to Roles -> Hyper-V -> Microsoft Hyper-V Server. If this is the first time that you have used Hyper-V, then you will be prompted to accept Hyper-V License Agreement. Once you accept the license agreement, the various Hyper-V options will be made available to you.

The first thing that you must do is to click on the Connect to Server link, located in the Actions pane. When you do, you will be prompted to select the computer that you want to connect to. Choose the Local Computer option, and click OK. You will now see the screen in

Figure A.

Figure A

This is the main screen that you will use for managing virtual machines.

Creating a New Virtual Server

To create a new virtual server, click the New -> Virtual Machine options found in the Actions pane. When you do, Windows will launch the New Virtual Machine Wizard. The wizard’s initial screen explains that you can click Next to begin customizing a virtual machine, but that you also have the option of clicking Finish right now to create a virtual machine that uses the default values. For the purposes of this article, we will create a custom virtual machine so that you can see the options that are available to you.

With that said, click Next and you will be prompted to enter a name and a location for the virtual machine that you are creating. I recommend using a descriptive name. The location is up to you, but if your server contains a striped RAID array, then that is a good location to choose for performance reasons

Click Next and you will be prompted to enter the amount of memory that is to be assigned to the new virtual machine. By default, new virtual machines are assigned 512 MB of RAM, but that isn’t really enough if you plan on running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. I would recommend 1 GB for Vista and 2 GB for Windows Server 2008 installations.

Click Next, and the wizard will prompt you to choose which network adapter you want to use for the machine’s virtual network connection. As you may recall, when you installed Hyper-V, you were given the opportunity to select one or more network adapters to be used by virtual machines. This option allows you to pick from the network adapters that you previously selected. The idea is that you can use a different network adapter on each virtual machine if you want, so that no single network adapter becomes over burdened.

When you have made your selection, click Next, and you will be prompted to choose the virtual hard drive that you want the machine to use, as shown in Figure B. As you can see in the figure, you can either create a new virtual hard drive, or you can use an existing one. Since there aren’t any existing virtual hard drives right now, we will have to create a new one. Windows defaults to creating a virtual hard drive that’s 127 MB in size, but you can create a drive of up to 2 TB if you want

Figure B

Click next, and you will be prompted to install an operating system on the new virtual machine. You have the option of installing an operating system later on, but you can also choose to install from a CD (or an .ISO file), a boot floppy, or from an installation server, as shown in Figure C

Figure C

You can choose to install an operating system now.

When you’ve made your choice, click Next. You will now see a summary of the options that you have created. If you have chosen to go ahead and install an operating system, then insert the operating system media, select the option to start the virtual machine, and click Finish. Windows will now launch the virtual machine and begin installing the operating system, as shown in Figure D

Figure D

Windows will launch the new virtual machine and begin installing the guest operating system. And with that, we are done!

Desktop Virtualization

2012-02-28T06:44:00.000-08:00

Many IT organizations now-a-days are looking at desktop virtualization to upgrade their entire approach to desktop management. Today, individual desktops are hard-coded combinations of OS, apps and user settings, and managed one-by-one on an ongoing basis. Desktop virtualization is a solution where one moving part doesn’t have to disrupt any of the other moving parts in order to make a change. It is the concept of separating a personal computer desktop environment from the physical machine through a client-server computing model.

One of the most significant benefits of desktop virtualization is that it gives IT administrators an easy and centralized way to manage employees' computers. Instead of each computer being separate, administrators create just a handful of VMs or VM templates for different roles within a company. For instance, a company may create one VM for each worker in a research and another for each sales representative. These VMs would include not just the operating system, but also any applications and drivers the employee would need. Such deployments work best where many employees need essentially the same functionality

Vendors providing support for desktop virtualization There are large numbers of vendors providing deskop virtualization solutions. Below mentioned are the top among the lot
• Microsoft – Microsoft Virtual PC, Remote desktop services, etc.
• Citrix - Citrix XenDesktop
• VMware - VMware View, VMware v Sphere, etc.
• Symantec - Endpoint Visualization

Diagrammatic representation of desktop virtualization

Advantages

1.Simpler provisioning of new desktops.

2.Reduced downtime in the event of server or client hardware failures.

3.Desktop image management capabilities.

4.Secure remote access to the enterprise desktop environment.

5.Desktop Virtualization offers major savings on expending on physical computer systems by easily installing and configuring VMs on a single computer system

Limitations
1.Compatibility – Not all applications can be virtualized easily.
2.Potential security risks if the network is not properly managed.
3.Some loss of user autonomy and privacy.
4.Challenges in setting up and maintaining drivers for printers and other peripherals.
5.Difficulty in running certain complex applications such as multimedia.
6.Increased downtime in the event of network failures.
7.Complexity and high costs of VDI deployment and management

Add the Command Prompt to the Windows Explorer Right-Click Menu

2012-02-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

A hidden functionality in Windows allows you to right click on a directory, and select “Command Prompt Here” from the menu.
Here’s the registry hack to get this working. Make sure you back up your registry just in case. it’ll show you the step-by-step method, but you can skip down to the bottom for the alternate reg file.

Step-By-Step Method:
Type regedit.exe into the Start\Run dialog, and then navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell Once you are at that key, right click and choose the New Key option:

Name the key “CommandPrompt” without the quotes and then double-click on the default value. Change the text to “Command Prompt Here” as seen here:

Right click on the new Command key and select New key, as you did before. Name the new key Command as well, and then double-click the default value of that key. Set the text of that key to this: cmd.exe /k cd %1 You can see what it should look like here:

Now when you right click on the folder, you should see this dialog:

That will open up a prompt like this:

Alternate method: You can create a text file named anything.reg, and insert this text into it:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt]
@=”Command Prompt:”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt\Command]
@=”cmd.exe /k cd %1
Double click on that file, and the text will be entered into the registry, and you’ll have the same right click command prompt.

How to Enlarge Data Partitions without losing data after Raid expansion in Linux

2012-01-30T00:47:00.000-08:00

Scenario : Customer needs to expand Data volume after expanding array size in Linux.
Possibilities : only Last Partitions can be expanded through Resize2fs
Recommendation : Please ask customer to take backup of File systems/system.

Step to be followed:

Suppose you have a Partition called c0d0p7 in last cylinder and mounted as a ext3.
#df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 15G 4.5G 9.3G 33% /
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 99M 12M 83M 12% /boot
None 4.0G 0 4.0G 0% /dev/shm
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6 46G 85M 44G 1% /name1
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7 46G 103M 44G 1% /name2

1) Un mount that file system/Mount point
2) Now you have to remove Journal feature ( if it is ext3 file system) from the file system
# tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/cciss/c0d0p7 # tune2fs 1.35 (Date)
Now you have to run e2fsck command to check file systems.
3) root@ff13manish /]# e2fsck -f -y /dev/cciss/c0d0p7
e2fsck 1.35 (Date) Pass
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Pass
Pass 2: Checking directory structure Pass
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity Pass
Pass 4: Checking reference counts Pass
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/Name2: 16/6111232 files (6.3% non-contiguous), 209772/12209392 blocks
4) Execute the fdisk -l command
Disk /dev/cciss/c0d0: 220.1 GB, 220122071040 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 26761 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Devic Boot Start End Blocks Id System
System /dev/cciss/c0d0p1 1 13 104391 83 linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 14 1925 15358140 83 linux
Linux /dev/cciss/c0d0p3 1926 3455 12289725 82 linux swap
/dev/cciss/c0d0p4 3456 26761 187205445 5 Extended
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5 3456 9535 48837568+ 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6 9536 15615 48837568+ 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7 15616 21695 48837568+ 83 Linux Original Cylinder size with 46GB

Command (m for help): quit

“Delete the Last partition and create it again”.

5) [root@ff13manish /]# fdisk /dev/cciss/c0d0

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 26761. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with:

a.Software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
b.Booting and partitioning software from other OS’s (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1-7): 7

“Don’t Quit here with save option , you have to continue without coming out from fdisk Menu”
Command (m for help): n
First cylinder (15616-26761, default 15616)
Using default value 15616
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (15616-26761, default 26761)

Using default value 26761
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/cciss/c0d0: 220.1 GB, 220122071040 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 26761 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 * 1 13 104391 83 linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 14 1925 15358140 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p3 1926 3455 12289725 82 Linux swap
/dev/cciss/c0d0p4 3456 26761 187205445 5 Extended
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5 3456 9535 48837568+ 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6 9536 15615 48837568+ 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7 15616 26761 89530213+ 83 Linux (Now Size moves to 89 GB)

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot. Syncing disks.
6) Execute Partprobe command
# partprobe
7) Execute Reszie2fs command
[root@ff13manish /]# resize2fs /dev/cciss/c0d0p7
resize2fs 1.35 (Date)
Resizing the filesystem on /dev/cciss/c0d0p7 to 22382553 (4k) blocks
The filesystem on /dev/cciss/c0d0p7 is now 22382553 blocks long.

