Justin Verstijnen on justinverstijnen.nl

Welcome to justinverstijnen.nl v2

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to justinverstijnen.nl v2

Welcome to my completely renewed website. The past month I’ve been busy rebuilding my old Wordpress website to a completely new website based on GitHub Pages. I wanted to enhance this website on the following areas:

Light/Dark mode
Better experience on mobile devices
Uniform pages and posts
Scalable and future-proof solution

Why this new update?

My old website was great, but with Wordpress and some specific requirements I had, it became obsolete to me. I couldn’t find a great skin other than I already had for the complete lifecycle of it which I still really like. It required me to have around 300 lines of extra CSS to get the website to my likings but still had an inconsistent experience across multiple devices. Also I needed around 28 plugins to make everything work, making it a mess sometimes.

Getting started

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to my blog section. In my blog posts, I describe the steps I took to make things work and/or explain how it works. The navigation on this page is relatively easy and I will do my best to explain all features of the blog to you as a manual.

1. Light/Dark mode

The website has a native light mode and dark mode in the top right corner. This makes the webpage a better experience for low-light environments.

Microsoft Secure Score - Apps

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Before we begin

I collected all the options of the Microsoft Secure Score for Apps on this page, and we I address them all. I also added some industry-accepted options which are not in the secure score framework but are really helpful in avoiding or minimizing attacks in your environment. You can use all options, or only a subset. The more of the options you implement, the higher your score.

Microsoft Secure Score - Devices

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Before we begin

I collected all the options of the Microsoft Device Secure Score on this page, and we will address them all. I also added some industry-accepted options which are not in the secure score framework but are really helpful in avoiding or minimizing attacks in your environment.

You can use all options, or only use a subset of the options. This is up to you :)

Update your Kerberos configuration with Azure Virtual Desktop (RC4)

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft released that the Kerberos protocol will be hardened by an update coming in April to June 2026 to increase security. This was released by Microsoft here:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/fslogix-blog/action-required-windows-kerberos-hardening-rc4-may-affect-fslogix-profiles-on-sm/4506378

At first, they are not very specific about how to check what Kerberos encryption your environment uses and how to solve this before becoming a problem. I will do my best to explain this and show you how to solve it.

Microsoft already introduced Kerberos-related hardening changes in updates released since November 2022, which significantly reduced RC4 usage in many environments. However, administrators should still verify whether specific accounts, services or devices are explicitly or implicitly relying on RC4 before disabling it. In this guide, I will explain to you how to do this.

Encrypt your Microsoft 365 emails with S/MIME

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A great way to encrypt your Microsoft 365 outbound emails using a similar technique as SSL is to use S/MIME. In this guide I will show you how to get certificates and configure S/MIME for your users.

Requirements

Around 30 minutes of your time
Exchange Online Powershell module installed
S/MIME certificate for your mailbox
Microsoft 365 tenant/mailbox to configure S/MIME

S/MIME explained

S/MIME means Secure / Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. It’s an email security standard defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force which allows you to encrypt your email messages and attachments sent. In simple terms:

Getting started with Microsoft 365 Backup

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

A Microsoft 365 environment with Global Administrator permissions
An Azure Subscription with PAYG capabilities
Around 30 minutes of your time
Basic knowledge of Microsoft 365

What is Microsoft 365 Backup?

Microsoft 365 Backup is an integrated solution of Microsoft to backup Microsoft 365 items. This applies to these items:

Exchange Mailboxes
OneDrive accounts
SharePoint sites/Teams

Microsoft 365 Backup can be used to extend the retention period of certain data. By default, spaces like SharePoint sites have a retention of 93 days if you count the recycle bin and versioning. But this is not really a backup, only some techniques to quicky restore a single file or folder. This doesn’t include things like permissions, which Microsoft 365 Backup does.

Microsoft Secure Score - Identity

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On this page, I will describe how I implemented my current Microsoft Secure Score on the Identity pillar. This means altering mostly the options of Microsoft Entra ID.

Before we begin

I collected all the options of the Microsoft Entra ID Identity Secure Score on this page, and we will address them all. I also added some industry-accepted options which are not in the secure score framework but are really helpful in avoiding or minimizing attacks in your environment.

