Just passed exam 70-680 TS: Windows 7, Configuring, with a score of 978/1000.
If you want a good score, you would especially want to study these following topics, as they were the main areas covered in the exam;
- BitLocker
- DirectAccess
- BranchCache
- User State Migration Tool 4.0
- AppLocker – Application Control Policies
- Internet Explorer 8.0
- WSUS
- System Protection / Shadow Copies
- Windows PE
- BCDedit
- Windows Automated Intallation Kit (WAIK)
- Know your CLI in Win7 (WinPE, Remote Management, USMT..)
Next exam is PRO:70-647, Enterprise Administrator….
Relevant study links;
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/windows-7/features.aspx
BitLocker
http://www.petri.co.il/bitlocker-in-windows-7.htm
http://4sysops.com/archives/review-windows-7-bitlocker/
Direct Access
http://4sysops.com/archives/windows-7-directaccess-features/
BranchCache
http://blog.augustoalvarez.com.ar/2009/07/26/windows-server-2008-r2-and-windows-7-branchcache/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/dd425028.aspx
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An often task in every administrators daily job, is to migrate users files and folders f.x users home directories from one fileserver to another.
A great tool who most of the windows sysadmins is aware of or should be aware of, is called Robocopy.
Here is a simple command / script to accomplish a file server migration, keeping NTFS perssions etc. in tact;
“%~dp0\robocopy.exe” SOURCE DESTINATION /E /SEC /COPYALL /ZB /V /ETA /TEE /LOG:”%~dp0\FileMigration.log”
A little output of some of the many parameters you are able to apply to robocopy;
I used these for a simple User Home Directory migration from one fileserver to another.
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Daniel Petri wrote a good article about “How can I optimize the Windows 2000/XP/2003 virtual memory (Pagefile)?”
The article covers some best practices on RAM, Virtual Memory and some Memory tweaking….
Read it here;
http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm
Auditing a File server can be a critical requirement for organizations. Accidental and unauthorized changes in files, folders, permissions and other objects can have great impact on the infrastructure by means of security and instability issues.
Tracking down what was changed, who did it and when did it occur, can be a difficult task with the default auditing system available in windows servers today.
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Here is a collection of freeware tools, that is useful for windows server admins, at least these has helped me out a lot, the last couple of years;
(This post will be updated as i discover new useful admin tools)
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Recently I needed to move 9 XenApp farm datastores from old SQL2000 servers to new SQL2005 servers. Approx. 150-200 citrix xenapp servers was affected by this change.
A manually way of configuring each citrix server to reflect the datastore change, would be a very time consuming process 
Therefore I created a simple batch script to automate this change wíth some simple logging.
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A guy called Patrick Ogenstad has started a great open-source project for documenting servers, called SYDI.
Check out sydiproject.com
Basically it consist of vbscripts taking advantage of WMI (Windows Management Instrumenation) and reqistry queries, which you can use to gather information about a host on your network.
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If you come into a situation where you need to compare the settings of two Group Policy Objects without having to go through each screen one by one, then take a look at the following option to accomplish this.
Pre-reqs.;
Steps;
- Open GPMC.msc
- Find the GPO´s you want to compare, right-click the GPO’s and save reports as XML
- Launch XML Notepad and open the first GPO.
- Then click “View” > “Compare XML files…” select GPO to compare with.
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Then all settings which differ is marked with green.
Besides the above approach, I am currently only aware of 3rd party vendors who enables you to compare GPO´s, unless you use Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) Which is a component of MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack). But if you know a smarter method for doing this in a 2003 environment please drop a comment
