In this blog post, I am going to walk you through how to Install, Configure and use Microsoft LAPS. But first, let’s explain what Microsoft LAPS is. Local Administrator Password Solutions (LAPS) is a solution provided by Microsoft to manage the local administrator account on domain joined computers and servers. Read more…
Now Windows Server 2016 has been out for a few months I have decided to update my lab Domain to 2016 forest functional level. But first I need to migrate the FSMO (Flexible Single Master Operation) Roles to my new Windows Server 2016 Domain Controllers. In this Step by Step Read more…
Sometimes, as a sysadmin you may need to move the Active Directory database and / or log files from one location to another. This may be due to your Domain Controller running out of space. The location you choose to move the files to may be a different folder or Read more…
Automatic Virtual Machine Activation was added into Windows Server 2012 R2. It allows you to activate your VM’s without using a KMS Server or using MAK Keys and you do not require an internet connection either! The VM’s activate against the host Hyper-V server. Using this method the Guests activation Read more…
What 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…
Recently 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…
It 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…
In 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…
Recently 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…
After I upgraded to windows 10 and install the RSAT tools I was ready to start managing users sessions, but tsadmin was nowhere to be found. After doing some googling I found out Microsoft removed it from Windows Server 2012. So in turn it was removed from RSAT. I tried Read more…