Moving away from WordPress
Yes, I'm moving Sysadmins of the North away from WordPress and migrate to another CMS.
Disable ECDH public server param reuse in Windows Server IIS
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.
Create strong passwords in Windows
Learn how to create strong and unique passwords in Windows using PowerShell, because the use of those is important. Whereas creating a secure password was difficult in Windows, you nowadays have the tools at hand to do this properly. Unique passwords keeps you safe(r) online and all those unique passwords are easily and securely stored in a password manager.
Install IIS in Windows 11 using PowerShell
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
Monitor website performance in IIS with Zabbix
Zabbix is a great tool to monitor your website performance on IIS using Performance Counters, PowerShell and WMI.
Use PowerShell with SSL client certificates for HTTPS GET requests
Sometimes you have use a specific TLS/SSL certificate or thumbprint for outgoing HTTPS connections because of endpoint restrictions. To test these connections you can use PowerShell, but how do you get the required certificate from your certificate store?
Test if a port is open with PowerShell
Learn how to use PowerShell Test-NetConnection to test if a TCP port is open
Calculate SHA-256 checksums in PowerShell
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).
IPv6 support for WSL2! 🥳
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 now has native support for IPv6! 🥳
Windows SID to username and vice versa
Old school: learn how to convert a Windows SID (security identifier) to an username, or vice versa (username to SID) using PowerShell and VBScript.
Get SQL database backup details with PowerShell
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...
Get IIS Current Connections using PowerShell
Use Get-Counter in PowerShell to get the current number of connections to IIS hosted websites. This information is stored in Windows Server Performance Counters, and you can get it using `Get-Counter` cmdlet in PowerShell of course. But in post I'll show you a different - and perhaps even faster - method using CIM and Win32_PerfRawData_W3SVC_WebService. Read on...
Install SSL/TLS certificates in Windows Server using PowerShell
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.
Tune Windows Server TCP/IP and IIS
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.
Install Windows Updates using PowerShell
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'm show you how to install Windows Updates with PowerShell and the PSWindowsUpdate module.