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Archive for February, 2009


Applying a Group policy to specific user groups or a user on Windows 2008 Standalone server

Have you ever tried to apply a Group policy rule to an individual one user or single group on the standalone Windows server?

Before Windows 20008, setting individual policies was not possible out of the box, but it could be achieved with a littler workaround. You had to disable reading of GPO directory to the administrator user (or users you don’t want to apply GPO) and then apply it.

With Windows Server 2008 it is possible to create different GPO for every user on the server. This is a nice to have feature, because Terminal Servers may not be a part of AD domain.

gpo

To enable this feature please follow these steps:
•    Start MMC console from the run or command prompt
•    File > Add remove snap-ip
•    Choose group policy objects > Add
•    (This is important) Do not confirm it yet. Choose browse, then tab users. (Here you will be able to select local users and groups GPO will be applied to).
•    Click Finish
•    Define all required GPO’s
•    Close MMC
•    In the command prompt type gpupdate /force (this will apply GPO immediately).


Terminal Services Log 2.2 – Released

Yet again, we are pleased to announce a new version of Terminal Services Log, our flagship product for Terminal Server / Citrix Monitoring and Reporting.

New version includes some long awaited features:
- Connectivity monitoring (IP Addresses and Hostnames)
- License compliance monitoring
- Improved user experience

Connectivity monitoring
Terminal Services Log now comes with a new connectivity monitoring report (available in Professional edition), which gives you quick and powerful insight into hostnames, IP addresses and network ranges.
The report gives you an ability to detect the exact source location for each user connected to your server. Combined with a server filter you can pinpont an exact source location and destination (server) to which the user is connected.

License compliance monitoring
The new set of license reports (available in Professional edition) provide you with valuable information about number of licenses consumed on a server or accross a server farm.
You can use license reports to: verify if you satisfy license compliance requirements, or to check if you need to purchase additional license for published applications.

Improved user experience

We heard your comments and completely rewrote parts of our interface.
The new interface is much easier to use, it gives more space for report panes. Time filters have been changed and improved to allow you to select various custom time periods.


Optimize backup strategy on a Terminal Services farm

Last week a client (a multinational corporation) contacted us with the following request:

[...]
I would like to determine optimal time for backing-up our databases.

The problem the client was facing was that his users were connecting from different continents and different time zones. So the usual “best practice” of backing-up databases during night could not be applied in this case.

The solution for this problem was really simple. Terminal Services Log was already installed, so we analyzed gathered data and here are the results. The first step was to analyze week activities and to determine weekdays when server was least used.

As shown on picture above, server is least used on Tuesday and Wednesday (due to nature of the business this company works on weekends). Daily activity report reviled that the optimal time for backup is 1AM – 6AM (GMT).

Our reports clearly show that the best time for performing backups, and in case this customer needed to plan a day or two for weekly backups he should probably choose Tuesday or Wednesday night when this farm is least used.