Category Archives: Windows Server 2012 R2

Project Honolulu

Posted on Tuesday 31 October 2017 by richardsiddaway

The recent announced project Honolulu – https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2017/09/22/project-honolulu-technical-preview-is-now-available-for-download/ – is Microsoft’s new browser based Server management tool. You can install it on Windows 10, Windows Server 1709 and Windows Server 2016, 2012 R2 and 2012 Honolulu is the proposed replacement for … Continue reading →

Posted in Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a comment

New PowerShell console on Server Core

Posted on Thursday 17 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

Server Core is great for reducing the footprint of your VMs – Nano server is smaller but it can’t be a domain controller One draw back to server core is that you only get a single console. If you hang … Continue reading →

Posted in Powershell, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a comment

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Posted on Monday 31 October 2016 by richardsiddaway

Way back when I used to take Microsoft certification exams there were often questions of the form “Perform task X with the minimum of administrative effort” Most, if nor all, of the possible answers would be correct but the correct … Continue reading →

Posted in Powershell, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 | 1 Comment

Creating DNS records

Posted on Friday 30 October 2015 by richardsiddaway

Following on from my previous post about creating a reverse lookup zone in DNS here’s a function to create records in that zone. The function takes an IP address and name (of host) and uses Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA  to add the record … Continue reading →

Posted in DNS, Powershell, Windows Server 2012 R2 | 1 Comment

Create a reverse lookup zone

Posted on Friday 30 October 2015 by richardsiddaway

I needed to create a DNS reverse lookup zone for my test environment. With Windows Server 2012 R2 I’ve got cmdlets available for managing DNS servers – the DnsServer module. You need to install the DNS role or the DNS … Continue reading →

Posted in DNS, Powershell, Windows Server 2012 R2 | Leave a comment

Quick update check

Posted on Friday 2 October 2015 by richardsiddaway

Want to check on any updates that haven’t been fully applied in your environment. Run this on your WSUS server (2012 R2) £> Get-WsusUpdate -Classification All -Status Any -Approval AnyExceptDeclined | where InstalledOrNotApplicablePercentage -ne 100 You can modify the filters: … Continue reading →

Posted in Powershell, Windows Server 2012 R2, WSUS | Leave a comment

Error handling for DNS lookups

Posted on Tuesday 29 September 2015 by richardsiddaway

Interesting question on the forum regarding the Resolve-DNSname cmdlet. This is part of the DNSclient module introduced with Windows 8. If the DNS record is found everything is good £> Resolve-DnsName W12R2DSC -Server server02 | ft -a Name                   Type TTL  … Continue reading →

Posted in DNS, PowerShell v5, Windows Server 2012 R2 | 1 Comment

PowerShell and messaging

Posted on Saturday 11 July 2015 by richardsiddaway

This article – http://powershell.org/wp/2015/07/07/rabbitmq-and-powershell/ – reminded me that Windows server comes with a built-in messaging system – MSMQ. There is a PowerShell module for MSMQ – https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh405007(v=vs.85).aspx Since reading the RabbitMQ article I think that Rabbit is more useful in … Continue reading →

Posted in Powershell, Windows Server 2012 R2 | Leave a comment

IPAM: 1 Installation and configuration

Posted on Thursday 21 May 2015 by richardsiddaway

IPAM stands for IP Address Management. It’s a feature in Windows Server 2012 R2 that enables you manage your DHCP and DNS servers as a whole rather than at the individual service or server level. Installation of IPAM follows the … Continue reading →

Posted in Networking, Powershell, Windows Server 2012 R2 | Leave a comment

DHCP scope lease time

Posted on Wednesday 7 January 2015 by richardsiddaway

I wanted to reduce the lease time on a DHCP scope $lt = New-TimeSpan -Hours 12Set-DhcpServerv4Scope -ScopeId 10.10.54.0 -LeaseDuration $lt You could even make it a one liner if you wished Set-DhcpServerv4Scope -ScopeId 10.10.54.0 –LeaseDuration (New-TimeSpan -Hours 12)

Posted in DHCP, Powershell, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 | Leave a comment