Old news: Comptia working on Storage+ exam

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Still some old news from Comptia, but It was (new)s for me. Comptia is currently working with SNIA http://www.snia.org/ to create a vendor-neutral certification in storage networking technologies. Many of the large vendors in SAN/NAS solutions have their own certifications for their product, and that will of course give you good knowledge about that vendors product, but if your organisation changes their SAN/NAS solution, much changes so its good to have a solid understanding of storage solutions before plunging into vendor certifications.
Another exam that will be added to my list.

Source:

http://www.comptia.org/news/pressreleases/11-01-04/CompTIA_and_SNIA_to_Produce_%E2%80%9CCompTIA_Storage_Powered_by_SNIA%E2%80%9D_Certification.aspx

Router robbery

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While reading for my CCNA I came past an excellent article regarding Router robbery on a blog, recommended reading for those that do not know the ramifications when a office Router is stolen.

You can read the article here -> http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/router-robbery/

Windows applications with Wine

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Most of my time I use debian/ubuntu on my laptop, but I recently swithed over to Linux Mint (why?) I was getting bored with Ubuntu (Note that Linux Mint is made from Ubuntu)
But It has some good reviews and my laptop needed a reinstall! (over 5 months since last time!)

Even thou I use Linux I need to use alot of windows applications on my laptop, and my rescue is Wine. Think most of those that use Linux today is familiar with use of Wine.
And most people think its an Emulator ( ITS NOT!) hence the name WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator, but instead act as a compability layer and runs most of the windows applications like windows does. It much like using Compability Mode in Windows to set  application to run under “Windows XP” anyhow, yesterday I needed to a spesific Windows application under Wine, and that application had a registry fix included. How to hell do I implement registry fixes to an application in wine? Well since Wine also creates its own registry it was easy.
1: open terminal
2: wine regedit.exe nameofregfile.reg, then wine nameofapplication

Worked like a charm.

Managing your Office365 trough powershell

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Hi Powershell geeks,

Ever tried to manage your Office365 enviroment by using Powershell?
Couple of easy steps to follow if you havent.
1: Download and install Online Services Module for powershell ( http://g.microsoftonline.com/0BD00en-US/504 ) /NB: Requires Windows 7 or 2008R2
2: Then it will create a shortcut on your desktop and in your start menu.
(Microsoft Online Services Module)

This gives you a total of 47 cmdlets that you can use to manage your office365 enviroment. By using the command Get-Command –Module msonline it will list all the commands avaliable in the msonline module.Remember in order to use these commands you will need to authenticate to the service first.

$cred = Get-Credential
(This command will ask you to enter an username and password for your office365 domain username@domain)
Now that powershell has stored the cred you can connect to the service.
Connect-MsolService -cred $cred (This command will use your stored creds in powershell to connect)
Note that you will not recive any confirmation that you are connected you only know that you are connected when you dont recive any error messages :)
From here all these commands listed here are avaliable -> http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/hh125002.aspx

Stay tuned

Trouble applying Group Policy

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While working with group policy on a particular computer I had some trouble using Startup scripts. According to the Event log, I had issues with resolving DNS names on startup. I think this was because of the arp table beeing flushed or because of STP. Anyhow! the computer would not process the startup policies because I could not get in contact with the DNS to get the location of the SYSVOL server. How did I fix it ?

Applied a reg fix to the particular machine by altering this value = http://technet.microsoft.com/nb-no/library/cc977482%28en-us%29.aspx
Since the timeout was so low it timed out before It could contact the DNS-server, so when I adjusted those values to 1, 2, 10, 10, 25. Did a reboot and my startup policies applied.

Office 365 (my thoughts so far…)

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I have been using the office 365 beta for a couple of months now and I must say the complete package with

* Exchange online
* Lync online
* Sharepoint online
* Office applications online

Is working good!

The integration between Exchange/Lync is just seamless, when a user is “booked” in a meeting in exchange his status automaticlly changes from Free to Busy in Lync Communicator. I also connected the Exchange server (in office365) from my local EMC, and tried to move an mailbox from my local forest to the office365 exchange and I had a couple of hicks until I updated my local Exchange with the latest patches. Remember when you are adding a Forest resource fqdn use this adress -> ps.outlook.com since the Exchange management console is just a gui for the powershell console. Then it will appear like this,

You dont have all the functions avaliable but when SP2 comes for Exchange you will have more of the avaliable. My Office365 beta is closing in august so I think I have to buy subscribtion from them in order to follow the “hype” of the Cloud solution that Microsoft is offering and see how it does against Google.

 

 

Exchange 2010 requirements

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Since I lately have been reading up on my 70-663 Exchange exam, I’ve been reading trough alot of Microsoft technet articles, and that includes blogs as well :)

Something I found usefull for my exam is this -> http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2010/01/22/updates-to-the-exchange-2010-mailbox-server-role-requirements-calculator.aspx

This is a calculator (in excel) made of the Exchange team (you can find their blog here -> http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/)

This tool is very useful if you are planning and designing your own Exchange infrastructure. I would also recommend follow these sites:
-> http://www.petri.co.il/exchange.htm
-> http://blogs.msexchange.org/walther/
-> http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/

Long time no blog

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Dear blog,

been a long time since last time I published a post here, reason for that?

* Focusing more on my certifications, taken:
SQL Server 2008 R2
First part of EUCIP
Windows 2008 Virtualization
Planning on taking my ITIL Foundation and Exchange 2010 PRO exam in a couple of weeks.
While focusing on my certifications has removed the urge to blog, but I see many use their own blogs to learn as well, so maybe I should do this as well.

Marius out!

 

It speaks!

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did you know you can use powershell to speak?
Me neither until now…

Open Powershell ISE and add this to the console

$Voice = new-object -com SAPI.SpVoice
$Voice.Speak( ”Hei!”)

And run this code it will speak the word “Hei”,  you can also change the command to make it read from an text file.
Example:
$Voice = new-object -com SAPI.SpVoice
$Voice.Speak( ”C:\Text\HolyGrail.txt”, 5 )
“The reason why you add a “, 5″ there is because this makes to command read from the file, if that parameter is not present it will just speak the file path.

You can see more about the API on Microsofts webpage -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms723602(v=vs.85).aspx