Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with windows and server

Looking for good system monitoring / task scheduling software

Nothing — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:09:28 -0800

Looking for good system monitoring / task scheduling software to run on Windows for server monitoring as well as running custom scripts for keeping track application specific metrics. Right now I am using a hand-rolled solution which runs scripts and updates logs / sends emails on output. It's nice because it is easy to add new custom tasks and metrics, but I am looking to migrate the functionality into something a little more robust, possibly with the ability to keep track of tasks running on multiple machines, etc.

We need to argue for a local server

scruss — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:32:12 -0800

Our office is losing hours of productivity a week due to networking decisions from head office. We'd like to price out a server to replace the dodgy technology that's been foisted on us. Not surprisingly, HQ gets kind of defensive if we use that language. Please help me cost out a server, and make it seem like it was their idea all along. I work in a regional office of an energy company. Head office is many thousands of kilometres away. Head office likes to keep complete control of their data centrally, so offices that used to have servers were replaced by WAFS boxes on the end of a 10Mbit link.

Since the WAFS boxes went in, users in remote offices have had nothing but trouble. Accessing files over the network feels like dialup speed. MS applications zone out for minutes on end thinking about autosaves. We have been known to start applications, go down to the coffee shop, come back, and the application might just have initialized. The WAFS machines themselves are unreliable, needing replaced every few months and rebooting weekly.

Our office has about fifteen professionals in it - engineers, lawyers, developers, environmental and admin staff. We're told that we never quite manage to fully fill our 10Mbit allocation, and that our connection maintains a supposedly quite speedy ping time of 50ms to Head office.

We're not digging the slowness. We estimate that we're each losing several hours per week waiting for the system. Some users have taken to working from home, as using a Citrix connection over DSL to head office is many times faster than running local applications in the office. We've lost staff over this issue.

Head office is all about the centralization, though. So much so that, a couple of years back, a fire alarm knocked out our central data server for 18 hours and we had no offsite failover. We'd need to make a very good case that having a local server would be cheaper than what we're using now.

Head office admits that the WAFS didn't deliver all it was supposed, and are looking at a similar technology from a different vendor. We're worried it will be a big spend with the same result - slow performance, and yet more technology that local techs barely understand. We have some allies in IT at head office, but not the ear of the head of IT.

So just how much would a robust small server with local support and backup cost for a 15 user office? We're in a big Canadian city with good access to service and support.

Can anyone lend me a hand in designing my new home network computer setup?

decrescendo — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:54:03 -0800

Can anyone lend me a hand in designing my new home network computer setup? I have two computers right now.

1. Macbook Pro from about a year ago. In awesome shape. Bought it new. I currently use it mostly on travel and in my living room when I'm watching TV and browsing the net.

2. Desktop I built myself in 2006. I use this computer to store all of my music and listen to said music through speakers that are hooked up to it. I also have tons of pictures and videos stored on this machine. 3 harddrives, around 1.5 TB of space I believe.

I'd really like to make this Macbook Pro my primary computer. I spent too much money on it to use it for browsing the net in my living room. I want to be able to have access to the videos, pictures, and music that are currently on my desktop wirelessly while I'm on my Macbook.

How would I best go about this? I can see retiring this desktop or using parts of it to create a server. I envision this server living in my closet somewhere with a lot of storage and backup capability. I'd like to be able to access the data on this server wirelessly via my Macbook anywhere in the world.

And if I have speakers in my bedroom and a 7.1 system in my living room, how can I "beam" music on my server to these seperate speaker setups via my Macbook (basically it would sorta function as a remote control). I don't want to listen to music THROUGH the laptop or speakers connect to the laptop; I want it to come through other setups.

Also, would swapping out my laptop for a new one in a few years be an easy way to tech refresh this system since the server probably wouldn't have to be built from the most up-to-date components? The laptop is going to be what accesses the internet and edits video and what not.

So can I make this setup work and is it easy? (And does anyone have any good resources for building this server?)

Learning Management System with Active Directory Support

mrw — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:03:24 -0800

I am looking for a (preferably Opensource / free) Learning Management System that will link up with LDAP / Windows Active Directory The company I work for is looking to roll out web-based "exams" on subjects such as desktop security for a certification we are looking to hold. Ideally the software will limit a user's permissions to do many things until they pass the exam/test. I have heard of such software, but I cannot recall the name.

