There is hardly any compression format which is not supported by IZArc. Even the not-so-common JAR, RAR, and WAR archives can be unpacked. You can see the full list of supported archives in the screenshot below.

However, a wide variety of supported archives doesn’t necessarily make the ZIP program outstanding. The usability and integration are also important factors to consider. IZArc shows no soft spot here either. It offers customizable Explorer integration.

Besides the standard functions they also included a menu point “test”. It is handy if you want to make sure that the archive was created without errors.

You can also define a virus scanner which is used to scan the files being processed by the application. This is a nice increase in security, because IZArc also integrates with Outlook and we all know that E-Mails often contain malicious attachments. Another nice feature is that it can open and convert ISO, Bin, CDI, and NRG images. This is tremendously helpful if you quickly need a file which is inside a CD or DVD image. Sensitive data can be protected by encrypting the file. IZArc offers various algorithms including the de facto standard 256bit AES.

Those who are interested in using IZArc from the command line must install the “Command Line Add-on” from their Homepage. Last but not least there is also a portable version which runs without installation. You can find IZArc2go here. However, it has some drawbacks which lie in the nature of portability: there is no Explorer integration and the supported files don’t get associated with the program.

So would I call IZArc the best freeware zip utility? Well, I certainly don’t have anything to complain about the application and neither do I miss a feature. But there are others like 7zip that have roughly the same features and are available for free. Maybe there is no great need to find the “best zip-utility” and it’s sufficient to have one that works fine. And IZArc is certainly one of those.

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Before we dive into the details, let us have a look at how VisualCron works. The diagram below shows how a job has to be configured with VisualCron. For most jobs you have to configure one or more tasks (the actions you want to perform), triggers (defined circumstances that will initiate the task), and optional conditions (states that can prevent a task from being launched even if a trigger is present). As you can see in the diagram, VisualCron supports many more task types than the Windows Task Scheduler supports. Once the task has been launched, VisualCron can notify administrators by several means.

Triggers

Triggers can be time-based or event-based. A time-based trigger can be a certain point in time or a time interval such as weekly or daily intervals. VisualCron has more options to offer here than does the Windows Task Scheduler. For example you can tell the tool that the task has to be launched on specific days of the week or hours of the day. VisualCron also supports scheduling based on seconds and years.

VisualCron comes with eight different event-based triggers: VisualCron, File, Mail, Process, Service, Registry, Event log, and Custom (WMI). A VisualCron trigger refers to a state of another VisualCron task. For example, you can launch a new task only if a specific former task has been completed. The names of the other trigger types speak for themselves. For example, the Process trigger can be used to launch a task whenever a certain process starts running. The Custom trigger is certainly the most powerful one because it allows you to use almost any Windows state as a trigger using WMI queries.

The only trigger I miss in VisualCron is the Idle trigger from the Windows Task Scheduler. This trigger probably doesn’t play an important role in server environments because servers are seldom idle; however, on desktops I found this trigger useful.

Conditions

As noted above, conditions are additional states that have to be present for a task to get started. For instance, the Process Condition allows you to specify a certain process that has to be running. If the condition is not met, then the trigger won’t be able to launch the task. A Process Trigger becomes active whenever a process starts running, whereas a Process Condition is met if the process is already running. The other Condition types are VisualCron (check if a VisualCron task is already running), File (check if a certain file is present), and Folder (check if a certain folder is present).

Time Exceptions

Time Exceptions are to time-based triggers as Conditions are to event-based triggers. The options for Time Exceptions offer the same flexibility as time-based triggers. For example, you can configure a VisualCron job that is triggered every 13 seconds, but not on Fridays in the year 2013 (just in case you are a little superstitious ).

Timeouts

Once the task is running, the Timeout specifies how much time the job has to complete. If the Timeout is reached before the task has finished, VisualCron will terminate the job. You can configure Timeouts based on hours, minutes, and seconds. You can also tell VisualCron to consider Timeouts as errors that can trigger notifications or other tasks.

