Sami Laiho

Hardening AppLocker

When it comes to a vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) backup, you have to make sure that the method is supported. As you know, VMware vCSA is a virtual appliance that can be backed up in two ways.

AppLocker Audit vs. Enforced mode

Windows 10 2004 introduces a new Group Policy setting that allows you to configure the minimum password length to a value greater than 14. This was already possible via PowerShell. However, the new audit policy shows conflicts between the two mechanisms.

Creating AppLocker rules from the Windows event log

Following the start of the general rollout of Windows 10 2004, Microsoft provided the corresponding group policy templates as a separate download. For documentation, I have created a multilingual reference of all settings as an Excel spreadsheet.

AppLocker best practices

NAKIVO Backup & Replication v9.4 provides new features, including backup to Amazon S3 storage, better physical-to-virtual recovery, role-based access control, and the ability to recover application objects to the source server. In this review, we take a look at the new features and functionality provided in this release.

AppLocker whitelisting vs. blacklisting

You know Microsoft is serious about something when there’s an exam for it. In this case, it’s MD-101, Managing Modern Desktops. In this article, we’ll look at what a modern desktop is and how it fits into Microsoft’s vision of a modern workplace.

Creating a complete memory dump without a Blue Screen

Protecting your VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs) running on premises is a must, but there are many backup programs on the market. A backup solution must be rock-solid reliable, be easy to configure, back up running VMs, provide flexible restores, and include offsite replication and cluster support. Altaro VM Backup 8 ticks all these boxes and more.

How to access the SAM and SECURITY hives in the Registry using the SYSTEM account

In this post, we’ll try to walk you through the upgrade process from vSphere 6.7 to vSphere 7. If you’re running vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.5 or 6.7, you should know that the upgrade is not an in-place upgrade. Rather, it is a new deployment of VCSA 7 with some copying of the old data to the new VCSA 7.

Capturing error messages and looking up text for error code numbers

You may have noticed once in a while that calendar entries in Exchange are defective in some mailboxes, but Exchange isn’t able to repair them with onboard tools. Although you can’t fix the problem online, you can use tools for offline repair.

How to capture a network trace from a remote computer

Most enterprises tend to use multiple vCenter Servers to manage their virtualized infrastructure. My environment has around 100+ vCenter Servers to manage the virtual infrastructure. It is a cumbersome task to manage and maintain the configuration of multiple vCenter Servers in the environment. Prior to vSphere 7.0, there was no centralized configuration tool to centrally manage and apply the same configuration across the multiple vCenter Servers in the environment to maintain consistency. vSphere 7.0 offers a new feature called “vCenter Server profiles” to maintain configurations across called multiple vCenter Servers in the virtualized environment.

Using Process Monitor (Procmon) remotely

Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 have reached the end of support from Microsoft as of January 14, 2020. Running an in-place upgrade on Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 will allow upgrading to newer versions of Windows Server. Let’s see what the process looks like to run a Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 in-place upgrade to Windows Server 2019.

Reset Windows 10 password by disabling Windows Defender

Installing Nano Server 2019 is a much different process than that of Windows Server 2016.  In this post, we will take a look at the process for installing Nano Server 2019.