Jean-Benoit Paux's blog

From the release of Windows Server 2008 you can choose when you install the OS between the Full or the Core version of Windows. The Core version has most of the functionnalities of the Full but lose its graphical interface (GUI).

In this particular configuration, most of Windows administrator will be lost. You can hopefully manage remotely the server using the well known MMC consoles but there are a lot of basic tasks that will require manual configuration.

If you try this savor you’ll find some included scripts to enable/disable Windows Update or Remote Desktop but that’s all.

There is however a tool named “Core Configurator” available in 2 version (2.0 for R2 and 1.1 for R1) that enable you to easily configure your Server Core.

The following can be done:

• Product Licensing
• Networking Features
• DCPromo Tool
• ISCSI Settings
• Server Roles and Features
• User and Group Permissions
• Share Creation and Deletion
• Dynamic Firewall settings
• Display | Screensaver Settings
• Add & Remove Drivers
• Proxy settings
• Windows Updates (Including WSUS)
• Multipath I/O
• Hyper-V including virtual machine thumbnails
• JoinDomain and Computer rename
• Add/remove programs
• Services
• WinRM
• Complete logging of all commands executed

There is another tool (in command line this time) named Core Configuration Console R2 (also exist for R1). It does most of the jobs (perhaps more than Core Configurator) and it’s worth having a look on it.

Keep in mind that you can also manage Server Core using:

• GPO (for Firewall settings, WSUS, Service configuration, screensaver etc.)
• Custom scripts (in PowerShell since Windows Server 2008 R2) so they can be reusable and be part of your documentation (it’s always easier to launch a script than going through multiple screens)

TrueSec, a consulting/training company in US and Sweden, well known for their experts has published a series of guides about deployment of Windows 7 using Lite Touch and Zero Touch deployment method.

These guides (in video and PDF format) show you how to deploy a PoC (Proof of Concept) from installing the environment (SCCM, SQL, MDT 2010), through capture a reference computer, deploy it afterwards, personalize images.

This is worth to look at it. It leverages the latest technologies :

• Windows 2008 R2
• SCCM 2007 R2 SP2 + WSUS
• SQL Server 2008
• MDT 2010
• Windows 7

It is from my point of view a good opportunity to discover what these products can do for you.

The link to download these guides (as a iso file) is here : http://www.deploymentcd.com/

UPDATED : both PASSED !!!

Microsoft give you the opportunity to take 2 MCITP exams :

• 71-685 : MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Support Technician, WIndows 7
• 71-686 : MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator, Windows 7

You can register to these exams on Prometric with these codes (for free):

• 71-685 : EDST7
• 71-686 : EDA7

Here are some information:

Availability

Public Registration begins: September 14, 2009

Beta exam period runs: September 21, 2009– October 16, 2009

Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately. Beta exams have limited availability and are operated under a first-come-first-served basis. Once all beta slots are filled, no additional seats will be offered.

Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although this exam may not be available in all countries (see Regional Restrictions). All testing centers will have the capability to offer this exam in its live version.

Regional Restrictions: India, Pakistan, China

The learning guides are available there :

• 71-685 : MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Support Technician, WIndows 7
• 71-686 : MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator, Windows 7

You can find some interesting resources there :

• http://learning.microsoft.com/Manager/Catalog.aspx?clang=en-US&dtype=Table&Sort=Relevancy&page=1&search=windows%207
• My post about the other Windows 7, Configuring exam

I registered for them, let see what I can do !

UPDATE : PASSED !!

Pour ceux qui comme moi aiment passer les certifications encore en béta, vous avez l’opportunité dès à présent de vous inscrire pour une certif sur Exchange Server 2010 !

J’ai déjà booké une date en septembre alors faites de n’hésitez pas et entrainez vous !

Exchange Server 2010 RC est disponible sur  MS Download Center à cette adresse http://technet.microsoft.com/fr-fr/evalcenter/dd185495.aspx

Vous trouverez de bonnes ressources à ces adresses http://technet.microsoft.com/fr-fr/evalcenter/dd185494.aspx et http://www.msteched.com/online/channels.aspx?cname=track&channel=Unified+Communications

Suivez juste le mail suivant pour plus d’informations et pour s’inscrire

You are invited to take beta exam 71-662: TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring. You were specifically chosen to participate in this beta because of the SME profile you created on the Microsoft Learning Content Development site. If you pass the beta exam, the exam credit will be added to your transcript and you will not need to take the exam in its released form. The 71-xxx identifier is used for registering for beta versions of MCP exams, when the exam is released in its final form the 70-xxx identifier is used for registration.

By participating in beta exams, you have the opportunity to provide the Microsoft Certification program with feedback about exam content, which is integral to development of exams in their released version. We depend on the contributions of experienced IT professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Microsoft certifications.

