Website Performance Tests

If you are responsible for performance on your network, you may from time to time get reports that one of your web based apps is slow.  This can be problematic to troubleshoot if it is external users reporting the slowness.

Here are a couple of tools that you can use that will give you some quick statistics on accessing URLs you are having problems with from outside your network.

dotcom-monitor
webpagetest

Install EPEL on CentOS 7

It is pretty easy to install the EPEL repos on CentOS 7, simply run the following commands.

To install EPEL:
yum install epel-release

To verify it is installed:
yum repolist

Site Lookup Tools

Here are a couple of sites where you can look up the categorization of a website before you attempt to follow a link.

Trend Micro
http://global.sitesafety.trendmicro.com/index.php

McAfee
http://www.trustedsource.org/en/feedback/url?action=checksingle

FortiGuard
http://www.fortiguard.com/ip_rep.php

VirusTotal
https://www.virustotal.com/ 

Find service pack level on SQL server

I am not a DBA, but I have on occasion had to find out if SQL is at a certain service pack level.  Since you cannot find this through help about in SQL Management Studio you can run the following query.

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productlevel')

Windows Updates on Server 2012 Core

Probably the easiest way to run Windows Updates on server core is to RDP to the server and once you are at the console screen run the following command:  sconfig

Once you execute sconfig you will see the following menu:
===============================================================================
                         Server Configuration
===============================================================================

1) Domain/Workgroup:                    Domain:  mydomain
2) Computer Name:                          mycomputer
3) Add Local Administrator
4) Configure Remote Management          Enabled

5) Windows Update Settings:             Manual
6) Download and Install Updates
7) Remote Desktop:                      Enabled (more secure clients only)

8) Network Settings
9) Date and Time
10) Help improve the product with CEIP  Not participating
11) Windows Activation

12) Log Off User
13) Restart Server
14) Shut Down Server
15) Exit to Command Line

Enter number to select an option:

Select option 6
Select All or Recommended (whichever you prefer)
Select All, No updates, or Select a single update (whichever you prefer)

The server will then at that point begin downloading and installing updates just as it would through the GUI.

If a reboot is required you will be prompted if you want to perform the reboot now (whichever you prefer)

If you are finished, simply select option 12 to log off user

nmap - OS fingerprint a address range

July 2015 is almost here and this means you are running out of time to find those Windows 2003 servers on your network and upgrade them.

A simple way to find them, is to scan your network for them using nmap.  I have provided an example below on how to scan an address range to locate the Windows 2003 servers on your network.

nmap -O -v 192.168.1.1-254

Posting Again

Due to some professional conflicts I had not posted in almost a year.  However, I am now back to posting things I feel are useful and/or helpful so stay tuned.

Introducing Microsoft Edge: The New Windows 10 Browser