Jason Yoder, MCT

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Every once and a while, I take on a project brought in by a member of my PowerShell class.  On the last day of class, I ask people to be ready to work on a “simple” project.  Sometimes the project they bring in is not simple.  If it intrigues me enough, I’ll steer them towards something more skill appropriate and then take on the original project myself.   This project involves getting a list of user names that are with in a specified number of days from expiring.  With the exception of connecting to Active Directory to find the MaxPwdAge attribute, this would be simple.  The problem comes when Fine Grain Password Policies come into play.  For this reason, I decided that I had better take this one on.   Fine Grain Password Policies allow us to provide different password standards to different users based on their security group membership.  We prioritize the Fine Grain Password Policies (Also known as a Policy Setting Object or PSO) with a Precedence property so if a user is a mem

OK, this is not exactly what I recommend doing unless you are trying to lose your job.  This is an actual question from one of my PowerShell classes.  SO, here it is, but use at your own risk. Import-Module ActiveDirectory $HostName = hostname Get-ADComputer -filter ' Name -ne $HostName ' | Select-Object @{Label = " ComputerName " ;Expression = { $_ .Name}} | Restart-Computer – Force Again, this is not recommended.

The final day of TechEd started off with VDI and Windows 8. Microsoft has extended the storage support for VDI to DAS and SMB storage devices.  This will greatly reduce the cost associated with a VDI deployment.  The removal of the SAN requirement coupled for the integration of App-V is estimated to help lower your storage cost for VDI by an estimated 75%. The should help take the pain out of some of the cost of VDI deployment. I took an opportunity to take a look at App-V 5.0.  For those of you who have heard me talk about application virtualization in class know that I like the concept of virtualizing your applications.  This decreases the complexity of deployment of a new client and accelerates software updates. Once again, PowerShell was pushed for App-V managers.  I also enjoyed watching the improvements made to App-V to make deploying and managing your apps even easier.  For applications that require other applications to work correctly, you can now create associates so the appl

  Today I spent quite a bit of time with PowerShell V3 and Server 2012.  On the PowerShell front, I got to listen to a team of hard core Group Policy admins give us some tips on better management of our GPOs with PowerShell.  Next up I picked up some tips on increasing the reusability of of my script code.  The final PS session of the day was the most interesting.  We covered a lot of the new features that will make PS work with the cloud and improve its reach to the level that will require every Network Admin to be able to use it. On the Server side, I sat through the basic principles of implementing the private cloud model.  I did a hands on lab to learn more about the Online Backup Service for Windows Server 2012.  My other lab actually allowed my to take a workgroup client, connect to direct access, and join it to the domain.  This feature has potential where you may have a remote workforce that uses personal devices, but need the manageability of Active Directory. What really ca

Where to start? Microsoft clearly listened to its customers with the development of Sever 2012. After sitting through a presentation on the new features of Active Directory, it was clear that Microsoft addressed many issues. These issues involved problems with large AD deployments, interfaces for the administrator, and also deployment of new domain controllers. Several of the these I was very happy to see. Now I can demonstrate to my students what aspects of Windows Server 2008 R2 management they want in a GUI, is now in a GUI. I also had a chance to sit in a seminar on MDT and Windows 8 as well as a chance to do a hands on lab with the new MDT version. With the continued march towards IPv6, I also took an opportunity to expand my knowledge of IPv6 and to try out the IPAM (IP Address Management). By far the highlight of my day was meeting with June Blender Rogers, Senior Programming Writer for Windows PowerShell. We had a very energetic conversation over the feedback from my students