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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”

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Script To Check Exchange NTFS Cluster Size

An issue came to light when onsite recently with a customer.  The design specifications from the Exchange team were not being correctly implemented.  In this environment there is a separate Windows team who are responsible for managing the underlying server OS and hardware.  They are to follow the prescribed process and steps laid down by the application owner but this was not consistently happeni… Read the rest “Script To Check Exchange NTFS Cluster Size”

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Blog Code Examples Not Running Due to Smart Quotes

During an excellent trip to see a local customer *, it was noted that some of the script examples on the blog were not working as expected.  The post we were looking at was the Check Exchange 2013 Schema and Object Information in AD.  When the sample commands were copied, the Exchange administrator was not able to immediately use them, even after editing to suit their environment.

The sym… Read the rest “Blog Code Examples Not Running Due to Smart Quotes”