8) Now enable ext3 feature in filesystems
tune2fs -j /dev/cciss/c0d0p7
tune2fs 1.35 (Date)
Creating journal inode: done
This filesystem will be automatically checked every 22 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first.
Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
Now check by mounting the filesystems
[root@ff13manish /]# mount -t ext3 /dev/cciss/c0d0p7 /Name2
[root@ff13manish /]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 15G 4.5G 9.3G 33% /
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 99M 12M 83M 12% /boot
None 4.0G 0 4.0G 0% /dev/shm
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6 46G 85M 44G 1% /Name1
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7 85G 107M 83G 1% /Name2

Check your data :
[root@ff13vel /]# cd /name2
[root@ff13vel name2]# ls
lost+found report-4b79378d-0000265d-00000003.zip RHEL 4 AS UTILITY FOR LINUX
[root@ff13vel name2]# ls -al
total 104
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Feb 17 11:27 .
drwxr-xr-x 29 root root 4096 Feb 17 10:08 ..
drwx------2 root root 16384 Feb 16 17:01 lost+found
-rw-r--r--1 root root 67517 Feb 15 18:27 report-4b79378d-0000265d-00000003.zip
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 15 16:57 RHEL 4 AS UTILITY FOR LIN

Procedure to remove Khatra.exe virus manually

2012-01-29T22:43:00.000-08:00

1. Go to task manager and select regsvr.exe(if found), gHost.exe , khatra.exe , Xplorer.exe rt click and select end process tree. press WIN+r or start>RUN

2.type cmd and hit enter
3.GO to the the drive where your OS is installed
4.In the command prompt make sure you get the command line as c:\ or d:\ (this can be achieved by the command "cd .." without quotes)
5.Type attrib -s -h -r khatra.exe Repeat the same process for the location c:\windows\system32
6.type del khatra.exe
7.Follow the same process for gHost.exe & Xplorer.exe as they are also part of the virus. To make sure that the virus is out of you pc ,
check your registry
1.win+R type regedit
2.ctrl+F type in search one by 1 the names of the
3.processes i.e khatra,gHost,Xplorer

4.search the entire registry n go-on deleting the values you find.

Maintenance Best Practices for Adaptec RAID Solutions

2012-01-24T03:19:00.000-08:00

RAID is the most common method of data protection and most companies rely on the redundancy provided by RAID at various levels to protect them from disk drive failures. RAID’s ability to protect data has become increasingly challenging with the exponential increase in drive capacities and the increased use of less reliable drives.RAID cannot protect data against virus attack, human error, data deletion, or natural or unnatural disaster. RAID cannot protect data beyond its advertised disk drive redundancy (for RAID-1, RAID-10, and RAID-5 one drive failure, for RAID-6 two drive failures, for example). Adaptec Technical Support often sees cases where an array is in a degraded state for a longer period of time and data loss then occurs when a further drive finally fails. The best RAID controller cannot help in this situation. In addition to timely maintenance, periodic backup still remains one of the most critical practices in data operations

THE EFFECT OF MODERN LARGER DISK SIZES AND DRIVE QUALITY ISSUES ON RAID

Hard drive media defects and other drive quality issues have steadily improved over time, even as drive sizes have grown substantially. However, hard drives are not expected to be totally free of flaws. In addition, normal wear on a drive may result in an increase in media defects, or “grown defects,” over time. The data block containing the defect becomes unusable and must be “remapped” to another location on the drive. If a bad block is encountered during a normal write operation, the controller marks that block as bad and the block is added to the “grown defects list” in the drive’s NVRAM. That write operation is not complete until the data is properly written in a remapped location. When a bad block is encountered during a normal read operation, the controller will reconstruct the missing data from parity operations and remap the data to the new location. A condition known as a double fault (“bad stripe”) occurs when a RAID controller encounters a bad block on a drive in a RAID volume and then encounters an additional bad block on another hard drive in the same data stripe. This double fault scenario can also occur while rebuilding a degraded array, leaving the controller with insufficient parity information to reconstruct the data stripe. The end result is a rebuild failure with the loss of any data in that stripe, assuming the stripe is in the user data area.
Today, hard drive capacities have increased remarkably, and the likelihood has grown that one or more media defects will occur over the lifespan of the drive. In addition, large arrays take longer to rebuild than small arrays, thus increasing the amount of time the array is not redundant

OVERVIEW OF STEPS THAT CAN BE TAKEN IN KEEPING WITH RAID BEST PRACTICES
Perform all recommended driver, controller firmware, and Storage Management application (Adaptec Storage Manager) updates

Install Adaptec Storage Manager:
Adaptec Storage Manager helps you to monitor and maintain Adaptec RAID controllers, enclosures, and disk drives in your storage space from a single location. When Adaptec Storage Manager is installed on a system, the Adaptec Storage Manager Agent is also installed automatically as a service. It’s designed to run in the background, without user intervention, and its job is to monitor and manage system health, event notifications, tasks schedules, and other on-going processes on that system. It sends notices when tasks are completed successfully, and sounds an alarm when errors or failures occur on that system.

Run regular consistency checks on the system:
Verification is designed to proactively detect hard disk media defects while the array is online and redundant. A RAID-5 or RAID-6 array is inconsistent when the data and parity do not match. Likewise, a RAID-1 array is inconsistent when the data and mirror do not match.
The verification process issues commands to each drive in the array to test all sectors. When a bad sector is found, the RAID controller instructs the hard drive to reassign the bad sector, and then reconstructs the data using the other drives. The affected hard drive then writes data to the newly assigned good sector. These operations continue so that all sectors of each configured drive are checked, including hot spares. As a result, bad sectors can be remapped before data loss occurs.

Two run modes are available to help enhance flexibility and data protection
1. Background Consistency Check (auto mode): In this mode, the tool is always on. Adaptec Storage Manager continually and automatically checks your logical drives once they’re in use. Once Background Consistency Check has checked all sectors of the array, it repeats this check indefinitely. As its name indicates, Background Consistency Check is always a background or secondary process. Data I/O remains the highest priority for the RAID subsystem.
Note: With this feature enabled, there may be an impact to performance. To enable Background Consistency Check using Adaptec Storage Manager:

• In the Enterprise View, right-click the controller.
• Select Background Consistency Check and then click Enable

Once enabled, the Background Consistency Check period can be adjusted:
• In the Enterprise view, right-click the controller.
• Click on Background Consistency Check, then select Change period. The Change Background Consistency Check period window opens.
• Adjust the slider control from Very Slow (365 days) to Fast (10 days). Alternatively, in the New Period field, use the arrow keys to increase or decrease the setting.
• Click OK.

2. Verify with fix (manual mode):
This mode is used to perform a single, quick check of the array. After the verification process has checked all sectors of the array, it stops and will not start again until started manually by the administrator. In manual mode, the verification process commands are given a higher priority than in Auto mode so that the check completes significantly faster.
Verify with fix is a data-level check and requires more controller resources to read and compare data. Also, because of the additional resources required, verify with fix is not designed to run continuously. Rather, it should be scheduled to run at a regular interval, preferably during periods of low drive activity, or during system maintenance.

To verify and fix a logical drive using Adaptec Storage Manager:

• In the Logical Devices View, right-click the logical drive.
• Select Verify with fix and confirm that you want to verify
• To begin the verification immediately, click Yes. To schedule the verification, click Schedule, and then set the date and time. You can also choose to set the verification as a recurring task. While the verification is in progress,
the logical drive is shown as an animated icon to indicate that the task is in progress. When the verification is complete, an event notice is generated in the local system’s event log.

Monitor Storage Manager Event Logs: You can see status information and messages about the activity (or events) occurring on your storage space by checking component properties and looking at the Event Viewer and status icons in Adaptec Storage Manager. To open a full-screen version of the event log, click the Events button in the tool bar The event log lists activity occurring in your storage space, with the most recent event listed at the top. Double-click any event to open the Configuration Event Detail window to see more information in an easier-to-read format. Adaptec Storage Manager can be configured to send email messages (or notifications) about events on a system in your storage space. We recommend doing this if your storage space is not managed by a dedicated person, or if that particular system is off-site or not connected to a monitor. Email notifications can help you monitor activity on your entire storage space from any location, and are especially useful in storage spaces that include multiple systems running the Adaptec Storage Manager Agent only.

To set up email notifications:

1.In the Configure menu (on the tool bar), select the system you want, and then select Email Notifications. 2.The Email Notifications window opens. The SMTP Server Settings window opens if you haven’t set up email notifications previously.
3.Enter the address of your SMTP server and the “From” address to appear in email notifications. If an email recipient will be replying to email notifications, be sure that the “From” address belongs to a system that is actively monitored.
4.Click OK to save the settings.
5.In the Email Notifications window tool bar, click Add email recipient. The Add Email Recipient window opens.
6.Enter the recipient’s email address, select the level of events for which the recipient will receive an email, and then click Add. Repeat this Step to add more email recipients. Click Cancel to close the window.

You can also set Adaptec Storage Manager to send status alerts about a specified system to all users who are logged into your storage space. When you set Adaptec Storage Manager to broadcast event alerts, all logged-in users receive messages about all types of events. In Windows, these alerts appear as pop-up messages; in all other operating systems, these alerts appear as console messages

Note:Replace drives that have either failed completely, or are starting to show signs of failing (medium errors, S.M.A.R.T. errors, etc.) immediately

Install Windows Recovery Console in Windows Boot Menu

2012-01-24T02:26:00.000-08:00

If you want to repair Windows installation but can’t get into the Recovery Console of the CD Rom as was the problem of one of our readers, then here is way to install the Recovery Console directly inside the Windows Boot Menu

if you want to access the recovery console but you can do this directly from your drive and not CD, so that you don’t have to search the CD in case of a Windows Failure this will be a good procedure
Steps:
1. Insert the Windows XP CD in the CD Drive but make sure that both the service pack in the CD and the one installed are same.
2. Now open Run Box, and type the command X:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons where X is your CD drive letter.
3. A Windows Setup box will come up, click Yes to proceed

4. Another dialog box will come up reading “Windows Recovery Console has been successfully installed”.

Just restart the computer to start using the Recovery Console directly in the computer without the CD

Hide or Show ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ icon from Taskbar

2012-01-23T03:55:00.000-08:00

A small informative post for today that lets you know (in case you don’t already know), how to remove and show the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon from Taskbar.