Currently our network setup is on a windows domain, using windows server 2008 active directory to manage user groups. I can set up a box for whatever operating system / webserver / databasing required as i have a few spares here at the moment.

In addition to the above, the software needs to generate some kind of file indicating which users have completed the test and which have yet to do so.

If you have a better idea on how to roll out such a thing, well... any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated

What's a good simple and cheap media or file server setup?

wastelands — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:15:38 -0800

Advice for a server newb who needs help getting started with a simple media/backup/torrent server? I've got a 438 GB movie collection an on external 500 GB USB hard drive right now, so I need to upgrade. I was thinking of buying two 1 TB external drives and using rsync for a poor man's RAID 1 setup. But for good drives plus shipping, that's nearly $250, and I thought, why not just setup a real file server? And maybe get a Bit Torrent thingy going too, so I could turn off my main computer at night and keep transfers going? Heck, I'd probably come up with other useful things for the server to do too.

But I don't know where to start. For hardware, looking at, say, a Dell Inspiron 530 ($379), it's too powerful and too expensive for what I'd use it for.

And for the OS... Windows Home Server? Ubuntu? I don't know what'd be easiest.

Ideas? Thanks!

Will SQL 2000 work in 2008 domain?

Man_in_staysis — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:33:57 -0800

Nerdlinger/Microsoft Server Filter: Can SQL 2000 exist in a Windows 2008 Domain when installed on a Windows 2000 member server ? Before anyone says it, yes, yes I know it's old, outdated, unsupported, we should be using SQL 2005 or looking at SQL 2008 and that it can't be installed on a Windows 2008 server. BUT... does anyone know if SQL 2000 will work when installed on a Windows 2000 server that is a member of a Windows 2008 domain? I know that Windows 2000 servers can be members of a 2008 domain but Exchange 2000 won't work. Will SQL 2000?

Can I get high availability with a modest budget?

flabdablet — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 21:34:11 -0800

How can I set up the virtual server environment I want, using as much open source and as little proprietary software as possible? I'm the technician / sysadmin at a primary school, which will be updating its on-campus server boxes early next year.

Both our existing boxes run Windows Server 2003. Admin1.admin.local runs SQL Server Express and the school administrative database and serves files to four admin workstations; curricserver.curric.local is pretty much a pure file server for 70 classroom workstations, making extensive use of NTFS permissions to manage access control. All workstations run Windows XP.

Admin1 is the PDC for admin.local (10.145.172.0/23), and curricserver is the PDC for curric.local (10.129.172.0/23). An upstream-managed router connects both subnets to the Internet, and also allows admin.local hosts to send UDP datagrams and establish TCP connections to curric.local, though not the other way around. No broadcast traffic transits the router. The router's link to the admin.local subnet is ten mbits/s, which is fine for internet but sucks for cross-subnet file serving.

Admin1 and curricserver each have a UPS. I use external USB drives for backup. I am pretty happy with the way each of the servers is currently set up.

Next year, we'll also be replacing our existing MS Access-based student reports package with a new web-based one from the same company. I have no reason to believe that this will go well. The company recommends hosting this thing on a dedicated box, which will basically be running SQL Server Express and IIS and not much else. I have no wish to install IIS on either admin1 or curricserver, so I'm happy to agree with them.

Now, rather than buy three new boxes and a new UPS and another set of backup drives next year, I'd rather buy two new boxes with i7's and loads of RAM, run a Linux on them with something like Heartbeat in it, and create the three W2k3 servers I need virtually.

It seems to me that doing this would allow me to (a) keep using the same virtual servers year after year after year, while updating the underlying Heartbeat cluster as often as necessary to suit the school's hardware management policy (b) avoid single points of failure for all servers (c) centralize my backup task (d) use solid Unix system administration tools for disk snapshot and backup management instead of whatever some random commercial vendor claims to have invented this year (e) save the school some money (f) easily bypass the upstream-managed router's connection between our two subnets, allowing me to set up the same safe one-way routing policy at gigabit speeds.

