Drag and drop to the command prompt

Daniel Petri discovered that drag and drop to the command prompt is back in Windows 7. This allows you to copy a file’s path to the command prompt.

Pin files to a taskbar button

Paul Thurrott mentioned this tip. To associate a file with a certain application, you can drag and drop its icon to the corresponding taskbar button. You can then open this file from the app’s Jumplist.

Dual Boot with Bitlocker

Keith Comb explained how you can encrypt your system drive with Bitlocker and still boot from a VHD. This is useful for dual boot environments

Revive the Quick Launch bar

I already mentioned this tip in a post about the Windows 7 taskbar. In my view, taskbar pinning is not really a good replacement for the Quick Launch bar. However, both ways for quickly launching applications complete one another.

Revive the Windows 3.1 File Manager

Mitch Tulloch talked about this tip in an interview at the Microsoft Press blog. You probably know that the new Aero Snap feature allows you to resize an application window to half screen by dragging it to the left or right side of the desktop. There are certainly many situations where this feature could be useful, but the one I like most is that it allows me to open two Explorer windows side-by-side this way. Mitch Tulloch refers to the Windows 3.1 File Manager, but this style of copying files reminds me of the good old Norton Commander under DOS.

Start Windows Explorer from My Computer

I found this tip in a list of 70 Windows 7 tricks (many of them already work for Vista). The Explorer in Windows 7 opens by default from the Libraries folder. If you want to start the Explorer with the My Computer page, you have to replace the shortcut target with %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}. Note that you can also open any other folder by just adding the corresponding path as a parameter to the launch command. For example, if you want Windows Explorer to start in C:\Program Files, the target for the Windows Explorer icon would look like this: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe “C:\Program Files”

Make use of hotkeys

Windows has countless keyboard shortcuts and Windows 7 received a few more. It makes sense to skim over the list of Windows 7 hotkeys at least once. Perhaps you will find a key combination that improves your productivity. My favorite new Windows 7 hotkey is “Windows logo key +Down arrow”. It minimizes the active window.

Of course, there are myriads of other useful Windows 7 tips out there. I am curious to know which ones are your favorite tips.

• Seven reasons why skipping Windows 7 is not a good idea – Part 2 (4)
• Seven reasons why skipping Windows 7 is not a good idea – Part 1 (3)
• Some more thoughts about the Windows 7 taskbar, a.k.a. Superbar (6)
• Deploying 2500 Windows 7 netbooks at Tech.Ed Australia (5)
• Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts – the complete list (3)

I tried Internet Explorer Collection on Vista and Windows XP. IE 1.0 only runs on Windows NT and Windows 95. Some of the older browser versions crashed every now and then under Vista. My impression is that the collection works better on an XP machine.

I think versions older than IE 6 don’t really play a noticeable role anymore. Last month, nine 4sysops visitors were using Internet Explorer 5.5 and two were running 5.01. That is good because 4sysops doesn’t really look good with those browsers.

According to Google Analytics, there were also 31 visitors who were using version 999.1. We now have the final proof that time travel is possible. Yeah, it appears some technology historians are accessing 4sysops from the far future. For the sake of completeness, among the IE users, 9.21% use IE6, 29.25.% IE7 and 61.48% IE8. Just in case you are an IE6 user, don’t you think, it is time for an update?

And since I am already in babbling mode, let me mention a related topic. In my view, the web as we know it today is the worst technological invention since the nuclear bomb. If you also have spent countless hours adapting your website to the numerous browsers out there, then you will probably agree. Why do we need open web standards anyway? Why not allow every browser publisher to use its own standard? It wouldn’t be a big a deal to automatically launch the rendering engine that fits to a certain document type. Like with PDF, this could be done automatically without bothering users.

Browser manufacturers could add new features without having to wait until the sluggish W3C bureaucrats accept a new proposal and the web would certainly develop much faster because there would be real competition between the different closed web standards. And most importantly, the number of ex-webmasters living in psychiatric hospitals would decrease rapidly.

• Windows 7 web browser Ballot Screen – The important facts (7)
• Thoughts about Google’s Linux distribution – A threat to Windows? (12)
• Why Firefox 3.5 doesn’t rock, and about the childish obsession with browser performance (18)
• The war against Internet Explorer – Has the European Commission gone bananas? (21)
• Internet Explorer 8 vs. Firefox 3 – Deployment and Management (6)

My last argument was that the new Windows 7 features will increase overall user productivity. However, the mere practical effect of the new features is only one side of the coin when it comes to productivity. On the other side is the often underestimated user motivation.

5 Motivation

It is true that some users are reluctant to learn new things and hope to keep their current OS as long as possible. But I’m guessing they’re not the most productive ones in your organization anyway. On the other hand, those users who are open to changes probably will have Windows 7 on their private PCs soon. It will certainly have a negative effect on their motivation, if you give them outdated equipment at work. Would you want to work in an office with furniture that hasn’t been replaced for the last 20 years?

You might say a desk is desk and a chair is a chair. Users only have to sit at a desk anyway, and a Windows XP PC doesn’t stand better on a new desk. But the truth is that modern motivational psychology has found that the so-called flow is an even more important factor than the person’s motives when it comes to motivation. To put it simply, you could say that a user who has more fun at work will work better. And there is no doubt that the most productive users who embrace innovations easily will have more fun working with a modern OS like Windows 7.

6 Turbulence

It is a general rule of thumb that skipping a desktop OS version will only cause more costs in the long run. Of course, there are exceptions, but in my experience these cases are rare. There are not just the costs of higher infection rates and lower user and admin productivity. The main point here is that ruptures always amplify the effort necessary to resume normal operation. Of course, any new OS causes such ruptures. This is the main argument of the “skippers.”

However, the bigger the gap, the more energy is required to jump to the other side. Admins who are already familiar with Vista can now focus on the new features in Windows 7 and deploy the new OS without time pressure. Admins who still live in the XP world have to learn the Vista part of Windows 7 plus the new enhancements. Once the new PCs are there, the new OS has to be deployed quickly. The greater the time pressure, the more likely are the mistakes which will only cause more ruptures.

This argument also applies to end-users. The more they have to learn about their working environment in a short time period, the more it will affect their daily work. The smoother the transition to a new level, the less turbulence. This is what chaos theory tells us, and we all know that a complex Windows network is the perfect playground for chaos experts.

7 Modesty

I think many CIOs and CTOs are much too dependent on what others are saying about Windows. Fifty-nine percent of businesses that skipped Vista never tested the operating system. How did they come to the decision to skip? And what about the 40% that already plan to skip Windows 7? Did they just skim over the feature lists?

Of course, the new features are the very reason why we upgrade. However, in my view it is impossible to really predict the exact benefits of a new OS. How do you calculate the costs that a computer worm will cause if it interrupts your business for a couple days? You can’t know in advance whether your network will be affected or not if you skip Windows 7. Past statistical data is often useless because IT is evolving too fast. Moreover, the number of new features every new OS version introduces is usually just too big to anticipate the concrete influence on productivity.

