Compressed SQL Server backups can be verified in PowerShell using a handy PowerShell function. This comes in handy when you need to verify if existing SQL Server backups are compressed.
Read More »How to determine if a SQL Server backup is compressed?
Sometimes you find your WSUS server keeps crashing over and over again. WSUS is unavailable and/or the WSUS management console hangs. When you start to investigate as to why Windows Server Update Services crashes, you’ll notice the following error message being logged in the HTTPErr log files:
Read More »WsusPool keeps crashing: stops again and againDetect the ethernet network speed using PowerShell or WMI is perfect for Windows Server Core. If you ever need to lookup the speed of your ethernet network card in Windows, on the command-line, use one of the following WMIC commands on your PowerShell prompt:
Read More »How to detect ethernet network speed in WindowsThis post explains how to restrict automatic NS resource record registration in Windows Server DNS using Dnscmd. This prevents Windows Server DNS to automatically create NS records for zones that it hosts on the server.
Disk cleanup in Windows Server using DISM is one of the most popular posts here on Saotn.org. It is still valid for Windows Server 2016 and up. So apparently, disk space usage is an issue in Windows Server. Which made me wonder: what more ways to clean up disk space in Windows Server are there?
Read More »5 Extra ways to clean up disk space in Windows ServerYou sometimes need to list and get all MAC addresses of all Hyper-V virtual machines in your network. Either for your Hyper-V administration or provisioning if you don’t set an unique MAC address automatically. Here is how to get all those MAC addresses easily with PowerShell.
Read More »List all MAC addresses of all Hyper-V Virtual Machines
When you start to play with Windows Server 2016 and IIS 10, you’ll receive an error when you try to install the IIS URL Rewrite Module in IIS. The error occurs because the URL Rewrite Module installer contains an invalid version check for the IIS being used. Here is how to install IIS URL Rewrite Module in IIS 10…
Read More »How to install IIS URL Rewrite Module on Windows Server 2016 & IIS 10Here’s a blacklist check script written in PowerShell. You can use this to lookup an IP address in various blacklists (DNSBL, RBL). Such a check is a great indicator for an IP address’ reputation. Basically this PowerShell blacklist checker is a port of my Bash script to check an IP address blacklist status in Linux.
Read More »PowerShell blacklist check script: find an IP address’ blacklist status & reputationEver wanted to know the current number of active FTP client connections on your Windows Server FTP Service? You can get this statistic using PowerShell, the Get-Counter cmdlet and the Microsoft FTP Service Current NonAnonymous Users performance counter.
Windows PowerShell (“PS” for short) is an important tool in Windows Server for administrators. You can use PowerShell for Windows Server administration, software installation, automation, and shell/command-line scripting. Here is a small and simple introduction to Windows PowerShell.
In this article I’ll show you how to install the Microsoft SQL Server Driver for PHP 7+. This makes the use of an SQL Server database back-end for your PHP website easy. If you want to communicatie with SQL Server using PHP you need to rely on some additional software and PHP extensions. This post walks you through the steps necessary to install the SQL Server driver and SQLSRV extension for PHP 7+, on Windows Server IIS of course.
Read More »How to install Microsoft’s SQL Server Driver for PHPOpenSSL comes in handy when you need to generate random passwords, for example for system accounts and services. In this short post I’ll give you a quick example on how to generate random passwords with OpenSSL in Linux (Bash), Windows and PHP…
Read More »Generate pseudo-random passwords with OpenSSLHere is how you can verify whether an external command in PowerShell was executed successfully or not by its errorlevel. Simply by verifying PowerShell’s return value, or exit code…
Read More »PowerShell return value, exit code, or ErrorLevel equivalentHow to retrieve the Hyper-V virtual machine’s serial number with PowerShell? Sometimes you need to have the serial number of a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM, or guest). We, for instance, use this serial number in our automatic, unattended deployment of the guest operating system. But then you need to know how to find this serial number…
Read More »Get Hyper-V guest serial number with PowerShell
How to tunnel Remote Desktop (RDP) over SSH with PuTTY.
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to perform remote administration on a Windows Server, and the RDP port 3389 is blocked on a firewall? Did you know you can tunnel RDP over SSH with PuTTY? This particularly comes in handy when there is no VPN available to the remote network… Here is how to set up a RDP SSH tunnel with PuTTY.
Read More »Tunnel RDP through SSH & PuTTY
