January 2007 - Posts
Did you read my last post, and you weren't happy with different spellings.
So here's what I really hate about the DNS Client-Service and the DHCP Client-Service:
They are different depending on the Language Version of the OS, comparing German and English Windows:
| OS-Language | Service-Name |
| English | DNS Client |
| English | DHCP Client |
| German | DNS-Client |
| German | DHCP-Client |
I do hate this, because I tend to be to lazy to open up a MMC just to stop, start or restart a service, instead I like to use a command prompt to take care of many tasks:
net stop DNS-Client
net stop "DNS Client"
or to restart
net stop DNS-Client && net start DNS-Client
net stop "DNS Client" && net start "DNS Client"
<RANT>
So just for stopping or restarting Services, I have to keep the language version in mind and decide whether I have to hyphenate them and put them in quotes or not. Can't we just keep some names in sync? I'd like to meet the one who's insisting that those names should be slightly different in the German language-version.
</RANT>
And before anyone is asking - the double-"&" means "do the second command if the first completed successfully" - so the service is only started if it stopped successfully.
Update: Nils Kaczenski - a fellow MVP in Germany and with whom I wrote both books I've published so far - made a good comment here, which I like to pull on the main feed:
[..] why don't you just use the service name instead of the display name? "net stop dnscache" stops the DNS Client service on every machine, no matter what its language is. You can find out the service names in Control Panel or by just querying "sc query" (or, more sophisticated: sc query|find /i "_name"). The most common names will surely burn into your mind quickly. ;-)
So yes - certainly he's right, and I can also recommend this procedure. I've done this way e.g. back in the early XP days when I had to take care of the Wireless Zero Configuration Service (wzcsvc - otherwise to much to type), however for some reasons I do DHCP, DNS and other services like by displayname. For whatever reason I'm just to lazy to keep them in mind and don't mind typing - so I'm usually using the Services displayname. No clue why - my brain prefers it this way 
- and there are more important things to remember.
I still don't understand why they are "semi-translating" certain things which are totally useless. Currently the name is English but the hyphenation is German.
Feels like eating ice-cream to fast: brainfreeze - ouch.
I've just read something on the Internet, which makes me writing this post.
There are many people not realizing a few things when it comes to the interaction of the DNS Client- and the DNS Server-Service - so here are some common misunderstandings:
I don't need the DNS-Client-Service on a DNS-Server
The DNS-Client resolves for the applications on that machine, the DNS-Server serves whichever DNS-Client is asking him.
If I'm trying to ping a computer per FQDN on a Server which is also DNS-Server, I can not reach/resolve it. However the server must be able to resolve the name, because when I'm looking in the DNS-Managementconsole I can see the record.
Meep - wrong - the Server does not directly care what records the DNS-Server on the same machine is holding. The DNS-Client is asking the DNS-Server he's configured to use, which may not be the local DNS-Server.
What is wrong? For App-X Nameresolution is working, because I'm able to nslookup the name, however the app is not able to reach the server.
Try to ping the name of the server instead of NSLookup. If NSLookup works but ping doesn't resolve it to a IP, restart the DNS Client-Service. NSLookup brings his own resolver and does not proove if the DNS Client is working, it's only there for troubleshooting Name Resolution. Actually there are behaviors where NSLookup even resolves slightly different than the DNS Client.
I'm hardening my server by disabling unused services. DHCP Client is one of them, because I'm statically configuring my IP-Adress, so I don't need it.
Usually the DHCP Client-Service takes care of registering Records in the Reverse Lookup Zone (PTR-Records) in DNS, so you might want to keep it.
I have configured a second DNS-Server in my DNS-Client, so my DNS-Client is able to resolve names even if the DNS Server-Service is not working / stopped.
This is a huge one. The second DNS Server will only be asked if the server is not reachable via TCP/IP. As long as it answers via IP it does not matter if the DNS-Server is answering or not.
