Whether you’re an IT pro, a normal home user, or a photographer, you have probably accidentally deleted an important file from a hard drive or memory card before.  Maybe you didn’t mean to delete it or maybe you did delete the file intentionally but changed your mind.  Maybe the storage device is beginning to corrupt and become unreliable. The result is always the same; panic.

In this post, we’re going to try and put your panic at ease. With Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery, virtually any file can be recovered from a storage device, generally within just a few minutes.

Download Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery will:

• Recover lost and formatted logical drives & partitions


• Recover accidentally deleted files


• Recover MS Outlook and Outlook Express files


• Fix boot Sector Corruption


• Works with FAT and NTFS file systems

What Happens When a File is Deleted?

While the idea of dragging a file to the “Recycle Bin” seems pretty straightforward and certainly feels final, the reality is that the file doesn’t actually go anywhere.  When you delete a file, you are simply telling your computer that the file is no longer needed and your operating system simply acts as though the file isn’t there.  The deleted file will actually remain intact until the hard drive needs that space and overwrites it.

The bad news is that if you are really trying to get rid of a file, you’re going to need to do a little more than just move it to and emptying the recycle bin.  The good news is that if you accidentally deleted a file, you have a pretty good chance of recovering it.  Here’s how…

Real World Data Recovery Scenario

Even with the recent growth of cloud storage solutions, portable and external storage devices continue to be very convenient.  Additionally, multi-gig thumb drives are about as affordable as your weekly latte budget.  So to demonstrate how to use Data Recovery Pro, we've set up a sample scenario utilizing a simple 2GB USB thumb drive.

In our sample scenario, you have a 2GB thumb drive that contains several folders and documents, including a work folder which contains a folder with files from a recent convention in which you helped sell some product for your company.

Most important is an image of a graph showing some sales figures that you need to present to your boss tomorrow morning.

What you didn’t anticipate is that your daughter has recently used the drive to transfer her recent Word document, an essay she’s writing for an upcoming final.  Whether she meant to or not, she deleted all of your files in place of her own.

Although your studious child deleted the file, there is a very good chance that the image you need is still on this storage device and can easily be recovered. All you need is some help, and that's where Windows Data Recovery Pro comes in.

Recovering Files With Data Recovery Pro

Open Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Pro. We suggest that you have administration rights when using the program.

Here you’re presented with several options:

• Quick Recovery is, as the name suggests, the quickest form of data recovery.  In most cases this will be sufficient whether you are trying to recover an accidentally deleted file, or cases in which the storage device has some corruption issues.
• Deleted File Recoverywill specifically scan for recently deleted files.  It will perform a “quick” or “deep” scan.  In my experience, the quick scan is sufficient but the deep scan certainly recovers more files.
• Formatted/Lost File & Folder Recovery is a very comprehensive scan of the storage device. I have found that when the drive is in fact formatted, this is the best option (not surprisingly).
• Search Lost Volume is the deepest type of scan. It searches every sector on the drive and will try and piece together lost or deleted volumes on the drive.

For our example, we’re going to select the “quick” recovery.  For starters, this will scan the drive very quickly, so rather than waiting around for the deep scan, it’s worth waiting the few seconds to see if this quick scan can find your file and if it doesn't, you can then start using the deeper (and more time consuming) scans.

Start the scan.

You’ll notice that it hasn’t completely recovered the original folder structure.  A deeper scan would most likely recover all of the folders as they were last set up but this doesn’t mean it can’t recover our deleted files with the quick scan.  To check, we search for the file name.

Fortunately we knew the name of the file, and Data Recovery Pro found 2 versions of the file.  We can verify that this is the right file because a thumbnail is provided.  This is useful if you can’t remember the exact name too, that way you don’t have to waste time recovering files you don’t need.

Once we have found the file, we select the file we want and then click on “recover”. This prompts us with a few options.  A nice perk is the recover to FTP server, for today we don’t need this. Instead we simply recover the file to a new folder we created on our desktop. For simplicity, I named it “Recovery”.  Inside we find images, in-tact and there for our use.

Other features and Use Cases

Windows Data Recovery Pro will also:

• Recover deleted emails (PST and DBX files).
• Create disk images and clones
• Recover Data from OS drives that will no longer boot

Registration Warning

Windows Data Recovery Pro is not a free program, however you can run the scans before you are required to pay.  This means you can try it before you buy it. Simply download the program and run the scan. If you want to use Windows Data Recovery Pro to recover any files that it finds, then you can register for the product.

