Installing Server OS on a Dell with a DRAC card and without a DVD Drive

Simple process for installing a server OS on a Dell server that came with a DRAC card (which I recommend in all cases).  

Download the ISO for the installation DVD (typically from the MS VLSC) such as the Windows 2012 R2 DVD ISO.

I recommend that you boot up the server and go through RAID configuration using Control - R to set up your RAID array before continuing.  RAID is not configurable inside Windows setup.

Open the DRAC web interface (default location is 192.168.0.120 with a username/password of root/calvin).  

Open a virtual console.

In the virtual console.

Click Virtual Media -> Connect Virtual Media

Click Virtual Media -> Map CD/DVD

Choose the ISO file from your local machine (the ISO file should be located on your phsyical machine - not at all on the server).  I highly recommend you do this over a wired connection.  It'll take 20+ minutes over a wired connection to transfer the contents of a 6 GB ISO file and more than an hour over wireless.

In Next Boot, choose virtual CD/DVD/ISO.

Take ownership of a folder without affecting existing NTFS permissions

I'm not positive of the reason, but sometimes, when I take ownership of a folder (perhaps it has to do with applying ownership to all subfolders) all the existing permissions are gone.  Here's a DOS command you can run in an elevated command prompt on the server to adjust ownership without affecting existing NTFS permissions:

TAKEOWN /A /R /F c:\SomeFolder

Speed test that doesn't require Flash

When I'm running a speed test on a server, I'm often in a small bind as I can't run my standard tests at www.speakeasy.net/speedtest or www.speedtest.net since most servers don't have flash and it's typically an obstacle to install it.

I found an HTML 5 speed test at www.speedof.me which works just fine, which works just fine on Firefox, which is typically my default browser.

removing Dell background on preconfigured servers

Dell prebuilt servers come with a wallpaper background that appears whenever you remote desktop to that box - which can be very slow over a low bandwidth connection. Found this registry change that will get rid of that default wallpaper:

Open Regedit and modify the following key
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\Wallpaper
Change value from \windows\system32\DELLWALL.BMP to blank, as in nothing, not the word ‘blank’.

resetting a domain admin password on Windows 2008

I had lost the main admin password on one of my client's Windows 2008 SBS boxes, and I thought I'd have to try one of the many utilities that exist for changing passwords outside of Windows, but instead I found this:

http://lordoftheping.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-did-not-use-my-tests-virtual-machines.html

Using just the Windows 2008 DVD, you can reset any domain admin password.

Info recreated here just in case that page is ever taken down:
* Boot onto DVD of Windows Server 2008
* Choose “Repair your computer”
* Launch cmd
* Go to c:\windows\system32
* Rename Utilman.exe to Utilman.exe.bak
* Copy cmd.exe to Utilman.exe
* Reboot on Windows
* Do the keyboard shortcut Windows + U when on the logon screen
* net user administrator Newpass123 inside the cmd
* log on with the domain admin account and this new pass
* change the password to remember it if needed
* Reboot on the DVD to put back the original Utilman.exe


Youtube video of the process here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar-VoO9ogHc

altering the default lockout policy on Server 2003 (SBS or Standard)

For servers that are publicly facing, it's possible that hackers will attempt to hack you. Recently, I had a hacker try to guess logins and passwords over and over and over again (thousands of times) over port 25. I was able to thwart that by disabling port 25 for a bit (15 minutes) and the hacker lost interest. But theoretically, had I not seen the hacker attempting, he could have tried hacking forever, just guessing and guessing.

There's no lockout policy for invalid usernames. If the hacker is guessing on jsmith and you don't have a jsmith user, he can keep guessing forever. The lockout policy will not apply. But if the hacker is trying legitimate user names, the hacker should be locked out after a limited number of attempts. I have seen the default as no limit and as 50 attempts on SBS machines.

The number of attempts should be 6 or fewer and the lockout times should be 15 minutes or longer.

You can get to the appropriate place via:

Group Policy Management -> expand to default domain policy, right click on default domain policy and click edit. Then edit these fields:

Symantec Endpoint Protection eating up disk space

On two of my servers, I found Symantec Endpoint Protection eating up disk space like crazy. In each case, they had many, many temp folders that amounted to many gigs of data in this folder:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\SymcData\sesmvirdef64

There doesn't seem to be any harm in deleting them. Very strange - very lame.

setting up shadow copy of folders to enable previous versions for users

One thing added to Windows 2003 was "previous versions" which allows users to retrieve old copies of files on network shares that they had deleted or saved over. In the old days, you had to go to backup (and still do if you haven't set up shadow copies on your network shares - which is not done by default).

Here's a good page on enabling shadow copies on network:

http://www.ucertify.com/article/how-to-enabledisable-the-shadow-copy-of-shared-folders-feature-of-windows.html