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EY Script documentation Software Inventory v4.0.8

As part of an EY software review, we use a small software tool (a tool) to obtain information about
installed software on one or more systems.
This document describes the detailed functionality of this tool and should be read before using the
tool in your computer environment.
The tool functions by querying systems for installed software and configuration information though
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), Windows Remote Registry service, PowerShell
Commands and SQL queries.The tool does not scan the file system nor does it write anything on the remote systems. By default, the tool will not scan systems under heavy load, to prevent performance degradation of heavily utilized systems.
Data is only read from the remote systems, writing only takes place on the central system from which the tool is executed, and the data collected is less than 100KB per system, the total network traffic is ~1MB-4MB per scanned system on average. The main inventory script (EYInventoryScript.vbs) is written in Visual Basic Script. This language was chosen to provide maximum
compatibility with all versions of Windows operating systems. The script may call other PowerShell
scripts when VB Script is unable to query certain inventory and configuration information. To start
inventory collection, simply double click EYInventoryScript.vbs. A menu of scanning options is
presented to the user.
The script(s) are provided “as is”, and none of EY or any other party involved in the creation,
production or delivery of any script(s) makes any warranties, express or implied regarding same.
Notably we cannot guarantee the operation of any script(s) will be uninterrupted, error free or that it
will be compatible with any hardware or software used by you. Accordingly you are encouraged to
submit the script(s) and supporting documentation for review and approvals through your Change
Advisory Board, or similar, before operation in your production environment. If you have any
questions regarding the script(s) or supporting documentation please revert to your nominated EY
contact.

Download the full report in the link below:

EY-Inventory-Script-v4.0.8

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Online DNS management tools

Online DNS management tools

There are several online tools that can be used to view DNS records. These are websites/commands designed to provide information on domain names. They can be useful in many scenarios e.g. when you want to check:

  • if a domain name is available or not
  • the hosting servers of a particular website or emails

Here are the websites:

  1. intodns.com

IntoDNS checks the health and configuration and provides DNS report and mail servers report.

And provides suggestions to fix and improve them, with references to protocols’ official documentation.

Usage: Type https://intodns.com/ on your browser and on the search box displayed, type your domain name and press Report. Note that intodns.com does not check sub domains.

  1. whois.com

Queries whois database for verified domain name registration information. It also provides the name servers a domain currently points to.

Usage: Type https://www.whois.com/ on your browser and on the search box at the top right, type the domain and press WHOIS. Note that whois information can be hidden thus may not be seen for some domains. Also, the same service is provided by many other websites. All web hosting and domain registration companies have this whois domain checker on their websites.

  1. mxtoolbox.com

This is a very powerful online too; used for various purposes. They combine all of your MX record, DNS, blacklist and SMTP diagnostics in one integrated tool. If you need to know whether your IP address is in any blacklists, this is one of the spots to check.

Usage: Type https://mxtoolbox.com/ on your browser. It will provide a search box with a drop down list next to it. First choose the DNS record you want to check – or if you want to check blacklist status, choose that. Then type your domain name or IP address or Host Name and click on the button adjacent to the search box. The button will display the type of record you are looking up.

  1. gtmetrix.com

This one is used to analyse your website speed and provide suggestions to make it faster.

Usage: Type https://gtmetrix.com/ on your browser and enter the domain name you want to analyse then press Analyse. The website will load your site and display a report on the speed of the site and how it can be improved.

  1. crt.sh

This is a website used to check the certificate transparency of websites running under HTTPS. Certificate Transparency is a process in which HTTPS domains are reviewed via public records to verify that the SSL certificates are legitimate.

Usage: Type https://crt.sh/ on your browser and on the search box displayed, type your domain name and the certificate record will be displayed there if it exist. If not, the the notice Certificates None Found will be displayed. If you have another domain parameter such as certificate serial number or Subject Key Identifier, you can use that in the search box by first clicking on the Advanced link. You will be able to fill the detail in the search box and search for the certificate

  1. verify-email.org

This is a website that is used to verify if an email address exists or has proper DNS records to allow it to send/receive emails. It is useful when you realised your messages to a particular email address are bouncing.

