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luke.geek.nz

An IT Engineer with a love for all things IT including (but not limited to), Microsoft Azure, Automation and Service Management!

  1. How to manage cost in Microsoft Azure

    Microsoft have built up the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, to offer scale and performance as and when needed, this gives customers the ability to not only remain competitive by lead and disrupt their industries without having to worry about on-premises datacentre capacity, redundancy and manual processes, this however comes at a cost, where engineers may have in the past not cared or been responsible for cost – the Cloud has enabled us not only to consume...…

  2. Using PowerShell DSC for Windows Hardening

    I am not a DSC (Desired State Configuration) expert, however, the technology has always interested me and as such, something I like to dabble in it. There are many reasons for using PowerShell DSC and hopefully today, I can help enlighten you towards some of its use. DSC can be used for things such as: Installing IIS and other Windows Features – and making sure they are installed! Installing Apache – Yes – even on...…

  3. Using PowerShell to start the DFS Namespace service

    Distributed File System (DFS) has some service dependencies - so if those don’t start the DFS Namespace service will also not start. The dependencies are: Remote Registry Security Accounts Manager Server Workstation I have seen the Remote Registry service become the culprit of the DFS-N service not starting. In my experience, this had been caused by antivirus software changing the Remote Registry service to Disabled start-up type so when the DFS-N server restarts, one of...…

  4. Using PowerShell to disable SMB1

    Although the new versions of Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 no longer install SMB1 as default, the majority of us are still using older systems, such as earlier versions of Windows 10, Windows 7 and Server 2012 R2 which still has SMB1 enabled. Unfortunately, you may still find legacy systems in your environments that might rely on SMB1, such as legacy Windows Server 2003 or Linux systems, so this is something you shouldn’t just...…

  5. Using PowerShell to connect to Microsoft Azure

    Microsoft Azure has a good user portal where you can do most things, however when it comes to automation, gathering a lot of information at once and more in-depth scenarios that the Portal doesn’t quite offer – PowerShell is used. Before you can use PowerShell to connect to Microsoft Azure, you need to install the Azure Resource Manager modules first – follow the guide below: Install and configure Azure PowerShell Once the AzureRM module has...…