Server Room Temperature Recommendation

       Server Room Temperature: Computer and networking equipment is designed to operate within a fairly narrow temperature range. To ensure reliable operation and the longest possible life from components you need to ensure that the temperature stays within that band.


       Even a few degrees too hot can blow a server chip.
       The cost of a catastrophic server failure can be considerable. Think how much money you would lose if your servers went down. There is the cost of replacement, but think also of lost e-commerce business, lost customer details, wasted staff time, and all the other associated costs.

What temperature is right?
       General recommendations suggest that you should not go below 10°C (50°F) or above

28°C (82°F). Although this seems a wide range these are the extremes and it is far more common to keep the ambient temperature around 20-21°C (68-71°F). For a variety of reasons this can sometimes be a tall order.
How do you maintain the right temperature?
       Purpose built server rooms are well insulated for fire precaution reasons and air conditioning is essential. In many companies however the maintenance of the air conditioning is separate from the running of the servers. If the air conditioning fails you might not be the first to know. You may even be the last.

       Even if everything is working the temperature may fluctuate during the day, from season to season, and there is always the possibility of localized hot-spots around equipment giving off lots of heat.

       Don’t be tempted to think that just because you have an air conditioning unit that is up to the job that you are safe. People working in the server room sometimes switch the air conditioning off and forget to turn it on again. Sometimes they leave doors open. Servers run hotter at some times of the day than at others, air conditioning systems sometimes run at lower power at night etc.

       What if it’s night time, your air conditioning is running at low power, and your webserver suddenly starts to work hard because the west coast has woken up? Now your machine heats up and your air conditioning can’t cool it enough. Exactly this scenario has been know to happen. Many intermittent faults and slow downs can be traced to overheating.

        Replacing old equipment can introduce a new set of problems. Newer machines run faster and often run hotter as well, increasing the burden on the air conditioning systems even more. If you’ve recently introduced new servers or modern switches, it might be time to examining your air conditioning unit to make sure it can still keep up.

       Another thing to look out for is the scenario where you turn up the air conditioning unit during the day, in order to ensure the right environment in your server room, but then don’t switch it down during the night or weekends. During the day there might be a lot of activity into and out of the server room. The server room door being opened all of the time lets warmer air into the server room thus necessitating the air conditioning system to be turned up high. At night and at the weekend, without the same level of activity, you may be running up large energy bills for no reason.

How are you going to monitor the temperature?
       You need to monitor the temperature in your server room all of the time, especially at night and weekends when nobody is around. A number of systems are available for this purpose, the Temperature Monitor range from OPENXTRA offer good products at reasonable prices. You need to measure temperatures at different points in the room to get an idea of where the hot spots might be. You need temperature measurement to be automated and reliable, so a network attached device is ideal. The device must support alarms, via a number of different methods like email or SMS. You should be able to set the system up and then be alerted when something is wrong.


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Benefits of Server Virtualization

       Server individualization is the concept of treating a physical server as multiple logical servers. How does that help? Let’s have a look.

       Virtual servers reduce your costs. Virtualization causes you to buy less hardware thereby saving you money. Also the operating costs are reduced with virtualization.

       Virtualization makes the servers stable and reduces downtimes considerably thereby making servers and the websites hosted on them available at all times. It ensures high availability and delivers prompt disaster recovery thereby offering you business continuity.

       Virtualization of servers lets you utilize the resources to the fullest. With automation and better utilization of available resources, virtualization increases the efficiency of the server. 

       In virtualization, a physical server is partitioned into multiple logicals and these logicals are independent of one another. As they don’t interfere with others, they promise increased security. This is the reason virtual private servers are often used as sandboxes or honeypots. 

       Another benefit of server virtualization is that it helps save space in your data centers as the number of physical servers is much less than the number of servers that are being used. 

      If we had to list them, what are the top benefits of server virtualization? Here's devided by categories: 

Financial benefits of server virtualization

• Reduction of HW maintenance costs 
• Reduction of LAN/SAN costs
• Reduction of floor spaces costs
• Reduction of power consumption costs

Intangible benefits of server virtualization

• Increased flexibility
• Increased availability
• Increased uptime
• Green IT
• Improved test processes
• Virtual labs
• Allow us to move to the cloud

       Have you experienced virtual servers yet? How has the experience been? Share us when and how you have used virtual servers.

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Benefits of Network Diagram

       A network diagram is essentially a flow chart that includes all of the project elements and how they relate to one another. It is widely used because it is easy to read and not only depicts the sequence of activities in the project, but also shows parallel activities and the links between each activity. Network logic is the collection of activity dependencies that make up a network diagram for a particular project. In other words, certain tasks are dependent on one another to complete the project. This creates a logical stream of events that will lead to completion of the project.