In this screen shot, you can see that the program scanned a hard drive and only prompts you to register for the product after you know it can recover the files you need.

Conclusion

And that’s it!  For this example, the entire process took less than 2 minutes.  We were working with a small (2gb) USB 2.0 thumb drive.  The larger the drive and the slower the interface, the longer the scan will take.  The software is not free and requires registration.

When studying IPv6, one of the main things that differs from IPv4 is the complexity of the IPv6 header compared with that of its predecessor’s header. The IPv6 header was designed to be less complex and easier to process than the IPV4 header, and with efficiency as one of the main design elements. This article takes a look at the contents of the IPv6 header and how they compare with the contents of the IPv4 header.

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IPv6 Header

Figure 1 below shows the contents of the main contents of the IPv4 header and will be used as a comparison to the IPv6 header elements.

Figure 1 - IPv4 Main Header

The main IPv6 header is shown in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2 - IPv6 Header

There are a number of unfamiliar fields within the IPv6 header but each of them replicates some of the functionality of the IPv4 header fields. Table 1 takes a look at each of these fields and what they are used for:

Summary

With the exhaustion of the IPv4 address space just a short time away, it is in the best interest of any current or future network engineers to become familiar with IPv6. This includes the different header fields and address types, as well as how the different routing protocols are configured compared with their IPv4 counterparts. Keep on the lookout for a number of different IPv6 based articles, which should be coming out shortly.

Resilient File System (ReFS) is a new file system introduced in Windows Server 2012. Initially, it is being targeted for implementation as a file system that is primarily used for file servers. However, starting as the file system for a file server is just the beginning. Like its predecessor, NTFS, ReFS will begin as a file server system, then become a mainstream file system. Before long, we will all be using ReFS on our boot partitions.

So why would you want to change file systems? If NTFS is working, why should anybody even consider switching to ReFS? ReFS is better and faster in many ways than NTFS, but in one way more than all others: its resiliency.

Resilient File System will likely replace NTFS completely within the next versions of Windows, and here are some reasons why you are going to really love the new file system.

4) ReFS Supports Long File Names and File Path. Really Long.

Capacity is just one of the ways that ReFS is making changes. There will no longer be a limitation of 255 characters for a long file name. A file name in ReFS can be up to 32,768 unicode characters long! The limitation on full path size has also been updated from 255 characters for the total path size to 32K (32,768).

The legacy 8.3 naming convention is no longer stored as part of the file data. There is only one file name, and it can be a very long name.

Other changes have increased the capacity as well, though it is unlikely that the maximum size of a single volume will impact a real person. NTFS already had a maximum volume size of 16 Exabytes. The ReFS format allows a maximum volume size of 262,144 Exabytes.

3) ReFS is Much Better at Handling Power Outages

NTFS stores all of its file information in metadata. The filename is stored in the metadata. The location on the hard disk is stored in the metadata. When you rename a file, you’re changing the metadata. Likewise, ReFS stores its file information in metadata.

One big difference in how NTFS and ReFS are different is in the way they update the metadata. NTFS performs like metadata updates, which means that the metadata is updated “in-place.” The metadata says your new folder is named “New Folder,” and then you rename it to “Downloaded Files.” When you make the change, the actual metadata itself is written over. When a power outage occurs at the time you’re updating a disk, the metadata can be partially or completely overwritten, causing data corruption (called a “torn write”). You may experience a BSOD when you try to restart, or you may find that your data is no longer accessible.

ReFS does not update the metadata in-place. Instead, it creates a new copy of the metadata, and only once the new copy of the metadata is intact and all the writes have taken place does the file update itself with the new metadata. There are further improvements to the way that ReFS handles writes to the metadata, but for the most part the other changes are performance improvements. This new way of updating metadata allows you to reliably and consistently recover from power outages without disk corruption.

“We perform significant testing where power is withdrawn from the system while the system is under extreme stress, and once the system is back up, all structures are examined for correctness. This testing is the ultimate measure of our success. We have achieved an unprecedented level of robustness in this test for Microsoft file systems. We believe this is industry-leading and fulfills our key design goals.”