Usage: Type https://verify-email.org/ on the browser and type the email address you want to verify on the search box. It will bring Okay result if email is exists and is okay and Bad if email does not exist or has improper DNS records.

  1. email-checker.net

This is also used to check if emails are existing and in good state to send/receive messages.

Usage: Type https://email-checker.net/ on the browser and type your email address on the search box provided. It will check wherever the email is available.

NB: Experience tells us that if we need to check on email status using tool 7 and 8 above, it is important to compare results from both tools. Only when they match should we conclude.

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DNS records

DNS records define everything about a domain’s hosted services. Website accessibility and proper email functionality depends on the DNS records. Without the proper DNS record, the hosting service is disrupted in one way or another. DNS management allows you to make use of one server for emails and another separate one for websites. The following are the most common types of DNS records:

  • Address Mapping Record (A) – It is also known as Address Record. It converts domain names to corresponding IPv4 address
  • IPv6 address records (AAAA) – converts domain names to corresponding IPv6 address
  • Canonical Name (CNAME) – The CNAME record specifies a domain name that has to be queried in order to resolve the original DNS query. Therefore CNAME records are used for creating aliases of domain names. CNAME records are truly useful when we want to point our domain to an external domain. In other cases we can remove CNAME records and replace them with A records and even decrease performance overhead.
  • Mail Exchanger (MX) – it specifies mail exchange for a DNS domain name. The information is used by Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to route emails to proper hosts. Typically, there are more than one mail exchange server for a DNS domain and each of them have set priority. MX records must point to a domain and not an IP.
  • Name servers (NS) – this specifies an authoritative name server for a given host
  • Reverse lookup pointer records (PTR)– this is used to lookup domain names based on IP addresses
  • Start of authority (SOA) – The record specifies core information about a DNS zone, including the primary name server, the email of the domain administrator, the domain serial number, and several timers relating to refreshing the zone.
  • Text record (TXT) –The text record can hold arbitrary non-formatted text string. Typically, the record is used by Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to prevent fake emails to appear to be sent by you. TXT is also used for DomainKeys, which verify that an email came from a trusted source.

These records can be viewed and edited from the cPanel Zone Editor or Advanced Zone Editor. In WHM, they can be edited by accessing WHM >> Home >> DNS Functions >> Edit DNS Zone.

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A Windows Server in A Data Center in Kenya for Multi-branch Business in Kenya.

Do you have a multi branch business operating Kenya.

Would you want to run all office operations from one system or one server..?

A windows server 2012, 2008 or any other..

We have a solution for you.

Our windows servers just like Linux servers in Kenya are situated in world class data centers with bomb proof security.

Guaranteed

  • up time of 99.95% throughout the year
  • 24/07 support 365 days a year
  • lightening speed when accessed with any local network
  • Super Secure
  • Affordable
  • Payable on Monthly terms – no contract

Order one today on www.cloudpap.com

 

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Private Email Server in Kenya

private email server

private email server

What do you need from your email provider?

  • Security for your emails
  • Reliability – 100% server uptime
  • Zero Spams
  • No Email Bounching

 

Can achieve all this with your own unmanaged private email server

Manage your emails

 

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Data Centers in Kenya

Data Centers in Kenya

http://www.datacentermap.com/kenya/nairobi/

East Africa Data Center

Liquid Telecom owned data center, a neutral carrier Tier III, highly rated and acreditted by IDCA

Its far the best data center in the country with large global Tech companies and banks as their clients.

Offers Rack space and power option in the three floors of the four floor secure building along Mombasa road. Capacity is around 450 -500 racks.

 

data center

data center

Safaricom Thika

Recently completed data center run and operated by Safaricom. It did not have the Neutral Carrier status as at the time of writing this article though it’s something Safaricom was pursuing.

