UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier)Â are also known as GUIDs (Globally Unique IDentifier). A UUID is 128 bits long, and can guarantee uniqueness across space and time. Why do I care about UUIDs? Well VMware attempts to assign a unique UUID to every VM. Generally they succeed, but sometimes you can end...
As most Windows administrators know when you logon to any system locally or remotely Windows generates a token that contains a list of security identifiers of all the groups the user belongs to. In large environments or where you have implemented granular role-based security, top-tier users could be a member...
Lately I've been working on our Server 2008 R2 vSphere 4.1 template and ran into an interesting issue. During the template build process we rename the Administrator and Guest accounts, to comply with best practices. However, after vCenter executed the customization specification the accounts got reset back to Administrator and Guest....
With the release of ESX 4.1 and vCenter 4.1, VMware has greatly increased the performance of vCenter. I accidentally stumbled upon this VMware document called VMware vCenter Server Performance and Best Practices.It's a great read covering benchmark performance differences between vCenter 4.0 and vCenter 4.1, plus a lot of tips...
Back in the days of vCenter 4.0 it required a 32-bit DSN to connect to your SQL database. Now that vCenter 4.1 and ESX 4.1 are out, it now requires the use of a 64-bit DSN. This makes sense as vCenter now requires a 64-bit server. The PowerShell script I...
If you aren't familiar with thin provisioning, it's a technology being widely adopted by storage vendors that only allocates back-end disk space to a LUN when data is written. For example, if you present a 500GB LUN to a server and only write 100GB of data, the array only uses...
With leaks starting to grow about next release of ESX(i), v4.1 is now out the door! It is a big upgrade and include a lot of new goodies for people. Below is a small sampling of the changes in 4.1:- VMware now made it obvious ESX is dying and everyone...
Several months ago when Microsoft moved their System Center management packs to their "PinPoint" site, it was a horrible mess. Trying to search or find the right MP was an exercise in futility. In fact, it's beyond me how MS released that interface to the public. Clearly they didn't consult...
Today a colleague of mine asked me if I really thought one could tell what cipher strength is used during SSL transactions. I said sure! Piece of cake if you know what to look for. Just like in the movie Matrix, if you stare at the cipher text long enough...
One of the neat security features with SQL 2005 and later is the ability to use a SSL certificate to encrypt off-host SQL server communications over port 1433. Encrypting communications between your SQL server and your remote applications is strongly recommended. Do you really want credit card data, personal information...
As previously mentioned in my blog about SQL TDE (Transparent Data Encryption), the example script I gave just used a SQL self-signed certificate to encrypt the database. While this is fine for a demo, you should only used trusted certificates in a production environment.Getting a trusted certificated inserted into SQL...
One of the new features in SQL Server 2008/R2 is Transparent Database Encryption, or TDE. TDE lets you encrypt any database, without having to change your application. This means you can fully encrypt databases and log files for SharePoint, RMS, or anything else you wish. For the ultimate in security...