To restart multiple computers with PowerShell and without relying on functionality of the remote operating system, you can use the PCSVDevice module. The module contains several useful cmdlets for out-of-band management and supports the IPMI protocol. Sometimes you have to shut down a large number of servers due to outages, Read more…
USMT has been a staple for system administrators for years and has greatly reduced the time to migrate data between computers. USMT has the ability to migrate user files, OS settings, and application settings. It can even do this between different Windows operating system versions. For instance, you can use Read more…
If you are managing Windows servers, chances are you have a mix of physical and virtual servers in your data center. While VMware provides a method to create VMs from templates to simplify server deployments, this method obviously does not work for deploying physical servers. Fortunately, you can use MDT Read more…
I’ve always wanted to be interviewed, and since I am not even close to being famous there is only one person who is willing to conduct one. Me. So let the narcissism role! Q. So how did you get into IT? A. That’s a great question. So back in late Read more…
Like many others organizations, mine is in the process of deploying Windows 10. Any new machine is now Windows 10, and we are now taking requests for users who want to do an in-place upgrade from 7 to 10. We are a small organization in comparison to most, so considering Read more…
Monitoring your infrastructure is an extremely important aspect of managing your systems. If services go down, IT needs to find this out as soon as possible so they can begin the process of bringing them back up. This is common practice for system administrators. To monitor systems there are a Read more…
Now that PowerShell is available on various Linux distributions (such as CentOS, Red Hat, and Ubuntu), it is natural for Windows sysadmins to begin tinkering on Linux machines. One of the first thoughts I had after hearing the news that PowerShell was cross-platform was “I wonder what I can script Read more…
I am not sure about you, but I sometimes wonder what other peoples lives are like day-to-day. I thought I would do a deep dive into a typical day of mine, a thirtysomething Husband, Father, Windows sysadmin. 4:30 am – My one year old daughter is crying. Not crying like Read more…
Chocolatey is a very popular tool among system administrators as it helps automate package management for Windows. Since Chocolatey can be used completely with a CLI, you can programmatically create, install and uninstall packages locally and remotely. One of the main issues I normally hear from Chocolatey users is that Read more…
With the NFL season upon us, Fantasy Football owners are starting to research and plan out which players they will draft. One of the hot topics is always the order of the draft, which if left to the commissioners, can be create a feeling of disapproval. There is no better Read more…