Hiding or removing the icon is not that difficult and if you want to clear your task bar of the green icon then following are the steps

Steps:

1. Right click on the Task Bar and select properties

2. Now click on the Customize button and in case if it is greyed out then check the box “Hide Inactive Icons” 3. In the list of the Current Items, change the behavior of “safely Remove Hardware” from Hide when Inactive to Always Hide

This is it; the icon will not appear again. Reverse process will make the icon to appear again

Using Windows 7 or Vista Compatibility Mode

2012-01-23T03:23:00.000-08:00

Windows Vista or Windows 7, will have problems running some older versions of applications, just because so much has changed under the hood from Windows XP days. There is a compatibility mode that can be easily set per application. To configure the compatibility mode for an application, just locate the installation directory and right click on the .exe, selecting Properties from the menu.

Select the Compatibility tab:
You can choose to run the program in Windows XP compatibility mode, or even all the way back to Windows 95 compatibility.

Probably the most useful setting to start off with would be to disable the visual themes and desktop composition, if you can’t get things working. If you are trying to run a video game, you will often need to choose “Run this program as an administrator”. You’ll have to play around with it, but most likely you can get your application working this way.

Disable AutoPlay in Windows Vista

2012-01-20T02:30:00.000-08:00

Windows Vista’s AutoPlay options are a great improvement over Windows XP in terms of flexibility, but unfortunately there are so many options that it can be confusing, especially since there’s no specific mention of USB Flash drives in the options. Open your Control Panel, and then click on “Play CDs or other media automatically” to open the AutoPlay dialog.

Disable AutoPlay Globally

The quickest way to disable AutoPlay entirely is to just uncheck the box for “Use AutoPlay for all media and devices”, which should usually work.

Disable for a Single

Type You can choose a setting in the drop-down menu for a single type of drive, for instance Audio CD in this example. For this to work you’ll have to make sure to keep the global autoplay option on, and then choose the specific setting in the drop-down.

Disable for just Removable (flash) Drives

The problem here is that while there are settings for Audio CDs and DVDs, there’s nothing specifically for USB flash drives. Windows will determine the drive type based on the content it finds on the flash drive itself, so that’s what we’ll need to change In order to disable AutoPlay for the removable drives, you should change all of the following to Take no action: Software and games, Pictures, Video files, Audio files, and Mixed content.

Disable Through Group Policy

If you’d like to disable it entirely you can use the Group Policy editor on the Business and Ultimate versions of Vista Open up gpedit.msc through the start menu search box, browse to Windows Components \ AutoPlay Policies, and change the value of “Turn off Autoplay” to enabled.

You can choose whether to disable for just removable devices, or entirely.

Run Windows XP on Windows 7

2012-01-20T01:51:00.000-08:00

it’s been a long time since the release of Windows 7 but there are few individuals who are not impressed with Windows 7 and want to continue with XP

Windows XP is so simple and easy to use that not everyone wants to come out of XP. So if you are using Windows 7 but also wants XP back then Windows 7 has something interesting for you.

The feature is called “XP mode on windows 7” and it can enable you to continue with XP while using Windows 7. This feature works with the feature called Windows Virtual PC. Other advantage of this feature is that while Windows 7 is compatible with most of the applications in XP, in case there is some application that runs only on XP then you can run it easily.

The only thing to note is that you must have Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate to run Windows XP Mode. Download link for the same is given below

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Troubleshooting Driver Problems with Tape Drives, Library or Autoloaders

2012-01-04T23:21:00.000-08:00

Tape drives and Libraries or Autoloaders do not necessarily require drivers, like a hard drive or CD-Rom. But they do need a 3rd Party Backup Software to manage the transfer of data from the server or hard drive, to the tape drive. If the software requires a driver, it will be included by that software vendor as part of the package. When the software is installed, it will search the bus for supported hardware, and will install the appropriate driver. If the software vendor does not provide a driver, they will give you information on the driver that is required.

Backup utilities that are provided with operating systems may not include drivers. Generic drivers are available on the Principal Vendor website for use with these utilities

DO NOT INSTALL THE GENERIC DRIVER IF YOUR SOFTWARE PROVIDES ONE. The generic driver will interfere with your software’s ability to communicate with the tape drive. They are also difficult to fully remove once installed.

DO NOT INSTALL MULTIPLE DRIVERS. Doing so will cause conflicts and failures. If you install multiple backup utilities, it also means multiple drivers are installed. It’s best to remove a backup utility before installing another one to avoid problems

YOU MUST TURN OFF THE SERVICES OF YOUR BACKUP SOFTWARE BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO USE ANY PRINCIPAL VENDOR DIAGNOSTICS TOOL. The backup services and drivers will prohibit diagnostics tools from communicating with the tape drive.

Following are indications of multiple driver installation problems:

•The Diagnostics tool fails

•The tape driver and/or library are reported in the SCSI bios and environment, but not in the backup software.

To determine what driver is installed

1. Right click on My Computer.

2. Select Manage then Device Manager.

3. Right click in Plus Box next to Device Category

4. Right click on Device name and select Properties

5. Click the Driver Tab. The 2nd line shows the Driver Provided.

VMware ESXi interview questions answer

2012-01-04T22:54:00.000-08:00

Can I run virtual machines created by Microsoft Virtual Server, Microsoft Virtual PC, or VMware Server on VMware ESXi?
Yes. You can use the free VMware vCenter Converter to import virtual machines that were created using VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server, or Microsoft Virtual PC version 7 or higher. VMware vCenter Converter also supports conversions from sources such as physical machines and certain 3rd party disk image formats.
What is the difference between VMware ESX and VMware ESXi?
VMware ESX and VMware ESXi are both bare-metal hypervisors that install directly on the server hardware. Both provide industry-leading performance and scalability; the difference resides in the architecture and the operational management of VMware ESXi. Although neither hypervisor relies on an OS for resource management, VMware ESX relies on a Linux operating system, called the service console, to performtwo management functions: executing scripts and installing third party agents for hardware monitoring, backup or systems management. The service console has been removed from ESXi, drastically reducing the hypervisor footprint and completing the ongoing trend of migrating management functionality from the local command line interface to remote management tools. The smaller code base of ESXi represents a smaller “attack surface” and less code to patch, improving reliability and security. The functionally of the service console is replaced by remote command line interfaces and adherence to system management standards
How is VMware ESXi different than VMware vSphere?
VMware ESXi is a hypervisor that partitions a physical server into multiple virtual machines.VMware vSphere is the industry’s first cloud operating system that drastically reduces ongoing costs and increases control over delivery of service levels while still preserving the flexibility to choose between any type of OS, application and hardware architecture. VMware vSphere offers organizations high availability and centralized management functionality that span across multiple ESXi hosts such as live migration, protection against hardware failures, power management, and automatic load balancing. VMware vSphere relies on a hypervisor to partition servers. Customers can choose to deploy either VMware ESX or VMware ESXi as part of the VMware vSphere suite. All the functionality of VMware vSphere is supported on both VMware ESX and VMware ESXi. In fact, VMware vSphere supports server resource pools that contain both hypervisors.
How do I use VMware vCenter Server to manage my VMware ESXi hosts?
VMware vCenter Server provides centralized management for ESXi hosts and their virtual machines. To manage an ESXi host with vCenter Server, you must have a vCenter Server Agent license, which is included in all editions of VMware vSphere
What is the difference between VMware ESXi and VMware Server?
VMware ESXi is an enterprise-class hypervisor that offers a bare-metal architecture for near-native performance, features like memory de-duplication to increase consolidation ratios and a cluster file system for managing VM files on shared storage. VMware ESXi and VMware ESX are the critical foundations for a dynamic and flexible virtual infrastructure.
VMware Server installs as an application on Windows or Linux, relying on the operating system for resource management. This limits the performance and scalability. VMware Server is popular for test and development activities. Virtual machines created using VMware Server can run on VMware ESXi, but they must first be converted using the free VMware Converter.
Is it possible to download a virtual appliance into an ESXi environment for evaluation?
Yes. If you are running VMware vSphere Client 2.5 and later along with ESXi 3.5 or ESX 3.5 or later, it is possible to access a list of downloadable virtual appliances for evaluation into an ESXi environment. To access that list of virtual appliances, open your VMware vSphere client, select "Virtual Appliance" from the file menu, and then select "Import...". When you select “Import from the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace” and click “Next”, you will be sent to a page where you can download the appliances
How do I use VMware vCenter Server to manage my VMware ESXi hosts?
VMware vCenter Server provides centralized management for ESXi hosts and their virtual machines. To manage an ESXi host with vCenter Server, you must have a vCenter Server Agent license, which is included in all editions of VMware vSphere.

Windows 2003 Server evaluation copy expiration behavior

2012-01-04T03:46:00.000-08:00

This article describes the behavior of the evaluation version of Windows Server 2003. It also contains information about the 14-day activation grace period and the 180-day evaluation period, and it describes what occurs when these time periods expire.

Windows Product Activation (WPA)

The End User License Agreement (EULA) for an evaluation version of Windows Server 2003 requires that you activate your installation of Windows Server 2003 within 14 days from the time that you install it. If you choose not to activate Windows the first time that you start it, an Activate icon is displayed in the notification area at the far right of the taskbar. This icon periodically displays notifications to remind you of the number of days remaining in the 14-day grace period. After this period expires, you must activate your installation of Windows Server 2003 before you can continue to use Windows

None of the information that is collected during product activation will be used to personally identify you. For more information about Windows Product Activation, visit the following Microsoft Web site

http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/default.mspx

Evaluation time period

The evaluation version of Windows Server 2003 expires 180 days from the time that you install and start it. You are reminded periodically of the number of days that are remaining in the 180-day evaluation period. Messages are logged to the Application Event log, and you also receive notification messages that are similar to the following when you log on to the computer

The evaluation period for this product will expire in Number days. Please upgrade this version to the retail product.

