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Quick Tip–Verify Which Hyper-V VMs Have ISO Mounted

Use PowerShell to Easily Show All Mounted ISO

It’s very common that we mount ISO files when needed, then forget to remove them after the fact.

This is generally a non issue until you want to move the mounted ISO file as Hyper-V may have a lock on the file.  Yes we could open up the properties of each VM in the console, but nope.  Not doing that.

Rather than search VMs one by one to see which is the offending VM, just run the below command in Po… Read the rest “Quick Tip–Verify Which Hyper-V VMs Have ISO Mounted”

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Quick Tip–Verify VHDs Mounted In Hyper-V VMs

Using PowerShell to List All Virtual Hard Disks

If you want to easily view all of the VHD or VHDX files that have been configured on Hyper-V VMs, the below PowerShell command makes this easy.

Since I may use a temporary VHDX as a mechanism to copy files into VMs, it sometimes get left mounted and this makes it easy to see which VM has that particular disk file attached.  Creating a temporary VHDX makes it easier to copy large source files to VMs… Read the rest “Quick Tip–Verify VHDs Mounted In Hyper-V VMs”

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Quick Tip – Easily Allow JIT to Azure VMs In A Resource Group

Azure Portal Connect to VM

Controlling connections to Azure VMs using the just in time (JIT) policy of Microsoft Defender for Cloud (MDC) certainly improves the overall security of the Azure resource.  However, then having to enable JIT on a given VM runs into issues pretty quickly.

Azure Portal Too Permissive

Who thought it was a great idea to have “All configured IPs” as the default option? No thanks – I do not want to enab… Read the rest “Quick Tip – Easily Allow JIT to Azure VMs In A Resource Group”

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Quick Tip – Easily Start All Azure VMs In A Particular Resource Group

Quick Tip Easily Start Azure VMs Using Azure Cloud Shell

Manually starting up lab VMs is painfully slow, and since many organisations will implement management policy to auutomatically shut them down to save costs you may find yourself powering them on a lot...

While you can set up automated tasks to power them on, not all really need to be running every day.  For example, I always want the DC's running so they are able to maintain replication and there … Read the rest “Quick Tip – Easily Start All Azure VMs In A Particular Resource Group”

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Unable To Install PowerShell Modules – Unable To Download From URI Error

When you try to install a PowerShell module or connect to the PowerShell Repository you may get the below error messages:

WARNING: Unable to download from URI 'https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=627338&clcid=0x409' to ''.
WARNING: Unable to download the list of available providers. Check your internet connection.

PowerShell Error - Unable to download from URI

For make most glorious benefit engine of search:

PackageManagement\Install-PackagRead the rest “Unable To Install PowerShell Modules – Unable To Download From URI Error”

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Quick Tip – Get Unique Instances In PowerShell

To remove duplicates using PowerShell is exceedingly straightfroward.  However, I have a habit of forgetting the cmdlet so parking this here for future reference.

For example, we can use the Get-Unique cmdlet or  Select-Object -Unique parameter.

 

Get-Unique

As  a simple example:

 

The Get-Unique cmdlet compares each item in a sorted list to the next item, eliminates duplicates, and returns only… Read the rest “Quick Tip – Get Unique Instances In PowerShell”

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Checking Exchange SMTP Logs To Determine Usage

This week I was fortunate to return to one of my favourite customers, to help with Exchange 2010 migration activities.  As we all know, Exchange 2010 will exit out of extended support on the 14th of January 2020.

Fortunately they are progressing very well with moving all mailboxes off Exchange 2010, and one of the last remaining items was to review SMTP mail flow through the Exchange 2010 Hub trans… Read the rest “Checking Exchange SMTP Logs To Determine Usage”

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Easy Way To Retrieve Certificate Thumbprint Using PowerShell

Since many certificate operations involve knowing the certificate’s thumbprint, it is always useful to to have an easy way to get this information.  In some of the online documentation it mentions you can copy the thumbprint out of the Certificate MMC snap-in and then manually delete the spaces between the data.  No thanks.

However, if you *really* want to do that, or a quick and easy way to launch… Read the rest “Easy Way To Retrieve Certificate Thumbprint Using PowerShell”

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Quick Tip–Adding Same ISO DVD Image To All Hyper-V Lab VMs

When building out a lab, you might need to attach the same ISO to multiple VMs.  In this case I was installing multiple Exchange 2016 severs, and wanted to easily add the same ISO file to each of the VMs.

This was on my Windows 10 laptop which makes quick work of the task since we can use PowerShell.

The VMs to target all have the same naming convention.  The VMs for the Exchange 2016 lab start with… Read the rest “Quick Tip–Adding Same ISO DVD Image To All Hyper-V Lab VMs”

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Automating Enable-Remote Mailbox

While operating in an Exchange hybrid model, users expect to see a consistent GAL no matter if they or other people to be contacted are on-premises or in Exchange Online.  In order for the Exchange on-premises servers to be able to build up a complete GAL there needs to be at least some mailbox information added to the AD user object.  If Exchange Online mailboxes are added by simply assigning an … Read the rest “Automating Enable-Remote Mailbox”