Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Fri, Oct 30, 2009
Photo by ://maraculio
I've been doing the same thing on my Mac since I first got one about 6 odd years ago. But the experience has been vastly different. OS X has the Migration Assistant which transfers files, settings and applications from one computer to another. It's worked almost flawlessly for me as I've moved my user account between the 7 Macs I've owned over the years. Not only has it worked going between computers, but it works great whenever I re-install the operating system. I have had the same user account since my very first Mac and it's survived at least 50 trips through the Migration Assistant (I use it whenever I travel to move my account to my laptop and back, I travel rarely enough that this is a feasible operation.)
So, a couple weeks ago when I decided to move my PC from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 RTM I decided to try out the Microsoft equivalent, Windows Easy Transfer. I was, sadly, underwhelmed. It didn't do any better than I do manually by copying my Documents folder. Nothing got transferred from AppData or the Registry (something probably did transfer, but it was so little that I didn't really notice what.) It's possible that I did something wrong, so I'll be trying it again next time I do a rebuild, but I don't really have the time now to play with it.
So I'll toss the question out to you, dear readers, what do you use to transfer your account settings when you rebuild or get a new computer? I haven't spent any time looking for a third-party utility specifically because I wanted to learn from the manual experience, but it's starting to get pretty tedious. It'd be nice to not have to re-create my start menu or re-pin applications to my task bar or recustomize my keyboard or... You get the idea.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Wed, Oct 28, 2009
Photo by Seattle Municipal Archives
Are you spending IT money maintaining email servers? How many users do you have? What are your email security requirements? Are you hosting your own servers or co-locating?
Our company recently made the move from co-hosting email to an all-out move to Google Apps Premiere Edition. You keep your domain name but get the power of Google availability. We love it. You get 25GB storage per user and the email service is as good as our co-host (better actually) and we never have maintenance to worry about. The cost is $50 per user per year. That covers everything that premiere edition has to offer, including their word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation apps. Google Apps works well with mobile computing too.
One valid concern is security, and Google hasn't left this to chance. You have the option of using Postini for security and archival.
We weren't too sure about using Google's word processor, but it turned out to be a better collaboration tool than 37 Signals Writeboards. The savings from canceling our basecamp account more than covered the annual cost of the Google Apps. What really sold us was the Firefox tool for creating and editing Google Apps docs offline (Google Gears).
We were surprised at how easy Google Apps was to setup. Just taking a couple of hours to familiarize yourself with the look 'n feel was valuable. Google provides a 30 day trial and we used it for about two weeks before we were sold.
If you need to save money, headache, or regular (time-consuming) maintenance, I suggest taking a hard look at Google Apps Premiere Edition. You may be surprised at which companies have made the switch.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Mon, Oct 26, 2009
Last week Microsoft released about 14 patches. I didn't want to distribute 14 different deployments to all of my computers so I went old school and just deployed using a single batch file.
- Contents of my batch file
- Directory of the deployment files. The batch file will call each of these patch files in succession.
I then opened up Admin Arsenal and chose to deploy to my Windows 2003 (x86) collection.
Pay particular attention to my deployment window. I check the "Include entire directory" checkbox. This way I can be certain that all the patch files (listed above) will ready for my batch file.
- Admin Arsenal Deployment window
Since I placed the the Command Line arguments in the actual script I didn't need to add them on the deployment window. I could have passed the arguments via the deployment window and have the deployment script reference the %1, %2 and %3 variables.
This is a simple and effective method for deploying applications and/or patches in rapid succession. This method is great for installing an application and then successive Service Packs or Updates.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Fri, Oct 23, 2009
We at Admin Arsenal are finalizing plans for our various formal paid support options. Here are some that we are considering*, please vote in the comments for the one you would prefer for your organization.
| Level | Cost | Response Time | Support |
|---|
| Talc | $1/year | Whenever | Sympathy. Talc support includes an agent who will commiserate with your problem. There won't be a resolution of any kind, just someone who will 'understand' what you're bitching about. |
| Shale | $5/year | Within a month or so | Response will always be, "We recommend you upgrade to the next level of support." |
| Obsidian | $100/year | Week? | List of competing products that don't have your unimportant problem. |
| Patina | $100/month | 72 hours | Guaranteed referral to "my supervisor." 8th supervisor offers refund. |
| Silver | $100/week | 24 hours | Answer to your question.** |
| Gold | $100/day | 30 seconds | Answer to the question you should have asked. |
| Platinum | $100/second | 8 hours before you ask | Air-dropped consultants guaranteed to correct issue. |
* Actual support levels will most assuredly differ from these proposals.
