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.

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:

2. Click Next and you will get the screen,  see below:

3. Select the Networking Server (DO NOT CHECK THE BOX) and Click on Details (Highlighted in red) and you will get screen below:

4. Check Box on Domain Name System (DNS) and Click OK >> then Next. It will start the installation and will popup for the CD:

5. Browse to the i386 folder and then Click OK to complete the installation of DNS Service.

DNS Service and ZONE Configuration:

1. G oto Start >> Run and type the command below and hit enter:

dnsmgmt.msc

2. This will open DNS Management Console:

3. Before making any changes on the DNS server I will show you some steps that will make your life as well as the configuration very easy.
A. We will assume that we have to crate a DNS zone for the domain www.moosa.com. For that just go to C:WINDOWSsystem32dns directory (Path to WINDOWS may differ as per the OS you use, you can find it with %windir% or %SystemRoot% in the explorer)
B. Create an empty file as moosa.com.dns.
C. Insert the entire code into it:
——–

;
; Database file moosa.com.dns for moosa.com zone.
; Zone version: 1
;

@ IN SOA NS1.moosa.com. info.moosa.com. (
1 ; serial number
900 ; refresh
600 ; retry
86400 ; expire
3600 ) ; default TTL

;
; Zone NS records
;

@ IN NS NS1.moosa.com.
@ IN NS NS2.moosa.com.

;
; Zone records
;

@ IN A 192.168.5.52
mail IN A 192.168.5.72
www IN CNAME moosa.com.
ftp IN CNAME moosa.com.

;
; Zone Mail records
;

@ IN MX 10 mail.moosa.com.

——-
Let me explain each entry one by one briefly, you will have to change each of them as per your requirement:

– NS1.moosa.com. in SOA : This is the primary name server of my domain moosa.com. It is not compulsory that you too may have name server on your domain. But it should be the one from the set of name servers that you provide to your registrar to point your domain on your server.

– info.moosa.com. in SOA: This is actually an email address info @ moosa.com, it is provided for the DNS server to send notification of that is a problem within the zone.

– You can forget the rest in SOA as it will require a separate topic to explain those.

– NS1.moosa.com. in NS: This is again a primary name server that was provided to registrar.

– NS2.moosa.com. in NS: This a secondary name server of my domain moosa.com.
It is not over here, you can even have 3rd and 4th NS entry here. A zone will accept up to 13 NS entries for a single domain.

– ‘A’ records: ‘A’ record has the IP address that you want your domain to point at. This will probably the IP address of your web server or a mail server. I have 2 A records for moosa.com and mail.moosa.com, one for the IIS web server and other for the Exchange mail server.

– CNAME: CNAME are the canonical names for a domain or duplicate names. I have 2 CNAME so that www.moosa.com and ftp.moosa.com will point to the same IP of moosa.com.

– MX record: MX record will be required for your mails to work. It shows a path to your email server. If you do not have an email server and this record will not be required.

I will not go more deep in each of these settings or this topic will turn into a book.

4. Save the file and close it, make sure that each setting looks exactly the same as that has been defined above or the zone creation will fail.

5. Now go back to DNS Management Console, right click on SERVER NAME to make sure that the DNS service is running. If it is not running then click on Start option to start the service.

6. Right Click on “Forward Lookup Zone” >> New Zone:

7. It will Open the New Zone Wizard, click Next on first screen and then select “Primary zone” and then Next:

8. Put Domain name in “Zone Name” screen, without www in it. and click Next:

9. In the Zone File screen, Select the 2nd option “Use this existing file”. Make sure that the file name and path matches your name and path from the steps above. Then click Next:

10. In “Dynamic Update” screen, select “Do not allow dynamic updates” and click Next:

11. Click Finish on Next screen to create the new domain for your domain:

12. Your zone will appear in the screen below. You wil either double click the existing entries to update/edit/modify them or right click on the white screen to Add new Records as per your need.

DO NOT FORGET TO EITHER RELOAD THE ZONE OR RESTART THE DNS SERVICE FOR THE CHANGES YOU HAVE MADE TO REFLECT.

That is it.. now create another zone and so on..

Wasn’t that damn easy..!!!

Recently I’ve seen people having issues with certain devices attached via USB to their thinking machines… Issues that included, Spyware, Malware, Viruses.. ugh, many more.. Wouldn’t it be good to disable these unwanted creepy devices when on a shared/public windows  machines? Ok, follow these steps & get yourself a bit secured.

