How do you troubleshoot this on your local workstation?  Well, there is a very useful command that can accomplish leaps and bounds with both forward and reverse DNS look ups.  By using the ipconfig command with a command line switch, we can effectively clear out our stale DNS cache that exists on our machine.  If you have an IP address that you KNOW for sure is supposed to link to a specific name and it doesn’t, you can flush your DNS cache to see if this resolves the issue.

By issuing the above command, ipconfig /flushdns we are telling our computer to effectively flush out any DNS entries it may have and then get a fresh copy of what your DNS server thinks the hosts should resolve to.  This way, if something has changed on the server side, you will be sure to get the latest host names from the server instead of from your local machine, which could be stale.

To test and make sure things are resolving correctly, we can issue the trusty ping command with a special switch to test our reverse lookup.

The ping -a %ip% command is the command we can use to test our reverse DNS resolver.  You should receive the correct host name back if your DNS is pulling the correct settings.

System Administrators

On a DNS server, sometimes what can also happen is that reverse DNS entries can become stale and incorrect entries or many entries for one IP address can sometimes pile up.  In Microsoft’s DNS server, you can check your reverse DNS entries to verify you only have one host name for the particular IP address in question.  If not, you have stale entries that may be causing problems with clients who are resolving IP addresses to hostnames.

New Home screen launch interface

The new home screen looks really nice with a sliding panel that gives you a peek at your most current notes.  You have an overall look at what you can do with the app from this start screen as well as a summary of your notes, notebooks, tags, and places for a quick and easy overview.

The notes section:

You have a couple of options when it comes to the view of the notes layout – snippet and list view.  Both are nice and it is very easy to get to and select this option so you can quickly change back and forth depending on your needs.

The sorting features are also very nice since you can sort by a wide range of values here show below.  The default view of course is the “Date updated.”

The search features are also very handy.  Below is a screenshot of the “advanced search” window that allows searching by quite a number of search values based on notebooks, tags, location, dates, to-do lists, and other.

Evernote continues to grow and evolve into an even better mobile application for keeping up with things.  In this day and age, as busy as our lives can be, Evernote really helps us out by providing a stunningly useful and easy to use application that can really help to make one’s life much more manageable!

Simply select Windows Server Backup Features

After the backup tools are installed, we can launch and proceed with the backup.  Simply type wbadmin.msc at the run/search box.

VSS settings are very important as they either clear the archive bit or not.  If you select the full backup it clears the archive bit which says to Windows, “these files have been backed up already and haven’t changed since the last backup.”

We are backing up to a remote shared folder which will store the backup on another location across the network.  Be aware that this option overrides itself if you back to the same network location more than once.

Hit next and enter in your server location information and proceed forward.

After you hit Next on the screen upon entering your server location, you will be taken to a Confirmation dialog box to review what you are about to do.  Simply hit Finish when you are ready to proceed and the backup of the files should take place.

There are a myriad of plugins out there that can create dynamic content sliders on your site for free.  One of the plugins that we have used a lot and really like that is easy and straightforward to setup for the most part is Dynamic Content Gallery by Studiograsshopper.

We really like this plugin because it gives you a wide range of features and the support with the site and forums is really good.  With other plugins it seems we found that they did a lot of what you want really well, but there was just one nagging little feature or thing you wanted the plugin to do that it just didn’t do or it was so complex to setup, it wasn’t worth it.  DCG is straightforward and if you have any experience with setting up other plugins and features within your blog, you shouldn’t have any problems with setting up DCG.

Installation

Again this is a very straightforward install that utilizes the normal procedures for plugin installation.  Simply download the plugin with a computer and unzip, or utilize the builtin WordPress plugin tool to add the plugin to your plugins that way and activate it.

After activating the plugin, you will find that it resides under Settings in your WordPress dashboard.

As you can see in the screenshot below, you have a ton of tabs/features with this plugin.  Just about anything and everything that you would want to customize is possible here.

There are three options to select in determining how your content is pulled and from where.  As you can see below, we have selected the ID Method, which means we are pulling content from specific posts/pages, however you can also pull from a single category or multiple categories if you like.

After you setup your pull method for content, you may ask, where do I actually set the image for the post or page?  The following screenshot shows the added input boxes in your posts/pages that are added after you activate the plugin:

If you note above, the plugin is telling us that we have the “Auto” feature turned on.  This is probably what most will want as this will pull the first image attachment associated with the post which will ensure that you will always have an image on a post/page if you have one included.  However, note that this may cause you issues if you don’t understand what is going on with this setting and the plugin is not displaying the image that you think it should.  Even if you have a URL specified for an image set in the box, the “auto” feature will still use the first image attached, overriding that URL.  Take a look at the setup of this setting below:

You may want to select the “full URL” setting if you do not wish the plugin to simply choose the first image attached.  However, there is a workaround using another plugin if you want to leave this setting the way it is and for a few pages simply use a specific image.  You can use the unattach plugin to detach the image from the post.  The image will still be there, but the WordPress backend will no longer use it as the first image if you do not want it to.  The unattach plugin is a great plugin in its own right.  Definitely another one to have in the bag of WordPress tricks.
Final Thoughts

If you are looking for a great plugin to add content slider functionality to your site, this is a great plugin that will leave most very satisfied.  It is easy to install, setup, and configure.  The support found on the developer site also is very good and you can find most of what you are looking for there if you run into issues.

