OpenDNS – A Great Tool at a Great Price

So, this week I have sold out to OpenDNS! I have known about them for some time, but have never really dug in to their services. But, with the recent release of their premium services (they still have a free version, which I HIGHLY recommend!), their buzz has gone way up.

This week, I decided to create an account and put OpenDNS on my network at home. It took all of five minutes and the system works great. Account creation took just a minute and configuring my home router (an old Linksys) took just another minute. With that done, and filtering set up and stats turned on, I was ready to go! Category-based site filtering began working immediately. But, that is not all this service offers. I am still learning about the other features.

What prompted this, you may ask? Several factors converged on me this week to urge action.

First, I read a few items, like this one and this one. It just became time to really consider adding some protection to my network for my family. Second, my son, despite my protestations, continues to grow up! As is more normal that it probably should be, kids are using computers more and more and at an earlier age. The last thing I need is for my 6-year-old to stumble upon material he doesn’t need to be seeing.

This topic of discussion continued at work. We had been looking at Google Web Security services, to add to our Postini e-mail management services already in place. Other services in this arena include tools like Websense. However, the more I read and researched, the more I kept gravitating to OpenDNS. First of all, the entry price-point can’t be beat (FREE!!). And, as you move into their newly-offered premiere services, they are still extremely price-competitive.

I would highly suggest and recommend that you look in to OpenDNS and their offerings. Check it out for both your home and enterprise! I think you will be glad you did!

Backup-To-Disk Problems with BackupExec 12.5 to a Virtual Disk on a MD3000i

…A long title for a weeks-long problem!

Well, it has been a long time since I have updated this blog. But, that doesn’t mean nothing has been going on! :-)

For the past couple of weeks, I have been troubleshooting a problem with my backups. I use BackupExec, so that shouldn’t really surprise anyone! But, in this case, the problem (as best as I can tell) turned out to lie elsewhere.

Here’s the skinny…

I do all of my backups to tape, except for my Exchange backups. They go to disk. I have a 3TB disk on my MD3000i that I use for this. That way, I can make the most efficient use of BackupExec’s GRT technology. It was working fine for a while until (as is often the case in Windows environments) it just stopped working.

My backup-to-disk jobs started failing with the error code: E00084AF

Symantec’s KB had a number of articles that spoke to the issue, but nothing seemed to work. I spent about a week on my own trying to solve the problem, running updates, tweaking the registry, deleting/recreating jobs… Nothing worked, so it was then time to call Symantec Tech Support.

Now, like most people, I DO NOT like calling tech support, especially for large companies. This has nothing to do with my ego and everything to do with the fact that, in most cases, the first-level support is likely a guy just like me… someone who kinda-knows the product, is sitting in front of a computer either reading from a ‘tech-support script’ or just searching their own KB as you describe your problem to them. I know they are trying to be helpful, but you end up spending most of your time re-hashing everything you have already tried! </rant>

I will say this, however… the Symantec guys were willing to ‘spend the time’ with me on this. I never felt rushed by them or brushed aside. I appreciated that.

Anyway, none of this troubleshooting helped and we all went into the weekend scratching our heads, wondering what we were going to try/look at next. Then, over the weekend, I had an idea…

As a Windows guy I have learned that, sometimes, you just need to start over. For example, if a distribution list in Outlook isn't working right, you may have to just delete it and re-create it (or add then remove someone). I have come across similar situations many, many times... Situations where 'touching' an object somehow resets things and gets it working again. Sometimes it's just a matter of changing a setting, saving, and then changing the setting back.

This is essentially what I did with my virtual disk on my MD3000i. I went into the management console of my MD3000i and changed the 'ownership/preferred path' of the virtual disk from one controller module to the other. Then, after a server reboot I ran a test job and it worked. The backups have been running fine ever since.

I have no idea what initiated this issue, or where it originated. That is the most frustrating part. I am just glad that things are working again!

Powershell and E-mail

There are times when I need to notify a group of people of a change made on our network file system. Perhaps the contents of the folder has changed and I need to let everyone who has access to that folder know. Perhaps permissions to a folder has changed (someone has been added or removed) and I want to notify everyone with rights to the folder.

This is normally an annoyingly manual process. Cull names from the security tab and generate a list of people, then paste them in to a mail message, etc… you get the idea.

So, I decided I would see if I could write a Powershell script to do the heavy lifting for me. Specifically, I want my script to:

• Gather the e-mail addresses of everyone with access to a shared folder
• Create an e-mail message and address to these people
• Save this message in my Drafts folder for further processing

Really a simple task, but, if automated, will save me tons of time.

The script is not yet written, but I have the basics down. Of course, it is ridiculously simple with PowerShell (and the Quest AD Cmdlets)

Here is the basic framework I have thus far…

# Get Email address of group members
$addrs = Get-QADGroup <GroupName> | Get-QADGroupMember | select email

$ol = New-Object -comObject Outlook.Application

$mail = $ol.CreateItem(0)

#Address mail
foreach ($addr in $addrs)
{
    $mail.Recipients.Add($addr.email)
}

$mail.Subject = "Some Subject"
$mail.Body = "Some Body"

#Save to drafts
$mail.Save()

As you can tell, there is a lot of work yet to do. Input, validation, etc., etc.  But, in just a few lines of code, this script is already performing tasks that would take me minutes to do. I love how easy it is to access AD objects and COM objects and pass data back and forth.

Perspective

I invest a lot of time (measured in actual minutes and hours) on computers. My job is in IT, managing dozens of Windows servers, dozens of Dell and Cisco switches/routers/WAPs/etc., over a hundred Cisco IP phones and their users, multiple software packages and all the other ‘trimming’s that come with a typical SMB systems installation. I spend many more hours reading and learning about technology, trying to keep up on trends, learn about what’s on the horizon, develop my skills on solutions we have in place. Much of my free time is spent on the computer, playing games, watching TED Talks, Stumbling, etc. All this to say, I’m no different than most of you, I am guessing…

I spend a lot of time on computers.

But, today is Father’s Day. For me, this is a day of perspective. Because, when I look into the eyes of my two sons, when my 5 year old runs up to me and gives me the longest hug I’ve had in a long time and tells me, “I’m so glad you are my father.”, well I am reminded of what is really important.

I just want to say to all you fathers out there, Happy Father’s Day. I hope and pray that this is a day of joy and happiness for you.