Peer-to-Peer Questions #21: Hiding Drives, SQL Server Sort Orders and Red Line, Machine Icons

Article
02/09/2009

March 15, 2000

Editors Note This article, culled from the TechNet Web site (https://www.microsoft.com/technet), answers the most interesting questions received on the peer -to-peer discussion groups over the past few weeks. To post your own questions, visit the TechNet discussion groups at https://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/default.mspx.

Hiding Drives Using Policies

This first question was posed by Stephano—a very good question, by the way.

Q. I wish to selectively hide some drives to our Metaframe users through the use of policies. I know there's a registry key that does the job, which has to be set to a number that has to be calculated according to what drive I want to hide. What I was looking for is a policy file which can help me do that. Does anybody know of the existence of such file?

Stefano

A. IT Pro Pelle offers the following bit of advice:

Zakwinnt.adm can be downloaded from the Microsoft homepage. You'll probably have to edit it to fit your needs.

This was a good start, but it provides only a tempting hint. Knowing precisely where to go to obtain something on the web can often save many minutes, if not hours, of valuable time—and lower the frustration level at the same time! First a little background, in the form of questions and answers that should help those that are interested in attaining a lower Total Cost of Ownership ("TCO") of workstations.

What is the Zero Administration Kit ("ZAK")?

The "Zero Administration" Initiative for Windows is a set of core technologies designed to lower the Total Cost of Ownership of PCs. This is accomplished by giving IT professionals new levels of control and manageability over their Windows-based environments by automating such tasks as operating system updates and application installation, and providing tools for central administration and desktop system lock down. These core technologies are delivered in the form of the Zero Administration Kit. The Zero Administration Kit is a set of tools for IT managers and OEMs that incorporates and supplements existing Windows technologies to allow for simplified implementation of a secure, policy-based management.

Where can you obtain more information on the ZAK?

The best place to start is the Zero Administration Kit (https://www.microsoft.com/windows/zak/) web page. From there you can download the ZAK, read a FAQ, order the ZAK on CD, and even download free self-paced training.

What is an .ADM file?

An ADM file is an administrative policy template file used when creating new policies. If you are interested in learning (or reviewing) more about system policies, one good place to start with is the Guide to MS Windows NT 4.0 Profiles and Policies whitepaper.

OK, so, let's look at the original question: "Where can we obtain the zakwinnt.adm" file?

There seems to be some confusion on exactly how to obtain the zakwinnt.adm file, so here is the scoop: The zakwinnt.adm file is included in the Windows NT 4.0 Zero Administration Kit, which can be downloaded from the ZAK Web site, https://www.microsoft.com/windows/zak/zakreqs.htm.

Choose the "Kit download" link (vs. the "Documentation only" link), and save to your disk. After you extract the compressed file, you will find the zakwinnt.adm file in the \i386\policies directory.

Lastly, there is a Knowledge Base article that addresses hiding drives using system policies, appropriately named **Q242092:**How to Use System Policies to Drive Hide Drives.

SQL Server Sort Orders

Diego Alonso posts this question:

Q. We recently re-installed our SQL 7.0 server in order to switch to binary sort order. We thought this would speed things up. Much to our surprise the server is now slower than before?! Is this normal? Can switching to binary sort order make things slower?

A. Frequent contributor Neil Pike had this to say about sort orders:

Binary sort order is 15% faster than others for key comparisons. However, this is only one TINY part of the processing that SQL needs to do and with the massive increase in processor speed since SQL Server was first released this is now really not an issue.

If you use binary (or another case-sensitive sort-order) then you may need to resort to queries with where clauses like "where UPPER(columnname) = UPPER(searchargument)." This prevents the query optimizer from selecting an index and forces a table-scan—with disastrous performance consequences.

Therefore it is recommended that you only choose binary for other reasons - not performance.

