We have recently had this complain from our various Shared hosting as well as Dedicated Server hosting clients that MSSQL Webadmin ASP .NET Enterprise Manager is having a virus / trojan on it. When the first complain arrived we too thought that there seems to be a problem with the server and might be MSSQL Webadmin ASP .NET Enterprise Manager has got an injection in it. But after receiving too many complains from most of our dedicated server clients we started investigating the problem and now we knew that this is something that has happen globally. After viewing MSSQL Webadmin ASP .NET Enterprise Manager on Plesk server it looked as the picture below:

We understood that the problem was not with the mssql.domain_name link but the virus alert only happened after click on ASP .NET Enterprise Manager, Recomended this site. And the link was:

www.referralplanet.com/referral/windows/referralWindow.asp?id=17

Since the site was not hosted with us we had a sigh of relief that the problem is not with the server however we thought we still have a security problem if the link has been injected into ASP .NET Manager site in IIS, may be due to a security issue with Plesk control panel. And after checking several servers we came to know that the problem has happened to the site that is recommended on MSSQL Webadmin site and not the server.

If you want to remove this link from your server as well as from the MSSQL WebAdmin site then follow the steps below:

1. Login into the server through RDP with Administrator user.
2. Go to D:\inetpub\vhosts\sqladmin\mssql\app
3. Open the navbar.aspx page in notepad
4. Go to line number 119 and remove the code below:

<!-- Begin ReferralPlanet.com Referral Script -->
<a onclick="refWindow=window.open('http:// www.referralplanet.com/referral/windows/referralwindow.asp?id=18','referralWindow' ,'width=350,height=520,scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,resizable=yes'); refWindow.focus(); return false;" target=_blank href="http:// www.referralplanet.com/referral/windows/referralWindow.asp?id=17">
<IMG alt="Click Here To Tell A Friend" src="images/tellafriend.gif" border=0></A>
<!-- Begin ReferralPlanet.com Referral Script -->

5. Save the file and exit.

This problem must have infected millions of computer in the world. Let see when chinese hacker stop putting their shit on other’s website and get mature.

What is ASP.NET?

ASP.NET, a higher version of ASP, is a programming framework used to create enterprise-class Web Applications. These applications are available to the entire world providing efficient information to their end users. ASP .NET has far more advantages than just a next version of ASP. And it is easily available to configure and use no matter if you have a Dedicated server or a Shared hosting account.

Why to use ASP.NET?

Microsoft has worked well to shift their focus on Internet world from a Windows based platform since 1995 and finally Microsoft introduced Active Server Pages (ASP) in 1996 that was much easy to understand than the orthodox languages like Java, C++ and Perl as it offered the efficiency of ISAPI applications. However ASP scripts were difficult to debug and main, since it consisted unstructured code and interpreted script. ASP also made it difficult for developer to ingrate the web development software as it required to understand many different technologies. If the web application grew more complex and bigger it became harder to maintain as the number of line in source code increased dramatically, specially when you host your application on a Shared hosting server. Therefore, a need of an architecture was required that would allow development of Web application in a consistent way.

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The architecture of Microsoft MSSQL Server is mainly divided into three components:

1. SQLOS: which implements the basic services required by MS SQL Server, including thread scheduling, I/O stat management and memory management.

2. Relational Engine: which implements the relational database components including support for databases, tables, queries and stored procedures as well as implementing the type system.

3. Protocol Layer: which exposes the MS SQL Server functionality.

SQLOS

SQLOS is the base component in the Windows SQL Server architecture. It implements functions normally associated with the Operating System, thread scheduling, memory management, I/O management, buffer pool management, resource management, synchronization primitives and locking, and deadlock detection. Because the requirements of Windows SQL Server are highly specialized, it implements its own memory and thread management system, rather than using the generic one implemented in the OS. SQLOS also includes synchronization primitives for locking as well as monitoring for the worker threads to detect and recover from deadlocks.

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Clustering in Windows 2003 Dedicated or Shared hosting is a means of providing High Availability to your applications and websites. Clustering is a group of machines acting as a single entity to provide resources and services to the network. In time of failure, a fail over will occur to a system in that group that will maintain availability of those resources to the network. You can be alerted to the failure, repair the system failure, and bring the system back online to participate as a provider of services once more. You learn about many forms of Windows clustering. Clustering in Windows 2003 hosting can allow for failover to other systems and it can also allow for load balancing between systems. Load balancing in Windows 2003 hosting is using a device, which can be a server or an appliance, to balance the load of traffic across multiple servers waiting to receive that traffic. The device sends incoming traffic based on an algorithm to the most underused machine or spreads the traffic out evenly among all machines that are on at the time. A good example of using this technology would be if you had a web site that received 2,000 hits per day. If, in the months of November and December, your hit count tripled, you might be unable to sustain that type of increased load. Your customers might experience time outs,
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Introduction

We read allot of articles on how one can use MRTG as an Intrusion detection tool or to creating traffic graph for a particular network subnet or a single IP address on Linux platform with Apache web server. But we find very few that allow us to have graphs on Windows Dedicated server with IIS Web Server.