Questions:

1. Is this idea Wrong in any important respect? I haven't had much hands-on VM experience, but I have enough Windows expertise to migrate our existing server setups to other hardware (even virtual hardware), probably without needing to do a Windows reinstall, a long enough beard and enough open source happy drink to see the project through, and the intention to document it thoroughly enough to stop it turning all white-elephant for the next guy.

2. Will Heartbeat in fact let me set up three VM's that will normally run on Tweedledum but reboot themselves automagically on Tweedledee if Tweedledum dies?

3. Which VM environments will let me put a Windows VM in charge of a physical network adapter, so I can serve files from a Windows VM over gigabit Ethernet without undue performance penalty?

4. Am I correct in assuming that I want N+2 physical network adapters in each physical box (one for each of N virtual machines to connect to an appropriate network switch, plus one to do a point-to-point link for DRBD, plus one to talk to the host OS via an appropriate network switch? Or, since the virtual replacement for admin1 is only going to be talking to four workstations, do I actually need a dedicated physical network adapter for that VM?

5. Is there any good technical reason for my visceral unwillingness to install IIS on anything except its own dedicated (physical or virtual) box?

6. What's the obvious question I've completely forgotten to ask?

Users cannot connect on Windows Server 2003

panboi — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:39:41 -0800

I've been asked to look at a network that runs three machines (XP) which apparently stopped working: Users cannot connect to the server (Windows Server 2003) due to some connection error. I've been asked to look at a network that runs three machines (XP) which apparently stopped working on Monday. The power supply to the internet router also decided to stop working, then the server (Windows Server 2003 SP2) deciding that no machine could connect to it.

The server also fell over towards the afternoon with blue screen issues. I suspected hardware issues somewhere. I cloned the drive and replaced what appeared to be a glitchy video card.

So the server is now functioning OK - but still have the original problem. Attempts to access the networked drives bring up this specific error message: "This connection has limited or no connectivity. You might not be able to access the Internet or some network resources". Unplugging and reconnecting the network cables causes the PC to think for a while trying to assign an IP address but this then leads to the same error message.

It could be that something on the server setup has been corrupted, but I'm stumped as to how to solve the problem.

My server just wont ... let ... go

bhance — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:00:05 -0800

Why won't my shiny new Windows 2008 server let its TCP connections go? I have a new Windows 2008 server (64bit, running on a big Dell rack) that acts as a file server for about 70 people - standard windows SMB, people hit it at \\servername on their XP desktops via login scripts.

Twice now, the thing has randomly 'frozen' and caused mass panic - all connected user machines freeze up when attempting to access their various shared drives on \\servername. Also, all their applications that rely on files on \\servername\mount also die/freeze/kill themselves/crash etc.

The thing is:

- All eventlogs on this box are clean. Zero. Nothing bad, no errors, application, system or otherwise.
- The network itself is fine. No high-bandwidth intruders, no heavy loads, no disconnects, no bad pings, nothing like that. Bandwidth is normal.
- Server processes are normal, nothing's eating up the local system's network or processor or HD load. No antivirus has kicked in, no special timed thing is happening, processor shows 99% idle, network is 1%usage, and so forth.

The *only* symptom:

.. a netstat shows many, many, many CLOSE_WAIT connections being held by all connected users. So desktop 'UserGuy' might have the following entries when the thing is 'frozen':



(a dozen similar CLOSE_WAITS ...)

TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1300      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1302      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1304      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1306      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1308      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1310      ESTABLISHED     4

... and that sort of CLOSE_WAIT repeat occurs for all 70+ connected users. We reboot, log back in, and when it's fine and behaving we don't have this long litany of CLOSE_WAITs.

My initial hunch is that there's a similar open-tcp-connections limit of some sort that is being met, which then freezes out further TCP connections. XP users used to up this kind of internal Windows limit when torrenting and so on.

My hours of Googling shows you can up this number with registry hacking, but to me that's treating a symptom - not the cause.

So what's holding the connections open in the first place? Why won't they die? What am I missing here?

How do I enable simple file sharing on Server 2008 and stop my network from crashing?

