25 Jun 2014
The Phoenix Project (Book)
A book that explains in real terms what the future of IT might just look like in a few years. I don’t know whether it will or not, but it’s a good read and really raises some great points where IT people can work towards improving systems and integrating with the business in a real way to help them reach their goals. The same guys involved in this also seem to have another book in the pipeline, called The DevOps Cookbook. It’s definitely on my list to read as soon as it comes out.
Ops All The Things (Podcast)
A really good podcast by a couple of really really smart guys in the ops/sysadmin field. It’s only just started, but each episode is jam packed full of interesting topics to think about. Every episode so far has given me some things to take into my day to day to help constantly improve what i’m doing and giving me ideas to share.
PowerScripting Podcast
One of my go-to podcasts when I’m just wanting to hear something new or interesting about the tech world. Loads of really really cool guests from all over the world, not just Windows/Microsoft. Even though it’s the official PowerShell.org podcast it’s about a lot of general tech/automation and just cool stuff as well, not just PowerShell focused.
31 Oct 2013
I’ve been doing some work recently with C# querying AD for locked out users. One of the requirements for this was to only show users that can be altered by the user running the program.
Fortunately there is a computed AD attribute available for this to do the job, called allowedAttributesEffective. Here is some sample code to check a user for attributes you can write to:
allowAttributesEffective
03 Aug 2013
I’ve been working with Exchange 2003 a bit recently, as part of a migration to Office 365. Most of the work has been around getting permission data, mailbox sizes and some other related data.
As part of that, I’ve written a couple of PowerShell scripts to grab some information we needed for the migration. The first is a script to get data from Exchange and AD in a 2003 domain using WMI. The second is a script to parse and output permission data from a PFDAVAdmin export in a more usable format.
I’ve put the two scripts on GitHub in my miscellaneous repository, under the PowerShell folder. Hopefully they come in useful to anyone else needing to make more sense of PFDAVAdmin exports, or pull mailbox data from Exchange 2003.
05 Jul 2013
I’m making more of an effort to post useful snippets of PowerShell and other stuff, like custom ADMX templates to either my GitHub Gists, or to a GitHub repository I’ve set up for miscellaneous bits and bobs.
As I’ve improved with PowerShell, it’s become easier to write generalised scripts, rather than highly targeted ones, so that I can solve similar problems, or share pieces of scripts around more easily.
If you’d like to learn more about Windows PowerShell check out PowerShell.org and the PowerScripting Podcast, they are nice friendly places that are easy to navigate and full to the brim with good content.
24 Jun 2013
If you’re just getting into Windows Server 2012, or you’re doing a lot of work with it, but want to go a bit deeper into the system, here’s a few links that should get you well on the way.
It’s also handy if, like me, you’ve started on the new MCSA/MCSE tracks and want some more resources to read so you can brush up and round out your knowledge.
I’ll add links as I remember them, come across them again, or just find new ones. Check back occasionally for updates.
Note
If you’re getting ready to take the 70-410 Exam: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012, there’s a nice little practice test I found that might help you on your way.