RSAT

I kept ending up switching primary work computers, changing domains with different policies, WU servers, etc and it seems that installing RSAT ended up using different method to install on occasion. Here’s what I ended up using that just plain works (so long as you have admin rights).

Domain password expiration list

A quick powershell way to list expiring user passwords from a specific ou. Change for your ou structure of course:

Get-ADUser -SearchBase "OU=Users,OU=OREU1-Eugene,OU=Properties,DC=mydomain,DC=net" -filter {Enabled -eq $True -and PasswordNeverExpires -eq $False} –Properties "DisplayName", "msDS-UserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed" | Select-Object -Property "Displayname",@{Name="ExpiryDate";Expression={[datetime]::FromFileTime($_."msDS-UserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed")}} | Export-Csv UserPassExpires.csv


Remote Desktop Services (RDS) in Server 2016

Good guide on setting up terminal services in Windows Server 2016 if you don’t want to use the ‘quick’ setup.

ref: https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2015/06/23/step-by-step-server-2016-remote-desktop-services-quickstart-deployment-rds-vdi-rdp-remoteapp/

 

Win10 1703 (Creators Update) released early

Released on the 4th, it is available through the Win10 update app but most folks will want to grab the ISO.  You can do that via the media creation tool (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=691209). The ISO’s are also available via MSDN

What’s in it for the Enterprise? 

Obtaining ILO ip and mac on esxi host

In Vcenter, for configuring Esxi Host Power management (configure tab, power management) I needed an easy way to get both ip and mac address. A quick search got me a powershell script for use under powercli. I didn’t have powercli installed on my newer workstation so.. here’s the process.

Veeam Endpoint Backup 1.5x and Windows Server 2016

The Veeem folks explicitly blocked the install on Server2016 because testing with the Tech Preview builds of Windows yielded some “actual issues” with the recovery process.
If you wish to still go forward and use it now, here’s how to get it installed.

Query NTP/Time server from windows

Just a quick note for easy reference.

c:\w32tm /stripchart /datonly /samples:5 /computer:0.us.pool.ntp.org

 

 

 

Export AD Computer List

For creating a few group policy preferences, I needed to come up  with a list of all the OU’s (and a simple export from the ADUC gui doesn’t cut it).  I also wanted a rough count of the pc’s in each ou for various other purposes.

OpenSSH on Windows

Quick and Dirty install of OpenSSH under Windows Server 2012R2 to obtain SFTP/SSH login.

Simple email notification when server reboots

Often overlooked is the ability to schedule a task to run at system start.  Utilizing that, you can use any number of ways to craft and send an email upon system reboot.

You can Google for a list of free smtp command line mailers to send the email or just use Blat which I’ve used for a while and works just fine.

Here’s a sample blat cmdline which can be added to a batch script or used directly in the task scheduler.

c:\utils\blat.exe -to recipient@mydomain.com -f Sender@mydomain.com -server smtp.mydomain.com -subject "Server Reboot" -body "%computername% has been rebooted."

If you want to use a mailer that’s a little more robust & includes CC,BCC, and support for SSL/TLS (can be used with gmail) and other little things, check out Send-It-Quiet (src/bin avail via Github). And a 3rd option that also supports TLS is sendEmail.

The key is to simply use task scheduler…there are quite a few delivery methods and scripts including using Powershell like this person has.