Magnakai — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:15:12 -0800

How do I transparently share files from a Windows Server 2008 box to several XP computers? I want it to stop asking for a username and password when people try to access files. Also, can anyone point me in the right direction to solving this weird network issue I've been having? I've been assigned to run the IT stuff for the small business that I part-time for. They have four machines running Windows XP. One of them used to host all the office documents in a shared folder, enabling it to be accessed from across the network. They're connected via brand-new Cat 6 cables going into a wireless router, which is connected via another brand-new cable to a rather ancient 4-port ADSL modem.

They now have need of a dedicated server, and because of some incoming (in the next year) custom written software, it needs to be Windows Server 2008. I built them a low-cost machine with stable components and it seems to run fine.

I hooked it up to the network, connected to current share and transferred all the office files over. I then shared that directory. I created accounts that have the same username and passwords as the default accounts on the XP machines. I gave access to the office file directory to Everyone. At the top of that screen, it specified that if you selected Everyone, it wouldn't ask for a username or password. But it does!

When they were shared from the previous workstation, you could happily access them without entering a password. Is there any way to revert to this level of behaviour?

My second question follows from this - I tried accessing the folder from one of the comptuers on the workgroup, and I then entered Administrator and the password for the server into the request box that popped up. It connects absolutely fine. But once it's connected, at regular but random intervals, it seems to hang the workstation for a period of time and kill the network connection for the server. Other computers were able to access the network and connect to the internet fine. I can reproduce this problem Can anyone give me pointers to trying to diagnose this error, as obviously it makes the whole endeavour rather useless!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and thank you for reading this long question.

Phantom files?

dozo — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:43:11 -0800

Windows Server 2003 - Best way to see what files (and their locations) disk quotas are counting against a user? I am running a 30 user 2003 domain using roaming profiles and 2GB disk quotas with XP Pro. All are working well except one user.

For some reason quota entries claim that she has 4GB used in her profile, but I cannot find what the quotas are talking about. Her profile is around 200MB, same on the server. I've searched through the server to find these files (music files from a year ago when the profiles was first started - all were erased from server and station) but I haven't found anything.

My question... What's the best way to list the files quotas are seeing?

There may be something obvious here I'm missing, but I'm a Linux man working with 2003 and nothing I can find online mentions how to list the files attributed to a user in quotas.

How do I access the internet through an ISA Server proxy?

mr_silver — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:15:31 -0800

I have an application installed on my PC at work that needs to connect to the internet through our ISA Server. The problem it has is that it can't connect directly unless I put in proxy settings. The problem that I have is that the proxy setting is just one long URL with no username or password. How can I get this application to connect? Whenever I connect to the internet with a browser (IE and Firefox) on the work computer (Windows XP) I need to use http://isa.uk.mycompany.com:8080/array.dll?Get.Routing.Script as the automatic proxy configuration URL in the preferences otherwise it refuses to connect.

The application I want to connect to the internet uses HTTP and gives me three options for the proxy: "use default", "direct" and "named proxy". "Use default" and "direct" don't work.

"Named proxy" requires me to enter a proxy server, username and password. I'm guessing that my windows username and password would be for the latter two, but I have no idea what to put for the proxy server.

I've tried putting the long URL in, but that doesn't work. The problem appears to be that it is expecting a server name, not a port number and certainly not a path to a script.

I tried pasting the URL into a browser and it downloaded what looked to be about 300 lines of VB Script. There was nothing in there that gave me much of a clue on what I should use. I also tried running the VB script from the command line but nothing was outputted.

Can anyone offer any insights into what I need to do to work out what the proxy server name would be? Failing that, what else can I do?

Help me learn to be the sysadmin I need to be!

Reverend John — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:34:00 -0800

What do I need to know and how should I learn it? I am the "IT" guy at my company, a small supplier of building materials, with an office staff of about 10, and a warehouse crew of about the same. Problem is I'm underqualified. Before I arrived here the network and all workstations were set up and supported by an outside consultant. When I arrived my primary responsibility was maintaining our web site, hosted elsewhere, and minor IT support when I could answer or fix immediate problems without having to call the consultant. I was A+ and Network+ certified around 4 years ago, but obviously thats not all that impressive, and really I haven't done much in depth there, haven't been building or fixing machines or doing significant network administration.