- Surendra Verma, “Building the Next Generation File System for Windows 8”
Development Manager, Storage and File Systems
Microsoft

2) ReFS works with Storage Spaces to Better Detect and Repair Problems

Storage Spaces is a storage virtualization technology. Storage Spaces was not made to run exclusively with ReFS, but they do work great together. ReFS has improved functionality when used in conjunction with Storage Spaces. Likewise, some of the redundancy features that Storage Spaces offers are able to be leveraged because of the abilities of ReFS.

So ReFS can be used without Storage Spaces, and Storage Spaces can be used without ReFS, but when they are used together, both ReFS and Storage Spaces both work more effectively. Storage Spaces uses mirroring, spreading copies of data across multiple physical data drives. When Storage Spaces finds a problem with even one piece of corrupt data on a drive, the corrupt data will be removed from the drive, and will be replaced with a known good copy of the data from another one of the physical drives.

ReFS uses checksums on the metadata to ensure that the data has not been corrupted. When Storage Spaces finds mismatched data between two or more copies of the same file, it can rely on the built-in metadata checksums that are a feature of ReFS. Once the checksums are validated, the correct data is copied back to the other physical drives, and the corrupted data is removed.

Occasionally, an ReFS drive controlled by Storage Spaces will undergo routine maintenance called “scrubbing.” Scrubbing is a task that runs on each file in a Storage Space. Checksums are verified, and if there are any checksums that are found to be invalid, the corrupted data is replaced with known good data from a physical drive that has a valid checksum. Scrubbing is on by default, but can be customized and configured even on individual files.

1) ReFS Volumes can Stay Live even if they have Irreparable Corruption

With NTFS, even a small amount of data corruption can cause big problems. With ReFS you are much less likely to have problems. In a case where a system is not using Storage Spaces and mirroring, or if for some strange reason one part of the data across the whole mirror is corrupt, only the corrupt parts will be removed from the volume, and the volume itself will stay active, thanks to “salvage.”

Salvage can remove even a single file that is corrupt. Once the corrupt data is removed, the volume is brought back. This turns what is usually a server that is brought offline for time consuming disk checking utilities to find and repair the entries, to a volume which is repaired except for the corrupt data files and brought back online in under one second.

Conclusion

Just like NTFS, ReFS brings with it some major improvements which will become a normal part of our industry for the likely future. Specifically, ReFS brings improvements in the way that metadata is updated, and by using checksums to ensure that corrupt data is easily found and repaired.

ReFS is the most robust file system from Microsoft to date, with reliability built in to make the most of our time and reduce the total cost of ownership on Windows Servers.

As of today, there is no official launch date for Microsoft’s next operating system, Windows 8. Even so, Windows 8 Consumer Preview currently receives more press and is the topic of more conversations than any other operating system, including Microsoft’s current OS Windows 7. One of the many explanations for this is the excitement surrounding Windows 8 tablets. One question in particular on many minds, including my own, resonates above the others: Will Windows 8 tablets offer valuable and compelling features for the enterprise?

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Windows 8 Tablets in the Enterprise

Naysayers abound, but the data is clear; tablets can add value to organizations. Case in point: according to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, over 80% of the Fortune 100 have deployed or are testing deployments of iPads. Think about that for a moment. 80 of the 100 largest companies are finding value in using tablets. Add to this the rapid adoption of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies, along with the general consumerization of IT, and Windows 8 tablets have a great opportunity in front of them.

Based on the published specifications and the current Consumer Preview of Windows 8, the product not only looks ready to add value to organizations from day one, but it looks poised to penetrate the enterprise faster than any tablet before it. Most modern organizations leverage Microsoft technology to build their networks and run their companies. Because of this, Windows 8 tablets will complement and integrate with these technologies.

Top 8 Windows 8 Tablet Features

In no particular order, here are 8 features Windows 8 Tablets will have and 8 reasons why enterprises will love them.

