Toolbox New Products for IT Professionals

new products for it professionals

Server Administration

Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools

www.microsoft.com/uk/ws2003resourcekit

Windows Server 2003

Resource Kit

The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 applications, or system states that lead to Robocopy.exe, gives you a variety of
Resource Kit Tools is an invaluable set a shutdown by keeping event items logi- options for moving or copying files. This
of over 100 utilities that can help you cal and organised. tool lets you use wildcard characters and
streamline and automate your admin- The DNS Resolver Tool, a command- even file attributes to specify candidates
istrative tasks. It includes everything line utility that simulates the SMTP for copying, and copying can be selective-
from Active Directory tools to network service’s execution of DNS resolution, ly set to be recursive. You can use the tool
troubleshooting utilities to CD/DVD displays messages regarding the status of for synchronization, and set it to delete
image burners. the DNS query you specify as a com- destination files or directories that have
The Custom Reason Editor (custrea- mand parameter. This utility will run on been removed from the source directory.
sonedit.exe) is a great tool for getting any Windows Server 2003 host with the Another one of my favorite utilities is
your Shutdown Event Tracker organised. SMTP service installed and will return the simple tool Tail (tail.exe) which, like
A component of Windows Server 2003, error codes you can use in batch files. the Linux/UNIX utility, lets you display
the Shutdown Event Tracker logs reasons CDBurn.exe and DVDburn.exe are com- the last N number of lines from a file,
for system shutdowns to the event log. mand-line utilities that let you create CDs refreshing the display when new lines
Meanwhile, the Custom Reason Editor and DVDs from ISO images and provide are added. This is great way to debug or
tool lets you create a custom list with limited support for RW media with the monitor any task that writes to a log file.
configurable parameters that will override /Erase switch that will clean the media Time It (timeit.exe) lets you time com-
the built-in reasons that are enabled by before applying the new disk image. They mands and stores the data into its own
default. This tool can make it easy to ag- can be used, for instance, to automate database file letting you test how long
gregate and identify troubling processes, archival processes in your infrastructure. your administrative tasks are really taking.
If you need to verify whether an ac- You should note that the tools have
count has been successfully locked out, not been localised, having been writ-
Greg Steen is a technology profes-
the Account Lockout Status tool makes ten and tested in English only, and may
sional, entrepreneur, and enthusiast. He
it quick and easy with both a command- “produce unpredictable results” upon
is always on the hunt for new tools and
line and GUI option. The tool queries execution. Be sure to test on your non-
methods to help make operations and
every reachable domain controller and English-based systems before you use
development easier for IT professionals.
checks the status of the target user’s ac- one of these utilities in a production
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of count. Perhaps one of the best tools for environment.
the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Microsoft. automation, the Robust File Copy Utility, Price: Free download.

12 To get your FREE copy of TechNet Magazine subscribe at: www.microsoft.com/uk/technetmagazine

12_13_Toolbox.desFIN.indd 12 27/3/07 13:47:49

 by Greg Steen Toolbox
Data Encryption in the outer volume “free space” very dif-

TrueCrypt
ficult to detect.
TrueCrypt can use AES, Blowfish,
CAST5, Serpent, Triple DES, Twofish,
www.truecrypt.org and a few combinations of those algo-
rithms to encrypt your data. The applica-
tion uses the LRW mode of operation
TrueCrypt, from TrueCrypt Foundation, is In addition, you can run TrueCrypt in for encryption, which is to become an
a free, open-source “on the fly” encryption “traveller mode” which essentially means IEEE standard for sector-based storage en­
tool that, with the correct password or you can create a file container on a USB cryption. For the header hashing algorithm,
encryption key, will decrypt information key along with the application files and you can choose to use Whirlpool, SHA-1,
you are trying to read or encrypt data take your encrypted data with you wher- or RIPEME-160, and the application will
you are trying to write in memory, from ever you go without requiring installation not store any hash on your system as an
and to your encrypted volumes. But don’t of the TrueCrypt application on the host added layer of protection. The applica­-
worry—at no point does your volume system. But, by the nature of the read/ tion supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and
exist in a decrypted state. Only if you have write via memory, you will need adminis- NTFS file systems, but as with other
a memory dump while the application is trative privileges on the system you want Windows-based sector encryption utilities
decrypting data in memory could an ag- to use your traveller disk on. out there, it doesn’t let you encrypt a
gressor find what information you are try- TrueCrypt has a simple wizard to set up Windows boot partition.
ing to protect. That can easily be avoided your traveller disk as well. This would be a Price: Free.
by turning off memory dumps on your great way to carry around your sys-admin
system, not to mention that only a small information and not have to worry (as
portion of your data exists in memory much) about eyes peering into sensitive
decrypted at any one time. corporate data.
The application supports both virtual For another extra level of security,
volumes and physical partitions or devices. TrueCrypt also lets you create a hidden
Virtual volumes, dubbed “file containers” volume within a file-container, so even if
by the authors, can be created with any an intruder mounts the outer volume, he
file extension or have no file extension at won’t be able to discover that there is an
all, so to peering eyes your sensitive data inner hidden volume on the disk. Every
will appear to be made up of random data; volume is initialised with random data,
there is no TrueCrypt “file signature.” making the hidden volume that resides TrueCrypt

Track Problems

ASP.NET Issue to program Web applications under the status, a priority, and a milestone, which
Tracker ASP.NET 1.1 framework, Issue Tracker is
a simple, but useful tool for tracking is-
helps organise your projects.
Another cool feature is that upon proj-
www.microsoft.com/uk/issuetracker sues related to projects. ect creation, you can specify your own sta-
The interface is straight forward and tus codes, priorities and milestones for each
There are two things that, in my mind, lets you create projects, users, and issues project and assign an image to represent it.
always make an application better: when with ease. The application supports All the code is available in the download, so,
it’s free and when it’s customisable. The multiple users with role-based permissions, if you have a .NET developer on hand, or
ASP.NET Issue Tracker, which is provided protecting issues from unwanted eyes. You can work your way through existing code,
through the ASP.NET online develop­ can also create custom issue categories you can use the starter kit as a basis for any
er community, is both of these things. for each project and custom data fields custom functionality you may need.
Designed as a Starter Kit for learning of various types. Tasks can be assigned a Price: Free.

technetmagazine.com TechNet Magazine

January
April 2007 13

12_13_Toolbox.desFIN.indd 13 27/3/07 13:47:50