Hey y’all, Mark back with a new topic we haven’t really talked about much here on the blog, IPv6. When I go onsite with customers I tend to have two discussions over and over again. First, RPC ports and firewalls. Ned Pyle has taken care of...

Our readers are simply the best! One of the benefits of having great folks that read what we post on the Ask PFE Platforms Blog are the questions we sometimes receive. One such recent question you will find below that came to us this week. If you have...

Hi readers, John Sanz here. A customer of mine came to me with a business requirement that couldn’t be satisfied out of the box, so I thought I would share the solution with you. The business requirement was that they needed to be able to enforce...

Is there an app for that? Not sure if you asked, but we do have an app for our blog that allows you to enjoy and read the content on your Windows Phone (WP7 or WP8). It's a basic blog reader app that allows you to read our blogs, tag them as favorite...

Hey y’all, Mark here with a real quick post. For our readers that are at Tech Ed 2013 in New Orleans (home of everyone’s favorite X-Men Gambit ). We got several PFEs delivering sessions that you should check out if you get the chance. Make...

Doug Symalla and Greg Jaworski here, tag-teaming to give you a hefty blog, full of detail. In Doug's last blog , he laid out an Active Directory upgrade roadmap. We promised you some practical detail for each of the phases, so let’s get started with the...

Collaboration. The idea that we are better when we work together. Isn't that something we often hear about, especially in IT? Well kids, I'm here to say it AGAIN! Within Microsoft, 'collaboration' and working with others across boundaries is critical...

From time to time, we come across issues where capturing a network trace is critical to determining root cause for a problem and even more important… a solution.  Simple right?  Just start Network Monitor or WireShark and reproduce the problem...

Hello all, If you pay attention to the updates we rollout each month or take note of what Windows Updates are on your Windows 8 PC or Windows Server 2012 Server, you may have seen some monthly rollup updates. Below are the rollups from the first one when...

Hey everyone, I’d like to make you aware of an opportunity to connect with some AskPFEPlat celebrities (relatively speaking, of course). We’re hosting two, one-day workshops, live and in-person. This is a unique opportunity for you to participate in detailed...

Hi AskPFEPlat readers. Tom Moser here. A question I get on a pretty frequent basis from my larger, multi-forest enterprise customers is: “Do I need to add subnets from Forest A to Forest B so that clients find the correct DC across the trust...

If you’ve been managing an Active Directory infrastructure for the last 5-10 years, you might have noticed that the pace of change has rapidly increased. After surviving the migrations from Windows NT to Windows 2000 and then Windows 2003, we settled...

I frequently get asked to consult on building out new Public Key Infrastructures here in Premier Field Engineering. One of the things that I get asked commonly is “How do I choose a key length and Hash Algorithm?”. That’s a complex question, that generally...

Hey y’all, Mark here with some quick links for you. We have two other PFE team blogs that have been getting some steam as of late we thought we’d pass along so our fine readership can check them out and spread the word. A bunch of SQL folks...

Hello folks, its Rick here. In a previous post Michael gave you nice overview of Windows Azure Services and helped you setup your own VMs in cloud using the free trial thru the Azure portal. Today I would like to walk you through building a VM in Windows...

My name is Bryan Zink and I am a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer focused on supporting Windows Server and Active Directory. You’ve probably read the fantastic post by Yong Rhee introducing RAP as a Service . Maybe you even read What is RaaS? Is That...

Some months ago, I shared a PowerShell script to enumerate the membership of privileged groups (including membership in nested groups) and report membership as well as password ages. Like most scripts, it works well in most environments, but has some...

Greg here with a quick post where the new DNS PowerShell cmdlets in AD made a task much easier. Many of our customers use Microsoft DNS and a feature of Microsoft DNS is the ability to remove stale records. By default this feature is disabled and...

If you've read any of my prior posts, you know I like to be able to do things without a lot of prep, in a short amount of time. Yes, I like the K.I.S.S principle – Keep It Simple, Stan. I also enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes when...

Here’s an interesting question that came to us from one of our readers. If you have a question for us, don't forget that you can contact us using the Contact tile just to the right of this article when viewed from our TechNet blog . Question...

While working with a customer this week on their Active Directory (AD) Site configuration I found out they had not heard about using a /32 or /128 subnet mask. In fact my Bing search did not reveal a lot of information on how and when to use this handy...

One of the great things about the Windows Assessment and Development Kit for Windows 8 is the Windows Performance Toolkit V5.0. The toolkit, itself, has a subset of tools that produce in-depth performance profiles of Windows operating systems and applications...

Here’s an interesting question that came to us from one of the readers. If you have a question for us, don't forget that you can contact us using the Contact tile just to the right of this article when viewed from our TechNet blog . Question: With an...

Active Directory Administrative Center (ADAC) was first introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2 to manage directory service objects along with Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) however, it did not win me over until after I saw the enhancements...

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer not knowing the answer to this question or educate thy self… Enough of Shakespeare... Where’s my PFE, when I need him? Well in previous releases of the operating system, customers always depended...