Restore Server Test – 2024 Edition
Over the years, I’ve published multiple articles about testing a server restore at a client site. The idea is to confirm that if the server went down, I could quickly …
Windows 10 Home and User Privileges
Working on a Windows 10 Home installation recently, I noticed that the primary user was an administrator. For best security, I prefer to have users work as non-admins, then have …
Using OpenLiteSpeed Behind Cloudflare
After switching to Cloudflare for DNS and caching (CDN), we’ve discovered that Cloudflare sometimes requests connections so fast that OpenLiteSpeed servers (versions 1.7.17 and 1.7.18) block them. The Cloudflare IPs …
Azure is Expensive for Synology Hyper Backup Storage
I posted earlier about using Azure blob storage for Hyper Backup. I initially set it up with Cool tier storage. After several months, I checked the costs by exporting one …
Multiple AVHDX Files in Hyper-V after Synology Active Backup
I’m running Hyper-V on a Windows Server 2022 host. I recently discovered that my largest virtual machine was in “differencing” mode, i.e. only writing changes to checkpoint AVHDX files, also …
Old Microsoft Syndication Site Hosts Redirect Malware
I have some earlier versions of mcbsys.com online more or less for fun and as historical archives. Today I discovered that when you visit one of them, it redirects to …
Synology Shared Folder Permissions Grayed Out
Recently, a backup target on my Synology NAS went offline. I was afraid that the folder had been corrupted and deleted. It was not visible in File Manger. It was …
sqlcmd No credentials, cannot generate SSPI context
I recently set up SQL 2022 Express and needed to connect to it over the LAN using sqlcmd. I thought enabling TCP/IP in SQL Server 2022 Configuration Manger and opening …
Use Batch Jobs and Scheduled Tasks to Copy Backups
I use a lot of batch jobs to copy backup data between Windows and NAS devices. I run the jobs as scheduled tasks. Getting this working smoothly is always a …
AT&T Flexible Reach with a Grandstream UCM
I blogged in 2019 about connecting 3CX running on Windows with an AT&T Flexible Reach SIP gateway. Now I’m moving that customer to a Grandstream UCM6301, currently running firmware 1.0.21.9, …