The only thing that is certain is that 5,000 engineers who have been in contact for years with thousands of businesses out there will always create a new OS that will be significantly better than its predecessor. Those journalists who know of a Windows version where this was not the case, must be smarter than those 5,000 engineers.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should always upgrade without even evaluating a new OS. If you have incompatible applications or hardware, then upgrading is probably not an option. And If you see that an upgrade would cause too many troubles because of the peculiarities of your environment, then skipping Windows 7 makes sense. Perhaps you are thinking that Windows 7 is just too expensive or that there are better operating systems. Maybe so.

However, concluding that your organization can do without the new Windows 7 features after reading a couple of reviews is certainly grossly negligent. I think for many of the 40% who already know that they will skip Windows 7, it should be enough to sit back for a moment and think about what they really know about the latest Windows version in order to acknowledge that they are not really able to make this decision yet.

• My favorite 7 Windows 7 tips (1)
• Seven reasons why skipping Windows 7 is not a good idea – Part 1 (3)
• Some more thoughts about the Windows 7 taskbar, a.k.a. Superbar (6)
• Deploying 2500 Windows 7 netbooks at Tech.Ed Australia (5)
• Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts – the complete list (3)

1. Security

The number one reason for deploying Vista was certainly security. Regular readers will probably start rolling their eyes, moaning “not again.” But when it comes to security, one can’t wag one’s finger too often. It is important to point out that according to new data from Security Essentials users, it is not just that XP is much more vulnerable than Vista; it appears that Vista is even more vulnerable compared to Windows 7. I wasn’t surprised to learn that, of all infected PCs, 52% were running Windows XP and only 32% Vista. But the fact that only 17% run Windows 7 seems to be surprising at first because Windows 7 and Vista are not that much different. One could object that this data is from Microsoft. Of course, they want to make their latest offspring look as good as possible. However, I think, this big difference can be partly explained by the fact that many of the Windows 7 machines were just installed and did not have enough time to get infected. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Windows 7 is the most secure Windows OS. I am positive that long-term data will prove this.

2. Compatibility

Given the fact that Windows 7 is hyped by the media and analysts, it is obvious that most ISVs and IHVs will now focus on the latest Windows version. Of course, they will all officially support Windows XP and Vista for some time. However, claiming compatibility is one thing; commitment is something different. If it is correct that 60% of all business will upgrade to Windows 7, then the share of XP machines in corporate environments will soon decrease, and within a short time period, XP will no longer be the norm but the exception. In the IT business, it’s always a problem if you belong to a minority, because it is less likely that compatibility issues will be detected. And if you still have applications in your organization that have problems running on Windows 7, then you can make use of the new XP Mode feature.

3. Admin productivity

Windows 7 also has a few new features for admins, but here the big changes certainly came with Vista. Most noteworthy probably is that Vista was the first Windows version where Microsoft acknowledged that imaging is a far better OS deployment method than unattended installations. The end of the HAL hell simplified OS deployment, significantly. If you are moving from XP to Windows 7, you will learn to appreciate this feature. In organizations having many users who are working from home or travel often, Windows 7 comes with quite a few important network-related enhancements that will make an admin’s life easier.

4. User productivity

I strongly believe that every new Windows version increases productivity. People often have problems seeing this because many of these tiny enhancements that come with every OS seem to be negligible. Maybe the new Windows 7 taskbar or the Jumplists improve productivity. But does this really justify deploying a new OS in the whole organization or even buying new PCs? I believe, most people underestimate the importance of the sum of all user interface enhancements. Every user works differently, but the likelihood is quite high that each user will find at least one feature that increases his or her productivity significantly, and this implies that the overall productivity of the entire organization will be increased. The problem is that this is hard to prove. That’s why it’s quite easy for the skippers to say that their users only need email and the web to do their daily work, so it doesn’t really matter if they use Windows 7, Windows 95, or even Snow Leopard. However, there is one factor that can’t be easily explained away when it comes to user productivity. This will be the first topic of my next post.

• My favorite 7 Windows 7 tips (1)
• Seven reasons why skipping Windows 7 is not a good idea – Part 2 (4)
• Some more thoughts about the Windows 7 taskbar, a.k.a. Superbar (6)
• Deploying 2500 Windows 7 netbooks at Tech.Ed Australia (5)
• Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts – the complete list (3)

Vista Switchter’s interface is divided into two panes. The right hand side displays a list of all opened applications with their window titles and the left side shows a preview of the application when you hover over the task list. The size of the interface is configurable, so you can make use of your entire screen size. This is especially useful if all your application icons don’t fit on the taskbar.

It is much easier to locate apps with VistaSwitcher than with Alt-Tab or the Windows taskbar because you can see a larger portion of the window title. This comes in handy if you have opened multiple instances of the same application. Furthermore, you can display only the tasks of the current foreground application. For example if Word is selected, then you can access a list of all other opened Word documents with a special shortcut key.

I replaced Alt-Tab with the tool and I “pinned” it to one of the buttons of my eight-button mouse (this thing is not just useful for gaming). If you only have a common mouse than you can replace the right mouse button plus wheel with VistaSwitcher. It is possible to assign a key of your choice to access the task list or click on the tool’s systray icon.

If you work with multiple monitors, then you can configure on which screen VistaSwitcher will be displayed. Also useful is that the tool allows you to assign numbers to tasks and that it is possible to exclude applications from the task list.

I had a odd problem when I first tried VistaSwitcher. The tool always crashed whenever I switched to a WinSCP task. I reported the bug to the NTWind support and they sent me a fixed version on the same day.

I have already tried quite a few different application switchers. Most of them are better than Microsoft’s solutions. However, many of them are unstable. Obviously, it isn’t easy to modify such an integral part of Windows. Thus, it would be Microsoft’s job to take care of this very essential function. The Windows 7 taskbar is a step into the right direction, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Perhaps, it would make more sense for Microsoft to integrate one of these third party solutions into Windows instead of lending ideas from the Cupertino guys.

• FREE: CCleaner – Improve Windows performance by removing unnecessary files and registry entries (3)
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• FREE: UBCD4Win – Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, a comprehensive rescue tool (1)
• AutoHotkey – A free mouse / keyboard shortcut and macro tool (2)

You can install the frontend (the documentation calls it the client) and the backend (server) separately. The frontend can be used to manage jobs remotely for one or multiple servers. Of course, you can also install the client and the server on the same machine.

VisualCron’s product name fits very well because its graphical user interface makes it easy for you to track all of your jobs. The user interface resembles the ribbon interface used in some Office 2007 applications. Microsoft introduced the ribbon in Office because the features had become too numerous for the menus and toolbars of the old interface style to handle without being cumbersome. I suppose this was also the reason why VisualCron chose a ribbon-style interface type.

I will describe each of the ribbons shortly, but let me first explain the main part of the user interface—the task area. This area is basically a grid designed to keep track of numerous servers and jobs. Each server is displayed separately and has two child “tracks,” the first one for the job and the second one for the job’s tasks.

