Welcome to Brien M. Posey's Section

Brien Posey is an MCSE and has won the Microsoft MVP award for the last two years. Brien has written who over 3,000 technical articles and written or contributed material to 27 books.

In addition to his technical writing, Brien is the co-founder of Relevant Technologies and also serves the IT community through his own Web site at www.brienposey.com

Prior to being a freelance author, Brien served as CIO for a chain of hospitals. He was also previously in charge of IT security for Fort Knox.

Brien M. Posey's Latest Contributions

Cloning Hyper-V Virtual Machines the Right Way (Part 4): Date - Mar 04, 2010; Section - Articles & Tutorials / General Virtualization Articles; This article concludes the series by showing you how to clone a virtual machine without the aid of additional software.
Planning an Upgrade to Hyper-V 2008 R2 (Part 1): Date - Jan 28, 2010; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Installation and Deployment; What you need to know when planning to upgrade your existing host servers to Hyper-V R2.
Cloning Hyper-V Virtual Machines the Right Way (Part 3): Date - Jan 14, 2010; Section - Articles & Tutorials / General Virtualization Articles; A preliminary explanation to the manual cloning process of a Hyper-V Virtual Machine.
Disaster Recovery for Hyper-V (Part 6): Date - Dec 16, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Installation and Deployment; Continuing the series on disaster recovery for Hyper-V by discussing the advantages and disadvantages of performing a guest level backup of your virtual servers.
Cloning Hyper-V Virtual Machines the Right Way (Part 2): Date - Nov 11, 2009; Section - Articles & Tutorials / General Virtualization Articles; One method you can use in order to clone virtual machines.
Cloning Hyper-V Virtual Machines the Right Way (Part 1): Date - Oct 14, 2009; Section - Articles & Tutorials / General Virtualization Articles; How to avoid disaster by creating a virtual machine clone properly.
Disaster Recovery for Hyper-V (Part 5): Date - Sep 22, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Installation and Deployment; Continuing the Hyper-V disaster recovery series by talking about some of the benefits of running VSS backups at the host operating system level of your Hyper-V servers.
Disaster Recovery for Hyper-V (Part 4): Date - Aug 25, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Installation and Deployment; Discussing the major limitations that you need to be aware of when creating a Volume Shadowcopy Service backup of a Hyper-V server and all of its virtual machines.
Disaster Recovery for Hyper-V (Part 3): Date - Jul 28, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Installation and Deployment; There is a lot more to backing up a Hyper-V server than just taking snapshots. In this article, we will discuss some ways of making traditional backups of a virtualized environment.
Disaster Recovery for Hyper-V (Part 2): Date - Jul 16, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Installation and Deployment; This article continues the discussion on the mechanics of snapshots in Hyper-V by showing you how to work with snapshots.
Working With Terminal Services Remote Applications (Part 5): Date - Jun 23, 2009; Section - Terminal Services / General; How to create traditional Windows Installer packages for remote applications.
Disaster Recovery for Hyper-V (Part 1): Date - Jun 04, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Installation and Deployment; Options for disaster recovery within a Hyper-V environment.
Working With Terminal Services Remote Applications (Part 4): Date - May 19, 2009; Section - Terminal Services / General; How to access remote applications over the Internet using TS Web Access.
Hyper-V and Legacy Applications (Part 5): Date - May 07, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / General; Completing the Windows NT deployment process by installing a service pack and connecting Windows NT to the network.
Hyper-V and Legacy Applications (Part 4): Date - Apr 23, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / General; Using Hyper-V with legacy applications by completing the legacy operating system installation.
Working With Terminal Services Remote Applications (Part 3): Date - Apr 21, 2009; Section - Terminal Services / General; Hosting a remote application and generating an RDP file, demonstrating some settings that we did not mention in part 2.
Hyper-V and Legacy Applications (Part 3): Date - Apr 07, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / General; Virtualizing legacy applications by continuing the process of installing Windows NT in a Hyper-V environment.
Hyper-V and Legacy Applications (Part 2): Date - Mar 19, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / General; How to install Windows NT in a virtual server.
Working With Terminal Services Remote Applications (Part 2): Date - Mar 17, 2009; Section - Terminal Services / General; A walk through the configuration process necessary for application hosting.
Working With Terminal Services Remote Applications (Part 1): Date - Feb 24, 2009; Section - Terminal Services / General; Discussing a Windows Server 2008 feature called Terminal Service RemoteApp, which allows you to host individual applications on a Terminal Server.
Hyper-V and Legacy Applications (Part 1): Date - Feb 12, 2009; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / General; Why virtualizing may not be the best option when it comes to legacy servers.
Determining Guest OS Placement (Part 2): Date - Jan 21, 2009; Section - Articles & Tutorials / General Virtualization Articles; Performance thresholds and why it is important to address an organization’s business needs up front.
Determining Guest OS Placement (Part 1): Date - Dec 09, 2008; Section - Articles & Tutorials / General Virtualization Articles; Why virtual server placement is something of an art form, and how to go about matching virtual server resource requirements with the physical resources that are available.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 14): Date - Dec 03, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; How to add additional terminal service functionality to our existing script framework.
Resource Allocation in Hyper-V (Part 4): Date - Nov 19, 2008; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Load Balancing & High Availability; This article concludes my series on resource allocation for virtual machines by talking about memory and hard disk allocation.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 13): Date - Nov 19, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues the series on terminal service scripting by integrating the Query Session command into our existing script.
