In today’s post, I will show you the process on promoting a Windows Server 2016 Server Core that is Domain Joined to be a Domain Controller in an Existing Active Directory Forest. As mentioned before, using Server Core means less resources used and a smaller attack surface on your server.
Category: Microsoft
Configure First Active Directory Domain Controller with Windows Server 2016 Server Core
In today’s post, I will show you how to create your first Active Directory Forest and Domain Controller on Windows Server 2016 Server Core. The advantages of using Server Core is less overhead, lower resource usage, and lower attack surface.
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Fixing a Fresh Install of Windows 7 SP1 stuck at Checking Windows Updates
When doing a Fresh Installation of Windows 7 SP1, you might run into the issue of running Windows Updates in order to get your Windows 7 SP1 installation up to speed with the latest patches. You will notice that Checking Windows Updates can take hours or never complete. Another thing you can notice is that the Windows Update Service will consistently use around 50% CPU usage this whole time. The following is the way to fix this issue in order to be able to quickly patch your Windows 7 SP1 Installation.
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Creating a Windows 10 ISO/USB Installation Media
Microsoft has recently released Windows 10 which if you have Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1, you are eligible for this upgrade (Except for folks running Enterprise Editions). But what if after the upgrade, you wanted to do a clean install of Windows 10 instead of merely using the built in reset feature? I will show you what you need to do in order to create a Windows 10 ISO/USB Installation Media for a Clean install.
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Running MS Hyper-V in VMWare Workstation 11
This post is an update to the previous post “Running MS Hyper-V in VMWare Workstation 10” that I did a while back. In VMWare Workstation 11, the steps are different to achieve this. When you try to install the Hyper-V Role in Windows Server 2012 R2 VMWare Workstation VM, you will see the following error … Continue reading “Running MS Hyper-V in VMWare Workstation 11”
This post is an update to the previous post “Running MS Hyper-V in VMWare Workstation 10” that I did a while back. In VMWare Workstation 11, the steps are different to achieve this.
When you try to install the Hyper-V Role in Windows Server 2012 R2 VMWare Workstation VM, you will see the following error below.
The following is what you can do in order to run Hyper-V in a VMWare Workstation VM.
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How Power Settings Can Affect Your PC/Server Performance
Power Settings on an Operating System can have different effects on system performance. If you want to use less energy and allow your Laptop to run longer then you would set your Power Settings to save power at the cost of performance. In most cases on a PC or Server, you do not want to have any power savings as you want the max performance you can get out of a system. Power Options are sometimes not set properly after setting up a new Operating System Installation or is overlooked when troubleshooting performance issues. You may have a high end CPU with many cores but for some reason even under light load, the CPU usage is over 50%. In this post I will mainly be looking at the Windows Operating System when it comes to Power Settings and things to look for to make sure that your System is running at it’s peak performance.
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Installing VMWare VCenter 6 on Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2014
With VMWare recently releasing VSphere 6 products, I will show you how to install VMWare VCenter 6 on Windows Server 2012 R2 using MS SQL Server 2014 as the backend Database. As similar to my VCenter 5.5 Update 2 install guide, please read the Prerequisites section first before beginning! The installation is split into 3 sections. The 1st section is getting the SQL Server Prepared, the 2nd Section is getting the VCenter Server Prepared, and the 3rd Section being the VCenter Installation itself. Please note that this installation may not be Best Practice as this is just a guide to quickly get VCenter Running.
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Installing VMWare VCenter 5.5 Update 2 on Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2014
In today’s post I will show you how to install VMWare VCenter 5.5 Update on Windows Server 2012 R2 using MS SQL Server 2014 as the backend Database. Please read the Pre-requsites section first before beginning! The installation is split into 3 sections. The 1st section is getting the SQL Server Prepared, the 2nd Section is getting the VCenter Server Prepared, and the 3rd Section being the VCenter Installation itself. Please note that this installation may not be Best Practice as this is just a guide to quickly get VCenter Running.
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Creating Windows Server 2012 R2 Template VM in VMWare Workstation 11
Creating new Windows VMs can be time consuming due to having to create the VM, install the Operating System, and then having to install Gigs of patches which can be time consuming. In this post today I will show you how to create a Windows Server 2012 R2 Template VM which can be cloned to create new VMs in order to speed up the process of deploying a new VM in VMWare Workstation 11.
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Using Sidder to find out who the User Profile Disk Belongs To
If you are managing a Remote Desktop Services Farm that uses User Profile Disk, you will see that the User Profile Disks naming format can be confusing and it does not exactly tell you who the User Profile Disk belong to. You can use the following tool to help you with this.
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