I tested Azure Virtual Desktop RemoteAppV2

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft announced RemoteAppV2 under some pretty enhancements on top of the older RemoteApp engine. This newer version has some improvements like:

Better multi monitor support
Better resizing/window experience
Visuals like window shadows

I cannot really show this in pictures, but if you test V2 alongside V1, you definitely notice these small visual enhancements. However, a wanted feature called “drag-and-drop” is still not possible on V2.

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/remoteapp-enhancements

How to enable RemoteAppV2

To enable RemoteAppV2, you need to set a registry key as long as the preview is running. Make sure you are compliant with the requirements as described on this page (client + hosts):

Getting started with GitHub Pages

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

A GitHub account (free)
A domain name for your website, or you can use the default domain name of GitHub
- youraccount.github.io
A template website to upload to your domain name
Some basic knowledge about websites and DNS

What is GitHub Pages?

GitHub Pages allows you to host a static website directly from a GitHub repository. This can be done without managing a server, infrastructure, or hosting provider. The only thing you do is create a repository, upload a website, and optionally connect it to a domain name of your choice. We can compare this to Azure Static Web Apps if you are familiar with that.

Azure Virtual Desktop V6/V7 VMs imaging

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The VM size ‘Standard_E4as_v7’ cannot boot with OS image or disk. Please check that disk controller types supported by the OS image or disk is one of the supported disk controller types for the VM size ‘Standard_E4as_v7’. Please query sku api at https://aka.ms/azure-compute-skus to determine supported disk controller types for the VM size. (Code: InvalidParameter)
This size is not available because it does not support the SCSI disk controller type.

Because I really wanted to use higher version VMs, I went to research on how to solve this problem. I will describe the process from creating the initial imaging VM, to capture and installing new AVD hosts with our new image.

Get notifications when Entra ID break glass admins are used

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The alert solution described

The solution we will configure looks like this:

Log Analytics Workspace
Set diagnostic settings for Entra ID sign in logs to write to Log Analytics
Set query to find successful or non-succesful sign in attempts (based on your needs)
Set Azure Monitor alert to alert admins of the attempts taking place
After all this we will test this to test if this works as excpected

Here we use all the features inside Azure only, and no 3rd party solutions.

How to properly secure Break Glass Accounts in your Entra ID

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

List of recommendations

The list of recommendations which I will describe further:

Have at least 2 accounts
Have the accounts cloud only -> not synced from Active Directory
Use the .onmicrosoft.com domain and no license
Exclude from all Conditional Access policies
Do not use licenses on Administrator accounts
Passwords must be at least 64 and max 256 characters
Avoid “break glass admin” or any tip to a high privileged account
Register FIDO2 key for the account
Setup Monitoring for login alerts
Test the accounts twice per year

1: Have at least 2 accounts with Global Administrator permissions

Very important to have at least 2 accounts (with a maximum of 4) with Global Administrator permissions. Most of the time, we will limit the amount of privileges but we need to have at least 2 accounts with those permissions.

Create HTTPS 301 redirects with Azure Front Door

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

For this solution, you need the following stuff:

An Azure Subscription
A domain name or multiple domain names, which may also be subdomains (subdomain.domain.com)
Some HTTPS knowledge
Some Azure knowledge

The solution explained

I will explain how I have made the shortcuts to my tools at https://justinverstijnen.nl/tools, as this is something what Azure Front Door can do for you.

In short, Azure Front Door is a load balancer/CDN application with a lot of load balancing options to distribute load onto your backend. In this guide we will use a simple part, only redirecting traffic using 301 rules, but if interested, its a very nice application.

Everything you need to know about Azure Bastion

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How does Azure Bastion work?

Azure Bastion is a serverless instance you deploy in your Azure virtual network. It resides there waiting for users to connect with it. It acts like a Jump-server, a secured server from where an administrative user connects to another server.

The process of it looks like this:

A user can choose to connect from the Azure Portal to Azure Bastion and from there to the destination server or use a native client, which can be:

I tried running Active Directory DNS on Azure Private DNS

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The configuration explained

The configuration in this blog post is a virtual network with one server and one client. In the virtual network, we will deploy a Azure Private DNS instance and that instance will do everything DNS in our network.

This looks like this:

Deploying Azure Private DNS

Assuming you have everything already in plave, we will now deploy our Azure Private DNS zone. Open the Azure Portal and search for “Private DNS zones”.

