Vagrant 2.1.0 and Hyper-V issues

EDIT - Vagrant 2.1.1 has the fixes for the issues below, use that! The latest version of Vagrant has issues for the Hyper-V provider which make it unusable without it being patched: The new "triggers" capability throws an "undefined method 'fire_triggers'", see GH#9775.  This happens for any operation, even "vagrant validate" When bringing up a machine …

Collaborating with multiple authors with GitHub

The great thing about GitHub is the way it brings developers together and promotes collaboration. In this example, I'm going to take a DSC module from Microsoft (xSQLServer), and combine it with some pull requests from Marko Bozikovic (@bozho). I'm then going to merge three of his pull requests so I can test 3 fixes …

Version Control for IT Pros

In this series, I'm going to write about using PowerShell with Visual Studio Code ("VS Code") on Windows.  If you're on Mac or Linux, don't feel left out, VS Code & Git are available on these platforms too, and it is an excellent editor for many languages, so if version control is new to you …

Launch SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) as a different user

EDIT - this is fixed in newer versions of SSMS.  Better to upgrade! Many organisations require that administrators have a separate user account for work on production systems, different to the one they use for day to day work. Unfortunately, newer versions of SSMS display this when you try to launch (or 'runas') SSMS as …

Chocolatey, a sweet package manager

Coming from a Linux system, Windows software installation appears rather confused and fragmented. On Ubuntu (and other Debian derivatives), we have: apt-get install - to install a piece of software apt-get update – to get the latest software versions available apt-get upgrade – to upgrade every piece of software on the system Using similar commands, …

Dealing with passwords in PowerShell

Oftentimes, it is necessary to store a password or some other secret within a script. It's not uncommon to see the password in plain text in a script, but that does create more than a few concerns. If you use a source code repository to version control your scripts (which you do, right?), this means …

Benefits realised, risks managed, using DSC

Desired State Configuration is a framework developed by Microsoft for managing systems, that provides significant benefits compared to traditional automated builds, or manual installs. Benefits extend beyond the initial build, into the operation of a system, for example, it can provide: A means to ensure on-going compliance, reduce risk & increase security Improvements to the …