Why have I never heard of this before?! It’s called Spotlight on Windows from Quest Software, it’s free, and it’s worth more like a million bucks or so. If you manage a Windows server, or servers, please install and try this software now. I’ve never before seen a free–and easy-to-install–tool that gives such immediate visual, […]

This past Tuesday, I installed ISA 2004 Service Pack 3. I’ve got a recent configuration backup from the last time I had some SSL certificate issues (that was fun enough I think I’ve blocked it out too much to blog about it!), so I figured trying it out couldn’t hurt, and it had a lot […]

Well, I got a reply from the DiskWarrior folks I mentioned on Saturday and it turns out you must run it while logged in as an administrative user, simply elevating privileges at the usual prompt is not enough (a useful warning or something more descriptive would seem more in line for, you know, a Mac […]

Last night, Friday evening at about four thirty to be precise, I get the call that a user has attempted to restart the Mac “server” (running OS X 10.4 but attached to an external RAID5 array and used as a file server) by doing a hard power cycle of the external SCSI RAID array. While […]

Mike Mayfield over at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church IT (“pvcbit”) posted a question about VPN remote access permissions. I wrote a blog post in March with a little bit of information on this relating to the Microsoft ISA 2004 firewall, but we’re actually using a combination of services for remote access right now (I mentioned […]

I’ve returned from a much-needed two-week vacation! But I decided to test out the recommendation from some security professionals (I can’t find the original posts right now) that suggest that when you leave the office, you don’t tell the general public that fact if at all possible. No out of office email, no giveaway voicemail […]

I posted the DNS resolution issue I encountered with the LAMP Server appliance from VirtualAppliances.net on their support forums. They’ve responded that they have yet to reproduce the issue but are working on it. I’m looking forward to getting this working, and I’ve also requested a quote from them to see what a custom appliance […]

Our server room’s battery backup consists of a couple of off-the-shelf APC battery backup units, running an ever-expanding collection of servers (about six, depending on what you term a “server”).  Not the optimal solution, but a cost-effective one that was good enough when the server count was lower. It’s been so good, in fact, that […]

The SANS Internet Storm Center has been tracking a 0-day exploit out there compromising Windows DNS servers that are live on the Internet. I’d say this is a good reason to use Linux for such services, but that’s an argument for another day; there have certainly been DNS exploits on Linux DNS server software as […]

Most people think that when they use traditional VPN technologies, such as PPTP, L2TP, and/or IPSec, that they are opening their network to a full, unfiltered connection from a computer, which is especially bad for a home computer, with unknown anti-virus and anti-spyware status, connected to a work network. This is true. However, with a […]