Friday Mail Sack – Big Picture Edition

Hi folks, Ned here again. Here are this week’s sample of interesting questions sent to AskDS.

Question

Is there a way to see information about the available RID pool for a domain?

Answer

Yes, with the attribute: RidAvailablePool

DN path: CN=RID Manager$,CN=System,DC= domain ,DC=com

Global RID space for an entire domain is defined in Ridmgr.h. as a large integer with upper and lower parts. The upper part defines the number of security principals that can be allocated per domain (0x3FFFFFFF or just over 1 billion). The lower part is the number of RIDs that have been allocated in the domain. To view both parts, use the Large Integer Converter command in the Utilities menu in Ldp.exe.

• Sample Value: 4611686014132422708 (Insert in Large Integer Calculator in the Utilities menu of Ldp.exe)
• Low Part: 2100 (Beginning of next RID pool to be allocated)
• High Part: 1073741823 (Total number of RIDS that can be created in a domain)

This is all (buried) in:

305475  Description of RID Attributes in Active Directory
https://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;305475

Update: and see comments - Rick has a slick alternative.

Question

I have an NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5 environment… <other stuff>

Answer

We’ve got nothing for you, as those operating systems and applications have not been supported for years -the same way if you call Ford and ask about getting warranty work on your '96 Taurus. A handful of Premier contract customers pay a significant premium every year for a “Custom Support Agreement” to maintain support on deceased products. If you’re interested in CSA’s (and if you are running Windows 2000 and getting worried that July 13th is approaching fast), contact your TAM.

Otherwise, whatever you can dig up from our KB or the Internet is your best bet. Your best chance to get an NT 4.0 question answered from us is “I am trying to migrate to a later OS and…”

Question

I am setting up DFSR and I’ve been told the following are best practices:

  • Increase the RF staging quota to be at least as large as the 9 largest files on Windows Server 2003 R2 sets.
  • Increase the RF staging quota to be at least as large as the 32 largest files on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 READ-WRITE sets.
  • Increase the RF staging quota to be at least as large as the 16 largest files on Windows Server 2008 R2 READ-ONLY sets.

Is there any easy way to find the N largest files with PowerShell? DIR really blows and the Windows Search GUI is taking forever since I don’t index files.

Answer

Try this on for size (ha!):

Get-ChildItem d:\scratch -recurse | Sort-Object length -descending  | select-object -first 32 | ft directory,name,length -wrap –auto

The highlighted portions are what you need to change. The first one is the path and the second is how many items you want to list as the “biggest”.

image

Question

I hear that you’re a big Chicago Cubs fan, Ned. Is it true that they have not won the championship in over 100 years?

Answer

I hate you.

 

Have a great weekend folks,

Ned “the short picture” Pyle