This can be implemented on your local Windows Machine or on the Windows Dedicated servers, please make sure to backup the Windows registry before following these steps. As making incorrect changes in Windows registry can make the system unbootable.

Search for the following keys in your registry to disable each of them respectively or as per your requirement.

SYSTEMCurrentControlSetServices

Notice the value ‘Start‘, this should be 3 by default [3 = enabled]. Switch this value to 4 [4 = disabled], and USB storage devices are disabled. To re-enable the device switch this value to 3.

To disable USB ports:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesUsbStor

To disable CD-ROM drive:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicescdrom

To disable Floppy drive:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesflpydisk

To disable a High Capacity Floppy Drive:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicessfloppy

Once done, you’d need to reboot your machine for the changes to come into effect. That is it

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.

Cause: This happens if the sitepreview ISAPI DLL is not loaded correctly in IIS web server.

Troubleshoot steps:
a. First check if a the Virtual folder with the name sitepreview is create in IIS Default Web Site. If it is not created then create it without the application pool and map it to folder “%plesk_dir%isapi”, same as in image below.  Also Make sure that Executable Permissions are set to “Scripts And Executables”

b. Make sure that the Site preview ISAPI DDL is Allowed in Web Exteniosn and look like in image below, if not then Add it in Plesk Extensions.  

c. Also make sure that the Site Preview ISAPI DLL has been loaded with green Arrow in IIS >> Web Site >> Right click >> Properties >> ISAPI Tab. like in the figure below. If it is not loaded then just click on the Add button and browser through “%plesk_dir%isapisitepreview.dll” and restart IIS.

d. If you have IIS7 on Windows 2008 Server then make suer that you have Plesk Site Preview DLL added in IIS >> Click on Server >> IIS Group >> ISAPI Filters.

2. Site Preview in Plesk will show Plesk Default page.

Cause: Related to IP configuration on the server.

Troubleshoot steps:

a. Please fo through all the steps in problem one for this. However the only reason for this problem that I have found is main IP address of the server. Just make sure that you have alleast one site added on the main IP address of the server. To know the main IP address of the server Go to START >> Control Panel >> Network Connections >> Right click on main network adapter >> Click on Properties >> Select TCP IP >> Properties. The IP address list in this windows as IP address is the main IP address of the server. Just make sure that you have atleast one site hosted on this IP address.

The above solution will also apply is Plesk Site Preview option is working with https prefix butnot with http in URL browser.

3. SitePreview will ask for user name and password for all website.

Cause: Related to Permissions and Security Options.

Troubleshoot steps:

a. First check if the URL work fine with the IP address only:

http://192.168.1.52/

if not then there are permissions issue with the default site and if you are using a dedicated IP address instead of shared IP then the problem is with the permissions of the site that holds the dedicated IP.

b. If step “a” is working then try access the link below:
http://192.168.1.52/$sitepreview/

The above link should get redirected to the IP address and show Plesk default page or index.html page in Default Web site but it is is asking for password then permissions on sitepreview virtual directory is not correct. Make sure that IIS_WPG, NETWORK SERVICE, psaadm, psacln & psaserv has read an execute permissions on the virtual folder, do not forget to inherit the permissions to files in it.

c. If it asks password for only one site then the problem should be either with the website permissions or the file you are accessing it.

I think this should cover all the problems with Parallels Plesk Site Preview problems. But if you still face problem and don’t want to use Site Preview then you have try the HACK below.

WINDOWS HACK TO POINT YOUR SITE TO AN IP WITHOUT CHANGING THE NAME SERVERS.

While I was searching for the solution I found the KB articel on Parallels sites below:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/1147

Where they (Plesk adminstrators) have clearly mentioned that custom permissions set on top level folder like httpdocs, statistics, cgi-bin etc will get reset by Plesk. So I decided to make a test, I manually gave write permissions to httpdocs folder and ran webservmng.exe on it and yes it was removed. Then after allot digging I would that there us a file .Security which is saved under the folder with the domain name (parallel to httpdocs folder), that stores all permissions for that domain.

Before we start please be informed that these steps are applicable to Parallel Plesk version 8.4 and above as .Security file was introduced in 8.4 only.

So here are steps to get around the problem permanently:

1. Backup the .Security file and delete it from [drive]:inetpub/vhosts/domain_name, this file saves all the permissions assigned to that user from Plesk on Windows. Deleting it will remove all the records.

