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By default when you create a new root forest a site is created within sites and services (helpfully named DEFAULTFIRSTSITE) and all domain controllers are added to the to the default first site. To take advantage of the features of sites and services you will need to create 3 different type of objects Those are subnets, Inter-site transport links, and sites. Sites are the objects for physical locations so for example if you had 3 sites, london, paris and isle of wight each location would be represented with a site. Inter-site transport links are objects that define how sites link to each other so if london and paris had a dedicated pipe between each other that would be a site link and if isle of wight had a dial up connection then that would also be a site link. Subnet objects define what subnet a site uses which allows client computers to interrogate DNS to find out which site they are on and therefore contact the local domain controller or other service that is sites and services aware.

To start configuring sites and services its always a good idea to change the name of the DEFAULTFIRSTSITE to something meaningful, so for example you can rename it to CorporateHQ. And also rename the DEFAULTIPSITELINK which at the moment has no use until you create an additional site. Now another cool thing whilst we are talking about links is that you can choose one of two different protocols when configuring the link which is either IP or SMTP. Yep I said SMTP the protocol mostly used for mail transport. I’ll explain more on that later.

Initially If you have more than one site link as we do in our example you will need to create the links first that will bind the sites toegether (remember that links are representations of physical links such as WAN connections or slower technologies such as dial up). To create a site link you will need to decide which protocol is best for the site link that you would like to create, you would use IP for an always up connection such as a site to site VPN, or better connection. Now because SMTP is good for queueing data and sending when the link is available you would use SMTP for links that are not always up such as dial up links or slow and unreliable connections to remote offices. I’ll explain more in later blog posts. Right click on the link protocol folder that you wish to use for the connection and select New Site Link, you will at the moment get a warning message about only having one site configured which obviously causes problems for site links as they have nothing to link to, at the moment you can safely ignore this message and click ok. Give you link a name and click ok.

Now to create your first additional site you need to right click on the sites container and click “new site” Choose a name for the site (something short but meaningful) and click next. Then select the sitelink that you would like to use to connect the site with. Then you will get a final message saying you need to take additional steps to correctly configure sites and services for replication.

Once you have created a site its time to start populating the site with configurable options. Now one thing that does underpin alot of what sites and services is about is the subnet configuration. By identifying which subnet a site uses, you enable clients local to that site to be able to find and use their local domain controller(s) or service is sites and services aware. Also when you create and promote other DC’s they will automatically add themselves to the correct site when they are created based upon their own IP address. To create a new subnet all you need to do is right click on the subnets container and select new subnet. Then enter the subnet details into the box and select the pre-created site that it should be associated with. So for example if our paris site uses 10.0.0.x as its address range you would enter 10.0.0.0/24 into the prefix box and then select the paris container.

I’ll blog about the configuration of your new sites and services topology which will allow you to define preferences and costs to the links to specify in what order they should be used etc.

I just thought I’d alert you to a couple of reasonably fun new services that are worth a play with. Audioboo is a social sound site (with apps for both android and iphone devices). It allows you to record audio from your computer or mobile device and post it onto their service. Also you can allow access to your twitter and facebook account which I guess at the moment is where the main use of the app is. Once you have recorded your audio segment it will also post it to your facebook or twitter account so all those follows get to hear how you actually sound (Which can be a blessing and a curse . I’ve started playing with it a little bit to see what its like and wondered if any WP plugins will appear allowing you to add it to your site. Might be nice to have an audio welcome message if you really wanted to or even dictating your posts if you happen to have long posts.

The other one is called pushnote, this allows you to comment on websites outside of the website. Sounds a bit weird but I’ll attach a screenshot to try and help explain. You install an extension to the browser of your choise and you get a little speechbubble added to your browser bar. when you visit websites the bubble turns green to say that people have commented on the site and you click your speechbubble to view or add comments. This brings the rather bizare possiblity of commenting on twitter whilst you are commenting on twitter.