8. Active Directory and Group Policy Integration - This is a big one. The ability to leverage Active Directory and Group Policy will enable a number of the other features on this list. IT Administrators have long been using Active Directory and Group Policy to control virtually everything on their networks and devices. The ability to extend this management and control directly to tablets is going to have many administrators chomping at the bit.
7. Multiple Account Support - Current iPad and Android offerings don’t allow you to login to the device with different accounts to control the apps, layout, and overall experience. Sure, there are apps that support multiple accounts, but enterprises often need fully independent device profiles, which Windows 8 tablets will have.
6. Edge to Edge Display - Current tablets have a 20 pixel buffer around the edge of the display. With Windows 8, Microsoft has found a way to eliminate the need for this buffer giving developers the ability to use the whole screen. 20 pixels may not seem like much, but it can be the difference between a productive user and a frustrated one.
5. Five Finger Digitizer - The core touch interactions defined by Microsoft for Windows 8 involve one or two fingers. This makes sense, but some gestures simply cannot be completed this way. To address this, Microsoft requires all Windows 8 tablets to have a five finger digitizer.
4. Internet Explorer 10 - According to Microsoft, Internet Explorer is the most used feature in Windows. Allowing users to use the same browser they use on their desktops can ease tablet adoption pains. In addition, Group Policy already supports more than a thousand policies to manage Internet Explorer. There’s also the Metro version of Internet Explorer 10 that will create an optimized experience for using the browser on a tablet.
3. Picture Password - One absolute for any device in an enterprise is security. Usually device security starts with a password to unlock the device and enable it to be used. Tapping a password with your fingers may not seem like a big deal, but many users find it annoying to say the least. Windows 8 offers a new way to ease logging in and unlocking a device: the Picture Password. The basic idea is to take a personal picture stored on the device and draw a custom picture on it. Draw the right picture and the device unlocks.
2. Microsoft Office - Microsoft Office is the leader in productivity suite software, especially in the enterprise. Many apps for both Android and iOS support the Office document file formats, but this isn’t good enough for many users. They want the same Word, Excel, and PowerPoint software found on their PC’s and Mac’s on their tablets. Windows 8 will bring Office to the tablet.
1. NFC Support - Many pundits, including myself, thought the new iPad would support Near Field Communications. We were wrong. Windows 8 tablets will however support NFC giving them an edge in this area. NFC is a great short range interaction technology. It is often spoke of in relation to commerce, e.g. paying with your phone instead of your credit card, but many other opportunities exist for NFC to add value to an organization. Many organizations use RFID in badges to unlock doors and gates when employees get close. This could now be done using NFC in the user’s Windows 8 tablet reducing cost and complexity.

BONUS: USB Support - Almost everyone I know has wished for a USB port on their iPad at some point. Loading apps, transferring files, expanding storage, the list goes on and on for the possible uses of USB ports on a tablet. With Windows 8 tablets we need to wish no more. They are required to have at least one USB 2.0 port on the device.

Conclusion

Windows 8 Tablets are eagerly anticipated. Not only will they be attractive to consumers next holiday season, but they will start showing up in organizations large and small almost as soon as they arrive. Their inclusion of many coveted enterprise functions such as those listed above almost guarantees that Windows 8 Tablets will make a splash in the enterprise.

The purpose of a share, which is also called a shared folder, is to expose a portion of a server’s file system to network users. The idea is to just keep portions of that file system available to users while allowing other portions of the server’s file system to remain private and unseen by network users.

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A share can expose a single folder and everything in it or an entire drive and everything on that drive.

Windows Explorer is where you’ll often administer shares, so let me show you how it’s done there.

Administrating Shares with Windows Explorer

Launch Windows Explorer and create a new folder. Just right-click on an empty space and select New > Folder.

Give the folder a name, e.g. “UserFiles.”

The intent here is that the contents of this folder will be the things we want our users to have access to from the network. For the purpose of an example, I’d like you to create a text document and give it a name, e.g. “Example.”

Next, let’s assign permissions to that file. Right-click on it and then select Properties from the context menu.

Once you’re in the Properties window, navigate to the Security tab. By default, the file is inheriting the permissions of the folder which, in turn, is inheriting the permissions from the drive itself. If you click on each group or user name, you’ll see their respective permissions in the lower panel.

To proceed with our example, let’s add a new user to this list. To do that, just click the Edit button.

And then in the next window, click Add.

Add an existing user into the text field labeled, “Enter the object names to select” and then click OK.

Give that person full control over the contents of the file by clicking the Allow check box for the item: Full control.

Click all OK buttons until you’re back at the folder you created earlier.

Next, go back up a level, right-click the folder you created, and select Properties.

In the Properties window, navigate to the Sharing tab and then click the Share button.

Now you should decide who among your users will be allowed to access files through this share. From the screenshot below, you see that the Administrators group is already in there. In addition to it, you can add whatever groups you like.

Just type in the name of the group (e.g. Users) or the name of an individual into the text box and then click Add. Once you’re done adding, click the Share button.

Then click Done.

