IT Pro Tuesday #194
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
Last week Carsten Rachfahl and Andy Syrewicze hosted a webinar focused on Azure Stack HCI and Hybrid Cloud. During the webinar there were a lot of questions around Azure Stack HCI and how exactly to work with it. This SysAdmin DOJO podcast expands on some of the most interesting questions from the webinar!
We're looking for cool tips and tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply with your latest finds, so we can help others benefit from your experience.
As always, we’re updating the full list on our website here. Enjoy.
But on with this week's tools...! Here are the most-interesting items that have come across our desks, laptops and phones this week. Hornetsecurity has no known affiliation with any of these unless we explicitly state otherwise.
A Tutorial
10 Cool AutoHotkey Scripts (And How to Make Your Own!) is a blog post that walks you through how to make some nice, custom Windows shortcuts, macros and more. Kindly shared by VeryVeryNiceKitty, who explains, "I handle a lot of Azure subscription and tenants, and often need to type their ID numbers. Instead of having a spreadsheet, I have made a number of entries, ie !customertenant, which enters the numbers for me… but it can be much more advanced.”
A Website
Microsoft 365 Scripts is a repository loaded with useful MS-specific scripts that have been organized into categories to make it easier to find relevant content: Exchange Online, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, News, Security, and SharePoint Online. Our appreciation for directing us to this resource goes to Embry.
A Free Tool
Argc is an easier way to handle sh/bash cli parameters. Allows you to create a command line program by simply describing the options, parameters, and subcommands in comments. Once you set it to work, Argc extracts parameter definitions from comments, parses command line arguments, outputs error text/help info for an abnormal parameter or the parsed parameter variable for a normal one, and finally, calls any subcommand function. A shout out to sigoden for this suggestion.
A Tip
Advice from VA_Network_Nerd on how to determine if your organization needs more bandwidth from the ISP: "Focus on your ISP circuit and the directly attached router interface. Look at your Network Monitoring System (NMS) performance data. If you don't have a NMS (an SNMP monitoring tool), you NEED ONE.
Look at percent utilization over time. Are you spending significant portions of the day above 75% load? If so, you probably need more capacity.
If you don't have an SNMP tool, then look at the router interface itself. Are you dropping packets?? Are you seeing PAUSE requests? Are you seeing errored frames?"
Another Tutorial
Learning How to Compare Objects with PowerShell is a helpful explainer on how to use the Compare-Object cmdlet to automate the rather tedious task of visually comparing files or file contents in Windows. Author adbertram describes how to use this cmdlet to compare objects, like files or file contents, and customize output.
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
WinCompose allows you to write special characters much more easily via intuitive, customizable key combinations. Recommended by Shishire who adds, "No more Alt+1234 codes to type special characters. Most common unicode characters are built in with intuitive defaults, and it's completely configurable."
Drift is a self-hostable clone of GitHub Gist for easy code and text snippet sharing. Features user authentication, private/public/password protected posts, syntax highlighting and automatic language detection, drag-and-drop file uploading, the ability to render GitHub Extended Markdown (including images), with markdown rendered and stored on your server. Author Giraffestock explains, "The primary goal of Drift is to capture the value proposition of GitHub… There are tons of self-hostable pastebins, and none target an experience like Gist."
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.