So, after more than a decade at WebIntellects hosting, I had to call it quits – they just didn’t keep up with my website – WordPress based, but not very active – still, logging in to the CPanel even got laggy. Moved one site to DreamHost and it was a lot faster, more reliable and easier to manage.
Migration, however, was not as straight forward as they would have you believe. Here is the REAL story.
I’m going to assume you have a current website (wordpress) and just set up your account, domain and got wordpress installed at DreamHost. What now?
Stop. You have some information to gather first.
Start by getting your WordPress MySQL credentials… (1) Click on MySQL Databases, (2) scroll down to Database(s) on this server:
(3) Click on the Users Access ( after you copy down the user name! ) and then scroll down to the “Do you need to know user’s password? and click Show – copy it.
Now, go back to MySQL Databases and scroll to HOSTNAME – click on the phpMyAdmin – where you will use the credentials gathered above to log in….
It should auto populate the MySQL Hostname:
Scroll down until you find wp_users (or wp_somthin_users) and expand that table.
Copy the user_login name and click Edit to change the password :
Find user_pass and click the drop down to set it to MD5
Enter a new password and click GO (bottom right)
When you go back to look at it, it will be in a hex string, so make sure you know what the password is or you will have to change it again.
On your DreamHost, under Manage Websites, manage your site and Get Migration Key under WordPress
I already got the Key… 😀
Now you should have: Dreamhost WordPress admin User name and Password Migration Key Current WordPress admin User name and Password.
Now, go to your current wordpress and log in as an admin.
Go to Plugins, Add New and search and install DreamHost Automated Migration.
Activate it.
It will ask you for the information gathered – put it all in and Begin Migration!
Once Migration is complete (15 minutes or more depending on your site size), you are not done. Now you need to point your domain’s DNS to DreamHost.
I use Cloudflare for my DNS, so I get the DNS settings from Manage Websites –> Manage –> DNS Records (under Domain)
Update appropriately – but you MUST have a mydomain.com and a www.mydomain.com record – or a sub.mydomain.com and a www.sub.mydomain.com record.
Once those are done, you need to turn on SSL…
Under Websites, click on Secure Certificates – then Add one to your website:
I went with the Free personal site SSL from Let’s Encrypt….
Once that order processes and is installed – you should see the Lock beside your website is green:
Now you should be able to see your new site (given fast DNS updates), though it may take a bit – 15 minutes or longer depending on your DNS’s TTL settings.
And Migration is complete – go in to word press and update plugins, check your Site Health, etc. Explore your page and make sure its all showing properly.
So, I copied some profiles over using Robocopy. The size of these profiles on the new server was staggering! I had to expand the drive to accommodate the bloat! Then I started looking – the data on the original profiles was not anywhere close to that big.
c:\temppath\blank is an empty folder. Robocopy will delete anything within the target thanks to the /purge switch. This also works for folder paths with more than 256 characters that windows can’t delete on it’s own.
Anyway – starting I had 190 GB free on the drive – I am at 400 GB free on the drive now. More than 200 GB in nested “Application Data” folders – replicated by robocopy over and over and over again.
The Cleanup in Action
24 nested folders – and this is after about 20 minutes of deleting! It is still going as I write this!
… and it just finished – 402 GB free –
Okay, I know what you’re thinking – what does copying a profile to a new system with Robocopy accomplish? It doesn’t really transfer the profile over!
You can use Profile Wiz to literally take over a profile! Lets say, for example, JohnSmith worked for the company for 5 years, and all his documents and such were in his profile. John gets hit by a bus and you get a new employee – Brad Cooper – well, you want Brad to have all of John’s information – you can use Profile Wiz to give c:\users\johnsmith to the BradCooper login. Concerned about the folder name? Change the folder name to BradCooper – and then use the “Unassigned Profiles” checkbox to assign it to Brad.
In the last post, I covered setting up a new domain controller and some things to help keep your domain healthy, well organized and your IT provider happy.
In this followup, I will keep going. Now that we have a Domain Controller, a Domain and DNS, we should look at Group Policy.
Group Policy Walk-Thru
One of the reasons that we chose to create OUs instead of Containers in the last post/video is that group policy can be applied to OUs, but not Containers.