You should then see the network path already filled in.

Users can use that path to access the contents of that folder.

If you want to give it a test run, go to the Start menu and click Run.

Enter the path. This share is advertised, so if you do that on a local machine, you won’t have to enter the entire path because Windows will automatically populate the rest of the path’s name for you and then suggest that as a choice. Select it and then click OK.

Windows will then open that shared folder in a new window. When users access something through a share, the share will look like the top-level item to them. In other words, they won’t be able to go further up into the filesystem hierarchy.

That is, they won’t be able to reach the Windows folder or anything else contained in the server because the share represents their entry point into the server.

Up in Explorer’s title bar, you can click on the server, and you will then be able to see all the other shares in that computer. Some of those you may or may not have access to. Some of them, like the netlogon and sysvol shares, are there for special purposes. Specifically, those two are used by the Windows operating system itself.

That’s how a shared folder looks. Now you can also share a drive. For example, you can share your C: drive.

To do that, navigate to MyComputer, right-click your C: drive, and then select Properties.

Next, go to the Sharing tab. Depending on the particular drive you’re working with, you may or may not be able to share it by clicking the visible Share button. In my case, my C: drive is my system drive, so I am not allowed to just click the Share button, which is why it’s grayed out.

One way to go around this is to click the Advanced Sharing button.

When the Advanced Sharing window appears, click the Share this folder check box. Give the share a name (e.g. CDrive) and then click OK.

If you go back to the root folder of your server,

you’ll notice that the shared drive already appears.

Because that share points to the drive itself, it enables you to access all folders on that drive.

Conclusion

This is the broadest form of sharing that Windows offers. If your server has multiple drives attached to it, the only way to give someone access to everything is to share each drive individually.

Way back in the day, all we had were local accounts on stand alone or workgroup-based computers, and in some ways, nothing has really changed. We still have computers that have local user accounts. Most of the time the local Administrator account is all that matters, but you may have situations where you want or need additional local user accounts.

Today, I will show you how easy it is to set up these accounts remotely, using Windows PowerShell.

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Now, if you only need to do this on a single machine on a rare occasion, by all means use the Computer Management console. However, if you are looking to create a number of local accounts across multiple machines, PowerShell will make this much easier.

Leveraging PowerShell to Create Local Accounts across Multiple Machines

I’m going to demonstrate in a domain environment from a Windows 7 desktop running PowerShell 2.0, creating local accounts on other domain members. I’m logged on with an account that has admin rights on the remote computers. With this approach, I don’t need PowerShell installed anywhere else.

If you need to create accounts on non-domain members, I think the best approach is to use PowerShell remoting. You can run the same commands I’m going to show you, but in a remote session or using Invoke-Command. The advantage is that you can specify the credentials you need. Setting up remoting for non-domain members is a bit tricky, and I don’t have space to cover it here, so I’ll assume if you have to go this route you have it worked out.

The first step is to connect to the remote computer. Unfortunately, there are no cmdlets for what we are about to do. Instead, we’ll rely on some .NET and PowerShell tricks using ADSI, which is the same technology we used in VBScript.

PS C:\> [ADSI]$server="WinNT://chi-fp01"

This command creates a variable, $server, which will be an ADSI object. The string on the right side of the expression is the “path” to the remote computer. The WinNT moniker is case sensitive, but the result is an object as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1 An ADSI Computer Object

To create a simple local account, we invoke the ADSI object’s Create() method, specifying what type of object we’re creating and giving it a name. Save the results to a variable because we’ll need it in a moment.

PS C:\> $HelpDesk=$server.Create("User","HelpDesk")
PS C:\> $HelpDesk

distinguishedName :
Path              : WinNT://GLOBOMANTICS/CHI-FP01/HelpDesk

Next, we need to define the new account’s password with the SetPassword() method.

PS C:\> $HelpDesk.SetPassword("H3lpD3>K")

Finally, we need to commit the change to the local directory service by calling the SetInfo() method. If we fail to do this, the account won’t be created.

PS C:\> $HelpDesk.SetInfo()

If you’d like, you can set additional properties for the account, calling SetInfo() at the very end to save all the changes.

PS C:\> $HelpDesk.Put("Description","Help Desk Tech Local Account")
PS C:\> $flag=$HelpDesk.UserFlags.value -bor 0x10000
PS C:\> $HelpDesk.put("userflags",$flag)
PS C:\> $HelpDesk.SetInfo()

The other step I took here was to define a new value for the userflags property. This is a bitmask value that indicates things such as if the password never expires or if the account is disabled. I set a new value so that the password never expires. You can see the result in Figure 2.

