The Life of Brian : Windows Server 2003

A Couple Quick Active Directory One-Liners

BrianM — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 17:57:56 GMT

Here is a few one-liner commands to help get info on your Active Directory environment. I don’t think there is any mind blowing commands here but they’ve helped me out. There are literally hundreds of these around the web as well as PowerShell...(read more)

Everything you wanted to know about Active Directory Replication but were afraid to ask

BrianM — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:54:00 GMT

I was thinking about writing a post about Active Directory replication but thankfully soon realized that by doing so I could be severely depriving my kids and wife of a happy life. Its not that Active Directory replication is bad or harmful, its...(read more)

Find and Disable Stale User Accounts

BrianM — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:45:00 GMT

Stale user accounts can be a big problem…even more so when they are not disabled. I’m a firm believer that if you have an account that is not being used it should be disabled. However depending on the size of your Active Directory that can...(read more)

How to Delegate the Right to Delegate Kerberos Constrained Delegation

BrianM — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:50:00 GMT

Wow, that is a lot of delegating…seriously how many times can you say it in one sentence. Today’s post is one that threw me for a loop. As a domain admin I have the right to configure constrained Kerberos delegation. There may come a...(read more)

What are Service Principle Names (SPNs)?

BrianM — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:51:00 GMT

SPNs seem to get more and more use these days so I thought it be nice to give an explanation of what SPNs are. SPNs are used for mapping a service to a user account. You will find SPNs used predominantly with Delegation and Impersonation and a lot of...(read more)

Lock Your Workstation

BrianM — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:39:00 GMT

I’m sure you are like me when it comes to locking your desktop. You ALWAYS do it. Most if not all corporations today have a group policy in place that at least sets the Screen Saver on after a certain amount of time and requires a password for security...(read more)

Server Health Checks

BrianM — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:15:00 GMT

I’d like to share some of the things I look at while do a health check on a server. Its funny how few resources there are out there on the Internet. I believe people keep this kind of stuff to them self because they are scared they are going...(read more)

Is my Active Directory Backed Up?

BrianM — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:51:00 GMT

There are a ton of methods to backup Active Directory. I’m not going to get into each method with this post. What I am going to do is share another little command that can be run to check to see if your Active Directory was backed up and when...(read more)

Initiate Replication across all Partitions and DCs

BrianM — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:29:00 GMT

It seems I'm always trying to remember this little command and its about time I put here where I can always access it in the future. This isn’t a new command but it is a nifty little one that will initiate replication across your environment...(read more)

Windows Event log limitations

BrianM — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:50:00 GMT

Not sure how many people modify the size of the Windows Event Logs but it is something that I like to do simply because the default sizes of most them is just not enough. For example you may remember the default for your System and Application log...(read more)

Unable to Change Share Permissions on a File Share Cluster Resource

BrianM — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:50:00 GMT

I ran into a weird issue the other day when configuring permissions on a Share that was clustered. I couldn’t find much online about this, and the one similar issue from Russ was not the issue here. Here is a little background info to help set the...(read more)

Viewing your FSMO Role Holders Remotely

BrianM — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:19:00 GMT

There are quite a few ways to view what your FSMO roles are. You can use the GUI tools or even the following netdom command that I've shared in the past – netdom query fsmo However if you are working in a trusted multi-domain environment the...(read more)

How to Remove a Failed or Offline DC

BrianM — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:13:00 GMT

I’ve seen this issue come up time and time again. Some administrator decided to remove an old DC from the network but forgot to remove it from Active Directory or the DC has entered a failed state and cannot be recovered from. In a perfect...(read more)

How to Search for an Email Address in Active Directory

BrianM — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:44:00 GMT

From time to time I’ve had to figure out which user account has a specific email address. Actually its more like finding who has the “reallycoolemailaccount@company.com ” so another “more senior” person can get it. Well if you work in a smaller...(read more)

Must Have Group Policy Setting!

BrianM — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:22:00 GMT

I recently blogged about time and how critical it is in a domain environment. Just this morning I read a post from the Directory Services Team that shows how to configure WMI Filtering through Group Policy to ensure that the PDC Emulator always has the...(read more)

KDC 11 Error in the System Event Log

BrianM — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:12:00 GMT

I ran into this error awhile back after building a new root level Domain Controller (DC). My initial health checks panned out ok but after about an hour the following should up in my System Event log: Event Type: Error Event Source: ...(read more)

What W32tm is it anyway?

BrianM — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:49:00 GMT

My daughter Alyssa and I play a game…well she might not consider it a game but she is constantly asking me “What time is it without looking”. I’ve actually gotten pretty good at it and can usually get within a few minutes. Not sure why...(read more)

Frustration with Server 2008

BrianM — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:12:00 GMT

Please don’t just read this post…participate by answering the questions I ask using the comments. Don’t worry you don’t have to register. :) One of the things that I’ve been waiting awhile for, was a Windows operating system that is smart...(read more)

What Version is Your Schema at?

BrianM — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:44:00 GMT

Have you ever had one of those jobs where you just weren’t sure what Schema update had been applied in an environment? The following command will let you know which of the Windows Server Schema updates have been applied. dsquery.exe * "CN=Schema...(read more)

RODC Compatibility Issues with Down-Level Clients

BrianM — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:15:01 GMT

I just read over at Jane Lewis's blog that if you plan on deploying Server 2008 Read Only Domain Controllers (RODC) and have down-level clients (XP and 2003 clients) then you will want to check out the RODC Compatibility Pack. I know a lot of people...(read more)