In going over Group Policy, I’d like to start with User folders. In a corporate environment, losing a file can be a very bad thing. For the most part, servers are backed up, but workstations are not. So, how to protect the files of users? Server Shared folders are one option, but I’ll cover a couple others in this post – Folder Redirection and Home Folders. These let your users have more control over their files, as other users can not normally access either one.
It is a good idea to make a dedicated drive for Data files, separate from the OS drive.
For Home folders, create a folder on the Data drive named something like “HomeFolders.”
Open properties of the folder, security, advanced and disable inheritance.
Remove the Users permissions – give Authenticated users “This Folder Only” permissions to: “List folder / read data“ “Read attributes“ “Read extended attributes“ “Create folders / append data“ and “Read permissions“
The user “Creator Owner” should have “Subfolders and Files only” full control.
On the Sharing tab, use advanced and share the folder as “Home$” to make it a hidden share. Give Everyone read and Authenticated Users full control of the share.
In Active Directory Users and Computers, on the Profile tab, in the Home Folder section, choose a drive letter and put a path with a folder name that matches the user’s logon name.
Clicking Apply creates the folder. If you have a lot of users and don’t want to edit every user to add the home folder, you can use powershell – but you will need to use powershell to give them permissions to the folder as well. Below is a powershell script to create the folders for existing users, give the users permissions and set the home folder for all users in active directory.
Import-Module ActiveDirectory
#Script for updating folder permissions to give the user full access to their home folder
# as long as its named the same as their username - so, jdoe will have full access to the jdoe folder.
# - with This "Folder, Subfolders and Files" level.
#
# --- change the domain name
$domain = "kearan"
$hdpath = "E:\KearanCo\HomeFolders"
# --- Make Home Directories
$users=get-aduser -filter *
Foreach($user in $users){
$usern=$user.samaccountname
$nhd = $hdpath + "\" + $($usern)
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $nhd
}
# ---- change the Folder Path
$folders = Get-ChildItem -Path $hdpath | Where-Object -FilterScript {
$_.PSIsContainer -eq $true
}
# --- Set the folder permissions
foreach ($folder in $folders)
{
$path = $folder.fullname
$ACL = Get-Acl -Path $path
$user = $folder.name
$AccessRule = New-Object System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule("$domain\$user","FullControl",”ContainerInherit, ObjectInherit”,"None",”Allow”)
$AccessRule1 = New-Object System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule("$domain\Domain Admins","FullControl",”ContainerInherit, ObjectInherit”,"None",”Allow”)
$Account = New-Object -TypeName System.Security.Principal.NTAccount -ArgumentList "$domain\$user"
$acl.SetOwner($Account)
$acl.SetAccessRule($AccessRule)
$acl.SetAccessRule($AccessRule1)
$acl | Set-Acl $path
}
# --- Set users Home Directory in AD ---
# --- change "FileServer" to the actual file server name
# --- and Home$ to the actual share name. And H to your share letter.
$users=get-aduser -filter *
Foreach($user in $users){
$usern=$user.samaccountname
$HomeDir="\\FileServer\Home$\$($usern)" -f $usern
Set-ADUser $user -HomeDirectory $HomeDir -HomeDrive H:
}
You can use each section of the above script as a stand-alone script in order to do one at a time. Use the below code to change an existing home drive to a new server.
For Folder Redirection, create an AD group for all those you want to have redirected folders. Unless you are comfortable having all the users in an OU having the folder redirection, of course. To have more control over what accounts get the folder redirection, use the AD group method.
Create a folder, like the Home Folder above, with the same permissions. Now, go into Group Policy Management and create a new Group Policy.
Edit the group policy and go to User Configuration –> Policies –> Windows Settings –> Folder Redirection
Choose the items to redirect (See the video) and set the scope of the policy to Domain Computers (or whichever computer group you want, such as RDS Servers) and the Group you want to apply it to, ie “Folder Redirection Group.” Apply the policy to the domain, or the target OU.
See the video for more on Group Policy and Troubleshooting.
A lot of guides and how-to videos out there show you the basics and the bare-bones – this is real world, git’r’done right stuff!
35 Minute Video Walk-thru of a Good Domain Controller configuration – read the rest of the blog for updates and corrections!
The first step to setting up a new domain, or creating a new domain controller for an existing domain, is, of course, to install the OS. We’ll assume that has already been done.