Located in the industrial town of Thika and served by fiber cable to Thika.

The data center best suited for large corporate and ISP companies.

Safaricom Kisumu

A data center located in the Western part of Kenya run and operated by Safaricom

Host Safaricom data and a few large corporate entities.

icolo.io
is a Kenyan tech startup building state-of-the-art carrier neutral data centers across East and Central Africa.
Mombasa One (MBA1) data center is icolo.io‘s first facility and the first carrier neutral data center in Kenya. The data center is a 226 racks facility that opened its doors for business in August 2017.
Nairobi One (NBO1) data center, icolo’io’s second data center is also a 226 racks facility schedule to open for operations by November 2018.

CloudPap Data Center (Ryanada Limited)

Artist impression of Cloudpap Data Center under construction in Nairobi.

Carrier Neutral Facility designed with a capacity of 300 Racks designed in Tier III standards. Designed to serve cloud companies through colocation services, cloud and dedicated server provision. Completion will introduce great service offering to clients in Kenya and Internationally.

Data Centers in Kenya

Data Centers in Kenya

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Cloud hosting services in Kenya

Cloud hosting services in Kenya

Cloud hosting the new terminology in town that everyone pretends to understand better those others. But what exactly is cloud hosting anyway.

Digital Ocean one of the leaders in cloud hosting describes Cloud hosting as a new Flexible approach or method of configuring servers to ensure most affordable, scalable and reliable web infrastructure.

cloud hosting

cloud hosting

Qualities of cloud hosting

Flexible – can vary different type of resources depending on demand and application – Customizable

A cloud hosting platform allow configuration of computing resources to the interest of client, a client may opt for 2GB RAM , 1 Core Processor and 20GB Storage as per the demand of the application. It also allows reconfiguration of the resources in upgrade or downgrades any other later date.

Affordable – pay for what you use

Cloud hosting has flexible billing, services are billed per month or even hour and therefore customers pay for what they consume.

Scalable – can add resources on demand

Cloud hosting platforms allow upgrades and downgrade of resources anytime, seamlessly without any form of disruption of service.

 

Reliable – Redundant network and storage

To ensure reliability, cloud hosting is ran on a network of redundant servers to ensure highest uptime possible to the hosted applications.

Storage in cloud hosting is also redundantly managed through a series of backup and network storage resources; this ensures there are no risks of data loss.

cloud servers

cloud servers

Resources offered and billed separately include:

Compute – processing resources

Storage – Refer to the disk space resources.

Network – networking resources

Loan balancers – for balancing processing load.

Monitoring – monitoring resources.

 

 

 

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DNS and WHO.IS –how it works and how the internet works for a website to appear on a browser.

DNS and WHO.IS –how it works and how the internet works for a website to appear on a browser.

WHOIS

WHOIS record refers a set information about registrants of the domains that include contacts, full names or biodata, in three sets of Administrative contacts, Technical Contacts, Registrant Contact, the data is maintain within domain registry operator database but it is the responsibility of domain registrar to ensure the whois data is correct as per ICANN guidelines.

DNS – Domain Name System is a centralized system that match the name – the domain name to the ip addresss of the server it is connected to.

Root Server

root server

root server

This is the first server that a servers recursive resolver . Root servers are usually operated by Registry operators for top level domains such as VeriSign. There are 13 root servers in the internet. VeriSign run two root servers out of the 13 root servers out there. VeriSign operates A Root and J root.

Root servers are the first server to give results in a DNS query.

There is a huge network of servers supporting the root server system strategically located across the globe to ensure that a request is served by the nearest server.. Verisign manages more that 143 Million domains and handles more than143 billion queries daily.

root servers

root servers

TLD Name Server

tld server

tld server

Top Level domain is( .com) while TLD while second level domain is (cloudpap.com). Each Top Level Domain DNS stores information on address of Second level domains. There a TLD server answer a query with the DNS IP address of the   domain.

