IT Insights

While it supports Windows and Linux, creating an OS image is vastly different between the two. In this article, I will focus on how Packer is used for Windows OS image creation.

Shadow IT is a real problem in the modern workplace. In this episode of Defrag This, we explore the reasons users turn to the dark side, the risks of unsanctioned IT stacks, and some of the solutions IT teams can use to curb Shadow IT. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is still the most popular cloud platform and Packer provides great integration that enables users to import builds into AWS and convert them to Amazon Machine Images (AMI).

Once upon a blood moon, there was a sysadmin called Kyle and he almost lost it all to the ghost in the machine...

Running commands locally on the remote computers is a common task many IT admins have to do every day. Here's how you can do that in PowerShell.

Tired of managing Windows system administration tasks manually? Wish you could set up a few Python scripts instead? Where there's a will, there's a way! In this article, we'll show you how to install Python's WMI module and how you can use it to perform system...

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a service known as Identity and Access Management (IAM) that lets AWS Administrators provision and manage users and permissions in AWS cloud.  AWS IAM can prove very useful for System Administrators looking to centrally manage users,...

Producing great software is only half the battle--or more like 1/3 of the battle. Software is worthless until it gets in the hands of the people that want to use it. To do that, though, isn’t simple.

In this article, we'll take a look at how system administrators can use Python to manage their Amazon Web Services (AWS)  Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure. You’ll learn to query existing EC2 instances, change the state of the virtual machines and their...

In this article, I will show how to configure a Vagrant box to run PowerShell.

In this article, we'll take a look at how Python can be used by System Administrators to automate the management of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure. You'll learn how to set up the Python scripting environment for first use, and how to...

In this article, I will dive into a Chocolatey package to show the important components.

There are times when you have a complex script that you just need to get into configuration management. Re-writing scripts into manifests is time-consuming, no doubt about it. In this article, I will show how to run PowerShell scripts from Puppet.

One of the excellent features of the new MOVEit Transfer 2018 product is the introduction of RESTful (REST) APIs. If you're not familiar with REST APIs, it boils down to an industry-standard way of accessing applications or services over HTTP/S.

The majority of organizations are not going to use one specific provider to host their systems. Whether it be VMware on-premises, Azure in the cloud, AWS, or Hyper-V, most will be operating on more than one.

One of the new features of Ipswitch's MOVEit Automation 2018 product is the introduction of REST APIs. In this video from Ipswitch contributor Adam Betram, we'll cover how to use PowerShell to first authenticate to a MOVEit Automation server and then we'll cover how to...

Basic details of your computer like operating system and version, memory, network adapter and hard drive are never stored in one central location. 

One “free” solution for deploying Chocolatey packages remotely is PowerShell. Using PowerShell remoting techniques, software can be deployed in parallel on many different machines at once. In this article, I will demonstrate this.

In this article, we will discuss how to get around the infamous double-hop problem in PowerShell. It's easier than you think.

In this article, we provide three tips to help you become more efficient with PowerShell commands. We will specifically cover how to streamline your efforts in searching for text inside of strings, transforming MSQL data into both XML and JSON, and building XML schemas.