MCSE Studying - Week 22

Overview
Week 22 of my MCSE studies was productive despite spending quite a bit of time setting up the hardware and software for the 70-411 lab environment. I finished the KnowledgeNet live learning course for 70-410, completed another chapter of "Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches" book, started into the 70-411 Training Guide by Orin Thomas, attending an exam prep session for 70-410, and got into some other supplemental training resources.

Cool Stuff
The coolest thing this past week was learning how customize a Windows Server 2012 R2 image, then deploy it via WDS (Windows Deployment Services). This could be a huge time saver for me when I need to setup a new lab environment, or simply add an additional server. The time savings come from learning how to add Windows Updates and drivers to an image file. Once this is done, future installs already have the Windows Updates installed. This alone could save 3-4 hours of update time per server. I think I'll setup a WDS server sometime in the next week or so.

PowerShell cmdlet of the Week
This week's PowerShell cmdlet is one that I have used several times this week:

Add-Computer

Simple, I know, but it was actually faster to join a computer to an Active Directory domain using PowerShell, than clicking my way through the system properties dialog boxes. Say for example you want to add the local server to an AD Domain called contoso.com (everyone's favorite test/training domain), using my administrator account (since we all know you shouldn't use the Domain Administrator account).

Add-Computer -DomainName contoso.com -DomainCredential dlamb_admin@contoso.com

Once you hit 'Enter', you will be prompted for a password. Once that is done, you just need a quick reboot using:

Restart-Computer

Easy!

Stats
Total time studying: 22 hrs. 35 min.

• PowerShell: 1 hrs. 5 min.
• 70-410: 8 hrs. 15 min.
• 70-411: 2 hrs. 55 min.
• Lab Setup: 10 hrs. 20 min.

Resources used:

Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches - 2nd Edition: Don Jones & Jeffery D. Hicks

KnowledgeNet Live Learning Course: Installing and Configuring Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
Training Guide: Administering Windows Server 2012 R2: Orin Thomas

In Closing
It was a busy, chaotic week, but I accomplished more than I thought I would. Next week I will be back to the books as I study 70-411 and PowerShell. I have also registered for two Microsoft Virtual Academy Live Events: "Modernizing Your Data Center Jump Start" and "PowerShell for Active Directory Jump Start". I am especially looking forward to the PowerShell event, as one of the hosts is Jason Helmick. He was one of the hosts in the MVA course where I first learned how to use PowerShell, and I thoroughly enjoyed that course.

This coming week, I also need to sit down and spend some more time mapping out exam objectives, and start assessing where I need to spend extra time. It's going to be fun!

Have a great week everyone!

MCSE Studying - Week 21

Overview
Week 21 of my MCSE studies was quite busy, but I still didn't get as much studying done as the previous week. I managed to finish Chapters 10 & 11 in the 70-410 Study Guide, which finally brought me to the end of the book. I also completed Chapter 12 & 13 in the"Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches" book, listened to two PowerScripting podcast episodes, and attended sessions 3 & 4 of the KnowledgeNet 70-410 course.

Cool Stuff
The coolest thing I learned this past week was how to configure the Windows Firewall, and IPSec. I have always avoided using the Windows Firewall, until now. I was pleasantly surprised how simple the service is to manage. Likewise for IPSec. It was surprisingly easy to use and configure. It took a bit more reading to understand the underlying technology of IPSec, but it was worth it.

PowerShell cmdlet of the Week
This week's PowerShell cmdlet is one that I have routinely used to disable the Windows Firewall. I had always considered the Windows Firewall difficult to use and configure, so I opted to disable it instead of trying to configure it. I have since learnt the error of my ways, and will start using the firewall.

Set-NetFirewallProfile

I used to use it in this form to disable all the firewall profiles:

Set-NetFirewallProfile -All -Enabled False

However, Microsoft recommends not doing this, and now that I am more educated, so do I. Still, it can be a useful tool for troubleshooting potential firewall issues.

Stats
Total time studying: 14 hrs. 30 min.

• PowerShell: 3 hrs. 35 min.
• 70-410: 10 hrs. 55 min.

Resources used:

Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches - 2nd Edition: Don Jones & Jeffery D. Hicks

Training Guide: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 R2: Mitch Tulloch

KnowledgeNet Live Learning Course: Installing and Configuring Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
PowerScripting Podcast - Episode 286

In Closing
I had quite a lot of fun this past week, but was a little frustrated by the lack of progress. It was a bit of a chaotic week, and I was forced to put studying on the back burner. Still, I did get more done than I thought I was going to. Next week, I am going to continue my 70-410 studies, start into 70-411, and keep going with PowerShell. I also have some lab setup to do that might take a few hours, but it has to be done.

