Posts

How to install PowerShell Core on Linux Mint 18

Beside my Lenovo X250, which is my primary working machine, I’m using a HP ProBook 6450b. This was my primary working machine from 2010 until 2013. With a 128 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM and the Intel i5 M 450 CPU, it is still a pretty usable machine. I used it mainly during projects, when I needed a second laptop (or the PC Express card with the serial port…). It was running Windows 10, until I decided to try Linux MInt.

Continuity vs. change

Note: I trashed this blog post several times. But I would like to express my point of view (hey, this is my blog. :D ) Some weeks back, I had an interesting discussion with a HR consultant. Bottom line: You ruin your career, if you stay for more than 3 years at the same company. IMHO this is bullshit. I have started my IT career, right after school, with an apprenticeship at a local IT company.

Notes about 802.1x and MAC authentication

Open network ports in offices, waiting rooms and entrance halls make me curious. Sometimes I want to plugin a network cable, just to see if I get an IP address. I know many companies that does not care about network access control. Anybody can plugin any device to the network. When talking with customers about network access control, or port security, I often hear their complains about complexity. It’s too complex to implement, to hard to administrate.

NetScaler ADC - Hidden vServer for HTTPS redirect

Starting with release 11.1, NetScaler ADC offers an easy way to redirect traffic from HTTP to HTTPS within the configuration of a load-balanced vServer. With 11.1, Citrix introduced the paramter -redirectFromPort and -redirectURL. While playing with a NetScaler ADC in my lab, I discovered a strange error message as I tried to configure the redirect. Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0 Internal vserver couldn’t be set?! Okay, there was already a vServer, that was listening on port 80.

Workaround for broken Windows 10 Start Menus with floating desktops

Last month, I wrote about a very annoying issue, that I discovered during a Windows 10 VDI deployment: Roaming of the AppData\Local folder breaks the Start Menu of Windows 10 Enterprise (Roaming of AppData\Local breaks Windows 10 Start Menu). During research, I stumbled over dozens of threads about this issue. Today, after hours and hours of testing, troubleshooting and reading, I might have found a solution. The environment Currently I don’t know if this is a workaround, a weird hack, or no solution at all.

Some thoughts about using Windows Server 2012 R2 instead of Windows 10 for VDI

Disclaimer: The information from this blog post is provided on an “AS IS” basis, without warranties, both express and implied. Last week, I had an interesting discussion with a customer. Some months back, the customer has decided to kick-off a PoC for a VMware Horizon View based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). He is currently using fat-clients with Windows 8.1, and the new environment should run on Windows 10 Enterprise. Last week, we discussed the idea of using Windows Server 2012 R2 as desktop OS.

Data Protector Exchange GRE and IP-less Exchange DAG

When dealing with Microsoft Exchange restore requests, you will come across three different restore situations: a database a single mailbox a single mailbox item (mail, calendar entry etc.) Restoring a complete database is not a complicated task, but restoring a single mailbox, or a single mailbox item, is. First, you need to restore the mailbox, that includes the desired mailbox, into a recovery database. Then you can restore the mailbox, or the mailbox items, from the recovery database.

Why "Patch Tuesday" is only every four weeks - or never

Today, this tweet caught my attention. Windows Patching As You Know It Is Dead https://t.co/X3y6rkspUY via @xenappblog — Trond Eirik Haavarstein (@xenappblog) June 28, 2017 Patch management is currently a hot topic, primarily because of the latest ransomware attacks. After appearance of WannaCry, one of my older blog posts got unfamiliar attention: WSUS on Windows 2012 (R2) and KB3159706 – WSUS console fails to connect. Why? My guess: Many admins started updating their Windows servers after appearance of WannaCry.

Roaming of AppData-Local breaks Windows 10 Start Menu

One of my customers has started a project to create a Windows 10 Enterprise (LTSB 2016) master for their VMware Horizon View environment. Beside the fact (okay, it is more a personal feeling), that Windows 10 is a real PITA for VDI, I noticed an interesting issue during tests. The issue For convenience, I adopted some settings of the current Persona Management GPO for Windows 7 for the new Windows 10 environment.

Simplemonitor - Python-based monitoring

While searching for a simple monitoring für my root servers, I’m stumbled over a python-based software called Simplemonitor. Other alternatives, like Nagios, or forks like Incinga etc., were a bit too much for my needs. What is SimpleMonitor? SimpleMonitor is a Python script which monitors hosts and network connectivity. It is designed to be quick and easy to set up and lacks complex features that can make things like Nagios, OpenNMS and Zenoss overkill for a small business or home network.