Resource Allocation in Hyper-V (Part 3): Date - Oct 29, 2008; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Load Balancing & High Availability; This article continues the resource allocation series by talking more about CPU allocation.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 12): Date - Oct 08, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; How to configure a script to accept user input.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 11): Date - Sep 10, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues the series on terminal service scripting by beginning the creation of a session management script.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 10): Date - Aug 13, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues my series on terminal server scripting by talking about menus and subroutines.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 9): Date - Jul 09, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues the series on terminal server scripting by talking about menus and subroutines.
Resource Allocation in Hyper-V (Part 2): Date - Jul 02, 2008; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Load Balancing & High Availability; This article continues the series on resource allocation for virtual machines by examining CPU utilization, and talking about some of the challenges associated with obtaining accurate Performance Monitor readings in a virtual server environment.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 8): Date - Jun 25, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues the Terminal Service Scripting series by explaining how we generated a date based filename.
Resource Allocation in Hyper-V (Part 1): Date - Jun 02, 2008; Section - Microsoft Hyper-V Articles / Load Balancing & High Availability; Proper resource allocation is critical to effectively hosting virtual machines. This article series explains how it is done.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 7): Date - May 14, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues with the series on creating terminal service based scripts by explaining the inner workings of the script that we created previously.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 6): Date - Apr 02, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues with the series on creating terminal service based scripts by beginning to take a look at using a script to create a report.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 5): Date - Mar 05, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues the series on terminal service based scripts by introducing a couple more commands that you can use in your scripts.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 4): Date - Feb 06, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues the discussion of terminal service related commands by talking about a command that you can use to send messages to terminal service users.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 3): Date - Jan 16, 2008; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; This article continues the series on writing terminal service based scripts by discussing more of the commands that are available to you.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 2): Date - Dec 19, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; How you can use a command line environment to create various scripts that assist with tasks encountered during day to day terminal server operations.
Writing Terminal Service Based Scripts (Part 1): Date - Nov 14, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / Scripting; How you can use a command line environment to create various scripts that assist with tasks encountered during day to day terminal server operations.
Using 2X ApplicationServer to Publish Applications, Part 6: Date - Oct 24, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / Management Tools; This article concludes the series on 2X ApplicationServer by showing you how to configure a published desktop, and how to publish an individual document.
Using 2X ApplicationServer to Publish Applications, Part 5: Date - Oct 03, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / Management Tools; How to create and configure application groups.
Using 2X ApplicationServer to Publish Applications, Part 4: Date - Sep 19, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / Management Tools; How to fine tune published applications.
Using 2X ApplicationServer to Publish Applications, Part 3: Date - Aug 29, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / Management Tools; How 2X ApplicationServer can be used to host individual applications in a terminal service environment.
Using 2X ApplicationServer to Publish Applications, Part 2: Date - Aug 01, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / Management Tools; How 2X ApplicationServer can be used to host individual applications in a Terminal Service environment.
Using 2X ApplicationServer to Publish Applications, Part 1: Date - Jun 20, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / Management Tools; The benefits of being able to host individual applications in a Terminal Service environment and the basic architecture involved in running 2X Application Server in an organization containing multiple Terminal Servers.
Changes to Terminal Service Security Related Group Policy Settings in Windows Vista and Longhorn Server: Date - May 16, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / Security; The group policy object settings that are related to Terminal Service security in Windows Vista and Longhorn Server.
Using SoftGrid to Support the Use of Conflicting Applications in a Terminal Service Environment - Part 2: Date - Apr 10, 2007; Section - Articles & Tutorials / Application Virtualization Articles; How application virtualization works and how SoftGrid allows you to move applications between terminal servers.
Troubleshooting Common Terminal Service Connection Errors: Date - Mar 13, 2007; Section - Terminal Services / General; Possible reasons why a client’s attempt to establish a connection to a terminal server might be refused.
Using SoftGrid to Support the Use of Conflicting Applications in a Terminal Service Environment - Part 1: An Introduction to Application Virtualization: Date - Feb 14, 2007; Section - Articles & Tutorials / Application Virtualization Articles; How Microsoft SoftGrid allows otherwise incompatible applications to run on a common server.
An Introduction to Terminal Services Remote Programs (Part 4): Date - Dec 27, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / General; How to create and deploy a Windows Installer package.
An Introduction to Terminal Services Remote Programs (Part 3): Date - Dec 06, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / General; How to distribute the remote programs that were authorized in the previous article.
An Introduction to Terminal Services Remote Programs (Part 2): Date - Nov 21, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / General; This article leads through the rest of the configuration process.