List ribbon

The columns in the grid display the most important job and task parameters. Using the tools in the List ribbon, you can customize the grid layout. You can select which parameters are displayed, you can group jobs, and you can use filters to display only specific jobs (for example, you can limit the display to the jobs that will run next).

Tools ribbon

VisualCron offers a few useful tools that can come in handy when you are configuring jobs: a file explorer (for remote servers), an SQL Explorer, a reporting tool (to print job configurations), a flow chart (to display relations between triggers, conditions, tasks, and notifications), and an object search tool (to find jobs, tasks, notifications, etc.).

Server ribbon

The Server ribbon allows you to define several objects that can be used in job definitions. For example, you can configure credentials or notifications that you can use in multiple job configurations (see screenshot for the other object types). Notice that these defined objects are only available for the selected server. Thus if you plan to copy a job definition to other servers, you must configure the corresponding settings for each job separately.

File ribbon

This ribbon allows you to configure some general settings, import and export settings from another VisualCron installation, and add remote servers to the frontend.

Conclusion

VisualCron is a very powerful task scheduling tool. Even three posts were not enough to describe all of its features. If task scheduling plays a role in your environment, you should definitely look closely at VisualCron. You can download a 45 days free trial with full functionality and without registering. Also check out the active user forum.

If you to have the chance to win VisualCron license, just send an email to:

with the subject line

VisualCron.

Please, add your name and the name of your organization for which you want to use the license. The deadline of this contest is December 4, 2009.

• Raffle: VisualCron – Configuring cron jobs (0)
• Raffle: VisualCron – Central task scheduling for Windows (0)
• FREE: WinRAP – Hide running Windows applications (0)
• FREE: Process Hacker – a mighty Task Manager and Process Explorer alternative (3)
• Process Lasso – improve the responsiveness of Windows (5)

There is hardly any compression format which is not supported by IZArc. Even the not-so-common JAR, RAR, and WAR archives can be unpacked. You can see the full list of supported archives in the screenshot below.

However, a wide variety of supported archives doesn’t necessarily make the ZIP program outstanding. The usability and integration are also important factors to consider. IZArc shows no soft spot here either. It offers customizable Explorer integration.

Besides the standard functions they also included a menu point “test”. It is handy if you want to make sure that the archive was created without errors.

You can also define a virus scanner which is used to scan the files being processed by the application. This is a nice increase in security, because IZArc also integrates with Outlook and we all know that E-Mails often contain malicious attachments. Another nice feature is that it can open and convert ISO, Bin, CDI, and NRG images. This is tremendously helpful if you quickly need a file which is inside a CD or DVD image. Sensitive data can be protected by encrypting the file. IZArc offers various algorithms including the de facto standard 256bit AES.

Those who are interested in using IZArc from the command line must install the “Command Line Add-on” from their Homepage. Last but not least there is also a portable version which runs without installation. You can find IZArc2go here. However, it has some drawbacks which lie in the nature of portability: there is no Explorer integration and the supported files don’t get associated with the program.

So would I call IZArc the best freeware zip utility? Well, I certainly don’t have anything to complain about the application and neither do I miss a feature. But there are others like 7zip that have roughly the same features and are available for free. Maybe there is no great need to find the “best zip-utility” and it’s sufficient to have one that works fine. And IZArc is certainly one of those.

• FREE: Unstoppable Copier – Copy physically corrupt files (0)
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• FREE: FileMenu Tools – Customize Windows Explorer easily (2)
• FREE: Recuva – Recover accidentally deleted files (2)
• FREE: GParted – Partition manager for Windows and Linux (1)

Before we dive into the details, let us have a look at how VisualCron works. The diagram below shows how a job has to be configured with VisualCron. For most jobs you have to configure one or more tasks (the actions you want to perform), triggers (defined circumstances that will initiate the task), and optional conditions (states that can prevent a task from being launched even if a trigger is present). As you can see in the diagram, VisualCron supports many more task types than the Windows Task Scheduler supports. Once the task has been launched, VisualCron can notify administrators by several means.

Triggers

Triggers can be time-based or event-based. A time-based trigger can be a certain point in time or a time interval such as weekly or daily intervals. VisualCron has more options to offer here than does the Windows Task Scheduler. For example you can tell the tool that the task has to be launched on specific days of the week or hours of the day. VisualCron also supports scheduling based on seconds and years.

VisualCron comes with eight different event-based triggers: VisualCron, File, Mail, Process, Service, Registry, Event log, and Custom (WMI). A VisualCron trigger refers to a state of another VisualCron task. For example, you can launch a new task only if a specific former task has been completed. The names of the other trigger types speak for themselves. For example, the Process trigger can be used to launch a task whenever a certain process starts running. The Custom trigger is certainly the most powerful one because it allows you to use almost any Windows state as a trigger using WMI queries.

The only trigger I miss in VisualCron is the Idle trigger from the Windows Task Scheduler. This trigger probably doesn’t play an important role in server environments because servers are seldom idle; however, on desktops I found this trigger useful.

Conditions

As noted above, conditions are additional states that have to be present for a task to get started. For instance, the Process Condition allows you to specify a certain process that has to be running. If the condition is not met, then the trigger won’t be able to launch the task. A Process Trigger becomes active whenever a process starts running, whereas a Process Condition is met if the process is already running. The other Condition types are VisualCron (check if a VisualCron task is already running), File (check if a certain file is present), and Folder (check if a certain folder is present).

Time Exceptions

Time Exceptions are to time-based triggers as Conditions are to event-based triggers. The options for Time Exceptions offer the same flexibility as time-based triggers. For example, you can configure a VisualCron job that is triggered every 13 seconds, but not on Fridays in the year 2013 (just in case you are a little superstitious ).

Timeouts

Once the task is running, the Timeout specifies how much time the job has to complete. If the Timeout is reached before the task has finished, VisualCron will terminate the job. You can configure Timeouts based on hours, minutes, and seconds. You can also tell VisualCron to consider Timeouts as errors that can trigger notifications or other tasks.

Tasks

As you probably have noticed, the different ways to schedule a task in VisualCron go far beyond the possibilities of the Windows Task Scheduler. This also applies to the supported task types. Whereas the Windows Task Manager supports only three different kinds of actions (start a program, display a message, send an email), VisualCron knows 13 different task categories: Process (execute, kill), File (copy, rename), XML (read / create node), Net (HTTP, SSH), Messaging (email, instant messaging), Database (SQL, Execute DTS package), Encryption (PGP), Service (start, stop), Office (macro), System (Registry, restart, control monitor), Interactivity (desktop macro, send keys), Internal (VisualCron task control, set variables), and Active Directory (create / modify objects). Each of the task categories comes with a couple of different task types. The texts in parentheses are only examples. I can’t discuss all of the different task types, but I think you have an idea now of how mighty VisualCron’s task management is.

