Some of the worst cable management hell and why is it important

 

Cables here, cables there, cables everywhere! 

Before I discuss solutions to help you get more organized, let’s look at some examples of horrible cable management. Be warned: some of these examples may just make you cry; 

Can you find the hidden equipment in this mess?

One of the leading Data Centre I visited had this bad cable management and we had to wait for another two weeks to decommission riverbed wan accelerator appliance! Guess what. To pull out the customer appliance they obviously had to plan for a production downtime.

If you dread walking into your server room to troubleshoot a network issue because of bad cable management or worse, dread having to give higher-ups a tour of your facilities, then it’s about time to straighten up your cable management system.

Some internet glimpses for some of the worst cable hell/ wiring ever seen.

 

Here are some things you can do now to avoid joining the terrible cable management hall of fame photos I just highlighted above.

Proper cable management will not only support existing infrastructure, but will also allow to accommodate future growth. 

Consider these tips for your next project:

• Before purchasing or installing cable products, determine the amount of cabling and connections required. Be sure to allow room for access and growth.
• Be sure to follow industry standards, such as ANSI/TIA and ISO/IEC, as well as any federal, state or local regulations. This will help ensure a safe, failure-free installation that will minimize system downtime.
• Plan for change by organizing cable properly and labeling cable that may need to be quickly and easily identified. Also, try to avoid blocking access to equipment inside and outside the racks.
• Be sure to use sweeping 90-degree bends when transitioning from the pathway support to the racks.
• Density is very important in data center cabinets and racks, so keep in mind how many rack spaces are being utilized with horizontal wire managers.
• Select a vertical cable manager that can accommodate all of the cable feeding from the horizontal managers. Use waterfalls and spools to help manage multiple cables and to help with maintaining proper bend radius on copper and fiber cables.
• Using a 50% cable fill when selecting vertical and horizontal cable management. This allows sufficient space for maintaining cable bend radius for patch cords.

Efficiency

Making our installations more efficient is one of the most beneficial tasks a person should consider. Not only does it save time but can decrease issues down the line. This is the plus side of proper cable management. Cable management is the organization of electrical or optical cables in a cabinet or an installation. The term comes from the goal of planning. Cable installations vary from job to job but for the most part you can see how difficult it is to properly situate each cable to make it easy to work with. Problems can happen down the line with too many cables around each other with possible issues of unplugging or identifying which cable is the cause. This is why cable management is very crucial to a smooth work place and installation.

Safety

Proper cable management can increase safety measures in the work place. Fire is a cause for concern after cable installation and loose cable can become tangled with each other possibly creating a spark. This spark can then turn into a fire damaging your network, data center and building and ofcoure financial loss! There is also the chance of someone coming by where the cables are installed and tripping or catching on the cables resulting in an injury. You never know what might happen and it's best to keep a clean and organized setup

Air Flow

An important aspect to cables longevity is the abundance of air flow during installation. The more air flow the better is the goal when cable is connected/running. This increases energy efficiency as well. Keeping temperatures low and consistent is beneficial to cables structure and performance. Increased temperatures can damage the cables jacket and do harm to its inner workings. Keeping your cables tied together and out of the way will open up airways to get to the cables to prevent temperatures from possibly increasing surrounding the cables.

 Diagnosis

Correct cable management can make life easier when going back to troubleshoot the problem with your cable. Organizing your network with various colors can help you trouble shoot problems down the line and can help in managing future additions. Plus, you'll get major props from others for a well managed setup.

OneDrive Files Accidental Deletion and Recovery within 93 Days!

 

If you have accidentally deleted your OneDrive files, then no need to worry. You can recover it from your OneDrive's recycle bin. You might also receive a warning email from SharePoint Online (no-reply@sharepointonline.com) Microsoft support team similar to the one listed below

Files are permanently removed from the online recycle bin 93 days after they're deleted

Hi Rinith KT, We noticed that you recently deleted a large number of files from your OneDrive. When files are deleted, they're stored in your recycle bin and can be restored within 93 days. After 93 days, deleted files are gone forever. If you want to restore these files, go to the recycle bin. Select what you want to restore, and click the Restore button. Ignore this mail if you meant to get rid of these files. Learn more about deleting and restoring files.

Hassle free vaccine registration in Qatar for children between 12-to-18-year-old

Steps to get vaccinated in Qatar for children between 12-to-18-years-old 

* NAS account is not needed for the 12-18 years old child category

* The Pfizer/ Moderna vaccine is being offered to those registered online who have received an SMS appointment

visit https://app-covid19.moph.gov.qa/en/instructions.html

Please call 109 for any technical issues with OTP

Click ‘To register for a vaccine appointment for your 12-18 yr child’

You will receive an sms from PHCC

click submit OTP button after one-time password is entered. OTP SMS will be received on the respective QID registered phone.