When the kernel time bomb period expires, you receive an error message that is similar to the following

The evaluation period for this installation of Windows has expired. This system will shut down in 1 hour. To restore access to this installation of Windows, please upgrade this installation using a licensed distribution of this product.

After approximately one hour (this time period may vary), you may receive the following Stop error message, and the computer may automatically restart:

*** STOP: 0x00000098 (parameter1, parameter2, parameter 3, parameter 4) END_OF_NT_EVALUATION_PERIOD

When the WPA time bomb period expires, you receive an error message after you log on to Windows that is similar to the following:

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error} The Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000268 (0x00000000 0x00000000). The system has been shut down.

When you receive this error message, you can no longer use the evaluation copy of Windows Server 2003. You must obtain and install the retail, released version of Windows Server 2003

Important You can log on to the computer in safe mode only if you log on to the computer by using the local administrator account. You can upgrade to the retail, released version of Windows Server 2003 while you are in safe mode. The option to upgrade in safe mode may not be available if your computer is running as a domain controller.

Use Winver.exe to Determine the Expiration Date

You can run the Winver.exe command-line tool to determine the version of Windows Server 2003 that is installed on your computer and the date when your evaluation copy of Windows Server 2003 expires. To do so:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.

2. In the Open box, type winver.exe, and then press ENTER.

Upgrade an evaluation version of Windows Server 2003 to a retail version

To remove the 180-day expiration period for an evaluation version of Windows Server 2003, upgrade your computer to the full retail, released version of Windows Server 2003. For more information about Windows Server 2003, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/default.mspx

Solve Ms Office for windows Installer Preparing to Install

2012-01-04T03:26:00.000-08:00

It is a common problem that whenever we try to open an Office application we come across a dialog box with the following message

Preparing to install… Please wait while Windows configures Office Edition

These messages may appear if any one (or all) of the following DWORD values in the registry is missing from

the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Common\LanguageResources key

UILanguage

HelpLanguage

InstallLanguage

Solution:

1. The problem has been solved and can be read in detail at the

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/265194.

2.Or just try the following method; it can also remove the problem

3.Uninstall the Office application from the computer. Restart the computer and open IE to see if the problem is solved

4.If the message box doesn’t appear again, reinstall the Office. The problem will be solved.

Set and Save Process Priority Permanently

2012-01-04T03:08:00.000-08:00

There are several processes running in the system at a specific time and Windows automatically sets the priority of each process

Priority to any process can be set using the Task Manager however it will be till the process gets completed and if you run the process again it will start again with the default priority.

So if you want to save some priority to a process. This compact program allows you to save the priority you specify for any process.

Steps:

1.Start the Task Manager

2.Right click on the process and select set priority

3.Set the priority you want

4.Just click Save Priority. The process will run with the same priority each time.

Thin Clint Concepts and Overview

2012-01-03T04:20:00.000-08:00

Thin Clients are low powered computers that do not have a hard disk drive. Since there is no hard disk drive, there is also no operating system. Since these are low powered systems, all processing is done on the server instead of the thin client itself. Certain types of thin clients (running on embedded X

P or embedded Linux) may have full fledged OS capabilities complete with installed applications such as Microsoft or Open Office and browsers such as Internet Explorer and/or Mozilla Firefox.

BOOTING PROCESS WITHOUT LOCALD HDD AND OS All Thin Clients boot up directly from a server which is running the operating system (Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server or even Linux). Thin Clients may boot either directly from the server via PXE boot and then connect to it or boot up from locally installed mini disk running Windows XP embedded (Win XPe), Windows CE embedded (Win CEe) or Linux embedded (Le) and then connect to the server. Once connected to the server, the user gets the log in screen of the operating system running on the server. Please bear in mind that booting from a server and connecting to a server are two different processes, since you can have more than one server -one simply for booting up and the second or even a third or more for connecting to (where the applications are installed and processing takes place) depending upon architecture. If required, an enterprise can also go in for a hybrid architecture consisting of both Windows and Linux Terminal servers.

Applications installation and user data storage

All applications are installed on the connecting server and every user has his own "My Documents" folder created where his profile, documents, etc. are stored.Applications and software to be installed and run in a Thin Client environment All common programs can be used with Thin Clients...to name a few MS Office; various browsers for surfing; e-mail clients like Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook, etc.; ERP packages -including SAP; Coreldraw, Adobe Photoshop, Pagemaker, Tally, MS SQL based packages, chatting (using keyboard) programs and even open source and customized packages.

Software packages that cannot be used on Thin Clients Heavy graphical games, animation packages like Maya and such others that require a very fast screen refresh cannot be used.

No Of Thin Clients can be made to run on a single server This depends upon the server hardware configuration, the choice of operting system and the programs/applications that are installed on that particular server. Typically, a small office with 10 Thin Clients can be well served by a P-IV machine with 1GB of RAM with Windows Server 2003 Standard edition (that supports up to 4GB of RAM. Enterprise edition + SP2 supports upto 64GB. For increased RAM support, 64 bit versions are apt wherein the Standard edition + SP2 can support 32GBwhile Enterprise + SP2 can support 2TB ). Increase the RAM to 2GB and the users to 20 to 25 without any problem. For users on an enterprise level, a Xeon based server with dual or more processors, a minimum of 4GB RAM and redundancy on storage devices by way of RAID, network adaptors and power supply unit is recommended. Load balancing technology with additional servers prevents any single server from reaching critical levels. These are of course, broad guidelines. Actual server hardware and architecture will most definitely vary from case to case

Connecting Printers on a Thin Client node

Printers can be installed on a Thin Client node either on a parallel port or USB port. The printer is physically installed on the Thin Client node but in configured on the server as a local printer printing to a TCP/IP port. In case of embedded systems, the printer in configured locally on the Thin Client itself

Devices a Thin Client access locally Most devices like local hard disk drives, pen drives, floppy disk drives and optical drives can be accessed by the Thin Client without any problem. For other devices like scanners, multi function devices and CD/DVD writer, if required on a Thin Client, our embedded systems are recommended, one that is running Win XPe.

Thin Clients and Citrix Citrix metaframe server installed on the Remote Server will enable the Thin Clients to work across a relatively slow WAN link also by using the ICA protocol instead of Remote Desktop (RDP).

Hard disk on my Thin Client Though not required, but if we do have or want a hard disk, we can have a dual boot system, whereby you can work either on the server or on the local hard disk

Windows & systen admin Interview Questions and Answers- Part 2

2012-01-03T03:36:00.000-08:00

what is RIS and what are its requirements

RIS is a remote installation service, which is used to install operation system remotely

Client requirements
PXE DHCP-based boot ROM version 1.00 or later NIC, or a network adapter that is supported by the RIS boot disk.
Should meet minimum operating system requirements
Software Requirements
Below network services must be active on RIS server or any server in the network Domain Name System (DNS Service) Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Active directory “Directory” service

Can we establish trust relationship between two forests
In Windows 2000 it is not possible. In Windows 2003 it is possible

What is FSMO Roles
Flexible single master operation (FSMO) roles are

Domain Naming Master
Schema Master
PDC Emulator
Infrastructure Master
RID Master

Brief all the FSMO Roles

Windows 2000/2003 Multi-Master Model
A multi-master enabled database, such as the Active Directory, provides the flexibility of allowing changes to occur at any DC in the enterprise, but it also introduces the possibility of conflicts that can potentially lead to problems once the data is replicated to the rest of the enterprise. One way Windows 2000/2003 deals with conflicting updates is by having a conflict resolution algorithm handle discrepancies in values by resolving to the DC to which changes were written last (that is, "the last writer wins"), while discarding the changes in all other DCs. Although this resolution method may be acceptable in some cases, there are times when conflicts are just too difficult to resolve using the "last writer wins" approach. In such cases, it is best to prevent the conflict from occurring rather than to try to resolve it after the fact.

For certain types of changes, Windows 2000/2003 incorporates methods to prevent conflicting Active Directory updates from occurring.

Windows 2000/2003 Single-Master Model
To prevent conflicting updates in Windows 2000/2003, the Active Directory performs updates to certain objects in a single-master fashion
In a single-master model, only one DC in the entire directory is allowed to process updates. This is similar to the role given to a primary domain controller (PDC) in earlier versions of Windows (such as Microsoft Windows NT 4.0), in which the PDC is responsible for processing all updates in a given domain
In a forest, there are five FSMO roles that are assigned to one or more domain controllers. The five FSMO roles are

Schema Master
The schema master domain controller controls all updates and modifications to the schema. Once the Schema update is complete, it is replicated from the schema master to all other DCs in the directory. To update the schema of a forest, you must have access to the schema master. There can be only one schema master in the whole forest.

Domain naming master
The domain naming master domain controller controls the addition or removal of domains in the forest. This DC is the only one that can add or remove a domain from the directory. It can also add or remove cross references to domains in external directories. There can be only one domain naming master in the whole forest.
Infrastructure Master
When an object in one domain is referenced by another object in another domain, it represents the reference by the GUID, the SID (for references to security principals), and the DN of the object being referenced. The infrastructure FSMO role holder is the DC responsible for updating an object's SID and distinguished name in a cross-domain object reference. At any one time, there can be only one domain controller acting as the infrastructure master in each domain.

