Encouraging Diversity & Inclusion Through Microsoft’s MVP Program

Diversity and inclusion have never been more critical in all facets of culture. That includes IT, technology experts, and the technological infrastructures at large. Even the technology itself needs to take diversity and inclusion into consideration. Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional program recognizes some of the greatest evangelists of their products and services, and helpers of the community of users at large. MVPs are proven experts in their fields. They go above and beyond in this capacity, with a  willingness and passion to help those seeking to better understand the technologies they’re using. And they’re advancing diversity and inclusion efforts for … Continue reading

Philips Hue Bridge POE

IOT, Smart Home, Intelligent home; Meaning a lot of connected devices (and power adapters & cables!)I have been using the Philips Hue system from the very beginning, recently upgraded to the Philips Hue Bridge 2.1 Square-shape bridge (supports Apple HomeKit) After my last upgrade to the home infrastructure. with the new and improved UniFi Switch PRO 24 PoE I wanted to get the most out of the switch with POE (Power-Over-Ethernet) I would have loved to see the Philips Hue Bridge with build-in POE, but unfortunately that was not the case of the 2.1 release. Luckily with a bit of … Continue reading

Cleaning up shortcuts

So the issue at hand;I was replacing a Office application on Windows systems, where i noticed that shortcuts created by the users, was not upgraded/removed when the new office version was installed. The issue seems to be related to users creating custom shortcuts, directly to exe files.I some cases the shortcut name was clear, but in other cases the users had chosen something they found fit. The following PowerShell script was created to remove shortcuts (lnk files) based on the executable. This means you can specific the exe or use a wildcard if there is multiple executable files releated to … Continue reading

Smart Card device integration into Windows 10

All the joys of Windows 10….. now on 1709 Last week after upgrading Windows 10, I came a cross this nice new integration for Smart Cards. (tokens)               Windows 10 new has support for eTokens (SafeNet Tokens) I was very pleased with this update, it will save me yet another application to install. I’ve been using the SafeNet Application from Gemalto and it has served me well for several years. So time for a changes, the integrated Smart Card application in Windows 10 works perfect for me. I am using the following it with: … Continue reading

Setting up the lab environment – DNS resolution puzzle

I would prefer to have access from my local vlan and wireless vlan to the servers. But didn’t want to all dns traffic into the VM’s (and depend on a testing environment) Basically I want host resolution, and being able to utilizing the domain services in the testing environment, without interruption of my other services. This is the solution in went for was using Conditional Forwarders First the Hyper-V host: I Installed the DNS Server role within Windows Server 2016. Setup forwarders to google dns:               After that i will add the Conditional Forwards … Continue reading

Where is my cloud key?

During vlan configuration for my new lab (see previous post Home Data Center) I had to change some vlans, for some reason my  Hybrid Cloud Device Management controller got “lost in translation” The setup: 1 x Mikrotik CCR1036-12G-4S-EM 1 x UniFi switch 16 150w 1 x UniFI Cloud Key It all starts with the adoption of devices onto the cloud key – no problems there. But when your Cloud Key is lost in a vlan with no connectivity or access to other devices, then its back to basics. My problem was that I deleted the valid networks/vlans added on ports – … Continue reading

Setting up the lab environment – Deduplication

The next step for the lab or so-called home data center: Installing and Configuring Deduplication I was going to use a USB stick for the Windows Server 2016 OS. The main reason for this: DEDUPLICATION. I did start out with a USB stick, but due to performance issues this was changed – read the follow-up post (https://blog.thomasmarcussen.com/follow-up-on-the-home-datacenter-hardware/) The reason for having the OS on a separate volume: Deduplication is not supported on system or boot volumes. Read more about Deduplication here: About Data Deduplication Let’s get started Installing and Configuring Deduplication Open an elevated PowerShell prompt Execute: Import-Module ServerManager Execute: Add-WindowsFeature … Continue reading

Follow up on the home datacenter hardware

It’s time for a small update – the previous post is available here: https://blog.thomasmarcussen.com/new-lab-home-datacenter/ The datacenter has been running for about a week now – quite good…. but….. I’ve been using the Samsung USB as OS drive – Samsung USB 3.0 Flash Drive FIT 32GB It does have fast read, and a not that slow write, according to Samsung: Up to 130 MB/s The week passed with setting up and installing VMs – using the actual VMs etc. But when installing Windows Updates on the Hyper-V host, installing Features/Roles or anykind of configuration, it seems to slow down to useless/freeze. … Continue reading

The new LAB and home datacenter

Finally i managed to setup the new lab and home-datacenter. Due to several home limitations (cost of power, space and noise) The decision was clear: 1 x Intel NUC Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK 2 x G.Skill Ripjaws4 SO DDR4-2133 DC – 16GB 1 x USB 3.0 to Dual Port Gigabit Ethernet Adapter NIC w/ USB Port 2 x Samsung NVMe SSD 960 EVO 1 TB 1 x Samsung USB 3.0 Flash Drive FIT 32GB The NUC can run RAID 0 and 1 on the internal NVMe drives, i’m going for RAID 0 (Stripe) This is where it gets a bit interesting.. … Continue reading