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How to generate a Remote Desktop Manager (RDMan) group XML for your infrastructure with PowerShell

I thought that RDMan, aka Remote Desktop Connection Manager, fitted perfectly in “A BLAST FROM THE PAST” category of software used back in the day by every System Engineer working on Windows Systems. I was wrong. Believe it or not, it is still strong today!

When you need to manage multiple servers/workstation remotely via RDP(Remote Desktop Protocol) it’s for most professionals the obvious choice. The GUI of the application is straightforward and in most cases or scenarios it’s fit for purpose. Continue reading “How to generate a Remote Desktop Manager (RDMan) group XML for your infrastructure with PowerShell”

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How to trigger incoming webhooks in Microsoft Teams with Powershell

As a DevOps with work experiences as a Developer and System Engineer, I tend to give for granted that all my colleagues or peers have the same background knowledge or simply the same vocabulary.

But I’ve recently discussed with some seasoned sysadmins working for other companies and I was surprised to discover the barrier was around the vocabulary and the design principles (for developers or system engineers) used as a reference point.

Naturally, we try to solve problems with solutions or technologies that we already used in the past, without exploring all the possibilities. Sometimes we simply don’t get some context or benefits of doing it differently or we can’t measure how expensive can be the adoption of different models or strategies.

For instance: Microservices, RESTfulAPI, Webhooks are common terms that most of us are comfortable using every day, but these design implementations and functions are sometimes not so simple to break it down into small independent pieces. Continue reading “How to trigger incoming webhooks in Microsoft Teams with Powershell”

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How to Query and Log Off Remote Desktop Sessions with Powershell

The Remote Desktop Procotol (RDP) is still strong and it’s not going away anytime soon, indeed there are companies like CITRIX that have built part of their success creating robust management for it.
As you can Imagine, there a lot of ways to manage RDP according to the type of implementations or tools involved, so some corner cases will not be cover in this article. There are also tools like gateways that will provide a central management point for all sessions, but let’s assume that these tools are not available to you or not part your infrastructure design. Continue reading “How to Query and Log Off Remote Desktop Sessions with Powershell”

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Powershell & Veeam Backup and Replication / VeeamZip

First things first: this is not a sponsored article.

I came across Veeam products multiple times in my career,  but most of the customers or companies that I worked for were using other products with no compelling reason for migrating from backup solutions that already worked efficiently with another one.

In the last couple of years, I’ve attended to VMWare UserCon and met some guys from Veeam, that was one of the sponsors of the event in here Melbourne (Australia). They were very approachable and kind to show that the company had a lot of new solutions to offer and one, in particular, it was too good to be true. Continue reading “Powershell & Veeam Backup and Replication / VeeamZip”

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Site Reliability Engineering

The moment I heard about this book, I wanted to read it. The title is self-explanatory: “How Google Runs Production Systems”. It looked so interesting to me that I immediately purchased it. At that time I had other books waiting in my bookshelf, but I was so impatient to read this one, that I admit I started immediately after the Phoenix Project. This one was the one that I absolutely wanted to read.

The contents in this book are well organised, chapter after chapter it’s easy to accept the challenges that an organisation of this size had to conquer to become successful in managing the infrastructure, processes and people.

Continue reading “Site Reliability Engineering”