Dave Long

Encoding binary files to include in scripts

A common question when building scripts in an RMM like Atera is, "how do I get files that my script needs to the endpoint?" For the most part, I've stored the binary files I need on an Azure file store, Dropbox folder, etc. Any plain text files, though, I embed

Connecting to Active Directory and other services from PC

As an MSP, I regularly need to connect to services running on client servers. I often will just connect to a server or management PC setup on the client environment, but it's also really easy to use the RSAT tools on my laptop with a simple command. You probably already

unifi

Setting up Netflow on UniFi Security Gateway

In my last post, I showed how to use the config.gateway.json file to setup a conditional forwarder in a UniFi Security Gateway. Since the UniFi Security Gateway runs the EdgeOS firmware underneath, you can set just about anything that you would be able to configure on an EdgeRouter

DNS Conditional Forwarding on UniFi Security Gateway

Now for something really controversial to start this off: I really like the ease of GUI based management tools for network devices, like UniFi. That said I also really like CLI configuration tools which let me tap into a lot more functionality than the GUI. If you've ever used an

Power Automate

Custom Issue Collectors with MS Forms, Power Automate, and Atera

The Atera support portal is handy, but sometimes it can be hard to get people to fill in everything for issues the first time. I also have run into a few clients that want to approve any issues before they hit our support team at Cage Data. While working with

My journey through mental health

This morning I find myself putting away dishes while the kids were in the backyard playing after breakfast. I started putting the tupperware away in the narrow cabinet next to the sink, as I usually do, getting frustrated that it's a tight fit to get them all in. I constantly

powershell

Using your partner account to connect to client Exchange Online tenants

This is going to be a really quick one, because I'm mostly posting this so that the next time I google it, I get my own blog instead of some StackOverflow posts and what not. With the Exchange Online PowerShell V2 Module, you can use your Partner Delegation privileges to

powershell

Scripting Office with PowerShell: Finding and Replacing Text in Word Documents

In my last post, I introduced you to to the Office Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) objects and how to use them in PowerShell to automate creating an Outlook rule. In this post, let's take a look at how we can perform another task that can be pretty tedious to

powershell

Scripting Office with PowerShell: Creating Outlook Rules

One of the really cool things about Microsoft Office is how extensible it is. Microsoft has included scriptable interfaces for all of the Office applications in the form of Component Object Model Objects, or as you may have heard it called: COM objects. The Office COM objects make it possible

Verifying Windows Licenses

While working on a recent project where I was taking over a new business that was detaching from it's parent company, I had to remove KMS licensing from a number of workstations.

networking

Beyond the Basics of nslookup

nslookup is right up there with ping in terms of the most common tools for diagnosing network issues on Windows. Want to know if your DNS is set right for your website? Easy, just type nslookup davejlong.com and you'll see that the hostname points at 68.183.26.177.

networking

Testing Local Network Performance with iPerf

In my last iPerf post, I showed how you can use iPerf to test internet speed using a server that I host in Azure. This is really handy when you want to get a good starting point to diagnose network issues for things like staff working from home. What about

powershell

Testing Network Bandwidth with PowerShell and iPerf

One of the first steps to diagnose network issues, especially nowadays when so many people are working from home, is to run a speed test. Testing speed by going visiting one of the many speed tests sites is useful, but what if you want to automate the process of testing

powershell

Monitoring Failover Cluster Patching

Windows Failover Clustering is a great way to run services like DHCP, Hyper-V, etc. resiliently. Microsoft makes it easy to schedule patching using Cluster Aware Updating. Once you have Cluster Aware Updating setup, you'll need to monitor it. First let's get the results of the last run: $ Get-CauReport -Last ClusterName

powershell

Default switch values

While working on some updates to the PSAtera module, I came across an interesting situation that didn't seem to have a straightforward answer. The new updates to the Get-AteraTickets command add a number of switch options for narrowing tickets down to only tickets with certain status', so I added some

powershell

GPOs in PowerShell

As more and more companies are taking the serverless route to running their business, GPOs are becoming a thing of the past. While Intune can do a lot to replace GPOs, your company may not be moving to Azure AD with Intune. It might be necessary to just have a

Atera

Mapping Networks with PowerShell

Part of maintaining clients is keeping track of the various networks involved in managing that client. It's important to know where computers are on the network to be able to support them. So here's a quick script, using PSAtera and PSWriteHTML to create a diagram mapping out what the public

powershell

Atera's PowerShell for Automation - Part 3

This post was written as part of a series for Atera, the PSA and RMM product we use at Cage Data. In the first and second posts in this series, we looked at how to get started with PowerShell, and how to access the strength of the community by accessing

powershell

PowerShell Modules - A Beginners Guide - Part 2

This post was written as part of a series for Atera, the PSA and RMM product we use at Cage Data. The first post in the series can be found here. In the first post you learned some basics about the PowerShell language. I hope that it tickled your fancy

powershell

Getting Battery Health With PowerShell

If you want to see an overview of your battery health, the easiest way is with powercfg: powercfg /batteryreport /output batteryreport.html .\batteryreport.htmlThe above commands will generate and then open a Battery Report showing a ton of information about your battery health. If you want to be able to

Atera

Getting Atera Custom Fields in Scripts

On a Reddit post recently someone asked how they might get the value from an Atera Custom Field on a customer from within a script on an agent. It's actually pretty easy using the PSAtera module. A great use case for this is installing Sophos Anti-Virus on an endpoint, one

ubiquiti

Enabling SSH to a UniFi Gateway Remotely

Sometimes its necessary to work on a UniFi networking issue directly on the Security Gateway, but what if you don't have a jump box on the network to connect to it through? Enable SSH from the controller! Before you start, you'll want to know your public IP address, so as

Atera

Scripting Sound Output in Splashtop

One of the most frustrating default settings in Splashtop, the remote access agent used in Atera, is that when you connect to a remote system the sound output is carried over to the computer you're connecting from. Which means whatever music they're listening to, phone call they're on with the

powershell

Creating a VPN connection with RMM

Now that everyone is working from home, you might find yourself needing to rapidly setup VPN connections on a ton of machines at once. Rather than connecting to every users computer to setup the VPN, or relying on users to follow a guide to setup the VPN themselves and figuring

Patch Tuesday with Atera

After the release of Microsoft's round of patching yesterday, some of the patches look to be pretty important security patches. Atera's Patch Search & Deploy report makes finding and deploying KBs to systems that need these patches quick and easy. To start, I created a spreadsheet of all of the