Notifications

VisualCron supports seven notification types: Email, File, SQL, Popup, Event log, Sound, and Syslog. Syslog is a standard for forwarding log messages in the UNIX and Linux world, although third-party solutions exist for Windows. You can use this feature to log VisualCron notifications on a remote Syslog server. The most fancy notification form is certainly the SQL notification. It allows you to execute an SQL query or procedure using OLEDB or ODBC. This is especially useful if you work with many different tasks and want to keep track of them in your own application.

However, VisualCron’s user interface will suffice in most cases since it provides a good overview and is highly customizable. This will be the topic of my next post.

If you to have the chance to win VisualCron license, just send an email to:

with the subject line

VisualCron.

Please, add your name and the name of your organization for which you want to use the license. The deadline of this contest is December 4, 2009.

• Raffle: VisualCron – Visual task scheduling (0)
• Raffle: VisualCron – Central task scheduling for Windows (0)
• FREE: WinRAP – Hide running Windows applications (0)
• FREE: Process Hacker – a mighty Task Manager and Process Explorer alternative (3)
• Process Lasso – improve the responsiveness of Windows (5)

VisualCron is the most sophisticated task scheduling tool I have ever tried. I was already quite impressed with the Task Scheduler in Vista and Server 2008, but VisualCron comes with far more advanced features. The ability to manage task scheduling on multiple machines from a central location, in particular, makes the tool an interesting alternative for large organizations. VisualCron targets task scheduling for server environments, but you can also use the tool on desktops.

In the first post of this series I will give you a general overview of VisualCron’s advantages over the Windows Task Scheduler.

One task scheduler for all Windows machines

First of all, if you have different Windows versions in your network, then you also have to work with different task schedulers. As you probably know, the differences between Task Scheduler in Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 are huge. With VisualCron, you only have to deal with one tool for all your servers regardless of the Windows version.

Central management

Secondly, and this could be even more important in some environments, VisualCron provides one central management console for all Windows machines. Although you can connect to a remote computer with the Windows Task Scheduler, you can only manage one remote server at a time. VisualCron can display multiple machines in its modern and well-thought-out interface. It is even possible to drag and drop scheduled jobs from computer to computer. Since VisualCron uses SSL to connect to remote machines, you can also use the tool to centrally manage servers through unsecured Internet connections.

Execution context

Thirdly, VisualCron has an interesting feature regarding the execution context. In the Windows Task Scheduler you can run tasks in the context of a certain user or without user context in the background. The latter means that user session-specific information, such environment variables or mapped network drives, is not available. VisualCron also makes this distinction but offers quite a few additional options. VisualCron distinguishes between user credentials and user context, which allows you to run a task in the standard user context with admin privileges. You can also target a specific session if the user is logged on multiple times, and you can even target all desktop sessions. The latter feature is most interesting in Terminal Server environments.

Sophisticated scheduling features

And last but not least, VisualCron has even more task scheduling options than the powerful Server 2008/Vista Task Scheduler offers. The term “task scheduler” seems to imply that you can use the tool to only run tasks at a certain time. However, VisualCron supports numerous triggers and conditions that can be used to launch a task. Moreover, VisualCron knows many different task types and has a sophisticated notification system. I will tell you more about these features in my next post.

If you want to take part in this raffle, just send an email to:

with the subject line

VisualCron.

Please, add your name and the name of your organization for which you want to use the license. The deadline of this contest is December 4, 2009.

• Raffle: VisualCron – Visual task scheduling (0)
• Raffle: VisualCron – Configuring cron jobs (0)
• FREE: WinRAP – Hide running Windows applications (0)
• FREE: Process Hacker – a mighty Task Manager and Process Explorer alternative (3)
• Process Lasso – improve the responsiveness of Windows (5)

There are different ways to use S3; today, I will just discuss the possibility of copying files from your servers or desktop to Amazon’s online storage service. Amazon offers a simple web-based S3 file manager, but this is only something to use if you are on the run and want to access your S3 storage from an Internet cafe or so (if you dare). There are quite a few free Windows tools that allow you to upload and download files to S3. For this article, I tried three free S3 explorers: Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer(S3Fox) 0.4.7, S3 Browser 1.9.7 and Cloudberry S3 Explorer 1.6.3.

Amazon S3Fox

Amazon S3Fox is an add-on for Firefox. As far as I know, there is no version for any other web browser. Thus, if you don’t use Firefox, this tool probably is not an option for you. Even though S3Fox runs in a web browser, the application’s look and feel is almost like native Windows application. Like most S3 file managers, S3Fox divides the screen into halves. On the left hand side, you have your local file system and on the right hand side, the remote S3 storage. The tool has all of the essential features. You can create S3 buckets (folders with a unique name), upload, download, share folders, edit the Access Control List (ACL), and retrieve the bucket URL. S3Fox also allows you to synchronize local and remote folders. However, in my test, this didn’t work reliably. Sometimes the upload or download was stuck in the queue; sometimes S3Fox uploaded a file even though it was unchanged.

S3 Browser

There is a free and a pro version of S3 Browser (29.95 USD, 39.95 for the portable version). The main downside of the free version is that it is only for private use. Check out this comparison table for information about the differences between the free and the pro version. S3 Browser is the only tool I tried that doesn’t divide the screen into two panes. The tool only displays the contents of the S3 buckets. Whenever you want to download or upload files, you always have to browse to the local folder. This is quite cumbersome. What I like about the S3 Browser that you can secure your Amazon credentials (Access Key ID and Secret Access Key) with a password. Since Amazon’s Secret Access Key is much too long for a password, it has to be stored in the S3 Browser. S3Fox also allows you to store your credentials, but it doesn’t offer password protection. A downside of S3 Browser is that it doesn’t support synchronization.

Cloudberry S3 Explorer

Cloudberry S3 does support synchronization and it even works (contrary to S3Fox). The only thing I dislike about this tool is that every time you launch it, the request to register pops up again. You can postpone registration, but if you really want to work with this tool, you will register it sooner or later. Cloudberry S3 Explorer’s feature list is quite impressive for a free tool. The only feature I am missing is password protection for the S3 credentials. (Cloudberry S3 Explorer can protect sensitive date with a master password.) The most interesting feature is the support for PowerShell! This means you can use the tool to manage S3 with PowerShell (upload, download, set ACLs, etc.). The user interface looks nice and is easy to use. It allows you to work with tabs, which is quite useful if you work with multiple buckets. My choice clearly is Cloudberry S3.

I also had a close look at the commercial tool Bucket Explorer (49.99 USD), but at first sight I couldn’t find a feature that would justify this price, considering that Cloudberry S3 is free. Another tool I found is SMEStorage. It supports not only S3 but also other cloud storage services such as Mosso Cloud Files, Box.net, or GMail-as-a-Cloud. You need an SMEStorage account to use the tool, which costs 25 USD. It is interesting to note that you can use Windows Explorer to access S3 with this tool. This is also a feature of the upcoming TntDrive tool, which is not yet available.

