—————————————————————————————————————

The core installation of Windows Server 2008 does not have the familiar display or personalization settings configuration that we have become comfortable with in prior versions of Windows and the full install versions of Windows Server 2008. You can configure the screen saver timeout in the Windows Registry for core systems.

On a per-user basis, the screen saver timeout is set in this registry location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktopScreenSaveTimeOut

Depending on the current configuration, a group policy object may have pushed down a different configuration in Active Directory and Group Policy environments. To set a timeout value, simply run Regedit from the core prompt and browse to this location in the registry. From there, you can open up the ScreenSaveTimeOut value and tweak the default value of 600 (10 minutes).

In this hive of the registry is the ScreenSaverIsSecure value. If this value is set to 0, it means that a password is not required to exit the screen saver; if the value is set to 1, it means that a password is required to exit the screen saver. Figure A shows this area of the registry with a five minute screen saver timeout and a password being required to exit the screen saver.

Figure A

These settings are not new to Windows core editions, but configuring these values in this fashion may be new for administrators. Another approach is the traditional group policy configuration, where domain membership and organizational unit placement will configure these settings centrally. This approach to the configuration is good for workgroup or standalone systems.

Note: Editing the registry can be risky, so be sure to have a verified backup before making any changes.

Stay on top of the latest Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 tips and tricks with our free Windows Server newsletter, delivered each Wednesday. Automatically sign up today!

—————————————————————————————————————

Although version 2.0 of Microsoft’s PowerShell scripting language has not yet made it to the beta stage, Microsoft has released a third community technology preview of the shell.  Designed to provide those interested a sneak peak as to what might make its way into the final release of version 2, it’s important to note that a community technology preview is not a beta and features may come and go.  Microsoft makes it very clear that CTP software is not in any way neither designed nor supported for production use and that CTP software may not even closely resemble final code.  In short, don’t build solutions on CTP software and then complain when it breaks later on!

What’s coming in PowerShell 2.0?

PowerShell 2.0 is packed full of new features designed to make it a more powerful, easier to use scripting language than the initial 1.0 release.  I’ll discuss a few of the more significant enhancements here.

ISE

The most immediately noticeable addition to PowerShell 2.0 comes in the form of the Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE).  ISE is a GUI-based PowerShell script development tool designed to make it much easier to create and modify PowerShell scripts.  Although there are other free third party development solutions, such as Quest’s PowerGUI, it’s nice to see the PowerShell team working to tame the beast a bit.

PowerShell 2.0 ISE screenshot

Remoting

PowerShell 2.0 will also greatly enhance the ability for a PowerShell script to work against remote systems.  In short, an administrator can, from his own workstation, issue PowerShell commands that are executed on remote stations, with the output being returned to the administrator’s own screen.  Of course, in order for remoting to work, the remote computer must have PowerShell installed. The beauty of remoting in PowerShell 2.0 is that the remote user doesn’t see any visual representation that a PowerShell process is being executed, beyond the actual PowerShell process appearing in Task Manager.  If user’s did see screens start popping up on their desktops in the middle or a work day, imagine what would happen at the help desk when the phone started ringing!

Background jobs

If you take a deeper look at the remoting functionality in PowerShell 2.0, you’ll understand that this new feature works because of PowerShell 2.0’s ability to run jobs in the background, shielded from the user.  Locally (or remotely, for that matter), administrators can create scripts that run in the background; that is, the script executes and the administrator is immediately returned to a new PowerShell prompt while processing continues in the background.  Later, when time permits, the administrator can gather the results of the command for further action.  The ability to run jobs in the background — or asynchronously — means that an administrator can keep working without constantly waiting for scripts to finish execution.

Transactions

PowerShell 2.0 also adds the ability to develop full transaction-based scripts complete with cmdlets for starting, committing, and rolling back a transaction in the event of an error or other condition.  This capability starts to make PowerShell an attractive choice for even the most complex business processes as administrators can be more sure that scripts can return data to its original state if necessary.

Multiline comments

In PowerShell V1, comments that spanned lines were, quite frankly, a pain in the neck unless you used a tool like PowerGUI.  Each comment line had to start with a # symbol.  Failure to include one of the symbols meant a bad script.  PowerShell 2.0 introduces the <# and #> script elements between which PowerShell script developers can embed as many comments across as many lines as they wish.  While it doesn’t sound like a major improvement, if you look at almost any serious programming or scripting language, they all have the ability to handle multiline comments.