2. After renaming or deleting the . Security file, run this command below:

"%plesk_bin%/websrvmng.exe" --reconfigure-vhost --vhost-name=domain_name

3. This command will create a new .Security file with all default permissions on that domain.

4. Now login into Plesk >> Click on Domains >> domain_name >> File Manager >> httpdocs >> golden padlock of folder_name to set perm on >> “Advance” Button >> Select users >> Assign permissions >> OK.

These steps will save new permissions in .Security file and even if you run websrvmng on that domain again, the new permissions that has been set from Plesk will not get removed. There is no need to add any special group or users like, ASPNET or NETWORK SERVICE to any folder as those permissions are handled by IUSR_ & IWAM_/IWPD_ users.

Any permissions that has been assigned directly to httpdocs folder will get reset by Plesk and if you inherit them to sub folder, permissions from sub folder will also get removed.

So the moral is, DO NOT give any permissions from RDP, use File Manager option if you want to keep the trouble of permissions away.

So here we go:

On your local machine, [AND NOT THE SERVER]:
Goto START >> Run >> and Type:
notepad "C:WINDOWSsystem32driversetchosts"
And hit Enter

If you get file does not exist error then create hosts file in notepad “C:WINDOWSsystem32driversetc” folder.

At the end of the file you will have:

127.0.0.1 localhost

Just add your domain with the IP you want to point to, and it will look like, this will be also applicable if you have create a new hosts file:

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.52 mywebhostingblog.net
192.168.1.52 www.mywebhostingblog.net

Save the file and exit.

Now ping the domain on the computer you have made changes on and it will point to the IP address defined. You can now browse your site without the site preview and you will have to the content of the server you are moving to. Just remove the entries from the hosts file to point your domain back it was.

Wasn’t that Simple..!!!

After installing a SQL Server failover cluster, the node hosting the SQL Server resource uses the Service Control Manager to check every 5 seconds whether the SQL Server service appears to be running. This “LooksAlive” check does not impact the performance of the system, but also does not do a thorough check; the check will succeed if the service appears to be running even though it might not be operational. Because the LooksAlive check does not do a thorough check, a deeper check must be done periodically; this “IsAlive” check runs every 60 seconds.

The IsAlive check runs a SELECT @@SERVERNAME Transact-SQL query against SQL Server to determine whether the server can respond to requests. Although a reply to the IsAlive query confirms that the SQL Server service is available for requests, it does not guarantee that all user databases are available, or that the user databases are operating within necessary performance/response-time requirements.

If the IsAlive query fails, the IsAlive health check is retried five times and then it attempts to reconnect to the instance of SQL Server. If all five retries fail, the SQL Server resource fails. Depending on the failover threshold configuration of the SQL Server resource, the failover cluster will attempt to either restart the resource on the same node or it will fail over to another available node. The IsAlive query tolerates a few errors, but ultimately it fails if its threshold is exceeded.

During failover of the SQL Server instance, SQL Server resources start up on the new node. Windows clustering starts the SQL Server service for that instance on the new node and SQL Server goes through the recovery process to start the databases. After the service is started and the master database is online, the SQL Server resource is considered to be up. Now the user databases will go through the normal recovery process, which means that any completed transactions in the transaction log are rolled forward (the Redo phase), and any incomplete transactions are rolled back (the Undo phase). In SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, each user database will be available to the user once the Redo phase completes; for the other editions, as with all previous versions, each user database is unavailable until the Undo phase completes. The length of the recovery process depends on how much activity must be rolled forward or rolled back upon startup. The ‘recovery interval’ sp_configure option of the server can be set to a low number to avoid longer Redo recovery times and to speed up the failover process. The Undo recovery time can be reduced by using shorter transactions so that any uncommitted transactions do not have much to roll back.

EFS can be used to encrypt SQL Server 2005 data files and folders. EFS is supported on Windows 2000 and later operating systems with New Technology File Systems (NTFS) formatted drives. EFS uses a combination of symmetric and asymmetric methods to provide transparent SQL Server 2005 data encryption. On Windows 2003 Server and newer operating systems, EFS by default creates a random File Encryption Key, which is a 256-bit AES key to perform data encryption.The File Encryption Key is then itself encrypted with the user’s public key and stored within the encrypted file or folder.