Select from the list of convenient Health centers of your choice

select preferred dates and time and submit

Wait for appointment date confirmation SMS from PHCC.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines both require two doses.

Pfizer News 

Coronavirus News

Fact Sheet

(Storage: Refrigeration units that are commonly available in hospitals. The vaccine can be stored for five days at refrigerated 2-8°C conditions.)

More data on Covid-19 vaccines for children 6 months to 12 years old are expected to be released later this year.

Azure: User not having access rights to the Azure AD conditional access

Environment details:

·         Tenant Id: ****0-33c2d-1318-****-1agdq71a2462

·         Tenant Initial Domain Name: blogger365.onmicrosoft.com

·         Affected user: testuser@blogger365.onmicrosoft.com (134***-1**-1356-31f1-689s3***1h)

·         Error message:
'No Access'
sessionid: 1fewh22c****8ee51a52199501b
ResourceID: not available
Extension: Microsoft_AAD_IAM
Content: PoliciesTemplateBlade
Error Code: 403

Cause
The user testuser@blogger365.onmicrosoft.com (test example) does not have any Azure AD Admin roles assigned.

From documentation, we can see that the least privileged role necessary to access the Conditional Access settings is the Conditional Access administrator role.

Conditional Access | Least-privileged roles by task - Azure Active Directory | Microsoft Docs

Resolution
In order to provide access to the Azure AD Conditional Access you will need to assign your user with one of the following roles, according to the necessary permissions that you require this user to have:

Roles with permissions to write:

·         Conditional Access Administrator

·         Security Administrator

·         Global Administrator

Roles with permissions to read:

·         Security Reader

·         Global Reader

In order to assign the user with permissions to manage the Azure AD Conditional Access you needed to assign the user with the Conditional Access Administrator.

Since you are enrolled in the Azure PIM for role management, you needed to make sure that the assigned role was in the Activated state, as the Eligible state “only” provides the user with the ability of requesting the activation of the role from a Global Administrator or a Privileged Role Administrator.

(If you have been made eligible for an administrative role, then you must activate the role assignment when you need to perform privileged actions. From Activate my Azure AD roles in PIM - Azure Active Directory | Microsoft Docs )

After we activated the role, the user was then able to access the necessary resources.

Additionally, we had the following settings activated for your Azure AD:

The above setting (which is also regarded as a best practice) prevents users that do not have any Administrator role from accessing the Azure AD through the Azure Portal.

If you wish to allow all the non-admin users to access the Azure AD using the Portal, it would be important to discuss internally the requirement of this setting.

Review/ Change Logon Server and Correct Erroneous Time

Change your logon server on your PC

1. open CMD in elevated mode.

 

C:\Users\rinith> echo %logonserver%

result (before change):

\\adc-dhcp

syntax: set logonserver=//servername

this sets the new logon server (pref. PDC)

C:\Users\rinith> set logonserver=//pdc2020

check the logon server again...

C:\Users\rinith> echo %logonserver%

result:

//pdc2020

  

Change Client Node Time and sync to the DC

c:>time

c:>echo %logonserver%

result: 

\\pdc2020

Set time as that of you logon server

c:>net time %logonserver% /set /y

this will update the client time same as that of domain controller time

c:>time

corrected time displays  

Command line to list users in a Windows Active Directory group?

The ability to administer and maintain up-to-date user lists and groups is critical to the security of an organization.

Using the GUI

There are a number of different ways to determine which groups a user belongs to. First, you can take the GUI approach:

1.     Go to “Active Directory Users and Computers”.

2.     Click on “Users” or the folder that contains the user account.

3.     Right click on the user account and click “Properties.”

4.     Click “Member of” tab.

Using the Command Line 

gpresult /V

You’ll get output that looks like this (I’ve truncated it to only include the group info):

  

Another command line to export to an output file

dsquery group -name ‘groupname’ | dsget group -members | dsget user -display >> outputfilename.txt

How do I check my mailbox database mount status?

Quick Exchange (on-prem)  Tips:

How do I check my mailbox database mount status?

Get-MailboxDatabase with the -status

Shell to create a user mailbox

New-Mailbox -Alias onPrem1 -Name "Test onprem1" -FirstName onPrem -LastName onprem1 -DisplayName "Test onprem1" -UserPrincipalName onprem1@yourdomain.com -Password (ConvertTo-SecureString -String 'P@ssw0rd' -AsPlainText -Force)

Shell to create a existing user mailbox

Enable-Mailbox estherv@yourdomain.com -Database UsersMailboxDatabase

Enable-Mailbox ktadmin@yourdomain.com -Database MDB1

check results:

Get-Mailbox -Database MDB1