IT professional writing about cybersecurity, cloud & DevOps, automation, networking, and systems administration. Real-world guides for real-world problems.
Learn how to create and manage DHCP IP reservations on Windows Server. This guide covers opening the DHCP console, locating the target scope, creating a new reservation with a descriptive name, entering the device MAC address, selecting supported protocols (DHCP, BOOTP, or Both), verifying the reservation, and avoiding common pitfalls including exclusion conflicts, duplicate MAC addresses, and stale reservations after hardware changes.
Learn how to create and manage DHCP scopes on Windows Server. This step-by-step guide covers launching the New Scope Wizard, configuring the IP address range, setting exclusion ranges and lease duration, configuring scope options (gateway and DNS), activating the scope, viewing active leases, modifying scope properties post-creation, creating superscopes for multinet environments, and monitoring scope utilization statistics.
Learn how to implement and configure the DHCP Server role on Windows Server. This step-by-step guide covers installing the DHCP role, setting a static IP address, completing the Post-Installation Configuration Wizard, authorizing the server in Active Directory (including DHCP Administrators and DHCP Users security groups), verifying authorization with green arrows, and creating a scope to begin issuing IP addresses.
Learn how to implement and manage IPAM (IP Address Management) on Windows Server. This step-by-step guide covers installing the IPAM feature, provisioning with Group Policy-based provisioning, configuring server discovery, setting servers to Managed status, applying IPAM GPOs with Invoke-IpamGpoProvisioning, retrieving data, and using the IP address space, DHCP scope, and DNS zone management capabilities.
Learn how to implement DNSSEC on Windows Server to protect against man-in-the-middle DNS attacks. This step-by-step guide covers the Zone Signing Wizard, configuring Key Signing Keys (KSK) and Zone Signing Keys (ZSK) with RSA-SHA-256, enabling NSEC3 and Trust Anchor distribution, verifying the padlock icon, and best practices for key rotation and monitoring.
Learn how to configure DNS forwarding in Windows Server DNS Manager. This step-by-step guide covers regular forwarding (offloading all external queries to public DNS servers like 8.8.8.8) and conditional forwarding (routing domain-specific queries to designated DNS servers), including the DNS resolution order and Active Directory replication for conditional forwarders.
Learn how to configure Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA) in Active Directory. This step-by-step guide covers creating the KDS Root Key, creating and installing the gMSA with New-ADServiceAccount and Install-ADServiceAccount, verifying with Test-ADServiceAccount, and configuring Services.msc to use the account with automatic password rotation.
Learn how to configure Active Directory Sites and Services for a multi-site environment. This step-by-step guide covers creating AD sites, configuring site links with costs, setting the replication interval and schedule, mapping IP subnets to sites, and managing site link bridging for efficient domain controller replication.