To encrypt SQL Server 2005 data files and folders using EFS, follow these steps:

1. Stop the SQL Server service.
2. Log out and log in using the SQL Server service account credentials.
3. Right-click on the file or folder to be encrypted and select Properties | General Tab | Advanced.

4. Within the Advanced attributes window, select Encrypt contents to secure data.
5. Within the Advanced attributes window, press OK.
6. Within the Properties tab, press OK.
7. If you are encrypting a folder containing subfolders, you will be presented with another window asking if you would like to  encrypt them as well. Press OK.
8. EFS encrypted files and folder names should now appear in green within any Windows file explorer window.
9. Restart the SQL Server services.

If errors are generated, you may have encrypted the SQL Server data files using an account that is not linked to the SQL Server service account.You can decrypt the data folders by reversing the steps above and trying again. When encrypting individual database files, EFS first creates a plain text copy of the file to be encrypted, encrypts the target file, and then deletes the temporary file.This temporary file is not securely deleted and can be recovered using common data recovery tools. To prevent local file disclosure, you should use a secure data deletion tool to overwrite the areas of disk containing the temporary file. Alternatively, you can simply encrypt the parent folder that contains the database files to ensure any temporary files are also encrypted.

EFS encryption is beneficial if the database media is stolen or misplaced. When transferring EFS encrypted files over the network, Windows first decrypts the file and then transfers the plain text equivalent. Some administrators perform manual backups of database files prior to implementing changes on the database server. If this backup involves copying data files from one server to another, you will effectively be storing an unencrypted copy of your database on the destination server.

Encryption File System Contains Inherit Flaws

On Windows Server 2003, EFS uses a strong 256-bit AES key to encrypt data. Under most circumstances, this would be an effective method of encryption; however, this AES key is protected by the user’s public key, which is based on the user’s Windows login password. This ultimately reduces EFS protection to the strength of the user’s Windows password. There are publicly available tools that can successfully decrypt EFS encrypted data by exploiting this flaw. Because of this, EFS should not be used to encrypt sensitive database data.

Working with EFS Encrypted Data

EFS encryption is managed by the operating system, and seamlessly provides file and folder encryption to SQL Server 2005. All SQL Server functions and operations remain unchanged when using this encryption method. Because EFS is handled outside of SQL Server 2005, encryption keys must be backed up separately in addition to your database backups.

BEST PRACTICES ACCORDING TO MICROSOFT

• Install only those components that you will use immediately. Microsoft recommends that you create a list of components that you will be using, and only enable those. If the need arises, you can install the additional components at that time. The components in a SQL Server installation are the Database Engine, Analysis Services Engine, Reporting Services, Integration Services, Notification Services, and Documents and Samples.

• Enable only the optional features you will use, and review optional feature usage before doing an in-place upgrade and disable unneeded features. Microsoft recommends that you create a list of the optional features that you will use, and only turn those on. If this is an existing SQL Server that is being upgraded, they recommend creating the same list, and disabling any optional features not on the list. These optional features are CLR Integration, OLE Automation, remote use of a dedicated administrator connection, Database Mail and SQL Mail, OpenRowset and OpenDataSource functions, SQL Server Web Assistant, and xp_cmdshell availability.

• Develop a policy with respect to permitted network connectivity choices and for the usage of optional features. Microsoft recommends defining policies that would be company wide on Connectivity Choices and the use of optional features. They also recommend using SQL Server Surface Area Configuration to standardize this policy and documenting exceptions to the policy on a perinstance basis.

• Turn off unneeded services by setting the service to either Manual startup or Disabled. Microsoft recommends going into the service management area and setting all services that you will not be using.

MS SQL 2005 Server was released after 5 servers of it previous SQL version, MS SQL 2000, Hence it required allot to revisions to cope up with the current windows development environment. Therefore MS SQL 2005 SP2 had major changes in it, with too many performances and security fixes. Microsoft could not add few revisions due to its basic development structure however they had all the scope to introduce them in SQL 2008 release. And indeed, MS SQL 2008 has many installation as well as performance fixes being applied to it and allowing Windows Administrators to have full control on SQL activities. The biggest advantage of SQL 2008 over SQL 2005 is the ability to manage and maintain server performance. SQL 2008 does not require too much resource which is the best deal for today’s Shared Hosting environment. Also an upper hand to whose to do not want to invest too much on hardware of their dedicated servers just to run SQL server on it.

