Preparing to Upgrade SQL Server? Data Migration Assistant! Part 1 #MVPHour #SQLServer #DMA
Datacenter’s and companies everywhere generally rely on a core piece of software to store their data and metrics, SQL Server. It’s nice to keep it up to date, but sometimes, and a lot of the time, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. SQL Server has been around for quite a while, there are many databases hosted by SQL Server. Microsoft has released many upgrade advisors over the years, but recently the SQL Server team has overhauled their traditional SQL Server Upgrade Advisor and have created a new product – SQL Server Data Migration Assistant (DMA), which is different than SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA). To pull off a successful migration or upgrade, you need to do your detective work.
Windows 10 Deployment Nightmare – Rogue Imaging in #SCCM #OSD
I just got back from a client site where we built their end-to-end Win10 migration solution. It was one of the cleanest environments I’ve had the pleasure of working in, with a solid AD and CM infrastructure, and made things go smooth. Up until my last day on...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 36 – Virtual Adapter Affinity S2D Deployment #PowerShell #MVPHour #StorageSpacesDirect
Hey Storage Spaces Direct fans, I have been on Vacation for the past few weeks so sorry about not having posted for a bit. In this Blog post I wanted to talk about the importance of Virtual Network Adapter Affinity. Here is a screen shot of my configuration below. We...SECURE ACCESS INTERNAL NETWORK RESOURCES WITHOUT VPN – DIRECTACCESS PART2 #DIRECTACCESS #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Windows 10 Enterprise as DirectAccess Client. Because Windows 10 supports automatic entry point selection and transparent failover, better scalability and performance. Also, windows 10 built-in DirectAccess connectivity status indicator, the administrators don’t have to deploy, manage, and maintain additional software.
SECURE ACCESS INTERNAL NETWORK RESOURCES WITHOUT VPN – DIRECTACCESS PART1 #DIRECTACCESS #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
DirectAccess provides users with the experience of being seamlessly connected to their intranet any time they have Internet access. When DirectAccess is enabled, requests for intranet resources (such as email servers, shared folders, or intranet websites) are securely directed to the intranet, without the need for users to connect to a VPN. DirectAccess enables increased productivity for a mobile workforce by offering the same connectivity experience both inside and outside of the office.
Installing #S2D without #RDMA
A client recently came to me and wanted us to flatten his hyper-converged appliance, and replace the 3rd party storage solution with Server 2016’s Storage Spaces Direct. With all hardware being on the HCL for Server 2016 and SSD, they can contact Microsoft for any...VMware Storage and PowerShell #MVPHour #PowerShell
Well I’ve been buried lately under a lot of LUNs. Spring is over and a customer I’m at has forgotten to do their spring cleaning! Needless to say, the LUN presentation and maintenance to their VMware clusters is a mess! In order to audit the system and ensure things were going in my favor, I wrote quite a few PowerShell code blocks/1 liners.
Dave’s Cool Tools Part 3 #PowerShell FTP Downloader Script PSFTP #mvphour #Canitpro
Hey fellow IT Pro’s in today’s blog post we will look at a super quick and dirty way to download files from your favorite FTP Site. Luckily there is already an FTP Module up in the PowerShell Gallery that we will use for this called PSFTP. Here is your...UPDATE MELLANOX NIC FIRMWARE AND DRIVER FOR NON-RDMA STORAGE SPACE DIRECT CLUSTER SERVERS #STORAGEPACEDIRECT #POWERSHELL #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP #MELLANOX
Today, let’s talking about how to step by step to update Mellanox NIC firmware and driver for non-RDMA Storage Space Direct Cluster Servers. You can easy to do via follow steps.
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 35 – Did you say #S2D for Free? #MVPHour #StorageSpacesDirect .@MS_Ignite
Eliminating Maintenance Contracts will pay for Storage Spaces Direct! One of the games our industry has played for as long as I have been around, is with maintenance contracts. These contracts are the lifeblood of most of these organizations as they generate run rate...Active Directory – When was this user/computer Created #PowerShell #MVPHour #
A pretty simple request came across my desk today. I was requested to send a report of users that were created after a specific date. Do you remember the Windows Server 2003 and prior? Before PowerShell? We had to use what I’ll term loosely as “wonderful” LDAP queries. Also the query result was pure text, we couldn’t do anything easily with it short of magical text parsing! Well here is my PowerShell script I quickly whipped up!
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 34 – Patching Offline S2D Labs with Cumulative Updates #MVPHour #StorageSpacesDirect
Hey Storage Spaces Direct fans, over the course of the past few months we have been showing you how to build your own S2D environment using PowerShell and scripts like Big_Demo. We have gone almost 6 months now and there are some really critical Windows Updates that...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 33 – Is Apple is causing the worldwide DRAM & NAND Shortage? #MVPHour #Apple #StorageSpacesDirect
...NON-RDMA STORAGE SPACES DIRECT STRESS TEST STEPS and RESULT – #WINDOWSSERVER #S2D #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Today, I am going to do stress test for NON-RDMA Storage space direct servers, the customer use their existing Cisco Catalyst 4500-x for Storage space direct servers, as we know, it doesn’t support DCB and PFC function, so, we will focus on stress test result for Storage space direct servers without enable RDMA and see how’s the performance.
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 32 – @MellanoxTech Hidden Device Manager Settings #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour #HyperV
Hey Networking fans, I’m back again this time with a really cool little trick to determine what protocol your ConnectX-3 Pro card is running. Also, how you can quickly get into the Event Viewer and build a filter for your card. Let’s start off by opening...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 31 – @MellanoxTech Capture RoCE v2 or Infinniband Traffic with #WireShark and IBDump.exe #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour #HyperV
Hey Networking fans, I’m back again this time with a really cool little trick to capture RoCE v2 traffic and view it using WireShark. Now I know what all of you are thinking… How can you capture traffic that is offloaded from one Nic to another NIc directly to...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 30 – @MellanoxTech System Snapshot 2.6 Documentation #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour #HyperV
Hey Networking fans, a few posts back we dug into the Mellanox PowerShell providers that come as part of their driver package. Today I wanted to showcase a little hidden gem that they have included as part of their tools. After installing your Mellanox CX3-Pro drivers...MINIMAL DOWNTIME MIGRATION OF WINDOWS SERVER ROLES – PART 3 #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Ok, it’s time to demote existing Windows server 2003 and migrate all Windows server roles to new Windows server 2012 R2, there are no down time for Part1 steps and Part2 steps, but we need to schedule down time for Part3 steps to cut over all services.