Upload multiple Github repositories into a single Azure Static Web App

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this guide, I will describe how I now host multiple Github applications/tools into one single Static Web App environment in Azure. This mostly captures the simple, single task, tools which can be found on my website:

https://justinverstijnen.nl/tools or jvapp.nl if you need a shortcut.

Because I started with a single tool, then built another and another and another one, I needed a sort of scalable way of doing this. Each tool means doing the following stuff:

What is MTA-STS and how to use it to protect your email flow

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 30 minutes of your time
Access to your domains’ DNS hosting to create DNS records
An Azure Subscription if you want to publish your policy with a Static Web App
- A Github account if you use this option
An Azure Subscription if you want to publish your policy with a Function App
Basic knowledge of DNS records
Basic knowledge of Email security

MTA-STS versus SMTP DANE

MTA-STS overlaps with the newer SMTP DANE option, and they both help securing your email flow but each in its own manner. Some differences:

Remove Microsoft Print to PDF and OneNote printers script

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

By default in Windows 11 with Microsoft 365 apps installed, we have two software printers installed. These are:

OneNote (Desktop)
Microsoft Print to PDF

However, some users don’t use them and they will annoyingly be as default printer sometimes, which we want to avoid. Most software have built-in options to save to PDF, so this is a bit redundant. Our real printers will be further down which causes their own problems for end users.

Automatically start Windows App at startup

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Creating the Intune script

We can achieve this with Intune using a PowerShell script. As Intune doesn’t support login/startup scripts, we have to create a Platform script that creates a Scheduled Task in Windows for us. This is a great way, as this is visible at the client side and can be disabled pretty easily.

To create this task/script, go to the Intune Admin center: https://intune.microsoft.com

Go to Devices -> Windows -> Scripts and remediations, then open the tab “Platform scripts”.

Azure Virtual Desktop FSLogix and Native Kerberos authentication

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this guide I will dive into how I configured an simple environment where I placed every configuration action in separate steps to keep it simple and clear to follow and also will give some describing information about some concepts and settings.

I also added some optional steps for a better configuration and security than this guide already provides for a better user experience and more security.

The solution described

The day has finally come; we can now build a Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) hostpool in pooled configuration without having to host an Active Directory, and/or having to host an unsecured storage account by having to inject the Storage Access Key into the machines’ registry. This newer setup enhances performance and security on those points.

FSLogix and maximum Azure Files security

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Maximum Security preset in the Azure Portal

We can also run the SMB security on the Maximum security preset in the Azure Portal and still run FSLogix without problems. In the Azure Portal, go to the storage account and set the security of the File share to “Maximum security”:

This will only allow the AES_256_GCM SMB Channel encryption, but Windows 11 defaults to the 128 version only. We now have to tell Windows to use the better secured 256 version instead, otherwise the storage account blocks your requests and logging in isn’t possible. I will do this through Intune, but you could do this with Group Policy in the same manner or with PowerShell.

Deploy Google Chrome Single Sign On with Intune

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How the extension works

The Microsoft SSO extension for Google Chrome uses the same token/session you already have when you have your device Entra ID joined. It will send that to every Microsoft Online webpage to show you are already authenticated and have a valid token. This makes the user experience a lot better as they don’t have to authenticate first before starting to use the web applications.

Disable users' self service license trials

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Why should you disable trial licenses?

You can disable self service trial licenses if you want to avoid users to use un-accepted apps. This could result in shadow-it happening in your environment.

Let’s say, your company uses Zoom to call with each other, and users are starting to use Microsoft Teams. Teams then is an application not accepted by your organization and users then should not be able to use it. If you give them the possibility, they will. This all of course assuming you don’t have paid licenses for Microsoft Teams.

Azure Virtual Desktop RDP Properties

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What are RDP properties?

RDP properties are specific settings to change your RDP experience. This can be to play sound on the remote or local PC, enable or disable printer redirection, enable or disable clipboard between computers and what to do if connection is lost.

In the previous years, this was also the case for normal RDP files or connections to Remote Desktop Services, but Azure Virtual Desktop brings this to a nice and centralized system which we can change to our and our users’ preference.

ARM templates and Azure VM + Script deployment

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will show some examples of deploying with ARM templates and also will show you how to deploy a PowerShell script to run directly after the deployment of an virtual machine. This further helps automating your tasks.

