Datacenter Management – Project Runspace

How to Install Windows Server 2025

Eric Siron — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 18:00:00 +0000

Most administrators don’t spend a significant portion of their careers installing operating systems (a good thing!). The activity sits at the foundation of our profession, however. From painful lessons learned from Windows installations in the 1990s, modern Microsoft operating system installers follow a minimalist philosophy. The process focuses on aspects that you cannot change later …

Continue reading "How to Install Windows Server 2025"

Windows Admin Center v2 with Certificate Cannot Load Site

Eric Siron — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Microsoft released a substantially upgraded Windows Admin Center with build 2410. Microsoft has offset it as “v2”. You can read the release announcement on the Windows Admin Center blog. You can download Windows Admin Center from aka.ms/windowsadmincenter. This article explains how to fix a condition when you use a true PKI certificate and cannot access …

Continue reading "Windows Admin Center v2 with Certificate Cannot Load Site"

Supercharge Powershell with Github Copilot

Eric Siron — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 17:00:00 +0000

Hey sysadmins! Do you want to automate more, but get bogged down in the time and complexity of bulletproof PowerShell scripting? After a period of skepticism and reading a lot of negative opinions on Copilot, I finally decided to try it out for myself. I discovered that you can’t simply allow it to go off …

Continue reading "Supercharge Powershell with Github Copilot"

Understanding the Two Virtual Machine Licenses with Windows Server Standard

Eric Siron — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Software licensing is a special form of awful that nearly rises to the frustration level of dealing with printers. Windows Server licensing pushes it even further. Virtual machine licensing in Windows Server takes it to an extreme. This topic has a lot to unpack, but I want to scope specifically down to the subtopic of …

Continue reading "Understanding the Two Virtual Machine Licenses with Windows Server Standard"

How to Configure Ubuntu for Public Key WinSCP Access

Eric Siron — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0000

[citationic] As with many of my articles, this one serves as a public “note to self” for a problem that I run into often enough to need to skip a lot of searching but not often enough to remember how to fix. I have set up a new Ubuntu server system and I want to …

Continue reading "How to Configure Ubuntu for Public Key WinSCP Access"

Fiber Channel or iSCSI Disk Appears Two or More Times in Disk Management

Eric Siron — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 17:00:00 +0000

Scenario: You connect your Windows or Hyper-V system to a FiberChannel or iSCSI target device that supports multi-path I/O (MPIO). When you view Disk Management, it shows up twice (or more). You can bring one online, but any others show “Offline (The disk is offline because it has a redundant path with another device)”. The …

Continue reading "Fiber Channel or iSCSI Disk Appears Two or More Times in Disk Management"

Getting Started with Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows Server

Eric Siron — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 17:00:00 +0000

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) brings the convenience of native Linux functionality to Windows Server. You have access to a fully functional Linux kernel in the distribution of your choice embedded right where you have instant access without needing to rely on a heavy virtualization layer or a thick emulator. This article focuses on WSL …

Continue reading "Getting Started with Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows Server"

Stop Using Self-Signed Certificates

Eric Siron — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 17:00:00 +0000

The growth of digital threats has made our need for security more pervasive. Where possible, we try to use active schemes. However, private key infrastructure and certificates serve a powerful purpose and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. As threats grow, we as systems administrators need to improve the way that we …

Continue reading "Stop Using Self-Signed Certificates"

How to Change the Windows Server Activation Mechanism

Eric Siron — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 18:00:00 +0000

The situation that prompted this article involved a Windows Server Standard Edition virtual machine that was migrated from a Windows Server Datacenter host to a Windows Server Standard Edition host. On the source host, the guest had used Automatic Virtual Machine Activation. That feature only exists on Datacenter Edition, so the virtual machine immediately went …

Continue reading "How to Change the Windows Server Activation Mechanism"

How to Install Windows Server 2022

Eric Siron — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 18:00:00 +0000

Whether setting up a lab or deploying into production, server administrators need to gain comfort with the installation process for Windows Server. This article specifically shows how to install Windows Server 2022. The process has not had much more than cosmetic changes for about a decade. These directions start at the beginning and go through …

Continue reading "How to Install Windows Server 2022"