Yesterday, I discussed the Microsoft’s Data Protection Manager’s (DPM) advantages over traditional disk-based backup software. However, DPM also has some disadvantages. Some of these shortcomings are related to the fact that DPM is a CDP solution; or to the fact that it is just version 1.0.

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This article is part of the series about continuous data protection (CDP). In the first article I introduced the concept of CDP. I recommend reading the article first, before you continue. This article discusses Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2006 as one example of a CDP system. Today, I will focus on its advantages over traditional disk-based backup systems. In the next article of this series I will talk about the disadvantages. I recently published an article about the DPM in the German magazine iX. My German readers can get the complete review there.

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Update: There is a much easier way now to resize a virtual disk: Expand a virtual VMware disk with VMware Converter. Also check out this article about my first impressions of VMware Converter 3.0 final.

Today, my Windows XP test system running in a virtual machine under VMware Workstation 5.5 complained that there is not enough space anymore on the system partition. I thought it can’t be too complicated to resize a virtual disk. After all, it is only virtual. I hoped to solve this problem within 5 minutes or so. Well, here’s how it went:

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Did you ever forget your USB stick at work, and then realized at home that you badly needed some files on it? If so, then this free tool is for you. pcwUnstick is a Visual Basic script from PC WELT, a German computer magazine. The script opens a pop up window whenever you shut down your PC if a USB-stick is still plugged-in. It works with Firewire hard disks too.

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This article is the first of a series about Continuous Data Protection (CDP), I intend to write. In my view, the future of all backup systems belongs to CDP. In this introduction, I will try to explain the concept of CDP. A review of some popular CDP solutions will come later.

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WinSCP is an Open Source SFTP Client while PuTTY is a free SSH client. Both are must-have tools for Linux Administrators who manage their servers from a Windows client. I guess, there aren’t many sysops out there who don’t know these tools. This blog post describes how one can integrate PuTTY in WinSCP.

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It seems fashionable lately for every simple program to have a component which starts when the system boots up. Often this is not necessary and just costs valuable memory space. There is another kind of “application” which considers themselves important enough to run all the time: malware i.e. spyware, trojans, computer worms, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to check regularly which programs will start when Windows boots up. Startup Contral Panel and StartupMonitor are free tools which configure and monitor the programs that start when your computer boots up.

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The title of this blog post might be a bit misleading. SiteBar is not really a social bookmark service like del.icio.us or furl.net. SiteBar is an excellent online bookmark manager which you can also download and install on your own server. All you need is a LAMP system which means that it will run in most webhosting environments. I am discussing this tool here because it’s quite useful for system administrators.

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I suppose that many sysops already know Sysinternals Process Explorer. Although I often meet system administrators who never used it. As it is one of my favorite tools, I’d like to introduce it now. Yesterday, I used the Process Explorer to find out which program used ntuser.dat.

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When we recently rolled out about 250 computers, three users had problems with their roaming profiles. Those users didn’t find the last version of their profile on their new computer because their profile was not updated anymore on the server. Every year or so, I encounter the same problem with my own profile. Usually I don’t realize that the synchronization failed because I got no error messages. We only backup user data from the file server. That’s why this is really annoying since I only realize weeks after, that my data was not backed up anymore.

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Many bloggers invest a lot of time in their weblogs. Usually they don’t care much about backup because they think that their hosting company is responsible for this. This is a bit careless since there are many cases where this doesn’t help at all. Let’s say that you upgraded your weblog software or you installed a malfunctioning plug-in and then finding out, nothing works anymore afterwards. It could also happen that you want to go back to an earlier version of your configuration. Or maybe some bad guy got access to your site and deleted everything. This article describes how to backup your weblog or your website automatically without any kind of user intervention.

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Two years ago I blogged about a similar subject in my German blog. I discussed the advantages of Internet Explorer (IE) over Mozilla and other web browsers in a corporate environment. I concluded that IE is by far the better choice. Recently we deployed about 250 new computers and so I considered this question again. Now, Firefox is the main rival of IE. The decision was not so easy this time, but IE won again in the end.

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Nmap probably is the best network port scanner and a must have tool for any system administrator. nmap 4.0 has some new interesting features; however insecure.org still doesn’t offer a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for Windows. They have one for Linux which is a bit strange as many Linux sysops prefer the command line anyway. So I searched for a Windows GUI that uses the original nmap scanner. I found three tools: NMapWin, NmapGui and nmapGUI. One not only makes nmap easier to use, but an even more powerful tool: NmapGui.

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I am planning to write an article about ISA Server 2006 for a computer magazine The testing will be documented in this blog. I had written an article about the first version, ISA Server 2000, and also about ISA Server 2004. ISA Server 2000 didn’t convince me, especially the user interface. ISA Server 2004 certainly was a major improvement. We are using it now as a firewall and will soon install two ISA Servers as web proxies.

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According to Microsoft officials Windows Vista will have 2750 new features. There was a detailed discussion about the major features like WinFS and NGSCB which were planned for Windows Vista, but had to be cancelled due to time constraint. I always said that these major features, which seem to be so important because every journal talks about them, are not the part of an operating system that’s decisive for its success.

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