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 29 – The Death of #StorageSpacesDirect on #NanoServer #MVPHour #HyperV
Hey Storage Spaces Direct fans, I some very unfortunate news for you. Nano Server + Storage Spaces Direct have broken up. In what seemed to be a meaningful relationship that was mutually beneficial has come to an abrupt end. This could spell disaster for OEM Vendors...MINIMAL DOWNTIME MIGRATION OF WINDOWS SERVER ROLES – PART 2 #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
After done for Active Directory Preparation, now we need to install a new Windows Server 2012 R2, export data from existing windows server 2003 and then import to new Windows Server 2012 R2.
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 28 – @MellanoxTech #PowerShell Reporting Script #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour #HyperV
Hey Storage Spaces Direct fans, I know we have had a lot of chatter going on regarding Mellanox’s recent bad firmware release. As I banged my head up against the wall I discovered that Mellanox actually provides some really nice PowerShell Cmdlets with their...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 27 – @MellanoxTech Physical Port Mapping #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour #HyperV
...UPDATE – June 27, 2017 – Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 26 – @MellanoxTech Firmware Bug CX3-PRO #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour #HyperV
Important UPDATE: June 27, 2017 – by Dave Kawula Hey folks –> We have an active support case going on now with Mellanox Technical Support. They are working through some issues and we have communications going on daily regarding this issue. I will...MINIMAL DOWNTIME MIGRATION OF WINDOWS SERVER ROLES – PART 1 #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
As we know Windows Server 2003 was end support on July 14, 2015, but there are some customers still using it for some reasons. Today, my customer asked me to migrate their Windows server 2003 to Windows Server 2012 R2, there are many windows roles on that server, let’s follow below steps to migrate it with minimal downtime.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 16 – MOVE MAILBOXES BETWEEN ON-PREMISES WITH EXCHANGE ONLINE #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
You can use the remote move migration wizard on the Office 365 to move existing user mailboxes between the on-premises organization with the Exchange Online organization
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 25 – Zero Downtime Migration to S2D #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour #HyperV
You have your new Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct hyperconverged HyperV Failover Cluster built. How can we move your workloads from your existing Hyper-V Failover Cluster to this new farm with Zero Downtime? Well this process is extremely easy to accomplish using...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 24 – Planned Power Outage of S2D #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour #Hyper-V
One of the challenges with any hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is that sometimes you need to shut things down for maintenance. This normally happens to some of my customers a few times a year depending on what part of the world they live in. I thought that it...STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 15 – ENABLE MRSPROXY SERVICE AND CREATE MIGRATION ENDPOINT #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Prior to performing on-boarding and off-boarding remote move migrations in an Exchange hybrid deployment, we recommend that you create Exchange remote migration endpoints. The migration endpoint contains the connection settings for an on-premises Exchange server that is running the MRS proxy service, which is required to perform remote move migrations to and from Exchange Online.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 14 – CONFIGURE ON-PREMISES EMAIL SERVER RECEIVE CONNECTOR TO RELAY EMAIL #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
By default, Exchange 2010 does not allow clients to use the SMTP service for anonymous relay, so we need to configure a Receive Connector for this purpose.
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 23 – Mellanox CX3-PRO on Dell R730XD Blue Screen #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour @Mellanoxtech
I recently came across a post on the Dell Support forum listing issues with a BLUE Screen on Dell R730XD Servers and Mellanox CX3-Pro Adapters. It is a really interesting read and here are some of the highlights of the case. BTW -> you can check it out yourself...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 22 – Critical Firmware Update for HPE Controllers lockup 0x13 #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour @HPE
If you are planning on deploying Storage Spaces Direct on HPE G9 hardware make sure that you check your Host Bus Adapters (HBA)’s to ensure that your firmware is up to date and current. Back in April 2017 HPE released a Critical Firmware Update for the H240ar...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 21 – Reference Architecture #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour @LenovoPress
Great reference architecture is really something that vendors should pride themselves on. When looking at Storage Spaces Direct Deployments I would say that one of the leaders in getting quality documentation out to the field is @LenovoPress. Their latest work is a...STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 13 – CONFIGURE ON-PREMISES EMAIL SERVER SEND CONNECTOR TO OFFICE 365 #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Configure on-premises email server send connector to Office 365.
SITE-TO-SITE VPN FROM CISCO MERAKI TO AZURE AND VEEAM BACKUP COPY TO AZURE – PART 2 #AZURE #MVPHOUR #CISCO #MERAKI #VEEAM
After build Site-to-site VPN between Cisco Meraki with Azure, let’s continually settings for Veeam backup copy to Azure.
Snapshot Management – Who done and When #PowerShell #VMware
This is one of those management tasks that comes up at any location you’re at, especially when you’re trying to manage VMs, performance or datastore space. The cleanup task of deleting snapshots is easy, but the questions that always comes to mind are: Who...STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 12 – CREATE A CONNECTORS FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Create a connector from on-premises email server to Office 365.
Win32/MicTrayDebugger getting flagged by #WindowsDefender on clean images #Microsoft #HP
I received a rather urgent email from a customer today that Malware was being detected by Windows Defender on fresh images. The first thing that was going through my mind was that we had some kind of infection in the Gold Image. Below is a screen shot of Windows...Dave’s Cool Tools Part 2 Channel 9 #PowerShell download Script #mvphour #Canitpro @CH9 @vladcatrinescu
Today I want to feature a really cool little PowerShell Script to download your favorite content from Microsoft Channel 9 @CH9. As I do most days at lunch I scour the internet for great IT News, Blog Posts, and cool tricks to help me with my day job. Today I was...SITE-TO-SITE VPN FROM CISCO MERAKI TO AZURE AND VEEAM BACKUP COPY TO AZURE – PART 1 #AZURE #MVPHOUR #CISCO #MERAKI #VEEAM
Today, a customer asks me to build a Site-to-Site VPN between their Meraki environment with Azure, they also need Veeam backup copy to Azure, they are using other cloud provider for their remote backup repository, this will save customer 13K per year after switch to Azure, let’s follow the steps and do it.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 11 – CREATE A CONNECTOR FROM Office 365 TO ON-PREMISES #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Create a connector from Office 365 to on-premises email server.