Tasks

As you probably have noticed, the different ways to schedule a task in VisualCron go far beyond the possibilities of the Windows Task Scheduler. This also applies to the supported task types. Whereas the Windows Task Manager supports only three different kinds of actions (start a program, display a message, send an email), VisualCron knows 13 different task categories: Process (execute, kill), File (copy, rename), XML (read / create node), Net (HTTP, SSH), Messaging (email, instant messaging), Database (SQL, Execute DTS package), Encryption (PGP), Service (start, stop), Office (macro), System (Registry, restart, control monitor), Interactivity (desktop macro, send keys), Internal (VisualCron task control, set variables), and Active Directory (create / modify objects). Each of the task categories comes with a couple of different task types. The texts in parentheses are only examples. I can’t discuss all of the different task types, but I think you have an idea now of how mighty VisualCron’s task management is.

Notifications

VisualCron supports seven notification types: Email, File, SQL, Popup, Event log, Sound, and Syslog. Syslog is a standard for forwarding log messages in the UNIX and Linux world, although third-party solutions exist for Windows. You can use this feature to log VisualCron notifications on a remote Syslog server. The most fancy notification form is certainly the SQL notification. It allows you to execute an SQL query or procedure using OLEDB or ODBC. This is especially useful if you work with many different tasks and want to keep track of them in your own application.

However, VisualCron’s user interface will suffice in most cases since it provides a good overview and is highly customizable. This will be the topic of my next post.

If you to have the chance to win VisualCron license, just send an email to:

with the subject line

VisualCron.

Please, add your name and the name of your organization for which you want to use the license. The deadline of this contest is December 4, 2009.

• Raffle: VisualCron – Visual task scheduling (0)
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VisualCron is the most sophisticated task scheduling tool I have ever tried. I was already quite impressed with the Task Scheduler in Vista and Server 2008, but VisualCron comes with far more advanced features. The ability to manage task scheduling on multiple machines from a central location, in particular, makes the tool an interesting alternative for large organizations. VisualCron targets task scheduling for server environments, but you can also use the tool on desktops.

In the first post of this series I will give you a general overview of VisualCron’s advantages over the Windows Task Scheduler.

One task scheduler for all Windows machines

First of all, if you have different Windows versions in your network, then you also have to work with different task schedulers. As you probably know, the differences between Task Scheduler in Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 are huge. With VisualCron, you only have to deal with one tool for all your servers regardless of the Windows version.

Central management

Secondly, and this could be even more important in some environments, VisualCron provides one central management console for all Windows machines. Although you can connect to a remote computer with the Windows Task Scheduler, you can only manage one remote server at a time. VisualCron can display multiple machines in its modern and well-thought-out interface. It is even possible to drag and drop scheduled jobs from computer to computer. Since VisualCron uses SSL to connect to remote machines, you can also use the tool to centrally manage servers through unsecured Internet connections.

Execution context

Thirdly, VisualCron has an interesting feature regarding the execution context. In the Windows Task Scheduler you can run tasks in the context of a certain user or without user context in the background. The latter means that user session-specific information, such environment variables or mapped network drives, is not available. VisualCron also makes this distinction but offers quite a few additional options. VisualCron distinguishes between user credentials and user context, which allows you to run a task in the standard user context with admin privileges. You can also target a specific session if the user is logged on multiple times, and you can even target all desktop sessions. The latter feature is most interesting in Terminal Server environments.

Sophisticated scheduling features

And last but not least, VisualCron has even more task scheduling options than the powerful Server 2008/Vista Task Scheduler offers. The term “task scheduler” seems to imply that you can use the tool to only run tasks at a certain time. However, VisualCron supports numerous triggers and conditions that can be used to launch a task. Moreover, VisualCron knows many different task types and has a sophisticated notification system. I will tell you more about these features in my next post.

If you want to take part in this raffle, just send an email to:

with the subject line

VisualCron.

Please, add your name and the name of your organization for which you want to use the license. The deadline of this contest is December 4, 2009.

