Welcome to the core Windows Server administration and engineering hub on saotn.org. Managing modern enterprise Windows Server environments requires a balance of scalable automation, proactive performance maintenance, and strict security baselines.
This category serves as a deep technical repository for sysadmins and infrastructure engineers. Whether you are deploying bare-metal nodes, managing hybrid active directory topologies, or streamlining lifecycle operations via command-line tooling, these verified guides offer production-ready solutions to keep your server fleet stable, secure, and highly optimized.
To assist with your environment maintenance, our essential Windows Server documentation is organized by administrative focus:
Browse the extensive chronological list of Windows Server tutorials, group policy enforcement templates, and deep-level registry troubleshooting guides below.
Windows Server
Stop editing paths in IIS handler mappings and scheduled tasks every time you upgrade software. Point them at a stable C:\Software\default folder, make that folder a junction with New-Item -ItemType Junction, and switch versions by recreating the link. Remove links with .Delete() so the target stays intact.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Monitor your website performance using Zabbix, Performance Counters, PowerShell and WMI on Windows Server IIS.
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Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 now has native support for IPv6! 🥳
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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?
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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...
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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
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Use PowerShell to install SSL certificate in Windows Server and change its FriendlyName property. As a bonus, I show you how to verify a certificate's Common Name (Subject) and Subject Alternative Name (SAN) using certutil.exe and PowerShell Get-PfxCertificate.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Monitor Microsoft SQL Server, databases and performance with Zabbix, PowerShell, Performance Counters and WMI. Keep SQL Server and databases in top shape and performance up! In this post I show you how you can use Zabbix to monitor those important aspects for database administrators (DBA).
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Set up debugging symbols for WinDbg in Windows and debug BSOD like a boss. Set symbol path for WinDbg.
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How to extract MSI files without installing Windows Server 2022 (quick command-line method). Learn the definitive way to extract files from .msi packages using the msiexec /a switch, TARGETDIR, and PowerShell for automated deployments.
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Connect virt-manager to a KVM host through an ssh tunnel and arbitrary port in Windows using Windows 11 and WSL 2.
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DevOps in Windows: 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.