Network Audit and Documentation, CENTREL Solutions Blog

Lately we've been asked a lot about Microsoft Azure - including both whether customers can  document their Microsoft Azure environments but also whether they can use XIA Configuration Server to document the Windows virtual machines and Linux virtual machines. The answer is now yes to all of these with XIA Configuration Server v9. The new agent supports the ability to document resource groups, resources including virtual machines, storage accounts and SQL servers. We've created a short tutorial video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y8YH-2_V9k&feature=youtu.be And full information about the Azure functionality can be found here https://www.centrel-solutions.com/xiaconfiguration/capabilities.aspx?capability=microsoft-azure-reporting-and-inventory-tool-audit-settings-and-create-documentation

When you use SQL Server Management Tools to try and restore a database you are able to browse to the .bak file however when you selected it the user interface shows no backups and displays "No backupset selected to be restored". This can occur if you are trying to restore a database from a newer version of SQL Server. Unfortunatley the user interface doesn't display this...

When using the new PowerShell 5.0 Install-Module command you may find that you have problems such as PowerShellGet requires NuGet provider version '2.8.5.201' or newer to interact with NuGet-based repositories. Install-PackageProvider : Unable to find repository with SourceLocation ''. Please use Get-PSRepository to see all available repositories.  This can occur when FIPS encryption is enabled on the machine, this setting can be checked by checking the local group policy settings. System cryptography: Use FIPS 140 compliant cryptographic algorithms, including encryption, hashing and signing algorithms

We've been doing some testing of our Windows machine scan agent to document a Windows Server 2016's configuration and have been lead to some confusion with Windows Update. In Windows Server 2016 the nice Windows Update settings user interface has been replaced by the dreadful "tablet" style interface and has lost the ability to configure the Windows Update mode. For anyone using test systems you may intentionally wish to not update your system to ensure your software works on all patch levels. So we looked at using sconfig  to configure Windows update to manual. However there is apparently a bug in the Windows Update user interface where it will always say “Available updates will be downloaded and installed automatically, except over metered connections…” This is a  bit of a worry but is a known bug in Windows Server 2016 that's apparently being addressed by Microsoft at the moment.