Sachin Kumar, a Premier Field Engineer from the India team, discusses a very important topic in this post. Many support incidents are actually triggered by non-standard (and sometimes unsupported) settings which are picked from outdated hardening guides. Read on for more details and for information on what NOT to tweak! I was recently helping a…
Tag: Windows Server 2012
Setting up Web Server SSL Certificates to Renew Automatically
Amer Kamal offers a solution to a long-standing request for auto-renewing IIS web server certificates, over on the Windows PKI (ADCS) blog! The problem: Working with Internet Information Services (IIS) certificates can be a bit challenging especially during renewal time. Most organizations do not track Web SSL certificates which in turn might expire and cause…
Logging and Reporting the Last Interactive Logon time with Windows 2008+ DCs
In a slight departure from our regular post style, I’m reposting an email sent by Mark Renoden in response to an internal Aussie PFE discussion about LastLogonTime. Sharing is caring. I thought I’d hijack the thread to discuss a feature we might be able to use more often, now that our customers are finally getting…
Uncovering a hidden gem: PSR.exe
Hmm… let’s see… I can remember the old Program Status Register from the Intel x86 days. Or maybe PSR stands for Physicians for Social Responsibility? No? Then what is it? Our colleague, Mike O’Neill from the PFE – US West team explains what PSR is all about in his recent blog post. PSR is Problem…
What is Cluster Aware Updating in Windows Server 2012? (Part 2) [VIDEO]
Summary: This article is contributed by Ryan Doon, a Premier Field Engineer based in Canada. In this post (the second of a two part series), he walks us through a video demonstration of the new Cluster Aware Updating feature of Windows Server 2012, and how it can be used to easily update clustered servers…
Headless installation of Windows Server 2012 Essentials
Tobias Hertkorn, one of our Microsoft Premier Field Engineers from Germany would like to share with you his tips on installing Windows 2012 Essentials, using a neat little trick and help from Hyper-V. The trick Headless installation can be cumbersome and nerve-wrecking. “Did it boot from my USB stick correctly?”, “Is it hanging somewhere…
Why Windows Server 2012 Parity Storage Spaces Might Perform Slowly
Summary: Gregg O’Brien, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer from Canada, walks us through some lessons he learned when testing Storage Spaces, a new feature in Windows Server 2012 that’s meant to provide enterprise-level storage performance, flexibility, and scale. The moral of his story: for heavy workloads requiring high speed, random I/O and the best…
Bruce’s Core Survival Guide
Bruce Adamczak continues to dig into the Server Core installation mode of Windows Server 2012, with some bite-sized nuggets of goodness in his Core Survival Guide. The list of Core topics he’s planning to cover is extensive, but he’s blazing through them! I like many of you keep notes to remember all the command line…
PowerShell Web Access?
(Huh!?) My old PFE flame* Chad Duffey has a short and sweet post on an interesting new feature in Windows Server 2012: Powershell Web Access. There is a nifty feature that comes with Windows Server 2012 which allows you to use PowerShell in a web browser. There are a million use cases for that! Maybe…
What is Cluster Aware Updating in Windows Server 2012? (Part 1)
Summary: This article has been contributed by Ryan Doon, a PFE working with Microsoft Canada. In this post (the first of a two part series), he talks about the new Cluster Aware Updating feature of Windows Server 2012, and how it can be used to easily update clustered servers while maintaining availability of service to…