New cmdlets, parameters, variables and operators

PowerShell 2.0 is the next major release of the language and, as such, includes a huge number of new cmdlets, new parameters for existing cmdlets, new permanent variables and some new operators, such as the -Split and -Join operators that allow the splitting or joining of strings based on certain characteristics.  There are new cmdlets to support background jobs (Start-PSJob, Stop-PSJob, etc.), to support transactions (Start-PSTransaction, Undo-PSTransaction, etc.), and new cmdlets to support PowerShell 2.0’s enhanced debugging capabilities (Set-PSBreakpoint, Get-PSBreakpoint, etc.)  As I said, some existing cmdlets have also received new parameters.  For example, the Stop-Process cmdlet now has a -force parameter.  The Export-Csv cmdlet now sports a -Delimiter parameter so you can specify what character you want to use.  While many of the new cmdlets and parameters are designed to support the new overall functionality in PowerShell, many enhancements also make PowerShell 2.0 a much more robust language overall.

Summary

PowerShell 2.0 has been in development for a long time and, with the third CTP under its belt, it’s looking like a huge step in the right direction for this excellent scripting language.

—————————————————————————————————————

Have a topic idea or question you’d like me to address or answer in a future post?  Email me directly right here at trfeedback@slowe.com.

Adding the File Services role and management tools

A base Windows Server 2008 installation does not include file serving capabilities. This is a good thing. With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has significantly enhanced the role-based capabilities in Windows Server, which helps to secure the operating system from attack. To add the File Services role:

1. Start the Server Manager. Start | Server Manager.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Roles.
3. Roles information will show in the work pane, as shown in Figure A below. Choose Add Roles.

Figure A

The Windows Server 2008 role management screen.

1. On the Select Server Roles dialog box, choose File Services and click the Next button. This screen is shown in Figure B.

Figure B

Choose the File Services role.

1. When you get to the Select Role Services dialog box, decide which services are necessary and click the Next button. At a minimum, choose the File Server Resource Manager option in addition to the required File Server service. In Figure C, note that the Windows Search Service is also selected.

Figure C

1. When requested, decide which volumes (if any) should be monitored for use. Use the Options button to make changes to the reports that will be installed and to change the threshold at which alerts will begin. You can see this in Figure D.

Figure D

Choose your usage monitoring options.

1. On the Set Report Options screen, choose the location at which storage reports will be saved. The default location is C:\StorageReports. Optionally, if e-mailed usage reports are desired, provide the information requested.
2. If the Windows Search Service is selected, as it has been in this example, select the volumes that should be indexed. The Search service makes finding files much easier.
3. On the confirmation window, click the Install button to install the File Services role with the specified options. Installation is generally pretty quick and should take only a couple of minutes.

When all is done, the File Services role is installed and, along with it, the File Server Resource Manager and the Share and Storage Management tools. The File Server Resource Manager helps administrators manage quotas and other high level functionality. The Share and Storage Management tool replaces the File Server Management tool that was present in Windows Server 2003 and is the focus of this article.

Share and Storage Management Console capabilities

With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has revamped the File Services role and created the Share and Storage Management Console to help administrators better manage storage volumes and shared folders and volumes. Here’s a short list of the major administrative tasks that can be accomplished with the Share and Storage Management Console:

• Add or remove disks and volumes to and from the server.
• Enable or disable shared access to server resources, including files, folders and volumes.
• Secure access to shared resources based on a variety of factors.
• View the users currently accessing a resource and, if necessary, disconnect them.

All of these areas will be discussed and demonstrated in this article. To start the Share and Storage Management Console, go to Start | Administrative Tools | Share and Storage Management. Figure E shows you the console.

Figure E

The Share and Storage Management console.

Add storage to a file server

Storage needs are not decreasing. Even with more and more information making its way into more hierarchical storage systems, the need for the unstructured storage capabilities offered by the File Services role is growing all the time. As such, the time will likely come when even the most overbuilt file server will need to have more storage space added in order to support burgeoning needs. Adding storage to a server is generally pretty easy. If you’re using a hardware RAID controller, follow the instructions for your controller. These instructions assume that your new storage is ready to use. For this example, I’ve added an external hard drive to my Windows Server 2008 computer. To add storage to a server:

1. From the Share and Storage Management console, choose Provision Storage. This starts a wizard that walks you through the steps necessary to make a new hard disk active. If you have no new storage, you’ll get a message indicating such.
2. The first screen of the wizard, shown in Figure F, asks you to indicate the location at which the storage should be provisioned. If you’ve attached a local disk, choose the first option. If your storage resides on a Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN, choose the On a storage subsystem option.

Figure F

The Provision Storage Wizard.

1. On the Disk Drive portion of the wizard, choose the drive that should be added to your server.
2. After selecting the disk to add, choose how much space should be allocated to your new volume. Remember, you can have multiple logical volumes per physical disk. You can see this in Figure G.