71-662: TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring counts as credit towards the following certification(s).
• MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuration
________________________________________
Availability
Registration begins: August 20, 2009
Beta exam period runs: August 31, 2009– September 14, 2009

Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately. Beta exams have limited availability and are operated under a first-come-first-served basis. Once all beta slots are filled, no additional seats will be offered. Because of the limited nature of beta exam seats, please do not blog or otherwise post this beta code until 8/24/09 to increase the likelihood that a seat will be available.

Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although this exam may not be available in all countries (see Regional Restrictions). All testing centers will have the capability to offer this exam in its live version.

Regional Restrictions: India, Pakistan, China
________________________________________
Registration Information
You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam.
Please use the following promotional code when registering for the exam: E14J
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately.

To register in North America, please call:
• Prometric: (800) 755-EXAM (800-755-3926)
Outside the U.S./Canada, please contact:
• Prometric: http://www.register.prometric.com/ClientInformation.asp

___________________________________
Test Information and Support
You are invited to take this beta exam at no charge.
You will be given four hours to complete the beta exam. Please plan accordingly.
Find exam preparation information: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-662

UPDATE : PASSED !!!

For those who like me like to take beta Microsoft exams, you have now a new opportunity with Exchange Server 2010!

I’ll take it next month, just to be sure I’m well trained.

Exchange 2010 RC is widely available on MS Download Center http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd185495.aspx

You have great resources there: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd185494.aspx and http://www.msteched.com/online/channels.aspx?cname=track&channel=Unified+Communications

Just have a look for the following mail and register (if some seats remain).

You are invited to take beta exam 71-662: TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring. You were specifically chosen to participate in this beta because of the SME profile you created on the Microsoft Learning Content Development site. If you pass the beta exam, the exam credit will be added to your transcript and you will not need to take the exam in its released form. The 71-xxx identifier is used for registering for beta versions of MCP exams, when the exam is released in its final form the 70-xxx identifier is used for registration.

By participating in beta exams, you have the opportunity to provide the Microsoft Certification program with feedback about exam content, which is integral to development of exams in their released version. We depend on the contributions of experienced IT professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Microsoft certifications.

71-662: TS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring counts as credit towards the following certification(s).
• MCTS: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuration
________________________________________
Availability
Registration begins: August 20, 2009
Beta exam period runs: August 31, 2009– September 14, 2009

Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately. Beta exams have limited availability and are operated under a first-come-first-served basis. Once all beta slots are filled, no additional seats will be offered. Because of the limited nature of beta exam seats, please do not blog or otherwise post this beta code until 8/24/09 to increase the likelihood that a seat will be available.

Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although this exam may not be available in all countries (see Regional Restrictions). All testing centers will have the capability to offer this exam in its live version.

Regional Restrictions: India, Pakistan, China
________________________________________
Registration Information
You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam.
Please use the following promotional code when registering for the exam: E14J
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately.

To register in North America, please call:
• Prometric: (800) 755-EXAM (800-755-3926)
Outside the U.S./Canada, please contact:
• Prometric: http://www.register.prometric.com/ClientInformation.asp

___________________________________
Test Information and Support
You are invited to take this beta exam at no charge.
You will be given four hours to complete the beta exam. Please plan accordingly.
Find exam preparation information: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-662

PowerShell utilise la puissance du Framework .Net et permet donc d’utiliser les classes de celui-ci avec une très grande facilité dans vos scripts.

Dans cet exemple, je vais vous montrer comment faire une résolution DNS à partir de la classe Net.Dns du Framework.

[System.Net.Dns]::GetHostentry("blog.paux.fr")

Le résultat sera (en fonction si votre entrée est un simple alias ou un vrai nom d’hôte) :

HostName                  Aliases            AddressList
--------                  -------            -----------
dedibox2.jeanb-net.com    {}                 {88.191.92.204}

On peut biensûr décorer un peu tout ça en pipant une liste de nom d’hôtes depuis un fichier, rediriger ça dans une grille via out-gridview (nouveauté PS2.0 !). (A noter que si vous voulez non pas avoir le nom d’hôte mais vraiment votre input, vous pouvez le rajouter via la commande Add-Member, testez avec et sans vous verrez).

gc .\hosts.txt |% { [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostentry($_) | Add-Member -Name Host -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $_ -PassThru } | Select Host,AddressList | out-gridview

On peut biensûr faire des résolutions inverses (IPv4 ou IPv6).

[System.Net.Dns]::GetHostentry("2001:4860:a005::68";)

La classe Dns du Framework reste sommaire, il n’est pas possible de résoudre autre chose que ça (impossible de récupérer les NS, MX, SOA, TXT etc.) mais on peut pour cela utiliser d’autres classes qui implémentent un autre resolver (ou utilisant de manière plus approfondie celui de Windows)

PowerShell uses the power of .Net Framework thus you can leverage .Net classes in your PowerShell scripts.

