Church IT Roundtable

HT: jpowell

"The consumerization of IT: Why most vendors get it wrong, and why it's a real challenge today"

My favorite Consumerization of IT article to date :-)

"The MacEnterprise project is a community of IT professionals sharing information and solutions to support Macs in an enterprise. We collaborate on the deployment, management, and integration of Mac OS X client and server computers into multi-platform computing environments. We welcome your participation through suggestions, comments or contributions."

Download link to Dell OpenManage System Administrator Managed Node installer that allows you to view hardware, including RAID, status on a Dell server from within Windows. It also adds logging to the event logs (which can then be monitored) for RAID-related errors and warnings.

DameWare NT Utilities & Mini Remote Control remote systems management software for Windows. Now Featuring Smart Card Login & Authentication

Great scripts for automating home folder permissions on Windows file servers. \n\n"Using the following three files (Addperm.cmd, Addperm2.cmd, and Yes.txt) you can add the Administrators Group and the User (whose logon name must be the same as the folder na

"KiTTY is a fork from version 0.60 of PuTTY, the best telnet / SSH client in the world." It adds many additional useful features to the original PuTTY application.

Manage, troubleshoot and diagnose windows systems and applications.

"McAfee provides an assortment of free McAfee tools to help in your software development. Simply select a tool and download it for free." System admin tools for forensics, password cracking, intrusion detection, network stress testing, and others. Many are not 64-bit compatible but there are some good, free gems.

"Look no further. I've created a collaboration of, yet again, FREE TOOLS for virtual machines within your VMware environment. All of the tools in this package were pooled together for performing advanced tasks to optimize performance, reclaim lost space, and clean up your virtual machine. The goal of this project was to mount the ISO to your VM and run the scripts or tools that are packaged. Of course not all of these tools will run from a VM, but most can."

"Dell PC service tags and express service codes are directly related. Given one type, the other can be computed."

"Reposado, together with the "curl" binary tool and a web server such as Apache 2, enables you to host a local Apple Software Update Server on any hardware and OS of your choice. Reposado contains a tool (repo_sync) to download Software Update catalogs and (optionally) update packages from Apple's servers, enabling you to host them from a local web server."

"By using (included) Eventtriggers.exe (in Server 2003), you can automatically start a batch file or VBS script which performs a custom action or captures useful information. You can also use a script to perform correction actions on the machine,  preventing the problem from reoccurring.  Sometimes you just need to be notified when certain events are created in the Event Viewer, so we can use a script to send an e-mail alert. For example, you can create a trigger that monitors the event logs for low disk space events and if such events occur, you can run a script that removes any temporary or unnecessary files to resolve the low disk space condition, and/or send an e-mail alert telling you about it."

Person recently had occasion to put a routing switch into a DMZ environment, which prompted him to research how to harden it. This document explains some of the steps he's taken to ensure the switch is secure.

"The joeware utilities... Saving administrators around the world time and frustration for over nine years..."

"UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. You can either let UNetbootin download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file if you've already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn't on the list."

"Manage your Windows desktop from your Mac or Linux computer. Utilizing Microsoft RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), iTap RDP gives you complete control over and fast access to your Windows PC from anywhere. "

"Virtual Router turns any Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 Computer into a Wifi Hot Spot using Windows 7's Wireless Hosted Network (Virtual Wifi) technology."