Cliff Hobbs is a UK-based systems management consultant who specialises in the various systems management tools covered by his website FAQShop.com such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) and Systems Management Server (SMS).Having worked with SMS since 1998 Cliff has gained extensive experience of designing, deploying, and supporting large enterprise-wide systems management solutions on behalf of companies such as EDS, 1E and Getronics.In recognition of his contribution to the Systems Management community Microsoft awarded Cliff the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for SMS in January 2004 which has been re-awarded in all subsequent years.Having grown up with the PC from the days of the IBM AT and PC-DOS 3.3, he has an extensive knowledge of several operating systems and applications gained through his present and past employment with companies such as EDS, Du Pont, Abbey National and Getronics, amongst others.The prime goal of FAQShop.com is to help people use Systems Management technology to make their lives easier - not for technology to control their lives which is reflected in this site's mission statement:
'Ensuring you get the best of IT'.
This could be one of those really useful snippets to file away somewhere:
“You're trying to do some basic troubleshooting on your network and you ping a machine but it doesn't respond. You know its there. Why isn't it responding? It's probably the firewall on the machine that's causing the problem. In this screencast you'll see how to create a firewall rule that will allow the machine to respond to a PING, (ICMPv4 Echo Request).”
http://edge.technet.com/Media/Creating-a-Firewall-Rule-to-Allow-ICMPv4-Echo-Requests/