Figure 2 A New Local Account

To see our results from PowerShell, we can query the server’s “children,” filtering by object class.

PS C:\> $server.children | where {$_.class -eq "user"} |
>> format-table Name,Description –auto
>>

Name            Description
----            -----------
{Administrator} {Built-in account for administering the computer/domain}
{Guest}         {Built-in account for guest access to the computer/domain}
{HelpDesk}      {Help Desk Tech Local Account}

Object properties are stored as arrays, which is why the output might look a little odd.

The last step is to add this account to an appropriate local group. I’m going to add the HelpDesk account to the Power Users local group. First we need to get the local group using ADSI.

PS C:\> [ADSI]$group="WinNT://chi-fp01/Power Users,Group"

To add a group member I need to specify the path to the user object.

PS C:\> PS C:\> $helpdesk.path
WinNT://GLOBOMANTICS/CHI-FP01/HelpDesk
PS C:\> $group.Add($helpdesk.path)

Conclusion

The change is immediate and there is no need to run SetInfo(). At this point, my new local user account is ready to go.

Next time we’ll look at managing this account including changing the password, modifying group membership, disabling the account and deleting it.

The idea behind route redistribution sounds so simple: routing protocol A will tell routing protocol B about its known paths. For the most part, when dealing with one-way redistribution solutions, it can be this simple; the complexity of redistribution comes with multiple routing protocols, two-way redistribution points, and multiple entry and exit points. When all of these different things exist within a redistribution situation, the configuration can get very complex very quickly. This article takes a look at some of the most common problems that are seen when redistributing to and from Cisco’s Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP).

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Things to Look for When Using EIGRP Redistribution

There are a couple different things that can be commonly misconfigured when setting up EIGRP redistribution. The following sections go over a couple of these and how they can be remedied.

Routing Table Entries

One thing that must be hammered into the mind of the configuring network engineer is that only routes that actively exist within the routing table will be redistributed. For example, if a router is being configured to redistribute OSPF into EIGRP, only those OSPF routes that are actively in the redistributing router’s routing table will be redistributed into EIGRP. This is not a behavior that is specific to EIGRP; it is the same regardless of dynamic routing protocol.

EIGRP default metric

Unlike most of the other dynamic routing protocols, EIGRP does not automatically have a default metric for any learned routes. What this means is that the redistribute command syntax can be perfectly correct, but nothing will actually be redistributed. To remedy this situation, ensure that either the metric keyword is used inside the redistribute command used under the EIGRP router configuration mode, or that the default-metric command is used.

The exception to this rule is when IGRP and EIGRP are being run on the same router and are redistributing between each other. In this case, the metrics are automatically converted between them and injected.

EIGRP Administrative Distance

Many network engineers forget that unlike other internal routing protocols, EIGRP does not use the same administrative distance for internal and externally sourced routes. “Normal” internal EIGRP routes by default use an administrative distance of 90 and are typically considered higher in priority than other common internal routing protocols (OSPF – 110, IS-IS – 115, RIP – 120). However, when a route is redistributed into EIGRP, it does not use an administrative distance of 90; it uses an administrative distance of 170. This way the router will always prefer EIGRP route sources from inside the network over externally sourced routes.

Summary

For those just learning dynamic routing protocols and redistribution, please take the time to test many different redistribution scenarios, either with live equipment or with a product like dynagen or GNS3. The further a candidate gets into Cisco’s certification path, the more complex the redistribution examples get and will be tested on. This time is very important because many engineers do not have to alter the redistribution configuration of a live production network until a change or problem occurs. Having this added experience makes the editing of these commands much easier as a ground level understanding will exist.

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What Happened to dcpromo?

Similar to previous versions of Windows Server, you start the process of making a server into a domain controller by adding the Active Directory Domain Services roles to your computer. However, in Windows Server 2012, you do not run dcpromo to promote your server to a domain controller. In Windows Server 2012, dcpromo has been deprecated.

So what replaces dcpromo in Windows Server 2012? There are now two ways to promote your server to a DC. The first option is to use PowerShell. This provides the ability to script the process, save the script, or batch the process out to multiple servers. The second option is a task made available in Server Manager that can be run to begin the promotion wizard.