I have tried to gather the major improvement introduced by Microsoft on SQL 2008 from Internet which is an advantage over SQL 2005 however it all depends on what features are useful to you in the development of your ASP .NET applications. But switching to Microsoft SQL 2008 is definitely going to improve the performance even if you don’t use any of the below feature. And not to forget that with the release of SQL 2008, Microsoft will announce “End Of Life” for SQL 2000 version, which will mean that there won’t be any official support or update release for SQL 2000.

Major difference between SQL 2005 and SQL 2008.

* Easy Upgrades: Version upgrades are now very easy and effective with SQL 2008.
* Resource Restriction Governor: We set a restriction on a users or groups from consuming high resources. This is a very good feature that can be used on Windows shared server with SQL database to maintain the performance.
* Dates and Times settings: New data types such as: Date, Time, Date Time Offset has been introduced.
* Improved Full Text Search: Ability to backup Native Indexes and also thesaurus them as metadata.
* External Key Management: This unique can store Keys separately and not with the data.
* Improved SQL Server Analysis Service: It now has improved Stacks and computes block faster.
* Improved Installation: Microsoft has added an option where you can uninstall Disk images and service packs.
* Data Synchronizing: A Development of databases used in applications that frequently get disconnected.
* Transparent Data Encrypts: It has the ability to encrypt full SQL database with different encryption Methods.

* SQL Server Integration Service: SQL 2008 Server has improved multiprocessor support and faster lookups in compare to SQL 2005.
* Change Data Capture: Allows all changes to be captured and queried. (Enterprise). Also allows us to get detailed information on what changes has happened to which rows after a specific version.
* LINQ: A Development query language for accessing multiple type of data like XML and SQL at the same time.
* Hot Plug CPU: With this feature to an add CPUs on fly for your SQL server to use.
* Microsoft Office 2007 integration: One can use MS OFFICE as an SSRS template, like SSRS to WORD.
* Spatial Data types: Data types for storing Longitude, Latitude and GPS entry of a particular database.
* MERGE: A new TSQL command as a combination Update, Insert and Delete.
* Encrypted Backups: We can execute it at the time running backups to prevent tampering from external resource.
* Data Compression: This feature is different as it allows us to manage data compression at table level to enhance performance.
* Dynamic Development: Latest Visual Studio and ADO options along with ASP .Net 3.
* Reporting Server Performance: Unlike in SQL 2005 we can set threshold on Reporting server for memory management.
* Performance Studio: It is a Gallery that has collection of monitoring tools enhanced performance.
* Audits: A very power feature for monitoring the data access of your SQL database.
* Table Value Parameters: SQL 2008 database has ability to insert entire table into a stored procedure.
* Entity Database Services: (LOB) Line Of Business framework and (eSQL) Entity Query Language.

No doubt that Microsoft has improved all the features that has been used by hosting services. Even SQL Cluster in version 2008 has few major advantages since every one in today world wants to have their site up all the time with 100% uptime. I hope I get some time to write on “MS SQL 2008 Clustering..“

Please make sure of the following before you configure the script:

• The user that is running the script must have execute permissions on cscript in system32
• The user that is running the script must have write permissions folder that is going to store the backup file.
• The user that is running the script must have execute permissions on mysqldump.exe in Mysqlbin
• If you running this script in browser then your web user will need the above permissions.

So here is the script:

backup-mysql-database.vbs

Option Explicit
Dim backup_dir, num_days, user, password, database, arguments, backup_file
Dim oShell, oFS, oDrive, nResults, sqldump

backup_dir = "C:MysqlBackups"
user = "xxxxxxxx"
password = "yyyyyyyy"
database = "zzzzzzzz"
sqldump = "C:Mysqlbinmysqldump.exe"

backup_file = backup_dir & database & ".sql"
arguments = "--user=" & user & " --password=" & password & " " & database & " > " & backup_file
arguments = sqldump & " " & arguments
WScript.Echo(arguments1)

Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

WScript.Echo("Creating backup file " & backup_file)
nResults = oShell.Run ("cmd /C" & arguments, 1, TRUE)
WScript.Echo(nResults)

Set oShell = Nothing

The following variable will be needed to be defined as per your need:

backup_dir = Should have the path to the directory that you want to save you backup file in.
user = Database user name that has full privileges over the database you want to backup.
password = Password of the database user.
database = Name of the database that you want to backup
sqldump = Path to mysqldump.exe, normally this is stored in MySQLbin directory.

