How to tell if your users AD account password has expired

Like I said in a previous post we are dealing with the after math of a disaster so most of our Administrative tools are still offline until we get around to bringing back online. One of those tools was a real life saver and would email not only the admin team but the end users that their AD password was about to expire. So without that we are flying blind, which is not a big deal for the day to day management of our network.


Moving along I got a call the other day from one of my users who was working remote who said that he could not connect to email. So I asked him when was the last time he reset his password, which he said he did not know.

So I opened up my command line and ran the following command

net user %USERNAME% /domain

Replace %Username% with the username you want to query and it will return a ton of information about the user account including the date the password will expire. 

TCP Reverse Proxies, the next step in web hosting

So as I mentioned previously, I have been dealing with a DR issue at work. One of the services that we did not bring back due to networking issues is our IIS ARR server which was acting as a reverse proxy for several of our web services.

So there are many options out there which we can go with so but I would say that the front runners at this time are either NGINX or PFSense. Over the next few days I will go into more details with additional posts with more information.

The Woes of being a SysAdmin.....

So last night I was called into our Data Center due to an outage. Once everything came back up we noticed an issue with our Exchange Archive Server which lives at that Data Center. From outlook we were not able to access our In-Place Archives, however we could do it from OWA (Weird Right?)


This morning I looked into the issue further and when I tried to open the Exchange Management Shell on that server I got this message 3 times.


New-PSSession : [ServerName.domain.local] Connecting to remote server ServerName.Domain.local failed with the following error
message : [ClientAccessServer=ServerName,BackEndServer=ServerName.Domain.local,RequestId=2de56d73-34a8-46a9-9bdd-5c023e960cb5,
TimeStamp=8/6/2018 3:14:08 PM] [FailureCategory=Cafe-SendFailure]  For more information, see the
about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
At line:1 char:1
+ New-PSSession -ConnectionURI "$connectionUri" -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Excha ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : OpenError: (System.Manageme....RemoteRunspace:RemoteRunspace) [New-PSSession], PSRemotin
   gTransportException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : -2144108477,PSSessionOpenFailed


So I tried to google this error message and let me tell you, if you try, good luck. There was literally no information about it. I then ended up googling this part of the message:

FailureCategory=Cafe-SendFailure

This let me to a Microsoft Answers thread which guided me to look at another blog which then said to check the SSL Binding on both the Website and Exchange Back end in IIS on the host. I discovered the the Exchange Back end did not have a binding for port 444. So I pointed it to the proper certificate and after and IIS reset it worked like magic.

Say hello to my little friend.....

So this little baby came in with the Amazon guy today!

As part of my preparation for the VCAP - DCD 6.5 exam that I am taking, I purchased this book which came recommended by the author whose blog I follow and listed on my VCAP 6.5 page.

I must say I have read many IT books in my time in this field that this one is probably my favorite. It is very concise and to the point. The book is broken up into small sections or "recipes " which are easy to digest and understand. Even the sections that I usually find boring or hard to get through was not as much of a struggle for me this time around. The author also left little nuggets of wisdom which I found helpful and fascinating.

I also loved the message in the beginning of the book from the publisher that said if there was any erroneous information or misspellings that you can email them to let them know so they can correct it in future revisions. This was so refreshing, I cannot tell you how many time I have read a book with misspellings or wrong information and it can really trip you up. You try to get in contact with the author or the publisher and nobody cares. I think more publishing houses should adopt this mentality.

I look forward to doing a full review of this book at a later time (depending on how well I do on the exam)

How to install PowerCLI

Recently VMware has changed the way you install PowerCLI from being the standard MSI installer that we have all been used to for years, to downloading and installing it from the PowerShell Repository.

Here is the process for installing PowerCLI:

Open PowerShell by running it as an Administrator

Once PowerShell loads up you will want to change the Execution Policy to Remote Signed

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Once that is done you can install PowerCLI by running this command:

Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser

You will then be prompted at least twice to give your consent to download and install from an untrusted repository.