If you are adding a 2019 DC to an existing Domain, you will probably need to migrate the domain to use DFSR instead of FRS for syncing Active Directory and DNS – see the DFSR Migration section.
In the video above, I may do things in a different order, but here are the first steps:
A. Set a static IP address and Public DNS servers. The DNS servers you set here will become the DNS Forwarders of your new Domain Controller.
B. Name the new server something those who come after you will understand. This means your organization name, year it was created and the server’s role should be in the name of the server. For a business named Kearan Company, our first domain controller could be Kearan-19-DC – created in 2019, acting as a Domain Controller. -DCFS, -RDS, -APP, -SQL, -Web, -Intranet are all possibly good role names to use. Just make sure that it is not a very long name – there are limits! 16 Characters for the server name should be fine. (Changing the name requires a reboot!) (Update:) It has come to my attention that Domain Controller In-Place-Upgrades are easier and more reliable than before, so maybe having the OS in the name is not a perfect idea, in case you update from 2012 to 2019 OS. If this is something you would be comfortable with, make a naming convention – Kearan-DC-001 ; Kearan-RDS-002 ; Kearan-RDS2-003 ; etc.
C. Use Server Manager to install the Active Directory Domain Services role and DNS Server – see the above video for a walk-thru on that process.
D. With the roles installed and the server rebooted, promote to a domain controller! Document the DSRM Password!
Domain name is very important – keep it short and informative. For a company named Contoso Specialty Products Supply Company, a domain such as “Contoso” or “CSPSC” would be perfect. The dot-local (Contoso.local) is preferred, as it is the default. You can use another such as .corp or .main – I have even seen .private – but stay away from the major top level domain extensions such as .com, .net and .org as these can cause a conflict between local DNS and Public DNS.So, New info has come to light – .local and other ‘private’ extensions are being sold as a TLDs (Top Level Domains) now, so the new Best Practice is to make your domain a sub-domain of a domain you own. So, you own Contoso.net (but not .com), you would want to make your local domain something like ad.contoso.net or internal.contoso.net. This way, you can also get SSL certs for your local domain names.
Document the DSRM password where it can be found in the future! Just in case.
Netbios name is just a short version of the domain name – so if you’re using ad.contoso.com – make the netbios “contoso” – it has a 15 character limit, so be brief.
Reboot and Log in to your new Domain!
E. Set some important DNS settings to squash problems before they happen
Set Aging/Scavanging for all zones
Apply to existing Active Directory-integrated zones
Allow zone transfers to servers listed on the Name Servers tab
Automatically notify the severs listed on the Name Servers tab
Check and/or set forwarders
F. Open AD Users and Computers and create a good AD structure!
You will need to move newly added users and computers from their default “Users” and “Computers” containers into your structure, but it will make organization and group policy much easier to manage in the future.
(See below for an AD User Import powershell!)
G. Copy the Administrator user and create a domain admin user based on your company – such as KearanIT. Add the new admin to the Backup Operators group. Log off of Administrator and log in with the new domain admin account. Now, DISABLEADMINISTRATOR! Move the new Admin account into the Service Accounts OU created as part of the good structure.
H. Make the Domain Controller a Reliable Time Server using the commands below:
Powershell, CMD Line and Troubleshooting for Domain Controllers
DFSR Migration
First, raise the Forest functional level to as high as possible – must be at least 2008 R2. Now get the Global State:
DFSRMig /GetGlobalState
Start the migration –
DFSRMig /SetGlobalState 1
Check on progress –
DFSRMig /GetMigrationState
Once the migration state says all domain controllers are synced, then go to SetGlobalState 2 – GetMigrationState until that is synced, then SetGlobalState 3 until that is synced. 3 is the Final state – you are all on DFSR now!