#VEEAM REPLICATION JOB FAILED AND CREATED MYSTERIOUS REPLICA VMS AT TARGET HYPER-V HOST SERVER #WINDOESSERVER #MVPHOUR
A mystery is happening, there is a VM be created on the target host server when I run the replication job even it failed, so if I run 10 times and there are 10 VMs be created.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 10 – VERIFY HYBRID CONFIGURATION #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
To further verify that you have successfully created and configured your hybrid deployment.
Yes, Veeam can back up your production physical servers!
For admins looking to reduce the amount of consoles that have to be managed, Veeam was, frankly, depressing. On one hand, the amazing validation and stability features to protect your virtual workloads are a must have, but on the other, its lack of physical support...STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 9 – FULL HYBRID CONFIGURATION #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Install and Run Hybrid Configuration wizard with Full Hybrid Configuration.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 8 – MINIMAL HYBRID CONFIGURATION #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
The Hybrid Configuration wizard helps you establish your hybrid deployment by creating the Hybrid Configuration object in your on-premises Active Directory and gathering existing Exchange and Active Directory topology configuration data. The Hybrid Configuration wizard also enables you to define and configure several organization parameters for your hybrid deployment, including secure mail transport options.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 7 – Verify AD FS Server #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
You can follow below steps to verify AD FS Server.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 6 – CONFIGURE THE FIRST FEDERATION SERVER IN A NEW FEDERATION SERVER FARM #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Configure the first federation server in a new federation server farm (if you Install Azure AD Connect with Customized settings, this was being configured).
#VEEAMON2017 HIGHLIGHTS – MORE INFORMATION MORE AVAILABILITY ON AND MORE EXCITING #VEEAM #VEEAMON #MVPHOUR
VeeamON is one of big Conference events of the world, I am glad that got a chance to join VeeamON 2017 in New Orleans. (Thanks @ClintWyckoff, @DaveKawula, @SuperCristal1 and Tricon Elite Consulting team members) This is my first time to join VeeamON event, what an amazing week!! Let’s review the most wonder sessions.
The SSL certificate is not expired but this site is not secure #Microsoft #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR
The SSL certificate is not expired but this site is not secure.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 5 – Deployment Active Directory Federation Service #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
Active Directory Federation Service, the main thing is to allow office 365 services through the federation service host to us AD to verify, and then achieve the goal of Single Sign-On with Office 365.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 4 – ENABLE PASSWORD CHANGE FOR AD FS #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
If you have an ADFS or Dirsync with Password sync identity it will not allow you to change your password in the cloud. You will receive. But you can configure change password functionality for ADFS server to solve the issue.
#VeeamON Day 3 #MVPHour #Veeam
The last day of VeeamON 2017. My head is hurting from all the great information that Veeam and other vendors have brought to the table. Today I’ve written about the highlights of the 3rd day!
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 3 – DEPLOY AZURE AD CONNECT WITH CUSTOMIZED SETTINGS #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
If you have multiple forests or you need to customized your sign-in option or customize synchronization feature, then this is the recommended option to use.
#VeeamON Day 2 #MVPHour #Veeam
The morning of day 2 started off a little different for myself. Some of the media and Veeam Vanguards attended a media and session where they disclosed some information about Veeam and some of the new products. After that it was a free for all! Which breakout session to attend, do I have time to see all the vendor presentations!? Read on to see what I attended.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 2 – DEPLOY AZURE AD CONNECT WITH EXPRESS SETTINGS #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
If you need a tool to connect your on-premises directory with Azure AD and Office 365, Azure AD Connect is the best way to do it.
STEP BY STEP MIGRATE EXCHANGE FROM ON-PREMISES TO OFFICE 365 PART 1- PRE-REQUISITES #OFFICE365 #MVPHOUR #STEP-BY-STEP
The MOP (Method of Procedure) is assumed you have an office tenant account and the domain have been added to Office 365. I am going to do multi-post and let you know how to migrate your exchange services to Office 365 via step by step.
DHCP SERVER FAILOVER CLUSTER WITH CISCO CALLMANAGER /IP PHONE #CISCO #WINDOWSSERVER #MICROSOFT #MVPHOUR
Today, let’s talking about how to configure DHCP Cluster with Cisco Call manager service (TFTP services).
Office 365 from Zero to Hero – Part 5 #Office365 #MVPHour #OneDrive
Are you using OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online with your Office 365 subscription? If so wouldn’t it be nice if you could quickly populate and sync your document libraries from a mapped network drive or a CIFS share sitting on a NAS Appliance. I think...Office 365 from Zero to Hero – Part 4 #Office365 #MVPHour #OneDrive
I recently had the chance to work with the Calgary Microsoft User Group and delivered a session titled: An Absolute Beginners Guide to OneDrive for Business. In this session, I helped to level set the technology use cases for OneDrive for Business and showcase some of...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 20 #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour
With the evolution of Storage Spaces Direct coming full circle since Oct/Nov 2016 when Microsoft Launched Windows Server 2016. I still get asked the questions about why RDMA is better than regular TCP/IP and how can I prove it. Well I tell you that there have been...VeeamON 2017 – Our View of an Amazing Conference #VeeamON #VeeamVanguard #Veeam #MVPHour
We had such an amazing trip to New Orleans for the annual VeeamON Conference last week. I take a moment and showcase some of the amazing moments that were captured on social media of our team down there. We had a strong representation of Team Kawula and Team TriCon...CMUG – Absolute Beginners Guide to OneDrive for Business #MVPHour #OneDrive
Here is the link to the presentation from today session at the wonderful Calgary Microsoft User Group. Today’s session was held at the Chinook Mall location of the Microsoft Store in Calgary, AB. We had an amazing 40 + Register for this session and it was a lot...Site-to-Site VPN From Sophos UTM to AZURE #Azure #MVPHour #Sophos #Veeam
Recently I was asked by a customer to setup a Site-to-Site VPN between a Sophos UTM Firewall and their Azure Portal. Here are the steps that you should follow to get this done. The purpose of setting all of this up was to setup a secure offsite Veeam Backup and...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 19 #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour @MPECSInc @MellanoxTech
Back in March of 2017 we ran our annual MVPDays Community Roadshow and at the show my friend and fellow MVP Philip Elder @MPECSInc presented a session on Hyper-V Performance Bottlenecks. And out of this session he gave a wonderful talk on how he uses Mellanox...What’s new in Microsoft Internet Information Server 10 with Windows Server 2016 .@ch9 #MVPHour
As many organizations are working feverishly to move off legacy technology. I do believe that Windows Server 2016 and it’s core services like IIS 10 are the right choice. Understanding the fundamental enhancements to your core Web Platform are key to this...DHCP Migration – Windows Server 2003 (2008) to Windows Server 2012 R2 #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR
Microsoft was ending support for the Windows server 2003 operating system on July 14, 2015, but still have some customer are using Windows server 2003 and need us to migrate them to windows server 2012 R2 or Windows server 2016.
