Blog

Sean Wilkins discusses configuration of Link Fragmentation and Interleaving (LFI). Although LFI is rather easy to implement, the benefits can be significant by preventing delays of large high-priority packets across the network, therefore increasing VoIP quality.

The Power Management feature in vSphere 4.1 allows you to choose between five power management policies, helping you reduce energy consumption and increase savings. See how easy it is to configure hardware power management in vSphere and utilize graphing to monitor the CPU of your ESX and ESXi servers.

The “Access Denied” error message is a common issue when accessing administrative shares on one Windows 7 PC from another, especially when they are members of a workgroup. In this article we’ll show you how to troubleshoot and fix this issue by doing a quick registry edit.

Windows Server Backup is built-in to Windows Server 2008 R2 and allows you to back up a full server, a selected list of volumes, the system state, or specific files or folders. Learn how to install the Windows Server Backup feature using three different installation methods: the server manager, the command prompt and PowerShell.

In a continuation of his Traffic Policing and Shaping Overview, Sean Wilkins gets into the details of Traffic Policing and Shaping Configuration. Both features are implemented using the Modular Quality of Service (QoS) Command line interface (MQC) which is used to classify traffic, define a traffic policy, and assign it to a specific interface.

Exchange 2010 has made the process of upgrading much easier, and now includes a simple wizard to assist with moving mailboxes to your new server. SBS and Exchange expert Tom Finnis provides a guide for moving mailboxes to Exchange 2010, including step-by-step instructions for using the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) to override the BadItemLimit when moving large mailboxes.

In this article, Daniel Petri addresses the case for user activity monitoring instead of relying only on system logs, which leave blind spots in your audit reports. Several scenarios are detailed to demonstrate how user activity monitoring can be used to augment the existing system and database logs.

Overview by Sean Wilkins of traffic policing and traffic shaping configuration when implementing Quality of Service (QoS) on a network. Included are the main differences between traffic policing and shaping. Also explained is the token bucket mechanism.

Bruce Mackenzie-Low covers Xperf, one of Microsoft’s hottest diagnostic tools. This article continues where “Xperf Rocks Part 1: Troubleshooting Storage Performance Problems” left off. Part 2 focuses on how to use Xperf to analyze event data and generate graphs & tables. Powerful graph options are explained, which allow you to quickly pinpoint storage bottlenecks, along with the detailed data in a tabular format.

TrainSignal recently had the opportunity to sit down with Don Jones at Windows Connections 2011 in Orlando to discuss the importance of learning PowerShell. The overriding message of the interview is that if you plan to learn one thing in 2011, it should be PowerShell. Video and transcript included.

In this article, David Davis covers issues related to keeping track of IP addresses on lab and production networks. Included are suggested tools which can help prevent outages caused by duplicate IP addresses.

Sean Wilkins covers AutoQoS VoIP and AutoQoS for the Enterprise, which allow for automatic quality of service (QoS) configuration on your network. While AutoQoS VoIP requires very little configuration in order to implement, AutoQoS for the Enterprise is split into two separate configuration phases: a discovery phase, and a generation & installation phase.