Do you know of another Amazon S3 file manager? Please let me know.

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I think, this is an important topic, especially for IT pros, because we usually work with many applications simultaneously and switch between tools all day. Hence, finding the best method to switch tasks can increase your productivity significantly, even if the time needed to change from one tool another is only a second. These seconds add up over a long work day. Even more important is the fact that switching quickly between applications is essential for keeping your focus. If you need two seconds or more to switch between apps, then this will certainly have a negative effect on your concentration and will tire you out quickly.

Jumplists

Let’s start with what I like about the Windows 7 taskbar. The new feature I like most is the Jumplists (right click on an icon on the taskbar). I hopelessly underestimated the value of the Jumplists at first. This thing is really a time saver. For example, you can pin folders to the Windows Explorer icon, which allows you to jump to a particular directory very quickly. Also useful, the Word icon displays the last documents opened. You can also pin documents to the Jumplist. I find myself using this feature all day. I am sure that ISVs will find many helpful ways to make use of this function and I believe that this will turn out to be a killer feature in the long run.

Quick Launch bar

I also found that pinning icons to the taskbar has one big advantage: The relative position of the application in the taskbar always stays the same. After a while you get used to the position, which allows you to locate an icon quicker than in Vista or XP.

The only problem is that not all the apps I need for my daily work fit on the taskbar. This is why I’ve only pinned the most important tools. All apps that can be minimized to the Systray are banned from my taskbar. To be able to launch these tools quickly, I revived the good old Quick Launch bar. The Quick Launch bar also handles those tools to which I only have to switch every now and then since they have no fixed position in the Taskbar once they are launched. If I need more space on the Taskbar, I can just close them.

Combining taskbar buttons

The taskbar feature I dislike the most is that windows of the same application are combined. To move the mouse first to the application’s button and then search again for the right window in a long list of much-too-small thumb previews is an absolute time killer. I have seen people doing this in presentations and I always wonder how they can be so patient as to allow three seconds or more just to switch to another window in the same application. This would drive me nuts. I’ve also seen, more than once, that people lose concentration just because of this.

Our short-term memory only has a very low capacity (up to five items) and lasts only a few seconds depending on the type of content. Yes, these thumb previews look absolutely cool. This was the reason why I expressed a liking for this feature in my first review. But after working with these thumbs for some time, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are useless.

It is possible to disable the combining feature, which I highly recommend. It makes sense to combine taskbar buttons only when the taskbar is full. This is at least better than working with two taskbars. However, every time Windows starts combining taskbar buttons, I find myself looking for apps I can close for the time being. This is certainly not very productive, either.

Therefore, the new taskbar works great for me as long as I don’t have too many apps open. The smaller the screen I’m using, the more problematic this downside of the Windows 7 taskbar becomes. Since most of the time I’m working on a laptop, I can’t really say that the Superbar is “super”. At best, I’ll let myself be carried away to say that it is a Nicebar.

But there is a better way to switch tasks. This will be the topic of my next post.

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Most networks today are still based on IPv4 because the Clients are not IPv6 capable. A lot of companies hesitated to migrate to Vista and still run Windows XP without the IPv6 stack. However, this circumstance will change with the release and deployment of Windows 7. Might IPv6, which technically is an old story, become more attention when Windows 7 is deployed en masse?

Not everybody is able to switch to Ipv6, though, because some needed applications may not support IPv6 yet. We have a hen-and-egg problem here: Most of the applications will only support IPv6 if most networks will run on IPv6, but the network administrators will only switch to IPv6 if all needed applications support it. Some argue that a killer application that only runs with IPv6 is needed to make people switch. But there is no such application available yet and the ones included with Windows 7 – Homegroups and Easy Connect, e.g. – can’t be called killer applications.

But maybe things lighten up a bit if we take a look at the improvements IPv6 has to offer over its predecessor:

• Large Address Space: IP addresses in v4 are 32-bit long; in v6 they are 128-bit
• Better Security: IPsec is part of the IPv6 standard, which makes the encryption of IP packets possible and guarantees their authenticity
• Integrated Quality of Service: The IPv6 Header provides a Flow Label. It enables routers to make decisions and treat those packets in a special way
• Mobility: With IPv6 a mobile device can be accessible by the same IP all the time

This short list only shows the major improvements. The listed points make IPv6 look like it does not have much to offer for lightening the daily work: IPsec, Quality of Service, and a static mobile IP are already possible with IPv4. They are not part of the protocol, but are in productive use and there is hardly any reason to change one’s running environment. Only the address shortage can cause administrators some headache, but it doesn’t affect Western countries that much. They have a big part of the pie and won’t run out of addresses in the next few years.

Especially in Africa the address shortage is a problem, though, and will become a huge one in a few years. It might even hinder the development of the continent’s IT infrastructure. With this in mind you could argue that we are morally obliged to migrate to IPv6 to support the development of third world countries. But usually there is no space in businesses for arguments of that kind.

But there is another good argument for migrating to IPv6: The address shortage already does cause problems for all internet users. Most administrators are not aware of them, though. The problems are rooted in the technique for overcoming this shortage: Network Address Translation (NAT).

Thinking that NATed IPs are an equivalent to public IPs is an error. Besides reducing performance, NAT does cause problems which are usually hard to discover. The reason for those problems is that NATed addresses break the end-to-end design specification of the IP protocol.

One of those problems is that the NATed address needs to be looked up in the Transition Table. Because the router is not informed if an IP Address of a client changes, it is hard to keep dynamically changing IP addresses up to date in the table. So it is quite common that entries of the Transition Table are out of date. This causes connectivity problems for video conferences, Voice over IP and slows down P2P downloads, etc.

Besides that the router is only able to maintain the Transition Table well for TCP connections. For stateless protocols like UDP the router has to guess if there will be more packets. Activity Timers are used to make the guesses more educated but they fail sometimes. The appropriate and valid entry from the Transition Table gets deleted then and as a result the connection dies.

NAT changes information in the header of IP packets. This causes problems with some protocols like IPsec, because it does integrity checks on the packet header. Another technique called NAT Traversal is needed as a work around. However, not only does it complicate things but it also is not standardized, which causes further problems.

This is by far not everything which needs to be said about IPv4 and the problems it causes today. A simple solution would be to use IPv6. So do you think that with the upcoming release of Windows 7 IPv6 will get more popular?

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Group Membership

When you load a report and then select some users, the “Load Membership” menu item becomes available and you can load membership for those selected users. The detail grid with membership information will be loaded as a sub grid of every record and the “+” sign will be highlighted meaning that membership is available for that particular users. You can click that little “plus” sign, extend that row to see membership information.

Filters

To generate common reports, you won’t need filters. Most of the typical reports can be created by using AD Reports’ navigation pane. However, sometimes, the output is just too big; you could then use a filter to further narrow down the list of AD objects. In addition, you can run uncommon searches using filters. AD Reports has two filter types: the general filter settings in the taskbar and a special filter in the results pane.

