Alberto Ortega’s Blog

This Saturday 4th-Oct on the UAI (San Juan 983), myself and many other Southworks team mates will be present at this year edition of Microsoft CodeCamp

We will offer a track in the morning at 11:15 dedicated to IIS7, named IIS7 4×4 with Horacio Gonzales,

IIS7 4×4
Como configurar un IIS todo terreno, PHP, ASP, ASP.net, etc, como tunear IIS para ajustarlo de acuerdo a la aplicación a hostear, cuales son las diferentes opciones según el caso, Entendiendo CGI, Fast-CGI e ISAPI y cual es mejor según el caso.
Oradores: Alberto Ortega Y Horacio Gonzalez

Later on at 16:15 in the afternoon together with crazy Ezequiel Jadib we will talk about Heterogeneous Application Monitoring with System Center Operations Manager. He will 1st add specific WMI counter to a running application so me (a lazy IT Pro) can guarantee application availability and performance leveraging Operations Manager features for in-house application monitoring.

Monitoreo de aplicaciones heterogéneas
Como utilizar las herramientas que nos brinda System Center para monitorear aplicaciones desarrolladas in-house, como proporcionar a help desk de información necesaria para diagnosticar rápidamente que componente de la aplicación no se comporta como se espera.
Orador: Alberto Ortega Y Ezequiel Jadib

If you are wondering which others sessions to attend, let me recommend what other Southworks team mates will we exposing

Our flexible Johnny Halife and wonder boy Pablo Damiani will be showing a really flashy demo on Microsoft SQL Server Data Platform, we developed this demo for the TechEd keynote this year. Now you now it is worth

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 “Introducción a “Microsoft SQL Server Data Platforma”
Los tiempos están cambiando, las personas cada vez tiene más información y la problemática ahora esta puesta en entender como, donde y cuando guardamos nuestra información. Tenemos muchos dispositivos y muchos escenarios SQL Server tiene una alternativa para cada uno. Conoce lo que la plataforma de SQL Server 2008 tiene para ofrecer y las soluciones de arquitectura de datos más avanzandas.
Orador: Johnny Halife Y Pablo Damiani

Our Jedi Master Matias Woloski will be sharing worthy experience about Performance & Load Testing with  the PerfBoy Federico Boerr. You need to hear what this guys has to say about this dark science known as Performance Testing:

HowTo: Performance y load testing
Durante la exposición, se presentará una aplicación de ejemplo sobre la cual se llevarán a cabo pruebas performance y carga. Los siguientes conceptos serán tratados durante las pruebas: Definición de diferentes tipos de testing (perf, load, stress). Definición de objetivos de las pruebas, patrones de carga en las pruebas de performance. Detección de cuellos de botella (disco y procesador en éste caso) y detección de memory leaks.
Oradores: Matias Woloski Y Federico Boerr

Finally out IT ranger Augusto Alvarez will be exposing an ITPro view of IIS7 dealing with an Heterogenous environment, ideal for an Apache fan who want to know what’s there in IIS7 for him.

Windows Server 2008 + IIS 7
Como interoperar con Linux y Apache
Orador: Augusto Alvarez

Hope to see you there!

This September 20th on Pazeo La Plaza you can enjoy another MS MSDN & Technet Briefing. This briefing will be around Windows Longhorn Server AD and IIS 7.

My slot will be focused on IIS 7 management and a live migration from and PHP website hosted on Open Suse 10.2, together with Maximo Naccarato we will provide an in-depth look of possible migration paths.

You can register and attend by visiting the following website: http://www.microsoft.com/argentina/briefing2007/

This is a common problem IT Administrators face when a member Server/Workstation reaches it’s Domain Controller only via a VPN connection. We need the VPN connection to be established before the logon time, so the member Server can Authenticate agains it’s Domain Controller, otherwise (unless be have cached credentials) we’ll get a "No Domain Controller Could Be Contacted" error message.

Here I present a solution I’ve used on a Windows 2003 member server. These steps are easily extended to accomplish the same task on a Windows 2000/XP system.

Step 1: Create a command-line that establishes de VPN connection
I’m assuming that you have already created the VPN connection and it’s working properly if you dial it up manually. So we will get focused only on it’s automation.

We will use the Rasdial command to accomplish this first step. You should test the following command on a Command Line window and test if you can successfully establish the VPN connection:

rasdial ConnectionName Domain\VPNUser Password

For example:
rasdial Southworks-HQ EXTRANET\beto p@ssw0rd

If running that command line success, then you can move forward t the next step.

Step 2: Wrap the Command-Line as a Service
The best approach when trying to do any task before logon time always is trying to use a Windows Service. You can Wrap any command line as a Windows Service using the XYNTService tool provided by The Code Project.

Once you have downloaded the GUI program to configure XYNTService, use it to wrap your Command Line created on Step 1 as a Windows Service. You should get to something like this:

When you click the Install button your service will be listed as any other service on the Services Snap-In.

Now go on and do a little Test. When you start your service (from Services Snap-In) the VPN connection should be established.

Note: Take care that the account under the service is running is Local System and depending on your configuration this account may not have sufficient rights to establish the VPN connection, you should consider running the service under another account with higher privileges. And, of course, check that your service is configured for Automatic Startup.

Step 3: Setting service Dependencies
We already have our service created, now we need it to start at the proper time when Windows starts.

Q: How can you control the startup time of any Windows Service?
A: Adding a dependency.

For our service it’s enough if we guarantee that it will start after the LanmanWorkstation Windows Service, so we can ensure that we have network connectivity and the NetLogon service has not yet started.

Adding a dependency is just creating a registry Multi-String value in the proper registry key. So, open Regedit and find the registry key that holds your Service configuration, that should be located on:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<<ServiceName>>

Under that key, create a Multi-String value named “DependOnService” edit the value adding the String “LanmanWorkstation” that will create a dependency for your service on the LanmanWorkstation service.

That’s all, restart your computer and your VPNDialService will Dial the VPN connection before logon time, so now you can login using a domain account.

Hope that helps!!

The MOM Conference went great yesterday! Thanks to all attendees who became interested in monitoring Active Directory using MOM 2005. We gave a MOM overview and talked about the ADMP (Active Directory Management Pack) configuration.

Here you can get the whole slides to see what was all about.

On April 25 together with Ale Jack we are going to have a technet session on Microsoft Argentina about MOM 2005 Active Directory Management Pack:
Dos MOMstruos se juntan para monitorear Active Directory

Organized by Alejandro Ponicke , IT Evangelist, we hope we will spend a good moment. The conference is open for apply! You don’t want to miss it!