Figure G

How much space should be allocated to the new volume?

1. Next, on the Volume Creation screen, decide how you want to mount this volume on your server. For this example, I have opted to mount this volume as drive J.
2. The final decision to make before the volume is added is to decide if the volume should be formatted and, if so, how large the allocation unit size should be on the new volume.

Once you’ve made your selections, review your settings and click the Create button. The wizard will display the progress of the action and let you know when everything is done. When you’re done, from the work pane, choose the Volumes tab. In Figure H, see that volume J, named External, has been added to my lab server.

Figure H

The new volume was successfully added.

Add a shared resource to the server and secure the resource

Earlier, you saw a list of the default shared resources on a Windows Server 2008 server that has the File Services role installed. You might wonder why these resources are shared by default and your own default shares may differ somewhat depending on your configuration. The list below explains the purpose of each share:

• Admin$: This share points to the location on the server to which Windows Server 2008 was installed, usually C:\Windows.
• C$: Each drive on your server is shared through what is called an administrative share denoted by a $ after the drive name. On my server, I have both C$ and J$ shares, although you don’t see J$ in Figure G since that screen was shot before I added my new drive.
• IPC$: IPC stands for Inter-Process Communication. The IPC$ share assists in communication between processes and computers.
• NETLOGON: Used for user authentication on domain controllers.
• SYSVOL: Used to help distribute group policy information between domain controllers.

As is the case with adding storage, Microsoft has provided a wizard that helps administrators add shares to a Windows Server 2008-based file server. You can still add shares in the more traditional way by using Windows Explorer, but the process discussed here uses just the Share and Storage Management console. To add a share:

1. From the Action pane, choose Provision Share to start the wizard.
2. The first screen of the wizard asks you to specify the location that you would like to share. Use the Browse button to do so. For this example, I’m sharing the C:\StorageReports folder.
3. Any time you open up access to a resource, you should limit who can access that resource to just those that require access. On the NTFS Permissions page of the wizard, you can opt to keep the default NTFS permissions or change permissions depending on your needs. In Figure I, note that I’ve shown both the NTFS Permissions page as well as the Edit Permissions dialog box to give you a look at how to change permissions. If you want to change permissions, in the Permissions for dialog box click the Add button, select the user that should be added to the permissions list and choose the appropriate permissions.

Figure I

How do you want to handle NTFS permissions?

1. The next step of the wizard asks you to choose the protocol(s) allowed to access the share. If you’ve opted to install the NFS portion of the File Services role, the NFS option will be available. If not, just SMB (Server Message Block), the Windows default, is available. The Share name field is automatically populated with the name of the folder you selected.
2. On the SMB Settings page, provide a description of the share that will show up when people browse the server. Lower on the page, note the Advanced settings area. If you want to change these settings, click the Advanced button. Figure J shows you the Advanced options page. On the Advanced page, note the Enable access-based enumeration checkbox. Access-based enumeration was introduced in an add-on in previous versions of Windows Server and brings to Windows the ability to limit user’s visibility to just the folders that the user has rights to see.

Figure J

SMB settings.

1. Next up… SMB permissions. On the SMB Permissions page, decide how you want users to be able to access the resource over the network. Note that this set of permissions is separate from the NTFS permissions you worked with previously. The SMB permissions (also called share permissions) are combined with NTFS permissions and the most restrictive permissions will apply. I recommend that you simply set SMB permissions to Administrators have Full Control; all other users and groups have only Read access and Write access and use just NTFS permissions to limit access.
2. I’m going to skip the next few screen shots, but will briefly describe their purpose. On the Quota Policy page, you can apply a quota template that you previously created with the File Server Resource Manager tool. By doing so, you can prevent users from eating up all of your available space. The File Screen Policy page, with templates also managed by the File Server Resource Manager tool, allows you to allow or disallow file storage based on the type of file saved. Finally, the DFS Namespace Publishing page provides a way to publish an SMB share into a DFS namespace. This feature is beyond the scope of this article.
3. On the review page, review your selections and click the Create button. When you’re done, choose the Shares tab in the main console. You should see your new share listed, as shown in Figure K.

Figure K

The StorageReports share has been created.

View and manage user access to shared resources

Once you have your file server completely up and running and allow users to access the system, you need to be able to perform administrative tasks that keep the server in good working order. Specifically, you should be able to see who is accessing your server and get a list of exactly what is being accessed. If necessary, you should also be able to disconnect users. All of these tasks are easily accomplished using the Share and Storage Management console. On the main page of the console, take note of the Manage Sessions and Manage Open Files options. Manage Sessions gives you a place from which you can control a user’s overall access to your shares. Manage Open Files gives you a way to see which sessions (user from a particular computer) have which files open. If a user has seven files open from his desktop computer, only a single session is required. If, however, the same user walks over to another computer and opens a server-based file, another session is created for that user. In Figure L, note that the user Administrator has two open sessions–one from the computer named Vista1 and another from the computer named Vista-VM1. If you want to close a session, choose the session and click Close Selected. To close all sessions, click Close All.