Unfortunately over the past year or so the consultant has gradually become less accessible to the point of being essentially useless, and I have recurring nightmares about something disastrous happening to our server or network and not being able to fix it, losing all of our business data, etc. I chatted with my bosses, the owners, last night and they've OK'ed me to upgrade my skills in order to make sure everything here is working well and secure.

Currently we have a single server running Windows 2000 server. The workstations are an amalgamation of Win XP pro and Win 2000 workstation. We have a 24 port switch tying it all together, and some networked printers, and a DSL connection to the internet. The server provides a shared directory, Active Directory services, DHCP, and hosts our business application server.

Given what we have my current plan is to self-study towards becoming an MCSA on Windows 2000 server. Some of the win 2k tests are discontinued, but since thats what we're running I figured I would work first on the tests which aren't discontinued yet, like 70-270 Admining Win XP, then working thru the self study books on Win 2k Server like 70-215 Adminning Win 2k server and 70-218 Managing a Win 2k Server network, as if I was going to try to take those exam. Then after I was up to speed on what we're currently running I might want to learn more on what we might want to move to in order to make sure our network is not too obsolete or insecure.

So, what I want to know from you technical mefites is, is my plan reasonable? Am I being foolish to consider studying for obsolete tests in order to fill out my knowledge of the stuff we already have? Is there a better way I should approach this?

Help! I feel overwhelmed and I live in constant fear that I'm going to come in one day and be told "nothing works, fix it" and not be able to.

Transition from Windows to mixed Win/Mac

jmd82 — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:14:50 -0800

Windows network admin moving into the world of Macs. Where & what to learn? I'm currently a school's IT director and know my Windows XP & server2k3. I like Windows.

Alas, we might be getting a number of Mac laptops in the next year or so (50-100). As such, I need to learn how to manage the Macs on my network. We'd still have a lot of Windows on the network.

I'm looking for tips or tricks on making a possible transition. Good resources for Windows-->Mac? Or good resources for Mac network management in general.
Heck, is managing a fair number of Macs even reasonable in a Windows server environment, or am I just better off getting a Mac server?
My experience with Macs is non-existent. My knowledge ends at their finally using TCP/IP instead of AppleTalk!
Too limit things down, I'm not looking for an MCSE-like tomb, but some resources to at least get me on my feet.

Of possible consequence is I do quite a bit of locking down through GPOs (can't change backgrounds, no editing of IE to use proxies, etc) and each student has their own (non-roaming or mandatory) log on with a mapped network home share. Of use would be knowing how AD & GPOs interact with Macs.

I'll also plan on getting Macs to mess with before anything's rolled out, but pointers beforehand sure can come in use.

Thanks!

Windows Vista is laughing at me...

cgomez — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:37:02 -0800

Server/network/IT-Filter? Windows Vista keeps, or more specifically explorer.exe drops my network transfers, how can I fix this or what is the best Explorer replacement? Also, how can I make Windows Server 2008 more useful on the small scale (more inside of course) ... I previously asked about a storage array for my personal network and ended getting another computer and converting the old one into a RAID-5 Windows Server box.

Here's what's on the network:

Computer 1: Windows Server 2008, RAID-5 Disk Array (2.3TB usable).
Computer 2: Windows Vista Ultimate (used as a media center/personal computer)
Computer 3: MacBook Pro

All of this is linked up through 802.11n/gigabit ethernet.

Question 1: Windows Vista randomly drops network transfers to the server (explorer.exe). This usually happens when I'm moving 5GB or more of data which is often. Essentially it stops transferring and when I press 'cancel', it locks up and I can't kill explorer.exe from the task manager. The only way to recover is restart.

This is, however, not a problem with Windows Networking. I've tried a different file manager called "Directory Opus" which is great and solves my issue. Network transfers never fail. The issue is the program costs $85 US and I'm not going to steal it :-\. So, does anyone have ideas on how to solve explorer.exe or is there a more affordable file manager/Explorer replacement? Also, I've tried this with and without SP1.

Question 2: I'm using Windows Server 2008 as a storage and print server. I've toyed a bit with the virtualization features but I'm looking to see if there are features that might be useful outside a true-server environment for my setup.

