How to Backup/Restore Internet Information Services using GUI or Command line for IIS 6 and IIS 7

Here is a step-by-step method to take IIS back, remember taking IIS backup is very important before modifying or doing any changes on the IIS based website and virtual directory

 

IIS 6.0

The First method is by using GUI Mode

1) Open Internet Information services (IIS) Manager

2) Right Click the server name and click on All Tasks and select Backup/Restore Configuration

3) Click on Create Backup option to take backup

4) Type the backup name in the Configuration Backup Name

5) If you want to Encrypt/ Password Protect the backup file, Select the option: Encrypt backup using Password and provide password of your choice

Note: Remember the password to be used during restore.

6) Click on OK and you are done

7) While restoring the backup just select the Backup Name you want to restore and click on Restore option

8) The same way if you want to delete any existing backup, use Delete option

The second method to take IIS 6 backup is by using the command Line

1) Open a command prompt

2) Run the command as you see in the below example

Example command : Cscript.exe iisback.vbs /s <YourServerName> /u Administrator /p  <YourAdminPassword> /backup /b NewBackupName

Refer Microsoft official Document:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324277 

IIS 7

First Method Using GUI

Unfortunately, by default GUI mode is not enable, to enable it follow the instructions in the below article

http://www.iis.net/downloads/community/2009/07/iis7-backup-restore-ui

Second Method Using command

To backup IIS configuration:
%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe add backup "Backup-Name"

To restore that backup:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe restore backup "Backup-Name"

To delete a backup:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe delete backup “Backup-Name"

Once the backup command is successful, the files can be verified in the default location C:\windows\system32\intersrv\backup\Backup-Name

Refer Microsoft official Document : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd819406.aspx 

Systemadminthings always recommend its reader to check the Official Document for the steps describe, you can find the links in after each steps

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List of Best and free Software, Utility and Tool for System Administrators

As a professional System Administrator your job becomes easy with the below listed tools, whether you are dealing with issues related to Desktop, Server or Network you will find something related for you which could be used in daily troubleshooting task

Process explorer

Process monitoring tool for windows operating systems, unlike task manager it provides vast amount of information for running process and  detailed information on DLLs, threads, handles and TCP/IP connections. It is a advanced process management utility and replacement for task manager

Link : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx 

Belarc Advisor 

A 3402 Kilo Bytes file size of free tool to do your system inventory . The software builds a in-depth profile of installed hardware and software, network, Installed hotfixes, status of anti-virus , you can use your Web browser to view the details.

• Works with Operating systems:  Server (Both 32 and 64 bit) : Windows server 2012, 2008, 2003 Windows 8, Windows 7, windows 2008 R2,  Windows Vista, Windows server 2008, Window server 2003, XP, 2000, NT 4, Me, 98, and 95. Both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows are supported.
• Works with browser Versions : Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and others.

Link : http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Norton removal tool

Tool is used to  uninstall Norton AntiVirus, Norton Internet Security, Norton 360, and Norton SystemWorks 12.0 from your computer. If you use ACT! or WinFAX, back up those databases before you proceed.

Link: http://support.norton.com/sp/en/in/home/current/solutions/kb20080710133834EN_EndUserProfile_en_us/ 

MyDefrag-4.0 

Completely automated and easy to use, quick, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and also works for floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. It is a simple tool which can defragment and optimize the windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008/X64.

Comes with different versions as below

• JkDefrag.exe - Windows Version
• JkDefragCmd.exe - Commandline version
• JkDefragScreenSaver.scr + JkDefragScreenSaver.exe -Screen saver version.

Link: kessels.com

PING [Partimage Is Not Ghost ] 

Best tool for Linux system rescue and windows with the below features

• Backup and restores Locally or network files and partition
• Can be used to backup Bios and restoration bootable DVD 
• Backup MS Network Shared directory, NFS, FTP or SSHFS 
• Creates bootable DVD
• Partitions and Format a disk for installing Windows 

Link: http://ping.windowsdream.com

SuperScan

A vigorous utility known as  SuperScan is a TCP port scanner, which also includes list of other additional networking tools like ping, traceroute, HTTP HEAD, WHOIS and many more. Can be used to perform ping scans and port scans for any IP range or specify a text file to extract addresses from. Other features include TCP SYN scanning, UDP scanning, HTML reports, built-in port description database, Windows host enumeration, banner grabbing and more.

Download link: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/superscan.html

Windows Sysinternals 
Provides a list utilities useful to troubleshoot, manage, and diagnose your Windows systems and applications.
Links : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

VirtualBox

Free Open source server, desktop virtualulization utility from Oracle 

• List of Supported host operating systems : Linux, Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Solaris, and OpenSolaris; there is also a port to FreeBSD.[3] 
• List Supported guest operating systems :  versions and derivations of Windows, Linux, BSD, OS/2, Solaris and others. The release 3.2.0, VirtualBox allows to virtualize  Mac OS X guests on Apple hardware, OSX86 can also be installed .

Download Link: virtualbox

Everything from Voidtools

It is a simple, easy to use and free utility . Shows faster and  better search results as compared to  the built in Windows search.  An administrative tool to locates files and folders by filename for Windows. It is a Freeware

Works with Operating System : Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista and Windows 7

Drawbacks of using : Only search local Files and folders and Removale NTFS volumes. To search for Netwok drive you need to install it on both local and network computers and start ETP server, does not search contents it  only works for files and folders names

Link : http://www.voidtools.com

WinDirStat and KDirStat

WinDirStat is a disk monitoring and clean up utility for Windows operating systems. On loading it takes a while to read the complete directory tree once and then presents it in three useful views:

The directory list sorts like Windows Explorer but it is sorted by file/subtree size

The treemap displays complete contents of the directory tree

The extension list, Display statistics about the file types.