** Answer not guaranteed to be correct.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Wed, Oct 21, 2009
The testing is complete. Admin Arsenal 1.4 is compatible with Windows 7. We'll get the logo package shortly from Microsoft and we'll be sure to update our website.
Being compatible is an important step in letting our users (and Microsoft) know that we're using best practice development methods. No using system folders or unregistered .dll's. (The support headache alone should dissuade companies from doing so anyway).
Thanks for using Admin Arsenal. We look forward to a great Windows 7 release. We're in the middle of Server 2008 R2 testing. So far so good. We hope to have the compliance logos for that platform soon.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Mon, Oct 19, 2009
A couple months ago I wrote about my use of Microsoft Hyper-V, which is Microsoft's answer to VMWare. I have been quite happy with it for working with a development lab. Since I wrote that blog post I've learned a couple new things.
- Photo by fdecomite
First, Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 is really slick. Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 include the bits and pieces to run within a virtual machine. With other operating systems you would need to install the Hyper-V tools in the guest in order to get full functionality. That saves a step when installing a new virtual machine, especially if you run the Hyper-V manager through remote desktop (without the tools, the mouse can't be captured making install a real pain.) 2008 R2 is going to give VMWare a run for its money for small organizations.
Second, VMWare still has more power overall than Hyper-V. I started using VMWare Server which is now free (in response to the "freeness" of Hyper-V, I assume.) It lacks some of the power of Hyper-V, but it does seem more mature. The user interface is quite a bit better, in my opinion, and it seems to support more options for hardware and configuration. It doesn't support multiple snapshots, like Hyper-V does, which can be limiting, but you can always pay for that feature if it's needed.
What I really like about VMWare, though, is its cross platform nature. I run a number of Apple Macintoshes and it's nice to be able to shuttle virtual machines back and forth between VMWare Fusion and VMWare Server. If I ever need to do some running on Linux, I would be supported there as well. Also, as for the virtual machines themselves VMWare is agnostic, while Hyper-V is focusing on Windows. I haven't tested anything but Windows just yet, but based on what I've seen so far it's probably going to be smoother with VMWare.
In the end, I think I'm going to stick mainly with VMWare so I won't have virtual machines trapped on Windows. But I won't abandon Hyper-V completely, there will be times that it'll make sense to use, particularly for testing. At some point I can see my development lab getting very large, and if that happens then I will look to VMWare's higher end products which look to have a lot more capabilities that Microsoft's high end offerings, at least for the time being.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Fri, Oct 16, 2009
I stumbled on this review of Windows 7:
A Review of the Pirated Copy of Windows 7 I Bought on eBay
I haven't experienced the problems in the review myself, but I may just be lucky. I didn't know that Windows 7 required a floppy drive, I've only got ISO images from MSDN. Good thing.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Wed, Oct 14, 2009
Want to deploy Windows PowerShell to your all your organization's computers? You can deploy PowerShell using Admin Arsenal. (A free, fully functional trial version is available.)
First things first: Go download Windows PowerShell. (note: PowerShell is included with Windows 7)
In the example below, I used Admin Arsenal to deploy PowerShell to all of my Windows 2003 x86 servers.
Make certain to use the appropriate installation for your OS (XP, Vista, 2003)
The installation will automatically add the PowerShell directory in your System Path.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Mon, Oct 12, 2009
If you aren't using Windows 7 and you haven't installed Windows PowerShell yet, then go here to download and install.
