Today I learned a little bit about how to get to some of the data stored within special shell folders. You can get a list of all of the easy-to-get-to special folders here. I noticed one folder in particular that a bunch of systems administrators I know want to read, and that’s the Nearby Computers page. Here’s a quick 23-line function that will go and get all of the computers from the Nearby Computers page, ping them, and return the Win32_PingStatus objects.
End-to-End WAN Optimization with BranchCache
Expanding a business into new regions of the world with branch offices is a great idea from a business perspective, but it often presents challenges to network architects and implementers. To connect each branch office to a central location requires some sort of physical or logical connection, with bandwidth that is typically orders of magnitude smaller than local area connections. Low bandwidth combined with the trend toward centralizing organization data often yields branch office links that are congested, resulting in poor performance for applications. Moreover, many types of wide area network (WAN) links are expensive and can incur substantial startup and monthly costs.
Understanding DFSR conflict algorithms (and doing something about conflicts)
I’m frequently asked to explain the DFSR conflict algorithm – i.e. what happens when files are created or modified on two servers before replication takes place. What we don’t document well is that there are actually three conflict algorithms and they all behave quite differently. I am breaking these out into scenarios for easier understanding.
The Configuration Manager Service Pack Install Guide
This document was created to help in troubleshooting Configuration Manager Service Pack 2 (SP2) install failures. This document is not entirely specific to Service Pack 2 and can apply to Service Pack 1 installs, upgrades from SMS 2003 to SCCM, and future service pack or Configuration Manager versions that rely on .mof file compilations, SQL SPNS, provider DLLs, etc.
PowerScripting Podcast with Ed Wilson
Some troubleshooting resouces:
serverfault.com
stackoverflow.com