In this example I’ll show you how you can perform DNS lookups using the Net.Dns class :

[System.Net.Dns]::GetHostentry(“blog.paux.fr”)

The result will be (depending if your input is a A or CNAME) :

HostName                  Aliases            AddressList
--------                  -------            -----------
dedibox2.jeanb-net.com    {}                 {88.191.92.204}

You can obviously pipe a list of hostname to this command and if you need to keep the original name you can add it to the resulted object and display it in a grid (new to PS2.0 !):

gc .\hosts.txt |% { [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostentry($_) | Add-Member -Name Host -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $_ -PassThru } | Select Host,AddressList | out-gridview

You can of course do the same with an IP address (or an IPv6 address):

[System.Net.Dns]::GetHostentry("2001:4860:a005::68")

The class in .Net Framework stay basic so you can’t resolve NS, SOA, MX or TXT records for example but you can try to use other classes as this implementation of a resolver in C# or using this one (that use the internal DNS resolver of Windows)

Microsoft released last week Office 2010 Technical Preview on Connect and it is time to speak about it !

I really appreciate this new version, for a lot of reasons (conversation display in Outlook, improvements of UI in most of apps of the suite etc.) but I’d like to emphasis on one improvement I was asking for a long time : the ability to have multiple Exchange Accounts in the same Outlook process (without using App-V, run-as or other tips to launch multiple Outlook).

You can ask why do I have 2 Exchange accounts, but it is simply because I’ve got my Avanade corporate account and my personal Exchange server (Exchange 2007 but soon Exchange 2010)

So how to do this ?

1. Close Outlook
2. Go to control panel
3. Search “Mail”
4. Click on New Account
5. Enter your account settings (and use Autodiscovery !)
6. Launch Outlook

As you can see it is really straightforward so abuse of it !

I’ve got now my two Exchange accounts, as we had before for POP/IMAP :

If you often use PowerShell as script language you well know the out-* and export-* cmdlets.

I often use export-csv and open the result in Excel or out-GridView in PowerShell v2 (useful cmdlet BTW) for a nice graphical interface. I sometime use Excel API to create an Excel sheet directly or to import data but something was missing : simplicity.

These are an excellent solutions but why don’t we use Excel directly with an out-excel cmdlet ?

I just found this cmdlet there : http://pathologicalscripter.wordpress.com/out-excel/ and it is working very well ! So have fun using it.

Un des problèmes récurrent sur les forums, les newsgroups est un problème d’accès aux ressources réseaux à partir de Vista (ou supérieur) ou la connexion à Vista à partir de clients sous XP par exemple.

Je vais essayer d’en apporter sur ce post une explication ainsi qu’un moyen de résoudre (au moins en partie les problèmes).

L’authentification réseau sous Windows est assez complexe et les liens en fin d’articles vous aideront à en comprendre le fonctionnement si vous y tenez vraiment. Il s’agit pour simplifier d’un échange avec challenge.

L’authentification se base sur deux paramètres : SMB signing et LMCompatibility. Chacun a plusieurs niveaux de sécurité. SMB signing permet de garantir l’expéditeur d’un message et LMComptatibility de connaître le niveau de sécurité NTLM (Lan Manager) à utiliser pour l’échange.

Ces paramètres peuvent être modifiés pour permettre l’accès mais il faut savoir que ces modifications affectent la sécurité de votre plateforme.

Le paramètre LMComptatibility a augmenté de niveau avec Vista ce qui peut poser ce problème d’accès.

Vous pouvez diagnostiquer ce problème comme tel si :

• Le problème se pose uniquement sur vos clients sous Vista
• Aucun paramètre de LMComptatibility a été défini par GPO
• Une trace réseau révèle ce genre de message :

Vous pouvez redéfinir le niveau de sécurité en passant soit par le registre (par la clé HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\LMComptatibility) soit par la console de sécurité locale secpol.msc dans Stratégies locales\Options de sécurité\Sécurité réseau : niveau d’authentification LAN Manager.

Les différents choix sont les suivants :

1. Envoyer les réponses LM et NTLM
2. Envoyer LM et NTLM – utiliser NTLMv2 si négocié
3. Envoyer uniquement les réponses NTLM
4. Envoyer uniquement les réponses NTLM v2 (par défaut)
5. Envoyer uniquement les réponses NTLM v2, refuser LM
6. Envoyer uniquement une réponse NTLM v2 ; refuser LM et NTLM

Vous pouvez essayer de réduire le niveau à 2 voir à 1 pour résoudre le problème.

Le mieux est d’uniformiser les différents niveaux de sécurité de vos machines.

Explication du fonctionnement de l’authentification : http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/08/SecurityWatch/?related=/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/08/SecurityWatch