New book: Engineering Software for Accessibility

I just saw this from the borntolearn site a New e-book: Engineering Software for Accessibility, which I plan to read by the end of the day on my way to province at north 😀 Just a 100 page book for those who are architecting and designing software’s. Based on the borntolearn site, you can  download this as a doc file from download.microsoft.com.

Also, the synopsis I shamefully copied from Barnes & Noble😀

Discover how to create accessible Web sites and software by planning for accessibility from the beginning of the development cycle-with design guidelines straight from Microsoft. This guide walks you through the process of reviewing the specification to create an accessible tree and identify keyboard navigation requirements. Learn to use the tree to determine where to apply common controls and when to create custom controls. Decide how to code controls and estimate implementation time for product development. And familiarize yourself with the basics of accessibility, including color contrast, font size, the handling of images, and systemwide settings.

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From TechNet Magazine: New Certifications: What They Are, Why They Matter

This is really a nice post from the TechNet magazine August 2009 Issue on Geek of all trades column : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.08.geekofalltrades.aspx

Also a great post for those who are seeking Certification Advices, notes, and tips! So those who are active in these links in the Community Forum: MCTS exam question , MCSE Path or this: MCTS & MCPD: Certified on Web/Win/XML & Application Development…  Here is a good start 😀

Connecting to multiple remote desktops from a single console

For a couple of times now I have seen a number of people doing remote desktops and they tend to navigate from one remote desktop window to another. Switching back and forth in a couple of windows sometimes is unproductive to some, and for me it just leaves clutter on my desktop. 

I just want to share a tool called Remote Desktops that allows you to connect to multiple remote desktops from a single MMC console.

I’m still using a Windows Server 2008 R2 RC as my personal laptop and this tool is already installed in this version. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, this tool is available as a part of an update. The whole package is called RSAT or the Remote Server Administration tool, there is a specific version for Vista and 7. For Windows 7, its RTM has just been published in Microsoft updates or here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d&displaylang=en

I already blogged about the RSAT for Vista and if you want to try this tool or the whole RSAT, here is the link where I posted my experience on it.

 

 

To use this tool, install first the RSAT then navigate to your Administrative tools, then expand Remote Desktop Services and click Remote Desktops.

This tool allows me to save your Remote Desktop Sessions in a single console. As you may notice in my example, there are 3 Remote Desktops at the moment.

It is lit as green if thats your active connection, very handy to tell what server you are on now :D, It could be very confusing specially if all of your servers look alike each other.

 

To connect to a computer, just right click to bring up the context menu, then click connect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  To add a new connection just go to the Remote Desktops Node under the Console Root then on the right hand pane Right Click then Add new Connection.

Then this add new connection dialog will appear. After specifying connection details, just click OK and will be added to your console.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you right click then click properties on the newly created connection, you will see this dialog window with three tabs, the general, screen options and the other. General has the connection details and the username, passwords will be asked on first attempt to connect, if you checked the allow me to save credentials, the passwords will be saved. The screen options lets you choose screen size of your session and the other tab is also interesting. The start a program is there, that allows you to auto start a program upon connect, more security details and there is also an option to redirect your local drives, very handy so that you don’t have to FTP your file to this remote server, right?

Backing up Windows Server 2008 DNS Zone Files

This will be quick and sweet. Last night someone asked me to turn re-use an old server from having a catalog installed to just hosting primary DNS zones. So before I make this Active directory integrated DNS server to just a primary or do anything worthwhile I wanted to backup the zones. Well how?

First stop the DNS service by doing this command at the cmd prompt “net stop "DNS Server"

Next, just create a separate copy of the “%WinDir%\System32\dns” in my case C:\Windows\System32\dns directory that contains flat files (text files) of your zones. There are also some samples inside this directory, not required to be included.

Lastly is start the DNS service again by doing “net start "DNS Server"

To restore it just stop the DNS service, copy your backup back to the above directory then start the DNS service again and the zones are restored 😀

I found my first hint on how to do this here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd392269(WS.10).aspx

Well, that’s it! Back to my deadlines, cheers!

PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V at codeplex

PowerShell management Library for Hyper-V
A project to provide a PowerShell management library for Hyper-V
It does pretty much what it says. Note that a lot of the information available from Hyper-V is only available if Powershell is running with Elevated privilege
At present there are 80 functions in the library, some of these are worker functions which are not expected to be called directly, the others are listed below.

NOTE: The version of PSHyper-V available in the Source Code section is under active developement and is not guaranteed to be stable. If you require a stable release, use 1.00b from the Downloads section.

 

Finding a VM
Get-VM, Choose-VM , Get-VMHost

Connecting to a VM
New-VMConnectSession

 

Discovering and manipulating Machine states
Get-VMState , Set-VMState , Convert-VmState,
Ping-VM , Test-VMHeartBeat, Shutdown-VM , Start-VM, Stop-VM, Suspend-VM
Get-VMKVP, Add-KVP, Remove-KVP, Get-VMJPEG

Backing up, exporting and snapshotting VMs
Export-VM , Import-VM, Get-VMSnapshot, Choose-VMSnapshot , Apply-VMSnapshot , New-VMSnapshot ,Remove-VMSnapshot, Rename-VMSnapShot, Update-VMSnapshot, Get-VMSnapshotTree, Get-VmBackupScript

 Adding and removing VMs, configuring motherboard settings.
New-VM , Remove-VM , Set-VM , Get-VMCPUCount, Set-VMCPUCount, Get-VMMemory, Set-VMMemory, Set-VMSerialPort

Manipulating Disk controllers, drives and disk images
Get-VMDiskController
Add-VMSCSIController , Remove-VMSCSIcontroller
Get-VMDriveByController , Add-VMDRIVE , Remove-VMdrive
Get-VMDiskByDrive, Add-VMDISK , Set-VMDisk, Get-VMDisk
Get-VMFloppyDisk , Add-VMFloppyDisk
Add-VMNewHardDisk

Manipluating Network Interface Cards
Get-VMNic , List-VMNic , Choose-VMNIC, Add-VMNIC, Remove-VMNIC , Set-VMNICAddress , Set-VMNICConnection , Get-VMNicport ,
Get-VMnicSwitch, Choose-VMSwitch, New-VMSwitchPort, Get-VMByMACaddress, Choose-VMExternalEthernet,
New-VMExternalSwitch, New-VMInternalSwitch,New-VmPrivateSwitch

Working with VHD files
Get-VHDDefaultPath, Get-VHDInfo, New-VHD, Compact-VHD, Test-VHD,Convert-VHD,Merge-VHD,Mount-VHD, Unmount-VHD

Download it here: http://pshyperv.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=21642

Security Audit Events for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (Excel Download)

I was helping a friend over some events of their company’s Windows Servers, upon searching the event ID’s we saw this from Keith Combs blog: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3a15b562-4650-4298-9745-d9b261f35814

Its a list of events for Windows Server 2008 R2 on an .xls file:

It has the Categories, event ID and the minimum OS where it will appear.