I'm sure I forgot many of those rumors - so if you have some to share please provide comments, I'm happy to update this post.
Did you try to use Sysinternals (now Microsoft) BGInfo on Windows Vista or Windows Server Codenamed "Longhorn"? Do you also prefer to see your network-settings such as IP-Adress and DNS-Server on the Background-Screen of BGInfo?
So did you like the picture you've got? Here's an example:
So apparently we are getting nine IP-Addresses and nine DNS-Servers back, but only one is configured. However, we only want the one Address which is configured, not any virtual or whatever Network-Interface. We still can use BGInfo, but we need to put some more brain into it.
BGInfo also allows you to configure Scripts or custom variables, and return their value. So in BGInfo, follow these steps:
- In BGInfo, underneath the list box "Fields" where you are able to select which values to see, click "Custom"
- In the dialog box "User Defined Fields", click "New"
- In the dialog box "Define New Field", choose an "Identifyer", such as "MyIPAdress"
- Under "Replace identifyer with" click "WMI Query"
- In the text box "Path", enter the following WMI Query:
SELECT IPAddress FROM Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration WHERE IPEnabled = TRUE - Close the dialog box with OK and repeat from Step 2 to create another new field:
Identifier:
MyDNSServer
Path (WMI Query):
SELECT DNSServerSearchOrder FROM Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration WHERE IPEnabled = TRUE
After you added MyIPAdress and MyDNSServer to your background, it'll look like the following:
So right after the new year started, I also got a great message: I was again reawarded as MVP for Windows Server - Directory Services. This is the fourth time in a row I got the award, and I'm really proud of it. THANK YOU Microsoft!
Currently work got me again, and this year will also be pretty busy. I'm looking forward to some interesting Projects, some interesting Conferences (I like to mention the Directory Experts Conference, which will be very exciting this year, we are already planning the Pre-Conference on Longhorn Server Active Directory and I'll also talk a few sessions).
But I'm totally recovered and working like crazy - and I have a couple interesting posts to take care of pretty soon, so stay tuned!
So after getting back from Barcelona I had a lot of work to make sure I'll be able to take some vacation during X-Mas. Worked like crazy. Also I had to finish an article, which was published in January in the IT-Administrator. I covered Security-Basics, Delegation and implementing Rolebased Administration in Active Directory. Yes - it complements my talk
Finally I was able to go on vacation from X-Mas to the first week of January. I was looking forward to it - I'm used to much work, however the last year was the worst ever and I was unable to finish everything - to many customers at the same time while always having issues to find "bodies".
So what happened? Sure! If you give your body time to relax, it takes whatever needed to recover. So I had a bad could over New Years until the end of the first week in January. Not very relaxing, so I decided to stay the second week of January still at home and keep my workload low.
I had to recover and deserved it!
So ... TechEd was just great - I can not describe it in other words.
As I wrote in a prior post I had some sessions to take care of at TechEd. So after we arrived in Barcelona we first had a dinner with the MCT-Community which we really enjoyed. There are so many MCTs out there who are so dedicated to their "passion" (and job) that it's always a pleasure to meet everyone and enjoy geek-talking. After the conference started I still wanted to adjust the demos of my session to show some new stuff. Unfortunately I made a small mistake (if you have dual-boot with Vista RC2 and XP try to avoid hibernating - especially if you have a laptop vendor which does provide very bad drivers) so I had some harddisk corruption on my Laptop. Did I mention that the PPTs and the demos were all supposed to run from my laptop (the XP-Part)? So I had some joy in fixing my Laptop on the road without the CDs, however I managed to get it up and running again (before it went right into a bluescreen after the bootmanager) - some files in XP were still corrupt (and they are currently still corrupt - didn't had the time to reinstall and I'm only using the Vista-Installation anyways). Learned it the hard way - do not hibernate with shared disks.