Who Can Install Active Directory on Windows Server 2012?

If you are going to be creating the first domain in a new forest, log on as the local Administrator. If you're adding a new domain in an existing forest, be a member of the Enterprise Admins group for the forest you're going to join. To add a new domain controller to an existing domain, be a member of the Domain Admins group.

Once you're logged into the server with the correct account, you'll next add the Active Directory Domain Services feature to your server. You can install the Active Directory Services feature on to Windows Server 2012 by both PowerShell and Server Manager.

The fastest method of installing features in Windows Server 2012 is with PowerShell; let's take a look at the steps needed to accomplish this.

Install Active Directory Domain Services on Windows Server 2012 with PowerShell

Add-WindowsFeature -name ad-domain-services -IncludeManagementTools

It doesn't get any easier than that, but in case you want to do it the hard way, I'll show you how to add the Active Directory feature to your Windows Server 2012 using Server Manager, too.

Install Active Directory Domain Services on Windows Server 2012 with Server Manager

1. Open Server Manager, then select Manage and click on "Add Roles and Features"
2. Click Next on the "Before you begin" window
3. Select Role-based or feature-based installation and then click Next
4. Click Select a server from the server pool, click the name of the server to install Active Directory Domain Services to, and then click Next (If you wanted to install this on a remote server, you have to first create a server group containing the remote server)
5. Click Active Directory Domain Services. When the Add Roles and Features Wizard dialog box opens, select Add Features, then Next
6. On the Active Directory Domain Services page, review the information and then click Next
7. On the Confirm installation selections page, click Install
8. On the Results page, verify Installation succeeded, and click Promote this server to a domain controller to start the Active Directory Domain Services Configuration Wizard

The nice part about using the Server Manager method is that it takes you directly into running the Active Directory Domain Services Configuration Wizard, which is the utility which replaced the deprecated dcpromo.

Now that you've installed the features, you will need to promote the server into a domain controller.

How to Promote a Server to a Domain Controller in Windows Server 2012 with Server Manager

After installing the Active Directory Domain Services feature on your server, you can promote the server to a domain controller. If you have just finished the feature installation, the AD DS Configuration Wizard begins automatically.

However, if the feature installation has already been closed, you can start the Active Directory Domain Services Configuration Window by clicking the Tasks icon along the top of Server Manager.

1. Choose your Deployment Configuration.
   • To install a domain controller to an existing domain, specify the domain name.
   • To install a new domain in existing forest, choose "Child" or "Tree" domain, then browse for forest structure.
   • To install a new forest, specify the new forest name.
   • Then click Next.
2. Choose your Domain Controller Options.
   • To create a new forest or domain, select the functional levels, click Domain Name System (DNS) server, specify the Directory Services Restore Mode password, and then click Next.
   • To add a DC to a domain, choose Domain Name System (DNS) server, Global Catalog (GC), or Read Only Domain Controller (RODC) as needed, choose the site name, and type the Directory Services Restore Mode password and then click Next.
3. If installing a DNS Server, you may need to Update DNS delegation. To update, enter credentials with permission to create DNS delegation records in the parent DNS zone. (To help determine if you need to update DNS delegation, see the Microsoft TechNet article Understanding Zone Delegation. For more information on any errors that may be generated by updating DNS delegation, see DNS Options.
4. If installing a Read Only Domain Controller (RODC), specify the group that will manage the RODC. Add or remove accounts to the Allowed or Denied password replication groups. Click Next.
5. On the Additional Options page, choose one of the following options:
   • To create a new domain, type or verify the NetBIOS name of the domain.
   • To add a DC to a domain, select a domain controller to replicate the AD DS installation data from (or the wizard can select "any").
6. Specify where the directories for the Active Directory database, the log files, and the SYSVOL folder will be. Click Next.
   Warning: Do not attempt to store any of the above on a Resilient File System data volume.
7. You may need to specify alternate credentials to run adprep on the Preparation Options page.
8. If you want to reuse these steps again, click View Script, and copy the text of the PowerShell script.
9. Verify your server was successfully promoted on the results page, then click Close.

A reboot is required and it happens automatically by default.

You can also automate this process with PowerShell.

