Grad student needs volunteers for short survey.

Found this on Linked in.   Thought I would help out.


“Hello all. I am a Ph.D. student at Capella University. My specialization is IT Management. I am in the last phase of my dissertation and seeking volunteers in North America to participate in an online survey.

The subject of the survey is the level of effort for the management, administration, maintenance, and/or security of Network Servers. If you are a technical professional familiar with the efforts required to keep network servers going on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, please take my survey. This includes technicians, administrators, managers and executives.”

Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/czf9yj


Thanks,


Steve

Creating a scheduled task with multiple actions using command line in Windows server 2008

I had the need to create a scheduled task on a Windows Server 2008 server that executed mutiple actions.   For those who haven’t worked with Windows Server 2008 new task scheduler, there are links listed below to help with that.  My post assumes you know about task scheduler and want to go one step further and automate creating using the command prompt.


To get started, on a single machine.  Create the scheduled task you want to run, this would include all the necessary actions. 



Create multiple actions.



Export the scheduled task



Here is the output from the export step.  Notice at the bottom it has the EXEC command.   


<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-16″?>
<Task version=”1.2″ xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/windows/2004/02/mit/task“>
  <RegistrationInfo>
    <Date>2009-03-20T05:18:33.8972515</Date>
    <Author>DomainNameUserName</Author>
  </RegistrationInfo>
  <Triggers>
    <CalendarTrigger>
      <StartBoundary>2009-03-20T05:16:04.8833515</StartBoundary>
      <Enabled>true</Enabled>
      <ScheduleByDay>
        <DaysInterval>1</DaysInterval>
      </ScheduleByDay>
    </CalendarTrigger>
  </Triggers>
  <Principals>
    <Principal id=”Author”>
      <UserId>DomainNameUserName</UserId>
      <LogonType>Password</LogonType>
      <RunLevel>LeastPrivilege</RunLevel>
    </Principal>
  </Principals>
  <Settings>
    <IdleSettings>
      <Duration>PT10M</Duration>
      <WaitTimeout>PT1H</WaitTimeout>
      <StopOnIdleEnd>true</StopOnIdleEnd>
      <RestartOnIdle>false</RestartOnIdle>
    </IdleSettings>
    <MultipleInstancesPolicy>IgnoreNew</MultipleInstancesPolicy>
    <DisallowStartIfOnBatteries>true</DisallowStartIfOnBatteries>
    <StopIfGoingOnBatteries>true</StopIfGoingOnBatteries>
    <AllowHardTerminate>true</AllowHardTerminate>
    <StartWhenAvailable>false</StartWhenAvailable>
    <RunOnlyIfNetworkAvailable>false</RunOnlyIfNetworkAvailable>
    <AllowStartOnDemand>true</AllowStartOnDemand>
    <Enabled>true</Enabled>
    <Hidden>false</Hidden>
    <RunOnlyIfIdle>false</RunOnlyIfIdle>
    <WakeToRun>false</WakeToRun>
    <ExecutionTimeLimit>P3D</ExecutionTimeLimit>
    <Priority>7</Priority>
  </Settings>
  <Actions Context=”Author”>
    <Exec>
      <Command>c:windowssystem32notepad.exe</Command>
    </Exec>
    <Exec>
      <Command>C:WindowsSystem32WindowsPowerShellv1.0powershell.exe</Command>
      <Arguments>\FileServerFileSharetest.ps1</Arguments>
    </Exec>
  </Actions>
</Task>


To automate creation, run from the command prompt.  For my testing, I created the task under one name and when I used the command prompt, I gave the TN (task name) property something else so I could have both jobs on my test box.


C:WindowsSystem32schtasks /create /tn “RunSomeTaskWith2Actions” /RU DomainNameUsername /RP Password1 /xml \FileServerFileShareExportedFile.xml


PS – To create the task on several machines, you could use a powershell script or something to call WMI (win32_process) to create everywhere.  With a little scripting and this, the task could be automated.  I hope this is helpful. 


 Additional resources




  • http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Working-Windows-Server-2008-Task-Scheduler-Part1.html


  • http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Working-Windows-Server-2008-Task-Scheduler-Part2.html






  • http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2008/06/24/task-scheduler-changes-in-windows-vista-and-windows-server-2008-part-one.aspx


  • http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2008/10/10/task-scheduler-changes-in-windows-vista-and-windows-server-2008-part-two.aspx


  • http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2009/03/17/task-scheduler-changes-in-windows-vista-and-windows-server-2008-part-three.aspx

Cheers,


Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP – IIS

Enuf said…..IIS Team does it again! More updates, More cool stuff.

Per an annoucement by Mai-lan 

“Today, at the 2009 MIX conference in Las Vegas, the IIS team announced the release of 10 new extensions and launched a new end-to-end experience for discovering and installing community applications on IIS.This wave of IIS extensions span new functionality in request processing, server management, site/app management and discovery of community applications. You can check out each extension or get the Web Platform Installer to install all of them.

·         Application Request Router (ARR) 2.0 beta, with disk cache and cache proxy support for edge configurations the IIS HTTP load balancer. ARR can be used as a complement to existing hardware load balancers, or as a standalone proxy.

·         FTP 7.5 RTW, with extensibility  support for developers who want to customize this IIS7 FTP publishing service.

·         WebDav 7.5 RTW, with support for both shared and exclusive locks to prevent lost updates due to overwrites.

