Disclaimer: this post is more for my own recollection than anything else! When it comes to Linux, I’m an amateur and everything I do from the simplest thing upwards is copy-and-paste from much more informed bloggers and websites! My home server is running Ubuntu Linux 10.10 – access is via an SSH client only. I run an NFS file server for my home network, which stores my Music and Video for the network, and is running an iTunes server.

Recently I installed and configured a client’s new ESXi host, they’re a small company and only require a single host. The host in question was an IBM x3650 M3, an excellent workhorse for virtualisation and one of 5 or 6 of the same model that I’ve installed in the last year. In addition to the onboard Broadcom Dual Gigabit NIC, we always install at least a second Intel PCIx Dual Gigabit card for resilience/redundancy/performance.

So here we go, my very first tech blog… so what on earth do I start with? Given I am unlikely to have any profound revelations I shall simply focus on what I have discovered as useful and helpful on my travels! First up then… I have been asked on many occasions by individuals and SMEs should they opt for a brand such as HP over Dell or vice versa… as ever my default response is a brief needs analysis.

Not as easy as it seems!

If you’ve been here before, you may have noticed a couple of changes – the theme and name of this blog for example, and hopefully you’ve been redirected to a new URL! There are a couple of reasons for the changes, all of which are aimed at increasing the presence and visitor numbers on this site: Branding. Whether I like it or not, “McGeown” is not easy to spell or remember so I wanted to move away from it as an identity.

Recently I needed to report on the ActiveSync devices that were attached to our Exchange 2010 organisation, and which users they were accessing, and then export them to a CSV file. This is the script: $ActiveSyncDevices = @() ForEach ($Mailbox in Get-Mailbox –Server MBX01) { Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics -Mailbox $Mailbox.Identity –ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select DeviceFriendlyName, Devicetype, DeviceUserAgent | ForEach-Object { $_ | Add-Member –MemberType NoteProperty -Name "MailboxIdentity" -value $Mailbox $ActiveSyncDevices += $_ } } $ActiveSyncDevices | Export-csv c:\Path\To\File.

I can’t plead ignorance: I should know better! For years I have preached to users about the importance of strong passwords, regular password changes and non-proliferation of the same password, yet I’ve fallen foul of 2 of my own rules. My password is strong - 13 characters, random alpha-numeric, upper and lower case and including special characters - but has been re-used in a few places, and hasn’t been changed in a (long) while.

Getting a SCOM 2007 R2 SCOM agent on TMG is a useful way of monitoring TMG, especially with the SCOM TMG Management Pack – it’s not exactly “out-of-the-box” functionality though, with many sources I’ve read simply stating that it can’t be done. There are some half-working solutions I’ve seen, but nothing that worked for me. The process involves simply opening the correct ports and protocols between the TMG servers and the SCOM management servers, which after a few attempts watching the live logs, I found.

SCOM 2007 R2’s Audit Collection Services (ACS from now on) is very useful for meeting compliance (e.g. Sarbanes Oxley) and security audit requirements – working with financial companies often requires such compliance. It’s pretty simple to install in a domain environment – you run the installer to create a collection server, then activate the forwarder on the client servers. When it comes to servers you really want to audit, those that are by definition more at risk from security breach because they are publicly accessible, it’s not so straightforward.

Today I was configuring a new FTP server based on IIS7 (well, 7.5 technically as it’s a Server 2008 R2 host), and I wanted an easy way to add and remove allowed IP addresses based on either an XML config file or a CSV import. Customers’ IP addresses are added or removed regularly, but I didn’t want to have to update their details twice, once on the server and once in the documents.