Just a quick one this time.
One thing I often like to do on my lab machines (servers and clients) is clear out all event logs. Not just the older style Windows Logs, but the newer Applications and Services Logs as well: The easiest way I’ve found to do this is just run the following PowerShell command in an Administrator PowerShell console:
get-winevent -ListLog * | % { [System.Diagnostics.Eventing.Reader.EventLogSession]::GlobalSession.ClearLog($_.LogName) }
Like most tech people I have lots of Hyper-V VM’s scattered across various computers at home. Some of these VM’s are running on Server OS hosts (Server 2012 R2) and some running on client OS hosts (Windows 8.1) on my desktop or laptop. These VMs also get varying amount of use - lab and dev machines getting used most of the time while “experimentation” machines getting booted only rarely.
I also like to run my heavily used VMs on fast SSD drives to keep them “snappy”.
I’ve been recently doing some experimentation with AD RMS templates and AD FS integration in my lab environment. Clearly, I lead a very exciting life. Of course to test AD RMS templates one needs a copy of Office installed into the lab environment. This, I thought, would be a good opportunity to configure Office (Office 2013 Pro Plus to be precise) to be installed via Group Policy.
I of course read the Deploy Office 2013 by using Group Policy computer startup scripts documentation on TechNet, which directed me to use GPOs which called batch files on computer start-up.
The Certificate Web Enrollment component of Certificate Services is fairly helpful for allowing easy certificate request and enrollment from any computer.
Requesting a certificate via the Web Enrollment service web page.
It does require Internet Explorer because of an Active X control that runs on the page, but this is acceptable. It also needs to be connected to using HTTPS - which is also fine. Except when it isn’t. Or more accurately, reports that you are not connected via HTTPS when you in fact are.
Features-on-demand - it’s a great new “feature” - when it works. However, the rest of the time it is a real headache.
A couple of months ago I decided I wanted to trim down the size of my Windows Server 2012 R2 VM’s. Disk Cleanup (cleanmgr.exe) is one tool that I’ve often found really useful to have on a server install, especially when preparing OS VM images to ensure the install is as lean and clean as possible.