Requirements

Around 30 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription to deploy resources (if wanting to follow the guide)
A Github account, Azure Storage account or other hosting option to publish Powershell scripts to URL
Basic knowledge of Azure

What is ARM?

ARM stands for Azure Resource Manager and is the underlying API for everything you deploy, change and manage in the Azure Portal, Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI. A basic understanding of ARM is in this picture:

Windows Server Inventory Report Script

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To help us IT identifying certain configurations on a server and possible misconfigurations I have made a PowerShell script which creates a complete overview of the current server configuration and exports it as a single HTML file.

In this post I will explain how to use it and how the script works.

An example of the output of the script.

Where to download this script?

For the fast pass, my script can be downloaded here:

Disable Windows Taskbar Widgets through Intune

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Method 1: Settings Catalog

The easiest way to disable these widgets is through a Settings Catalog policy. Open up Microsoft Intune admin center and create a new policy through the Settings Catalog.

Search for “widget” and these options are available:

News and Interests: Disable Widgets on Lockscreen
News and Interests: Disable Widgets Board
Widgets: Allow Widgets

In my case, I have set all three options to disabled/Not allowed.

Using and configuring Windows Backup for Organizations in Intune

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Windows 11 with the latest feature updates installed for both creating and restoring backups
Entra ID joined or Entra Hybrid joined device
Microsoft Intune-capable license
Around 15 minutes of your time

What is Windows Backup for Organizations?

Windows Backup for Organizations is a feature where Windows creates a backup of your Windows settings and Windows Store applications every 8 days. This will be saved to your Microsoft business account. If ever having to re-install your device or to use a new device, you can easily restore your old configuration. This is a revolution on top of the older Enterprise State Roaming feature, who did around 20% of this.

Remove Pre-installed Windows Store Apps with Intune

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This new feature described

In Intune we can now select which default shipped apps must be removed from Windows clients. Before, this was a complete package we had to use or remove with custom scripts, but now we can select the apps to remove (and deselect to keep).

Keep in mind, we have the following requirements for this new feature:

Windows 11 25H2
Education or Enterprise version

Also worth mentioning, removing an application needs a manual reinstall, which is easy to do.

Azure Compute Gallery and (AVD) VM images

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Compute Gallery is a great service in Azure to store, capture and maintain your VM images. This can be helpful when deploying multiple similar VMs. Use cases of this can be VM Scale Sets, webservers , containers or Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts.

In this blog post, I will tell more about Azure Compute Gallery, how to use it when imaging VMs and how it can help you storing and maintaining images for your VMs.

Solved - ADSync service stopped (Entra Connect Sync)

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, the ADSync service stops without further notice. You will see that the service has been stopped in the Services panel:

In this guide I will explain how I solved this problem using a simple PowerShell script.

The Check ADSync script

The PowerShell script that fixes this problem is on my GitHub page:

Download script from GitHub

The script simply checks if the service is running, if this is the case the script will be terminated. If the service is not running, the service will be started.

Customize Office apps installation for Azure Virtual Desktop

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 30 minutes of your time
A Microsoft 365 tenant with Global Administrator, Security Administrator or Office Apps Admin permissions
A Windows machine to test the installation
Basic knowledge of Virtual Desktops and Office Apps

What is the Office Configuration Tool?

The Office Configuration Tool (config.office.com) is a customization tool for your Office installation. We can some custom settings and define which settings we want, how the programs must behave and include and exclude software we don’t need.

Clean files on a schedule with Powershell script

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes in IT, we have software or solutions that need to to save temporary files in your filesystem. Let’s say, a feed with logs or CSV files that are saved, logs or back-ups like the Bartender software. The software itself doesn’t have a solution to clean up those files and after 2 years, the size can be massive.

To let this files clean on schedule I have created a Powershell script which cleans those files in specific folders after they are not modified in *specfied* days . You can define the folders and number of days at the parameters section of the script.

Automatic Azure Boot diagnostics monitoring with Azure Policy

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In short, Azure Policy is a compliance/governance tool in Azure with capabilities for automatically pushing your resources to be compliant with your stated policy. This means if we configure Azure Policy to automatically configure boot diagnostics and save the information to a storage account, this will be automatically done for all existing and new virtual machines.

Step 1: The configuration explained

The boot diagnostics in Azure enables you to monitor the state of the virtual machine in the portal. By default, this will be enabled with a Microsoft managed storage account but we don’t have control over the storage account.