I could not agree with Neil more. As is so often the case with almost anything SQL Server (or relational database related, for that matter) the answer to the question starts with "It depends" There are other factors that need to be considered when dealing with the overall performance of some action, such as the types of queries, the required result format that you will typically be running, and the types of characters that you need to store. If you have a copy of Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 (Microsoft Press: https://www.microsoft.com/mspress/) by Ron Soukup and Karen Delaney, there is an extensive section on Sort Orders and performance considerations.

Lastly, here's a section from the SQL Books Online that addresses sort order performance:

Binary sort order is the fastest sort order option. The overall performance difference between sort orders varies significantly depending on the types of operations and the type of data used. Sorting operations that depend on string comparisons in character fields (for example, GROUP BY and LIKE statements) take more time to process than other sorting operations and have the greatest effect on sorting speed.

With certain queries, if there is a nonunique clustered index on a character value, sort order options that define uppercase preference require the optimizer to perform a sort. Using a sort order with no uppercase preference, such as dictionary order, case-insensitive (no uppercase preference), improves performance because no sorting is necessary. Choosing dictionary order, case-insensitive (no uppercase preference), causes an uppercase A and a lowercase a to be treated equally in an ORDER BY statement.

SQL Server MMC's Red Line and "SQL Server <server name> is not running" error

Q. Every time I go into the MMC and open up my server I get the following message even though it is running. On the taskbar there is the green arrow for SQL Server:

The SQL server <server name> is not known to be running. Are you sure you wish to connect?

Also besides the server icon there is a red squiggly mark. How do I get rid of these two things?

Patrick

A. What the message about the server not known to be running is, is because there doesn't exist a connection to the server and the machine that you are running MMC/SQL Enterprise Manager from will not create a connection until you tell it to do so. One thing that would be interesting to know is whether the particular server that is the source of the message is a local SQL Server (running on the same computer that the current MMC is running on) or a remote server. Also, if it is a local server, what was specified in the server name dialog box when it was originally registered – "<local>" or the specific server name.

As far as that red squiggly line—I doubt that you'd want to get rid of that—it means that you have a connection to that SQL Server. This is a good thing

Grayed Out Machine Icons in Server Manager

Jason Dessel has the following dilemma:

Q. This problem occurs every so often and drives me crazy for almost the entire time I've been involved with Windows NT and I'd love to understand why it happens. Basically, if I view the domain in question (it's happened in many different domains), sometimes all servers are displayed fine in the Server Manager console. By this, I mean:

Server or workstation icon is in color; Windows NT servers are listed as "Windows NT 4.0 Server". DC's are labeled as "Windows NT 4.0 Backup" or "Windows NT 4.0 Primary"

However, sometimes, the following happens, regardless of whether or not "Show Domain Members Only" is checked:

Server and workstation icons are in black & white (gray). Windows NT servers and workstations are listed as "Windows NT server or workstation"; the DC's are labeled as "Windows NT Backup" or "Windows NT Primary" (No version #)

This is usually what happens if the server in question is offline, but it is happening for all of the servers! Interestingly, I can double-click on the grayed-out servers when this happens and I can successfully communicate with the server—WHY does this happen?

A. To this question, IT Pro John Buchan replies:

Aside from the facts that (1) workgroup/domain is one of the determining factors of browsing endpoints and (2) the browsing across subnets required a Domain Master Browser (another artificial limitation built in by MS to force the use of NT Server), browsing has no relationship to NT Domains.

It would be difficult to determine just what might cause browsing problems in your network without a fairly detailed description of your network (physical, protocol, subnet), domains, the location (physical and logical) of the relevant machines, and the configuration of a number of key systems.

What I would add to John's reply is to reaffirm that Server Manager depends on browsing and browsing can be an expensive proposition when you're talking about potentially thousands of machines. Another thing to consider is what exactly needs to be done within Server Manager – is it manage one or two machines at a time? In other words, what is the benefit of having all machines on the network displayed in a current state (i.e. not grayed out in Server Manager) and is it worth the impact on the network to browse all of them? Just some things to think about.

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