Microsoft Presence at #DevIntersection LiveStream on Channel 9 .@ch9 #MVPHour
In today’s fast-paced world with technology changing rapidly, it’s a challenge to stay on top of everything new while mastering the fundamentals. This exciting event, now in it’s forth year, brings your favorite Microsoft leaders, engineers and...Flash Promo MVPDays Books are free again this month #PowerShell #HyperV #MVPHour #VeeamON #Veeam
From all of our amazing authors and team at MVPDays publishing we have done it again. From May 23-27,2017 you can get yourself a copy of each of our books we have released this year. You may be asking yourself why we do this??? The answer is so simple… Because we love...Interview with an MVP Episode 62 – Live from New Orleans – #VeeamON Pre-Show #MVPHour
Welcome to our Pre-Show from the amazing VeeamON Conference in New Orleans, LA. May 15-19, 2017. MVP Allan Rafuse and myself, MVP Dave Kawula chat about how to get involved in a technical conference and use social media like Twitter. We also have a discussion...#VeeamON 2017 Session Slide decks and links #Veeam #MVPHour #MVPBuzz
First of all, thank you to all of the 3000 + attendees of #VeeamON 2017. This year was a busy one for team Kawula as we presented 10 sessions. As promised here are some important links for you: GITHUB Repo https://www.github.com/dkawula You will find the Big Demo...#VeeamON 2017 Day 1 – #Veeam #MVPHour
In the morning we listened to Michael White present on VAO and how it empowers businesses to maintain business continuity or at least speeds it up. If you’ve heard of VMware’s Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Product, well you’ve got a great handle on how it works.
#VeeamON 2017 is available via @livestream #mvphour #veeam
Can’t make it down to the amazing venue in New Orleans, LA… Not to fear #VeeamON is available via LiveStream. Click below to add a reminder to your calendar to tune in LIVE for the VeeamON 2017 general sessions. Don’t miss out! Be a part of the experience!...Tips for building your own exchange server when ISP blocked the port 25 #MVPHOUR #WINDOWSSERVER
Almost all of ISP block TCP port 25 for some reasons, if You would like to build your own exchange server but you don’t want to pay extra money for static IP address or ISP business account, here is some tips you can easy to build your own exchange server.
VeeamON 2017 is upon us! #VeeamOn #MVPHour #MVPBuzz
If you haven’t gotten your tickets and cannot be a part of #VeeamON this year, all is not lost! We here at http://Checkyourlogs.net will have you covered. If you’ve been following us or go look back at the #MVPHour posts, you’ll see that we have arrived here early. We are continuing to blog, tweet (@AllanRafuse) and are currently setting up our Live Stream system!
Windows 2016 Server mysterious shutdown issues #MVPHour #WindowsServer
Today, I tried to troubleshooting windows 2016 mysterious shutdown for my client, I found it was NT Authority\System that shutdown the system because the windows 2016 server license was expired, this is easy enough to solve the issues, I thought.
VeeamON Pre-Conference Survival Guide Part 1 – #VeeamON #Veeam #MVPBuzz
One of the most important parts of attending conferences all over the world is checking out the local scenery and nightlife. In our group from TriCon Elite we now have a total of 4 x Microsoft MVP’s and 3 x Veeam Vanguards and it is kind of cool to see a behind...Microsoft Presence at #VeeamON 2017 #Veeam #HyperV
VeeamON 2017 is just around the corner and I wanted to let you know that our good friends from Microsoft will be joining us to present this year. Here is a nice snip from the Microsoft Blog: ...A Winning Combination – Veeam 9.5 and Windows Server 2016 – Part 1 #ReFS #Veeam #VeeamOn #MVPDays
In this post I’m going to touch on a few basic components that make Veeam 9.5 and Windows Server 2016 a winning combination. I will be presenting at a #VeeamOn breakout session on Thursday. We’ll be talking about using a Microsoft’s Storage Spaces Direct technology as a Veeam Backup and Restore File Repository. Which Operating and Filesystem do you think I’ll recommend?
I think we’ve all heard of Veeam by now, the most innovative and leading backup provider for virtual and physical environments. Regardless of hardware vendor, and regardless of hardware type, rackmount or hyper converged, it just works. But why is Veeam 9.5 and Windows Server 2016 a winning combination together? The two companies have worked hard together to simply and enhance existing technology not only to decrease backup and restore times, but to with storage technology to allow you to save space without deduplication and to guarantee the integrity of your data at rest. How? You’ll find out if you keep reading.
Overview of our Microsoft MVP / #VeeamVanguard Sessions for #VeeamON 2017 #MVPBuzz
This year at VeeamON 2017 in New Orleans Dave and I will be presenting a total of 7 sessions. We wanted to do a quick write-up on them to let you know when and where they will be. First of all, let’s have a look at the floor plan for the Conference and Expo Hall...The Case of the Mysterious Reboot #MVPHour @MVPDays #HyperV
This week I was asked by a client of mine to check into why a VM kept mysteriously rebooting. Here are some of my notes about this case à It actually turned into a nice little blog post. I have obviously redacted the customer information for privacy reasons. Case...Dave’s Cool Tools Part-1 #mvphour #Canitpro @mvpdays #OneDrive #Veeam
Have you ever received an email like the one in the screen shot below? Well, I did this morning and it reminded me of a really cool tool that I always use to solve this very issue. Now remember finding those log files that are running away, temp files and are not...Office 365 from Zero to Hero – Part 3 #Office365 #MVPHour #OneDrive
Communications is key in any project and for those of you that are working on a Hybrid Cloud imitative this blog post will be very interesting. I often get requests from my clients regarding communications plans, email templates, process, and general end user adoption...WSUS – Microsoft Software License Terms have not been completely downloaded #SCCM #MVPHour
I’ve seen this pop up a few times in forums and even in a few SCCM implementations. It’s actually a fairly simple fix if you know which log files to look at. Check your logs and/or keep reading this post to see how to fix the wonderful Microsoft Software License Terms have not been completely downloaded WSUS Issue.