To backup all database you can ignore the database variable and replace the first argument command with:

arguments = "--user=" & user & " --password=" & password & " --all-databases --quick
--result-file=" & backup_file

Now you can run the command below to execute the script on Windows server:

cscript c:myscriptsbackup-mysql-database.vbs

You can also schedule the above command to run on sceduled timining to backup the MySQL databases.

A password that allows for spaces can be referred to as a pass phrase. The benefit of pass phrases is that you can make them meaningful and easy to remember. Instead of creating and managing encryption keys or certificates in your database server, you can encrypt data using only a pass phrase.The ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement uses the supplied pass phrase to generate a symmetric key, which is used to perform the actual data encryption. No key management is required, as the key will be recreated each time the same pass phrase is supplied.The common syntax of the ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement is as follows:

ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE ('PASSPHRASE', 'PLAINTEXT')

In this statement, PASSPHRASE specifies the data string to be used to derive an encryption key. PLAINTEXT specifies the data to be encrypted. No permissions are required to run the ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement.

The following syntax encrypts the string using the supplied pass phrase:

SELECT ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE('SQL Server 2005 Pass Phrase Encryption', 'pass phrase encryption test')

Here are the results:

0x01000000B0FA66E0152FB0B655B23439904E36F3ED5B758618BEED0F2A2BF918C6CF9DF685BC2A60A
AD5E81D660BA5A396D1CA89

As mentioned earlier, the preceding results will differ from what you receive on your SQL Server.To decrypt data, you can use the DECRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement.The general syntax of this statement is as follows:

DECRYPTBYPASSPHRASE ('PASSPHRASE', 'CIPHERTEXT')

In this statement, PASSPHRASE specifies the data string to be used to derive a decryption key. CIPHERTEXT specifies the data to be decrypted. Similar to the ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement, no permissions are required to execute the DECRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement.The following syntax uses the DECRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement to decrypt the previously encrypted data, and converts it into the human readable varchar format:

SELECT CAST (DECRYPTBYPASSPHRASE('SQL Server 2005 Pass Phrase Encryption',
0x01000000B0FA66E0152FB0B655B23439904E36F3ED5B758618BEED0F2A2BF918C6CF9DF685BC2A60A
AD5E81D660BA5A396D1CA89) AS varchar)

Note that you should substitute the cipher text in the preceding statement with the cipher text that you obtained from the earlier ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement. Here is what the results of running the preceding statement will look like:

pass phrase encryption test

The encryption algorithm and key length used by pass phrase encryption have not been formally documented by Microsoft. Because of this, it is recommended that you do not use this encryption mechanism to encrypt sensitive data.

Flaws within Microsoft Object Encryption

The object encryption used by Microsoft is weak, and there are publicly available scripts that can successfully decrypt the objects. Further, at run-time, SQL Server internally decrypts the object and SQL Profiler can be used to capture object logic in plain text form. Due to this, object encryption should not be used to encrypt sensitive information, and you should not embed key or certificate passwords or pass phrases in SQL Server objects encrypted using objectbased encryption.

The File system comes with Windows NT. (NT File System) An optional file system for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista. NTFS is the more advanced file system, compared to FAT32. It improves performance and is required in order to implement numerous security and administrative features in the OS. NTFS supports Active Directory domain names and provides file encryption. Permissions can be set at the file level rather than by folder, and individual users can be assigned disk space quotas. NTFS is designed to log activity and recover on the fly from hard disk crashes. It also supports the Unicode character set and allows file names up to 255 characters in length. See FAT32 and file system.

NTFS compared to FAT and FAT32

NTFS has always been a more powerful file system than FAT and FAT32. Windows 2000, Windows XP, and the Windows Server 2003 family include a new version of NTFS, with support for a variety of features including Active Directory, which is needed for domains, user accounts, and other important security features.
FAT and FAT32 are similar to each other, except that FAT32 is designed for larger disks than FAT. The file system that works most easily with large disks is NTFS.

The following will describes the compatibility of each file system with various operating.

NTFS :
A computer running Windows 2000, Windows XP, or a product in the Windows Server 2003 family can access files on a local NTFS partition. A computer running Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5 or later might be able to access some files. Other operating systems allow no local access.

FAT :
Access to files on a local partition is available through MS-DOS, all versions of Windows, and OS/2.

FAT32 :
Access to files on a local partition is available only through Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and products in the Windows Server 2003 family.

