Need your External IP address? Just use the following in Windows PowerShell 3+ or PowerShell 7+: 1$ip = (Invoke-WebRequest https://ipinfo.io/ip).Content.Trim() As a bonus, you can also get additional IP information using ipinfo.io's JSON web service. 1# Simple, object-based approach 2$ipinfo = Invoke-RestMethod …

Note: This article assumes you know how to setup Lync 2013 already and just need to know the intricacies of changing the default ports. Ever since I was exposed to Lync in 2011, I've been a huge proponent of using chat to communicate at work. Years ago, I recall corporate chat being a hard sell, but now it seems …

Note (2025): Lync Server 2010 and SQL Server 2012 are long out of support. The workaround below reflects what was done in 2013 to keep an existing deployment running; it is not a recommendation for modern environments. Prefer upgrading to a supported Skype for Business/Teams migration path and a supported SQL Server …

Unfortunately, there are no native PowerShell Failover Cluster cmdlets which will give you the volume information for disks in a cluster. I've seen some bloggers use Get-ClusterSharedVolume but a Cluster Shared Volume or CSV is different from volumes used within a SQL cluster. The script below, which was written with …

Recently, I was asked to help automate a friend's super boring daily duty of logging repetitive activities to a SharePoint Task list. Even though I'm no longer regularly working with SharePoint (yay!), I accepted the challenge. Below is the script I created, which can be scheduled (and mixed up, even using $a = …

I'm currently reading VMware vSphere Design and found a super useful tip: you can find a centralized list of config and log files for ESX. This page, located at https://youresxhost/host, shows a whole lot of stuff, from your license keys, to your SSL certs to log files and more. Note that it does require …

In my previous post, I outlined how to use PowerShell v2 to keep a CookieJar and POST to a Web Form that Prohibits XSS. The code was 35 lines long. Upon seeing my post, Lee Holmes suggested using PowerShell v3's Invoke-WebRequest instead to get my code down to 1/5th of its original size. I'm astounded at how easy …

After speaking with a colleague today, I expect this list will grow as I work more with the vSphere suite. But until then, here is a consolidated list of posts and scripts that I've written to ease the replacement of SSL certificates on Windows-based vSphere related products using PowerShell and a Windows Domain …

I recently had a project that required I log into a site and submit a form. Initially, I had a Start-Process that launched iexplore but then I decided it would be best to.. scriptallthethings My initial attempts to automate this process failed with the server response "403 Forbidden." As it turns out, the web …

Well, this script was different. Unlike the other posts in this series, I was required to use only Microsoft command line tools instead of OpenSSL. Not that I'm opposed to using certreq and certutil -- I actually started this whole cert automation project to see if it was possible to use only these tools and …