Powershell to Move FSMO Roles
Run the following in an Admin Powershell window on the server you want to be the new FSMO role holder:
You will need to copy the powershell code below into a new Powershell ISE module, then save it as a .ps1 and edit it for your needs. Create the CSV file with the two lines after “format of file:”
The following does a report and saves it in a txt file on the root of C:\ (adjust to your preferred file path)
DCDiag /c /v /f:c:\dcdiag.txt
The following does a report and attempts to fix any issues it found and puts the txt file in the root of C:\
DCDiag /fix /v /f:c:\dcdiag.txt
Force a Time Zone Change
For some reason, Windows has become a bit difficult about changing the time zone. Below is a command line to see the time zone and change it. Last line outputs a list of time zone names that can be used. Open the cmd window as admin to run this.
tzutil /g tzutil /s "Central Standard Time" tzutil /l
Group Policy Central Store
A central store for Group Policy is a good thing to implement. This allows all domain controllers to access the same policies no matter what version of server they are running. To set this up, follow the below steps:
Create the Central Store on a Domain Controller by creating the policy definitions folder: C:\Windows\SYSVOL\domain\Policies\PolicyDefinitions
Copy all of the contents of C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions into the newly created folder.
You now have a Central Store – as this gets replicated to all domain controllers.
Now you can download more up to date .admx files – such as windows 10 and windows 11 policies – or Google Chrome templates. Extract those and then copy over to the central store. Put the .admx files with the rest of the .admx files, and copy the language files from the “en” folder to the “en” folder in the central store. You do not need to copy all the other language files unless you will be using them.
— what would you like to see covered next? Comment below —
5 FSMO roles? Oh, no. There are Hidden FSMO roles that they don’t tell you about! They don’t want you to know about these until you run into a problem! There are really 7 FSMO Roles to know about.
Have you even been unable to demote a domain controller? It tells you that it can’t determine the fSMORoleOwner – even though a netdom query FSMO returns all 5 roles?
You may also get: “The Directory service is missing mandatory configuration information, and is unable to determine the ownership of floating single-master operation roles”
Well, there are two hidden roles: CN=Infrastructure,DC=ForestDnsZones and CN=Infrastructure,DC=DomainDnsZones
So, the next time you are transferring FSMO roles, you need to move these two as well – before you Decom the old Role Holder!
Run adsi edit as admin.
Connect to
Right click on ADSI Edit, select Connect to the naming context
DC=DomainDNSZones,DC=Kearan,DC=local
Click and expand the new “Default naming context” – click on the connection point, move to the right column and click Infrastructure:
CN=Infrastructure
Right click and select properties or double click to edit.
Scroll to fSMORoleOwner
fSMORoleOwner line
You may see something like : CN=NTDS Settings\0ADEL:aae73bb2-d552-4b61-a6e0-7ce4e09dcc47,CN=oldservername\0ADEL:234e4831-f988-4c2a-a1ca-db0f8b2643d8
This is an already decommed DC that never got the fSMO role moved.
Double click to edit. Change the CN to match your normal FSMO role holder. You can copy the fSMORoleOwner from the original “Default naming context” section – which is DC=yourdomain,DC=tld”
Repeat for naming context “DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=yourdomain,DC=tld”
DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=Kearan,DC=local
The fSMORoleOwner in each of the three “Infrastructure” sections should match.
So, ran into a situation the other day where some printers were added to some computers they were not supposed to be on. When we went to remove them – nobody could. Access denied. Enterprise Admin could not remove the printer from the computer. Why? Group Policy.
There are a few ways to deploy printers via group policy. 1. Click “Deploy” on your print server. Unless you want everyone and every system in the entire domain to have that printer – do not do this. You won’t know which policy it uses to deploy the printers, you won’t know where it is applied. ( probably sets a “printer” policy on the root of the domain ) 2. Create a group policy using Computer Configuration –> Policies –> Windows Settings –>Printer Connections (on older DCs) ( Don’t do this! ) 3. Create a group policy using Computer Configuration –>Preferences –> Control Panel Settings –> Printers (Nobody will be able to delete these printers) 4. Create a group policy using User Configuration –> Preferences –> Control Panel Settings –> Printers (You will be able to delete these printers – and they will show back up on next reboot, unless removed from the policy)
So, I recently discovered that Office 365 has a new trick up it’s sleeve – using SPF records WRONG. Had several bouncing and rejection issues with some clients due to this new idiocy.
An SPF record is supposed to match your SENDING ip to the SPF record. But now O365 is requiring the MX record – the Receiving ip – to be in the SPF record. Why is this messed up? Well, for one, many people use third party Spam Filtering services for their MX record – to filter out spam before it gets to their inbox. So, many MX records are spam filters – not what is sending out the email. Basically, O365 just opened up a Huge security hole.
