Reading Time: 4 minutesWhat is Azure Server Management Tools? Azure server management tools is an Azure service that is basically a Html 5 web based GUI and command line tool that allows you to manage your on-prem Windows Servers. This comes in very handy when you need to manage headless servers such as Read more…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteNow that Microsoft Ignite is over and I have had a chance to catch up with some of the information. I thought I would post a list of what’s new and updated in Hyper-V 2016. Most of this has me excited for what Microsoft is doing and I will be Read more…
Reading Time: 3 minutesEvery Sysadmin has had to troubleshoot group policies at least once. I know I have had to do this many, many times in the past. One of the first tools I go to when troubleshooting group policy from a client machine is GPResult. GPResult is a command line utility that Read more…
Reading Time: 2 minutesI have noticed that there is a lot of confusion around how to name an Active Directory Domain primarily because the best practices have changed. Picking a name for your Active Directory Domain should be planned carefully as it is very hard to change. Although it can be done. Before Read more…
Reading Time: 5 minutesMicrosoft released this update to fix a man in the middle attack using Group Policy Update, unfortunately it appears that it has also changed the behaviour in how Group Policy is applied. If you use security filtered Group Policy that are applied to users AND you have removed “Authenticated Users” Read more…
Reading Time: 2 minutesRecently I have been tidying up Active Directory. We have a lot of users that the helpdesk have disabled but not removed, they have not even moved them to a new OU. Because of this I decided to manually remove each disabled user whilst comparing it to a list of Read more…
Reading Time: 3 minutesIt is always good practice to keep you Active Directory clean. One easy way to keep your Active Directory clean is by removing stale computer accounts periodically. I have always found that when Windows machines are disjoined from a domain, rebuilt with a different computer name, etc, removing computer accounts Read more…
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn Windows Server 2012 Microsoft introduced a new feature that allows us to clone domain controllers. This helps us sysadmins to quickly restore a domain controller in an event of failures (when we have one left) and it also helps us to deploy to test environments when needed. Before Server 2012 you Read more…
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhat is a Group Policy Central Store? The Group Policy Central Store is a repository of ADMX and ADML files that are stored in the SYSVOL folder of your domain. Why use a Central Store? If like me you have managed Group Policy inside of an Active Directory domain you Read more…
Reading Time: 2 minutesRecently at work, we have been making sure all our servers are fully patched and have no known vulnerabilities in them. We use a tool called Nessus, that scans the servers for any known vulnerabilities. And they were all coming back saying the needed MS15-011 KB3000483. Our team made sure Read more…