Note: The Infrastructure Master (IM) role should be held by a domain controller that is not a Global Catalog server (GC). If the Infrastructure Master runs on a Global Catalog server it will stop updating object information because it does not contain any references to objects that it does not hold. This is because a Global Catalog server holds a partial replica of every object in the forest. As a result, cross-domain object references in that domain will not be updated and a warning to that effect will be logged on that DC's event log. If all the domain controllers in a domain also host the global catalog, all the domain controllers have the current data, and it is not important which domain controller holds the infrastructure master role.

Relative ID (RID) Master:
The RID master is responsible for processing RID pool requests from all domain controllers in a particular domain. When a DC creates a security principal object such as a user or group, it attaches a unique Security ID (SID) to the object. This SID consists of a domain SID (the same for all SIDs created in a domain), and a relative ID (RID) that is unique for each security principal SID created in a domain. Each DC in a domain is allocated a pool of RIDs that it is allowed to assign to the security principals it creates. When a DC's allocated RID pool falls below a threshold, that DC issues a request for additional RIDs to the domain's RID master. The domain RID master responds to the request by retrieving RIDs from the domain's unallocated RID pool and assigns them to the pool of the requesting DC. At any one time, there can be only one domain controller acting as the RID master in the domain.

PDC Emulator
The PDC emulator is necessary to synchronize time in an enterprise. Windows 2000/2003 includes the W32Time (Windows Time) time service that is required by the Kerberos authentication protocol. All Windows 2000/2003-based computers within an enterprise use a common time. The purpose of the time service is to ensure that the Windows Time service uses a hierarchical relationship that controls authority and does not permit loops to ensure appropriate common time usage.
The PDC emulator of a domain is authoritative for the domain. The PDC emulator at the root of the forest becomes authoritative for the enterprise, and should be
configured to gather the time from an external source. All PDC FSMO role holders
follow the hierarchy of domains in the selection of their in-bound time partner
In a Windows 2000/2003 domain, the PDC emulator role holder retains the following
functions:
Password changes performed by other DCs in the domain are replicated preferentially
to the PDC emulator
Authentication failures that occur at a given DC in a domain because of an incorrect password are forwarded to the PDC emulator before a bad password failure message is reported to the user.

Account lockout is processed on the PDC emulator
Editing or creation of Group Policy Objects (GPO) is always done from the GPO copy found in the PDC Emulator's SYSVOL share, unless configured not to do so by the administrator.
The PDC emulator performs all of the functionality that a Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server-based PDC or earlier PDC performs for Windows NT 4.0-based or earlier clients.
This part of the PDC emulator role becomes unnecessary when all workstations, member servers, and domain controllers that are running Windows NT 4.0 or earlier are all upgraded to Windows 2000/2003. The PDC emulator still performs the other functions as described in a Windows 2000/2003 environment.
At any one time, there can be only one domain controller acting as the PDC emulator
master in each domain in the forest.

What is the difference between authoritative and non-authoritative restore
In authoritative restore, Objects that are restored will be replicated to all domain controllers in the domain. This can be used specifically when the entire OU is disturbed in all domain controllers or specifically restore a single object, which is disturbed in all DC’s
In non-authoritative restore, Restored directory information will be updated by other domain controllers based on the latest modification time

what is Active Directory De-fragmentation
De-fragmentation of AD means separating used space and empty space created by deleted objects and reduces directory size (only in offline De-fragmentation

Difference between online and offline de-fragmentation
The size of NTDS.DIT will often be different sizes across the domain controllers in a domain. Remember that Active Directory is a multi-master independent model where updates are occurring in each of the domain controllers with the changes being replicated over time to the other domain controllers.
The changed data is replicated between domain controllers, not the database, so there is no guarantee that the files are going to be the same size across all domain controllers.
Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 servers running Directory Services (DS) perform a directory online defragmentation every 12 hours by default as part of the garbage-collection process. This defragmentation only moves data around the database file (NTDS.DIT) and doesn’t reduce the file’s size - the database file cannot be compacted while Active Directory is mounted.
Active Directory routinely performs online database defragmentation, but this is limited to the disposal of tombstoned objects. The database file cannot be compacted while Active Directory is mounted (or online).
An NTDS.DIT file that has been defragmented offline (compacted), can be much smaller than
the NTDS.DIT file on its peers. However, defragmenting the NTDS.DIT file isn’t something you should really need to do. Normally, the database self-tunes and automatically tombstoning the records then sweeping them away when the tombstone lifetime has passed to make that space available for additional records
Defragging the NTDS.DIT file probably won’t help your AD queries go any faster in the long run.
So why defrag it in the first place? One reason you might want to defrag your NTDS.DIT file is to save space, for example if you deleted a large number of records at one time.
To create a new, smaller NTDS.DIT file and to enable offline defragmentation, perform the following steps: Back up Active Directory (AD). Reboot the server, select the OS option, and press F8 for advanced options. Select the Directory Services Restore Mode option, and press Enter. Press Enter again to start the OS. W2K will start in safe mode, with no DS running. Use the local SAM’s administrator account and password to log on. You’ll see a dialog box that says you’re in safe mode. Click OK. From the Start menu, select Run and type cmd.exe In the command window, you’ll see the following text. (Enter the commands in bold.) C:\> ntdsutil ntdsutil: files file maintenance:info .... file maintenance:compact to c:\temp
You’ll see the defragmentation process. If the process was successful, enter quit to return to the command prompt.
Then, replace the old NTDS.DIT file with the new, compressed version. (Enter the commands in bold.)
C:\> copy c:\temp\ntds.dit %systemroot%\ntds\ntds.dit

Restart the computer, and boot as normal.

What is tombstone period
Tombstones are nothing but objects marked for deletion. After deleting an object in AD the objects will not be deleted permanently. It will be remain 60 days by default (which can be configurable) it adds an entry as marked for deletion on the object and replicates to all DC’s. After 60 days object will be deleted permanently from all Dc’s.

what are the monitoring tools used for Server and Network Heath. How to define alert mechanism
Spot Light , SNMP Need to enable

How to deploy the patches and what are the softwares used for this process
Using SUS (Software update services) server we can deploy patches to all clients in the network. We need to configure an option called “Synchronize with Microsoft software update server” option and schedule time to synchronize in server. We need to approve new update based on the requirement. Then approved update will be deployed to clients
We can configure clients by changing the registry manually or through Group policy
by adding WUAU administrative template in group policy

What is Clustering. Briefly define & explain it
Clustering is a technology, which is used to provide High Availability for mission critical applications. We can configure cluster by installing MCS (Microsoft cluster service) component from Add remove programs, which can only available in Enterprise Edition and Data center edition.In Windows we can configure two types of clusters

NLB (network load balancing) cluster for balancing load between servers. This cluster will not provide any high availability. Usually preferable at edge servers like web or proxy.
Server Cluster: This provides High availability by configuring active-active or active-passive cluster. In 2 node active-passive cluster one node will be active and one node will be stand by. When active server fails the application will FAILOVER to stand by server automatically. When the original server backs we need to FAILBACK the application
Quorum: A shared storage need to provide for all servers which keeps information about clustered application and session state and is useful in FAILOVER situation. This is very important if Quorum disk fails entire cluster will fails
Heartbeat: Heartbeat is a private connectivity between the servers in the cluster, which is used to identify the status of other servers in cluster.

How to configure SNMP
SNMP can be configured by installing SNMP from Monitoring and Management tools from Add and Remove programs.
For SNMP programs to communicate we need to configure common community name for those machines where SNMP programs (eg DELL OPEN MANAGER) running. This can be configured from services.msc--- SNMP service -- Security

Is it possible to rename the Domain name & how?
In Windows 2000 it is not possible. In windows 2003 it is possible. On Domain controller by going to MYCOMPUTER properties we can change.

What is SOA Record
SOA is a Start Of Authority record, which is a first record in DNS, which controls the startup behavior of DNS. We can configure TTL, refresh, and retry intervals in this record.

What is a Stub zone and what is the use of it.
Stub zones are a new feature of DNS in Windows Server 2003 that can be used to streamline name resolution, especially in a split namespace scenario. They also help reduce the amount of DNS traffic on your network, making DNS more efficient especially over slow WAN links

What are the different types of partitions present in AD
Active directory is divided into three partitions
Configuration Partition—replicates entire forest
Schema Partition—replicates entire forest
Domain Partition—replicate only in domain
Application Partition (Only in Windows 2003)

What are the (two) services required for replication
File Replication Service (FRS) Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC)

Can we use a Linux DNS Sever in 2000 Domain
We can use, But the BIND version should be 8 or greater

What is ASR (Automated System Recovery) and how to implement it
ASR is a two-part system; it includes ASR backup and ASR restore. The ASR Wizard, located in Backup, does the backup portion. The wizard backs up the system state, system services, and all the disks that are associated with the operating system components. ASR also creates a file that contains information about the backup, the disk configurations (including basic and dynamic volumes), and how to perform a restore You can access the restore portion by pressing F2 when prompted in the text-mode portion of setup. ASR reads the disk configurations from the file that it creates. It restores all the disk signatures, volumes, and partitions on (at a minimum) the disks that you need to start the computer. ASR will try to restore all the disk configurations, but under some circumstances it might not be able to. ASR then installs a simple installation of Windows and automatically starts a restoration using the backup created by the ASR Wizard.

What are the different levels that we can apply Group Policy
We can apply group policy at SITE level---Domain Level---OU level

What is Domain Policy, Domain controller policy, Local policy and Group policy
Domain Policy will apply to all computers in the domain, because by default it will be associated with domain GPO, Where as Domain controller policy will be applied only on domain controller. By default domain controller security policy will be associated with domain controller GPO. Local policy will be applied to that particular machine only and effects to that computer only.