Here are a couple of useful PowerShell examples for common tasks:
- Example of Extracting the Total Physical Memory from WMI
- Use PowerShell to directly query WMI
The two examples above show how you can use the "-filter" cmdlet to narrow down the results. In this case we filtered out any device where the DeviceId wasn't "C:". The second example shows how you can pass a WMI query using the "-query" cmdlet. In this case we only returned disks that are registered as Fixed Disks ("DriveType = 3")
- You can also query remote computers
Using the "-ComputerName" cmdlet you can specify a remote system. This should work for any object under the "get-WmiObject" cmdlet.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Fri, Oct 09, 2009
Photo by Jean & Nathalie
First, I love resources. I hate gathering them but I love having them (for those who don't know, most of these types of games require that the player find and gather various resources such as wood, gold, and stone used to create buildings and weapons.) This would sometimes become a detriment because I would spend so much time gathering resources I would neglect other things. But when it worked right, I would end up with so much stuff that I could almost buy my way out of a tough situation.
My second strategy was that I focused almost entirely on defense. I would build all kinds of defensive structures, and I would concentrate all my research energies on defensive measures. When I would finally attack I would would only come out of my defenses when I was reasonably sure that I had an overwhelming force, one that I could lose without compromising the security of my base. I was always paranoid that even a small breach of my outer wall would lead immediately to my downfall. I think I could have been more balanced, because I would pass up on opportunities that could have been aggressively capitalized on. Part of my problem was that I always assumed that my opponent had twice the power I did and that I was constantly fighting from a losing position.
My third strategy was that I was always looking for something clever and unexpected. No frontal assaults for me (unless I knew I had a 20 to 1 advantage.) No, I always needed to find the perfect flaking movement, feint, or insertion of special forces units. Now I'm certain that this caused me problems, because these types of moves are complex to run and there's a lot of truth in the KISS principle. Not only that, but unless the conditions are just right these operations tend to turn into spectacular failures, even with a 20 to 1 advantage.
I've often reflected that the way that game playing makes certain personality traits come to the surface. Looking at how I tended to play these games I can see how I have similar strategies in my professional work. For example, I'm constantly struggling against my desire to do something "clever" with the user interfaces I build. I lose that struggle all too often and wind up with some pretty spectacular failures. But, on the other hand, my defensive programming strategies have the opposite effect deep within the code. In there, simplicity rules out of the fear that a tiny failure somewhere would be catastrophic.
There's probably psychological literature on how game play parallels other forms of endeavor (and if not there should be.) Now I need to figure out the deep meaning in the Snakes and Ladders games with my kids.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Wed, Oct 07, 2009
Once in awhile a new study comes along that no one has done before, for whatever reason (cost, availability, data, etc.). While perusing blogs today I saw a ZDNet story from Robin Harris that jumped off of my screen and smashed into pieces on my keyboard. I think that every sysadmin should read it.
DRAM error rates were studied at Google over a period of 30 months (yes, that's 2 1/2 years). The study included tens of thousands of Google servers. The results: "error rates are hundreds to thousands of times higher than thought — a mean of 3,751 correctable errors per DIMM per year."
Rather than regurgitate the article I highly recommend that you take some time to read directly from ZDNet. It's amazing that this study was able to take place and that the results were made public.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Mon, Oct 05, 2009
One of the better hidden features of Admin Arsenal (and "better hidden" isn't really a compliment) is the ability to see the output from remote commands when running them on a group of computers.
Let's say you want to edit the registry of a group of computers using reg.exe. You send out your command to a couple of computers and you end up with something like this:
It looks like everything worked perfectly, but you can't be sure there weren't any warnings without seeing the output of the command. Right-click on a computer and select "See Output..."
You'll be taken to the remote command window where you can see the output and re-run the command if you wish.
A note on return codes: Currently remote commands will show "successful" in the task window even if the remote command failed. This is because the task is only showing whether or not the command was successfully sent to the computer. The next update of Admin Arsenal 1.4 will show a failure if the command returns a non-zero error code. This isn't a guarantee, though, because not all command line utilities will return non-zero on failure and some will return non-zero even if they succeed.
Posted by The Admin Arsenal Team on Fri, Oct 02, 2009
The IT Dojo (now called TR Dojo) blog discussed a utility for creating keyboard shortcuts. The utility is called AutoHotKey.
This utility is pretty cool. You can easily overwrite existing keyboard shortcuts. There are a few steps involved but it is fairly straight forward. Taking even a few minutes to become familiar with the tool can save countless minutes in the future.
Remember, if you're continually repeating actions it's time for a script. AutoHotKey scripts certainly fall into that category.