Sysinternals is still has some of the best administrations tools out there.  They continue to updated on a continued basis thanks to Mark Russinovich.  The latest update included updates to CoreInfo and Process Explorer.  Check out the links below for more information on Sysinternals.

Process Explorer

Sysinternals Main Site
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals

Sysinternals Download Site
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062

 Mark Russinovich Blog
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2012/01/05/3473797.aspx

Mark Russinovich’s Upcoming Events
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963883

PowerhShell has turned into one of the best tools that we have as administrators of windows products.  Support from the community is truly amazing.  PoshWSUS is a module that was created to help administrate WSUS.  The below commands can be used instead of executing everything through the GUI.  Stop by the CodePlex site and check it out.  Below are also a couple more links you can reference.  Please leave a comment if you have used it and what you think.

Current Commands From The PoshCode website.  (http://poshwsus.codeplex.com/)

Current commands are:

• Add-WSUSClientToGroup
• Approve-WSUSUpdate
• Connect-WSUSDatabaseServer
• Connect-WSUSServer
• Deny-WSUSUpdate
• Disconnect-WSUSServer
• Export-WSUSMetaData
• Get-WSUSChildServer
• Get-WSUSClient
• Get-WSUSClientGroupMembership
• Get-WSUSClientPerUpdate
• Get-WSUSClientsInGroup
• Get-WSUSCommand
• Get-WSUSContentDownloadProgress
• Get-WSUSCurrentUserRole
• Get-WSUSDatabaseConfig
• Get-WSUSDownstreamServer
• Get-WSUSEmailConfig
• Get-WSUSEvent
• Get-WSUSGroup
• Get-WSUSInstallableItem
• Get-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• Get-WSUSServer
• Get-WSUSStatus
• Get-WSUSSubscription
• Get-WSUSSyncEvent
• Get-WSUSSyncHistory
• Get-WSUSSyncProgress
• Get-WSUSUpdate
• Get-WSUSUpdateApproval
• Get-WSUSUpdateCategory
• Get-WSUSUpdateClassification
• Get-WSUSUpdateFile
• Get-WSUSUpdatePerClient
• Get-WSUSUpdateSummary
• Get-WSUSUpdateSummaryPerGroup
• Get-WSUSUpdateSummaryPerClient
• Import-WSUSMetaData
• New-WSUSComputerScope
• New-WSUSGroup
• New-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• New-WSUSLocalPackage
• New-WSUSUpdateScope
• Remove-WSUSClient
• Remove-WSUSClientFromGroup
• Remove-WSUSGroup
• Remove-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• Remove-WSUSUpdate
• Reset-WSUSContent
• Resume-WSUSDownload
• Resume-WSUSUpdateDownload
• Set-WSUSEmailConfig
• Set-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• Start-WSUSCleanup
• Start-WSUSInstallApprovalRule
• Start-WSUSSync
• Stop-WSUSDownload
• Stop-WSUSSync
• Stop-WSUSUpdateDownload
• Test-WSUSDatabaseServerConnection

Examples Of PoshWSUS
http://learn-powershell.net/2010/11/14/wsus-administrator-module/ 

7zip is one of the best free file compression utilities currently available for download.  Just like its competitors 7zip can handle several different formats for zipping and unzipping of files.  The big thing that makes 7zip stand apart is its own compression standard.  You will usually see about 20-30 percent better compression when using the 7zip standard compared to the other industry standards.  Some of the advanced options include creating self extracting archives and the ability to adjust compression levels.  So if you are looking for a new file compression utility I highly recommend trying it out.  Please let us know what you think.

Main Features From 7zip Site (www.7-zip.org)

• High compression ratio in 7z format with LZMA and LZMA2 compression
• Supported formats:
  • Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM
  • Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z.
• For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
• Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
• Self-extracting capability for 7z format
• Integration with Windows Shell
• Powerful File Manager
• Powerful command line version
• Plugin for FAR Manager
• Localizations for 79 languages

7zip Console

7-ZIP Download
http://www.7-zip.org/

System administrators sometimes need to be able to produce a list of drivers that are installed on their system.  Driveryquery.exe is an excellent command line tool from Microsoft to accomplish this.  This tool will give you a report on all of the current device drivers that are loaded on your system.  The command line tool also gives you several options on the information that it will display.  Below is a screenshot that shows all of the options available for running Driverquery.exe.

Driverquery.exe From Microsoft

Examples Of Driverquery.exe

This example will pipe the information from driverquery.exe to a txt file on the drive.
C:\driverquery.exe > C:\driverqueyr.txt

This example will format the output into a list view.
C:\driverquery.exe /fo list

This example will turn on verbose output for more information.
C:\driverquery.exe /V

This example will show drivers that are currently running.
C:\driverquery.exe /v | findstr Running

Filezilla is another one of those must have tools for both your work and home PC.  Even though with everything moving to the cloud I still run into a frequent need to FTP files to different companies and friends.

FileZilla is a free open source FTP application.  So one of the best features is that is is free to use. The interface is also another great feature as it is strait forward and easy to use.  Some of the highlights of the program is that is allows you to download and upload multiple files from several different servers at the same time.  You are also  able to customize the interface to set it up the way you like.   I have added a screenshot below of the user interface along with a link to their site.  Please leave us a comment if you have used FileZilla and like it.

