Computer Browser service on Windows 2008

The Computer Browser service on Windows 2008 either won't start, or starts and then stops. This can be caused by Windows Firewall. Enable all the File and Printer sharing inbound rules and then try starting the service.

Editing Cisco ASA configuration by line

The Cisco ASA parses its configuration line by line, so the order the configuration is in can be critical. When we need to add a line to the config it's always in the middle somewhere so we have to insert it into the access-list by line number. To do so we go to an enabled sessions and use "sh access-list <ACL name>" to show the access list with the lines numbers. So if the access list in question is called acl-dmz then the command would be:

sh access-list acl-dmz

Looking at the lines you figure out where you want the new line inserted, then you go into configuration, and preface the line with "access-list <ACL name> line <number> <command>". So if I want to allow traffic on a new external IP address in the acl-out access list at line 10 the command would be:

access-list acl-out line 10 extended permit  tcp any host 192.168.0.1 eq www 

Prevent Veeam from locking tape drive

With Veeam v.7 tape drive support has been introduced. However, it can be a problem if you're running Backup Exec on the same server as Veeam. We run Backup Exec to back up the few physical servers we still have, and also to move Veeam backups to tape for off site storage.

Veeam regularly rescans for new devices, and can temporarily lock the tape during the scan, which Backup Exec sees as the tape being offline.

You can set Veeam to only scan at start up by adding DWORD ChangerElementFillCompletionTimeoutSec to HKLM\SOFTWARE\VeeaM\Veeam Backup and Replication and setting it at the maximum value.