So after I was sure that at least Powerpoint and VPC are back and running I was adjusting my demos. The rest of the time of the first days (there wasn't much as you can assume) I spent in the Ask-the-Experts-Area and answered questions in the Longhorn Booth. This is one of my favorite things at those conferences - you get so much insight of many issues within multiple companies, and how attendees (mis)understand the products. This also gives me ideas which points we have to outline in talks and blogs, apart from enjoying to helping the attendees.
On Wednesday I had the first of two Chalk-&-Talks with Karmal Janardhan (Group Program Manager in the Active Directory Program Group). The concept of Chalk-&-Talks is a mixture between Ask-the-Experts and Breakout Sessions. You have many attendees in a session room, you are not supposed to use Powerpoint (a few slides to help the discussion getting started or outlining examples are accepted) and you are discussing technologies with the attendees. We did a Chalk-&-Talk on "Active Directory and DNS in Longhorn". It was just great. Kamal is so deep into the planning and features of the technology, and I was able to contribute with my practical experience. We both enjoyed the session, and according to the discussion and feedback afterwards the attendees enjoyed it as well. I don't think there was another session where you could get a better knowledge topic. OK - maybe Kamals Breakout Session which covered the same topic - but I even think we were able to explain it better in the Chalk-&-Talk due to the discussion format of the session. We had the last session-slot of the day and the room was crowded. There were people leaving because there was no more space. Afterwards in the Hotels Lounge some other speaker was complaining that the last session of the day was empty in many sessions and the attendees were supposedly already off partying, but I know where they were .
On Thursday afternoon I had my own session: "A Directory Services Geek's View on Access Control Entries (ACE)". Since I just had a few minutes between the session prior to me I decided to use a longer break before to connect my laptop to power at the speakers desk and get it up and running, so that the session before allows the power ma
nagement-drivers to "adjust". Otherwise the time to start up as well as the performance would be questionable. This was a good decision - I didn't had any issues with performance, the session and demos went very well (OK - I was a bit nervous because I still didn't trust my recovered laptop). I love this session, since I was always missing Geek-Level content at TechEds, so I was happy to present it. There were a lot of interested attendees, feedback was great (e.g. "You can improve the conference by doing more sessions like this.", and "excellent session - best one I have been to so far" on a Thursday afternoon). There were many interesting questions right after the session, but at some point we got bounced so that the next session was able to start. However I went right back into the Ask-the-Expert-Area and had some lengthy discussion about the topic with some attendees. Very interesting talks - so we continued until we were told that the exhibition area is closing and we are to leave.
On Friday Kamal and I repeated our Chalk-&-Talk about "Active Directory and DNS in Longhorn" right in the morning. We had slightly less attendees (probably partying the night before, or everyone was in our first session) but the discussion was still very good. Kamal is impressive - at her own session she got a comment like "how comes a little girl tells all geek's in here how technology really works" . After the Chalk-&-Talk we went to the Ask-the-Experts-Area, and I didn't leave until the conference was over. There were so many interesting questions. Actually some attendees were coming up to me with their "List of Questions" they made up during the week, so I was answering .. answering .. answering ... (I call it the "streaming answering mode" now ).
However - what a great week - everytime again!
OK - I haven't written a post in quite a long time. The last one was before I went to TechEd EU in Barcelona. So what 
happened?
I decided that I've deserved some vacation, so I went with my wife and a "close friends couple" to Hurghada, Egypt to do some sun-tanking and scuba-diving. I enjoyed it, there are great beautiful animals in the red sea (kind of poisoning too, so you are far safer snorkeling or diving then swimming or worse - walking).
Afterward we went almost straight (one day re-packing in Munich) to Barcelona.
TechEd and Barcelona was great (again). Microsoft has done a great deal in making this the best TechEd/IT-Forum in the last years (at least in my opinion), they valuated the feedback from last year and the conference was great. I'll continue in the next post with my experience from TechEd, since this is really deserving a separate post.