Figure L

Manage open sessions.

Finally, let’s look at the Manage Open Files window. Take a look at Figure M. Note that the file named Sample Document.txt is open by the user named Administrator. You’ll also note that there are a number of directories open. Each time you open a folder on your server, it’s considered an open file.

Figure M

Manage files that are open on your file server.

To close an open file or folder, choose that file or folder and click Close Selected. To close all open files and folder, click Close All.

Summary

With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has made a number of improvements to the venerable File Services role. Beyond enhanced management capability, Microsoft has also improved the underlying SMB transport mechanism to provide better performance with Vista.

———————————————————————————–

Adding a field to a database table is sometimes not as simple as it may seem.  If certain situations are not considered when adding fields, you may find yourself looking at some long nights fixing database code.  Today, database consultant Tim Chapman looks at two such scenarios, and how you can plan for their occurrence.

SELECT ALL

A SELECT * statement returns all field values from a table.  While this is not only a lazy practice, returning more fields than needed will lead to performance problems in your application.  In addition to potential performance problems, SELECT * statements can cause your application code to break when additional fields are added to your database table.  Consider the following example.  Database table Sales has four fields; SaleID, SalePrice, SaleDate, and Product.  A front end application calls the following stored procedure to acquire sales for the last two days.

CREATE PROCEDURE usp_GetSalesLastTwoDays

AS

SELECT * FROM Sales

WHERE SaleDate >= DATEADD(d, -2, GETDATE())

When this procedure is run, it returns all four fields from the Sales table.  If the front-end application is code in such a way so that it tries to handle only these four fields, returning an additional field may result in a broken front end.  While something like this should be caught through testing, little situations like this may end up leaking through to production code which would result in a “broken” application.

The most simple method to correct this situation is to not use a SELECT * statement.  If you always explicitly list the field names that you want your procedures to return then you’re much more likely to avert these types of problems as well as enjoy some performance gains from not returning all fields in the SELECT statement.

Table Joins

Adding database fields to tables that participate in JOIN statements (probably most of your tables) can potentially cause problems.  These problems can arise when the name of the field added also exists as a field name in the joined table and table aliases are not used.

To make this a bit clearer, consider the following example.  The Products table has 3 fields; ProductID, ProductCode, and ProductDescription.  The Sales table has the following fields; SaleID, ProductID, SaleDate.  Most queries join these tables in the form of:

SELECT SaleID, SaleDate, ProductCode

FROM Products p

JOIN Sales s ON p.ProductID= s.ProductID

Because most queries are only concerned with the ProductCode from the Products table, a developer as decided to add the ProductCode field to the Sales table to avoid the lookup.  Adding the ProductCode to the Sales table will not only go against normalization rules (which is sometimes OK), but will immediately cause the query listed above to fail.

The reason is that no table aliases are used when listing the fields, so the optimizer will not know whether the query is specifying the ProductCode from the Products table or the Sales table.  To fix this problem, any statement that looks at the ProductCode from the JOIN of these two tables and which does not use table aliases must be rewritten.  To avoid this problem entirely, ALWAYS use table aliases when joining two or more tables.

Conclusion

Adding a field to a table should not cause your programs to crash.  The problems encountered here could be very easily avoided if you include these types of situations in your database programming standards and ensure they are enforced.  A little bit of looking forward can prevent many hours of reprogramming.

Filtered indexes are a neat new feature in SQL Server 2008 that allows you to define indexes on subsets of data.  In today’s article, database architect Tim Chapman shows how you can take advantage of this useful new feature.

———————————————————————–

A filtered index is a non-clustered index created on a well-defined subset of data in a SQL Server table object.  By “well-defined”, I am talking about those sets of data that are used exclusively to satisfy query criteria.  For example, if you have a field in a table that contains predominately NULL values, you may benefit from creating a filtered index that only contains those values that are NOT NULL.  Note that you cannot define a clustered index with a filter.

Why a filtered index?

Filtered indexes can provider performance gains in those scenarios where a majority of queries on a table filter on a specific subset of data.  These indexes are likely going to be much smaller than an index on the entire field, so there is less index storage involved.  Also, filtered indexes are likely going to take less work to maintain.  Because the filtered index will be smaller, data manipulation operations will affect smaller portions of the index, making these operations less costly in terms of database I/O.

