Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Additional Online Resources for the 70-411 Exam

Although I have written and passed the Microsoft 70-411 exam, I have chosen to keep this list in place, in the hopes that others will find it's contents useful. It is quite a lengthy list of links to additional online reading and videos that I have collected from several sources, and I have found them to be quite valuable.

Unless someone shares any new resources with me, this list will remain fairly static from now on. If I do add any new links, I'll make an effort to mark them as new.

I also made an effort to break down the list by exam objective where possible. Some links are clearly outside of the scope of the exam, but I figure some extra knowledge here and there can only benefit a person's learning. Where appropriate, I have added these extra links to each section where I felt they would be of greatest use. I know I find little nuggets of extra information that are outside the exam objectives often help to solidify my understanding of core topics.

So, without further delay, here is the list:

*Most recent update: November 20, 2015

Downloads
PowerShell

General Information

Advanced Topics

Objective 1 - Deploy, manage, and maintain servers
Objective 2 - Configure File and Print Services
Objective 3 - Configure network services and access
Objective 4 - Configure a Network Policy Server (NPS) infrastructure

Objective 5 - Configure and manage Active Directory
Objective 6 - Configure and manage Group Policy
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Sunday, January 18, 2015

Additional Online Resources for the 70-410 Exam

Although I have written and passed the Microsoft 70-410 exam, I have chosen to keep this list in place, in the hopes that others will find it's contents useful. It is quite a lengthy list of links to additional online reading and videos that I have collected from several sources, and I have found them to be quite valuable.

Unless someone shares any new resources with me, this list will remain fairly static from now on. If I do add any new links, I'll make an effort to mark them as new.

I have made an effort to break the list down by exam objective where possible. Some of the links are outside of the scope of the exam, but I figured a little extra knowledge here and there can only benefit a person's learning. Where appropriate, I have added these extra links to each section where I felt they would be of greatest use. I know I find little nuggets of extra information that are outside the exam objectives often help to solidify my understanding of core topics.

So, without further delay, here is the list:

*Most recent update: August 27, 2015

Downloads
PowerShell
General Information
Objective 1 - Install and configure servers
Windows Server Installation Options
Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration Overview
Storage Spaces - Designing for Performance
NIC Teaming (NetLBFO) Cmdlets in Windows PowerShell

Objective 2 - Configure server roles and features
Objective 3 - Configure Hyper-V
Objective 4 - Deploy and configure core network services
Objective 5 - Install and administer Active Directory
Objective 6 - Create and manage Group Policy
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Monday, December 8, 2014

Change to Group Policy Preferences: Creating Local Users

During the course of my MCSE studies I was working through some lab exercises at the end of one of the chapters, and encountered a problem. The chapter was covering Group Policy preferences, and specifically, I was looking at the steps to setup a new local user on a computer. This is found at "Computer Configuration\Preferences\Control Panel Settings\Local Users and Groups". I thought this might be useful in certain circumstances, but also understood the potential issue, as this method stores the password for the new user account in plain text on the SYSVOL share. The recommendation that I had read stated that it would be a good idea to require the password to be changed at the next logon. A sensible precaution.

So, I started into the exercise. Imagine my surprise when I clicked on "New | Local User", then under "Action:" selected "Create" and encountered this issue:



Every single entry was grayed out, and I was unable to enter any information. If I changed it back to "Update", all of the boxes opened up, but re-selecting "Create" grayed them back out again. So, I tried it from a different computer. Same results. I also tried rebooting the server. Same result. Okay.... Time to hit the Internet and see if anyone else is having the same problem.

The first search result told me all I needed to know. Microsoft has released a patch to remove this security vulnerability. The Knowledge Base article is here:

MS14-025: Vulnerability in Group Policy Preferences could allow elevation of privilege: May 13, 2014

Well, that was easy. Simply put, if you are regularly patching your servers (I hope you all are), you can no longer add a local user to systems via group policy preferences.

The question I have is will exam 70-411 test on the pre-patch behavior, or the post-patch behavior? Time to do some more research.

Have a great week everyone!
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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Welcome to The Frozen Geek

I am going to be using this page to post technical articles that do not really belong on my personal blog. Here, you will find information on Windows Server and PowerShell tips & tricks, guides, lab setups, and walk-throughs. My hope is to create a repository of relevant information for myself and others to refer to. Whilst this is going to be a technical blog, I will continue to post updates on my MCSE studies to my personal blog.

My first technical tip: Learn PowerShell.

Here are a few useful resources below for beginners wanting to learn PowerShell:

Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches - 2nd Edition: Don Jones &Jeffery D. Hicks


Have a great week!

David


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