What is the use of SYSVOL folder
Policies and scripts saved in SYSVOL folder will be replicated to all domain controllers in the domain. FRS (File replication service) is responsible for replicating all policies and scripts

What is folder redirection?
Folder Redirection is a User group policy. Once you create the group policy and link it to the appropriate folder object, an administrator can designate which folders to redirect and where To do this, the administrator needs to navigate to the following location in the Group Policy Object:

User Configuration\Windows Settings\Folder Redirection
In the Properties of the folder, you can choose Basic or Advanced folder redirection, and you can designate the server file system path to which the folder should be redirected.
The %USERNAME% variable may be used as part of the redirection path, thus allowing the system to dynamically create a newly redirected folder for each user to whom the policy object applies

Domain Functional Level
Domain functionality activates features that affect the whole domain and that domain only. The four domain functional levels, their corresponding features, and supported domain controllers are as follows:

Windows 2000 mixed (Default)
Supported domain controllers: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003
Activated features: local and global groups, global catalog support

Windows 2000 native
Supported domain controllers: Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003
Activated features: group nesting, universal groups, SidHistory, converting groups between security groups and distribution groups, you can raise domain levels by increasing the forest level settings

Windows Server 2003 interim
Supported domain controllers: Windows NT 4.0, Windows Server 2003
Supported features: There are no domain-wide features activated at this level. All domains in a forest are automatically raised to this level when the forest level increases to interim. This mode is only used when you upgrade domain controllers in Windows NT 4.0 domains to Windows Server 2003 domain controllers.

Windows Server 2003
Supported domain controllers: Windows Server 2003
Supported features: domain controller rename, logon timestamp attribute updated and replicated. User password support on the InetOrgPerson objectClass. Constrained delegation, you can redirect the Users and Computers containersDomains that are upgraded from Windows NT 4.0 or created by the promotion of a Windows Server 2003-based computer operate at the Windows 2000 mixed functional level. Windows 2000 domains maintain their current domain functional level when Windows 2000 domain controllers are upgraded to the Windows Server 2003 operating system. You can raise the domain functional level to either Windows 2000 native or Windows Server 2003. After the domain functional level is raised, domain controllers that are running earlier operating systems cannot be introduced into the domain. For example, if you raise the domain functional level to Windows Server 2003, domain controllers that are running Windows 2000 Server cannot be added to that domain
The following describes the domain functional level and the domain-wide features that are activated for that level. Note that with each successive level increase, the feature set of the previous level is included.

Forest Functional Level
Forest functionality activates features across all the domains in your forest. Three forest functional levels, the corresponding features, and their supported domain controllers are listed below

Windows 2000 (default)
Supported domain controllers: Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003
New features: Partial list includes universal group caching, application partitions, install from media, quotas, rapid global catalog demotion, Single Instance Store (SIS) for System Access Control Lists (SACL) in the Jet Database Engine, Improved topology generation event logging. No global catalog full sync when attributes are added to the PAS Windows Server 2003 domain controller assumes the Intersite Topology Generator (ISTG) role.

Windows Server 2003 interim
Supported domain controllers: Windows NT 4.0, Windows Server 2003. See the "Upgrade from a Windows NT 4.0 Domain" section of this article.
Activated features: Windows 2000 features plus Efficient Group Member Replication using Linked Value Replication, Improved Replication Topology Generation. ISTG Aliveness no longer replicated. Attributes added to the global catalog. ms-DS-Trust-Forest-Trust-Info. Trust-Direction, Trust-Attributes, Trust-Type, Trust-Partner, Security-Identifier, ms-DS-Entry-Time-To-Die, Message Queuing-Secured-Source, Message Queuing-Multicast-Address, Print-Memory, Print-Rate, Print-Rate-Unit

Windows Server 2003
Supported domain controllers: Windows Server 2003
Activated features: all features in Interim Level, Defunct schema objects, Cross Forest Trust, Domain Rename, Dynamic auxiliary classes, InetOrgPerson objectClass change, Application Groups, 15-second intrasite replication frequency for Windows Server 2003 domain controllers upgraded from Windows 2000
After the forest functional level is raised, domain controllers that are running earlier operating systems cannot be introduced into the forest. For example, if you raise forest functional levels to Windows Server 2003, domain controllers that are running Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 Server cannot be added to the forest.
Different Active Directory features are available at different functional levels. Raising domain and forest functional levels is required to enable certain new features as domain controllers are upgraded from Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 to Windows Server 2003
Domain Functional Levels: Windows 2000 Mixed mode, Windows 2000 Native mode, Windows server 2003 and Windows server 2003 interim ( Only available when upgrades directly from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2003)

Forest Functional Levels: Windows 2000 and Windows 2003

Ipsec usage and difference window 2000 & 2003.
Microsoft doesn’t recommend Internet Protocol security (IPSec) network address translation (NAT) traversal (NAT-T) for Windows deployments that include VPN servers and that are located behind network address translators. When a server is behind a network address translator, and the server uses IPSec NAT-T, unintended side effects may occur because of the way that network address translators translate network traffic If you put a server behind a network address translator, you may experience connection problems because clients that connect to the server over the Internet require a public IP address. To reach servers that are located behind network address translators from the Internet, static mappings must be configured on the network address translator. For example, to reach a Windows Server 2003-based computer that is behind a network address translator from the Internet, configure the network address translator with the following static network address translator mappings

• Public IP address/UDP port 500 to the server's private IP address/UDP port 500
• Public IP address/UDP port 4500 to the server's private IP address/UDP port 4500.
These mappings are required so that all Internet Key Exchange (IKE) and IPSec NAT¬T traffic that is sent to the public address of the network address translator is automatically translated and forwarded to the Windows Server 2003-based computer

How to create application partition windows 2003 and its usage?

An application directory partition is a directory partition that is replicated only to specific domain controllers. A domain controller that participates in the replication of a particular application directory partition hosts a replica of that partition. Only domain controllers running Windows Server 2003 can host a replica of an application directory partition.
Applications and services can use application directory partitions to store application-specific data. Application directory partitions can contain any type of object, except security principals. TAPI is an example of a service that stores its application-specific data in an application directory partition
Application directory partitions are usually created by the applications that will use them to store and replicate data. For testing and troubleshooting purposes, members of the Enterprise Admins group can manually create or manage application directory partitions using the Ntdsutil command-line tool.

Is it possible to do implicit transitive forest to forest trust relation ship in windows 2003?
Implicit Transitive trust will not be possible in windows 2003. Between forests we can create explicit trust
Two-way trust
One-way: incoming
One-way: Outgoing

What is universal group membership cache in windows 2003
Information is stored locally once this option is enabled and a user attempts to log on for the first time. The domain controller obtains the universal group membership for that user from a global catalog. Once the universal group membership information is obtained, it is cached on the domain controller for that site indefinitely and is periodically refreshed. The next time that user attempts to log on, the authenticating domain controller running Windows Server 2003 will obtain the universal group membership information from its local cache without the need to contact a global catalog. By default, the universal group membership information contained in the cache of each domain controller will be refreshed every 8 hours

GPMC & RSOP in windows 2003?
GPMC is tool which will be used for managing group policies and will display information like how many policies applied, on which OU’s the policies applied, What are the settings enabled in each policy, Who are the users effecting by these polices, who is managing these policies. GPMC will display all the above informationRSoP provides details about all policy settings that are configured by an Administrator, including Administrative Templates, Folder Redirection, Internet Explorer Maintenance, Security Settings, Scripts, and Group Policy Software Installation.When policies are applied on multiple levels (for example, site, domain, domain controller, and organizational unit), the results can conflict. RSoP can help you determine a set of applied policies and their precedence (the order in which policies are applied).

Assign & Publish the applications in GP & how?
Through Group policy you can Assign and Publish the applications by creating .msi package for that application
With Assign option you can apply policy for both user and computer. If it is applied to computer then the policy will apply to user who logs on to that computer. If it is applied on user it will apply where ever he logs on to the domain. It will be appear in Start menu—Programs. Once user click the shortcut or open any document having that extension then the application install into the local machine. If any application program files missing it will automatically repair.With Publish option you can apply only on users. It will not install automatically when any application program files are corrupted or deleted.

How to Manually Configure FSMO Roles to Separate DC’s

2011-12-30T08:02:00.000-08:00

How can I determine who are the current FSMO Roles holders in my domain/forest

Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory domains utilize a Single Operation Master method called FSMO (Flexible Single Master Operation), as described in Understanding FSMO Roles in Active Directory.

The five FSMO roles are:

Schema master - Forest-wide and one per forest.
Domain naming master - Forest-wide and one per forest.
RID master - Domain-specific and one for each domain.
PDC - PDC Emulator is domain-specific and one for each domain.
Infrastructure master - Domain-specific and one for each domain

In most cases an administrator can keep the FSMO role holders (all 5 of them) in the same spot (or actually, on the same DC) as has been configured by the Active Directory installation process. However, there are scenarios where an administrator would want to move one or more of the FSMO roles from the default holder DC to a different DC. The transferring method is described in the Transferring FSMO Roles article, while seizing the roles from a non-operational DC to a different DC is described in the Seizing FSMO Roles article
In order to better understand your AD infrastructure and to know the added value that each DC might possess, an AD administrator must have the exact knowledge of which one of the existing DCs is holding a FSMO role, and what role it holds. With that knowledge in hand, the administrator can make better arrangements in case of a scheduled shut-down of any given DC, and better prepare him or herself in case of a non-scheduled cease of operation from one of the DCs.

How to find out which DC is holding which FSMO role? Well,

one can accomplish this task by many means. This article will list a few of the available methods.

