Email Encryption
I’ve been trying to get people to encrypt their email, and send me encrypted email, since 1995 or so. Here’s why: email is cleartext. What does “cleartext” mean? Well, if your ISP is having you send your email out through port 25, you can do...The Best Thing Windows Users Can Do To Prevent Malware
If you’re a Windows user, you probably want to do your daily web surfing as a non-administrative user. This is because any process you launch (on any operating system) runs with your account’s permissions. That means that if your browser runs into an...Generate a Change Script to Move System Databases
I set this up to be modular and reusable, because I like reusing things. This doesn’t actually move your system databases. It just outputs a change script and a revert script. You still have to run the generated script, then log on to your server and restart...De-duplicating files in batch
So, I have a drive full of files. Sometimes, I get a new one–okay, sometimes I get over 1000 new ones–and want to keep the latest and pitch the duplicates without throwing away old files that don’t have a duplicate. These files are of the form...Pull the restore chain from MSDB
What files do I need to restore this database to a point in time? You might know this off the top of your head, especially if you set up the backups or if you don’t have a lot of backups, but just in case you’re panicking, ask MSDB. MSDB knows all…...Windows Internal Database/SQL Express backups and maintenance
Google informs me that my post on Windows Internal Database Maintenance is popular. It’s not what I’m currently using, however. I’ve switched over to Ola Hallengren’s scripts. If you download and run the installer script, it creates a series...Nagios Checks for Dell OpenManage Disk Health Written in PowerShell
I wrote these in PowerShell to run with nrpe/nsclient. They query Dell OpenManage’s command line and return a Nagios-readable result. (There are plugins available on Nagios Exchange, but they all seemed to be… more than I wanted. I just wanted to know,...Katherine’s Excellent Log-Shipping Adventure
Or, Log-Shipping over 1200 databases automagically. The Problem Question: How many SQL Server databases can you put on one server? Answer: It depends on how fast you need them restored if something terrible happens. Because Dude, if your server crashes most heinously,...Log-Shipping SQL Express with PowerShell
Someone on Server Fault asked a question about which versions of SQL Server support log shipping. He uses Express. Log shipping uses SQL Agent, and Express doesn’t come with SQL Agent, but you can still manually log ship with PowerShell and Task Scheduler. Use...Subscribe