The general filter settings allow you to limit the search on the number of objects displayed, the time range and the object’s membership. The time range refers either to the creation date or to the date when the object was last changed.

My favorite AD Reports feature are the filters (right click on column header). The filter works similar to the one you might know from the Active Directory User and Computer interface (ADUC). However, it is easier-to-use and more powerful. Whereas the ADUC filter only supports logical operators other than the AND operator through command-based LDAP queries, you can use AD Reports’ GUI to easily click together a complex filter using common logical operators such as OR, Not AND, Not OR, etc. The currently active filter is always displayed at the bottom of the results pane. This way, you don’t forget that the output is filtered.

Print Preview

Another highlight of the new AD Reports version is the customizable print preview. Printouts can give you a better overview of a report. The problem with printed reports is that often not all of the information fits easily on the limited size of a sheet of paper. That’s why it is important that you are able not only to preview the print but also to customize the printout. With most other AD reporting tools, you have to do this with an external application such as Excel. AD Reports already comes with a nice Print Preview application, which saves you the step of exporting the report before you print it.

You can add a header and a footer, change the margins, and you can specify the number of pages that a row will span in the printout. If you want everything to fit onto one page, you can go back to the search results pane and remove columns. It is also possible to change the column width of each attribute. However, you can’t do that in the print preview app; you have to use the search results pane for this.

Conclusion

AD Reports’ strength is the modern and customizable user interface that enables you to quickly perform complex Active Directory queries. Of course, you can also export reports in all common formats (CSV, XLS, TXT, HTML, XML, PDF). It is typical for AD Reports that you can even speed up the export by placing a button for your favorite export format on the taskbar. In environments with a large number of AD objects, you will notice that the tool generates reports pretty fast. Thus, one could say that AD Reports’ focus is speed.

If you want to take part in this contest, please send an email to:

with the subject line:

AD Reports.

Please add your name and the name of your organization for which you will want to use the license. The deadline for this contest is November 25, 2009.

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The most obvious new feature of Active Directory Reports 5.1.1.1 is the new Outlook-like user interface. I think, it is the tool’s biggest advantage over competing products. It does not only look cool, it is also very effective. Even if you already have an Active Directory management suite, you definitely should have a look at this specialized AD reporting tool; it could speed up your reporting tasks significantly. You only need few minutes to have an idea about how you can retrieve all kinds of information from your domains with AD Reports.

Generating a report with AD Reports means narrowing down the range of AD objects in several steps. Some steps are executed with a mouse click. First, you have to decide what type of objects you want to find. With a click on the navigation pane on the left-hand side, you can decide if you want to retrieve information about domains, users, groups, Organizational Units (OUs), or Group Policy Objects (GPOs). As in Outlook, this will open the corresponding category at the top of the navigation pane, where you can further limit your search. For instance, with another click in the user category, you can generate a list of users who have been inactive for 30 days. There are 40 other such subcategories in the user’s category.

The resulting list will be instantly displayed as a table, with the most important object attributes in the middle pane, after you click on the subcategory. You have several ways to organize the output. You can add a new column for each of the object’s attributes by clicking on the Show/Hide column in the taskbar. It is possible to sort the list and you can group objects by their attributes. This all works just like in Outlook. If you click on an object, AD Reports will display its attributes in the pane on the right-hand side. This pane has several tabs (general info, membership, security, LDAP attributes) which let you quickly find an attribute of a particular object.

If the list of objects is too large, or if you want to display a special type of object, you can use filters to further restrict the output. This will be the topic of my next post.

If you want to take part in this contest, please send an email to:

with the subject line:

AD Reports.

Please add your name and the name of your organization for which you will want to use the license. The deadline for this contest is November 25, 2009.

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However, Elasticfox is an interesting alternative once you understood how EC2 works. Its biggest advantage over Amazon’s tool is that it is snappier. Working with Elasticfox feels like using a desktop tool, whereas the AWS Management Console is a typical web app and often a bit sluggish although it is based on Ajax. Elasticfox is probably also the better tool if you have to manage many instances because it uses the screen space more efficiently. The spreadsheet-like interface allows you view all relevant information quickly.

The functionality is similar to the AWS Management Console, but there are a few differences. Elasticfox doesn’t support the new monitoring feature, Amazon CloudWatch (it wasn’t able to do so when I reviewed the tool), but it has a tab for the brand new Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) which can’t be managed yet with the AWS Management Console.

I found one more Elasticfox feature that the AWS Management Console lacks. I already used it a couple of times. Elasticfox allows you to force detaching EBS volumes (virtual disks). It happens sometimes that an EBS volume hangs if you try to attach or detach it to an instance (virtual machine) at the wrong moment. Then you have no other than choice than to detach it by force. You can do that with Amazon’s command line interface, but it is more convenient with Elasticfox.

Even though I really like Elasticfox, I usually use the AWS Management Console to manage EC2 instances. I can’t really tell you why. I suppose, it is because its interface looks somewhat more appealing to me. But that is a matter of taste.

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• Amazon EC2 pricing for dummies – Part 1: Only pay for what you use (0)

Amazon EC2 bandwidth costs

One of the things I really dislike about EC2 are the bandwidth costs. One GB inbound data transfer costs $0.10 and one GB outbound traffic costs $0.17. This doesn’t seem to be much. However, in my case the bandwidth costs are a significant part of the overall monthly fees. In September, I paid about $15 for data transfer, which corresponds to approximately 90GB. I enabled HTML encryption in Apache after I moved to EC2, but this didn’t really help because most of my traffic comes from the screenshots. I also download backups of the database and the screenshots every day, which equals up to 15% of my monthly bandwidth costs. In my view, external backups are absolutely necessary because if someone hacks your Amazon account , then you might lose all your data even if you have backups within cloud.

If you rent a dedicated server or a VPS, 1000GB ore more are often already included in the monthly fees. This amount of traffic would cost $340 at Amazon! Of course, most users never use 1000GB, and that’s exactly the reason why conventional providers can be so generous. However, it gives customers a safe feeling. Just in case a friendly hacker uses your server as a download server for his community, you are on the safe side until you recognize what’s going on. Moreover, since traffic changes all the time, you always have to be vigilant and check your bandwidth costs regularly. Charging for bandwidth usage per GB is a relic of the Internet stone age, in my opinion.

Amazon EC2 instance costs

The major cost factor certainly always is the EC2 instance. These fees heavily depend on the instance type (dependent on RAM, CPU power and operating system) you use and whether you purchase a reserved instance. I am using the High-CPU-Medium Linux instance type (1.7 GB of memory, 5 EC2 Compute Units, 350 GB storage), which costs $0.20 per hour as an on-demand instance. For a reserved instance of this type, you pay $0.06 per hour. On an one year plan, the fee for reserving a High-CPU-Medium instance is $455 and on a three year term you pay $700. I chose the one year term because three years is a long time in the always evolving cloud business. Hence, the EC2 instance costs amount to $81.72 (=455/12 + 0.06*24*365/12) per month in my case. Note that reserved instances are currently not available for Windows systems.