Creating a filtered index

Let’s take a look at how to create a filtered index, and how we can see some performance benefits from its use.  First, run the following script to create the SalesHistory table and populate it.

IF OBJECT_ID(’SalesHistory’, ‘U’) IS NOT NULL

DROP TABLE SalesHistory

GO

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SalesHistory]

(

[SaleID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1),

[Product] [varchar](10) NULL,

[SaleDate] [datetime] NULL,

[SalePrice] [money] NULL,

CONSTRAINT PK_SalesHistory_SaleID PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (SaleID ASC)

)

GO

SET NOCOUNT ON

BEGIN TRANSACTION

DECLARE @i INT

SET @i = 1

WHILE (@i <=5000)

BEGIN

INSERT INTO [SalesHistory](Product, SaleDate, SalePrice)

VALUES (’Computer’, DATEADD(ww, @i, ‘3/11/1919′),

DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) + (@i + 57))

INSERT INTO [SalesHistory](Product, SaleDate, SalePrice)

VALUES(’BigScreen’, DATEADD(ww, @i, ‘3/11/1927′),

DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) + (@i + 13))

INSERT INTO [SalesHistory](Product, SaleDate, SalePrice)

VALUES(’PoolTable’, DATEADD(ww, @i, ‘3/11/1908′),

DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) + (@i + 29))

SET @i = @i + 1

END

COMMIT TRANSACTION

GO

With some records in my SalesHistory table, I am going to update the SaleDate to NULL for 6 out of every 7 records in the table.  This will give me a pretty sparse distribution of values in the SaleDate field.  After the update I will then create a normal nonclustered index on the SaleDate field.

UPDATE SalesHistory

SET SaleDate = NULL

WHERE (SaleID % 7) > 0

GO

CREATE INDEX idx_SalesHistory_SaleDate

ON SalesHistory(SaleDate)

Run the following command to run IO statistics on.  This allows you to view IO values for each TSQL command ran.

SET STATISTICS IO ON

The following query returns all rows from the SalesHistory table where the SaleDate contains a value.  This query uses the idx_SalesHistory_SaleDate index we created earlier, and uses an Index Seek operation to return 2142 rows.  This query requires 8 logical reads from the database to return the necessary rows.

Note that the queries used in this article only return the SaleDate field in the resultset.  The reason for this excluding or including more fields in the SELECT list will alter the execution plan.  So, for the purposes of this article, I will only return the field for which I am setting criteria.

SELECT SaleDate

FROM SalesHistory

WHERE SaleDate IS NOT NULL

I can view index related data for my idx_SalesHistory_SaleDate index through querying some system views.

SELECT i.name, p.rows, i.filter_definition

FROM

sys.partitions p

JOIN sys.indexes i ON p.object_id = i.object_id AND p.index_id = i.index_id

WHERE

OBJECT_NAME(i.object_id) = ‘SalesHistory’

AND i.name = ‘idx_SalesHistory_SaleDate’

The following query is similar to the query specified above, but filters those rows where the SaleDate does contain a NULL value.  This query also does an index seek on the index I created above, but this time requires 31 logical reads from the database as the query returns 12858 records.

SELECT SaleDate

FROM SalesHistory

WHERE SaleDate IS NULL

Now that I’ve looked a little bit how nonclustered indexes work, I’ll take a look at how you can user fliteres when defining the nonclustered index to index only subsets of data.  First, I’ll need to drop the index I created above.

DROP INDEX SalesHistory.idx_SalesHistory_SaleDate

In the following script I create a filtered nonclustered index on the SaleDate field.  This index will contain data pointers for ONLY those records for which the SaleDate IS NOT NULL.  This means that for any records where the SaleDate IS NULL, the index will not be considered at all.

CREATE INDEX idx_SalesHistory_SaleDate

ON SalesHistory(SaleDate)

WHERE SaleDate IS NOT NULL

In the following query, an index scan of the idx_SalesHistory_SalePrice is used with 7 logical database reads.  So, even though an index scan was performed, the operation took less logical reads due to the filtered index.

SELECT SaleDate

FROM SalesHistory

WHERE SaleDate IS NOT NULL

I can query the same system table query as before to view the number of records contained in the index.  The previous index contained all 15,000 records from the table, whereas the current index contains only records where the SaleDate IS NOT NULL (2142 records in this case).

SELECT i.name, p.rows, i.filter_definition

FROM

sys.partitions p

JOIN sys.indexes i ON p.object_id = i.object_id AND p.index_id = i.index_id

WHERE

OBJECT_NAME(i.object_id) = ‘SalesHistory’

AND i.name = ‘idx_SalesHistory_SaleDate’

In the following query, I look for those records where the SaleDate IS NULL.  Remember that the index I defined earlier only contains those records where the SaleDate IS NOT NULL, so it will not be considered for this query.  In fact, a clustered index scan is used to find the records where the SaleDate IS NULL, resulting in 79 logical database reads.

