You shouldn’t have to reboot your ESX servers very often. But when you do, you might want the virtual machines to start up automatically. To configure a virtual machine to start up (or shut down) automatically select the host and click on the Configuration tab. Then click on virtual machine Startup/Shutdown and click on Properties, selecting “Allow virtual machines to start and stop automatically with the system”. As I mentioned in a previous article, you can also configure the operating system to start after a brief delay by providing a Default Startup Delay time, allowing time for booting systems to run scripts or to throw them into Safe Mode. You…
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Configure File Shares In Windows Server 2012
As I mentioned in an earlier article, the File and Storage Role is installed by default in Windows Server 2012. This means you can create a file share with a very minimal amount of work on a brand new server. To get started, as with many things regarding Server 2012, open Server Manager. From Server Manager, click on File and Storage Services in the Server Manager sidebar. Then click on Shares. From the Shares screen, click on the Shares drop-down list and then click on New Share. This will open the New Share Wizard. From here, select a type of share. For the purposes of this article, we’ll create a very…
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Adding Roles In Windows Server 2012
Out of the box a Windows Server 2012 isn’t really that helpful. But luckily, it has these things called Roles. Roles are things like Hyper-V, File Sharing, Windows Update Services, Web Server, etc. Each role then has a collection of services that it can run as well, within the Role. Roles include (borrowing from Microsoft here): Active Directory Certificate Services Overview This content provides an overview of Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) in Windows Server 2012. AD CS is the server role that allows you to build a public key infrastructure (PKI) and provide public key cryptography, digital certificates, and digital signature capabilities for your organization. Active Directory Domain Services Overview By…
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Role Playing In Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2012 comes with a nifty feature called the Remove Roles and Features Wizard. Using this wizard, you can remove any of the built in roles or role services from a Windows Server 2012. To get started, open the Dashboard in Server Manager. Click on Remove Roles and Features from the Manage drop-down list. If you accidentally click on Add Roles and Features then you will be fine, as the first screen asks if you would instead like to launch the Remove Roles and Features wizard. At the Before you Begin screen of the Remove Roles and Features Wizard click Next. At the Server Selection screen, select the server…
- Active Directory, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mac Security, Network Infrastructure, Ubuntu, Unix, VMware, Windows Server, Windows XP, Xsan
List All DNS Records For A Domain
Sometimes you want to move a domain but you don’t have a copy of the zone file in order to recreate records. The easy way to do this is to grab a zone transfer. To do so, dig is your friend: dig -tAXFR mycompany.com Sometimes though (and actually more often than not) a zone transfer is disabled. In that case you’ll need to dig the domain a bit differently. I like to use +nocmd, query for any and list the results (+answer): dig +nocmd https://krypted.com/ any +answer Which results in the following: ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 39183 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1,…
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Reboot Windows 8 Pro Using A Touch Screen
How to reboot Windows 8 using a touch screen. Your browser does not support the video tag
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Configuring Windows 2008 As An NTP Server
When you’re configuring a Mac to leverage an existing Windows infrastructure, having the clocks in sync is an important task. Luckily, Windows Server has been able to act as an NTP server for a long time. In this article, we’ll look at configuring Server 2008 R2 to be an NTP server for Mac and Linux clients. Note: Before you get started, or any time you’re hacking around in the registry, make sure to do a backup of your registry/SystemState! To enable NTP on Windows Server, open your favorite registry editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeTimeProvidersNtpServer. From here, enter a key called Enabled as a dword with a value of 00000001. The NTP Server should…
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Managing Office 365 Users Using PowerShell
Programmatically controlling the cloud is an important part of trying to reign in the chaos of disparate tools that the beancounters make us use these days. Of all the companies out there, Microsoft seems to understand this about as well as anyone and their fine programmers have provided us with a nice set of tools to manage Office 365 accounts, both in a browser (as with most cloud services) and in a shell (which is what we’ll talk about in this article). This article isn’t really about scripting PowerShell. Instead we’re just looking at a workflow that could be used to script a Student Information System, HRIS solution or another…
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Installing the DHCP Service in Windows Server
With the DHCP service no longer in the Server apps provided by Apple (for the most part), it’s important to look at alternative solutions to host the service. The DHCP Service in Windows Server is a Role that a Windows Server can fill that dynamically assigns IP addresses to client computers requesting addresses. The DHCP Role is easily added using the Server Manager application, available in the Administrative Tools menu of the Start Menu. Once opened, click on the Add Roles button. At the Select Server Roles screen, locate DHCP Server and then check the box for it, which will allow you to click on the Next button. At the…
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Disable ACLs for SMB
I had a pretty strange issue recently with how QuickBooks works with Samba. The fix was to disable ACLs for SMB. While this seems like a silly issue for silly software, it’s worth noting the fix. Before doing so, it’s worth mentioning that defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server AclsEnabled -bool NO If yore having saving issues from QuickBooks and this doesn’t fix your issue I’d immediately switch back: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server AclsEnabled -bool YES