Using Network Access Protection with Remote Desktop Gateway [2]

It is almost a month since I wrote about this topic. I was able to defer the setup of the RD Gateway that I was previously doing until today when I had to finish it without completing the NAP client setup. This means that for the moment all clients connecting to our server will be assumed to be non-NAP capable and the system health checks will not be performed on them. However in the course of the work I was doing today I stumbled across this useful article on MSDN:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2009/08/17/deploying-rd-gateway-r2-server-with-nap.aspx
• This also links to another useful article on Technet:
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732172(WS.10).aspx

The articles contain other content that I was not aware of up until now, namely that you have to do things on the client with the server certificate and add the RD Gateway server to the Trusted Server list on the client. The second article provides a link to a script to help configure the client. There is also a lot of information there about how to test for the proper operation of the NAP client and SHVs etc. Although I am of course very busy at the moment with just a couple of days of the work year to go, I will have a look at this stuff in more detail over the break when I am actually on leave.

We are about to take delivery of 35 brand new computers which is a substantial order for us and they are all built locally by one of NZ’s top educational market computer companies. The installation of these will be our major project over the summer holiday break with just some minor maintenance work being carried out as far as the servers go. The majority of the computers will probably be configured to use native VHD boot with Windows 7.

We are about to set up a proper backup system using removable hard drives and commercial grade backup software, replacing the use of spare server capacity and scripting to back up stuff. This is important as once we can link our sites by fibre it will dispense with the necessity to have duplicate servers in the two sites and enable the main file servers to be consolidated into one.

End of year Catchup

By now it will be apparent I have not posted any work related content here for a good while. The reason is mostly that we are hideously busy with end of year stuff.

Here is a useful code snippet. How to get a ping log with nice neat output, with the time and date displayed. It is great when you are having problems with your internet connectivity and need a continuous log of pings at a particular time/date.

@echo off
:top
for /F "tokens=*" %%i in ('ping 1.2.3.4 -n 1') do set Pingresult=%%i
echo %time% %date% %Pingresult% >>pingrg.txt
echo %time% %date% %Pingresult%
goto top

Basically this tells the Windows shell command interpreter to:

• Do a single ping and store the results in an environment variable called Pingresult
• Send one line of text to the end of a text file
• Send the same line of text to the screen.
• Repeat infinitely.

Now for more substance. We are working through various things including buying lots of new computers so I expect that some of the process of deploying a large number of new Windows 7 computers for students will be written about here within the holiday period that is starting soon.

Slingshot complaints feature in the Herald

Around two years ago I wrote about my trials in changing ISP from Telecom to Slingshot. The experience was bad enough that I ditched Slingshot and changed to TelstraClear and haven’t looked back. In fact I wondered why I hadn’t gone to Telstra in the first place. Today there’s an article in the Herald on Sunday about Slingshot. I don’t know if the experiences I had were similar to those mentioned. However I was fortunate in that Slingshot gave me a refund of advanced charges and waived the early termination fee; I only had to send the modem back to them.

One thing to be wary of is that Slingshot is not a member of the Telecom Dispute Resolution scheme. Most major carriers are and it gives you an avenue that you can follow if you feel a complaint has not been adequately resolved by the telco.