Unlocking USB
Drives with
Cipher
I appreciate Mark Minasi’s
Cipher tip in his Windows
Power Tools column (“Manage
Your EFS Keys with Cipher,”
February 2008, InstantDoc
ID 97735). I have a USB drive
that I move between two
machines. Because of company
policy, the contents of
any USB drive connected to
a laptop are encrypted with
Cipher. The encryption occurs
during the logoff sequence (a
GPO logoff script). The first
time, the process can hang the
logoff sequense as it processes
your USB device (in my case,
a 200GB drive at 25 percent
capacity). After that, it scans for
deltas and runs quicker. Mark’s
technique let me export/import
my keys to the second machine
and continue to access the
data.
—ajrinaldi
PowerShell Intro
Robert Sheldon’s article in
the February 2008 issue of
Windows IT Pro (“PowerShell
101, Lesson 1,” InstantDoc
ID 97742) provides a terrific
introduction to PowerShell. I
would’ve liked to
see some
mention of
Get-Command
and
Get-Member
because
these tools,
together with
Get-Help,
comprise a
great selection
of tools
for learning
the capability
of PowerShell cmdlets. The
article also should have mentioned
the fact that PowerShell,
as initially installed, can’t run scripts. If readers can’t get
simple scripts to run, they’ll
conclude that PowerShell
doesn’t work. The use of Set-
ExecutionPolicy, as detailed in
the Help file, will overcome this
restriction. Robert does give a
good overview of aliases and
how you can use them. I hope
he includes, in follow-up articles,
some guidelines about not
using them in scripts.
—Richard Siddaway
Thanks for your valuable feedback!
You raise a good point
about running script files, and
you’re correct in pointing out
that if users want to run a
PowerShell script file, they must
first use the Set-ExecutionPolicy
cmdlet to set the execution policy.
They can find information
about the cmdlet by retrieving
its Help file in PowerShell.
In later installments, I do
plan to discuss how to run script
files. We’ve divided the information
into two series: PowerShell
101 and PowerShell 201. In
addition to the topics I cover in
the first and second installments
(February and March 2008), the
PowerShell 101 series will cover
how to use operators and work
with expressions, how to work
with string values
in your commands,
how to
use variables in
your commands,
and how to
work with PowerShell
providers
to access
various data
stores. The
PowerShell
201 series
will cover
how to implement flow
control in your commands, how
to work with data types, how
to create and use functions,
and how to persist PowerShell scripts through script files and
profiles. I hope this series provides
a solid foundation for
using PowerShell.
—Robert Sheldon
Hyper-V vs. ESX
I want to thank Michael Otey
for his look at Microsoft’s
Hyper-V thin hypervisor (“A
First Look at Windows Server
2008 Hyper-V,” February 2008,
InstantDoc ID 97857). In
principle, I agree that Hyper-V
might drive adoption of Windows
Server 2008. However,
I disagree that Hyper-V levels
the playing field with VMware’s
ESX Server. Here’s why:
- VirtualCenter—Michael
mentions System Center for
managing Hyper-V. Although
I agree that managing some
aspects of ESX can be tricky,
VirtualCenter simplifies the
management of resources,
performance, migrations, and
virtual machine (VM) creation
across your enterprise.
- HA and Distributed Resource
Schedule (DRS) clusters—
These VirtualCenter features
let you move VMs among ESX
servers. DRS is particularly
useful because you can create
rules that prevent redundant
VMs from being hosted on
the same ESX server. (Think
domain controllers—DCs—or
MSCS nodes.) Keep in mind
that all the migrations occur
live.
- Community—The VMware
Technology Network (VMTN)
is a vibrant, technically strong
community that solves many
challenges of using ESX
autonomously.
- VMFS and .vmdk files—
VMware’s VMFS file system
and .vmdk are far more
elegant than the partition
model that Hyper-V uses.
Instead of requiring individual
partitions for guests, you create large VMFS volumes.
Several VMs can happily
coexist on a VMFS volume.
The virtual disk file (.vmdk) is
essentially a virtual partition
in a file.
Hyper-V might be fine for the
SMB, but in my opinion ESX
is still the only real contender
from an enterprise perspective.
That said, Michael’s article
got me excited by Microsoft’s
progress because I’m sure it’ll
spark innovation from VMware.
The recently released ESX 3.5
is early evidence of VMware’s
initiative. Several new experimental
features have been integrated
to improve the overall
ESX experience.
—Brent McCraney
Thank you for writing. Watch for Michael Otey’s virtualization shootout, in which he compares
Hyper-V with ESX Server 3.5, in
the June issue.
—Amy Eisenberg
Create SPF
Records
Automatically
I read the very useful Reader to
Reader article by Nolan Garrett
and Jeff Jones about SPF
records (“Fighting Spam and
Phishing with SPF,” InstantDoc
ID 98034, March 2008). I just
want to add that Microsoft
provides an easy Sender ID
Framework SPF Record Wizard
that automates the procedure
of creating SPF records. You
can find it at www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard.
—Apostolos Fotakelis
End of Article
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