windows-server

Recently I needed a way to copy a certificate file from within a PowerShell session to another Windows machine without opening a nested PowerShell session. But I ran into a little snag along the way: Copy-Item‘s dreaded Access is denied error. Here’s my setup: A Windows 10 laptop, from which I’m remoting NC1, a Server 2016 virtual machine I’m remoted into. It’s a member of a domain. HYPERV1, the Server 2016 machine I want to copy a certificate file to.

Sometimes you just need to create a file share. With Windows Server Core, you don’t have all the old GUI tools that we’re all used to. So you have to make do with PowerShell and the old fake DOS prompt. Fortunately, with a little help, it’s pretty easy. First, create the folder you want to share. In this case, c:\share Next, modify the ACL to grant the DOMAIN\File Server Admins group full control

Forget using scripts and group policies to configure a new Windows Server machine. Using Chocolatey and Puppet, you can do it faster & easier than ever (and it’s more fun too). This is especially true if you’re using a Server Core installation and don’t have a GUI to help you along. Oh, and if you don’t know Puppet, you really should watch my course Puppet Fundamentals for System Administrators on Pluralsight 🙂

How to Configure Server Core with Active Directory Services, DNS, and DHCP Using Nothing But PowerShell

Windows Server 2012 offers two installation options: Server Core or “Server with a GUI”. This begs the question: Why would you want to install Server Core instead of the GUI? One reason may be that you have limited physical hardware resources and want to keep the footprint as small as possible.

Recently I needed to build a domain controller, DHCP, and DNS server for a branch office. This office has a Riverbed Steelhead WAN optimization appliance which runs a nested VMware ESXi hypervisor. The appliance has limited memory and disk space, so I needed to keep the installation as small as possible (Incidentally, if I only needed DNS and DHCP, I would have just installed RedHat Enterprise Linux, but having the server be an Active Directory domain controller was also a requirement.)

I’m going to show you step-by-step how I configured Active Directory Services, DNS, and DHCP on a Windows Server 2012 Server Core installation.

Have you ever had an application that seemed to initially run fine under Windows x64, only to have it crash or complain when performing a certain function inside the app? If you’ve run into this problem, take heart because the fix is really simple. But first, it’s helpful to understand what happens when you run an application under 64-bit Windows. Some applications and libraries (DLLs) are compiled in such a way that they can run either as native 64-bit or 32-bit mode.