Blind Spots – Setting the System Path Variable in Windows

nbeam published 1 week ago in Development, Microsoft, Windows Administration. Tags: , ,

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Have you ever come across something in your IT career that makes you think to yourself “How did I come this far having missed this for so many years?” I had one of those moments this morning when it dawned on me that I didn’t instinctively know how to create or update environment variables in Windows, specifically the system “path” variable.

Typically, when I run across something like this I write about it because it helps me to understand it and it documents it so I don’t have to go “a-googling” at some point in the future. Onward and upward and all that jazz…
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Copy an Azure Table Using AzTables Powershell Module and Powershell 7

nbeam published 2 months ago in Azure, Cloud Services, Microsoft, Powershell. Tags: , , , , , ,

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A few months back I started using Azure Tables as a quick, cheap, and simple database for a project at work. I was recently re-factoring my main Powershell script which spits data out into an Azure Table for later PowerBI reporting. Thankfully, even though it was close to midnight, my years of “ops management brain” kicked in before I pushed the “go” button on my refactored script. Thankfully it dawned on me I should be testing my updated script on a copy of my table vs. the only copy of the data I had.

Being late and me being tired, it didn’t occur to me to just try Azure Storage Explorer, which allows you to easily copy a table from one storage account to another. Instead, I turned to Powershell. (more…)

Audit Your Blobs Using Azure Powershell

nbeam published 8 months ago in Azure, Cloud Security, Cloud Services, Information Security, Microsoft, Network Security, Powershell, Storage. Tags: , , ,

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Halloween is over but the the world is still a scary place. In a continuation of a thought from an article I wrote a few weeks back for Auditing AzureSQL Firewall Policies, I thought I would also include a short function for auditing azure storage accounts that are currently configured for “public” access.
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Getting Up and Running with Powershell 7

nbeam published 9 months ago in Development, Fun, Microsoft, Powershell, Windows 10. Tags: , , ,

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I recently overhauled a script that I wrote to take advantage of the parallel processing functionality that is included in Microsoft Powershell 7. The results have been excellent with script runtimes being reduced from over an hour down to roughly 5 minutes. Learning the ins-and-outs of using parallel processing was a bit of a chore that I will discuss in a later article, however the first hurdle that had to be mounted was simply getting Powershell 7 installed and figuring out how to make use of it. Quickly getting up and running with Powershell 7 is what this article seeks to address. (more…)

I Passed My Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam and Then Moved My Blog to Oracle’s Cloud…

nbeam published 9 months ago in Cloud Services, Linux, Ubuntu. Tags: , , ,

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Let me start by saying, I really love Microsoft Azure and my brain is currently flooded with plenty of Azure goodness after earning my Azure Admin certification. Therefore I was surprised to find myself working on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) platform less than a week after passing the AZ-104. I find that my professional life is focused on Microsoft, Windows Server, Hyper-V, Powershell, IIS, Storage Spaces, etc. but the technical tinkerer in me is always working in the world of Linux. Additionally, my personal pet projects have personal pet budgets. So that means Apache, MySQL, PHP, BASH, Drupal, and WordPress.

I also delight in most things open-source. The first time I SSH’d into my hacked Western Digital “WDTV” media player well over a decade ago I was enchanted by the incredible things that can be done with Linux on not-so-incredible hardware and non-existent budgets.

Had you told me a month ago this blog would be running on Oracle hosted infrastructure supported by hardware released within the last three years I believe I would have laughed. First, I am familiar with Azure and genuinely like the platform. Second, “Oracle” and “Budget” are typically diametrically opposed concepts. And yet… here we (literally) are.
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