I’ve been doing a lot lately. I have stood up a Windows Server 2012 server, racked it and configured it for a client. I have updated boot code and firmware on firewalls and routers (Sonicwall, Cisco and Mikrotik). Fixed a couple “Read-only Filesystem” linux errors on Xen VMs. Moved a few websites/email from a hosting service to our own hosting server.
Hmm, written down, it doesn’t seem like a whole lot – until you think about all the steps involved in moving a website, changing DNS in multiple places, syncing emails, doing documentation.
So, we decided we needed to monitor Exchange servers for Backpressure so we can be more proactive in preventing problems.
I wrote a script in Labtech to monitor the event log for incidents that indicate potential issues. Check out the SQL concat! The logic checks for existing tickets, either creates a ticket, makes a note on an existing ticket or closes the ticket it if the situation no longer exists. I didn’t include putting time into the ticket, but that would be fairly easy as well.
See the script export below:
Resend EventLogs SET: @BackpressureEvent@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT Concat(eventlogs.TimeGen, ” “, eventlogs.Message) As dEvent FROM eventlogs WHERE eventlogs.`Message` like ‘%resource pressure increased from Medium to High%’ AND (timegen > DATE_SUB(NOW(), INTERVAL 1 HOUR)) AND ComputerID=%computerid% LIMIT 1] IF @Backpressureevent@ Contains High THEN Jump to :Alert SET: @mysqlquery@ = SELECT COUNT(v_tickets.`TicketID`) FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’ ‘ SET: @sqlresults@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT COUNT(v_tickets.`TicketID`) FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’] IF @sqlresults@ >= 1 THEN Jump to :ProcessTicket GOTO :END :Alert – Label Note: Backpressure! – need to create a ticket! :CheckTicket – Label SET: @mysqlquery@ = SELECT COUNT(v_tickets.`TicketID`) FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’ ‘ SET: @sqlresults@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT COUNT(v_tickets.`TicketID`) FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’] IF @sqlresults@ >= 1 THEN Jump to :UpdateTicket :CreateTicket – Label LOG: Exchange Backpressure High! Creating Ticket Create New Ticket for %clientid%\%computerid% Email:%ContactEmail% Subject:%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected SET: @eTicketId@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT v_tickets.`TicketID` FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’] Send Email To:[email protected] Subject:Exchange Backpressure – %clientname% – %computername% GOTO :END :UpdateTicket – Label SET: @eTicketId@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT v_tickets.`TicketID` FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’] LOG: Exchange Backpressure High! updating Ticket Comment Ticket @eTicketId@ to Admin GOTO :END :ProcessTicket – Label Note: If the Ticket exists then Finish it. SET: @monitorticketid@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT v_tickets.`TicketID` FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’] IF @monitorticketid@ = 0 THEN Exit Script IF [SQL SELECT COUNT(ticketid) FROM tickets WHERE ticketid=@monitorticketid@] < 1 THEN Exit Script IF @monitorticketid@ Ticket Status equals Resolved THEN Jump to :ClearMonitorTicketID RUN SCRIPT: _System Automation\Functions\Load Properties – Ticketing* Finish Ticket @monitorticketid@ to @propTicketDefaultUserID@ :ClearMonitorTicketID – Label SET: @monitorticketid@ = 0 SET: [STATE @fieldname@ticketid] = @monitorticketid@ for computer @computerid@ :EndProcessTicket – Label :END – Label
Labtech. RMM tool. (Remote Monitoring and Management).
What is so great about it? Well, once you learn it… once you understand it… you can do anything you want with it.
Like what? Well, you have your normal RMM things like keep track of the computers on the network, what OS, what programs, keeping up with Microsoft patching, installing software, removing software, etc. Then you have the monitoring – you can monitor just about anything you can think of from registry entries (including installed programs), event logs, pretty much anything you can find in a readable file on the computer, you can monitor and trigger alerts or even emails and text messages on those events.
Then you have scripting. Some of the things I can accomplish with scripting:
Extract the backup status of a computer from the logs of the backup program and send an email if there is a failure.
Read a file version, compare to an internet site and send an alert if the two are different or off by more than two, etc.
Launch a series of powershell scripts to configure a new windows server, with variables put in when starting the script in Labtech.
With a little creativity, anything you can do via command line or powershell, can be done remotely, in the background, with Labtech.