The network diagram lets know the following:

• It is easy to identify the problem that come from the workstation, LAN, WAN, server or application server.
• A network diagram gives a bird-eyes view of a system without having to go into technical details. If well done it will also show who is responsible for which parts.
• Helps us find our critical / non-critical activities. So if we know our critical activities we would like to allocate our critical people on the critical task and medium performing people on the non-critical activities. 
• This also helps us to identify which activities we can run in parallel, thus reducing the total project time.
• Finally, it gives the Project Manager and the team a point of contact; the person capable of creating the network diagram surely has a thorough understating of the system.

The following diagram shown the physical connectivity between the device:

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Batch File Commands - Network Self Test

Network Self test IT Services:
Run the script TestNetwork.CMD, you will see the following screen, which provide menu to test IT network services. perform a ping to a domain or application - this will help identify ... ping commands before the user contact your site admin

Menu 0: IP configuration: Provide overall network configuration detail on your PC.

• For Company (Thai), “Ipv4 Address” should begin with 192.160.xxx.xxx (where x represoen 0-9)

Menu 1: Test network connection to the file server.

• If you can ping to the file server, your O and P drive should be accessible. 
• If you see some “Request timed out.”, there might be a problem on the cable or port connected to the PC.
• If you see all “Request timed out.” but you got the IP address begin with 192.168 in “Menu 0”, the network route to the file server is unreachable.
• Time should be less than 10 ms

Menu 2: Test network connection to the Email (Exchange) server.

• If you can ping to the Email server, you should be able to send and receive email.
• If you see all “Request timed out.” but you got the IP address begin with 192.168 in “Menu 0”, the network route to the email server is unreachable. 
• Time should be less than 10 ms

Menu 3: Test Office Communicator (IM) Server in Singapore.

• If you can ping to the server, you should be able to login and use Office Communicator (chat program).
• If you see all “Request timed out.” but you got the IP address begin with 192.168 in “Menu 0”, the network route to the OC server is unreachable.
• Time vary because the server is in Singapore, however more than 500ms consider high response time. 

Menu 4: Test network connection to the SAP (PC8) Server.

• If you can ping to the PC8 server, you should be able to login and use SAP.
• If you see all “Request timed out.” but you got the IP address begin with 192.168 in “Menu 0”, the network route to the SAP server is unreachable.
• Time vary because the server is in Houston, however more than 1000ms consider high response time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~SAMPLE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@echo off
:prompt
title Menu Slect to Auto Check IT Services                                                                by:BoYL@SeR 2011
color 1f
cls
echo.
echo    This is a private system operated for Company (Thailand) Company.
echo    Authorization from Chevron management is required to use this system.
echo    Use by unauthorized person is prohibited.
echo    WARNING: This computer system is accessed by authorized users outside
echo    of Chevron. All security and control procedures must be strictly followed.
echo ________________________________________________________________________________
echo                  Select Number to Auto Check the Internet Connection
echo ________________________________________________________________________________
echo                        0. IP configuration
echo                        1. Ping File Server (THFILESHARE)
echo                        2. Ping Mail Server (THMAILSERVER) 
echo                        3. Ping Office Communicator (SGCOMMUNICATION)
echo                        4. Ping SAP Server (PC8)
echo                        5. Exit
echo.
echo       Response Time Guideline:    Nomal             High
echo         1, 2 (local LAN)           1-10ms       more than 10ms
echo         3 (SG Ehub)              100-300ms      more than 300ms
echo         4 SAP                    300-500ms      more than 500ms
echo ________________________________________________________________________________
echo.
set /p answer=    Select 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 and press Enter
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 DOWNLOAD BAT FILE HERE ┌∩┐(◕_◕)┌∩┐

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Retrieve the computer serial number

Instructions

Please use one the method bellow to retrieve the computer serial number:1. Using the buid in "wmic" command:
"wmic bios get serialnumber"
Tip: You can use the command "wmic csproduct get name" to retrieve the local computer model.

2. Using a vbs script: On Error Resume Next
Dim strComputer
strComputer = InputBox("Enter the name of the computer:")
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colSMBIOS = objWMIService.ExecQuery ("Select * from Win32_SystemEnclosure")
For Each objSMBIOS in colSMBIOS
MsgBox strComputer & ": " & objSMBIOS.SerialNumber
Next

wmic /node:SERVER1 printer list statusWMIC /locale:ms_409 OS WMIC OS LIST BRIEF

WMIC OS GET csname, locale, bootdevice
WMIC /locale:ms_409 NTEVENT where LogFile='system'
WMIC NTEVENT where "LogFile='system' and Type>'0'"
WMIC SERVICE where (state=”running”) GET caption, name, state > services.tsv
WMIC SERVICE where caption='TELNET' CALL STARTSERVICE
WMIC PRINTER LIST STATUS
WMIC PRINTER where PortName="LPT1:" GET PortName, Name, ShareName
WMIC /INTERACTIVE N PRINTER where PortName="LPT1:" DELETE
WMIC PROCESS where name='evil.exe' delete
WMIC /output:"%computername%.txt" MEMORYCHIP where "memorytype=17" get Capacity

Interactive mode:C:>START "Windows Management" WMIC
wmic:root\cli>/locale:ms_409
wmic:root\cli>OS get csname
wmic:root\cli>quit

