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March 25 2010
Exchange 2010 allows auditing of administrative actions. All actions can be audited or just specific cmdlets and parameters. To enable Audit Logging open the Exchange Management Shell and run the following commands.
Audit All cmdlets
Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -AdminAuditLogCmdlets *
or
Only audit New-Mailbox, all transport rules, all management, all set-transport cmdlets
Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -AdminAuditLogCmdlets New-Mailbox, *TransportRule, *Management, Set-Transport*
Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -AdminAuditLogParameters *
or
Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -AdminAuditLogParameters Database, *Address*, Custom*, *Region
Audits just the parameters that have Database, all parameters with *Address*, begins with Custom, ends with Region.
Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -AdminAuditLogMailbox AdminAudit@adatum.com
All auditing is sent to the mailbox of AdminAudit.
Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -AdminAuditLogEnabled $True
All of the commands can be run on a single line if you prefer.
After creating a new mailbox by either using the EMC or the EMS, an email is sent to the AdminAudit Mailbox. Make sure the Mailbox is secured appropriately and archive or delete the mail after a specified amount of time. A command Set-AdminAuditLogConfig –AdminAuditLogAgeLimit DD.HH:MM:SS is not available for the RTM release of 2010 so be sure to watch the size of the mailbox.
Below is a screenshot of the message sent to the AdminAudit Mailbox after creating a new Mailbox and User.
January 15 2009
Do you have staff in remote locations, and find it difficult to get them the training they need? There comes a time when your resource is too valuable to send off site for a class. This is where ISInc’s e-Learning can come into play. Now your students can access the same classes via their desktop computer.
ISInc’s e-Learning training is live, interactive online training for those who would like to attend one of our face-to-face instructor-led training courses without leaving their offices, homes or classrooms. Learners can listen to the presentation, ask questions, hear others’ questions and get live answers, all from wherever they choose. They can engage in discussions with others in the physical classroom and throughout the country who are involved in the same class session.
ISInc’s e-Learning training blends the best from traditional face-to-face instructor-led training with the latest in conferencing technology, allowing us to deliver live training to multiple locations at one time. This model is based on our over 27 years experience as trainers and the general premise that the classroom is the foundation of a great training experience.
All courses offered at ISInc can be taken online via our live e-Learning training using Microsoft Lync. So, if you have employees in remote offices that you are trying to schedule for IT training, consider ISInc e-Learning Training. Please contact us for more information.
For more information on our e-learning and to view a video on how it all works, visit our e-learning page here.
November 19 2008
I recently came across a problem where I needed to schedule the daily FTP upload of a set of files to one of my client’s FTP servers. I was a bit out of my element and found that locating a solution to this task was surprisingly challenging. I thought I would post the steps here so that someone in a similar situation might benefit from the time I spent in trial and error.
1. My first goal was to make sure I could upload via ftp using the command prompt in Windows XP. I created the following script, ftp_script.txt, which I placed in a scripts folder on the C drive:
open www.yourhostname.com
username
password
put c:\test.txt test.txt
quit
Plug in your corresponding hostname, username, password, and file locations. This script will upload the local copy of test.txt to the server. The above script can be passed into your command line ftp client. Open up your command prompt and type:
ftp -s:path_to_script\scriptfile
Which, in my case, was:
ftp -s:c:\scripts\ftp_script.txt
The “-s” allows you to specify a file name in order to pass your username, password, and put commands to the command line ftp client.
2. If you get Step 1 working, the next step is to create a command file to run the ftp script. The command file is just a text file with a .cmd extension that calls up the command line ftp. In my case, I created ftp.cmd with the contents:
ftp -s:c:\scripts\ftp_script.txt
Test your command file by double clicking it to make sure that it executes the FTP successfully.
3. Finally, create a daily task using the Windows Task Scheduler. Go to Start > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks (in Classic view). Click Add Scheduled Task and when it prompts you for the application, browse to your command file that you created in Step 2. As you finish out the task scheduler, you’ll get to choose how often you want the task to run and at what time.
After you complete these steps, your ftp job should be ready and waiting for its next scheduled execution time. I hope you find this trick as useful as I did!
November 4 2008
Are you trying to kick off a successful project using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007? Do you want to make sure you install and implement it using the industry best practices? Are you migrating from 2003 to 2007?
ISInc can help you kick off a successful implementation with SharePoint with our packaged consulting offerings!
More »
This is exactly the question that I asked Tom Shinder, a Microsoft MVP on the Forefront Security product. He spent some time and came up with this posting for us to help you understand Microsoft’s offering around Forefront.
What is Microsoft Forefront?
Have you heard friends or colleagues mention Microsoft Forefront and wonder what they were talking about? If so, you’re not alone, as Microsoft Forefront is relatively new and just beginning to get real traction in the network security market.
The first thing you need to know is that there is no “Forefront” product. Instead, Forefront is a collection of Microsoft security products. This collection of Forefront security products is referred to as the “Forefront Security Suite”
More »
October 10 2008
One of the interesting issues I have found when building reports in Crystal is the nature of their record selection on blank data. More »
September 17 2008
Running an Enterprise IT Environment has more cost than just the equipment and power that is used. Now we need to keep in mind the entire eco-system to run our infrastructure, from the power each machine uses to the amount of time people need to support it. Running a “Green” IT will not only help the environment, it will often relieve some of the stress on your IT staff.
Here are some steps your IT group can take to make your company more environmentally friendly. More »
September 10 2008
Learning web design can be easy with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, like Dreamweaver or Microsoft’s Expression Web. You create a new document and edit it like a PowerPoint slide or a new file in Microsoft Word. You add text, tables, and pictures. Voila, you have a web page.
More »
April 19 2008
Eclipse is a fantastic IDE for PHP development. The best part is that it is free! It is a Java development environment that can be extended to edit Ruby, Perl, Python, PHP, C++ and many other obscure languages.
I went through a number of hurdles to get my development environment setup, but I came across this posting the other day that highlights all the necessary steps. The article covers SVN, Eclipse, PHP and Mysql installation.
Setup PHP development in Windows
April 11 2008
While working remotely I noticed my bandwidth would drop when I connected to our VPN. It appeared that all internet packets were being routed through our VPN connection. While this normally wouldn’t be a problem, I often found myself downloading large files and my connection performance was limited to the available bandwidth to the VPN connection. That’s when I learned about what a “split tunnel” vpn connection is. I wrote this article to walk you through the process of setting up your VPN to take advantage of this option in Windows Networking. More »
