• Articles and Books,  Microsoft Exchange Server,  Windows Server,  Windows XP

    Microsoft Office Live

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Microsoft Office Live Workspace is a portal that allows you to view your Microsoft Office documents online. This includes the ability to share documents and do desktop presentations of Microsoft Office documents. Microsoft Office Live Workspace is in beta and free, so why not give it a try? That’s what Microsoft is asking now that Google Docs and Zoho are moving towards commoditizing the document and spreadsheet space. So first impressions? Office Live Workspace doesn’t let you edit documents. Anyone who has used Google Docs or Zoho is going to be looking for that feature. There is a nice plug-in that is free that…

  • Xsan

    Xsan: Backup

    OK, RAID 5 is not a backup scheme.  Even with Direct Attached Storage you have to back it up.  But even more to the point, if you have a bunch of RAIDs strung together as an Xsan and you’re not backing it up then you are taking life one day at a time.  Stop.  The cost of a backup is probably nothing compared to the cost of loosing all your data.

  • Active Directory,  Microsoft Exchange Server

    Exchange 2003: Applications that Access the Information Store

    I would always create a service-specific (Atempo, Blackberry, GFM, Symantec, etc) account that is not a Domain Admin but is an Administrator. Then I would provide the rights mentioned here. So, once you do that then you can go to Services and provide the service with an account to fire up as (eg – AtempoAdmin). Then make sure this key is in the registry (according to which SP you have it might not be) HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftExchange EXAdminShowSecurityPage DWORD value =1 Then fire up Exchange System Manager, click on the Organization, click on the Admin Group and then your group and then properties for it. Then you’ll notice that nice security tab.…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Mac OS X Server: Does My Name and Host Name match?

    Two utilities worth noting here, changeip and scutil.  You can check if your name and hostname match using changeip.  It will look at the DNS and look at the name your system has for itself and let you know if they match: changeip -checkhostname  You can also use scutil to see what the hostname is: scutil –getHostName If you want to change the hostname: scutil –setHostName <new hostname> With the DNS, if the name server runs on the system you’re sitting at then you can edit the zone files on that system.  Use dig to check whether the name matches the hostname.  Think FQDN here btw, with Server…

  • Consulting,  Network Infrastructure

    WAN Acceleration Magic Quadrant

    WAN Acceleration has been a hot topic for some time.  But over the past couple of years the cost of acceleration technology has dropped drastically due to its emergence as a full-blown market.  Riverbed has jumped to the top of the leaders circle for a number of reasons, with Juniper, Blue Coat, Cisco, Packeteer, etc in its wake.  For the most part, all WAN accelerators are going to have a few things in common.  There are a pair of appliances, each with a disk that can cache files going between two points.  To some degree, the purchase of accelerator appliances should be driven by the protocols to be used.  For example, if you’re a…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Mac OS X Server 10.5: Introduction To Wiki

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Leopard Server and wiki. It’s cool and it works. But when you’re first looking into it, it might seem a little confusing. So let’s do a simple walkthrough. Here we’re going to enable a wiki in advanced mode for a group called testgroup and we’re going to give a user called testadmin access to edit the wikis and create new ones. To get access to the wiki we’re going to assume a hostname of server.318.com. First, let’s go into Workgroup Manager and create a new group called testgroup. To do this, open Workgroup Manager, authenticate to Open Directory and click on the New Group…