(all software licenses are legitimate, piracy is bad, m'kay)

What's in a "File Server"?

danbeckmann — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:43:21 -0800

ITGeekFilter: My office needs a new (Windows) file server. My boss is kinda cheap (and won't give me a budget); why do "File Servers" sold as such cost so much? Unfortunately, we have to stick with Windows due to some lightweight license management programs. Right now we're running an old Dell desktop with WinXP Pro (on a Celeron 2.4GHz and 256MB RAM) , and two 250GB hard drives that are nearing capacity. There are only six users on our network, and I think that our system runs really slowly. One problem is the software backup that is mirroring files from one hard drive to another - it runs daily and takes about 12h. (This is the first thing that has to go.) I'd like to add some sort of RAID implementation to improve speed (of backups and serving), but have a couple of questions:

1) Why are new file servers sold as such so powerful and expensive? Even the Dell machines that are billed to only serve flat files have a Quad-Core Xeon processor...

2) Are standalone NAS devices worth their salt? Even if I can find one with RAID?

3) Would it be worthwhile to find a RAID controller that will work in our current box and put more drives in it?

4) How is Windows Storage Server better?

See, I told you Macs and PCs don't play nice!

joshrholloway — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:51:27 -0800

I'm having a weird Final Cut Pro issue relating to projects interacting with local and remote media files with authentication on server login. (I know that probably didn't make much sense, but this is kind of an emergency issue so I'm frantic. I'll try to give all the details here in the post.)

So the company I work for has a couple of video editors in our marketing department who use Final Cut Studio 2 for editing. We're using the latest versions of all the Pro apps and QuickTime. Here comes the weird issue:

Our two editors, let's call them Jack and Jill, are working on different projects all the time. These are pretty typical video projects incorporating video, audio, text, pictures, etc. You know the drill. These project files are located locally on Jack and Jill's Macs, and the media files for the projects are located on a combination of their local hard drives and Windows Server 2003 file shares in the building using Active Directory credentials for login authentication.

So Jack is the primary video editor, and he's having a problem with his projects. When he's got the servers open and logged in using his own AD credentials, the projects will not open. It gives him the error message, "This project is unreadable or may be too new for this version of Final Cut Pro." The weird part comes in here: when he does the exact same thing and the only difference is that he is logged into the file servers with Jill's credentials, the projects open just fine. Again, the projects are saved locally, not on the servers.

We discovered this evening that Jack did not have proper permissions on some of the locations on the servers where media files were, so the permissions are being changed overnight and we are going to try again in the morning. I just need to know what's going to happen next. It seems to me that if he was logged into the file servers, even if he did not have permissions to all the files, the project would open just fine but would have offline media rather than not opening at all. Is this right?

Again, I'm pretty frantic right now because he's in the middle of a big project that has to be done tomorrow and we just made the change requiring Mac users to log in with AD credentials, so if giving him full permissions on the server doesn't work, I honestly don't know what to do next. Any suggestions?

LAMP/Windows Comparisons

kirkaracha — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:27:41 -0800

I'm looking for good, neutral, non-dogmatic comparisons of LAMP and Windows for building and hosting database-backed web applications. Comparisons of cost, security, stability, and maintenance would be especially helpful.

Batch image compression on Windows Server?

bloodniece — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:02:59 -0800

Can anyone recommend a small/lightweight image compression program that can run on Windows Server 2003? Thanks We are archiving large amounts of jpeg and tiff files but want to leave behind lower resolution reference images. Is there a program that you can say, right click over a folder and compress the entire contents of said folder?

What can I do with Windows 2K3 and old hardware?

Ziggy Zaga — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:40:24 -0800

I've got a copy of Windows Server 2003 and a bunch of old computers. What are some things I can do with it? I've got a copy of Windows Server 2003 and a bunch of old computers. I am also taking some courses in Server 2K3 administration, but I'm not really getting a feel for what I can *do* with 2K3 besides setting up Active Directory, DNS and DHCP. I can get a client to join a domain, but as it stands it's pointless since the domain provides no additional functionality to the client-- just slows down logging in.

What are some ways in which 2K3 is deployed in an enterprise environment? I'd appreciate some example setups, projects or scenarios to try to emulate so I can get a feel for what I might expect if I did this for a living.

Thanks!