Have a great week everyone!

Feeling Thankful and Grateful

As another Thanksgiving is upon us here in Canada, I thought I'd take a few minutes to share with you some things that I'm thankful and grateful for.

I am thankful for my wonderfully supportive family, and that we are all happy and healthy. I think that it is sometimes easy for a person to to take their family for granted, but that is a trap I do not want to fall into.I have a wonderful wife, who supports me through all of my ups and downs, successes and failures, and even my crazy ideas that I sometimes come up with. I regularly tell her that I love her, but I still don't say it enough. Love you sweetie! I also have two wonderful children who are always happy to see me, and can still put a smile on my face, regardless of how bad of a day I might have had. I also need to tell them that I love them more often than I do.

I am grateful that I have had a really good friend and co-worker over the past 7 years. He is enough like me that we get along really well, but different enough from me that I can learn something from him on a daily basis. Without him, I doubt I ever would have had the experience of attending my first entertainment expo, and known the simple pleasure of standing in line for hours on end to meet a favorite celebrity. I also wouldn't have been introduced to a whole new language, which still continues to baffle me to this day. It saddens me to know that he will soon be leaving for new opportunities. I will miss his goofy sense of humor which never fails to make me laugh, and I will miss those heart-to-heart talks that only family men can appreciate. I am thankful that I have had the chance to know him, as my life has been made immeasurably richer for knowing him.

I am thankful that I live in a wonderful community, in a prosperous province, in what can only be described as one of the best countries in the world. One only has to read the world news for a few minutes to get a sense of strife and suffering elsewhere in the world. It is in those time that it is important to reflect on how great this nation of ours is. I am proud to be a Canadian, and I am thankful that I am able to call it my home.

As strange as it may sound, I am also grateful for my now former employer. I am happy to have had the opportunity to cut my teeth as a sysadmin on a network that was just the right size over the past 13 years. It gave me a chance to explore all areas of system and network administration, allowing me to discover what it is that I really love doing. I have discovered where my passion lies as a sysadmin, and I plan to follow that aggressively. I firmly believe that what I needed most at the moment, was a firm push out the door so that I would have the opportunity to continue to grow and learn. They provided that for me, and I thank them for that. I will miss working with that fantastic group of people, co-workers and customer alike, and I look forward to continuing those friendships outside of work.

There are a lot more things to be thankful for, and there isn't space here to list them all. This short list is simply the highlights that came to mind as I mulled over my experiences over the past few weeks. If I were to take a lesson away from this, it would be to spend a few minutes each day reflecting on what I am thankful for. Believe me, there is a lot to be thankful for.

Perhaps you might want to take a few minutes right now and ask yourself, "What am I thankful for?".

Have a wonderful week!

MCSE Studying - Week 20

Overview
Week 20 of my MCSE studies has been a little more intense than I have been used to. I accomplished far more than I have in any previous week. In the 70-410 study guide, I finished chapters 7, 8, and 9. In the 'Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches', I completed chapters 9, 10, and 11. I also decided to retake the 70-410 live, instructor led course and completed sessions 1 & 2 along with the pre and post tests. In addition to all of that, I got caught up on my extra reading from various TechNet articles, blogs, and other posts. It has been a great week!

Cool Stuff
The coolest thing I learned this past week was how to use Windows Server 2012 R2 to host an iSCSI target. Once I had a couple of iSCSI targets set up on a 2012 R2 server, I connected my VMWare ESX server to one of them and created a datastore, and then I connected another 2012 R2 server to the second one and created a drive. There was a great sense of accomplishment once I had them setup and running.

My understanding of how iSCSI works, and what all of the terminology meant had always been a bit of a mystery to me.This past week has been a real eye-opener into this particular storage technology, and I feel much more confident about using it now.

PowerShell cmdlet of the Week
This week I had an opportunity to learn a lot more about PowerShell. Picking just one of these is going to be tricky, but here goes:

Format-Table

I have used this one occasionally in the past, but just recently learned how to use it correctly. My favorite parameter is -AutoSize. It really cleans up the output when you only want a few columns displayed. It helps prevent your table from being spread across the entire width of the display. Consider the following two examples:

Say you wanted to get a list of running processes and how much memory each one is using. You can use the following on-liner to fetch the information and display it for you:

Get-Process | Select-Object -Property Name,VM | Format-Table

It does produce the desired output, but look, it spreads the two columns out across the entire display, making it a little difficult to read. Try it again with the -AutoSize parameter:

Get-Process | Select-Object -Property Name,VM | Format-Table -AutoSize

Much better! The -AutoSize parameter narrowed the columns to be just wide enough to display the information passed to it. Now the information is presented in an easier to read format.