This is the script I ran to gather a variety of system information from server3 remotely...
del c:\GatherInfo.txt
systeminfo /s \\server3 > c:\GatherInfo.txt
driverquery /s \\server3 >> c:\GatherInfo.txt
getmac /S \\server3 >> c:\GatherInfo.txt
freedisk /s \\server3 /D C: >> c:\GatherInfo.txt
gpresult /s \\server3 >> c:\GatherInfo.txt
sc \\server3 query >> c:\GatherInfo.txt
eventquery /S \\server3 /L application /FI "type eq error" >> c:\GatherInfo.txt
notepad c:\GatherInfo.txt

Data output:

WMIC BIOS > mydata.txtWMIC OS >> mydata.txtWMIC /APPEND:mydata.txt PAGEFILEWMIC /OUTPUT:output.txt OSWMIC /OUTPUT:CLIPBOARD BIOS

Data display:

WMIC PROCESS WHERE "name like '%HOST%'"WMIC PATH Win32_Process WHERE "name like '%HOST%'"WMIC PROCESS WHERE “Name=svchost.exe” LIST StatisticsWMIC PROCESS WHERE “Name=svchost.exe” LIST BREAFWMIC PROCESS WHERE (Name='svchost.exe') GET name, processed

Some Examples and usage of WMIC:

1. To get the process list – wmic process list
2. To get the group list – wmic group list
3. To get the NIC Card Configuration – wmic nicconfig list
4. To get user account list – wmic useraccount list
5. To get the built in System account list – wmic sysaccount
6. To get the Environment list – wmic environment list
7. To get the information of all shares (including hidden) – wmic share list
8. To get the list of services – wmic services list
9. To get the computer system details – wmic computersystem list
10. To get the volume information – wmic volume list
11. To get full startup list – wmic startup list full
12. To get Information of logical disks – wmic logicaldisk get description, filesystem, name, size
13. To get screensaver information – wmic desktop get screensaversecure, screensavertimeout
14. To get logon information – wmic logon get authenticationpackage
15. To get information about the OS – wmic os get name, servicepackmajorversion
16. To get information about QFE (Quick Fix Engineering) – wmic qfe get description,installedOn
17. To get information about the computer – wmic csproduct get name,vendor,identifyingNumber
18. To get the toal ram – wmic computersystem get TOTALPhysicalMemory,caption
19. To get the macaddress of nic card – wmic nic get macaddress,description

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Basic commands

Basic commands, windows admin's should know


Basic commands
View Last Reboot Time
net statistics server | more
Run a program as another user
runas /user:domain\username appname
ex: runas /user:jeffk cmd.exe


Remote Desktop into Console of specific computer
Mstsc /v:computername /console
Ex: mstsc /v:deserver /console

Map a network Drive
Net use drivename: \\server\share
Net use z: \\daserver\music
Force network credentials
Net use \\server\sharename /user:domain\user
Ex: net user \\daserver\music /user:jeffk
Tip: Before using this you may want to issue net use * /d to delete previously stored credentials, or you can view your credentials by just typing net use

Environmental Variables 
use these at start>run to quickly goto or anywhere in explorer
Tip: Type set to see your variables
%windir%
%systemdrive%
%appdata%
%userprofile%
%programfiles%
%allusersprofile%
%temp%


sc queryex - The following command displays the process ID (PID) that corresponds to a service
sc \\ qc - The following command displays the services that the specified service depends on
sc \\ enumdepend - The following command displays the services that depend on the specified service
psservice \\ depend - You can also use the following command

taskkill -pid - The following command kills a process by PID
taskkill /s -im - And this command kills a process by name on a remote server
pskill \\ - The pskill.exe utility works in a very similar manner

tasklist - viewing the running processes via the command line
pslist \\ - The Sysinternals pslist.exe utility is available for Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2008 and can be run against a remote host
top - There is also the top.exe command, which is available in the Windows 2003 Resource Kit. It provides a continually updated view of the top running process (by CPU)

runas /user: "" - The runas.exe command allows you to run a command with alternate credentials
runas /user:AMER\rallen.adm "mmc.exe" -

diskpart - On Windows Server 2008, you can use the diskpart utility to view the disk, drive, and volume configuration. First, get into interactive mode
list disk - to view the list of disks
list vol - to see the list of volume and assigned drive letters,

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Location-Aware Printing

Windows 7: Location-Aware Printing

Note: this feature is only available for mobile devices, and not on desktop computers.

       One of  Windows 7's new feature is it can automatically switch your default printer when you move between networks (for example, when you move your laptop from your home network to your business network).

To configure this feature, follow the instructions below:

• Click the Start menu and in the search field type Devices.
• Click the link for Devices and Printers.
• Select a printer and right-click Manage Default Printers 
• Select Change my default printer when I change networks
• Select a network, select the default printer you want to use when on that network and press the Add button.
• Do the same for each network that you joined your laptop to it.

When you connect to a network, Windows will automatically select the default printer that was specified for it. 

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