Office 365 from Zero to Hero – Part 2 #Office365 #MVPHour #OneDrive
Now that my account has fully provisioned let’s login and make sure we can actually send and receive emails with the default configuration. Ok so yup we can send and receive email in this newly minted Office 365 Tenant. The journey to a Microsoft Hybrid Cloud...Office 365 from Zero to Hero – Part 1 #Office365 #MVPHour #OneDrive
This week I have started a new project where a customer will Migrate from Exchange 2010 to Office 365. The cool part about this project is that the Office 365 configuration is “Green Field”. I have worked a long time in my career and it isn’t very...Congratulations to Cristal Kawula for getting her Microsoft MVP Award today #MVPBuzz #MVPHour
So, proud of Cristal Kawula for finally getting the prestigious Microsoft MVP Award today. It was pretty unbelievable because as I was writing the post about Allan I was emailed this one about Cristal. I don’t know of very many Communities out there like our...Congratulations to Allan Rafuse for getting his Microsoft MVP Award today #MVPBuzz #MVPHour
One of our family of bloggers Allan Rafuse has now received the prestigious Microsoft MVP Award today. This makes a grand total of 3 x Microsoft MVP’s that we have as active bloggers. Congratulations Allan we are extremely happy to have you as part of our team....Learning OneDrive for Business Part 3 @OneDrive #OneDrive #MVPHour
Well this is just a quick update that after setting up my Symbolic Links in the Part 2 of this series. My Mapped Network Drive Files have started to upload. It seemed to take quite a while for the OneDrive for Business Sync Client to process all of the files prior to...Improvements to the Blog – We hope you like them #mvphour #mvpbuzz
We have been working really hard as a group of Community Evangelists to improve our blogging content and quality of the blog site. Over the past few weeks we have added some really cool new features to www.checkyourlogs.net and we hope you enjoy them. New Feature #1 –...The Patch Solution – Part 6 #PowerShell #ThePatchSolution #MVPHour
Now that we know about the great advantages that The Patch solution provides, understand the main goals of The Patch Solution, it’s time to look at how it’s configured. Keep on reading to see how easy it is to set up and get going.
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 18 #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour
In Part # 17 of this series we were working with some Cisco Meraki Infrastructure. I wrote that I didn’t feel that the Meraki Infrastructure Supported Priority Flow Control 802.1Qbb. I just heard back from Cisco Technical Support and they have confirmed the...The Ultimate Performance Tuning Guide for Windows Server 2016 #HyperV #MVPHour
I know a lot of us are always struggling to figure out the best way to optimize our Server Farms. Well look no further… Checkout this Ultimate Performance Tuning Guide for Windows Server 2016. The best part is that you can actually download the entire document in a...List of my Sessions for #VeeamOn 2017 New Orleans, LA #Veeam #VeeamVanguard #MVPBuzz
Well I seem to have done it to myself again. I submitted a ton of sessions for #VeeamON 2017 and I have been selected for count them 7 sessions. Below is a list of the sessions that will be delivered at the Microsoft Theatre on the Trade Show Floor. We will have a...#Meetup with the Calgary Microsoft User Group #CMUG and learn about @ONEDrive for Business #OneDrive
Emile and I will be doing our very first presentation as MODE (Microsoft OneDrive for Business Experts) on Thursday May 25, 2017 at the Chinook Mall Microsoft Store Location. In this session, you will learn about the benefits of using Microsoft One Drive for your...Learning OneDrive for Business Part 2 @OneDrive #OneDrive #MVPHour
So, we are starting on our journey of learning OneDrive for Business. I have a goal in mind for this post and that is to Migrate my Corporate File Server up to SharePoint Document Libraries using the OneDrive for Business Sync Client. I have been running the same File...Learning OneDrive for Business Part 1 @OneDrive #OneDrive #MVPHour
In this series, we will learn about Microsoft OneDrive for Business. Let’s get started by first logging into to our Office 365 SharePoint Site for myself this is our corporate site at https://triconelite.sharepoint.com. We have just started to create some...Active Directory Authentication (LDAP) for Cisco Unified Computing System Manager (UCS) – Part 1 #ActiveDirectory #UCS #MVPHour
UCS Manager supports LDAP Authentication along with a specific setting for Microsoft’s LDAP implementation, Active Directory. After configuring this a few times for multi-domain support, I’ve found a few things that can become troublesome if you don’t watch out.
#PowerShell – The Patch Solution – Part 5
Having an email in your inbox outlining which machines in your organization that are going to be patched in the next day or two is every service owner/managers dream. So simple and proactive. The email also outlines when the machines are going to be patched and displays how many outstanding updates there are. This is a summary of what will happen in the days to come. Keep reading to see how you can dive into seeing the details of what is about to happen in your organization.
#PowerShell – Setting SQL Server Memory Allocation (Maximum and Minimum)
If you’ve ever run an installation of SQL Server, you’ll know it’s a database, and databases love, love, love memory. By design and by default, Microsoft SQL Server thinks it’s the only process on the system and is therefore given all the available memory and CPUs. As a best practice, I limit this. Here is the script I use to edit these values.
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 17 #StorageSpacesDirect #MVPHour
I have recently had the chance to work on the configuration of a @Cisco Meraki farm this week. I was brought in to troubleshoot a lot of latency coming from the network. Our HyperConverged Servers were constantly dropping packets and all around it wasn’t a very...PowerShell – The Patch Solution – Part 4
The previous posts on The Patch Solution have outlined the though process and goals to a patching strategy. Now it’s time to start taking that strategy and putting it into practice. Now that we have defined some of our goals (See
The Patch Solution – Part 3 post), we can start looking at how we reach those goals. In my opinion, one of the easiest goals to attain is reporting. This gives you an attainable goal which is completely measurable and trackable. Simply run a report, see where you’re at, update a few machines, run a report and see where you got to. The solutions that we try and come up with at TriCon Elite is all about being free and giving back to the community. We like to strive for secure and simple. For The Patch Solution, we opted to use Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).
SCCM PowerShell and Connect to Multiple SCCM Sites at once (DEV/Prod)
There have been quite a few times that I’ve needed to do some comparisons, or even move some objects from one SCCM environment to another. The System Center Configuration Manager console has quite a few options for exporting objects, or saving things to CSV, but then you still need to import it. Check out the rest of this blog post to see how easy it is to report, compare or recreate things between your SCCM environments with PowerShell.