Keep in mind, you can shorten Format-Table -AutoSize using it's alias and a little shorthand:

ft -a

That's it for this weeks cmdlet!

Stats
Total time studying: 22 hrs.

• PowerShell: 2 hrs. 55 min.
• 70-410: 19 hrs. 5 min.

Resources used:

Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches - 2nd Edition: Don Jones & Jeffery D. Hicks

Training Guide: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 R2: Mitch Tulloch

KnowledgeNet Live Learning Course: Installing and Configuring Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2

In Closing
This past week was a lot of fun! I enjoyed being able to focus in on my studies and make some real progress. The quizzes I have been taking are proving to be very useful in pointing out areas that I need to spend a little more time learning about. One of those areas in particular, is the IPv6 transition technologies. I still do not have a firm grasp of what each one is used for, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. However, this knowledge will come in time.

This coming up week, I plan to complete my first pass through the 70-410 Training Guide, attend sessions 3 & 4 through KnowledgeNet, and get in at least 3 more chapters on PowerShell.

Have a great week everyone!

MCSE Studying - Week 19 - A Slight Change In Plan

Overview
There has been a slight change in my plans. Actually, that might be understating the issue slightly, but I'm going to run with it. Last week, on Monday morning, I was let go from the job I had held for over 13 years. To say it was a shock would be grossly understating the feelings I felt.

I have heeded the advise of a professional and I took the week off from my studies. I did however spend quite a bit of time listening to the PowerScripting podcast, which helped me maintain some feeling of normality in this transition period.

I have decide to take a little bit of time off from working and spend that time focusing on my studies. I found it difficult to carve out enough time to study while I was working, so this brief pause in work should allow me to catch up on my studies while I search out a new opportunity.

Cool Stuff
The cool thing from this week wasn't so much the info, but the experience of sitting in on the live recording of the PowerScripting Podcast, Episode 287. It was nice to be able to put faces to the voices and get a chance to see behind the scenes.

Stats
Total time studying: 7 hrs. 40 min.

• PowerShell: 7 hrs. 40 min.

Resources used:

PowerScripting Podcast - Episode 249, 256, 257, 258, & 287

In Closing
This past week has been a restful one, but next week shall be very busy as I hit the books. I'm not sure what the goal for studying will be, but I do know the progress will be much higher than past weeks. I suppose that's one advantage of being unemployed.

I believe that in the long run, this is going to be a great opportunity, and I am looking forward to what the future holds.

Have a great week everyone!

MCSE Studying - Week 18

Overview
Wow! I seem to be really late getting last week's post out. It's been an interesting and chaotic week this week, but I'll cover that more in another post.

There is not a whole lot to report, so I'll be fairly brief this week. I have completed week eighteen of studying for my MCSE exams. I started Chapter 9 in the Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches book, listened to the latest episode of the PowerScripting Podcast, and finished Lessons 2 & 3 in the 70-410 Training Guide.

Cool Stuff
As far as cool stuff goes, getting more knowledge on Hyper-V was once again the coolest thing I learned. There wasn't anything specific, just the general satisfaction of learning something new.

PowerShell cmdlet of the Week
This week's cmdlet is actually a pair of useful cmdlets:

Save-Help

Update-Help

I learned about these quite some time ago, but are really quite useful for updating help files for PowerShell on multiple systems, especially when those systems do not have access to the Internet. You can use the following command to download and save the files to a specific location. say a USB drive:

Save-Help -DestinationPath F:\PSHelpFiles

and then use this command to update help from those saved help files:

Update-Help -SourcePath F:\PSHelpFiles

Stats
Total time studying: 4 hrs. 40 min.

• PowerShell: 2 hrs. 35 min.
• 70-410: 2 hrs. 5 min.

Resources used:

Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches - 2nd Edition: Don Jones & Jeffery D. Hicks

Training Guide: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 R2: Mitch Tulloch

PowerScripting Podcast - Episode 284

In Closing
This past week has been an improvement over previous weeks. This week I am going aim to finish the lab exercises and additional reading from Chapter 7 in the 70-410 study guide, and complete the Chapters 9 lab, and finish Chapter 10 in the Learn PowerShell in A Month of Lunches.

Have a great week everyone!