Here are some steps that can be used to create graphs on Windows Dedicated server with IIS as the web servers. And there is no need to take all the efforts to configure MRTG as we can simply have graphs with the use of logparser and the RRDtool from Tobias Oetiker and you can use the RRDtool perfectly without the rest of MRTG.

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Some times Configuring MSDTC and their error can ruin your Windows Cluster service and your time as well. You may get one of the following error when you failover the MSDTC service from one Dedicated node to another.

This would only happen if the Cluster services has been installed before installing and configuring MSDTC Service. Hence it is highly recommended that you first install and configure MSDTC and then configure the Windows Cluster Service.

Event ID: 4097
Description:
MS DTC started with the following settings: Security Configuration (OFF = 0 and ON = 1): Network Administration of Transactions = 1, Network Clients = 0, Distributed Transactions using Native MSDTC Protocol = 1, Transaction Internet Protocol (TIP) = 0, XA Transactions = 1.

OR

Event ID: 4395
Description:
MSDTC detected that MSDTC related information in the local registry is different from that in the shared cluster registry. Error Specifics: d:ntcomcom1xdtcsharedmtxclumtxclusetuphelper.cpp:541, CmdLine: C:WINNTSystem32msdtc.exe, Pid: 796
Data:
0000: 05 40 00 80 .@.?

OR

Event ID: 4384
Description:
MS DTC was unable to start because the installation was not configured to run on a cluster. Please run comclust.exe and restart MS DTC. Error Specifics: d:ntcomcom1xdtcsharedmtxclumtxclusetuphelper.cpp:668, CmdLine: C:WINNTSystem32msdtc.exe, Pid: 796

OR

Event ID : 7024
Source : Service Control Manager
Description: The MSDTC service terminated with service specific error 3221229584.

Initially you should try and run the command below and check if it solves the problem:

msdtc -resetlog

If that does not help then follow the fix below:

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This checklist helps you prepare for installation. It is very important to go through all of them else it make it very difficult to restart if either one of them is missed or not configured:

Software Requirements

•    Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition or Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition installed on all dedicated servers in the cluster.
•    A name resolution method such as Domain Name System (DNS), DNS dynamic update protocol, Windows Internet Name Service (WINS), HOSTS, and so on.
•    An existing domain model.
•    All nodes must be members of the same domain.
•    A domain-level account that is a member of the local administrators group on each node. A dedicated account is recommended.

Hardware Requirements

•    Clustering hardware must be on the cluster service Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). To find the latest version of the cluster service HCL, go to the Windows Hardware Compatibility List at http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/, and then search for cluster. The entire solution must be certified on the HCL, not just the individual components.

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Steps to Configure Windows DNS Server/Service.

Here is a very simple way to configure a DNS service on Windows Dedicated Server that hosts your website.

Requirements:

1. You should have one of the following Windows OS to install the DNS service:

– Windows XP Professional edition.
– Windows Vista.
– Windows 2003 Server Data center edition.
– Windows 2003 Server Enterprise edition.
– Windows 2003 Server Standard edition.

You cannot install DNS service on Windows 2008 Server with the steps below as it does not have an option to add remove Windows Components. You will have to use the Server Manager option to install Services on your Windows 2008 Server.

I have not specified Windows NT and Windows 2000 version as they are hardly used now a days. Also Windows XP Home edition and Windows 2003 Server Web edition does not support DNS service on them.

2. Windows OS installation CD or the i386 folder.

3. A user that will have Administrator rights on the Dedicated server on which you want to install DNS service.

Installation Steps:

1. Go to Control panel >> Add/Remove Programs >> Add/Remove Windows Components, it will open a windows below:

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Remote Desktop [RDP] not Working..?

This applies to all versions of Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 and also to Vista and XP Professional. This problem normally occurs to our client with Dedicated Server hosting. So I thought I will create a check list to make their hosting service a bit easy.
Yes, you will need physical access to the machine to check this, it is obvious that you will not be able to check this problem unless you have remote access to the server. These steps can only be performed if you have physical access to the dedicated server or through a Keyboard-Video-Mouse [KVM]. So there we go:

* First thing that you need to check is whether the Remote Desktop Console [RDC] is enabled on your server.
Go to Desktop >> My Computer >> Properties >> Remote Tab
Check the box for “Enable Remote Desktop on this computer” and click OK.

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Most of our users have this problem with there Windows Plesk Dedicated hosting as well as Windows Shared hosting packages with recent Parallels Plesk versions. I have had so many instance of support about the sitepreview not working on our Windows Shared Servers with Plesk for different reasons and I had to scratch my head to get things sorted for our valuable Windows dedicated hosting customers. And it is an important feature for our Shared hosting customers without the dedicated IP address to check their site before moving their name server to us. So I decided to write this blog with the steps to troubleshoot the problem with Plesk sitepreview in few simple steps. I will try and put every thing that I have figured while investigation.

There are 3 types of problems with site preview in Plesk:

1. Site Preview in Windows Plesk will show 404 Page Not Found error
2. Site Preview in Windows Plesk will show Plesk Default page.
3. SitePreview will ask for user name and password.

We will troubleshoot each problem with site preview one by one.

1. Site Preview in Plesk will show 404 Page Not Found error.

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