The following are comparison of disk and file sizes possible with each file system.

NTFS :
Recommended minimum volume size is approximately 10 MB. Maximum volume and partition sizes start at 2 terabytes (TB) and range upward. For example, a dynamic disk formatted with a standard allocation unit size (4 KB) can have partitions of 16 TB minus 4 KB. Cannot be used on floppy disks.

Maximum file size is potentially 16 TB minus 64 KB, although files cannot be larger than the volume or partition they are located on.

FAT :
Volumes from floppy disk size up to 4 GB. This file system does not support domains controller.
Maximum file size is 2 GB.

FAT32 :
Volumes from 33 MB to 2 TB can be written to or read using products in the Windows Server 2003 family.
Volumes up to 32 GB can be formatted as FAT32 using products in the Windows Server 2003 family.
Does not support domains controller.
Maximum file size is 4 GB.

STEPS:

1. Create a Folder on any of your drives with name RRDTool.

2. Download the latest version of RRDTool from the link below:

DOWNLOAD RRDTool

3. Extract the ZIP in RRDTool folder.

4. Open START >> Run >> type cmd to open Windows command prompt.

5. Type following command on prompt to use the RRDTool.

cd C:\RRDTool\

That is it…!!!! You are ready to use your RRDTool on your Windows machine.

These steps are applicable to all Windows versions including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows NT and Winsdows 2003/2008 Servers.

“SQL Server has encountered 1 occurrence(s) of I/O requests taking longer than 15 seconds to complete on file [T:\MSSQL\DATA\%file_name%] in database [%DB_name%] (2).  The OS file handle is 0×00000838.  The offset of the latest long I/O is: 0x000000ebdc0000“

Do you refer it to as a stalled IO? We always hear a questions such as, what’s wrong with SQL Server..? Why is SQL taking so long to read or write to the disk..? Let us discuss why it is not a MS SQL Server problem:

MS SQL Server does data file reads and writes almost exclusively as asynchronous IO, using the win32 APIs ReadFile, WriteFile, ReadFileScatter and WriteFileGather. Each of these APIs behave in a fairly similar steps, the caller sends in a handle to the file, some memory location to read or write, the size of the block and a structure that tells the kernel how to handle the IO. In MS SQL Server’s case, how to handle the IO is Asynchronously, please.  The call returns immediately so that the thread issuing so that the IO can get out of the way and make life happy for other users who are also waiting got their query to return.

The catch here is that, ordinarily the time between the Asynchronous call to read or write and the completion of the read or write should be on the order of 10ms. The longer it takes for an IO to return the more noticeable a performance impact there is to end users.

Prior to MS SQL Server 2000 SP4 the only way you would be able to tell if your IOs were taking longer than expected would be to use System Monitor and watch the PhysicalDisk\Avg Disk sec./read, write and transfer counter.  This is a relatively acceptable method when the cause of your IO bottleneck is the latency of the physical disk, you might be surprised to find out that’s not the only thing that might slow down an IO!

Once a user mode application issues an IO request it’s the equivalent of putting a package in the mail, there’s nothing to do but wait.  While you may not have anything to do once you’ve dropped the package the parcel carriers job has just begun, what with all the processing and labeling and transit – you get the idea.  Likewise for the kernel.  Once an IO transitions over to kernel mode it’s transformed into something called and IRP (interrupt request packet) and begins a trek down levels of filter drivers, virus scanners  and device drivers before it finally makes its way home to a physical device.

Windows exposes methods for device and software manufactures to be notified of, and participate in, IOs.  Filter drivers are one method of doing this, and it allows for great functionality of verifying you aren’t writing a file with a virus pattern, or backing up a file as it’s being written.  The problem here is that the filter driver can hold up an IO for an extended period of time, and this time isn’t reflected in the Sysmon counter.

So what are you to do? You’ve put your specially crafted package in the mail, but the intended recipient still hasn’t got it.

The approach taken in MS SQL Server is to make note of the time the IO started, the offset of the IO within the file then check back a short time later to make sure all IOs have completed.  If an IO is still outstanding and 15 seconds have elapsed then the warning is printed to the errorlog to alert the system administrator that something’s amiss.

When you see this message the first thing you need to check is the physical disk counters in sysmon to ensure that the disks are servicing IOs in a reasonable period of time.  If those appear to fine then start looking at what filter drivers are installed on your system, are there any known issues with them, or just disable them if you don’t need them.