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  Chewy Chong 10:47 am on January 30, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  IIS 6 Caching (Kernel and User Modes) 

  We were working on a way to verify and tweak IIS 6’s static content caching functionality.  Best way we can figure is to put some large images on a page and use NTFileMon (SysInternals), NetMon and Perfmon to monitor everything.  We were disappointed to see IIS 6 not caching our static content. 

  After more reasearch, it turns out IIS 6 does not cache anything anything over something like 16K.  We were testing 1MB files.  That was why we did not observe the cache working.  You can configure this along with other caching parameters with registry keys.  Also, with the whole http.sys in the kernel while IIS is in user mode, you need to have an understanding who is doing the caching.  It turns out in our tests, we needed to adjust user mode caching.  I’ll provide more details later.

  Tweaking HTTP.sys (kernel mode)
  http://support.microsoft.com/?id=820129

  Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2003
  (includes a very good section on IIS tweaking including kernel mode and user mode tweaks – not just caching stuff either)
  http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/performance/tuning.mspx

   

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  Chewy Chong 10:35 pm on January 29, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Authentication Flow in ASP.NET (a large flow diagram) 

  Srinath (a PM at Microsoft) has a good diagram of the authentication flow process in ASP.NET.  Really interesting diagram.

  http://weblogs.asp.net/srinathv/archive/2003/12/11/42838.aspx

   
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  Chewy Chong 1:48 pm on January 29, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  What is the difference between Active and Passive FTP? 

  We have been working with the security people on my project to secure the FTP communications in our app.  One of the concerns is around which mode… Active or Passive.  Active looks more secure since the client only initiates communication to the server on one port (they use another port later on but the server starts that communication first).  Passive is less secure since the client initiates communication to the server over two ports.  Passive mode is useful when you’re behind a firewall or a proxy.

  Good technical article here with very discriptive diagrams:
  http://slacksite.com/other/ftp.html

  Dean just found out the default Windows client can only do ‘Active’ mode. 

   
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  Chewy Chong 10:38 am on January 29, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Freedom from Failovers (Look Ma! No clustering!) 

  Clustering servers is one way you can maintain high availablity.  If one of the nodes fail, the other node will kick in.  However, during this failure process (failover)… services will be unavailable.  This ranges from ~1 min for a simple file share cluster to ~5+ min for a SQL cluster.

  Here’s an interesting solution a friend of mine (Dean) showed me.  From a company called Marathon.  Without the use of clustering, their application keeps servers constantly in sync (they call it LockStep).  If one fails, the other one kicks in w/o a failover.  We are going to look into this technology and fill you guys in.

  Marathon Endurance Virtual FTserver
  http://www.marathontechnologies.com/products/products.htm

   
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  Chewy Chong 8:21 pm on January 28, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Remotely Enabling Terminal Services (Remote Desktop) 

  Just incase you’re too lazy to walk down to the server room… a co-worker just sent out the following VBS script to remotely enable ‘remote desktop’. 

  strComputer = “SERVERNAME.GOES.HERE.COM”
  Set objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts:” _   
     & “{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\” & strComputer & “\root\cimv2″)
  Set colTSSettings = objWMIService.InstancesOf(“Win32_TerminalServiceSetting”)

  For Each colTS in colTSSettings
   colTS.SetAllowTSConnections(1)
  Next

  Update
  Another cohort has an even easier way.  From the command line:

  WMIC /NODE:”ServerName” /USER:”DomainName\Administrator” /PASSWORD:”Password” RDTOGGLE WHERE ServerName=”ServerName” CALL SetAllowTSConnections 1

   
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  Chewy Chong 4:22 pm on January 28, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Microsoft Weighs in on RFID 

  Thanks to Walmart and the US DoD, RFID (think of it as a wireless barcode) is being taken very seriously.  So seriously that Microsoft is entering the scene. 

  RFID Journal reports Microsoft is working with a Dutch snack maker (KiMs) on a RFID supply chain management application.  Microsoft plans on releasing a RFID aware version of their Axapta and Navision business applications in FY05 followed with a RFID enabled version of their Retail Management System.

  Interesting tidbit about the upcoming significance of RFID.  Many years ago, barcodes weren’t popular until US retailer Walmart got behind the standard and made all their suppliers use it.  Now with Walmart behind RFID, we’ll soon be able to simply walk through a scanner and automatically tally and purchase our groceries without stopping.  No more long lines at Coles Express!

   

  For more info:

  RFID Journal Article
  http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/774/1/1/ 

  InfoWeek Article
  http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17501128 

  MS Smarter Retailing Initiative
  http://www.microsoft.com/smartretail/

  MS Axapta Business Solution
  http://www.microsoft.com/businessSolutions/Axapta/default.mspx

   MS RFID Tools & .NET Web Service
  http://news.com.com/2100-7345-5139176.html

   
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  Chewy Chong 9:53 am on January 28, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Locking Down RPC Port Allocation and Selective Binding 

  Good document on how to lock down the ports used by RPC and what processes can bind to those ports.

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/rpc/rpc/configuring_the_windows_xp_2000_nt_registry_for_port_allocations_and_selective_binding.asp

  Here’s a technet KBA how-to for RPC and firewalls (Configure RPC Dynamic Port Allocation to Work with Firewall).

  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;154596

   
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  Chewy Chong 9:38 pm on January 26, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 Beta 

  This is a pre-release document.

  This spreadsheet lists the full set of Group Policy settings described in Administrative Template (.adm) files shipped with Windows Server 2003. This includes all policy settings supported on Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003. The spreadsheet includes separate worksheets for each of the .adm files shipped, as well as a consolidated worksheet for easy searching. Using column filters, the spreadsheet allows simple filtering by operating system, component and machine/user configuration, as well as regular text search of keywords through Excel.

  As a pre-release list, this spreadsheet includes new policy settings added in the Beta version of Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2.

   
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  Chewy Chong 9:24 pm on January 26, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Converting Log Files to XML with .NET and Regular Expressions 

  Good MSDN article giving code on how to use RegEx to convert a log file into XML.

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/regexandxmlclasses.asp

  This document includes other goodies including a link to another RegEx Building and Testing tool.

  http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/Expresso.asp

  The author of the tool (Roy Osherove) even has a blog dedicated to RegEx.  You’ll notice we share the same blogging tool (DotText).

  http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/articles/6863.aspx

   
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  Chewy Chong 4:21 pm on January 26, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Tool to Wrap Your Brain Around Regular Expressions 

  Found this cool tool that helps you hammer out regular expressions.  

  http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/#install

  It allows you to input the text you’re attempting to match on then display matches as you slowly hack through the regex.  Allows you to step through the regex matching process.  Heck, it even attempts to translate the regex expression into plain English.  Pretty freaking cool.