• Raffle: VisualCron – Visual task scheduling (0)
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There are different ways to use S3; today, I will just discuss the possibility of copying files from your servers or desktop to Amazon’s online storage service. Amazon offers a simple web-based S3 file manager, but this is only something to use if you are on the run and want to access your S3 storage from an Internet cafe or so (if you dare). There are quite a few free Windows tools that allow you to upload and download files to S3. For this article, I tried three free S3 explorers: Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer(S3Fox) 0.4.7, S3 Browser 1.9.7 and Cloudberry S3 Explorer 1.6.3.

Amazon S3Fox

Amazon S3Fox is an add-on for Firefox. As far as I know, there is no version for any other web browser. Thus, if you don’t use Firefox, this tool probably is not an option for you. Even though S3Fox runs in a web browser, the application’s look and feel is almost like native Windows application. Like most S3 file managers, S3Fox divides the screen into halves. On the left hand side, you have your local file system and on the right hand side, the remote S3 storage. The tool has all of the essential features. You can create S3 buckets (folders with a unique name), upload, download, share folders, edit the Access Control List (ACL), and retrieve the bucket URL. S3Fox also allows you to synchronize local and remote folders. However, in my test, this didn’t work reliably. Sometimes the upload or download was stuck in the queue; sometimes S3Fox uploaded a file even though it was unchanged.

S3 Browser

There is a free and a pro version of S3 Browser (29.95 USD, 39.95 for the portable version). The main downside of the free version is that it is only for private use. Check out this comparison table for information about the differences between the free and the pro version. S3 Browser is the only tool I tried that doesn’t divide the screen into two panes. The tool only displays the contents of the S3 buckets. Whenever you want to download or upload files, you always have to browse to the local folder. This is quite cumbersome. What I like about the S3 Browser that you can secure your Amazon credentials (Access Key ID and Secret Access Key) with a password. Since Amazon’s Secret Access Key is much too long for a password, it has to be stored in the S3 Browser. S3Fox also allows you to store your credentials, but it doesn’t offer password protection. A downside of S3 Browser is that it doesn’t support synchronization.

Cloudberry S3 Explorer

Cloudberry S3 does support synchronization and it even works (contrary to S3Fox). The only thing I dislike about this tool is that every time you launch it, the request to register pops up again. You can postpone registration, but if you really want to work with this tool, you will register it sooner or later. Cloudberry S3 Explorer’s feature list is quite impressive for a free tool. The only feature I am missing is password protection for the S3 credentials. The most interesting feature is the support for PowerShell! This means you can use the tool to manage S3 with PowerShell (upload, download, set ACLs, etc.). The user interface looks nice and is easy to use. It allows you to work with tabs, which is quite useful if you work with multiple buckets. My choice clearly is Cloudberry S3.

I also had a close look at the commercial tool Bucket Explorer (49.99 USD), but at first sight I couldn’t find a feature that would justify this price, considering that Cloudberry S3 is free. Another tool I found is SMEStorage. It supports not only S3 but also other cloud storage services such as Mosso Cloud Files, Box.net, or GMail-as-a-Cloud. You need an SMEStorage account to use the tool, which costs 25 USD. It is interesting to note that you can use Windows Explorer to access S3 with this tool. This is also a feature of the upcoming TntDrive tool, which is not yet available.

Do you know of another Amazon S3 file manager? Please let me know.

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I think this is an important topic, especially for IT pros, because we usually work with many applications simultaneously and switch between tools all day. Hence, finding the best method to switch tasks can increase your productivity significantly, even if the time needed to change from one tool another is only a second. These seconds add up over a long work day. Even more important is the fact that switching quickly between applications is essential for keeping your focus. If you need two seconds or more to switch between apps, then this will certainly have a negative effect on your concentration and will tire you out quickly.

Jumplists

Let’s start with what I like about the Windows 7 taskbar. The new feature I like most is the Jumplists (right click on an icon on the taskbar). I hopelessly underestimated the value of the Jumplists at first. This thing is really a time saver. For example, you can pin folders to the Windows Explorer icon, which allows you to jump to a particular directory very quickly. Also useful, the Word icon displays the last documents opened. You can also pin documents to the Jumplist. I find myself using this feature all day. I am sure that ISVs will find many helpful ways to make use of this function and I believe that this will turn out to be a killer feature in the long run.

