The Life of Brian : Tools

Admin Tools of the Trade

BrianM — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:18:00 GMT

I’ve just finished writing an article up on admin tools that I use over on AdminPrep . If you have some tools that you would like to recommend please leave a comment here for others to see what helps get your through your day…tool wise that...(read more)

Easy Way to View Windows Server 2008 and Vista’s Network Card Properties

BrianM — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:07:00 GMT

That has to be the longest title I’ve ever had in any blog. In my opinion this has the ability to the best post I’ve ever created too. The reason being that I’m always looking for ways to make my life easier…and then share them...(read more)

Windows Server 2008 Command Lines for Administrative Consoles

BrianM — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:41:29 GMT

I’m always of fan of shortcuts and the Windows Server 2008 Administrator's Companion from Microsoft Press has a complete list of the command line shortcuts for starting Administrative Consoles for Server 2008. There are plenty of other goodies...(read more)

Process Explorer on Server Core

BrianM — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:10:28 GMT

While I’ve always been a fan of Task Manager but lets face the facts…its has its limitations. Mark Russinovich has rolled up his wonderful Sysinternal Troubleshooting Utilities into a single download that can be found here . In there you will find...(read more)

Server Core CoreConfigurator

BrianM — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:54:40 GMT

I know i'm late on this but I've got to blog about it. Fellow Directory Services MVP Guy Teverovsky has created the coolest tool yet for Server 2008 Server Core. It is the Server Core CoreConfigurator . After you copy the four files to your Server...(read more)

RSAT Missing Tabs in Active Directory Users and Computers

BrianM — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:26:13 GMT

Some of you may have noticed there were some missing tabs in Active Directory Users and Computers after you installed RSAT on Windows Vista. Specifically the Terminal Services Profile, Remote Control, Environment, and Sessions tabs are not there. The...(read more)

Windows Vista Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) Finally Released

BrianM — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:24:00 GMT

It looks like Microsoft finally released RSAT for Windows Vista. What a relief. We can finally effectively manage our environment with Vista. It can be downloaded in two versions, 32bit or 64bit . What Is Included in RSAT? This is the list of Windows...(read more)

Group Policy Spreadsheet for Server 2008 and Vista SP1

BrianM — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:15:41 GMT

I've always loved these spreadsheets as they allow a quick and easy way to search for Group Policies. With Server 2008 live and Vista SP1 out Microsoft has updated their reference sheet to add all the new Group Policy settings. There are now over...(read more)

AdminPak (Remote Server Administration Tools) for Windows Vista Almost Ready

BrianM — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:12:00 GMT

This is been a hot topic here for a long time. Back in May I mentioned that there was going to be no AdminPak and sure enough that was confirmed. Microsoft's decision was to create a new tool called the Remote Server Administration Tools. Back in...(read more)

Microsoft Cluster Configuration Tool

BrianM — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 14:19:03 GMT

I just noticed that the Microsoft Cluster Configuration Validation Wizard was released yesterday. Don't bother about the long name, everyone just calls it ClusPrep. This is a great little tool that will evaluate potential nodes that are to be clustered...(read more)

Restore files from older backups on Vista and Longhorn

BrianM — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:34:00 GMT

If you migrating to Windows Vista or playing with Longhorn you may be interested in this newly released utility. The Windows NT Backup - Restore Utility allows you to restore files that were backed up in Windows XP or Server 2003 to Windows Vista and...(read more)

Unbelievable Remote Desktop Software!!!

BrianM — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 15:26:00 GMT

I’ve been looking for a good tool that allows me to manage a large amount of servers via Remote Desktop for…well for as long as I can remember. I’ve become tired of the Remote Desktops MMC because of its lack of features. Yesterday I found a truly unbelievable...(read more)

New Remote Desktop Connection tool

BrianM — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 20:57:00 GMT

On the subject of managing your servers, Microsoft recently released the Remote Desktop software to go along with the one that is built into Windows Vista. If you have Windows Vista you don’t need this but if you are using XP SP2 or Server 2003 you may...(read more)

Run Command Shortcuts for Administrative Tools

BrianM — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:44:00 GMT

I’m always looking for ways to make my job easier. Knowing shortcuts to the commonly used admin tools that you use is one of the best ways. Take a look below for your favorites and remember them… Not only will it save you a ton of time but...(read more)

Active Directory Must Have Tools

BrianM — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 04:42:00 GMT

Just finished publising my latest article at www.adminprep.com . This was such a fun one to write since it was something so many people have asked me about over the years. I can't believe it has taken me so long to get out to them. I would love to find...(read more)

Checking the Version of Windows Installer

BrianM — Tue, 30 May 2006 20:53:00 GMT

One of the requirements of upgrading to Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 SP1 for you clients is to ensure those clients reporting to MOM are running Windows Installer 3.1 or higher. After attempting to install the agent on my Integration servers I noticed...(read more)

RoboCopy to the rescue

BrianM — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 07:39:00 GMT

Another day and another tool to save the day. Today I was staging the production DCs for different types of updates and I really didn't feel like copying 50+ files to these servers. So I remembered an old friend of mine named RoboCopy. RoboCopy has been around for some time and is a life saver when wanting to copy an entire directory with sub-folders and sub-files underneath it.

What I do when I want to copy files to multiple servers is to create a batch file that includes all the servers. I'm sure there is a better way to script this but i'm not a scripting monkey.

robocopy c:\temp\update *.* \\server\c$\temp /s

I'll just copy this as many times as I have servers and replace \\servername with the actual server name. The folder called update on the source was the parent folder that contained all the folders I wanted to copy over. This folder will not be copied over during this operation and it will copy the folders that were under it to the root of C:\Temp of the destination.

Concurrent logons are driving me nuts!

BrianM — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 18:06:00 GMT

Being able to log on to multiple machines at the same time has always irked my security conscious. While I can see the need for it and have done it plenty of times myself I was pleased to find that Microsoft has a tool that can limit concurrent sessions. This is a brand new tool and has been around for about year...that I know of but LimitLogin v1.0 is a resource kit utility that can be downloaded from here.

Here is a list of clients that work with it:

Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4 and above (Including Terminal Server sessions)
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 and above
Windows Server 2003 (Including Terminal Server sessions)
Make sure that you read through the help file before implementing it in your test environment...trust me it will answer a lot of questions.