How to completely hide language bar/selector Windows 11

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the small things I experienced in one of the updates for Windows 11 (24H2) is that the language bar/selector get’s automatically visible on the Windows taskbar. In previous versions of Windows, this was only available when using multiple keyboard languages.

Because this can get very annoying, I researched on how to disable this button to clean up our taskbar and only use it for the applications and space we need.

Wordpress on Azure

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

An Azure subscription
A public domain name to run the website on (not required, but really nice)
Some basic knowledge about Azure
Some basic knowledge about IP addresses, DNS and websites
Around 45 minutes of your time

What is Wordpress?

For the people who may not know what Wordpress is; Wordpress is a tool to create and manage websites, without needing to have knowledge of code. It is a so-called content management system (CMS) and has thousands of themes and plugins to play with. This website you see now is also running on Wordpress.

New: Azure Service Groups

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What are these new Service Groups in Azure?

Service Groups are a parralel type of group to group resources and separate permissions to them. In this manner we can assign multiple resources of different resource groups and put them into a overshadowing Service Group to apply permissions. This eliminates the need to move resources into specific resource groups with all broken links that comes with it.

This looks like this:

In-Place upgrade to Windows Server 2025 on Azure

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Once every 3 to 4 years you want to be on the last version of Windows Server because of new features and of course to have the latest security updates. These security updates are the most important these days.

When having your server hosted on Microsoft Azure, this proces can look a bit complicated but it is relatively easy to upgrade your Windows Server to the last version, and I will explain how to on this page.

Match AD users using Entra Connect Sync and MSGraph

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The difference between soft and hard matching

Most of the time the system itself will match the users automatically using soft-matching. Here the service will be matching users in both Entra ID and Active Directory by using known attributes like UserPrincipalName and ProxyAddresses.

In some cases, especially when you use different Active Directory and Entra ID domains, we need to give the final tip to Entra ID to match and AD user to an Entra ID users. We will tell Entra ID what the GUID of the on-premises user is by getting that value and encode it into Base64. Then we pass Entra ID this value so it understands what local user to link with what cloud user. This process is called “hard-matching”, as we have to do this by hand or by scripting.

Joining storage account to Active Directory (AD DS)

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 30 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription with the storage account
An Active Directory (AD DS) to join the storage account with (on-premises/Azure)
Basic knowledge of Active Directory and PowerShell

Step 1: Prepare the Active Directory server

We must first prepare our server. This must be a domain-joined server, but preferably not a domain controller. Use a management server instead when possible. We must execute

Initial Installation script for Windows Azure VMs

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When deploying Windows VMs in Azure, we get the default settings. This means we get a 12-hour clock, standard UTC/Zulu timezone and such. For users like us in the Netherlands we want to change this but not by hand.

For this purpose I built this script. It sets the timezone for Western Europe and sets the clock to 24-hour system. It also does some bonusses like responding to ping and disabling the IE Enhanced Security as it’s mostly server focussed. We don’t change the Windows language and this stays English.

Clean up old FSLogix profiles with Logic Apps

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I will give you a step-by-step guide to build this Logic App yourself.

Make sure you have backups ofenabled on your storage account so when a file is deleted but you need it for some reason after some time, you can restore it from a monthly or yearly backup.

Also: Recover Services storage is much cheaper than live Storage Account storage, keep this in mind when implementing this sort of Logic Apps.

Using FSLogix App Masking to hide applications on Virtual Desktops

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 45 minutes of your time
An environment with Active Directory and separate client machine with FSLogix pre-installed
Basic knowledge of Active Directory
Basic knowledge of Windows and FSLogix

What is FSLogix App Masking?

FSLogix App Masking is an extra feature of the FSLogix solution. FSLogix itself is a profile container solution which is widely used in virtual desktop environments where users can login on any computer and the profile is fetched of a shared location. This eliminates local profiles and a universal experience on any host.

Installing Windows Updates through PowerShell (script)

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes we want to install updates by hand because of the need for fast patching. But logging into every server and installing them manually is a hell of a task and takes a lot of time.

I have made a very simple script to install Windows Updates by hand using PowerShell including logging to exactly know which updates there were installed for monitoring later on.

The good part about this script/PowerShell module is that it does support both Windows Client and Windows Server installations.

