January 3, 2022

Using Windows Powershell for System Administration

First published: 2019-08-02, modified 2022-01-03 I am more of a Unix guy but I get to administer more and more Microsoft systems as time goes by. Back in the day Windows had very limited commandline options to manage systems. It often felt that you were working on a car with the bonnet welded shut. Luckily things changed when Powershell arrived on the scene. Powershell is a bit counter intuitive for someone that used Unix shells for 30 years but it is very powerful and you can do a lot with it. Read more

May 28, 2018

Clear windows DNS cache

Windows sometimes has a mind of its own when it comes to DNS. To clear the windows DNS cache when you have issues do the following. Open cmd or powershell as administrator. Run ipconfig /flushdns

July 19, 2017

WSUS is not setup and forget

Windows Software Update Services provides a way for Windows sysadmins to control the distribution of updates to windows computers. It also helps to save a lot of bandwidth if you don’t have a superfast internet connection. Unfortunately many think that it is easy to setup and maintain. On newer version of Windows Server it is easy to setup but it needs a lot of care and feeding. I you want to run WSUS you will have to run the “Server Cleanup Wizard” at least once a month, or run Invoke-WSUSCleanup in a scheduled task. Read more

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