Quick Launch bar

I also found that pinning icons to the taskbar has one big advantage: The relative position of the application in the taskbar always stays the same. After a while you get used to the position, which allows you to locate an icon quicker than under Vista or XP.

The only problem is that not all the apps I need for my daily work fit on the taskbar. This is why I’ve only pinned the most important tools. All apps that can be minimized to the Systray are banned from my taskbar. To be able to launch these tools quickly, I revived the good old Quick Launch bar. The Quick Launch bar also handles those tools to which I only have to switch every now and then since they have no fixed position in the Taskbar once they are launched. If I need more space on the Taskbar, I can just close them.

Combining taskbar buttons

The taskbar feature I dislike the most is that windows of the same application are combined. To move the mouse first to the application’s button and then search again for the right window in a long list of much-too-small thumb previews is an absolute time killer. I have seen people doing this in presentations and I always wonder how they can be so patient as to allow three seconds or more just to switch to another window in the same application. This would drive me nuts. I’ve also seen, more than once, that people lose concentration just because of this.

Our short-term memory only has a very low capacity (up to five items) and lasts only a few seconds depending on the type of content. Yes, these thumb previews look absolutely cool. This was the reason why I expressed a liking for this feature in my first review. But after working with these thumbs for some time, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are useless.

It is possible to disable the combining feature, which I highly recommend. It makes sense to combine taskbar buttons only when the taskbar is full. This is at least better than working with two taskbars. However, any time Windows starts combining taskbar buttons, I find myself looking for apps I can close for the time being. This is certainly not very productive, either.

Therefore, the new taskbar works great for me as long as I don’t have too many apps open. The smaller the screen I’m using, the more problematic this downside of the Windows 7 taskbar becomes. Since most of the time I’m working on a laptop, I can’t really say that the Superbar is “super”. At best, I’ll let myself be carried away to say that it is a Nicebar.

But there is a better way to switch tasks. This will be the topic of my next post.

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I suppose if I had asked this question a few years ago, we would have received an even stronger bias for the GUI. PowerShell is changing the view of many Windows admins, simply because you can do now many things on the CLI that you can’t do with the admin tools that come with Windows. Before we had PowerShell, the Windows command prompt was mostly used for relatively trivial tasks like pinging a remote computer or perhaps clearing the DNS cache.

It is not difficult to guess for what I have voted. I am clearly pro GUI. It is not really that I am completely against working on command prompt. On a Linux server, I wouldn’t even install a desktop environment. In my view, Windows is just not made for the command line. Perhaps this is the reason why PowerShell commands are often so longwinded.

What upsets me in this discussion is the argument that you can “automate” administration tasks with PowerShell. In my opinion, this claim is absolutely meaningless. Every piece of software is meant to automate tasks. In fact, software has no other purpose. PowerShell fans usually want to imply with this assertion that with GUI tools, you have to do everything manually and that Windows admins can save a lot of time if they finally start automating things, just as their Linux colleagues do. The main reason why Windows is so successful is because there are so many great administration tools available that allow you to automate all kinds of tasks for thousands of machines with just a few clicks.

However, that doesn’t mean that I am against PowerShell. On the contrary! PowerShell is one of the most important Windows enhancements of the last years. It is probably the best programming language for Windows management. Thus, it has become a very important tool for all system management developers.

I also recommend that every Windows admin learns PowerShell. Microsoft sometimes offers only a PowerShell interface for new Windows features, probably in the hope that someone else will take on the expensive task of programming a graphical user interface. And, of course, sometimes you have no other choice than to write a script to get the job done, simply because no one else has yet written such a program or because your organization can’t afford a new tool. (Even though this is not as often the case as in former times.) Some readers have pointed out that it depends on the kind of task whether a GUI or a CLI is preferable. This is certainly also true.

