vSphere: Get ESX Server Serial Numbers
KB ID 0001670 Problem A few weeks ago I needed to sort out some extended warranty for a customers servers. To do that I needed the serial numbers of those servers, (a mixture of IBM/Lenovo and Dell Servers). As I didn’t fancy a drive to two different datacenters, I wanted to try and get them programatically. Solution After some searching I came across a post by one of my old EE buddies LucD with exactly what I needed. I’m...
Microsoft Teams: Custom Background Images
KB ID 0001669 Problem With the current lockdown and everyone working from home, I’m using Teams a lot. I use one of the images that I use here at PNL as one of the background images that ‘appear’ behind me when I’m using the webcam in Teams. I was asked today how I did that, so I thought I’d write it up here. Solution I’m using Teams on my MacBook but the procedure it pretty much the same in...
Windows Server – Schedule a Reboot
KB ID 0001321 Problem Back in the day we just used the ‘At’ command to schedule a reboot, but starting with Server 2012 that was stopped! If you try it now you will see the following; The AT command has been depreciated. Please use schtasks.exe instead Solution (The Quick Way) Execute the following command (change time and data accordingly); schtasks /create /tn “Scheduled Reboot” /tr “shutdown /r /t 0” /sc once /st...
Powershell: Get Folder Size ‘Quickly’
KB ID 0001660 Problem Right clicking a folder and selecting properties is usually how you would see how large a folder is. Which is great, but if your folder size is HUGE (i.e. many terabytes) then this takes ages! Solution If you use PowerShell you can get the figure considerably quicker! Below I want to ge the size of E:\Shared; In MegaBytes; “{0:N2}” -f ((Get-ChildItem -path E:\Shared -recurse | Measure-Object -property...
Cannot Recreate Azure AD ‘Local’ AD Connector
KB ID 0001659 Problem While trying to fix another Azure AD Replication problem today I managed to delete one of the connectors (the one for the local ‘on-prem’ Active Directory). In an effort to ‘recreate’ it, I ran the ‘Microsoft Azure Active Directory Connect’ and went to ‘Customise the Synchronisation Options’. Unfortunately I got this error; The forest {forest-name} cannot be added...
Adding Duo 2FA to Microsoft ADFS
KB ID 0001656 Problem I did a Duo run through a few weeks ago, and to be honest their documentation is usually pretty good. I was spinning this up as a PoC for a client so I thought I’d put my take on the procedure here. ADFS Duo Pre-Requisites I already have a Duo Authentication Proxy server setup and my users are enrolled, you will need to set this up first. See the following article; Duo: ADSync and Enroll Users via SMS Log...