Android and Apple certainly have market domination right now and Android in our opinion right now has that certain “cool” factor in the market.  It has been said that if Apple and Android were Star Wars characters, then Apple would be the Jedi and Android would be the Sith Lords.  There is something about Android that gives you that cool feeling and end users perceive that in thinking about their new cool phones.  Apple products are great, but having an iPhone or iPad isn’t exactly the cool thing that everyone wants any more.  It will be interesting to see though how well Apple continues to push the envelope as they have done before and how well they keep their current market share and beloved fans.

Microsoft’s real advantage comes from the market share of desktop users they currently hold.  Practically everyone has used and is familiar with Windows when it comes to using a computer.  That same familiarity and comfort will appeal to many users who may be looking to jump into the tablet market.  However, one of the big hurdles with Windows 8 ARM releases or those designed for ARM processor equipped tablets is software compatibility.  The problem will be for the myriad of end users who will be confused at the different offerings and wonder why their software they recently bought for their desktop computer at home won’t load on the new ARM tablet they just purchased.

Recent rumors and blogs have lit up about the fact that Microsoft is tightly controlling releases of ARM based tablets and will tightly limit just who is manufacturing and releasing these versions.  These details and compatibility issues could spell trouble for Microsoft due to the confusion among end users.  The point can be made though that Apple really has the same issue between full blown Mac OS and its IOS software that runs on its mobile devices including iPhones and iPads.  This very real compatibility issue so far hasn’t stunted the sale of their mobile devices.  The problem for Microsoft is though they have a ton more end users running their desktop software than Apple does.  So the possibilities for end user problems is much greater than it is for Apple.

Even with the above mentioned issues that Windows 8 will need to overcome, its release is going to mark an exciting turn of events for Microsoft who actually has the real possibility of entering into the tablet market in a very successful way.  Time will tell just how successful they can be and whether or not the consumer base will accept their entry into new territory.

Taking a look at the link below is a good place to start with TLS and securing transport servers:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb430764.aspx

A good article on understanding TLS certificates and looking at the terminology and configuration with these:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998840.aspx

However, there comes a point where an administrator must look to other possibilities when TLS just isn’t functioning correctly and a properly functioning certificate is verified.

There are a couple of areas that we want to mention in this post that could be a possibility, however, they exist in very specific environment setups.

Watchguard Firewalls

There is a known issue with Watchguard Firewall products that are caused by setting up SMTP proxy’s instead of SMTP filters.  By default Watchguard configures the SMTP services by using these proxy setups instead of filters.  Take a look at the post below:

http://support.google.com/postini/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138468

Untangle UTM

In working in a client environment recently we discovered an environment where TLS was not working for the client.  In digging a little deeper into their firewall and UTM setup, we found that the default value under the Untangle >> Config >> System >> Protocol settings was set to not allow TLS encryption.  The screenshot below is after we changed the setting.  After changing the setting in Untangle, the TLS issues were resolved!

A really great website for system administrators and mail administrators to bookmark if they don’t have it bookmarked already is mxtoolbox.com.  Their free web tools are great for checking several of the big ticket items when it comes to the health of your mail server(s) from the outside in.  You can check your MX records, blacklists, Reverse DNS, Whois, and many other items.  If you suspect you are having problems with DNS or your MX configuration, this is a great place to verify that you have issues in those areas.

There are a lot of really good DNS services available out there.  One of the companies out there that will probably hit on a web search for outsourced DNS services is DNS Made Easy who can be found at http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com.  Recently, in working with a client who migrated their internal DNS services to DNS Made Easy, we were able firsthand to experience the ease and usability of their account creation and migration tools for businesses.

The account creation process was very easy and straightforward as you simply fill out the appropriate information in the forms, and confirm email address and contact information as is the standard for most account creation processes these days.

After creating the account, the user is brought to their web management portal and configuration forms.  Overall, we found the DNS records creation forms to be easy to use and intuitive.  There were a couple of small quirks to the panel in creating certain types of records that were very minor but yielded a support request and was answered VERY quickly as web forms go.  Within literally half an hour we had an email response back from a technician with the solution to our issue.

Planning is essential in making sure you have a smooth transition from an internal DNS solution to a hosted solution such as DNS Made Easy.  The service that is provided with DME starts out as a 30 day trial service.  This allows you to have enough time to create records and test name resolution flow so that all problems can be worked out before hand.  You will want to make sure you have all records created before you make the cut-over to the hosted DNS solution.  This makes the transition seamless to end users.  It would also be a good idea to leave existing internal name servers in place so that any cached server values still inbound to the internal servers will be able to answer those requests.  After you make sure that you no longer have any queries destined for those internal servers, then you can essentially pull the plug and the transition is complete.

