Came across a problem when upgrading to WSUS SP1 earlier today. If you’ve moved your WSUS database as per my post your upgrade will fail with the following:

Success  MWUSSetup  Validating pre-requisites... 
Success  MWUSSetup  Creating database backup...
Success  MWUSSetup  The SQL server instance is remote. No database backup will be created
Success  MWUSSetup  Removing Wsus...
Error  MWUSSetup  RemoveWsus: MWUS Uninstall Failed (Error 0x80070643: Fatal error during installation.)
Error  MWUSSetup  C UpgradeDriver::PerformSetup: Failed to remove earlier version of WSUS (Error 0x80070643: Fatal error during installation.)
Error  MWUSSetup  C SetupDriver::LaunchSetup: Setup failed (Error 0x80070643: Fatal error during installation.)

The solution is to make sure the following registry keys are set:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Update Services\Server\Setup]
"SqlInstanceIsRemote"=dword:00000001
"wYukonInstalled"=dword:00000000

I’ve used various network monitoring tools over the last few years, in particular Cacti, System Center Essentials and now Zenoss.

Cacti is great for monitoring SNMP hosts and has some incredible graphing abilities. The problem I had with Cacti is simply that there’s no useful OS error monitoring. So, there became a requirement for either a replacement or additional monitoring system.

This was where System Center Essentials came in. It had the promise of SNMP monitoring, windows agent support and other goodies. Unfortunately even with SP1 the performance was poor and I was frequently plagued with meaningless alerts (to which the Microsoft solution was to filter them out). SNMP reporting was so poor that SCE just had to go.

I then came across Zenoss, so far it looks really swish. It has a nice user interface, SNMP graphing and WMI interaction with windows hosts – meaning full event log monitoring. Check out the screenshots below and then go and take a look at their website!

As part of my routine auditing process I wanted to check to ensure that the Windows firewall is enabled and set to use its domain profile on all of our Member servers.

Here’s a script to do just that

' Configuration.
'====================================================================
Dim strFirewallStatus, strComputer, arrComputers
arrComputers = Split("london,brisbane,perth,chicago", ",")


WScript.Echo "-------------------------------------------------------"
WScript.Echo Left("Computer Name" & Space(47),47) & "Status"
WScript.Echo "-------------------------------------------------------"


' Iterate through computers, showing status.
'====================================================================
For Each strComputer in arrComputers


  ' Required so we don't die on permission errors.
  On Error Resume Next


  Set objReg = GetObject( "winmgmts:{impersonationLevel" &_
  "=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv")


  If err.number = 0 Then
    objReg.GetDWORDValue &H80000002, "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\" &_
    "Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\" &_
    "DomainProfile\", "EnableFirewall",dwValue


    If dwValue <> 0 Then
      strFirewallStatus = "Enabled"
    Else
      strFirewallStatus = "Disabled"
    End If


    WScript.Echo Left(strComputer & Space(47),47) & strFirewallStatus


  Else
    WScript.Echo strComputer & " - Error" & err.number & " : " &_
    err.description
    err.clear
  End if
Next

You’ll need to make sure that you’ve got the relevant permissions on the target computers, otherwise you’ll just get errors.