Both are at least quite entertaining diversions to the usual social sites I frequent and we shall see how they get on in the coming months.

www.pushnote.com

www.audioboo.fm

I will try abstain from using any toilet humour in this post (I dont know why as thats the only sort I know). But I was looking for a way of scripting a batch file that will look at the contents of files and remove a line from it. The files were htm files so the added issue would be that the file extention could be htm and html.

I knew you could not scan contents of files from the command line natively so I began a bit of googling. After a while I came across this extremely handy tool which can scan inside files.

Its called F.A.R.T (thats Find And Replace Text to you) LINK HERE

Its a small exe that you can download and add to your scripting. it allows you to find and replace text from within any file and also crucially for me to remove text from the file.

So for me the script I wrote went a little something like this:

c:

cd\

cd “%userprofile%\LOCATION”

\\SERVER\SHARE\fart.exe -V -r -Remove *.* “text to search for”

exit

Basic but it worked a treat and saved alot of manual work for a few members of the team!

Usage: FART [options] [--] <wildcard>[,...] [find_string] [replace_string]

Options:
 -h --help          Show this help message (ignores other options)
 -q --quiet         Suppress output to stdio / stderr
 -V --verbose       Show more information
 -r --recursive     Process sub-folders recursively
 -c --count         Only show filenames, match counts and totals
 -i --ignore-case   Case insensitive text comparison
 -v --invert        Print lines NOT containing the find string
 -n --line-number   Print line number before each line (1-based)
 -w --word          Match whole word (uses C syntax, like grep)
 -f --filename      Find (and replace) filename instead of contents
 -B --binary        Also search (and replace) in binary files (CAUTION)
 -C --c-style       Allow C-style extended characters (\xFF\0\t\n\r\\ etc.)
    --cvs           Skip cvs dirs; execute "cvs edit" before changing files
 -a --adapt         Adapt the case of replace_string to found string
 -b --backup        Make a backup of each changed file
 -p --preview       Do not change the files but print the changes

In order to disable universal printing logon to your xenapp server and run gpedit.msc. You will now notice that there are citrix policy nodes under computer and user configuration policies.

Click on the Citrix Policies under User Configuration and click on the Settings Tab. Scroll down top Printing\Universal Printing and click Add on the Universal Printing Setting. Then edit the setting to say “use only printer model specific drivers”.

Reboot the server and you should now notice that it no longer uses CUP, although you now have the fun and games of loading printer drivers and testing them, but it is a way round printing through an MSTSC published application.

Its no secret that I’m platform agnostic when it comes to deploying new systems and services so when we need something at work I’ll look at the open source alternatives to the standard products to see what’s about.

At the moment I’m thinking about deploying an instant messaging service as we have branch offices popping up all over the place and it would be a good way of reducing telephony bills.

Now MS obviously have their OCS system which we could use, but I have also found a couple of GPL alternatives, Both have nice easy windows installers both for the server and client.

One is Openfire which is the server element and Spark is the messenger client. The other is called OfficeSIP and the messenger client is OfficeSIP messenger.

At this stage of the trialling both install nice and easily with no issues and both integrate with active directory.

For me I think the spark client looks better and is easier to use where OfficeSIP messenger is more functional based. For example when you type out a message to someone in OfficeSIP you have to physically press the send button to send the message, call me lazy but I would like to just smash the enter key to send my message.
Both support voice/video messaging (in spark with the help of a red5 plugin), but voice/video appears hit and miss sometimes it will work in the spark client where as it seems rather solid in officesip, and whilst I dont think at this time it will be a used a great deal I dont fancy trying to fix flakey voice/video comms.

Both again have a SSO (single Sign On) element to them if you are logged into an AD account when launching the messengers.

I’m still testing the products and whilst I have no doubt that they will both just work in regards to the instant messaging its the voice/video and other bells and whistles I need to test further to ensure my support calls for the eventual winning stay at an acceptable level.

Anyway heres a few snippets of the closing ceremony and also a rather amusing song about the end of IPv4!

Closing ceremony

The day the routers died!