The hourly rates for the instance types vary between $0.03 and $0.24 for reserved instances. Therefore, choosing the optimal instance type is key in minimizing your EC2 costs. You might find this site helpful for finding the appropriate instance type for your purpose. The best method certainly is to just try them out. You can play with on-demand instances until you get a feeling for the performance and then buy the corresponding reserved instance. This is where pay-as-you-go pricing comes in handy.

Conclusion

Basically, there are four major factors to remember when it comes to EC2 price calculation: S3 storage, EBS storage, EC2 bandwidth, and EC2 instance type. In my case, the storage costs are negligible ($2), the bandwidth costs are significant ($15) and the EC2 instance costs are decisive ($82). I hope that this will help you to get an idea of how Amazon EC2 pricing works.

However, the most interesting part of this story is that I needed two posts to explain my case and I didn’t even discuss all the factors listed in Amazon’s Simple Monthly Calculator simply because they turned out to be irrelevant. Perhaps I could have made it all shorter with less babbling. But on the other hand, if I had to explain what renting a dedicated or conventional virtual server costs, one sentence would have been enough. And imagine how complicated things will get if you have to calculate the costs for moving a whole datacenter to EC2.

In my view, this relatively convoluted price structure is a major disadvantage of EC2. The pay-only-what-you-use philosophy is typical for most new information and telecommunications technologies. Once the technology matures and prices drop, providers move over to flat rates. For example, mainframe computation was charged per CPU time and home users paid for broadband Internet by the hour and/or for the data transferred in the beginning. Even though usage-based rates might seem to be the fairest pricing model, most people prefer easy-to-calculate and predictable costs. Pay-as-you-go pricing is nice-to-have as an additional feature, but those cloud providers who rely only on pay-only-what-use will lose.

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• Amazon EC2 pricing for dummies – Part 2: Storage costs (0)
• Amazon EC2 pricing for dummies – Part 1: Only pay for what you use (0)

Okay, let’s start with Amazon’s Simple Monthly Calculator. When you open the page, you will recognize that Amazon S3 (storage) is the only service that is already checked. The reason why this service is often essential for other services is because you always need a place to store your data. Hence, you have to include it in your price calculation.

S3 is needed for EC2 if you want to bundle AMIs (store OS images). Thus, S3 is not really necessary to run an EC2 instance (virtual server), but I think most EC2 customers are using this feature. There are five different factors that determine your monthly S3 costs: storage (GB-months), data transfer-in, data transfer-out, PUT/LIST Requests, and other requests.

Amazon S3 costs

As far I can tell, all of these costs are more or less negligible in my case. I have been bundling quite a few AMIs in September because I was testing this feature. At the moment, I have about 10 different copies of my virtual server stored at S3. All in all, I paid $1.76 in September for this service. The $1.73 is for the storage usage, the rest for the other factors mentioned above. The S3 costs will probably drop below $1 in October because I will only keep the last three versions of my installation. Please note that only the system partition is bundled and stored to S3. This is why the amount of compressed data on S3 is only 11GB in my case. Since I am running Fedora without any graphical interface the virtual machine is relatively small. My system partition only occupies about 5GB. Of course, if you run a common Windows server on EC2, things look a bit different. It probably only makes sense to use Server Core in the cloud. Amazon charges $0.15 per GB-month in the U.S. for S3 storage. More info about S3 pricing can be found here.

Amazon EBS costs

Another factor are Elastic Block Store (EBS) costs. EBS is a part of the EC2 service and shouldn’t be confused with S3. S3 is only for storing OS images (when used with EC2) and EBS storage can be attached directly to a running EC2 instance. You can run an instance without renting EBS storage because each instance type comes with a system and data partition, which is already included in the EC2 instance fee (topic of my next post). My High-CPU Medium Instance comes with 350GB, which is more than enough for my purposes.

However, I am using EBS because I want to separate the MySQL database and the WordPress installation from the EC2 instance. An advantage is that I can take snapshots (backups) of the EBS volume with just a mouse click. This is much more convenient than bundling an image. Moreover, it allows me to launch a second instance, modify the OS, and then just attach the currently active EBS volume with the latest data (reader comments for example) to the new instance without interruption.

The extra costs for EBS are also negligible in my case. I paid 55 cents for EBS in September. My EBS volume has only 5GB, which is enough storage for more than 1,000 4sysops articles including all the screenshots. Of course, if you need more storage for your applications and you also want to separate the data storage from the instance, you will pay more. Amazon charges $0.10 per GB-month for EBS volumes. Pricing for EBS snapshots is comparable to S3 storage ($0.15 per GB-month).

So all in all I am paying not more than $2 per month for storage. 4sysops isn’t a big website, but it also isn’t small. Hence, if you plan to run a web server on EC2, you probably will have comparable storage costs. In my next post, I will discuss the decisive EC2 fees, i.e. bandwidth and instance costs.

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• Amazon EC2 pricing for dummies – Part 1: Only pay for what you use (0)

At first, prices appeared to be quite low to me. I mean, $0.10 per hour for a server appears to be pretty cheap. My coffee consumption seemed more expensive, or so I thought. But when I calculated its yearly price, it became clear that even I can’t drink that much coffee! The story could end here, if I didn’t stumble upon Amazon’s Simple Monthly Calculator.

I realized that I must have somehow missed the fact that there are other available options other than an hourly rate (virtual server). However, quite a few other cost factors come into play here that you should be aware of. In fact, the “simple calculator” looked extremely complicated to me. I was unfamiliar with many of the terms used, even though, I have read quite a bit about EC2 on Amazon’s web site.

I felt a bit retarded because if I wasn’t able to understand this simplified cost calculation, then how would I go with the version for cloud geeks? Obviously, I was a little left behind because there must be IT pros out there who use this cost calculator every day and know this stuff backwards, however, I have not got the slightest clue about cloud computing.

Googling all the unfamiliar terms didn’t really help. Although I did understand a little more, I still wasn’t able to calculate what an EC2 server would cost me. The only thing that was clear was that I would still be able to afford a cup coffee if I launched an EC2 instance for a short trial period – just to see how much I had to pay after I go.

After playing with EC2 for a day or so, I developed a feeling for the actual costs. Funny thing is that even after a few months of using EC2, I still can’t use the Simple Monthly Calculator. I have no idea how many I/O requests an EBS volume (virtual disk) needs or “other requests” my S3 storage requires each month.

The only thing I am sure of is that many of the cost factors don’t really matter if you just want to run a virtual server in Amazon’s cloud. I think, Amazon somewhat exaggerates a little this only-pay-what-use mantra of cloud computing.

Imagine if a coffee shop started charging you for the number of sips you took of their precious brown liquid. If you drank your cup in one go, you’d pay only half the price because you would be occupying the cup for a much shorter period of time than a customer who enjoys savoring their daily wake-up drug with a lengthy sniffing and sipping ceremony. And if you don’t drink all of the coffee in your cup, you would be entitled to a refund. After all, it would only be fair for you to pay for what you actually used.

