Archives

Archives / 2012
  • How to manage a Windows cloud server

    Managing a Windows cloud server can be a relatively easy task; especially if you know the basics.  Check out the post I put together with the initial information that you need to know to get the most out of your Windows cloud server.

  • Easy Web Development With IIS Express

    Triggered by a question in the forums the other day, I had started working on a blog post about IIS Express and how it works compared to Visual Studio Development web server, also known as Cassini.  During my research I came across this well written and comprehensive post that covers everything that I was going to write about and more.

  • Send an email when an event is logged

    As a systems administrator you may find yourself spending a significant amount of time in Event Viewer looking for specific events.  You will be happy to know that there is a new feature that shipped with Windows 2008 and all versions of Windows Server since then that allows you to attach events to a log file so that you can configure a specific action to occur.  There is a way to do this in previous versions of Windows Server that is covered below.

  • What the Marine Corps taught me about customer service

    I am a big supporter of all those who are serving or who have served in all the branches of the United States military.  As a former Marine I understand what they have been through and all they have sacrificed for their country.  With Veteran’s Day right around the corner I want to take a step back in time and focus on a non technical topic.

  • IIS 8 FTP

    This post began its life as ‘What’s new in IIS 8 FTP’ but has since morphed into something quite different.  As the ultimate goal is still to talk about what’s new with FTP for IIS 8, I have retained IIS, 8, and FTP in the title but nothing more.

  • Perform a clean startup of Windows the easy way

    From time to time you may experience issues with a program not working as expected on your Windows computer.  To assist in troubleshooting, Microsoft has included a tool that many have forgotten about even though it has been around since Windows 98.  The tool is called System Configuration and is accessed by typing msconfig in the start menu.  You will note that making changes to any of the options in the utility will require a restart of your system to take effect.

  • DNS 101

    The Internet is still a mystery to many people.  The goal of this post is to explain the Domain Name System (DNS) in simple terms to help more people gain an understanding.  The Internet is a worldwide network of computers and devices that share information.  In this network all devices and resources are accessed by IP addresses.  The simplicity of this network isn’t very user friendly, though, because in order to access your favorite web site you would have to remember its IP address.

  • IIS8 Memory Improvements

    There is a lot of buzz in the Internet Information Services (IIS) community about IIS 8, the version of IIS that is included with Windows Server 2012.  While there are plenty of new features in IIS 8, for this writing I am going to focus on the memory improvements that you will see for the application pools.  Memory is a key resource on an IIS server as it is often the first limiting factor if you planned your CPU and disk requirements appropriately.

  • Enabling Failed Request Tracing

    Occasionally I get questions on how to troubleshoot intermittent issues in IIS.  One example is an intermittent 500 status code and another example is a slow page load.  In IIS7 and later there is a simple module that you can install as part of IIS called Failed Request Tracing (FREB).

  • Which application pool is it?

    If you are running multiple web sites on your IIS web server you will eventually need to know which worker process is associated with a particular application pool.  It may be for baseline information or troubleshooting but at one point or another you will need to cross reference an application pool to a w3wp worker process.

  • Orchard Memory Usage

    I recently spent some time working with some coworkers to track down an Orchard performance issue.  We found it was caused by some memory restrictions on the application pool.  I wrote about it on another blog site where I am also a guest blogger.

  • Track down the source of SQL Injection

    A SQL Injection attack is a malicious technique used to attack databases through a website.  It adds portions of SQL statements into the URL from a page that accepts user input.  The attack is successful when there are vulnerabilities in a website where user input is not filtered and validated.

  • Running multiple websites on a single server

    A question I see a lot has to do with running multiple websites on a single web server.  This is a relatively simple topic once you are able to grasp one concept:  website bindings.  Every website on a server needs to have a unique binding.  There are three parts to a website binding, the IP address, the port, and the host name.

  • FREB: LOG_FILE_MAX_SIZE_TRUNCATE

    I was troubleshooting an issue today using Failed Request Tracing (FREB) and I kept getting LOG_FILE_MAX_SIZE_TRUNCATE before I could find the root cause of the issue. I came across a post with information on how to change the default size of the FREB log file and find the issue.