December, 2008 | Blog Bujarra.com

Creating a .flp file for use with Virtual Floppy.

In this document, I will try to explain how to make advanced use of the Virtual Floppy in a Virtual Machine, either with VMWare Workstation, Server, ESX or ESXi. In the beginning, We will no longer need the use of this support, But we all know, that on certain occasions, The easiest thing would be to take a floppy drive with us 3 1/2 USB on top. With this procedure, We learn how to create an image in .flp with drivers, or a boot floppy disk for later use on the VM.

Hide the language bar in Citrix XenApp

Good, in this document we will be able to see how to hide the language bar and prevent users from getting it when they open their applications via Citrix, since it is usually quite uncomfortable to work with and especially because it usually gives quite a few problems in user sessions.

Taking Active Directory Snapshots on Windows Server 2008

Well, the other day I saw this in an official Microsoft doc and it had to be tested. It refers to being able to take snapshots of our Active Directory, for the simple fact of taking it to another computer and performing some tests with LDAP tools for example, or to see how our Active Directory was doing at any given time, in case we have to do an authoritative AD restore and we don't know what an object or container is called (HTTP://www.bujarra.com/?p=1593), or to use with ADrestore to find out what a Tombstone is called (HTTP://www.bujarra.com/?p=1567)… In any case, it is not advisable to have many snapshots that are not going to be used due to loss of performance.

Doing an Authoritative Restore of Active Directory on Windows Server 2008

Well, ahora veremos una pequeña diferencia con el otro tipo de restauración, esta es una restauración autoritativa. Para realizar esta restauración es obligatorio haber realizado antes una restauración no autoritativa (HTTP://www.bujarra.com/?p=1582). Con esta restauración lo que realizamos es una replicación de los objetos que acabamos de restaurar a los otros controladores de dominio, indicando que ‘nuestro’ Directorio Activo es el origen de la réplica. Para realizar está restauración, no debemos reiniciar el servidor DC tras la restauración no autoritativa.

Doing a non-authoritative restore of Active Directory on Windows Server 2008

GOOD, In this document we will see how we can restore our Active Directory backup in case we need it to recover from a catastrophe. To do this,, We will need a backup of the system state (HTTP://www.bujarra.com/?p=1574) or a full copy of the server. This is called performing a non-authoritative restore of Active Directory, since we will not indicate which objects we want it to forcibly replicate to the other domain controllers.

Backing up Active Directory on Windows Server 2008

It is worth explaining well, how to make a backup of our Active Directory in case at any given time we need to restore objects from it, are users, Ous, Printers… This document explains how to install backup software from Microsoft, since NTBackup has not been continued, but with a new utility called “Windows Server Backups”.

Using AdRestore to recover Tombstone items

What is a Tombstone? Well, when we delete an object in the Active Directory it is not deleted directly, if not, the attribute 'isDeleted' is checked’ as 'True’ and is hidden from the normal view of AD consoles in addition to moving to the 'Deleted Objets' container. Eye, almost all but the most important attributes like GUID and SID are deleted. These objects remain in the Active Directory as Tombstone's until after 90 days, once this time has elapsed they are eliminated by the 'Garbage collector'. What is the Garbage Collector? It is a process that runs the Active Directory by default every 12 hours, although this parameter is modifiable in the attribute 'garbageCollPeriod'’ in the configuration object (NTDS). This, apart from removing the Tombstone's, also defragments the Active Directory. All of this comes in handy when using the Sysinternals AdRestore tool, since this utility allows us to […]