Steve's Stuff

Server Patching: WSUS, SCCM, or something else…

I have a question that I’m looking into for my day job, which is how to manage server patches for our organization. I have used WSUS all the way back to when it was just SUS. I’ve also somewhat looked at a few 3rd party applications that do this same thing. We currently have a SCCM server, which is what Microsoft implemented for patching inside of their datacenter It’s a very powerful solution and has a lot of flexibility, but not sure that’s needed in our situation.

We currently have about 75 to 80 servers and as of right now, there’s not a lot of differences between what servers get what patches. That may change in the future, as well as maybe needing to do more custom service stopping and starting as we find issues with patch cycles rebooting servers.

So what is everyone else using and what does everyone recommend? Thoughts?

December 3, 2012 0

I have made it a habit to use the latest and greatest of any software that is released. When the newest version of whichever product it is comes out, I immediately install it and am usually the first of anyone around me using whatever it is. This is true with browsers, operating systems, and any update to daily used software.

So, as is customary, as soon as Internet Explorer 9 was released as a final product, I put it right onto my work laptop ignoring any thoughts of the headaches this might cause in a completely untested environment. Hey, I did the same thing with Vista the day it hit our MSDN site and found out how little drivers had actually been created to work with that. So if I survived that, this couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as that was. And it wasn’t. What I found was a great browser that sort of ‘gets outta the way’ and lets you browse the web.

I won’t turn this into a full review about IE9, but I did want to mention something that has been an issue since installing it. I manage several servers at my job on a daily basis. This sometimes involves connecting to a management card installed in each server that gives me a console view without having to actually walk to the server. And there are functions that require me to press F12 during server boots and other things. Well, IE9 added this new ‘debug’ feature. For website developers, I’m sure this is great. When I’m awake at 2am and trying to get something done, it’s a killer that instead of it passing F12 to the server, it opens up the debug window for me. So, I’ve found a way to turn this off.

First, make sure you have admin rights on your computer

Next, go to the run prompt and type gpedit.msc

In the left pane, click on to expand Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Internet Explorer, and Toolbars.

In the right pane, double click on Turn off Developer Tools

Select Enabled

Go back to the run prompt, and type in “gpupdate /force” (minus the quotes)

Your option under tools should now be grayed out and F12 will perform as it did previously

I hope this helps others out as it was killing me for awhile trying to get this to work as it did prior to the upgrade.

New iMacs… waiting…

So Apple updated the MacBook Pros about a month or so ago with Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors and the Thunderbolt ports. I will say, a guy at my work purchased one (his first Apple Computer purchase ever sans iPods) and has been blown away by the speed and processing power inside of the laptop.

This laptop was replacing a desktop tower computer in his house that he used for video editing and media center functionality. Other than the learning curve of a completely new operating system, paried with his misunderstanding of how iTunes works as an application (I’ve been helping out alot in those area) he has loved it. It wasn’t until we were working to encode some digital movies he had into a format that would play on his 5th generation iPod that I realized the speed of this processor.

He was able to completely re-encode this movie, getting from point A to point B, in less than 7 minutes. In comparison, my computer at home would take around an hour to do the same task. Mine is an iMac 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo machine with 3GB of RAM. Once I saw this, I knew that my current iMac would have to be replaced by a machine running the new Intel processor architecture.

So, now I ask Apple, how long will I be waiting for this iMac to be released… (and after that, how long before Thunderbolt hard drives become avaiable at decent prices)

April 8, 2011 0

2010 Montgomery County All-Stars

Haileys team after becoming runners up in the all star tournament.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.3.9

July 2, 2010 0

New iMac on the way

So I finally did it the other day. I decided to take the plunge and buy me an iMac. I played around with a lot of configs before deciding on the one I bought. So what I got was:

17″ iMac Core 2 Duo
2.0 GHz processor
2 GB RAM
250 GB Hard Drive
Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mighty mouse

All in all, it sounds like a great machine that should be very fast. I’m used to using a 450 MHz Mac before this, so it’ll be quite a step up on the Mac side. I’m also hoping that I will be able to decomission my other Dell PC in place of this iMac. My two thoughts on that are one, some of the stuff I did on my Dell was because my Mac was so slow and not able to do what I wanted it to do. The second is that since it’s an Intel Mac, I’ll have a whole lot more options in getting the windows things I need on the Mac. For one, there’s Parallels for virtualization, and then there’s Boot Camp for that have to have PC games that the developers won’t make for the Mac. All in all, it should clean up the 1000+ cables I have floating around my desk area and make it look much better than it does now. I’ll keep you posted on when it arrives, which should be by Monday.

October 10, 2006 0