Use Ephemeral OS Disks in Azure

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 25 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription (if wanting to deploy)
Basic knowledge of Azure
Basic knowledge of servers and infrastructure

What are Ephemeral OS Disks?

Ephemeral OS Disks are disks in Azure where the data is stored directly on the hypervisor itself, rather than having a managed disk which could be resided at the very other end of a datacenter. Every cable and step between the disk and the virtual machine creates latency which will result in your machine being slower.

RDP Multipath - What is it and how to configure?

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s take a look what RDP Multipath adds to your connections:

Green: The normal paths of connecting with RDP/Shortpath Purple: The paths added by RDP Multipath

This adds extra ways of connecting session hosts to the end device, selects the most reliable one and therefore adds stability and decreases latency.

RDP Multipath now has to be configured manually, but the expectation is that it will be added to new AVD/Multi Session images shortly, just ad RDP Shortpath did at the time.

Implement Certificate-based authentication for Entra ID scripts

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 20 minutes of your time
An Entra ID environment if you want to test this
A prepared Entra ID app registration
A server or workstation running Windows to do the connection to Entra ID
Some basic knowledge about Entra ID and certificates

How does these certificates work?

Certificate based authentication means that we can authenticate ourselves to Entra ID using a certificate instead of user credentials or a password in plain text. When using some automated scripts it needs permissions to perform its actions but this means storing some sort of authentication. We don’t want to store our credentials on the server as this decreases our security and a potential risk of compromise.

Use Azure Logic Apps to automatically start and stop VMs

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Logic Apps

Azure Logic Apps is a solution to automate flows that we can run based on a trigger. After a certain trigger is being met, the Logic App can then perform some certain steps, like;

Get data from database/SharePoint
Process data
Send email
Start or Stop VM

To keep it simple, such logic app can looks like this:

In Logic Apps there are templates to help you starting out what the possibilities are:

How to implement Azure Firewall to secure your Azure environment

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 60 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription
Basic knowledge of Azure
Basic knowledge of Networking
Basic knowledge of Azure Firewall

Overview

Before creating all resources, it is great to plan before we build. I mean planning your network before building and having different overlaps or too much/less addresses available. In most cases, Azure recommends building a Hub-and-Spoke network, where we connect all spoke networks to a big hub.

What is Azure Firewall?

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 15 minutes of your time
Basic knowledge of Azure
Basic knowledge of networking and networking protocols

What is Azure Firewall?

Azure Firewall is an cloud based firewall to secure and your cloud networking environment. It acts as point of access, a sort of castledoor, and can allow or block certain traffic from the internet to your environment and from environment to the internet. The firewall can mostly work on layers 3, 4 and 7 of the OSI model.

Audit your Entra ID user role assignments

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Microsoft Graph PowerShell module
Entra P2 or Governance license for PIM
- Only required for fetching PIM specific data. Script can run without licenses.

Entra ID User role assignments script

To start off with the fast pass, my script can be downloaded here from my Github page:

Download script from GitHub

Using the Entra ID User role assignments script

I have already downloaded the script, and have it ready to execute:

Disk cleaning script on Windows Azure VMs

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On Windows Servers, a critical point is maintaining the disk space. If a disk fills up to the end, several errors can occur and impacting the end-users experience of your applications. Something we definitely not want.

To help reducing this chance, I have created a PowerShell script that cleans up your server using built in tools of Windows. In this post, I will explain what the script does, how to install it and how to use it.

Audit your privileged Entra ID applications

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Entra ID Privileged Applications report script

To start off with the fast pass, my script can be downloaded here from my Github page:

Download script from GitHub

This script can be used to get a report of all high privileged applications across the tenant. Go to this section for instructions of how to use the script and the output.

What are Enterprise Applications?

Enterprise Applications in Entra ID are the applications which will be registered when users need them. Somethimes, it can be for a add-on of Outlook or Teams, but other times this can be to enable Single Sign On to 3rd party applications.

Azure Default VM Outbound access deprecated

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What does this new requirement mean?

This requirement means that every virtual machine in Azure created after 30 September 2025 needs to have an outbound connectivity method configured. You can see this as a “bring your own connection”.

If you do not configure one of these methods, you will end up with a virtual machine that is not reachable from the internet. It can be reached from other servers (Jump servers) on the internal network or by using Azure Bastion.

