Silicon Shecky

So my manager goes to put in the new 2008 server at one of our remote offices and finds that replication especially FRS which replicates SYSLOG, is not working with the server in the location. Worked fine when in the main office. So I dig around, and find that in AD Sites and Services, the subnet for the remote site was not connected to the site itself, but to the main office.

Always double check to make sure everything is set right in all palces before say, “Yeah just plug and go!”

So this week has been an interesting week for me from an install standpoint. I got to load up from scratch my first Windows Server 2008 machine, and let me say that I am actually impressed.

The machine is going to a remote office, and needed to be laoded upto be a DC and file/print server on a Windows 2003 SP1 network, which I thought would make life interesting. Usually you find all sorts of odd things when integrating different Server OSes. Not as much in this case.

Active Directory was going to be my biggest worry, yet once I ran the adprep off the 2008 disk on the 2003 DC, everything jsut slipped right into place. The wizards that 2008 uses are fairly simple and straight forward, and did a great job of promoting the server.

The other item of big importance was DFSR for file replication and again, the install and setup of it was amazingly simple.

Yes, 2008 uses that darn Vista GUI, and yes I still don’t like how exploring files and folders (especially the network) is set up with it, its a small, superficial complaint to the ease of 2008. After install I found that 2008 booted faster than 2003, and was just as capable of a server OS. The other complaint I have about it is that it is too simple. I did not see a chance to customize my install initially, which I would like to have the option of.

The whole install and configuration took me 1 day and the file data replicated overnight easily, bringing all the NTFS security information with it.

Honestly, as much as I think Microsoft gets a lot wrong, so far I would say the did something right with server 2008.

Keep watching as my test server finally came in and I am going to be doing a review of SBS2008, installing from scratch soon.

You know, I love my job. I love being able to work on things and learn new thoughts and ideas as I work. It is so fulfilling to see a project finished and working right. The only problem is they never are really finished.

So after the big file migration, and the corrections to the AD Users/OUs/Groups was down to a tweak here or there, I decided to see if I could figure out why some things with Exchange and DNS seemed to be so damn slow. They say that curiosity killed the cat and satisfaction brought him back, well we shall see how this ends.

Between finding that AD/DNS integration was set to a legacy standard, even though we use Server 2003, to find that we had only 1 Global Catalog, even though we have 5 DCs 4 of them at other sites, only one DC as a Global Catalog. Replication for AD was set to 4 hours, and all other sorts of small errors in the DNS server have been found. Its the sort of stuff that should have been thought through when the original migration from 2000 to 2003 happened.

Well, at least its keeping me busy, and who knows when any of this stuff will come in handy, but I know it will at some point.