SELECT SaleDate

FROM SalesHistory

WHERE SaleDate IS NULL

Conclusion

The new filtered index feature in SQL Server 2008 is a very useful new feature.  It allows you to create indexes on only subsets of frequently used data.  However, these types of indexes should be used with care.  In almost all circumstances, a normal non-clustered index will be the more useful index to use rather than a filtered on.  Only after you are comfortable with the data usage patterns of your database should you consider creating filtered indexes, otherwise you may cause yourself

————————————————————————————————————- 

Earlier this year, Microsoft released Windows Server Essentials 2008, one product in their nascent midmarket arsenal.  For my next few postings here, I’m going to provide you with an overview of the installation process for this new suite of products.

The whole installation of Windows Essentials Business Server 2008starts with running the Preparation and Planning Wizard that is included with the product.  Install these tools from the first Windows EBS disc onto a workstation in your organization and then run them.  You can’t skip this step; the server installations require that you provide the results of these wizards to them in order to complete.

Before you begin, insert the first disc of the Windows Essentials Business Server 2008 package and install the tools necessary to complete your task.  Specifically, from the root of the first disc, execute TOOLSLAUNCH.EXE. 

Windows Essential Business Server Preparation Wizard

The first stage of the installation process consists of running the Server Preparation Wizard.  Once you install the Windows Essential Server Business Preparation wizard, run it by going to Start > All Programs > Windows Essential Business Server > Windows Essential Business Server Preparation Wizard.  Once you start the wizard, you’ll see a screen like the one below.  Click Next to continue.

Install updates

As you probably know, keeping servers current with the latest patches from Microsoft and other software vendors is a critical tool in your security arsenal.  During this phase of the wizard, decide whether or not you want to update the wizard with the latest version available from Microsoft.  It’s highly recommend that you allow updates to install.  Click the Update button to continue.  The download and update process can take a bit of time.

Choose a domain

The Windows Server Essentials management and messaging servers also act as domain controllers in your new infrastructure.  The new servers can be joined to an existing forest or you can choose to create a new forest and domain for your new infrastructure.  In this example, I’ll be creating a new forest and domain named example3.com.  In this step of the preparation wizard, decide how you plan to handle the domain aspect of your installation.

Add firewall address

For the next step of the wizard, provide the internal IP address and subnet mask of your internal firewall.  In my lab scenario shown here, the address is 192.168.0.1.

Add subnets

If your overall network consists of multiple networks and subnets, provide a list of them on this page of the wizard.  When you click the Add subnet button, you’re asked for the network’s router address and subnet mask as well as for the type of connection and speed.

You can edit the first discovered subnet by clicking the Edit Subnet button at the bottom of the window.

I have only a single network in my lab, so the only entry necessary is the one shown in the screen below.

Start health scan

The health scan portion of the wizard examines your network to determine its suitability for the new services you plan to add.  The scan looks for issues that could prevent Windows EBS from running properly.  Click the Scan button on this page to begin the scan.

The progress of your scan will show up on the Progress of health scan page in the wizard.  Once the health scan is complete, you’re able to view the scan results on the View health scan results wizard page.  Green check marks indicate success.

Click the Finish button to complete the preparation portion of the wizard.

Windows Essential Business Server Planning Wizard

The next stage of the installation process involves running the Server Planning Wizard, which was installed along with the other tools from the first disc of the Windows Essential Business Server 2008 package.  Go to Start > All Programs > Windows Essential Business Server > Windows Essential Business Server Planning Wizard.  Once you start the wizard, you’ll see a screen like the one below.  Click Next to continue.

Install updates

As is the case with the preparation wizard, the planning wizard provides you with an option to install updates before you continue.  Updates can contain new security patches and other items critical to your new server infrastructure.

Confirm network topology

The wizard’s next step is to make sure that everything is in order with regard to your network.  Earlier in this process, you provided a wizard with information about what networks and subnets are available in your environment.  Now, that information is verified.  In my example, you’ll note that I’m running a single-subnet network, but this may not be the case for your infrastructure.

About your firewall

The wizard asks you a number of relatively self-explanatory questions regarding the configuration of your firewall.  Do you manage it yourself or does someone else do it for you?  How does the firewall’s external interface get an IP address and does the firewall double as a DHCP server for your internal network?

Plan network firewall

Windows Essential Business Server installs  the Forefront Threat Management Gateway on the Security Server to act as a firewall. You can choose to replace your existing firewall with this software, or you can deploy the Security Server behind your existing firewall.  In my example, I’ll install the Security Server behind my existing firewall.