Enhance email security with SPF/DKIM/DMARC

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft announced that starting from May 5, 2025: SPF, DKIM and DMARC will become mandatory for inbound email delivery. Not configuring all three can result in your emails not being delivered correctly.

These 3 techniques are:

SPF: Sender Policy Framework
DKIM: Domain Keys Identified Mail
DMARC: Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance

When using Microsoft 365 as your messaging service, I also highly recommend to configure SMTP DANE. A detailed guide of configuring this can be found here: https://justinverstijnen.nl/configure-dnssec-and-smtp-dane-with-exchange-online-microsoft-365/

Pooled Azure Virtual Desktop with Azure AD cloud users only

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This deployment option is superseded by the more easy and secure Entra Kerberos option, check out the updated deployment guide here: https://justinverstijnen.nl/azure-virtual-desktop-fslogix-and-native-kerberos-authentication/

Since the beginning of Azure Virtual Desktop, it is mandatory to run it with an Active Directory. This because when using pooled session hosts, there has to be some sort of NTFS permission for FSLogix to reach the users’ profile disks. This permission is done using NTFS with Kerberos authentication. Something Azure AD doesn’t support.

Microsoft Azure certifications for Developers

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The certification poster

Microsoft has an monthly updating certification poster available to have an overview for each solution category and the certifications of that category. You can find the poster here:

Certification poster

Certification types

Certifications in the Microsoft world consist of 4 categories/levels:

Fundamentals: Foundational certifications to learn the overview of the category
Intermediate: Intermediate certification to learn how a solution works and to manage it
Expert: Expert certifications to learn to how to architect a solution
Specialties: These are add-ons designed for specific solutions like Azure Virtual Desktop, SAP workloads, Cosmos DB and such. (not included below)

Microsoft wants you to always have lower certifications before going up the stairs. It wants you if you take an expert certification, you also have the knowledge of the fundamentals and intermediate certification levels. Some expert certifications even have hard pre-requisites.

Introduction to Networks

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Some basic networking knowledge
Some basic subnetting knowledge
Around 20 minutes of your time

Introduction to Networking

Networking is the process of connecting devices to share data and resources. It allows communication between users over local or global distances. Networks can range from small home setups to large corporate infrastructures. Key components include routers, switches, and protocols that manage data traffic. Effective networking ensures reliable, secure, and efficient information exchange. As technology advances, networking plays a critical role in enabling digital communication worldwide.

Creating Static Web Apps on Azure the easy way

Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 45 minutes of your time
An account for Github (recommended)
An Azure subscription to host your Static Web App
Some basic knowledge of Azure
A custom domain to link the web app to your domain

Introduction to Static Web Apps and Github

Before we dive into Static Web Apps and Github, I want to give a clear explaination of both the components that will help us achieving our goal, hosting a simple web app on Azure.

Test Azure Virtual Desktop connectivity and RTT

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I created a script to test the connectivity, if it is allowed through Firewall and also test the RTT to the Azure Virtual Desktop service. The script then gives the following output:

The script to test Azure Virtual Desktop connectivity

I have the script on my Github page which can be downloaded here:

Download TestRTTAVDConnectivity script

What is Round Trip Time (RTT)?

The Round Trip Time is the time in milliseconds of an TCP packet from its source to it’s destination and from destination back to the source. It is like ping, but added with the time back like described in the image below:

Windows Search optimization on Azure Virtual Desktop

Thu, 15 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The video

In this video you will see that it takes around 5 seconds till I can begin searching for applications and Windows didnt respond to the first click. This is on a empty session host, so in practice this is much slower.

How to solve this minor issue?

We can solve this issue by running a simple script on startup that opens the start menu, types in some dummy text and then closes. In my experience, the end user actually likes this because waiting on Windows Search the first time on crowded session hosts can take up to 3 times longer than my “empty host” example. I call it “a stupid fix for a stupid problem”.

Create custom Azure Workbooks for detailed monitoring

Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Azure Workbooks are a powerful way to build customizable dashboards for monitoring applications and infrastructure. They can combine multiple data sources such as:

Metrics
Log Analytics Workspaces
Visualizations

They are flexible enough for quick performance overviews or deep investigations.

Using Default Azure Workbooks

Many Azure resources include built-in workbook templates with basic health and performance insights.

Open your Virtual Machine.
Select Workbooks.
Choose Overview or another template.

Disable DirectSend in Exchange Online

Sun, 04 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What is DirectSend?

