Posting to Cisco Webex Teams via Powershell

Or, “API Basics for Powershelling Windows Admins”

My team has begun rolling out Cisco’s Webex Teams collaboration platform to our internal users. As is often the case, the IT department is the first customer, kicking the tires and exploring different use cases. I happened to be working on a Powershell-based script to create new Active Directory users, and decided to get creative …

Jellyfish

Mountains, Valleys, Scars

Automatically Renaming Hyper-V Guest VMs Using Desired State Configuration

You’ve created yourself a shiny new virtual machine inside Hyper-V, quite possibly using a cool method of quick-deploying (or maybe Packer, or something else). You’ve already given your new baby a name inside Hyper-V Manager … but what about the Guest OS? Windows boots up and calls itself WIN-49NMA43RF, but let’s use Desired State Configuration and spruce things up a bit.

Hyper-V ‘Quick Deploy’ VMs with Powershell & Differencing Disk

Creating VMs in Hyper-V the manual way is easy enough – lovely wizard, boot from ISO, install your OS, boot in, patch it up, be on your way. But it takes time I don’t have. It also takes tons of disk space, which I also don’t have (I’m running off a laptop’s SSD). How can we speed things up while slimming down? 

Hyper-V Core 2016: Building A Workgroup Cluster – Part 4, Cluster Setup

Windows Server 2016 features workgroup cluster support. In Part 4, I’ll give an overview of putting the actual cluster together. If you’ve never build a Windows cluster, the most important thing is ensuring you keep all nodes in lock-step with each other, so pay close attention and be consistent.

Hyper-V Core 2016: Building A Workgroup Cluster – Part 3, Security Setup

Windows Server 2016 features workgroup cluster support. In Part 3, I’ll give an overview of the required security adjustments you’ll need to make on your hosts and admin PC to get everyone to play nice.

Hyper-V Core 2016: Building A Workgroup Cluster – Part 2, Hardware

Windows Server 2016 features workgroup cluster support. In Part 2, I’ll give an overview of the lab on which I built my cluster.

Hyper-V Core 2016: Building A Workgroup Cluster – Part 1

If you’re keeping up with the latest release of Windows Server, Windows Server 2016 brings some interesting new features to the table. One particular item caught my eye: multi-domain and workgroup clusters. Does it work? Can I use it on the free Hyper-V Core? Let’s check it out.

Bypassing NetApp’s LUN Geometry Limit

When you’re creating a LUN for the very first time, you may not consider the future, but there’s an aspect to LUN sizing that can be very important further down the road. Getting this detail wrong means sometime in the distant (or not) future copying all your data from this LUN onto a new one. Think this one through.