Ahhh, it seems like replacing SSL certificates in vSphere is a never-ending process. My vSphere farm was not prompting me about untrusted SSL certs until I installed the NetApp Virtual Storage Console. Using the template from my previous posts, however, I was able to quickly update VSC's certs using a combination of …

Replacing ESX SSL is the easiest of all the vSphere components, in my opinion. Unlike vSphere 5.1, you can use Microsoft's Web Server SSL template, and there's no need to use the Java keytool or reregister the service with SSO. Below is a script I use in conjunction with my vSphere/PowerShell Replace SSL script. This …

While it took quite awhile to figure out how to replace vSphere 5.1 and 5.1U1's SSL certs, converting that script to work with 4.1U3 and 5.0. It probably helps that SSO doesn't exist (or I couldn't find it -- I haven't used vCenter on a regular basis since about 2006, but I've learned quite a bit from these SSL …

One month ago when I finally got my vSphere lab set up, I had no idea that getting rid of those annoying untrusted SSL errors would be such a colossal undertaking. I have my own domain CA and thought it would be easy to automate the process of replacing the self-signed vSphere SSl certs with my own trusted certs. At …

Read this updated post instead. It's superior in a number of ways ;) Alright, so I've wanted to setup a Remote Desktop Gateway for years, but the configuration seemed so.. time-intensive. Then I moved to Belgium, my living situation changed and I didn't want to setup a whole new VPN server to access my virtual lab. …

I recently discovered NoMachine's NX while looking for an easy way to encrypt VNC. NX, if you aren't familiar with it, is generally a PITA to setup, but well worth the pain (on Linux anyway). All traffic goes over SSH and while the performance isn't as great as Windows' RDP, it's faster and more secure than VNC. …

While I usually like conversation-style technical books (think: Manning's In Action series and many Wrox books), Microsoft's Patterns and Practices series is one of my favorite even though they feel so formal. Recently, my buddy Buck Woody posted a link to the freely available Patterns and Practices book for A Guide to …

Once, after viewing a SharePoint 2010 document library in Windows Explorer, I ran a net use and saw that Windows 7 had stored the credentials of my SSL-secured SharePoint intranet server. It took a bit of fiddling, but I eventually found you can, in fact, map a secure network drive using the command line: net use W: …

I started on a new client site last week and my first task was immediately clear: I had to remove the Mixed Content Security prompt on the encrypted SharePoint intranet's front page. Firebug showed that my browser was making calls to feeds.feedburner.com even though the RSS feed was an entirely different address at …

[Update 2025] PPTP is now widely considered insecure and deprecated for new deployments due to known weaknesses in MS-CHAPv2/MPPE. Prefer modern VPNs like WireGuard or OpenVPN. The setup below remains for historical reference and reflects what I ran in 2011. Firesheep got me thinkin' that I should probably do a little …