PowerShell – The Patch Solution – Part 3
So far in this blog series (See previous post: PowerShell – The Patch Solution – Part 2), we’ve explored some of the thoughts and questions that come to mind when thinking about patching your infrastructure. Now we need to design deployment strategy. Keep...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 16 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
As you read in Part 15 of this blog Series we are able to create some great Gold Images with Big Demo. How do we go about building the actual application Servers from the Gold Images? Building your Servers with Big_Demo Whenever you are working with logic and...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 15 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
We have been having some great feedback over the past few weeks on the blog series and especially the BigDemo Script that Dave uses for his deployments. So, in the spirit of community and the love of sharing information here is a nice breakdown of exactly how the...PowerShell – The Patch Solution – Part 2
In the previous part of this blog series (PowerShell – The Patch Solution – Part 1) we introduced The Patch Solution. Simple, elegant, but yet empowering! In this post, I want to talk about some of the issues I’ve seen and heard about around patching. After you understand this, you’ll have a deeper understanding of The Patch Solution.
Deployment Options for Windows 10 in SCCM
With the release of Windows 10 came a new deployment option that Microsoft calls an “In-Place Upgrade.” But wasn’t that always a method, like when we went from Windows XP to Windows 7? Kinda sorta, but not really. Traditionally, we often used...PowerShell – The Patch Solution – Part 1
Over the last few years, we here at TriCon Elite have been using what we call “The Patch Solution”. Boring name, but it also fits its purpose. Who loves deploying patches and reporting? There are many ways to patch your Windows Servers, but our slim, simple, PowerShell solution was created to solve a few key areas, for free. It has been released to the community for quite some time, but keep reading on why you should use it too!
PowerShell – Add a Direct Member to a SCCM Collection
One of these tasks was to add a computer directly to a SCCM collection. According to their requirements, they had to use direct membership and could not do a WMI call. So I created the following script and added it to their task sequence.
Connecting on-premises to Azure using Windows Server 2016
One of the most powerful features of Azure is it’s ability to seamlessly integrate with your on-premises environment, functioning similar to every other site. To connect the Azure resources to the on-premises network, we use an Azure Gateway. There are two...Going to VeeamOn in New Orleans?
I wanted to do a shout out to all you folks that are registered for VeeamOn, to consider coming to town a few days early. On the Friday before VeeamOn, Vanguards Dave and Cristal Kawula will be hosting a 1-day conference, called MVPDays Community Roadshow...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 14 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
In this blog post in the series we will have a look at some of the different Vendor Designs that have been made available. Let’s first start with our good friends over at Intel who have a very close partnership with Microsoft and the Storage Platform Teams....Workaround for Storage Spaces Direct – Unspecified Media Type
With the release of our Master Storage Spaces Direct book on Amazon we have been getting a lot of requests to help people setup some test labs. Storage Spaces Direct does require some specific hardware to get going and today we had one such case. We wanted to use some...Need Leverage for your next Hardware Purchase?
Negotiate your Maintenance Contracts One of the games our industry has played for as long as I have been around, is with maintenance contracts. These contracts are the lifeblood of most of these organizations as they generate run rate revenue well beyond the initial...S2D on Fanless Hardware
Over the past few months, I’ve been working with the Airtop-S Fanless Server from Compulab. This is a compact device, about the size of a Small Form Factor PC. What’s cool about it is that it uses a Natural AirFlow technology that does not require fans or...Azure IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS
One of the things that almost everyone asks me when starting cloud adoption, is what the difference is between the various as a Service models. So much so, that I recently did a presentation on the topic at MVPDays in Edmonton. Here are the main points that I talked...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 13 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
Recently at the MVPDays Roadshow in Western Canada I had a chance to deliver a session with a few good friends on Storage Spaces Direct. It was called an Absolute Beginners Guide to Storage Spaces Direct. We recorded this session in Edmonton, AB where Clint Wyckoff...Deploy OMS Step by Step – Quick, Easy, Free
Operations Management Suite is Microsoft’s Azure-based Cloud monitoring solution. As is the case with all their Azure solutions, OMS has seen tremendous development and enhancements since its evolution from Operational Insights. Over the past couple of years, I...Windows 7: Good to the last drop
For the majority of organizations, Windows 10 adoption can’t happen soon enough. The security enhancements bring on a sigh of relief in an age of Ransomware and devastating zero-day threats. There are, however, still isolated environments and service...A bit of a RoCE start…
...Harnessing the Power of #PowerShell #DSC to build my #RDS Farm Part 1 #mvphour
So, I have a new project coming up where I will be required to manage, maintain, and support an RDS Deployment for a local engineering firm. And after working with some of the brightest PowerShell experts in the world on the Master PowerShell Tricks series I decided...PowerShell –Managing the Datadog Cloud Service
PowerShell to the rescue again! Datadog is a Cloud service for aggregating real-time metrics, events and logs from all your servers. The easiest way is to install an agent and let it report via HTTPS directly to the internet or via a web proxy. Another cloud aggregation solution that I’m more familiar with is Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS). Both of these services provide access via PowerShell.