We won’t go over all of the features or how-to’s of creating the records as DNS Made Easy has a really great tutorials section for account holders which takes them through in video or written form how to create and manage their DNS records.

One of the great features that the DNS Made Easy provided with their DNS management web tools is the ability to import your DNS records to your new hosted DNS zone.

This option is especially helpful if you have hundreds of DNS records that need to be created in the hosted DNS side.

Reverse DNS

Along with the standard DNS lookup zones, you can also have your reverse DNS or PTR records housed in your hosted DNS account.  The reverse DNS zones are just a tad more tricky to setup than the forward lookup zones.  The reason for this is that you have to create the zone exactly as the zone has been delegated to you from your ISP.  The first thing you need to do is contact your ISP and make sure they will delegate your reverse zone to you as some do not normally do this if you don’t have a full class C network registered.  However, this isn’t always the case.

Once you establish that the ISP is willing to do this, they will normally put in the change request for you and then process the change on their DNS servers.  They may send you a copy of the zone file they have created.  If they don’t, then you might want to ask for this as it is extremely helpful in crating the correct zone on your hosted DNS side.  The zone file may look similar to this:

nslookup

> server ns1.swbell.net

Default server: ns1.swbell.net

Address: someip=ns

> someip.in-addr.arpa

Server:         ns1.swbell.net

Address:        someip#53

 Non-authoritative answer:

*** Can’t find zone: no answer 

Authoritative answers can be found from:

yourip.in-addr.arpa nameserver = someserver.dnsmadeeasy.com.

You would then create your reverse lookup zone as a “domain” in the control panel of DNS Made Easy.  Your associated PTR records would be created here.

Final Thoughts

It was a great experience working with DNS Made Easy and they have certainly established themselves in our experience as being a very worthy company to house a hosted DNS service.  The web tools that are provided are straightforward and easy to use and the import function for your current DNS records makes creating all existing records in your current DNS environment on the hosted side extremely easy.  Infrastructure services are definitely headed to the cloud and having core services such as DNS hosted outside of the environment makes life easier for administrators so we ca concentrate on those other issues that we have to deal with.

the UI of the new 12.04 LTS distro is quite appealing to the eyes and works with most current video card models and drivers.  Cloud storage is also tightly integrated into the core of this release with Ubuntu One being baked in with a 5GB account for free to Ubuntu users.

Installing Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop is very straightforward and is a task which most users with any installation experience will be comfortable with.

Setup asks you what you want to do – “Try Ubuntu” or “Install Ubuntu”

After selecting your install method, you will see a prerequisites check performed and the option to select to download updates as well as install some third party plugins during the installation process itself.

You will be asked to select what type of action you want to perform on the disk – erase or doing something else.

You will see the selected disk properties shown and the partitioning scheme that will be used

Time zone selection

Keyboard layout

The screen below allows you to name the computer and setup your user for installation purposes.

The installation begins and setup begins copying files

After files are copied and the installation has completed, you will be asked to restart the computer

You are now ready to login to the Ubuntu desktop!

Final Thoughts

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is a great version of Linux which will fit the bill for most users who are either novice Linux users or a more experienced to advanced user who wants a highly configurable distro for more intensive and customized use.  Only time will tell just what direction Canonical will take this distro including where Unity desktop will fit into the picture in the future.

Creating a new mailbox in Powershell – Live

$Password = ConvertTo-SecureString ‘1234’ -AsPlainText -Force

new-mailbox -Name “Some User” -Password $Password -WindowsLiveID someuser150@institution.edu

-ResetPasswordOnNextLogon 1 -FirstName Some -LastName User –DisplayName “Some User”

Resetting a user’s password:
Set-Mailbox someuser@someinstitution.com -Password (ConvertTo-SecureString -String ‘Pa$$word1′ -AsPlainText -Force) -ResetPasswordOnNextLogon $true

Creating a Mailuser

Enabling a mailuser

Evict an unmanaged Windows Live ID:

New-Mailbox -Name “SomeUser” -WindowsLiveID someuser@institution.edu -Password (ConvertTo-SecureString -String ‘Pa$$word1′ -AsPlainText -Force) -EvictLiveId

Connect to Live Powershell

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirectiond

Hide All New Users in Live@Edu

Set-MailboxPlan GalDisabledMailboxPlan -IsDefault

Mass Updating Targetaddress ObjectAttribute in Powershell using PowerGui with Quest AD Powerpack

$searchRoot=“Your DN goes here”

Get-QADUser -SearchRoot $searchRoot | ForEach-Object ($_.samaccountname) {$email = $_.Samaccountname +”@domainsuffixgoeshere” ; Set-QADUser -ObjectAttributes @{targetAddress=$email} -Identity $_.SamAccountName}