Server Core Part 1: Getting Hard-Core This is the first in an eight-part series about Windows Server Core. In it we’ll install Server Core from scratch, configure it for the network, and promote it to be a domain controller in an new domain. Pretty pictures will be included along the way for your amusement and edification,

PowerShell: Taking Some Time Off I'll be taking a two-week break from my weekly PowerShell column here to relax and enjoy the holidays with my family. See you next year!

App-V Part 5: Lightweight Infrastructure Designed to provide a balance between features and infrastructure requirements, App-V's Lightweight Infrastructure mode does require a bit of back-end: Specifically, you need to install the System Center Application Virtualization Streaming Server - which most folks just call "the App-V streaming thing." Operating without AD (if you like) and with

IT Book Report: “The Definitive Guide to Building a Windows Server 2008 Infrastruture” 10 months in the making, this e-book is finally released in its final form. Now in sharing the role of author and in this case reviewer as well, this review will obviously have some bias. But with that said, I can tell you that this book is your definitive guide

PowerShell: Output Options One of PowerShell's truly amazing capabilities is its ability to convert objects into a variety of useful formats for reporting, archiving, sharing data, and more. Here's a fast rundown of the many built-in options; to use any of them, just pipe your objects to the output cmdlet, as in: Get-Service

Reluctant DBA Part 5: Relationships So where does the "relational" part of "relational database management system" come into play? Imagine a Customers table that contains the following columns: ID Name Address We'll leave it at just those three to keep the example simple. Now imagine an Orders table: ID CustomerID OrderDate ShipAddress BillAddress Wait, why

Terminal Services Part 11: Apps to Host. Apps Not to Host. � With all the features discussed to this point in this series, you would think that Terminal Services is a solution for all the applications in your environment. � Just move every application over to your TS servers, and your problems are resolved. � Users can access applications from anywhere,

PowerShell: Happy Holidays The holidays are upon us, and it's time to revisit an oldie-but-goodie from the TechNet Script Center - "Jingle Bells," done in Windows PowerShell. Seriously. Get the code here, and we'll get back to "serious" PowerShell in a few weeks (grin).

App-V Part 4: Standalone Mode Okay, you've sequenced your apps and you're ready to deploy them. Standalone Mode is the simplest of App-V's three infrastructure options, so let's cover it first. In Standalone Mode, you want the Sequencer to produce MSI files for you. Quite simply, you then deploy those suckers however you want: IntelliMirror,

Terminal Services Part 10: Making the Choice: TS vs. Citrix? One of the biggest questions that has been on people’s minds since the dawn of Terminal Services is, “When do I need to make the jump to Citrix?” Citrix and Terminal Services have throughout their lifetime been inexorably linked. This is partially due to the similarities in technology, but even

PowerShell: PowerTab This is PowerTab. Get it now. It's free, and it really helps make using PowerShell easier by providing command completion ("IntelliSense", only text-based, not graphical pop-up menus) within Windows PowerShell. That's it. Easy tip this week - if you're not using PowerTab, you're working to damned hard.

Reluctant DBA Part 4: Normalization Normalization� is a database concept that applies to database design, and not administration. However, it's pretty important to performance, so you need to know where database designers are coming from, and be able to tell when they're going too far. Briefly, normalization is the goal of eliminating redundant data in

Terminal Services Part 9: Licenses: Domain, Forest, or Workgroup? And yet we’re not done yet with the decisions we need to make about our Terminal Services licenses. The Per User versus Per Device question is only one of the architectural questions that you need to answer before ever installing any software. Next up is the determination of how your

PowerShell: Target Computers from AD Need to execute a command against every computer in a domain? Easy: Here's how to do it using nothing more than what's built into PowerShell: $strFilter = "computer" $objDomain = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry $objSearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher $objSearcher.SearchRoot = $objDomain $objSearcher.SearchScope = "Subtree" $objSearcher.PageSize = 1000 $objSearcher.Filter = "(objectCategory=$strFilter)" $colResults =

App-V Part 3: Sequencing App-V starts with sequencing, the process of turning a "normal" Windows app into a "virtualized app" (I'm starting to like the term "bubbled app" because it sounds neat; some folks also call it a "packaged app" or a "sandboxed app"). The App-V Sequencer is the bit that does this. This