KDirStat is a GUI () disk usage utility for Linux, BSD, and  other Unix-type systems like Solaris. it provides cleanup facilities to reclaim disk space.

Download Link: http://windirstat.info/

Download Link: http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/

Wireshark 
A very popular, free and open source tool used for Network troubleshooting  It capture the packets from Network traffic which is helpful in troubleshooting purpose i network related issues. Network Administrator's read the live packet capture or can also save the capture.
Compatible with  Linux, OS X, BSD, and Solaris and Microsoft Windows.
Link: http://www.wireshark.org/

UltraTech Knowledgebase Viewer
UltraTech Knowledge base viewer provides  list of  tools and their links. It has list of  KB CONTENTS, not well updated but good for the beginner who are looking for good technical links
Link: http://kb.ultratech-llc.com

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How to create inbox rule in outlook.com

Outlook.com...What it is?

A Free webmail service from Microsoft with fresh, Easy to use design and features, Your Hotmail account will be soon automatically upgraded to Outlook.com, so we can call it as replacement of Hotmail. Its feature is based on Microsoft's Metro design language. It’s more over look like Outlook 2013 Application

Here is a quick share on how to enable Email Rule on Outlook.com

Sign in to your account on Outlook.com

Click on the setting icon on the top right corner of the inbox->option and select More mail Settings

To create a custom email fitter click on the option: Rules for sorting new messages



Next you can see the rule customization option; here you can create a new Rule, Modify or Delete an Existing rule as per your requirement








Note: The rule created here will not be applied for any Instant Message or Text Message

To organize your incoming email by applying following rule based on the options

• Sender’s address
• Sender’s name
• To or cc line
• Subject
• Message attachment

And based on the following conditions

• is 
• contains
• contains Word
• does not contains
• begins with
• ends with

Depending upon the criteria you select, we can achieve following

• Move incoming message to chosen folders: inbox, junk, draft, sent, others
• Delete the message without being moved to deleted items
• Assign designate categories
• Remove category from email
• Flag you email
• Forward to any other email address 

In the end don’t forget to click on 

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Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP) failing to connect with error The RPC_S_SERVER_UNAVAILABLE error (0x6ba) was thrown by the RPC Runtime process.

Recently I came across issue with Outlook Anywhere connectivity on Exchange 2007 server

I made sure that outlook anywhere is enabled on the Exchange server, settings for outlook anywhere are correct and I have proper certificate installed

Certainly the best way to initiate the troubleshooting in this case will be to use http://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com. Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzed tool is undoubtedly one of the best tools I have ever used.

So I ran the http://testexchangeconnectivity.com test for RPC over HTTP, and everything was just fine, expect for the error which I got as below

Attempting to ping RPC endpoint 6001 (Exchange Information Store) on server SERVER.domain.local. The attempt to ping the endpoint failed. Tell me more about this issue and how to resolve it <http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=133210&v=ExRCA.1&id=db543644-c252-47ee-a70b-4f60770083dc>

Additional Details        

The RPC_S_SERVER_UNAVAILABLE error (0x6ba) was thrown by the RPC Runtime process.

Tried to access the URL https://server.domain.com/rpc/rpcproxy.dll and got the expected blank page (Externally)

Checked the valid port registry as per stated in the article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998910(v=exchg.65).aspx and found that it is blank and there are no entries made HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Rpc\Rpcproxy.

Modified the valid port registry on the new server and added the below entries

SERVER:6001-6002;SERVER:6004;SERVER.domain.local:6001-6002;SERVER.domain.local:6004;SERVER:6001-6002;SERVER:6004;server.domain.local:6001-6002;server.domain.local:6004;

 

Still didn’t got the issue resolved

I researched on some forums which talked about to hard code the Netbios name and FQDN name in your CAS Hosts file (c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc)

Added the HOST entries on the Exchange server with the following details

Internal IP address of Exchange Server        NetBIOS Name of Exchange Server

Internal IP address of Exchange Server        FQDN of Exchange Server

Ran EXRCA and guess what?? It was successfully completed

Ideally disabling IPV6 should also will fix the issue if you have Exchange 2007 Installed on Windows 2008 Server, because Windows Server 2008 prefers to use IPv6 protocol instead of the IPv4 protocol. The Exchange 2007 server does not listen to some specific ports on IPv6 that are used for Outlook Anywhere. Therefore, this problem occurs.

Reference : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/db543644-c252-47ee-a70b-4f60770083dc.aspx 

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Why Exchange server uses transaction logs? Why not write to data directly on Exchange database?

Reason

One of the most important components of Exchange server is the transaction logs. Exchange server was designed to write all transactions to these log files and commit the changes to the databases when the system allows. Users can send and receive messages without touching the database thanks to this write-ahead method of logging. When a message is sent, the transaction is first recorded in the transaction logs. Until the transaction is committed to the Exchange database (EDB), the only existence of this data is in the system memory and the transaction logs. In the event of a crash, you lose the contents of the memory and all you are left with is the record in the transaction log. These transaction logs are crucial to the recovery of a failed Exchange server, whether it was a minor crash that required a reboot, or a more catastrophic failure requiring the deployment of your disaster recovery plans. The same goes for other transactions such as received messages, deleted items and messages moved to different folders. For this reason, it is recommended to house the transaction files on a redundant storage system, like a RAID 1 array, so that in the event of a hardware failure, no data is lost. Losing a set of transaction logs will not prevent you from restoring from your backups, but you will lose all the messages and changes since the last full backup.

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