Offline folders sync issues on windows 2008 R2

Setup scenario is that user folders are in a single centralized share and they all access their folder with proper permission on the folders so that only they can have an access to a folder.

Some of the users had intermittent issues of their folders not syncing properly or their files would randomly get locked and they could not save the file without saving as different name.

FIX:
Give root folder that is shared out a special permissions for "Authenticated Users" (or some other group if you wish to limit share access to only certain user group) under advanced options. The permissions required are: "Traverse folder /execute file", "Read attributes" and "read extended attributes"

NOTE:
Permissions above need to be applied only on root folder so make sure "This folder only" is selected while changing permissions.

Changing key in windows server 2012

When installing a new win 2012 OS in case where key is not installed immediately during install wizard you might get into issue where there is not place in GUI (at least that I could find) where you can change to appropriate key in order to activate windows.

Thanks to powershell there is even easier way of doing this:

slmgr -upk (this removes the current Product Key)
slmgr -ipk XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX (this installs the new Product Key)

Once key is installed using first command you can also go to action center in order to use GUI to enter key and activate windows.

IOPS Explained

I found this great article explaining IOPS and correlation to latency read/write % and IO data size.
IOPS Explained Article

How to use esxtop

I found this great article full of benefitial references for using esxtop. Here it is: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/esxtop/

How to download a diagnostic log bundle from an ESX/ESXi host using PowerCLI

Login to desired host using PowerCLI:
Connect-VIServer -Server HostnameOrIPAddress

Download a diagnostic log bundle from host:
Get-VMHost HostNameOrIP | Get-Log -Bundle -DestinationPath c:\Storage\Location\




 

More usefull powershell commands

Alternate authentication cmdlet
Sometimes it is pretty useful to be able and use alternate credentials in PowerShell command. This can be done by using Get-Credential cmdlet but a downside is that you can not specify password. Instead what will happen every time this cmdlet is ran it will produce a popup box to enter password.
A nice workaround is to store the credentials in encrypted variable such as $cred = Get-Credential Administrator this will initially pop up with authentication box where password is typed in but afterwards you can use $cred variable in your session without need to type it in again.

Run PowerShell command in background and keep control of your session for other tasks
In the situation where we need to run a cmdlet where output will take a while to be produced we can use -asjob switch. This will give us back our prompt to run additional command while our initial query will run in the background. Some of the related cmdlets with which we can control or view jobs are: Get-Job, Receive-Job, Remove-Job, Resume-Job, Start-Job, Stop-Job, Suspend-Job, Wait-Job

Output text in PowerShell
Write-Output

Input some text into powershell
Read-Host

Convert output of query to HTML
This is specifically usefully if desired output needs to be shared for wide audience. All needs to be done is convert it to HTML using ConvertTo-hmtl and output to file using Out-File to write contents into file on web server and your info is readily available for brain consumption.

Import contents of file into PowerShell for processing
Best example for this would be creating multiple users in AD from predefined csv file. We can use Import-CSV cmdlet to take a contents of csv file and pipe it into another cmdlet such as Import-CSV file.csv | New-ADUser. Please note that header of csv file should contain valid AD properties for user. Whichever properties you have, those properties will be created along with a user.

Basic help powershell commands that make life easier

get-help
displays help for desired commandlet

get-help -full
displays full help for desired commandlet including examples

get-help -online
if you have internet access this will display online help for any commandlets desired

update-help
downloads and installs help files from internet

show-command
opens gui for desired commandlet where you can see whole bunch of options and parameters. If desired these parameters can be filled out in gui and copied to run in PowerShell window in order to see exact syntax

get-command
this will list commands that pertain not only to PowerShell but a whole system

get-member
gets the properties and methods of objects. This is very useful to see what custom fields/methods you can use for specific cmdlet