Welcome to Brendon Davis

Group Policy Center

Autor brendon | 21.01.2010 | Category 7, Server, TechStuff, VISTA

Alan Burchill, one of the organisers for the Brisbane Infrastructure Group and a speaker at last year’s auTechEd has started up a web site for the thing he loves most. The Group Policy Center is now online and answering all those questions you didn’t know you asked.

On a serious note though, Alan and Lilia did an awesome presentation at TechEd and I’m sure this site will show the same level of awesome-ness. Rock on Al.

Repost: Roaming Local Settings in Office 2010

Autor brendon | 19.01.2010 | Category TechStuff

The uber-scripter Parky has noticed a setting to enable roaming for the office ribon and quick launch settings between devices. With the default install, any customisations done to office are local to that PC only. And I quote:

Good news! Office 2010 fixes the Office 2007 issue, where-by you need to resort to implementing fixes yourself, to get Quick Access Toolbar and the new customisable Ribbon to roam between computers. You’ll have to remember to enable this option yourself though – create a Setup customisation with the Office Customisation Tool and enable the following option:

Features – Modify user settings – Microsoft Office 2010 System – Global Options – Customize – Allow roaming of all user customisations

He also points out the MS Knowledge Base article to enable roaming for Office 2007 settings as well.

Thanks Parky

New version of ISA – FFTMG

Autor brendon | 14.12.2009 | Category Comms, Server, TechStuff

Well it has been a long time coming but Microsoft have finally released a new version of their awesome Internet Acceleration and Security (ISA) server. The last major upgrade was 2004 and since then the product has become a little long in the tooth. There are several new ways the internet is being used and ISA 2004/2006 in my opinion just couldn’t keep up.

Jump over to http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/threat-management-gateway/en/us/default.aspx and check out the details on Forfront Threat Management Gateway (FFTMG). Building on the new Windows Server 2008 network stack there are several new features that administrators (myself included) have been crying for:

• Support for dual/ failover internet links. (using a separate fibre service for remote access and publishing plus a DSL2 service for web access.)
• Publishing (Static NAT) rules apply to both inbound and outbound traffic. (ISA would always NAT outbound connections on default IP address.)
• Category based Access lists (requires additional licenses) to filter traffic for “Social Networking” or “Known Virus URL’s”.
• Support in a Hyper-V or ESXi or XenServer virtualised environments.
• ONLY RUNS on Windows Server 2008 x64 eddition!!!

The old ISA server team blog has been updated to reference TMG now also; there are half a dozen articles available here that may help with deployment considerations.

Running Terminal Server on ESXi

Autor brendon | 10.12.2009 | Category TechStuff, Virtualization

I came across a site recently where an ingenuitive sales person had installed convinced the customer to have users logging onto a Virtual Terminal server for their MYOB and not use the SBS as a TSE. Great idea unfortunately the implementation was a little less well considered.

I won’t go into all the gory details but some of the sites I found with good tips on how to correctly configure TSE VM’s are:

http://www.stefanschuller.com/guides/guide-optimize-performance-citrix-vmware-esx.html
and
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/gabeknuth/archive/2007/08/27/a-short-guide-to-virtualizing-presentation-and-terminal-servers-on-vmware-esx-3.aspx