Windows Power Essentials Tips & Tricks
August 6, 2015 9 Comments
Microsoft published a helpful blog post and table of the various Client OSs supported by the various Essentials Server versions, and any known issues or workarounds required to get them to work.
Today, i am focussing on 2012 Essentials, and Windows 10. Read more of this post
March 3, 2015 1 Comment
I wrote a blog post a few months back about how to use WSS PowerShell to hide Users from the Essentials 2012 R2 Dashboard. A commenter on that post asked whether or not we could do the same for 2012 R1. I know the PowerShell Support for R1 is not as rich as it is in R2, and sure enough i could not see a way to do it directly. But that just makes it more fun!
February 14, 2014 4 Comments
Listening to the ‘Home Server Show’ podcast recently, the conversation inevitably steered towards Client DNS on Essentials. It reminded me that i had written a script last year, to manage the UR3 feature of Essentials 2012 that being ‘DNS AutoDiscovery’ but never actually shared it.
I uploaded it to the TechNet Gallery today.
November 11, 2013 5 Comments
A question came up in the Essentials Forum recently which prompted me to build quite a large lab, and not even manage to repro the issue. The issue affects both the Essentials Role and the SKU., but it does not appear to affect R1.
The symptoms were, that a user of the Domain Admins was unable to open the Dashboard, being greeted instead with this error..
August 30, 2013 3 Comments
I am writing this post in order to try and highlight the issues people are having with DA, and suggest a course of action. Rather than simply reply to comments about various bits not working.
It was October last year when i posted my process for enabling DA on Essentials 2012, and at the time i was really excited about the new OS and the possibilities that having a supported DA configuration for SMB would bring. If you are not on-board with DA and what it can bring your customers – you need to consider it. Just like PowerShell i think DA is a really important technology for people to be picking up and deploying for small businesses.
Unfortunately, it is not working as smoothly as i had hoped, and, Microsofts response so far has not been ideal and has sapped a lot of the passion i had for this product.
June 13, 2013 1 Comment
You may have seen that Microsoft have released Update Rollup 2 for Windows Server 2012 Essentials.
The update resolves some issues documented in the KB here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2824160
If you deployed the beta of UR2 you will need to remove that before you install the full version.
If your client computers show offline after installing this update you may need to reboot the server and the clients.
May 31, 2013 22 Comments
Skipping over the usual boring intro on the whys and wherefores of a subject i write about i thought id just crack on and tell you how to get this done.
First on your Essentials Server you will need to install this hotfix. After you install this hotfix the WSUS Role is available.
That is correct, WSUS is a ROLE not something you need to download as it was previously.
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