Nutanix Technology Champion #NutanixNTC for 2017 #MVPHour
...Microsoft OneDrive Expert #MODE Charter Member #mvphour
Today I had a rather exciting email come in from Microsoft. It turns out that I was selected to be a Charter Member in Stephen Rose’s @stephenlrose program called the Microsoft OneDrive Expert. As a Microsoft MVP and Community Influencer this is not the only...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 12 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
In Part #11 of this blog series we chatted about expanding an existing Virtual Disk and respective Volume. Now what about expanding the Storage Pool itself. Let’s say for argument sake that you have run yourself out of space in your Storage Pool. Luckily you...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 11 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
One of the most common administration tasks of a SAN Administrator is expanding a LUN or Volume. In this 11th part of our Blog Series on Storage Spaces Direct we will look at the process to expand an existing Virtual Disk and corresponding Volume. Expand a Virtual...SMB Special: #StorageSpacesDirect on Fanless Xeon Servers #MVPHour @ecabot
I had a chance to watch this amazing session delivered by one of our Principal Consultants Emile Cabot at MVPDays 2017. He took some Fanless Xeon Servers and built them live during this 45-minute session and did an absolutely amazing job. This session was a spin off...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 10 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
Sometimes after we have configured a piece of infrastructure in production it would be nice to see what we have done right? Well, unfortunately for Storage Spaces Direct a lot of these functions are still trapped inside of the PowerShell Providers that are exposed....Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 9 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
We have a Storage Spaces Direct Cluster now what? Wouldn’t it be nice to maybe create a HyperConverged Virtual Machine on it or present some storage for a Scale out File Server (SOFS). Well fortunately we have another Good News Scenario for you. Guess what it...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 8 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
So, the day has finally arrived and you have successfully completed the first 7 parts of this Blog Series. Now you actually want to deploy Storage Spaces Direct. Well this is a good news bad news scenario. Let’s start with the good news: Good News There is...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 7 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
Prior to deploying Storage Spaces Direct we should probably make sure that our Storage Subsystem is healthy and ready to go. Here are some quick PowerShell commands that you can use to validate your S2D Configuration. Validate the Cluster prior to Configuring Storage...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 6 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
Before we can successfully build our Windows Failover Cluster we need to assign some IP Addresses to our nodes and their respective virtual adapters. Let’s do this now Configuring the IP Addresses for the S2D Nodes #Configure S2DNode1 New-NetIPAddress...PowerShell – Updating the .DEFAULT and All User Profiles Registry
There are times that you may need to push out a change to all existing user profiles and to new profiles that are created on a system. I’ve seen a few PowerShell scripts floating around out there, but they didn’t seem to work for Windows 7 SP1. You may or...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 5 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 4 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
Post-Configuration of the S2D Nodes With the nodes now fully turned on we can connect the S2D nodes to complete their final configuration tasks. It normally takes less than 1 hour to complete the entire post configuration. You can further automate this entire process...Exporting SCCM Boundaries and Boundary Group Information
Working with SCCM 2012 R2 and SCCM 2016, there are PowerShell cmdlets to export several types of objects from System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). Alas, the boundary group Cmdlets just aren’t there yet. Here are a few examples of SCCM objects that support...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 3 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
In this third part of our Blog Series on Deploying Storage Spaces Direct we will talk about probably the most important configuration – Network. Storage Spaces Direct relies on having a solid, high performing, and reliable network configuration in order to operate...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 2 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
...Deploying Storage Spaces Direct – Part 1 #StorageSpacesDirect #mvphour
Deploying Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) The day has arrived for your company to start deploying its newly acquired HyperConveged Infrastructure from SuperMicro. Fortunately, the Out of Box experience process has been greatly simplified and a near instant-on...#1 Best Selling Book – Master PowerShell Tricks Volume 2 – Free for the next 48 hours #PowerShell
Backed by popular demand #1 best-selling authors: Dave Kawula MVP – @daveKawula Thomas Rayner MVP – @mrthomasrayner Sean Kearney – @EnergizedTech Ed Wilson “The Scripting Guy”- @scriptingguys Mick Pletcher MVP – @mick_pletcher Allan...#MVPDays – Storage Spaces Direct – Getting your feet wet
Today at the #MVPDays Vancouver we talked to people who had never heard of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direction (S2D). It’s hard to believe, but yes there are people out there that haven’t had the chance to get up to date on the latest Windows Server 2016 Operating System. This is usually due to meetings, ongoing projects and running older version of the Windows OS. So what were the big take aways from the session?
Opening/Upgrading SCCM 2012 R2 PowerShell
Nothing truly new here, but it is a new year and a new environment for me. I’ve just sat down at my seat at a customer’s location and wanted to inventory a bunch of things inside their System Center Configuration Manager 2012 R2 CU3 environment. Regardless it’s older and we’re in the process of migrating to Configuration Manager 2016! Exciting times ahead! In any case, I installed the Configuration Manager 2012 R2 console on my Windows 7 laptop (64-bit). See where things are going. We’re not running the latest and greatest… yet 😉
The Ultimate Veeam Production-Replica Test Lab Step by Step
As a consultant, I implement many different solutions, be they pilot, production, or proof-of-concept. In any organization of any size, it is important to test the implementation, functionality, and management of a new solution before the production environment is...The Worlds Largest Availability Conference – VeeamOn, May 16-19, New Orleans
2017 is a big year for IT infrastructure. Non-volatile SSDs are readily available, Azure datacenters are cropping up in all corners of the planet, and HyperConverged Infrastructure is free to everyone running Windows Server 2016. A lot of companies have been keeping...GPO/GPP – Control the Local Administrators Group
One of the issues that data center or even any Windows Administrator has is managing the local administrators group on each and every one of their domain members. There is a lovely security setting that has been around for many years, Restricted Groups, which can be controlled via local security policies of via GPO. This works, but has a few pitfalls as you’ve probably run into once in a while. Keep reading to see how you can solve some of them with Group Policy Preferences.
Master PowerShell Tricks Volume 2 – Now Available on Kindle
This time with the help of these amazing Co-Authors we have released another amazing volume of Master PowerShell Tricks. This time we have some new MVP’s that helped out and in no particular order here they are: Thomas Rayner – MVP and Honorary Scripting Guy...Free Azure Training – Microsoft Tech Summit Sessions on #Azure from 2016
...SCCM – Using Multiple SUPs, but clients aren’t switching
One of the issues I’ve come across is using Configuration Managers (2012 R2+) feature of being able to deploy multiple Software Update Points (SUP) within a site. This scenario is essentially to avoid using traditional network load balancing (NLB) and offload the work to the clients. One would think, if one SUP is not available it’s pretty simple, switch to the next one in the list. Well this doesn’t always happen as one may expect. Why?
Great Free Training – Live Stream Tech Field Day #TFD13
Hey folks you definitely need to check out this live event streaming via LiveSteam called Tech Field Day. My good friends and colleagues from Veeam Rick Vanover and Clint Wyckoff are presenting later this afternoon. The best part is that this 3-day event is...Configuring Multiple Software Update Points (SUP) in SCCM
I was working on a SCCM deployment where there was already one existing Software Update Point (SUP). Due to new firewall restrictions, a few new SUPs were required. Microsoft has changed their best practices with SCCM in regards to using multiple SUPs. The best practice is to share the WSUS Database (SUSDB) and the WSUS content directory. This cuts down on a lot of space, replication and administrative issues.
Master PowerShell Tricks – Volume 2
With the amazing success of our first release of Master PowerShell Tricks Volume 1 we have commenced Volume 2 already. This time we have added some amazing new Authors to the series. It is going to be another huge success and hit the #1 Best Sellers list just like...Edmonton MVPDays Early bird tickets Sold Out #mvphour @mvpdays
Still want to attend MVPDays? Well you can you just have to pay for your ticket. I know you are asking yourselves: Man I wish I was faster and got one of the Free Early Bird tickets! Now I have to pay $99.00 to attend. Why would I do that? Well let’s see what...Our PowerShell eBook is available… for Free (72 hours)!
