Sometimes you need to convert a Windows SID (security identifier) to an username, or vice versa (username to SID). In this post I show you a couple of methods to translate the one into the other using VBScript and PowerShell.
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Learn how to query the .bak file for header information. 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…
…Do you want to know how to get the current number of connections to IIS hosted websites? The 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 WMI/CIM and Win32_PerfRawData_W3SVC_WebService. Read on…
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.
Install SSL/TLS certificates in Windows Server using PowerShellRead More »
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 going to show you how to install Windows Updates with PowerShell and the PSWindowsUpdate module.
…Easily send your DevOps reporting by email with this PowerShell function, because the Send-MailMessage cmdlet is obsolete.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.
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In this post I describe some of the settings and changes I made to make my Windows 10 and Ubuntu WSL into a fully fledged development environment. Here are the settings and tools I use for DevOps/SysOps on Windows.
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Are you worried about your .NET webapp running out of memory? In order to let your .NET (web) application run smooth over a longer period of time, it is important to monitor the .NET CLR Garbage Collector (GC) and collection. The what? The .NET Common Language Runtime Garbage Collector. Here is how you can monitor this in a Zabbix template using Powershell WMI / CIM and Win32_PerfRawData_NETFramework_NETCLRMemory Windows Performance Counters.
…Monitor .NET CLR Garbage Collected heap from your web applicationRead More »
If you want to find out fast if your IIS webservers have EnableTrailerSupport enabled for https.sys in the registry, here is a small PowerShell method. All you have to do is set the correct SearchBase.
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If you need to add VirtIO drivers to your Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) to recover your Windows virtual machine, here is how. The following steps come in handy if you found out the hard way you don’t see any disks in Windows RE after a hard crash. As have I…
…Adding VirtIO drivers to Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE)Read More »
If you want to be able to log on to your Windows Servers through Win32 OpenSSH, you can make use of SSH public key authentication through a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. But if you have tens (hundreds) of servers and/or users, perhaps it’s easier to retrieve user SSH public keys from Active Directory (AD). In this article I’ll explain how.
Retrieve SSH public key from Active Directory for SSH authenticationRead More »
Install SQL Server update silent: installing SQL Server cumulative updates is always a cumbersome, and quite daunting task. Unpacking and running the CU installer is a slow process, you have to click through a lot of screens, and it’s hard to get it to install silently. But here is how!
…Here is a short PowerShell snippet for you to remove a computer object from Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). In an elevated PowerShell session, adjust the following to your environment and execute:
…Remove computer object from Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) in PowerShellRead More »
Yesterday, I showed you how to block IP addresses in Windows Firewall using PowerShell. This comes in handy when blocking IP addresses that are brute-force attacking your servers. In this short post I’ll show you how to bulk add IP addresses in Windows Firewall, list an IP address and how to remove all IP addresses from Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security.
…How to add, list and remove IP addresses in Windows FirewallRead More »
This PowerShell solution blocks IP addresses that are trying to brute force your SQL Server logins, by blocking IP addresses in Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security. For the time being, some manual labor is involved, but it is still manageable. You can use this to create your own solution to block offending IP addresses in SQL Server’s firewall.
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