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Interesting article from TechRepublic
Cloud, iPad, and the end of the geek era | TechRepublic.

Finally added another ESXi host on VMware Workstation 8 to the DRS/HA cluster. Just had to copy the CPU masking into the VM configuration file and it was good to go!
VMware Communities: Workstation 8 and ESXi EVC Mode.

Good list of Widows 7 features, tips and tricks.
http://images.globalknowledge.com/wwwimages/whitepaperpdf/WP_MS_77FeaturesforWindows7.pdf

In Microsoft Windows 2000 and in Microsoft Windows Server 2003, as an administrator, you can customize desktops by using Folder Redirection. You can redirect the following folders by using Active Directory and Group Policy:

• Application Data
• Desktop
• My Documents
• My Documents/My Pictures
• Start Menu

You can find more information about Folder Redirection by searching Windows Help for Folder Redirection.

When you redirect folders to a shared location on a network, users need both read and write access to this location so that the users can read the contents these folders. However, in some scenarios, you may not want to grant read access.

Create security-enhanced redirected folders

To make sure that only the user and the domain administrators have permissions to open a particular redirected folder, do the following:

1. Select a central location in your environment where you would like to store Folder Redirection, and then share this folder. In this example, FLDREDIR is used.
2. Set Share Permissions for the Everyone group to Full Control.
3. Use the following settings for NTFS Permissions:
   • CREATOR OWNER – Full Control (Apply onto: Subfolders and Files Only)
   • System – Full Control (Apply onto: This Folder, Subfolders and Files)
   • Domain Admins – Full Control (Apply onto: This Folder, Subfolders and Files)
   • Everyone – Create Folder/Append Data (Apply onto: This Folder Only)
   • Everyone – List Folder/Read Data (Apply onto: This Folder Only)
   • Everyone – Read Attributes (Apply onto: This Folder Only)
   • Everyone – Traverse Folder/Execute File (Apply onto: This Folder Only)
4. Configure Folder Redirection Policy as outlined in Windows Help. Use a path similar to\serverFLDREDIRusername to create a folder under the shared folder, FLDREDIR.

Because the Everyone group has the Create Folder/Append Data right, the group members have the proper permissions to create the folder; however, the members are not able to read the data afterwards. The Username group is the name of the user that was logged on when you created the folder. Because the folder is a child of the parent folder, it inherits the permissions that you assigned to FLDREDIR. Also, because the user is creating the folder, the user gains full control of the folder because of the Creator Owner Permission setting.
How to dynamically create security-enhanced redirected folders by using folder redirection in Windows 2000 and in Windows Server 2003.

Here’s a nice step-by-step for  for load balancing and failover purposes.
Networking: Integrating VMWare ESX into your enterprise network with VLANs, trunking, load balancing.

 
Taken from tek-tips.com to clear up DNS server misconception.
Quote:
 

Primary is local first then any other DNS server second

 
That is actually a very common misconfiguration in DNS servers. The first DNS server listed (aka, primary) should NOT be the server itself. The correct method is to list one or more DNS servers as the primary, secondary, and on the advanced tab, and then add the loopback IP address (127.0.0.1) as the last DNS server in the list. If you run the DNS Best Practice Analyzer it will confirm this.
 
The reason is pretty simple. If you set the DNS server to use itself for DNS lookups then it will never query another DNS server unless its own DNS service isn’t running. That means that it is entirely possible for it to become isolated from the other DNS servers in your environment if it doesn’t have the appropriate records to locate the replication partners, and you’ll never know that anything is wrong until you run into name resolution issues.
Microsoft: Windows Server 2008 – recommended dns settings for domain controllers running 2008 server.

Delete Failed DCs from Active Directory.

Here’s 8 steps to create a bootable WinPE CD:

1. start “Deployment Tools Command Prompt” as administrator
2. copype.cmd x86 c:winpe_x86
3. Dism /Mount-WIM /WimFile:c:winpe_x86winpe.wim /index:1 /MountDir:c:winpe_x86mount
4. Dism /image:<path_to_image> /Add-Driver /Driver:(Here I put the folder path to the folder with the .inf and .sys files) /recurse (the /recurse causes all the drivers in that folder to be added)
5. dism /unmount-wim /Mountdir:c:winpe_x86mount /commit
6. copy c:winpe_x86winpe.wim c:winpe_x86ISOsourcesboot.wim
7. oscdimg -n -bC:winpe_x86etfsboot.com C:winpe_x86ISO C:winpe_x86winpe_x86.iso (this creates a burnable .iso)
8. Burn the .iso to CD/DVD.

via Making a WinPE CD with HP SmartArray Raid Drivers « BasementJack.

It has been well discussed that aligning disk partitions is very critical to achieving maximum performance. It seems that the newer operating systems automatically create aligned disk partitions but I was curious to find out how to determine whether the current partition is aligned. After some googling, I found the following:

wmic partition get BlockSize, StartingOffset, Name, Index

Running this will show the starting offset of each disk and partition.
Running DiskPart and listing the partitions will also show a rounded up value of the offset.
It seems that starting offsets of 1048576 (WMIC) or 1024kb (DISKPART) indicate correctly aligned partitions. The solution for incorrectly aligned partitions seems to be extensive disk tools or basically formatting and realigning the disk.