Authentication across Windows, Linux, and Mac

remi — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:22:57 -0800

How do you use a single authentication system for different kind of servers, systems, and workstations? We're a small Web development business of less than 20 employees. Currently, we have three local servers:

Server A, using Windows Server 2003, is the "main" server for putting all of our document (including financial data) and most of our projects. For development and testing, we also host Web sites there which require a Windows server, ASP and MS SQL. It's also our main DHCP and DNS server.

Server B, Fedora Core 6, is mainly for hosting projects requiring Linux, PHP or ColdFusion, and MySQL. It's the backup DHCP and DNS server.

Server C, Windows Sever 2003 Web Edition, is for hosting projects requiring ColdFusion and Windows.

We have various kinds of workstations at the office: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mac OS X 10.4.

Our biggest annoyance at the moment is authentication. Every employee has a different account for everything. Windows file shares, Linux file shares, Linux shell accounts, MySQL, MS SQL...

Server A already has Active Directory set up, though I'm not too familiar with it. (I'm more of a Linux system administrator.) I tried some ways to combine all one employee's accounts together, but it just won't work. One of the ways I tried was to set up PAM on server B to use LDAP or other mechanisms supposedly supported by the server A, but it doesn't work.

Now, I'm wondering, are there any methods to make the authentication process of every service work together?

I'm not even sure where to start to set this all up. Any suggestions will be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

What will happen if I set up Windows Home Server with all of my existing external drives?

jbiz — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:51:36 -0800

What will happen if I set up Windows Home Server with all of my existing external drives? I currently have several external USB drives. Over the past couple of years, I've been using two of them as the primary drives, holding different kinds of data. Then I have another 2 that serve as backups of the primaries that I would manually populate on a regular basis using robocopy.

If I were to install Windows Home Server and plug all of these drives in, what would happen? Would it create the big "storage cloud" I've been hearing about automatically, essentially creating one huge file share with software RAID? Or would the drives have to be reformatted in the process?

What would be the best way to go about setting this up? I want to use WHS to create my home network storage/backup solution but I don't want to lose any of the data that's already on my existing drives.

Thanks!

Possible uses for idle XP box

Hat Maui — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:10:22 -0800

What are some things I could do with an old XP box? I just got a new iMac and I'm left wondering if there would be any useful purpose to which I could put my four-year-old XP Dell to... or should I just scrap it?

It's a 2.4 gig Celeron with 700 megs of ram, a dvd and cd drive, and I have two external hard drives for it, plus a monitor (that i'll now likely use with the mac). Oh, and a 40 gig internal.

It'd be too slow to use it as a dedicated media streaming box over wifi, right? (at least, for video anyway).

Any other thoughts as to what use I could put it to?

Best OS for these requirements.

DJWeezy — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:45:07 -0800

Best *nix distro for SSH, RDC, router and print server. Or i could use windows if that would satisfy the conditions. What is the best OS that will be good for using as a router, SSH machine, and print server? I recently purchased a server closet on wheels for my dorm room. I also got a new case for my computer to make it rack mountable. Now i am going to be buying a mediocre 1U rack server in order to satisfy some of my other needs. I would like to know what the hive-mind would recommend for such a use. It will be on nearly 24-7, needs to have SSH, be able to launch a RDC connection to other computer once in SSH, router, and would work for a password protected print server.

Wow now that i write it out that sounds like alot of qualifications. I am kind of a nix n00b so any step by step tutorials for this would be great.

Windows network permission issues (access denied)

ijoyner — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:39:58 -0800

Serverfilter: My office is in the process of migrating to Windows Server 2003 for Fileserving. We constantly have issues with newly created files. Whenever they are placed on the server by a user, the immediately lose rights to do anything with the file. All other users attempting to access the files are also denied. This is just beyond frustrating. Any ideas what is happening and how to fix it? We already have the domain set up with all the users on it as well as the fileserver added to the domain. We added the domain users with share level and file level access. They are able to access files we placed on there that were restored from backup from the old server. When people create a file or save a file to the server, then close it and attempt to open it again, Windows doesn't know who the owner of the file is, and thus disables access for everyone. We have to go onto the local drive of the server just to get the permissions back to where it knows who the owner is.

We think it may have something to do with the inheritance of permissions across shares. Any help would be greatly appreciated.