The fact that one third of Windows admins can live perfectly with the command prompt also shows that, to a certain degree, the answer to this question is a matter of taste. Not all brains work the same way. I have seen admins who can type faster than I can think. If you feel comfortable on the command prompt, my anti-CLI rants won’t persuade you anyway. I am the most tolerant person when it comes to the choice of the right administration tool. Just do me the favor and don’t tell me that you can automate tasks just because you have PowerShell. It is like telling me that you can sit because you have the tools to build a chair and all others have to keep standing.

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Most networks today are still based on IPv4 because the Clients are not IPv6 capable. A lot of companies hesitated to migrate to Vista and still run Windows XP without the IPv6 stack. However, this circumstance will change with the release and deployment of Windows 7. Might IPv6, which technically is an old story, become more attention when Windows 7 is deployed en masse?

Not everybody is able to switch to Ipv6, though, because some needed applications may not support IPv6 yet. We have a hen-and-egg problem here: Most of the applications will only support IPv6 if most networks will run on IPv6, but the network administrators will only switch to IPv6 if all needed applications support it. Some argue that a killer application that only runs with IPv6 is needed to make people switch. But there is no such application available yet and the ones included with Windows 7 – Homegroups and Easy Connect, e.g. – can’t be called killer applications.

But maybe things lighten up a bit if we take a look at the improvements IPv6 has to offer over its predecessor:

• Large Address Space: IP addresses in v4 are 32-bit long; in v6 they are 128-bit
• Better Security: IPsec is part of the IPv6 standard, which makes the encryption of IP packets possible and guarantees their authenticity
• Integrated Quality of Service: The IPv6 Header provides a Flow Label. It enables routers to make decisions and treat those packets in a special way
• Mobility: With IPv6 a mobile device can be accessible by the same IP all the time

This short list only shows the major improvements. The listed points make IPv6 look like it does not have much to offer for lightening the daily work: IPsec, Quality of Service, and a static mobile IP are already possible with IPv4. They are not part of the protocol, but are in productive use and there is hardly any reason to change one’s running environment. Only the address shortage can cause administrators some headache, but it doesn’t affect Western countries that much. They have a big part of the pie and won’t run out of addresses in the next few years.

Especially in Africa the address shortage is a problem, though, and will become a huge one in a few years. It might even hinder the development of the continent’s IT infrastructure. With this in mind you could argue that we are morally obliged to migrate to IPv6 to support the development of third world countries. But usually there is no space in businesses for arguments of that kind.

But there is another good argument for migrating to IPv6: The address shortage already does cause problems for all internet users. Most administrators are not aware of them, though. The problems are rooted in the technique for overcoming this shortage: Network Address Translation (NAT).

Thinking that NATed IPs are an equivalent to public IPs is an error. Besides reducing performance, NAT does cause problems which are usually hard to discover. The reason for those problems is that NATed addresses break the end-to-end design specification of the IP protocol.

One of those problems is that the NATed address needs to be looked up in the Transition Table. Because the router is not informed if an IP Address of a client changes, it is hard to keep dynamically changing IP addresses up to date in the table. So it is quite common that entries of the Transition Table are out of date. This causes connectivity problems for video conferences, Voice over IP and slows down P2P downloads, etc.

Besides that the router is only able to maintain the Transition Table well for TCP connections. For stateless protocols like UDP the router has to guess if there will be more packets. Activity Timers are used to make the guesses more educated but they fail sometimes. The appropriate and valid entry from the Transition Table gets deleted then and as a result the connection dies.

NAT changes information in the header of IP packets. This causes problems with some protocols like IPsec, because it does integrity checks on the packet header. Another technique called NAT Traversal is needed as a work around. However, not only does it complicate things but it also is not standardized, which causes further problems.

This is by far not everything which needs to be said about IPv4 and the problems it causes today. A simple solution would be to use IPv6. So do you think that with the upcoming release of Windows 7 IPv6 will get more popular?

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Group Membership

When you load a report and then select some users, the “Load Membership” menu item becomes available and you can load membership for those selected users. The detail grid with membership information will be loaded as a sub grid of every record and the “+” sign will be highlighted meaning that membership is available for that particular users. You can click that little “plus” sign, extend that row to see membership information.

