The IT Crownd

Morning, Haven't posted in a while so here goes. I've been tasked with looking into automation of various tasks in our environment.  I found three processes which would clearly benefit from automation. 1. User onboarding 2. Group management 3. VM creation. So with item one; user on boarding we already automate the majority of this using PowerShell scripts to do the grunt work so whilst things could be improved here I wanted to make something new. So I looked into both Group Management and VM Creation. I've heavily copied from various sources for both run books.  Big thanks to those who post their skills and knowledge so that others can learn too! References Automys's awesome site  https://automys.com/library/category/system-center-orchestrator Group Management It has always been an aspiration of mine to run an IT team where the least privs model actually worked.  So I wrote a run book - heavily copied from various sources which I will name later...

Just a note for myself really.  I stole this from the internet so credit to those before me! This can basically install anything from the Windows client. The example I've included will uninstall ALL versions of Skype wmic /interactive:off product where "name LIKE 'Skype%%'" call uninstall Clearly adjust for your needs...I found this particularly useful when uninstalling Box Tools - I used this in a bat file to remove all versions of Box Tools then install the version I wanted. wmic /interactive:off product where "name LIKE 'Box Tools%%'" call uninstall msiexec -i BoxToolsInstaller-AdminInstall-SingleUserMode.msi /qn For example... Enjoy...

Some PowerShell code to change DNS servers on a set of windows boxes.... Might be useful - have I posted this before???  Maybe not with any Try/Catch stuff... Make a list of machines names in a txt file "c:\scripts\machinelist.txt" - is my example... Copy the following into a ps1 file (enable scripts to run!) and run as an admin on all the machines in the list (domain admin?)...done. # # Script to set the DNS Settings on a Windows box # $computerList = get-content c:\scripts\machinelist.txt $date = Get-Date -format D $log = "---------------- Log Starting : $date ----------------`r`n" ForEach($computer in $computerList){ # Do some logging?? try{ $NICs = Get-WMIObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -computername $computer -ErrorAction stop         $NICs = $NICs | where{$_.IPEnabled -eq “TRUE” -and $_.Description -match "Wireless"} ForEach($NIC in $NICs){ $DNSServers = ”1.2.3.4","1,2,3,5",“1.2.3.6" ...

This has been an issue for all IT departments for ages - nice to see that Microsoft finally got in this space with something free! http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46899 Basically this is a GPO, GUI and client dll which allows you to change the local admin password on your Windows machines! Yea! We've had this working now for about 5 months and is awesome, my security guys are very impressed :)

This has been an issue for all IT departments for ages - nice to see that Microsoft finally got in this space with something free! http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46899 Basically this is a GPO, GUI and client dll which allows you to change the local admin password on your Windows machines! Yea! We've had this working now for about 5 months and is awesome, my security guys are very impressed :)

Still here.  Got promoted though in a slightly different role. Have loads to say but no time to write it down!

Wow! Ok so I am somewhat behind the times here but I was investigating how to "stand up", to use the LINUX community parlance, an instance of the excellent MediaWiki on a Windows 2012 box and came across a Microsoft blog talking about WebPlatform Installer 5.0 So far this is awesome. Basically download it and have a play. You simple select from the lists what you want the installer to download and install - I think it even installs the required Windows features for you too - it happened so quick I'm not sure!? Want MySQL database?  MediaWiki?  Just select em.  Then click install - I had to provide MySQL root credentials to setup MySQL. More when I know how it went - initial thoughts are that this is MAGIC! Happy Friday!