Practical Technology

New view for certs.  After doing a full-day session with a local consulting firm on SC2012 and some new Server 2012/HV3.0 features, I am very enthusiastic about the new possibilities.  So, I'll be rebuilding the lab as MS-only in an effort to get a good grasp of Server 2012 and System Center 2012, especially what you can do with Orchestrator and Service Desk. Unfortunately my MCITP:EA cert doesn't seem to count for much in the new scheme of things, only really counts toward the MCSA2012 cert, same as any of the 2008 admin certs, it seems.   MCSA: Server 2012 - 70-417 - Upgrading your skills to Server 2012 MCSE: Server Infrastructure - 70-413/414 -  ( Design&Implement / Adv.Implement ) MCSE: Desktop Infrastructure - 70-415/416 - ( Implement desktop infra. / Implement desktop application environments ) MCSE: Private Cloud - 70-246/247 - ( Monitoring&Operating / Configuring&Deploying ) That'll keep me busy for a year or two, along with saving up t...

Another handy project. First and foremost, follow this process when changing the passwords: Create Excel file with servers/passwords Import into your password manager Use that Excel file as the basis for the 'serverpasslist.txt' file How to use # Open a command prompt with appropriate DA credentials. # Browse to the directory containing the batch file, list file, and Sysinternals tool files. # Run the batch file. If there are issues, like the computer name does not exist, you'll see this: ---------------  E:\scripts\sysinternals>serverpasschange.bat  PsPasswd v1.22 - Local and remote password changer  Copyright (C) 2003-2004 Mark Russinovich  Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com  Error changing password:  '''The RPC server is unavailable.''' --------------- Script See below for sources.  Removed the echoing to help with visual security.  Removed extra parameters as they are not necessary. ---------------  @echo...

Worked on this the other day, very handy! Need to change all the admin passwords for iLO.  It's okay if the passwords are the same, just has to be complex.  Note also there is a 20-char limit for IPMI 2.0 (recommended, not enforced). Batch file I created a batch file and server list file for each domain to keep things simple.  Note if the path has spaces, you need to enclose with quotes.  :P ------------  @ECHO OFF  set FILE=server_list_test.txt  for /F "skip=2 tokens=1,2,3*" %%i in (%FILE%) do (   echo %%i   psexec \\%%i -u %%j -p %%k -h -c hponcfg.exe /f \\testserver.test.local\F$\temp\ilo_password.xml  ) ------------ Quick breakdown of what it's doing: * '-c hponcfg.exe' is in here because '-w' to set local working directory doesn't seem to work, so we copy the exe over * '-h' is for Vista and up, elevates the cmd * '/f' specifies the location of the ilo xml file * Note there are separate source text files...