Hyper-V cluster with SMB Multichannel

Introduction

Windows Server 2012 has a new version of SMB which makes it possible to store virtual machine files on a Windows Server file share. This can make your virtualization infrastructure design less complex as it is in case of iSCSI and MPIO usage for example.
There is also one great feature in SMB since version 2.2 – SMB Multichannel. Together with NIC teaming it aggregates NICs making them redundant and dynamically creates multiply connections making it possible to split one network stream between several network interfaces. As the result the connection is not limited by a speed of one network interface anymore, but a summary of NICs in the team.

Openfire: Certificates

After you install Openfire it’s shipped with self-signed certificates, which you can use or replace with your own certificates. Why actually you need certificates? First thing is you admin panel, second is the client-server communication. There is no problem for one or couple Openfire admins to accept once the self-signed certificated, but second part is more difficult. Spark doesn’t complain meeting a self-signed server certificate, but Jitsi for example does. So, it’s better to use your own signed certificates.

You have to install additional packages before to start:

# yum install –y java-devel openssl

Openfire: Connection Managers

Connection Manager is an Openfire module which scales your Openfire and can handle up to 5000 client connections. The good usage of it can be a publishing into Internet for external connectivity. Putting this into a DMZ network provides additional layer of security and scalability to your enterprise. Connection managers have the same 5222 and 5223 incoming TCP ports and one additional outcoming 5262 for connection to Openfire server.

Openfire: installation on Linux CentOS 7

“Openfire is a real time collaboration (RTC) server licensed under the Open Source Apache License. It uses the only widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging, XMPP (also called Jabber). Openfire is incredibly easy to setup and administer, but offers rock-solid security and performance.”

Ignite Realtime community

It’s a great opensource Instant Messenging system roughly saying and  here I’d like to share my experience of Openfire 3.10.0 installation and basic configuration on Linux Centos 7.
In this example Openfire stores all its settings in a MySQL database and users are taken from Microsoft Active Directory.

PowerShell: Get-Resigned

This script is to cover a user leaver process when there are requirements like:
– User accounts must be disabled, the same for their mailboxes.
– Mailboxes must be exported to PST files on a file server.
– VPN access must be blocked (in this example VPN access provided by adding users to VPN* groups).
– Disabled accounts must be moved to Disabled OUs (sub containers inside of their containers).

And here it is:

Powershell: Get-Home

This simple script can be used for the case when you have to create a bunch of home folders for domain users on a file server and to grant them necessary permissions on corresponding folders. It’s also possible to create just personal folders on a server without assigning them as home folders. It can be executed directly on a server or remotely through network for shares using UNC paths.

First example is for the case when users reside an OU in Active Directory. It creates folders, sets permissions for their owners ans setup home drives for user accounts to connect.

PowerShell: Get-Networking

This script was created to get network adapter’s information from remote machines. It connects to machines defined in a text file using WMI query, looks for enabled network adapters and shows their settings. Simply can be adapted using Quest snap-in to get settings for all domain machines or for computers from a defined OU. Some of NIC’s settings comes up as objects, so, to make possible csv extraction I put [string] before those settings and used Join with coma separator.

PowerShell: Get-Shares

Here is the simple script which lists all shares on remote machines and sends output to a csv file. Feed it by a text file which includes defined hostnames to process. It’s also possible to involve Quest comandlets to process all domain machines, computers from a specific OU, etc… I’ll show it below.

PowerShell: Get-Access

Here is the script for a case when you need to report who has access to folders on a file server. Usually access is restricted by groups and this script shows those group members in additional to group names, processing root folder and its subfolders recursively. Quest Snap-in is required in this case. Import the extraction from csv file into Excel, do a bit of filtering and have fun.

PowerShell: Get-Admins

Here is the script to list all members of local Administrators group on computers from a specific OU. The main advantage of this script is that it uses SID of local Administrators which is the same on all systems. This gives us possibility to list admins on systems in different languages where the Administrators group is named in different manner. This script requires Quest Snapin and exports everything to a csv file.