Adam the Automator

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Adam Bertram

https://adamtheautomator.com

adamtheautomator

Setting Up Hybrid Azure AD-Join: The Best of Both Worlds

If you use on-prem Active Directory (AD) features and would also like to use Azure AD features like conditional access, single sign-on (SSO) and more, this article is for you. In this article, you're going to learn how to set up a mode Microsoft calls Hybrid Azure AD Join.

5 min. read

Understanding Azure DevOps Variables [Complete Guide]

Learn just about every concept variables in this article and apply this knowledge to your Azure DevOps Pipelines to automate all the things.

11 min. read

How to Build an Azure Pipeline (Build/Release) from Scratch

Software must be written, tested and deployed into a production environment. To do so, in an automated fashion, developers and DevOps build CI/CD pipelines or build/release pipelines that automate much of this activity.

12 min. read

PowerShell: Getting (and Exporting) AD Group Members

A popular use of PowerShell is working with Active Directory Directory Services (AD). There are so many time-saving things PowerShell can do with AD objects. Using PowerShell get AD group members and groups saves a ton of time.

7 min. read

PowerShell and Excel: Yes, They Work Together

Microsoft Excel is one of those ubiquitous tools most of us can't escape even if we tried. Many IT professionals use Excel as a little database storing tons of data in various automation routines. What's the best scenario of automation and Excel? PowerShell!

5 min. read

How to Automate Finding Interesting Twitter Users

Are you on Twitter? If not, you're missing out. Twitter is the best social media platform to keep up with the fast pace of tech. But there are millions of people on Twitter. How do you track down interesting people? In this article, I'll show you how to do just at and automate it!

7 min. read

Understanding Mocking in Pester

If you want to ensure your PowerShell code is in tip-top shape, you need to be unit testing it. Pester is a popular unit-testing framework built for PowerShell code that allows you to ensure the code you write is as you expect and stays that way.

3 min. read

How to Deploy and Update Azure VM Scale Sets with PowerShell

Performing an Azure VM Scale Set deployment is a great way to get autoscaling and high-availability out of the box. Azure VM Scale Sets have many baked-in features like automatically scaling to meet demand, deploying across availability zones and more.

9 min. read

Psexec: The Ultimate Guide

If there was a command-line utility that could compete with robocopy in terms of usefulness, it’s PsExec. The Sysinternals PsExec utility is as ubiquitous as they come in an IT admin arsenal. This tool allows administrators to remotely run commands just as if they were on the local computer.

13 min. read

The Ultimate Guide to Robocopy

Robocopy is one of the most-used command-line utilities to copy large volumes of data in Windows. It's such a popular tool because of how powerful it is. But with all that power comes complexity. In this guide, we're going to break down all that complexity and provide a complete tutorial on using this useful tool.

20 min. read

How to Find Domain-Joined Computers not in an Active Directory Site

As long as Microsoft Active Directory (AD) has been around, there have been roaming clients. Roaming clients are those domain-joined machines that aren't assigned to an AD site. These computers don't have an Active Directory subnet defined to a site. They have no way to know what site they're in.

3 min. read

Autounattend.xml: How to Perform Windows Unattended Install

One of the biggest time drains when deploying a new Windows client or server is installing Windows itself. The wizard that comes with the install forces you to set various configuration settings ahead of time so that Windows knows how to install the operating system. Let's automate this by performing a Windows unattended install.

2 min. read

Windows 10

How to Set Up File History on Windows 10

Backups are important. Everyone knows this. We all should perform routine backups of our important files. But, that's sometimes easier said than done. You get busy and forget to do it and by the time you really need that file you've already accidentally overwrote.

4 min. read

An Introduction to Working with TFS and PowerShell

Microsoft's Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a version control, work tracking, build deployment and release management application. It's a product that help software developers and DevOps teams control the entire code creation and deployment process. Although TFS does have a variety of graphical methods to use it, there are times when teams need to automate various aspects of TFS. Luckily, it includes a REST API so we can manage TFS with PowerShell.

3 min. read

Getting Started with Chef’s Test Kitchen

As more companies become more DevOps focused, code testing is creeping its way out of just the software development realm. With software "eating the world," we are now seeing operations/system administrators writing more code. A lot of this code is "infrastructure code". This code automates tasks like VM creation, standing up databases, adding/removing users from machines and so on.

3 min. read

Automation

A Sysadmin Guide to Automation

Automation. It's a term that has a different connotation for different people. Some believe automation is and will continue to be the cause of job loss. Some believe that automation will increase efficiency throughout the industry. Others believe automation will force workers to become more educated and get better jobs.

3 min. read

How to Find the Last Backup for a Domain Controller (Active Directory)

Everyone agrees that domain controller backups are important. Even multi-master services like Active Directory should be regularly backed up. Even though you've got copies of the Active Directory database and SYSVOL on various servers spread throughout the world doesn't mean you should simply ignore backups. Depending on replication intervals one wrong change can spread across your entire Active Directory environment quickly!

3 min. read

The End-All Guide to Repairing Active Directory Trust Relationships

Once the most common problems that plagues Windows system administrators is trusted, Active Directory computers seemingly fall off the domain. In this guide, you're going to learn every trick I've come across in my 20+ years managing Active Directory and how to automate it with PowerShell.

9 min. read

How to Build PowerShell Functions for Easier Pester Testing

When testing PowerShell modules and scripts, the de facto standard is Pester. Pester is a unit testing framework that allows a developer to pick apart and confirm various bits and pieces of PowerShell code.

3 min. read

Microsoft Azure

Azure Policy: How to Create and Remediate Compliance

A common theme in cloud environments today is the ability to define templates, policies, and procedures. These templates then dictate what can be done and verify that what does exist is correct. A service from Microsoft called Azure Policy is a great way to make that happen.

5 min. read

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