Method #1: Know the default settings

The FSMO roles were assigned to one or more DCs during the DCPROMO process. The following table summarizes the FSMO default locations

FSMO Roll - Schema

Number of DC's Holding this Role- One per forest

Original DC Holding this Role - The first DC in the first Domin

Domain Naming	One per forest	forest (i.e. the Forest Root Domain)
RID	One per domain	The first DC in a domain (any domain,
PDC Emulator	One per domain	including the Forest Root Domain, any
Infrastructure	One per domain	Tree Root Domain, or any Child
		Domain)

Method #2:Use The GUI

The FSMO role holders can be easily found by use of some of the AD snap-ins. Use this table to see which tool can be used for what FSMO role

Fsmo Role Which snap-in should I use?

Schema Schema snap-in

Domain Naming AD Domains and Trusts-in

RID AD User and Computers snap-in

PDC emulator

Infrastructure

Finding the RID Master, PDC Emulator, and Infrastructure Masters via GUI

To find out who currently holds the Domain-Specific RID Master, PDC Emulator, and Infrastructure Master

FSMO Roles:

1.Open the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in from the Administrative Tools folder.

2.Right-click the Active Directory Users and Computers icon again and press Operation Masters.

3.Select the appropriate tab for the role you wish to view.

4.When you're done click Close.

Finding the Domain Naming Master via GUI

To find out who currently holds the Domain Naming Master Role:

1.Open the Active Directory Domains and Trusts snap-in from the Administrative Tools folder.

2.Right-click the Active Directory Domains and Trusts icon again and press Operation Masters.

3.When you're done click Close.

Finding the Schema Master via GUI

To find out who currently holds the Schema Master Role:

1.Register the Schmmgmt.dll library by pressing Start > RUN and typing:

2.Press OK. You should receive a success confirmation.

3.From the Run command open an MMC Console by typing MMC.

4.On the Console menu, press Add/Remove Snap-in.

5.Press Add. Select Active Directory Schema.

6.Press Add and press Close. Press OK.

7.Click the Active Directory Schema icon. After it loads right-click it and press Operation Masters.

8.Press the Close button.

Method #3: Use the Ntdsutil command

The FSMO role holders can be easily found by use of the Ntdsutil command.

Caution: Using the Ntdsutil utility incorrectly may result in partial or complete loss of Active Directory functionality

1.On any domain controller, click Start, click Run, type Ntdsutil in the Open box, and then click OK.

2.Type roles, and then press ENTER.

Note:To see a list of available commands at any of the prompts in the Ntdsutil tool, type ?, and then press ENTER

1.Type connections, and then press ENTER.

2.Type connect to server <servername>, where <servername> is the name of the server you want to use, and then press ENTER.

3.At the server connections: prompt, type q, and then press ENTER again.

4.At the FSMO maintenance: prompt, type Select operation target, and then press ENTER again.

At the select operation target: prompt, type List roles for connected server, and then press ENTER again. select operation target: List roles for connected server

Server "server100" knows about 5 roles Schema - CN=NTDS Settings,CN=SERVER100,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site-Name,CN=Sites,CN=C

onfiguration,DC=dpetri,DC=net

Domain - CN=NTDS

Settings,CN=SERVER100,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site-Name,CN=Sites,CN=C

onfiguration,DC=dpetri,DC=net PDC - CN=NTDS

Settings,CN=SERVER100,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site

Name,CN=Sites,CN=Conf

iguration,DC=dpetri,DC=net

RID - CN=NTDS Settings,CN=SERVER100,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site-Name,CN=Sites,CN=Conf iguration,DC=dpetri,DC=net

Infrastructure - CN=NTDS

Settings,CN=SERVER100,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site-Name,CN=Si

tes,CN=Configuration,DC=dpetri,DC=net

Select operation target:

8.Type q 3 times to exit the Ntdsutil prompt

Note: You can download THIS nice batch file that will do all this for you (1kb).

Another Note: Microsoft has a nice tool called Dumpfsmos.cmd, found in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit (and can be downloaded here: Download Free Windows 2000 Resource Kit Tools). This tool is basically a one-click Ntdsutil script that performs the same operation described above

Method #4: Use the Netdom command

The FSMO role holders can be easily found by use of the Netdom command

Netdom.exe is a part of the Windows 2000/XP/2003 Support Tools. You must either download it separately (from here Download Free Windows 2000 Resource Kit Tools) or by obtaining the correct Support Tools pack for your operating system. The Support Tools pack can be found in the \Support\Tools folder on your installation CD (or you can Download Windows 2000 SP4 Support Tools, Download Windows XP SP1 Deploy Tools).

1.On any domain controller, click Start, click Run, type CMD in the Open box, and then click OK.

2.In the Command Prompt window, type netdom query /domain:<domain> fsmo (where <domain> is the name of YOUR domain)

Close the CMD window

Note: You can download THIS nice batch file that will do all this for you (1kb).

Method #5: Use the Replmon tool

The FSMO role holders can be easily found by use of the Netdom command.

Just like Netdom, Replmon.exe is a part of the Windows 2000/XP/2003 Support Tools. Replmon can be used for a wide verity of tasks, mostly with those that are related with AD replication. But Replmon can also provide valuable information about the AD, about any DC, and also about other objects and settings, such as GPOs and FSMO roles. Install the package before attempting to use the tool.

1On any domain controller, click Start, click Run, type REPLMON in the Open box, and then click OK.

2.Right-click Monitored servers and select Add Monitored Server.

3.In the Add Server to Monitor window, select the Search the Directory for the server to add. Make sure your AD domain name is listed in the drop-down list.

4.In the site list select your site, expand it, and click to select the server you want to query. Click Finish.

5.Right-click the server that is now listed in the left-pane, and select Properties.

6.Click on the FSMO Roles tab and read the results.

7.Click Ok when you're done.

Troubleshooting Startup Issues after configuration change on IBM x3550M2, x3650 M2 Servers

2011-12-30T04:29:00.000-08:00

Scenario: IMM or system fails after configuration change or IMM reboot -IBM System x3550 M2, x3650 M2.
Symptom
After changing the hardware configuration of System x3550 M2 or System x3650 M2, most often when adding options such as memory, hard drives, and Central Processing Units (CPUs), the system may become unresponsive after about 30 minutes.
Some cases prevented the box from powering on again, and in some cases, power on was possible, but network connectivity to the Integrated Management Module (IMM) was not possible. The issue may also occur when rebooting the IMM while the system is powered on with certain hardware configurations

Affected configurations
System x3550 M2, type 4198, any model
System x3550 M2, type 7946, any model
System x3650 M2, type 4199, any model
System x3650 M2, type 7947, any model
IMM firmware versions older than YUOO24I version 1.04

Solution
A fix was provided in IMM firmware yuoo24I (version 1.04).
All users of System x3550 M2 and System x3650 M2 should update to this IMM firmware or later to avoid the possibility of replacing the system board.
The file is available from the 'Software and device drivers ¬IBM System x' web site at the following
URL: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-4JTS2T

Additional information
An internal buffer overrun issue in the IMM code caused the IMM firmware to repeatedly crash. The internal buffering issue was corrected in yuoo24I. Hardware configurations with large numbers of memory DIMMs and hard disk drives could result in unresponsive systems if the system was powered on and the IMM was rebooted with older firmware

Windows & systen admin Interview Questions and Answers- Part 1

2011-12-30T01:18:00.000-08:00

Difference between 2000 &2003
Application Server mode is introduced in windows 2003 Possible to configure stub zones in windows 2003 DNS Volume shadow copy services is introduced Windows 2003 gives an option to replicate DNS data b/w all DNS servers in forest or All DNS servers in the domain.

Difference between PDC & BDC
PDC contains a write copy of SAM database where as BDC contains read only copy of SAM database. It is not possible to reset a password or create objects with out PDC in Windows NT.

Difference between DC &ADC
There is no difference between in DC and ADC both contains write copy of AD. Both can also handles FSMO roles (If transfers from DC to ADC). It is just for identification. Functionality wise there is no difference.

What is DNS & WINS
DNS is a Domain Naming System, which resolves Host names to IP addresses. It uses fully qualified domain names. DNS is a Internet standard used to resolve host names
WINS is a Windows Internet Name Service, which resolves Netbios names to IP Address. This is proprietary for Windows

Types of DNS Servers
Primary DNS Secondary DNS Active Directory Integrated DNS Forwarder Caching only DNS

If DHCP is not available what happens to the client
Client will not get IP and it cannot be participated in network . If client already got the IP and having lease duration it use the IP till the lease duration expires.

what are the different types of trust relationships
Implicit Trusts Explicit Trusts—NT to Win2k or Forest to Forest

what is the process of DHCP for getting the IP address to the client
There is a four way negotiation process b/w client and server DHCP Discover (Initiated by client) DHCP Offer (Initiated by server) DHCP Select (Initiated by client)
DHCP Acknowledgement (Initiated by Server)
DHCP Negative Acknowledgement (Initiated by server if any issues after DHCP offer)

Difference between FAT,NTFS & NTFSVersion5
NTFS Version 5 features
Encryption is possible We can enable Disk Quotas File compression is possible Sparse files Indexing Service NTFS change journal In FAT file system we can apply only share level security. File level protection is not
possible. In NTFS we can apply both share level as well as file level security NTFS supports large partition sizes than FAT file systems NTFS supports long file names than FAT file systems
What are the port numbers for FTP, Telnet, HTTP, DNS
FTP-21, Telnet – 23, HTTP-80, DNS-53, Kerberos-88, LDAP-389

what are the different types of profiles in 2000
Local Profiles Roaming profiles Mandatory Profiles

what is the database files used for Active Directory
The key AD database files—edb.log, ntds.dit, res1.log, res2.log, and edb.chk—all of which reside in \%systemroot%\ntds on a domain controller (DC) by default. During
AD installation, Dcpromo lets you specify alternative locations for these log files and database files