Filters

To generate common reports, you won’t need filters. Most of the typical reports can be created by using AD Reports’ navigation pane. However, sometimes, the output is just too big; you could then use a filter to further narrow down the list of AD objects. In addition, you can run uncommon searches using filters. AD Reports has two filter types: the general filter settings in the taskbar and a special filter in the results pane.

The general filter settings allow you to limit the search on the number of objects displayed, the time range and the object’s membership. The time range refers either to the creation date or to the date when the object was last changed.

My favorite AD Reports feature are the filters (right click on column header). The filter works similar to the one you might know from the Active Directory User and Computer interface (ADUC). However, it is easier-to-use and more powerful. Whereas the ADUC filter only supports logical operators other than the AND operator through command-based LDAP queries, you can use AD Reports’ GUI to easily click together a complex filter using common logical operators such as OR, Not AND, Not OR, etc. The currently active filter is always displayed at the bottom of the results pane. This way, you don’t forget that the output is filtered.

Print Preview

Another highlight of the new AD Reports version is the customizable print preview. Printouts can give you a better overview of a report. The problem with printed reports is that often not all of the information fits easily on the limited size of a sheet of paper. That’s why it is important that you are able not only to preview the print but also to customize the printout. With most other AD reporting tools, you have to do this with an external application such as Excel. AD Reports already comes with a nice Print Preview application, which saves you the step of exporting the report before you print it.

You can add a header and a footer, change the margins, and you can specify the number of pages that a row will span in the printout. If you want everything to fit onto one page, you can go back to the search results pane and remove columns. It is also possible to change the column width of each attribute. However, you can’t do that in the print preview app; you have to use the search results pane for this.

Conclusion

AD Reports’ strength is the modern and customizable user interface that enables you to quickly perform complex Active Directory queries. Of course, you can also export reports in all common formats (CSV, XLS, TXT, HTML, XML, PDF). It is typical for AD Reports that you can even speed up the export by placing a button for your favorite export format on the taskbar. In environments with a large number of AD objects, you will notice that the tool generates reports pretty fast. Thus, one could say that AD Reports’ focus is speed.

If you want to take part in this contest, please send an email to:

with the subject line:

AD Reports.

Please add your name and the name of your organization for which you will want to use the license. The deadline for this contest is November 25, 2009.

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The most obvious new feature of Active Directory Reports 5.1.1.1 is the new Outlook-like user interface. I think, it is the tool’s biggest advantage over competing products. It does not only look cool, it is also very effective. Even if you already have an Active Directory management suite, you definitely should have a look at this specialized AD reporting tool; it could speed up your reporting tasks significantly. You only need few minutes to have an idea about how you can retrieve all kinds of information from your domains with AD Reports.

Generating a report with AD Reports means narrowing down the range of AD objects in several steps. Some steps are executed with a mouse click. First, you have to decide what type of objects you want to find. With a click on the navigation pane on the left-hand side, you can decide if you want to retrieve information about domains, users, groups, Organizational Units (OUs), or Group Policy Objects (GPOs). As in Outlook, this will open the corresponding category at the top of the navigation pane, where you can further limit your search. For instance, with another click in the user category, you can generate a list of users who have been inactive for 30 days. There are 40 other such subcategories in the user’s category.

The resulting list will be instantly displayed as a table, with the most important object attributes in the middle pane, after you click on the subcategory. You have several ways to organize the output. You can add a new column for each of the object’s attributes by clicking on the Show/Hide column in the taskbar. It is possible to sort the list and you can group objects by their attributes. This all works just like in Outlook. If you click on an object, AD Reports will display its attributes in the pane on the right-hand side. This pane has several tabs (general info, membership, security, LDAP attributes) which let you quickly find an attribute of a particular object.

If the list of objects is too large, or if you want to display a special type of object, you can use filters to further restrict the output. This will be the topic of my next post.

If you want to take part in this contest, please send an email to:

with the subject line:

AD Reports.

Please add your name and the name of your organization for which you will want to use the license. The deadline for this contest is November 25, 2009.

• Contest: MaxPowerSoft Active Directory Reports – Filters, and print preview (0)
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