Category: PowerShell
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Resize Live Virtual Hard Drives
I have used Hyper-V for as long as there has been Hyper-V. Today I use it much less than I once did, but it is still handy for running VMs on my laptop. I run a particular VM called ‘Sandbox’ in which I do all sorts of things that I would not want to…
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Remotely Enable RDP
Like most IT Managers I manage myriad servers, most of which are both remote and virtual. So when I configure them initially I make sure that I can manage them remotely… including in most cases the ability to connect via RDP (Remote Desktop). But what happens if you have a server that you need to…
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Wireless Networks: Know your strengths!
It is not uncommon for me to hear people complain that their wireless network is not stable, is not working properly, disconnects, is slow, and just isn’t good enough. Unfortunately, unless you are a networking specialist, wireless connectivity is essentially a binary state: It works… or it doesn’t work. There are three things I ask…
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How To Cheat With PowerShell
Admit it… you are a crappy coder. You may be a pretty fair IT Professional, but you cannot script your way out of a paper bag. There’s a support group for you. Hi, my name is Mitch, and I’m a lousy scripter. Admittedly I have never been to an AA or NA meeting; I have…
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PowerShell: HELP!
This is a guest article written by my colleague Michael. Mike and I have been working closely together for the past two years, and I have turned him into a monster! He is now trying to learn anything he can get his hands on. So when he wrote me an e-mail with a suggestion for…
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iSCSI Virtual Disks: If you have to make a bunch… Use PowerShell!
I don’t mean to sound like a broken record but when you have to do things over and over again, it simply doesn’t make sense to do it manually. Sure, the GUI (Graphical User Interface) in Windows is great… but if you have to click through the same wizard ten times to create ten of…
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Distinguished Names: How do I…
Yeah yeah, I know… A little while ago I talked about how to determine the Distinguished Name (DN) of an Active Directory Object, and I got a flurry of requests for doing it with PowerShell. Now, normally I do like to show you how to do things via the GUI, and then what the PowerShell…
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Where am I? HELP!
My colleague created a virtual machine for me in our datacentre a few weeks ago. (Thanks Michael!) Earlier this week I needed to create a second virtual machine to cluster with it, and I felt that the best way to maximize my resources completely would be to create another virtual machine identical to the first. …
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Insanity Is…
We have all heard this quote before… and it is exactly true. However in your server environment, when you want things identical, then we would turn this phrase around: Insanity: Doing things manually over and over and expecting identical results. I have not spent a great deal of time learning PowerShell… but whenever I have…
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Do IT Remotely
A few days ago I was in with my boss and he asked me to perform a particular bit of maintenance during off-hours. ‘Just come into the office tonight after Taekwondo and do it… it shouldn’t take you very long.’ He was right, and I almost did… and then I remembered that in 2014 there…
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Meet Dr. Scripto
While I am sure most of you are not familiar with this crazy character, I suspect a lot of you use the tools that he represents. You see, this is Dr. Scripto. I am not sure which delusional drunk came up with the idea and design of the character, but I think it is a…
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Standardize your Hosts: Simplify your Life
For several years I have been speaking and writing about desktop deployment to standardize your client system environment. What about your servers? What about your hypervisors? A couple of years ago VMware introduced Host Profiles into vCenter Server which allow you to take all of the settings from one host and then apply them to…
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Step by Step: Adding the GUI to Windows Server Core
HELP! Mitch, you told me that I should learn Server Core and I am trying, but you also told me that it wasn’t a problem to add the GUI back into a Server Core machine if I really needed it. How do I do that? This is a question I have gotten a few times…
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Building the IT Camp with PowerShell Revisited
I always said I am not hard to please… I only need perfection. So when I wrote my PowerShell script to build my environment the other day I was pleased with myself… until I realized a huge flaw in it. Generation 1. Actually to be fair, there is nothing wrong with Generation 1 virtual machines…
The World According to Mitch 