What is the location of AD Database
%System root%/NTDS/NTDS>DIT

What is the authentication protocol used in NT
NTLM (NT LAN Manager

What is subnetting and supernetting
Subnetting is the process of borrowing bits from the host portion of an address to provide bits for identifying additional sub-networks
Supernetting merges several smaller blocks of IP addresses (networks) that are continuous into one larger block of addresses. Borrowing network bits to combine several smaller networks into one larger network does supernetting

what is the use of terminal services
Terminal services can be used as Remote Administration mode to administer remotely as well as Application Server Mode to run the application in one server and users can login to that server to user that application

what is the protocol used for terminal services
RDP

what is the port number for RDP
Port Number-3389

what is the difference between Authorized DHCP and Non Authorized DHCP
To avoid problems in the network causing by mis-configured DHCP servers, server in windows 2000 must be validate by AD before starting service to clients. If an authorized DHCP finds any DHCP server in the network it stop serving the clients

Difference between inter-site and intra-site replication. Protocols using for replication.
Intra-site replication can be done between the domain controllers in the same site. Inter-site replication can be done between two different sites over WAN links
BHS (Bridge Head Servers) is responsible for initiating replication between the sites. Inter-site replication can be done B/w BHS in one site and BHS in another site.
We can use RPC over IP or SMTP as a replication protocols where as Domain partition is not possible to replicate using SMTP

How to monitor replication

We can user Replmon tool from support tools

Brief explanation of RAID Levels

Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 offer two types of disk storage: basic and dynamic

Basic Disk Storage
Basic storage uses normal partition tables supported by MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. A disk initialized for basic storage is called a basic disk. A basic disk contains basic volumes, such as primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. Additionally, basic volumes include multidisk volumes that are created by using Windows NT 4.0 or earlier, such as volume sets, stripe sets, mirror sets, and stripe sets with parity. Windows XP does not support these multidisk basic volumes. Any volume sets, stripe sets, mirror sets, or stripe sets with parity must be backed up and deleted or converted to dynamic disks before you install Windows XP Professional

Dynamic Disk Storage
Dynamic storage is supported in Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003. A disk initialized for dynamic storage is called a dynamic disk. A dynamic disk contains dynamic volumes, such as simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. With dynamic storage, you can perform disk and volume management without the need to restart Windows.
Note: Dynamic disks are not supported on portable computers or on Windows XP Home Edition-based computers.
You cannot create mirrored volumes or RAID-5 volumes on Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition-based computers. However, you can use a Windows XP Professional-based computer to create a mirrored or RAID-5 volume on remote computers that are running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, or the Standard, Enterprise and Data Center versions of Windows Server 2003.
Storage types are separate from the file system type. A basic or dynamic disk can contain any combination of FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS partitions or volumes.
A disk system can contain any combination of storage types. However, all volumes on the same disk must use the same storage type.

To convert a Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk

Use the Disk Management snap-in in Windows XP/2000/2003 to convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk. To do this, follow these steps:

1Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.

2Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

3Click Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management. You can also right-click My Computer and choose Manage if you have My Computer displayed on your desktop.

4In the left pane, click Disk Management.

5In the lower-right pane, right-click the basic disk that you want to convert, and then click Convert to Dynamic Disk. You must right-click the gray area that contains the disk title on the left side of the Details pane.

6Select the check box that is next to the disk that you want to convert (if it is not already selected), and then click OK.

7Click Details if you want to view the list of volumes in the disk. Click Convert.

8Click Yes when you are prompted to convert the disk, and then click OK.

Warning: After you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, local access to the dynamic disk is limited to Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003. Additionally, after you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, the dynamic volumes cannot be changed back to partitions. You must first delete all dynamic volumes on the disk and then convert the dynamic disk back to a basic disk. If you want to keep your data, you must first back up the data or move it to another volume.

Dynamic Storage Terms

A volume is a storage unit made from free space on one or more disks. It can be formatted with a file system and assigned a drive letter. Volumes on dynamic disks can have any of the following layouts: simple, spanned, mirrored, striped, or RAID-5.

A simple volume uses free space from a single disk. It can be a single region on a disk or consist of multiple, concatenated regions. A simple volume can be extended within the same disk or onto additional disks. If a simple volume is extended across multiple disks, it becomes a spanned volume.

A spanned volume is created from free disk space that is linked together from multiple disks. You can extend a spanned volume onto a maximum of 32 disks. A spanned volume cannot be mirrored and is not fault-tolerant.

A striped volume is a volume whose data is interleaved across two or more physical disks. The data on this type of volume is allocated alternately and evenly to each of the physical disks. A striped volume cannot be mirrored or extended and is not fault-tolerant. Striping is also known as RAID-0.

A mirrored volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on two physical disks. All of the data on one volume is copied to another disk to provide data redundancy. If one of the disks fails, the data can still be accessed from the remaining disk. A mirrored volume cannot be extended. Mirroring is also known as RAID-1.

A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is striped across an array of three or more disks. Parity (a calculated value that can be used to reconstruct data after a failure) is also striped across the disk array. If a physical disk fails, the portion of the RAID-5 volume that was on that failed disk can be re-created from the remaining data and the parity. A RAID¬5 volume cannot be mirrored or extended.

The system volume contains the hardware-specific files that are needed to load Windows (for example, Ntldr, Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com). The system volume can be, but does not have to be, the same as the boot volume.

The boot volume contains the Windows operating system files that are located in the %Systemroot% and %Systemroot%\System32 folders. The boot volume can be, but does not have to be, the same as the system volume.

RAID 0 – Striping

RAID 1- Mirroring (minimum 2 HDD required)

RAID 5 – Striping With Parity (Minimum 3 HDD required)

RAID levels 1 and 5 only gives redundancy

What are the different backup strategies are available

Normal Backup

Incremental Backup

Differential Backup

Daily Backup

Copy Backup

What is a global catalog

Global catalog is a role, which maintains Indexes about objects. It contains full information of the objects in its own domain and partial information of the objects in other domains. Universal Group membership information will be stored in global catalog servers and replicate to all GC’s in the forest.

What is Active Directory and what is the use of it

Active directory is a directory service, which maintains the relation ship between resources and enabling them to work together. Because of AD hierarchal structure windows 2000 is more scalable, reliable. Active directory is derived from X.500 standards where information is stored is hierarchal tree like structure. Active directory depends on two Internet standards one is DNS and other is LDAP. Information in Active directory can be queried by using LDAP protocol

What is the physical and logical structure of AD

Active directory physical structure is a hierarchal structure which fallows Forests— Trees—Domains—Child Domains—Grand Child—etc

Active directory is logically divided into 3 partitions

1.Configuration partition 2. Schema Partition 3. Domain partition 4. Application Partition (only in windows 2003 not available in windows 2000)

Out of these Configuration, Schema partitions can be replicated between the domain controllers in the in the entire forest. Where as Domain partition can be replicated between the domain controllers in the same domain

What is the process of user authentication (Kerberos V5) in windows 2000

After giving logon credentials an encryption key will be generated which is used to encrypt the time stamp of the client machine. User name and encrypted timestamp information will be provided to domain controller for authentication. Then Domain controller based on the password information stored in AD for that user it decrypts the encrypted time stamp information. If produces time stamp matches to its time stamp. It will provide logon session key and Ticket granting ticket to client in an encryption format. Again client decrypts and if produced time stamp information is matching then it will use logon session key to logon to the domain. Ticket granting ticket will be used to generate service granting ticket when accessing network resources

What are the port numbers for Kerberos, LDAP and Global catalog

Kerberos – 88, LDAP – 389, Global Catalog – 3268

What is the use of LDAP (X.500 standard?)

LDAP is a directory access protocol, which is used to exchange directory information from server to clients or from server to servers

What are the problems that are generally come across DHCP

Scope is full with IP addresses no IP’s available for new machines

If scope options are not configured properly eg default gateway

Incorrect creation of scopes etc

what is the role responsible for time synchronization

PDC Emulator is responsible for time synchronization. Time synchronization is important because Kerberos authentication depends on time stamp information

What is TTL & how to set TTL time in DNS

TTL is Time to Live setting used for the amount of time that the record should remain in cache when name resolution happened.

We can set TTL in SOA (start of authority record) of DNS

How to take DNS and WINS,DHCP backup

%System root%/system32/dns

%System root%/system32/WINS

%System root%/system32/DHCP

What is recovery console

Recovery console is a utility used to recover the system when it is not booting properly or not at all booting. We can perform fallowing operations from recovery console

We can copy, rename, or replace operating system files and folders Enable or disable service or device startup the next time that start computer Repair the file system boot sector or the Master Boot Record Create and format partitions on drives

What is DFS & its usage

DFS is a distributed file system used to provide common environment for users to access files and folders even when they are shared in different servers physically.

There are two types of DFS domain DFS and Stand alone DFS. We cannot provide redundancy for stand alone DFS in case of failure. Domain DFS is used in a domain environment which can be accessed by /domain name/root1 (root 1 is DFS root name). Stand alone DFS can be used in workgroup environment which can be accessed through /server name/root1 (root 1 is DFS root name). Both the cases we need to create DFS root ( Which appears like a shared folder for end users) and DFS links ( A logical link which is pointing to the server where the folder is physically shared)

The maximum number of Dfs roots per server is 1.

The maximum numbers of Dfs root replicas are 31.

The maximum number of Dfs roots per domain is unlimited.

The maximum number of Dfs links or shared folders in a Dfs root is 1,000