I know I haven’t been posting a lot, but that’s because I’ve been busy developing my first public Powershell modules. This short post isn’t to discuss the specifics of that, but rather my new strategy going forward. Many of you probably know what GitHub is by now, but for those of you who don’t, it’s pretty much the...
I created a function while ago that utilizes the VMDK serial number to map which VMDK is used for a Windows volume. Starting with Windows 10 / Server 2016, I noticed that I could no longer see the serial number of a VMDK insides the OS. After reaching out to VMware, turned out to be a really simple fix. First let me...
In general, I find DRS does a fantastic job of keeping VM’s happy. However, in the past, I’ve seen a number of unexplained situations where hosts in a cluster run out of memory when a VM goes from idle, to busy all of a sudden. In fact, this happened three times to us in a dedicated cluster for our SQL VM’s. What was...
Introduction: We setup a decent number of SQL servers every year. Most of the time we’re migrating to a newer OS + SQL combo, but sometimes it’s for a new product. As you may have read in my virtualizing SQL post, one of the pros to virtualizing SQL, was having this ability. Having seen the ameba affect virtualization...
Introduction: I know what you’re thinking, it’s 2017, why are you writing about virtualizing Microsoft SQL? Most are doing it after all. And even if they’re not, there’s this whole SQLaaS thing that’s starting to take off, so why would anyone care? Well I’m writing this as more of a reflection on virtualizing SQL....
I know I’m totally guilty of saying expletives with regards to truckers. Being honest, most of it is due to my own impatience / selfishness. Still once I realize, that I’m getting upset about a person that’s driving a 40-ton vehicle cautiously, things tend to fall back into perspective. In fact, the more I’ve watched...
Series Introduction: Back in October I had a grand plan to have 23 days of thanks. Unfortunately, life got in the way, and I never had the time to pre-write all the posts I wanted to. Rather than giving up, I’m going to punch out as many as I can before the 24th. Since I want to focus on the month of thanks, by giving...
Introduction: I hate the WSUS reports built into the console. They’re slow, and when it comes to doing something useful with the data, it’s basically impossible. That’s why I wrote this function. I wanted an ability to gather data on a given WSUS computer(s), and work with it in Powershell. This function gives me the...
Introduction: These two functions by themselves aren’t exactly sexy. Their main goal is to be used to feed my function Get-ECSWSUSComputerUpdatesStatusReport. Still, I can see some limited value to them outside of that use case. One thing you’ll notice, is i’m hitting SQL directly instead of querying the WSUS APIs....
Introduction: This post is 100% off topic, it’s about my “exotic car” experience through 877stockcar.com. In general, my blog is for tech stuff, but I figure it might be fun to write about something non-tech for once. This is about the https://877stockcar.com/experiences/exotic-experiences/ located at Pocono Raceway....
Warning: This post is clicking in at 6k words. If you are looking for a quick read, this isn’t for you. Disclaimer: Typical stuff, these are my personal views, not views of my employers. These are not facts, merely opinions and random thoughts I’m writing down. Introduction: I don’t know about all of you, but for me,...
Introduction: If you don’t know by now, I’m a huge PowerShell fan. It’s my go to scripting language for anything related to Microsoft (and non-Microsoft) automation and administration. So when it came time to automating post exchange cumulative update setting, I was a bit surprised to see some of the code examples...
Introduction: If you remember a little bit ago, I said I was trying to work around the lack of driver management with vendors. This function is the start of a few tools you can use to potentially make your life a little easier. VMware’s drivers are VIBS (but not all VIBS are drivers). So the key to knowing if you have...
Hi Folks, After updating WSUS to support Windows 10 newer update format, we noticed that our Windows 10 client weren’t working. The error they were getting was 8024401c whenever we checked for updates (post WSUS upgrade). Initially we thought it was related to the WSUS upgrade, but found out that most of our systems...
Introduction: Backup and recovery is a rather dry topic, but it’s an important one. After all, what’s more critical to your company than their data? You can have the best products in the world, but if disaster strikes and you don’t have a good solution in place, it can make your recovery painful or even impossible....
Hi, Given the recent events, I just wanted to repost one of my older posts which goes over using WSUS’s SQL DB to get the update status of a computer(s).
History: Let me give you a little back story before digging into the meat of this post. My team and I make a very concerted effort to keep our servers firmware and drivers updated. We’ve gone so far as to purchase software from Dell, implement a process on how firmware / drivers are to be updated, and ensuring that...
Disclaimer: These are opinions, not facts and these opinions are mine, not my employers. Introduction: Upon receiving the news that HP was to acquire Nimble, I can’t say I was exactly thrilled. Nothing personal against HP, they make great servers, but I like Nimble the way it is right now. None the less, I know the...
Introduction: One of the things I’m struggling with, is how to balance the number of posts per naming convention. It would be easy in some ways to use a single post per server type, but it would also be overly redundant in many ways. I originally wrote a dedicated post to SQL server naming conventions, and realized...
Introduction: I wrote a really quick review here about MVP systems JAMS product about 1 year or so ago (maybe a little less). At the time, I was in search of a solution that could help me glue together several disjointed systems in a workflow. Specifically, we were trying to integrate Veeam and CommVault backup’s...
Introduction: If you’re working in a Windows environment like me, you have to deal with 15 character limitations (at least if you care about NETBIOS resolution). Honestly, really cramps my style, but these conventions were written with that limitation in mind. If you’re using this for a Linux based server running...
Introduction: One thing that always kind of sucked with windows servers (and its even worse with Linux) is dealing with how to manage local administrator rights. Now I realize a lot of you just add yourself to the domain admins and use that account (not a security best practices) to administer your servers, but what...
Introduction: If there was one area in IT that I tend to be fanatical about (some would say fanatical isn’t a strong enough word), I would have to say its naming conventions. For me, learning about naming conventions in school and then seeing it put into practice in my first real gig, really enforced the concept that...
Introduction: If you’re not in a DevOps based shop, or living under a rock, you may not know that Microsoft has been working on a solution that by all accounts sounds like its poised to usurp GPO / GPP. The solution I’m talking about is Desired State Configuration, or DSC. According to all the marketing hype, DSC is...
Disclaimer: Typical stuff, these are my views not my employers, they’re opinions not facts (mostly at least), use your own best judgement, take my views with a quarry full of salt. Introduction: When I started at my current employer, one of the things I wasn’t super keen on was having to deal with Dell hardware. I had...