Tag: windows server
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How to enable SQL Server 2008 R2 authentication mode with PowerShell
Some of my friends who follow this blog have told me that they have no idea what I’ve been posting about lately. That’s because my recent posts have been mostly about helping people who are Googling specific questions. If you are one of my pals who who’ve stuck with me here, thank you. I appreciate it.…
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How to use PowerShell in Chef to install Windows Server features
Chef — the wildly popular configuration management system, whose motto is “infrastructure as code” — treats Windows as a second-class client, despite all protestations from from its creator, Opscode, to the contrary. Still, you can do some cool stuff with Windows and Chef in PowerShell, as long as you can stand the Ruby “domain specific language” that Opscode…
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AWS: the best thing since sliced bread?
At AWS re:Invent last November, I was invited to a marketing panel in which AWS sought customer feedback. I’ll never forget the developer on the panel who kept proclaiming his “love” of AWS — the answer to every question he was asked was, essentially, that AWS is the best technology ever invented. I think even…
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How to kill your Windows Server in EC2 with one click…and how to get it back
This is unlikely to be the most technical post I’ve written lately. But it might be among the most important. Here’s a rule for you: don’t ever disable the only network adapter in a Windows Server machine running in the cloud. Most of you are now saying, “Well…yes” and “Duh.” Just for the record in case it…
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Connect two AD FS federation servers
AD FS setup and configuration
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AWS Route 53 private domains: gettin’ there…but hoping for more soon
This blog has been receiving lots of traffic lately to a post on using AWS Route 53 DNS in a VPC. Google features the post in search results for folks interested in the topic and I am gratified that people find it and spend long periods (sometimes more than 20 minutes) reading it — and I presume…
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Connecting to Windows Server on the Mac using RDP
(If you are also interested in a technique to secure RDP connections without having to open TCP 3389, please see this post about Remote Desktop Gateway.) If, like me, you are a Mac user who has responsibility for managing a large number of Windows Server instances running on EC2 in AWS (or in a data…
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How to set up a bastion host for Windows in AWS
Make your AWS EC2 Windows jump servers more secure
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Remote Desktop Manager RDP client for Windows on EC2
One of the first things you need when you start managing multiple Windows Server instances is a really good Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client. To its credit, Microsoft has been on a tear lately with RDP clients, shipping an excellent Mac client (though they inexplicably removed the search functionality in the latest release) and, best…