How to Promote a Server to a Domain Controller in Windows Server 2012 with PowerShell

There are three PowerShell cmdlets, which coincide with the three deployment options:

How to Add a Domain Controller using PowerShell

To use Install-ADDSDomainController, only three things are required:

• domain name - which must be passed through the DomainName parameter
• credentials - that are in the Domain Admins group of the domain
• Directory Services Restore Mode password - which can either be passed through the SafeModeAdministratorPassword parameter, or it can be provided when prompted.

There are many more optional parameters that can be used, which specify everything from where to find the installation media, to whether or not to reboot when it's completed.

The simplest example of this is:

Install-ADDSDomainController "mydomain.local"

How to Add a Domain Forest using PowerShell

To use Install-ADDSDomain, you must also specify the parent domain name. Just as when using PowerShell to add a domain controller, you may either supply the Directory Services Restore Mode password in the cmdlet, or provide it when prompted.

This is an example of how to create a new domain in a forest with PowerShell:

Install-ADDSDomain  -NewDomainName  mychildn  `
-ParentDomainName mydomain.local; `
-InstallDNS `
-CreateDNSDelegation `
-DomainMode Win8 `
-ReplicationSourceDC  dc0.mydomain.local

Note: The ` character is used to continue the command on the next line

How to Add a New Forest with PowerShell

To use Install-ADDSForest, all that needs to be provided is the forest name. A prompt will allow the Directory Services Restore Mode password to be entered, and DNS is installed by default during a forest installation.

An example of this would be:

Install-ADDSForest "mydomain.local"

Or you could be more specific:

Install-ADDSForest –DomainName mydomain.loca  `
 -CreateDNSDelegation  `
 -DomainMode Win8   `
 -ForestMode Win8 

Conclusion

Though Windows Server 2012 removes the dcpromo that system engineers have been using since 2000, they have not removed the functionality. If a GUI is preferred by an active directory engineer, they may still have much of the look and feel provided through Server Manager. If a script or a command line interface is preferred, new cmdlets in PowerShell provide all of the flexibility of the GUI, with the added benefit or scalability and reusability.

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A mobile cloud app is not simply porting your existing app to a virtual environment, or modifying them for use on a mobile device.

Mobile cloud apps are a new breed of apps that integrate the experience of a downloaded app with the enablement of a cloud service. Early examples of such mobile apps include a tool that allows you to edit your pictures on your mobile device and then store them in the cloud. A field service’s app has tools on the device the engineer needs to analyze a problem but syncs with a cloud app to enable the engineer to investigate if there are existing solutions.

There are three essential qualities that you need to think about when you specify your mobile cloud app.

Combine the advantages of the cloud with the advantages of a mobile device

The cloud offers the ability to store vast amounts of data, to collaborate with others, and to pay as you go. The mobile device offers the capabilities to go anywhere, to locate the user, and personalization. When these capabilities are brought together, you can create new and innovative apps. Examples are:

• Combine cloud data with mobile location information to create interactive maps that show where your friends are, where your children and other precious assets are, or where your service engineers are.
• Combine cloud computing resources with the touch capabilities of phones and tablets to create new gaming experiences. As we see more sensors going into mobile devices, we can expect to see more innovation in how people can interact with online gaming as well as other online services.

Works all the time

The best mobile apps allow the user to be productive when they are offline, or have a low data rate connection and then offer a richer experience when the user has a broadband connection. The reality is that even with the roll out of 4G, and the growth of Wi-Fi in enterprises and in public hotspots, wireless cannot keep up with the growing traffic demands. Even though wireless service providers are providing higher data rates, these data rates are a shared resource. You can expect that the growth in wireless traffic will outpace the service provider’s ability to roll out additional base stations, so expect things to slow down.

Includes a collaborative aspect that allows your users to participate

Make sure your mobile app includes a collaborative aspect that enables users to participate and feel a sense of inclusion and belonging. One of the easiest ways to make people feel like they are included is to enable them to create and contribute content. One of the easiest mediums to create and share on a mobile device is through video.

The growth in video traffic is outpacing all other types of traffic, and not only because people want to watch Internet TV. People with mobile devices create and share an amazing amount of video content. Let’s go back to our field service example. Let the engineer capture how they solved a customer’s problem and share it with other engineers.

The mobile device provides the camera and means to capture the video. The cloud provides the mechanism to securely store the user-generated content. In addition, the cloud has the computer resource to run sophisticated image recognition software and implement search tags to make it easily accessible and searchable by others.

Conclusion

If your mobile app has these three essential qualities, you will be close to designing the perfect mobile cloud app.