·         Advanced Logging beta for monitoring and measuring media and Web browsing experiences, rich and flexible data collection, client-side logging and real-time logging capabilities.

·         Administration Pack for IIS7 RTW, with IIS Manager support for management of FastCGI, Request Filtering, ASP.NET authorization and custom error settings, and HTTP request filtering, and Configuration Editor for easier config management.

·         IIS Snap-in for Windows PowerShell RTW, for management of the IIS configuration system through Windows PowerShell, along with 60 cmdlets for common management tasks in Powershell.

·         Web Deployment Tool RC, which is a platform for Web deployment of IIS servers and applications that run on servers. This extension provides a foundation for administrators who want to synchronize and migrate Web servers in a web farm. Developers use Web Deployment Tool to deploy applications to a server or integrate with the new Windows Web Application Gallery.

·         Database Manager RC, providing Web database management support for local and remote databases from within IIS Manager.

·         Media Services 3.0 beta, which introduces the world to live streaming on IIS with multiple extensions, including Smooth Streaming and Advanced Logging. Our media extensions bring high quality media delivery to IIS customers as well as CDNs like Akamai.

·         Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta, which installs community applications and its dependencies on Windows computers. See Introducing the Web Platform Installer for more details.

In addition, we have launched the Windows Web Application Gallery, a destination for users to discover and install community applications that deploy and run well on IIS. See Introducing the Windows Web Application Gallery for more information. We launched with Web Deployment Tool integration for a great set of partners including WordPress, Acquai Drupal, Gallery 2, SilverStripe, DotNetNuke, SubText, DasBlog, Umbarco, ScrewTurn and BlogEngine.NET. We also have updated our server Web sites with new www.iis.net content for PHP support on IIS and media, as well as a new section in Learn that talks about the Web Application Gallery and Web Platform Installer. You should check out the brand new www.microsoft.com/web site, which has been totally overhauled, and has a new IIS server Web page.”


Thanks IIS Team, keep up the great work.


Steve Schofield

Got an hour to burn? – Add Server Core R2 to a domain and Install IIS 7

I’m on my way to the 2009 MVP summit, I had a two hour layover in Detroit.   Considering I forgot to bring a book to read, I thought I would geek a little.  Within 40 minutes, I had a Server Core box configured with IIS, added to my domain and managing it remotely.   Pretty darn cool I must say’  I pulled the commands from a few posts including a post by Ruslan how to install IIS on a Server Core on R2.  On my laptop, I have VM Workstation and a small network.  I installed a loopback adapter and all VM’s use this as their network adapter.   My first VM I installed w2k8 r2 full version, then installed an additional network adapter inside VMWare workstation.  I installed RRAS and promoted to a domain controller.  This allows any additional VM’s to route the traffic outbound.  I’ve done the same thing with Virtual PC 2007, this time around I gave vmware workstation a try.  Both seem to be about the same. ?


Here are the commands I used along with the links.



Setup your network
netsh interface ipv4 set address name=”Local Area Connection” source=static address=192.168.167.20 mask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.167.2


Set a DNS Server
netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name=”Local Area Connection” address=192.168.167.2


Change machine name


hostname


netdom renamecomputer oldBoxname /NewName:NewBoxName


Join the computer to domain
//* means you’ll be prompted for the password
//netdom join /? will show all commands
netdom join Newcomputername /domain:SteveSchofield.local /Userd:administrator /passwordd:*


//To perform basic and default installation of IIS on Server Core run the following command:
//Working with ocsetup seems to be case sensative, so be aware. ?
start /w ocsetup IIS-WebServerRole


//Installing ASP.NET
start /w ocsetup WAS-NetFxEnvironment
start /w ocsetup IIS-ISAPIExtensions
start /w ocsetup IIS-ISAPIFilter
start /w ocsetup IIS-NetFxExtensibility
start /w ocsetup IIS-ASPNET


Installing PowerShell and IIS snap-in
start /w ocsetup MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell
windowssystem32WindowsPowerShellv1.0powershell.exe


After running this command you should see a PowerShell prompt. Type the following to import IIS snapin:
import-module WebAdministration


After that you can get the list of available IIS cmdlets by typing
get-command –pssnapin WebAdministration


//Logout of Powershell command shell othewise the commands below failed. 
//I didn’t figure out the syntax to do the Management service install inside Powershell
Type exit


Install and enabling IIS Remote Management


start /w ocsetup IIS-ManagementService
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWebManagementServer /v EnableRemoteManagement /t REG_DWORD /d 1


//Start Management Service.
net start wmsvc


//Go to another machine and manage IIS
//Article how to use IIS manager to connect remotely

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/158/remote-administration-for-iis-manager/

//Browse to ensure IIS is working
Create a test asp.net page on the Server Core box


//Inside Server Core, type Notepad
Add


<html>
 <body>
  <h1>Hello world from Server Core R2</h1>
 </body>
</html>


This is darn cool!  Running ASP.NET on Server Core R2 and managing the Website remotely


Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP

Linksys wireless access point information

I was trying to reset my linksys access point security settings.   When I used the CD that came with the Access Point, I got this error. “the setup utility was unable to locate a wireless-g access point”.  


For future reference.


The default ip address was 192.168.1.245


Leave username blank


Password admin


At worst case, reset the unit to get it back to the default settings.