An Introduction to Terminal Services Remote Programs (Part 1): Date - Oct 11, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / General; This article will introduce you to a new type of Terminal Service session called Terminal Services Remote Programs.
An Overview of Longhorn Server’s Terminal Service Gateway (Part 5): Date - Sep 27, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / Security; This article concludes the series by demonstrating how to create resource groups and resource access policies that control user access to resource groups.
An Overview of Longhorn Server’s Terminal Service Gateway (Part 4): Date - Sep 13, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / Security; In this article, I will explain how to configure IIS and how to create a Connection Authorization Policy.
An Overview of Longhorn Server’s Terminal Service Gateway (Part 3): Date - Aug 31, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / Security; In Part 2 of this article series, I showed you how to create an enterprise certificate authority that could be used to issue SSL certificates to your Terminal Service gateway. In this article, I will continue the discussion by showing you how to configure the Terminal Service gateway to interact with the certificate authority that you created.
An Overview of Longhorn Server’s Terminal Service Gateway (Part 2): Date - Aug 15, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / Security; In this article, I will continue the discussion by showing you how to confirm that the necessary services are installed correctly. From there, I will show you how to create a certificate authority that issues the certificates used to encrypt gateway traffic.
An Overview of Longhorn Server’s Terminal Service Gateway (Part 1): Date - Jul 06, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / Security; In this article I will explain how the Terminal Services Gateway makes it easier for remote users to access a terminal server session.
Terminal Service Administration and Folder Redirection: Date - Jun 06, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / General; If Remote Desktop for Administration is enabled on a server that’s running Windows Server 2003, then the server can not be configured to use offline files and vice versa. In this article, I will explain why that is and how you can decide which of these two features is more important to you.
What to Expect From the Windows Terminal Services in a 64-Bit Environment (Part 2): Date - May 17, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / General; In this article, I will continue my discussion by talking about the impact of a move to a 64-bit operating system on your server’s hardware.
What to Expect From the Windows Terminal Services in a 64-Bit Environment (Part 1): Date - Apr 13, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / General; In this article, I will discuss why 64-bit servers may be a worthwhile investment for organizations that are currently using Windows Server 2003 based terminal servers.
Creating a Terminal Service Pilot Deployment Program: Date - Mar 22, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / General; If you have spent much time on this Web site, then you probably know that if properly deployed, the Terminal Services can greatly ease a network’s administrative burden, and can be a huge cost saver for a company. In spite of its many benefits, switching all of the users in the company from a client/server deployment to a thin client deployment is a big undertaking. In this article, I will discuss how to go about performing a pilot deployment for your new thin client environment.
Securing the Windows Terminal Services: Date - Feb 08, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / Security; Security is important for just about any computer network, but it tends to be especially important in a Terminal Service environment. Think about it for a moment; users are running applications directly on your server. If a vulnerability exists in an application or in the server’s configuration exists, then the vulnerability could potentially be exploited in an effort to gain access to the underlying operating system. That being the case, it’s worth spending some extra time making sure that you have done a good job securing the Terminal Services. In this article, I will share some security techniques with you.
Running Legacy 16-Bit Applications in a Terminal Service Environment: Date - Jan 04, 2006; Section - Terminal Services / Performance; It may seem strange to talk about applications written for an operating system that has been obsolete for at least ten years, but believe it or not, there are a huge number of companies that still depend on legacy DOS applications for mission critical tasks. Unfortunately, DOS applications do not tend to work well with the Windows Terminal Services. In this article, I will discuss some of the underlying reasons for this incompatibility. After doing so, I will then go on to discuss some possible resolutions for the various compatibility issues.
Managing User Specific Application Configuration Data in a Terminal Service Environment: Date - Dec 14, 2005; Section - Terminal Services / General; Today almost every Windows application writes data to the Windows registry during the installation process. Although the way that the application uses the registry isn’t usually a pressing issue on a standard PC, registry key placement becomes crucially important when the application is run in a Terminal Service environment. In this article, I will explain why this is the case and how the Terminal Services manages application related registry entries for multiple users.
Juggling Terminal Service Resources: Date - Nov 17, 2005; Section - Terminal Services / General; Thin client computing has been around for many decades. Although the basic underlying principles are the same for terminal sessions today as they were thirty years ago, the demands made against the servers that host terminal sessions have increased exponentially. Bloated applications and resource hungry operating systems place huge demands on terminal servers. In this article, I will discuss how you can plan your terminal server hardware so that your terminal service environment will run efficiently.
Using the Terminal Services through Internet Information Server: Date - Oct 21, 2005; Section - Terminal Services / Management Tools; Although the Terminal Services can be used as a management tool, sometimes firewall port issues or the unavailability of a Terminal Service client can make using the Terminal Services impractical. However, there is a Web based Terminal Service client included with Windows Server 2003. This client allows you to remotely access a Windows 2003 Server through a Web browser.