From the Exchange Management Shell Run the following command GCM exsetup |%{$_.Fileversioninfo} Note the ProductVersion number Check against Microsoft Exchange version referrence http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh135098.aspx
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SAS/SATA LSI Hardware PCI-e RAID under $50
SAS/SATA LSI Hardware PCI-e RAID under $50, say what? Yes its true and I will show you how. Recently I was shopping for some Raid controllers for our Dell PowerEdge 2950′s at work which typically use a Dell PERC 5/i or you can outfit them with something better but I was looking for the OEM solution. I was hunting on eBay when I started to notice most of these cards where under $50, in fact I purchased 3 of them for $35 each. If you don’t know already a Dell PERC 5/i is nothing more than a re-branded LSI MegaRAID SAS 8480e utilizing an Intel IOP333 Processor. Intel makes some of the best and fastest RAID controller processors so any card with an Intel Processor is likely a good bet. I found this great article which details the Dell PERC 5/i, Dell PERC 6/i and goes into detail about reflashing the PERC 5/i with the MegaRAID 8480e firmware, there’s also a host of benchmarks including comparison to an onbaord Intel ICH9R. http://www.overclock.net/t/359025/perc-5-i-raid-card-tips-and-benchmarks So whats the catch?
Slow Disk to Disk File Transfers (Caching)
Recently I ran into an issue that I would like to share with you and it had to do with slow file transfers. To make a long story short I am upgrading my server which has a RAID 5 and I am replacing the onboard RAID with a hard controller. To do this I am going to need to back up all my data on the RAID Array but this is where I ran into an issue. When I would transfer files from the array to one of my non-array drives I would receive 40-50 MBps sustained writes on one drive while receiving 10-20 MBps sustained on another. I was getting very frustrated by this because the speeds would start out around 120 MBps but then dwindle down to nothing within 10-15 minutes. I did some searching but most of what I found led to what I already knew or only applied to IDE drives and not SATA drives. I checked and re-checked the settings in Device Manager which would be the cache settings for
MySQL Root Access Denied fix for Plesk
When you setup a Dedicated server with a host like 1and1 they setup an admin account for root access on MySQL but the password is a mystery and login from outside the localhost isn’t possible anyway. After tons of frustration and searching I finally found the fix for this. The reason this is so important is mainly for backups, there’s no other way to backup all of you databases quickly other than using an account which can access all of your databases. When running Plesk in the default Reseller mode access to databases is limited to each domain and one account cannot access another domain’s database. This is obviously like this for security and its great but we really need access to all DB’s as root. Another reason is then use if programs like MySQL workbench which requires a master account that can access all databases if you want to administer all databases. On with the fix, log into Plesk and navigate to “Tools & Settings \ Database Servers” now click on your database, select
Setup Dedicated (VPS) Virtual Private Server from the ground up (1and1 hosting specific)
By now you should already have your server purchased and ready to go, if not go watch a movie while its being “set up” and come back here, I’ll be here I promise. I know when I got my first dedicated server from 1and1 Web Hosting it took forever for them to “set it up” or whatever it is they do. I read on the website it normally takes about 24 hours but in my case it was closer to 4 days. I don’t want to knock them because maybe they were low on hardware and I did get double the amount of ram I signed up for so I can’t complain. Obviously since I have 1and1 hosting there will be many references to how they do things and to Parrales Plesk Panel, you can still follow along if you have another hosting company but there will be many things that don’t apply to your hosting situation. Hopefully the usefulness of this article is great enough that even with another hosting company everyone will be able to
IT Systems Monitoring Solutions Overview
When it comes to IT monitoring software you nearly need a Bachelor’s degree from the software provider just to manage the damn thing, and we won’t even get into the complications involved in setting it all up. Its no secret I often fantasize about the perfect piece of monitoring software for specific tasks and all in one style solutions. At one point in the last year it was a task of mine to research all monitoring solutions I could find and come up with something affordable, fairly straight forward and easy to manage and it needed to scale well. By the end of this task I was left with only a few solutions that made the cut and I will briefly cover those as well as some that didn’t and why they didn’t. Although I only list a handful here I can assure you I tested over 20 different monitoring solutions of all shapes and sizes. Our primary goal was a monitoring solution that could monitor servers, workstations, network devices, virtualized servers such as VMWare and possibly
IIS Hacked, index. & default. files replaced
I have seen this a few times in the recent past and it’s always the same. All of the folders and sub-folders within the main Websites directory have been spammed with several default index files. Generally the files are as follows. The reason you find every file type in every directory is obvious, the not so obvious is why they don’t include index.aspx & default.aspx on their list of files. Most of these hacker groups or “script kiddies” as their called seem to be Turkish or at least refer to Turkish Hackers in some way within the index files themselves. Searching for help on the web in relation to this type of hack seems to be near useless. If you search a phrase from one of the index files you will only find other sites hacked by the same group and not any useful information on how they got in or how to prevent future attacks. If this is your first time getting hacked in this manner and your reading this thinking your wasting your