The Domain Name Server.

Once a TLD Server returns the IP address of the DNS server. The DNS server usually is the custodian of the ip address of the particular domains. The Address is inform of an IPv4 (there are upto 4.3 billion IPv4)  and it is transiting  to IPv6 that has capacity of 10^36  ip address

Website

The Website is now visible on a browser,  After the recursive resolver has obtain the website or domain name   IP address, it feeds it to the browser which in returns send s request to retrieve content from the hosting server.

This takes a fraction of a second to complete.

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Cheapest Virtual Private Servers (VPS) in Kenya

Cheapest Virtual Private Servers (VPS) in Kenya

Virtual Private servers or Cloud Servers in Kenya i.e. by Kenyan Companies in Kenyan Datacenter or in International data center will be explored in this article.

We start on Cheapest VPS in Kenya in a Kenyan IDCA certified data center by cloud services provider in kenya; the author choice is

Cloudpap KL1

  • 1 Core Processor
  • 512MB RAM RAM
  • 10GB HDD Disk
  • Unlimited Local Transfer
  • 1 IP4 IP Address
  • Linux OS
  • Kenya Data Center
  • Available at $7.99 or KES 800 a month
  • 97% Uptime
  • Set up time – under 2 hours

$7.99 / KES 800/= isnt bad for this small virtual machine.

VPS in Kenya

cheap VPS in Kenya

Disk Space is upgradeable to large disk so no worries for your small growing application.Elsewhere an equivalent VPS may go for $3 so by that sense Cloudpap KL1 isnt a bargain, but by the prices for other VPS and cloud servers in Africa this is a real bargain.

Cheapest Cloud server in Kenya as available from any data center by cloud providers in kenya – author’s choice is

Cloudpap 1

  • 1 Core Processor
  • 4 GHz Speed
  • 2GB RAM RAM
  • 10GB SSD Disk
  • Local RAID 10
  • Openstack KVM
  • Unlimited – 100Mbps Bandwidth
  • 1 IP4 IP Address
  • Allow upto 15 extra IP Address
  • Anti-DDoS Pro Protection
  • RESTful API
  • 97% SLA
  • Data center location – Canada, USA, Germany, France.
  • $7.99

This is a bargain – see the 2GB RAM, Openstack powered and SSD Disk and 100Mbps Link in one of the best data centers in the world.

cloud servers in Kenya

Set up time is 30 minutes or less.- how about that..?

Get one today just to have a feel of real computing power.

Consider this as the cheapest Cloud server in the World for its qualities. Kindly note the 24/07 support that comes with servers at Cloudpap.com. Any young developer needs this, it gets crazy at times and therefore 24/07 technical support counts a lot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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VPS Based in Kenya

VPS Based in Kenya

Virtual Private Servers in Kenya are a key investment for any business operating in the region. These offer firms and businesses a chance to have their data physically located in Kenya, without unnecessary CapEx Spend, and with the flexibility of quick set up, buying on demand and ease of scaling when demand changes.

Kenya is a major technological hub in East Africa, a regional leader in terms of technological advancements, direct foreign investments and housing regional offices for major multinational companies. With a vibrant ICT sector, Kenya leads the region in terms of infrastructure and availability of skilled labour in various sectors. With this status, global firms have found the need to have dedicated servers or virtual private servers located in Kenya for ease of managing their operations in the region.

The existence of cheap virtual servers in Kenya is credited to availability of several data centres located in Kenya, and the connectivity to the rest of the world via several undersea optical fibre cables. There is also a local internet exchange point that makes it easier to route the Kenya traffic, and even the data within East Africa, thus making virtual private servers serving local population extremely fast. Coupled with a highly skilled labour force and a tech savvy population, many VPS providers in Kenya are able to offer nearly 100%uptime and relevant support. Other services like mail servers are also available at competitive prices, usually lower than what they cost in the developed economies.

WhatsApp Truehost Kenya