Plan firewall addresses

Now, you get to plan the addressing for your new infrastructure?  The wizard will configure a setup file that creates an additional subnet between your existing firewall and your security server.  Provide the new IP address that you will assign to the inside interface on your firewall.

Record firewall rules

You may have created a number of rules on your firewall that you want to carry over to the new security server.  If you’d like, you can specify those rules here so that you don’t have to worry about them later on.

Plan RWW and SAN

Windows Essentials Business Server 2008 includes a feature called Remote Web Workplace (RWW) that allows web-based access to resources in your new environment.  For security, you can configure RWW to use an SSL certificate, but this has to be done separately.  I won’t be going over this step in this article.

Further, you can configure RWW to use a SAN if you like.  Again, I won’t be covering this step in this article.

Plan network settings

Almost done!  Every server in your new infrastructure needs both a name and IP address.  On the Plan network settings page, provide this information for the three servers that will make up your Windows Essentials Business Server environment.  Note that the security server already has an IP address.

Save planning data

Finally, save the settings information that you’ve gathered as a part of the wizard.  You’ll need to provide this file to the installation process for each of your servers as you perform their installations.

Here’s a look at the report generated in my example.

Summary

This completes the preparation and planning portion of the Windows Essentials Business Server installation.  In my next posting, I’ll go over the installation of the management server.

From auditing data changes to capturing data for loading a data warehouse, hash fields have a ton of practical uses.  In today’s article, database consultant Tim Chapman shows how you can use built-in SQL Server functions to create your own hash fields.

——————————————————————————————–

A hash field is a calculated numeric field based on the value(s) contained in one or more fields.  This calculated value is great for detecting data changes, which can be put to use in auditing strategies or datawarehouse ETL (extraction, transformation, loading) operations.

Creating a hash field in SQL Server is easy.  The database engine has a couple of built-in functions that can be used to generate the hashed value.  Two of these functions are CHECKSUM() and BINARY_CHECKSUM().  CHECKSUM() is intended to be used to build hash indexes while BINARY_CHECKSUM() is great for detected data changes.  I’ll be using the BINARY_CHECKSUM funtion for the purposes of todays writing.

Using the hash field

In the following example I’ll show you how you can take advantage of the BINARY_CHECKSUM() function.  First, I’ll create the SalesHistory table and load some data into it.

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SalesHistory]

(

                SaleID int IDENTITY(1,1),

                Product varchar(10) NULL,

                SaleDate datetime NULL,

                StatusID TINYINT NULL,

                SalePrice money NULL

)

GO

SET NOCOUNT ON

BEGIN TRANSACTION

DECLARE @i INT

SET @i = 1

WHILE (@i <=500)

BEGIN

                INSERT INTO [SalesHistory](Product, SaleDate, SalePrice, StatusID)

                VALUES ('Computer', DATEADD(ww, @i, '3/11/1919'),

                DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) + (@i + 57), 1)

                INSERT INTO [SalesHistory](Product, SaleDate, SalePrice, StatusID)

                VALUES('BigScreen', DATEADD(ww, @i, '3/11/1927'),

                DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) + (@i + 13),5)

                INSERT INTO [SalesHistory](Product, SaleDate, SalePrice, StatusID)

                VALUES('PoolTable', DATEADD(ww, @i, '3/11/1908'),

                DATEPART(ms, GETDATE()) + (@i + 29),8)

                SET @i = @i + 1

END

COMMIT TRANSACTION

ALTER TABLE SalesHistory

ADD CONSTRAINT pk_SalesHistory_SaleID PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (SaleID)

Once my table is created, I can add a calculated field to the SalesHistory table using the BINARY_CHECKSUM() function.

ALTER TABLE SalesHistory

ADD HashField AS BINARY_CHECKSUM(SaleID, StatusID, Product)

The HashField I create above creates a checksum on the SaleID, StatusID, and Product fields.  The resulting value is a signed integer value based on the values in the SaleID, StatusID, and Product fields.  As the values in these fields the HashField value will change also.  I can then use this HashField value to keep track of changes to specific data fields, which makes it great for capturing changes for loading a data warehouse.

Capturing these changes can be as easy as comparing each hash value to a previously stored hash value to determine changed rows to as complicated to finding row data changes and then routines to find the changed values.

Regardless of how you use it, using hash values in SQL Server is a great tool.