Anyway, I can’t really relieve you from trying EC2 in order to develop a feeling on your own how much cloud computing with Amazon would cost you. However, I can tell you what cost factors affect my own server that runs on EC2. This will be the topic of my next post.

• Poll: Are you interested in cloud computing? (5)
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If you want to use these new features, you have to add the Cmdlets first. PowerShell v2 is now modularized. This only works under Windows Server, because you need to install the role “Active Directory Services” and the feature “Remote Server Administration Tools.” You can use the Server Manager for the installation, or if you prefer typing the following commands, you will have the same results:

import-module servermanager
Add-WindowsFeature -Name “RSAT-AD-PowerShell” -IncludeAllSubFeature
import-module ActiveDirectory

Now you have all the tools and are ready to check them out. One novation is that the AD gets mounted like a drive. The command to change to the drive and display its content is the same as with other drives:

cd AD:
dir

Your window should look like this now:

If the AD was not mounted, make sure the relevant port (TCP 9389) is not blocked by a firewall. Besides that, the target AD Server must have installed the role “Active Directory Web Services.” If the requirements are met, you can add the drive with the following command:

New-PSDrive -PSProvider ActiveDirectory -Name AD -Root “” -Server “server.domain.tld” -get-credential

Here is a screenshot with an overview of all available Cmdlets:

The list was created with the following Cmdlet:

(Get-Module ActiveDirectory).ExportedCommands | format-table -Autosize

The help text for, e.g., the Get-ADForest Cmdlet, is displayed with this command:

get-help Get-ADForest

Now you can create and alter objects. I’ll just give you a few examples of adding a user, a group and a user to a group. The final example deletes the created user:

New-ADUser -Name “User” -SamAccountName “Username” -GivenName “Miller” -Surname “John” -DisplayName “John Miller” -Path ‘ou=Office,DC=domain,DC=tld’

New-ADGroup -Name “GroupToJoin” -SamAccountName groupToJoin -GroupCategory security   -GroupScope Global -DisplayName “GroupToJoin” -Path ‘ou=Office,DC=domain,DC=tld’ -Description “John wants to join this group”

Add-ADGroupMember “GroupToJoin” “Username”

Remove ADUser -Identity “Username”

The Cmdlets used for managing the Active Directory were not the only feature that got a nice boost with PowerShell v2. The management of HyperV and Exchange via PowerShell was also greatly improved. If you are interested in these topics, let me know and I’ll write about them.

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• How to migrate the Active Directory domain functional level to Server 2008 R2 – Part 3 (0)

The actual process of raising the functional level is pretty straightforward – a couple of clicks and you’re done. However, every domain controller has to be able to support the new level, so that means taking existing DCs based on earlier versions of Windows Server out of commission. They can still stick around as member servers, but you have to use DCPROMO to revoke their role as DCs. In my case, the last DC (which was Server 2008 Standard) happened to be the first DC of a new domain, so that meant it also took the FSMO roles for the domain (Flexible Single Master Operations) which are still part of Active Directory Domain Services. These do not get transferred automatically so this must be done manually.

There are five roles to be transferred – Schema Master, Domain Naming Master, PDC, RID Pool Manager and Infrastructure Master. To see which servers hold these roles in your environment, open a command window and type in:

netdom query fsmo /domain:yourdomain.com

In my case the same server held all five roles. I used the MMC snapins from a domain-joined workstation with the Remote Server Admin Tools (RSAT) installed to transfer the roles as follows:

Step 1 – Transfer PDC, RID Pool Manager and Infrastructure Master roles

1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers
2. Right-click “Active Directory Users and Computers” in the left-hand pane of the snapin and select “Connect to domain controller”, and choose the DC which you are transferring the roles TO
3. Right-click “Active Directory Users and Computers” again, and select “All Tasks” and then “Operations Masters”
4. For each of the three tabs – RID, PCD and Infrastructure – verify that the current Operations master is the DC you wish to transfer the role FROM, and that the other field is populated with the DC you wish to transfer the role TO, and click Change
5. Click Close

Step 2 – Transfer Domain Naming Master role

1. Open Active Directory Domains and Trusts
2. Right-click Active Directory Domains and Trusts and select “Change Active Directory Domain Controller” and choose the DC which you are transferring the role TO
3. Right-click Active Directory Domains and Trusts again and select “Operations Master”
4. Verify that the current master server and the new master server fields are populated correctly, and click Change
5. Click Close

Step 3 – Transfer Schema Master role

1. First, register the snapin – go Start, Run, and type in “regsvr32 schmmgmt.dll” (without quotes) and hit Enter
2. Go Start, Run, mmc.exe
3. In the console screen go to the File menu and select “Add/Remove Snap-in”
4. Select “Active Directory Schema” from the list of available snapins and click Add, then press OK
5. Right-click “Active Directory Schema” and select “Change Active Directory Domain Controller”. Select the DC which you will transfer the role TO
6. Right-click “Active Directory Schema” again and select “Operations Master”
7. Verify that the current master server and the new master server fields are populated correctly, and click Change
8. Click Close

The remaining considerations to assess what roles are currently in operation on the old DC. In my case it was also running as a DNS and DHCP server, so those roles needed to be replicated on new infrastructure and migrated, as my plans were to take the old DC offline completely. You also need to look at any specific or unique authentication scenarios – for example, I had a NAS which supported AD authentication but which had to point at the AD server hosting the PDC role, as it used a legacy form of authentication.

Go to the old DC and go Start, Run, DCPROMO to launch the ADDS Installation Wizard.

1. Click Next
2. Click OK to confirm that you have another Global Catalog server available on the network
3. Do NOT click the checkbox on the next page, as this will delete the domain
4. If DNS is running on the DC, tick the box to remove the DNS delegations which point to the server and enter administrative credentials to confirm this
5. Type in a new Administrator account password

The server will configure and remove ADDS and replicate any existing data to the other DC. Reboot the system once the process is complete. Once the old system has restarted, log back in using the new local admin account (if the server was a DNS server then it will still be using its loopback address for DNS resolution so you won’t be able to log onto AD just yet) and then uninstall any services which are no longer needed.

Run checks in AD Users and Computers, Sites and Services and DNS to ensure that the DC has been removed successfully. At this stage, wait a few hours to allow domain replication to take place.

To raise the functional level, launch Active Directory Users and Computers. Right-click the domain and select “Raise domain functional level”. In the field “Select an available domain functional level” choose “Windows Server 2008 R2” and click “Raise”. The domain level is now raised and the change replicates to each DC.

To raise the forest level, launch Active Directory Domains and Trusts and right-click “ Active Directory Domains and Trusts” (don’t click the domain). Click “Raise Forest Functional Level”, make sure that “Windows Server 2008 R2” is selected and click “Raise”. Again, the change replicates throughout the forest to all the other DCs.

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