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Never forget an OpenSSL command again. This comprehensive cheat sheet covers certificate conversion (PFX, PEM, DER), CSR generation, and remote SSL / TLS verification for Windows and Linux admins.
Windows Server
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In this post I describe some of the settings and changes I made to make my Windows 11 and Ubuntu WSL2 into a fully fledged development environment. Here are the settings and tools I use for DevOps / SysOps on Windows.
Windows Server
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Being unable to open SQL Server Configuration Manager is often caused by a corrupt or removed WMI provider for SQL Server. This post explains how to resolve this.
Windows Server
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The fire-and-forget method to update SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) automatically by uninstalling any installed version and downloading & installing the newest available version from Microsoft.
Codebase
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Learn how to use the Twilio SendGrid Web API v3 to send email with PowerShell
Windows Server
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Windows Server IIS is known for reusing DH key values, but there is a way to disable ECDH public server param reuse in Windows Server IIS and here is how.
Windows Server
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Learn how to create strong and unique passwords in Windows using PowerShell, because the use of those unique and strong passwords is important.
Windows Server
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Have a need for IIS in your Windows 11 development station, and now you wonder how to install IIS? Here I describe how you can easily install IIS and some modules using PowerShell
Windows Server
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Zabbix is a great tool to monitor your website performance on IIS using Performance Counters, PowerShell and WMI.
Codebase
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Use a specific TLS certifictate or thumbprint for outgoing HTTPS connections because of endpoint restrictions using PowerShell.
Useful
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Learn how to calculate and create file checksums with PowerShell’s Get-FileHash and certutil.exe. Use this to validate file integrity in Windows (Windows Server).
Codebase
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Learn how to use PowerShell Test-NetConnection to test if a TCP port is open
Windows Server
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Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 now has native support for IPv6! 🥳
Windows Server
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Old school: learn how to convert a Windows SID (security identifier) to an username, or vice versa (username to SID) using PowerShell and VBScript. Because sometimes you just need to convert a Windows SID to an username, don’t you?
Windows Server
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Whenever I need to restore an SQL Server .bak backup file, I want to know some properties of the backup file to make sure I’m working with the correct file(s). Luckily, the .bak file and PowerShell provide all the information I need, so I don’t have to start a Restore procedure in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) just to view the header information. As you know, SSMS is slow…
Windows Server
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Use PowerShell, Performance Counters and WMI to get the current number of active connections to IIS websites. Monitor IIS servers in Zabbix
Windows Server
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The following PowerShell snippet can be used to quickly install an SSL (or TLS) certificate in Windows Server. It assumes you have a PFX file and its password. The default location is Cert:\LocalMachine\My, to use for IIS websites.
Windows Server
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In this small post I’ll guide you through the various Windows Server and IIS configuration settings, for an optimized network performance, high performance websites and high volume of web requests.
Windows Server
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You can use PowerShell to install Windows Updates automatically, unattended and simple. Neat, right? For this, you don’t have to have an enterprise environment with WSUS, or Windows Server, but since this is Sysadmins of the North, I assume you do. In this post I show you how to install Windows Updates with PowerShell and the PSWindowsUpdate module.
Codebase
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Easily send your DevOps reporting by email with this PowerShell function, because the Send-MailMessage cmdlet is obsolete. Of course you’ll be using StartTLS and authenticated SMTP as additional security.
Windows Server
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Sometimes you need to create an additional SQL Server Login (user) for your database (databases). Here is a small T-SQL snippet that creates such a login for contained databases in SQL Server and adds memberships.