Category: Technical Reference

Virtualization Updates to Active Directory 2012

As part of the many updates to Active Directory, one of the most interesting is virtualization safeguarding in Windows Server 2012. Active Directory Domain Controllers running Windows Server 2012 can now identify if they are virtualized and have been improperly restored or cloned (copied). Windows Server 2012 introduces a new feature called the VM Generation …

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Domain Controller Virtual Cloning

One of the best new features of Windows Server 2012 is virtual cloning. The ASKPFE blog has an excellent article covering this new feature: Tom Moser here with a post on one of the new ADDS features in Windows Server 2012; Virtual Domain Controller Cloning. Until now, cloning, snapshotting, copying, or pretty much doing anything …

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Active Directory Domain Trusts & Trust Password Management

Recently a customer asked me about Active Directory Domain Trusts and how the passwords were managed. I replied with some educated guesses based on how AD manages a variety of passwords. After stating how I thought it worked (and mentioned that I wasn’t sure), I decided to look it up. I was mostly correct. Every …

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Windows Server 2012 R2 deprecates FRS (File Replication Service)

Microsoft’s Tip of the Day has the following useful information on Domain Controller File Replication Service (FRS) depercation: FRS (File Replication Service) has been deprecated in Windows Server 2012 R2.  The deprecation of FRS has been accomplished by enforcing a minimum domain functional level of Windows Server 2008.  This enforcement is present only if the …

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Powershell Code: Determine LastLogonTimeStamp Replication Time

It seems that I have been asked to provide a lot of user (& computer) logon information over the past few months. In order to provide this information, I (as others have) leveraged the LastLogonTimeStamp attribute to determine when a user (or computer) logged on last. Assuming you have a Windows 2003 forest mode Active …

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Hyper-V How to install integration services when the virtual machine is not running

From Microsoft’s Virtualization Blog, How to install integration services when the virtual machine is not running: We’ve been talking to a lot of people about deploying integration services (integration components) lately.  As it turns out, they’re pretty easy to patch offline with existing Hyper-V tools. First, why would you update integration services on a not-running …

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Windows Server 2012 R2 Features

Single post coverage of all of the major new and updated features in Windows Server 2012 R2 This covers the following technology areas: iSCSI Target Server SMB Windows Deployment Services Active Directory BitLocker DFS Replication DHCP DNS Server Failover Clustering File and Storage Services File Server Resource Manager Group Policy Hyper-V Hyper-V Network Virtualization Hyper-V …

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New & Updated Features in Windows Server 2012 R2

New & Updated Features in Windows Server 2012 R2 Expanded from: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn250019 What’s New for iSCSI Target Server in Windows Server 2012 R2 iSCSI Target Server enables you to network boot multiple computers from a single operating system image that is stored in a centralized location.  iSCSI Target Server can boot hundreds of computers by …

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Hyper-V VM Generation Differences

  From the Microsoft Tip of the Day Blog: Generation 2 VMs replace a large number of emulated devices with resource efficient synthetic devices.  Here is a list of Generation 1 devices that you will not find in a new Generation 2 VM. BIOS COM Ports DMA Controller Floppy Controller i8042 Keyboard Controller IDE Controller …

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PowerShell and Ambiguous Name Resolution (ANR) Search in Active Directory

I was recently asked how to find a user when you have data that may be the SamAccountName or in another attribute. My first thought was leveraging Ambiguous Name Resolution (ANR) Search in Active Directory. ANR enables you to find a user when you have some information about a user, but don’t know exactly to …

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