Well it’s finally happened, I’m officially going to accept the title of author. After previous collaborating on a few books, and after a lot of time collaborating with other MVP rock stars and some hard work, our eBook, Master PowerShell tricks (Volume 1) has been released on Amazon.
Free E-Book Available for the next 72 Hours – Master Storage Spaces Direct
Just for you we have a promotion running on our latest book called Master Storage Spaces Direct Volume 1. This time it is 100 % free on Amazon for the next 72 hours. In this book, you will learn how to deploy Microsoft HyperConverged solution called Storage Spaces...Free E-Book for the next 48 hours – Master PowerShell Ticks
Just for you we have a promotion running again on Master PowerShell Tricks Volume 1. This time it is 100 % free on Amazon for the next 48 hours. http://amzn.to/2jhiQBT The coolest part about this is we are currently ranked #329 on the Bestsellers list at...PowerShell – Installing and Finding Modules (PowerShellGet)
Install-Module is a wonderful new cmdlet that comes with PowerShell v5 and can be found in Windows Management Framework (WMF) 5.0. This allows us to skip the whole search the Internet to find modules and pull them from pre-configured repositories. By default, your machines should be configured to look at https://www.powershellgallery.com/api/v2/ .
EmoPowerShell Validate Parameters for you
When writing PowerShell scripts, one of the most time consuming tasks is validating input and handling invalid input. PowerShell does have built in mechanisms to deal with this and ease these tasks so that we can focus on creating a production level script.
Free – Azure Training!
On-going training is something that anyone in IT needs. IT changes as fast as the clouds come and go! You need to keep up! There are several ways to easily keep your head in the clouds using Microsoft’s resources and social media. The New Year is here and one of your...Comparing Office 2016 and Office365 ProPlus
With the widespread adoption of Office365, a popular question that comes our way is whether to deploy the Office 2016 Client, Office365 Client, or a hybrid of the two. The Office365 ProPlus client is available to license as a standalone monthly/annual subscription, or...PowerShell – My way to prepare a SQL Server VM
As I get called on a lot of to do SQL Server installations, I’ve come up with what I’ve found works best for me. Every location has different infrastructure, security, networks and their way of doing things. Since I’m the one doing the installation, and I know I’ll get called back in the future at some point to upgrade, troubleshoot or manage the SQL Server environment, I like to have a set of standards. Documentation, I actually do enjoy writing it (yes I may be sick), but having a self-documenting PowerShell script is even better!
Master PowerShell Tricks Volume 1 – Kindle Version is now Available
Well fearless @mvpdays followers it is official we are in print on Amazon. Kindle version of Master PowerShell Tricks is out today. Order your copy and support your MVP’s. You can check out a copy of the book yourself below: Thanks, Dave and the MVPDays...PowerShell – Start-Service, Stop-Service, they work, but not always well enough!
Well as the title suggests, I’m happy with the code, but I always find myself adding more and more code around the cmdlets. Service control in Windows has been pretty straight forward for the past few decades. Obviously PowerShell can control the state and configuration of services, but one thing I’ve always run into with service control is reacting to how the service stops and starts and also managing the state of dependent services. I’m sharing some short code functions that I use.
Hyper Converged for the best price possible – E-Book
Well based on some extremely wonderful feedback from our attendees of the North American MVPDays Community Roadshow we have released our 2nd @mvpdays e-book. This one was compiled by Dave Kawula MVP @davekawula. The book reveals what you need to know about the Hyper...Master PowerShell tricks Volume 1
Update…. Order your copy today. Our E-Book is available on Kindle from Amazon Below is a preview of the Kindle Version that was just released as of today. December 19, 2016. The book documents the following Master PowerShell tricks that these two experts employ...It’s that “Time” Again – Windows Server 2016 Time Changes
Well I recently blogged about time syncronization issues in Windows Time Sync – The fixes!. This troubleshooting still works on Windows Server 2016, but hopefully we don’t need to do it as often!
Windows Azure Pack (WAP) Overview
Do you empower your customers whether they’re colleagues, internal departments or even 3rd party entities to provision virtual machines, databases or websites in your data center?
PowerShell – Is your AD Sites and Services missing subnets?
This has been a very common pain point for Active Directory administrators. AD is perfectly planned according to Microsoft’s best practices and successfully deployed. But as time goes on, network admins change the network topology, devices are added here and there and if there is no formal process of adding new networks, AD Sites and Services will mostly likely not be updated to reflect these changes.
Massive Savings on Hyper Converged Infrastructure with Project @Data_Raft #S2D
...Countdown to Orlando MVPDays
We are less than 1 week away from our last stop on the North American MVPDays Community roadshow. This time we are heading all the way down to Orlando Florida on December 2, 2016. We still have space left to come out and see some amazing presenters and support your...Why Do Hyper Converged Installs fail?
About two years ago the term Hyper Converged infrastructure was not common in most discussions around that IT water cooler. Now it seems like this is all that people are talking about. Hyper Converged has skyrocketed onto the Gartner Magic quadrant and customers are...Hyper-V Operational Training Part 2
...Hyper-V Operational Training – Part 1
...Huge Milestone – Episode 50 – MVPDays Countdown Show – Orlando
Wow I can’t believe we finally did it. 50 Episodes are up and live at http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/interview-with-an-mvp I have to say a huge thank you to our fearless Microsoft CPM MVP Lead – Simran Chaudry @sim_100. He was the one that pushed us to start...PowerShell – Copy directories/files to a list of remote computers
How often are you given a list of servers and you need to quickly copy files to them? I used to always take the wonderfully format list given to me and format them into a PowerShell array buy putting quotes around each of them and commas. Example:
$Computers = @(
“Server01”,
“Server02”,
“Server03.mydomain.local”,
“Server06”
)
Windows Time Sync – The fixes!
As many of you know when running a simple standalone machine at home, at work, in a datacenter or in the cloud, time keeping can be tricky. Very odd though, it’s been around for over a decade and people/enterprises still can’t seem to figure out how it really works or how they should configure it.
Every Windows computer has a lovely service on it that is called W32Time with a description that reads “Windows Time Service”. This service is set to manual, and for all intents and purposes can be left that way.
Azure Stack – @Data_Raft
The goal of this project is to bring affordable Hyper-Converged infrastructure to environments of all sizes using 100% native Microsoft technologies and a few cool Open Source tools too. The cost to you is FREE.
@MVPDays – Seattle 2016
What did you miss by not attending #MVPDays, Seattle 2016?
Allan Rafuse
Cary Sun
Cristal Kawula
Dave Kawula
Émile Cabot