—————————————————————————————————————

The use cases for Windows Server 2008 Core Edition include additional security for certain installation sites and networks, and certain products (e.g., the free Hyper-V role) are only available on core editions. In Windows Server 2008 systems, including the core installations, the Windows Firewall is enabled by default. For many administrators, the first step of a new Windows installation is to disable the Windows Firewall. You can do this with the following Netsh command:

[netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off]

Now the Windows Firewall is disabled for all network profiles. You can tweak the parameters to within what is run from Netsh. To determine what commands are available for Netsh, simply go into Netsh and enter a question mark (?) in one of the interactive contexts. Figure A shows the advfirewall context.

Figure A

Visit TechNet for more information about Netsh in the advfirewall context.

Stay on top of the latest Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 tips and tricks with our free Windows Server newsletter, delivered each Wednesday. Automatically sign up today!

——————————————————————————————————————–

Although the economy is not exactly in great shape these days and the news of downsizing keeps coming, organizations must continue business as usual as much as possible.  That means that IT in those organizations needs to keep forging ahead.  Of course, this also means that servers need to be upgraded and replaced and new servers need to be installed in order for the organization to continue to implement new technology initiatives.  If your server budget is shrinking and the expectations on your services have not kept pace, how can you keep up?

Note: I’m going to focus on Dell refurbished equipment here since I’ve had quite a lot of experience with them.

Refurbished servers can provide you with a great way to keep the upgrade cycle in place at a lower cost than buying new servers.  Often sold for much less than new equipment, refurbished servers generally carry the same warranties as brand new equipment and can sometimes be available more quickly since they do not need to be built.

For example, at Westminster College, we use Dell M600 blade servers.  Our current servers are configured with dual quad core 2.33 GHz Xeon processors with 32GB of RAM and two 73GB SAS disks.  A few months ago, before the M600’s were available in the Dell refurbished store, we paid around $4,000 for each blade server with this configuration.  Last night, in perusing the Dell refurb store, I found M600’s with dual quad core 2.8 GHz Xeons processors and 32 GB of RAM for less than $2,500.  That difference is pretty significant.  If you need a lot of servers, the difference can add up very quickly.

On the downside, if you start buying refurbished equipment, it’s more difficult to buy servers with a consistent configuration.  You get what you get, as it were.  If you need ten servers and you hit the store at the right time, you might get lucky, but you can’t count on it.

The main worry with regard to refurbished equipment lies in the warranty service and stability.  As I mentioned, Dell refurbished equipment usually ships with the same warranty that would be included with new equipment.  Further, you can choose to extend the warranty for an additional charge.  As for stability, speaking from experience, I’ve never had a bit of trouble with any of the servers I’ve purchased refurbished.  In addition to servers, I’ve also purchased a number of refurbished Dell desktop computers, laptops and storage devices.

Pros

• You can save a whole lot of money by buying refurbished equipment
• The equipment usually includes the same warranty as new equipment

Cons

• You may not be able to locate the exact equipment configuration that you need
• There is a stigma attached to the word “refurbished”

If you’re buying in large volume, you may not be able to get a better deal in the refurb store, but it definitely doesn’t hurt to check, and you may be able to extend that shrinking budget just a little further.

—————————————————————————————————————

Have a topic idea or question you’d like me to address or answer in a future post?  Email me directly right here at trfeedback@slowe.com.

—————————————————————————————————————

Microsoft’s PowerShell scripting language has proven to be an excellent addition to the scripting language family largely due to its flexibility and raw power.  However, as the saying goes, “with great power comes great complexity.”  Like I said, PowerShell is eminently flexible and, for simple tasks, pretty easy to figure out, but as a powerful and extensible scripting language, memorizing complete syntax for every command and procedure would not be a simple task.

Quest Software has developed a freeware product, PowerGUI, that provides PowerShell script developers with a GUI tool that makes the development process much easier.  In fact, Quest has built an entire community around this tool and around PowerShell in general.

As you can see in the screenshot below, PowerGUI can be used to allow you to quickly develop code snippets that you can use in your own scripts.  This automated develop can save you a whole lot of time.  In the shot below, PowerGUI generated code that displays all of the members of an Active Directory group.

PowerGUI provides PowerShell script developers with a number of benefits, including:

• Code generation. Browse through the Active Directory — as well as through other objects — and let PowerGUI build code snippets for you to use.
• Syntax highlighting
• Through the use of PackPack extensions, wide support for managing a number of systems, including:
• Windows Server
• Exchange Server 2007
• Active Directory
• SQL Server 2005 and 2008
• Hyper-V
• VMware ESX
• SharePoint
• Debugging
• Breakpoints
• Commenting of code blocks

The screenshot below gives you a look at the syntax highlighting feature found in the PowerGUI Script Editor.

These are just a few of the features provided by PowerGUI.  For more information about PowerGUI and the PowerGUI user community, visit the PowerGUI site.