FileZilla Interface

Features From the FileZilla Site:

• Easy to use
• Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
• Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X and more
• IPv6 support
• Available in many languages
• Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
• Tabbed user interface
• Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
• Bookmarks
• Drag & drop support
• Configurable transfer speed limits
• Filename filters
• Directory comparison
• Network configuration wizard
• Remote file editing
• Keep-alive
• HTTP/1.1, SOCKS5 and FTP-Proxy support
• Logging to file
• Synchronized directory browsing
• Remote file search

FileZilla Site
http://filezilla-project.org/

Additional FileZilla Screenshots
http://filezilla-project.org/client_screenshots.php

FileZilla Download Link
http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client

Microsoft has been doing a great job at releasing new best practice analyzers.  They have now released one for SQL Server 2008 R2.   The analyzer will look at things like event logs, permissions, and SQL metadata.  The BPA will provide recommendations for any warnings or problems.  You can download the BPA by following the link below.

BPA For SQL 2008 R2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0fd439d7-4bff-4df7-a52f-9a1be8725591

Performance Monitor is an essential tool in a server administrators life.  This tool allows us to see deep down into the operating system to see what is actually going on.  I am going to cover the performance counters I use the most over the next few weeks.  This by far does not mean that these are the only counters you should look at.  These are just the ones I have found to be very important.

One of the biggest areas we can look at is processor utilization to figure out how our server is performing.  Below are the three main counters that we will be looking at today.  The definitions are taken strait out of performance monitor.

• %Processor Time – The percentage of elapsed time that the processor spends to execute a non-Idle thread. It is calculated by measuring the percentage of time that the processor spends executing the idle thread and then subtracting that value from 100%. (Each processor has an idle thread that consumes cycles when no other threads are ready to run). This counter is the primary indicator of processor activity, and displays the average percentage of busy time observed during the sample interval. It should be noted that the accounting calculation of whether the processor is idle is performed at an internal sampling interval of the system clock (10ms). On todays fast processors, % Processor Time can therefore underestimate the processor utilization as the processor may be spending a lot of time servicing threads between the system clock sampling interval. Workload based timer applications are one example  of applications  which are more likely to be measured inaccurately as timers are signaled just after the sample is taken.
• %User Time – The percentage of elapsed time the processor spends in the user mode. User mode is a restricted processing mode designed for applications, environment subsystems, and integral subsystems.  The alternative, privileged mode, is designed for operating system components and allows direct access to hardware and all memory.  The operating system switches application threads to privileged mode to access operating system services. This counter displays the average busy time as a percentage of the sample time.
• %Privileged Time – The percentage of elapsed time that the process threads spent executing code in privileged mode.  When a Windows system service in called, the service will often run in privileged mode to gain access to system-private data. Such data is protected from access by threads executing in user mode. Calls to the system can be explicit or implicit, such as page faults or interrupts. Unlike some early operating systems, Windows uses process boundaries for subsystem protection in addition to the traditional protection of user and privileged modes. Some work done by Windows on behalf of the application might appear in other subsystem processes in addition to the privileged time in the process.

Now that you have the Microsoft definition of these counters lets take a quick look at whats important.  The first thing you want to look at is %Processor Time for all instances.  If this counter stays below sixty percent the majority of the time the system is pretty healthy.  If this counter is consistently between sixty and ninety percent you are going to want to look at the server closer.  When this counter consistently stays above ninety percent you should be alarmed and look into what is consuming most of the CPU.

This is where the other two counters come into play.  If most of the processor is being consumed in %User Time then you know it is an application like SQL or IIS that are consuming most of the resources.  If the most of the process is being consumed by %Privileged Time then you know that your bottleneck is some where else like disk IO, memory, or network.  When you are having a %Privileged Time issues it takes a little bit more investigation work to look at all the OS subsystems.

Hopefully you now know what some of the basic processor counters you should be looking at and why.  In the next part of the series we will be looking at network interface counters.

With the official release of Windows 7 channel 9 has released another video interview with Mark Russinovich.   This interview is basically part two of an interview series. Mark did an interview several months ago that covers some additional talking points.  The new video covers a wide range of topics.  I guarantee you will have to watch this video a few times to catch all of the information that is presented.  If you have not heard the first interview I also highly recommend it.  I would also like to thank channel 9 and Mark for making the time to share this great information.

Mark Russinovich: Inside Windows 7 Redux
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going%20Deep/Mark-Russinovich-Inside-Windows-7-Redux/

Mark Russinovich: Inside Windows 7
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Mark-Russinovich-Inside-Windows-7/

There is one thing that we can never get enough of of and this is best practices along with security.  There has been some new documentation posted on technet that covers your VMM 2008 environment.  The documentation covers basic VMM security, hardening of VMM components, and even covers how to secure you VMware environment by using VMM.  Stop by and check it out when you get a chance.

Download VMM Security Content:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc764247.aspx

I have been meaning to post this for a long time.  For those of you have dove into Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7.0 there is a great resource that has been published.  The new documentation or library has IIS 7.0 configuration settings in Windows 2008 including elements, configuration collections, and allot of other important settings.  If you have not already seen it you will want to put this in your favorite bookmarks.  Please stop by and at least check it out to see if you could gain some value by reading through it.

IIS 7.0 Technical Reference
http://www.iis.net/ConfigReference