Posts by Todd Baratz
End of support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 What comes next?
On July 9, 2019 support ends for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2. On January 14, 2020 support will end for Server 2008 and 2008 R2. Are you still running any production workloads on these two vulnerable products? If you are, what’s your plan for migrating to a supported platform prior to end of support? …
Read MoreHow to Restore Files from Encrypted Azure Disks
Like many things in a secure world, restoring deleted/corrupted files to an Azure VM with encrypted disks is not as straight forward as restoring unencrypted files. File and folder stores are not available and even though you can download the entire virtual hard drive from backup, it is unusable due to the encryption. The encrypted…
Read MoreUses and Setup of Azure Site Recovery Explained
Microsoft provides two ways to backup and recover data using its Azure cloud platform, Azure Backup Server (ABS) and Azure Site Recovery (ASR). With Microsoft’s well-known penchant for fragmenting their own technologies is this more of the same? In this case, no. These two services satisfy different requirements and should be employed to achieve separate…
Read MoreAzure Data Protection – An Overview of Your Options
With Microsoft’s cloud solution there seems to be a dizzying array of options to secure data, with new ones coming out all the time. There is Azure Site Recovery (ASR), Azure Information Protection (AIP), Customer Key (new and not fully rolled out), Azure BitLocker, Key Vault, and the list goes on. Some of these solutions…
Read MoreBlocking Built-in Applications With AppLocker
With the new world of Windows 10 and its never-ending stream of feature updates, Microsoft has introduced a new set of “built-in” applications. Some of these “applications” can be removed as part of an MDT or SCCM task sequence or manually from PowerShell. However, there are some applications which Microsoft does not allow to be…
Read MoreHow’s Your Insecurity Level?
Panama, Paradise, Publicity P.T. Barnum receives attribution for the phrase “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”. I think there are a large number of offshore investors who may be disagreeing with that statement this week. The Panama and Paradise Paper revelations have placed an exclamation point on the importance of an aggressive security posture. As the game of cat and…
Read MoreImplementing Jumbo Frames
A lot has been said about jumbo frames. Some say it’s not worth the effort while others proclaim it to be an absolute requirement. Regardless of where you stand on the debate it is generally accepted that jumbo frames can yield performance improvements on isolated iSCSI networks.
Read MoreUpdating Windows 7 Workstations
Sometimes when you setup a new Windows 7 workstation and try to do Windows Updates it just appears to “hang” on the checking for updates screen? There can be a number of reasons for this, but there are some things you can try that will usually help resolve the problem. First, Microsoft puts out a…
Read MoreRecovering Data From An Exchange Archive
There are many many articles written about how to recover data from an Exchange recovery database, but fewer articles are around that talk about how to recover data from an Exchange archive recovery database. Normally you can mount a recovery database and run a “New-MailboxRestoreRequest” to get your data. However, if you want to recover…
Read MoreOutlook Slow After Migrating to Exchange 2013
If you’ve just migrated your mailbox to Exchange 2013 and you’re having issues with slowness in Outlook (opening Outlook, reading e-mails, etc.) you may need to adjust something called TcpAckFrequency in the registry. The default TcpAckFrequency parameter in Windows is 200ms, which does not always work well with Exchange 2013. Luckily, there is a very…
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