DirectSend (Microsoft 365) lets devices or applications (like printers, scanners, or internal apps) send email directly to users inside your organization without authentication. Instead of using authentication, it uses your MX record directly with port 25.

Some details about DirectSend:

Only works for internal recipients (same tenant)
No mailbox or license required for the sending device/app
Uses SMTP to your tenant’s MX endpoint
Commonly used for scanners, alerts, and legacy systems
Does not support sending to external email addresses
Possibly exposing public IP addresses in your DNS records

We can see it like a internal relay, possible to send email to all users in your tenant, which is actively used to distribute malicious activity. This consists of sending mailware or credential harvesting, bypassing different security controls active on normal email.

Setup a Minecraft server on Azure

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

An Azure environment
Basic knowledge of Azure
Basic knowledge of Linux and SSH
Basic knowledge of networking and TCP/UDP
Experience with Minecraft to test the server
Around 45 minutes of your time

System requirements of a Minecraft server

For a typical Minecraft server, without Mods, the guidelines and system requirements are as stated below:


Processor cores	Ram	Player Slots	World Size
2	8GB	Up to 10	Up to 8GB
4	16GB	Up to 20	Up to 15GB
8	32GB	Up to 50	Up to 20GB
16	64GB	Up to 100	Up to 60GB

Setup the Azure environment for a Minecraft server

Creating the Resource Group

First, we need to setup our Azure environment for a Minecraft server. I started with creating a Resource group named “rg-jv-minecraftserver”.

Monitor Azure Virtual Deskop logon speed

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The script is not made by myself, the source of the script is: https://www.controlup.com/script-library-posts/analyze-logon-duration/

The script used in practice

I have a demo environment where we can test this script. There we will run the script.

The script must be run at the machine where a user has just finished the login process. The user must be still logged on at the time you run it because it needs information from the event log and the session id.

Skrepr Tech CI - PowerShell

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dit is mijn Collective Intelligence voor mei 2025 over PowerShell. Ik ga hier wat leuke dingen over laten zien, zie de inhoud voor handige links naar de kopteksten.

Aan het einde heb ik nog een leuke praktijkopdracht waarin we een PowerShell module gaan installeren en uitvoeren.

Ik heb mijn best gedaan om de uitleg zo simpel maar duidelijk te geven, ook voor onze niet-technische mensen.

Wat is PowerShell?

Powershell is een shell en script taal en sinds Windows 8/Server 2012 de onderliggende CLI van Windows. Eigenlijk alles in de grafische interface van Windows wordt door Powershell verwerkt, zoals te zien in onderstaande afbeelding:

Storage Account performance and pricing for Azure Virtual Desktop

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this blog post I will explain everything about hosting your FSLogix profiles on Azure Virtual Desktop and the storage account performance including pricing. AFter that we will do some real world performance testing and a conclusion.

Billing types for Storage Accounts

Before looking into the details, we first want to decide which billing type we want to use for our Storage Account. There are two billing types for storage accounts:

Deploy Resource Group locks automatically with Azure Policy

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Note: Locks on Resource Groups can stop some automations. If you use read-only locks on a Azure Virtual Desktop resource group for example, autoscaling will not work anymore.

Take care and test these changes before creating them and assigning this policy to such (production) subscription.

The solution described

This solution consists of an Azure Policy Definition, that is assigned to the subscription where this must be executed. It also consists of a custom role that only gives the needed permissions, and nothing more.

Monitor and reduce carbon emissions (CO2) in Azure

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Carbon Optimization dashboard

Azure offers several Carbon Optimization options to help organizations to monitor and reduce their CO₂ emissions and operate more sustainable. You can find this in the Azure Portal by searching for “Carbon optimizations”:

At this dashboard we can find some interesting information, like the total emissions from when your organization started using Azure services, emissions in the last month and the potential reductions that your organization can make.

Migrate servers with Azure Migrate in 7 steps

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

A server to migrate to Microsoft Azure
Ability to install 1 or 2 additional servers
- Must be in the same network
Around 60 minutes of your time
Administrator access to all source servers
RDP access to all source servers is useful
Secure Boot must be disabled on the source servers
A target Azure Subscription with Owner access
1 server dedicated to Migration based on Windows Server 2016*
2 servers for Discovery and Migration based on Windows Server 2016*

*Windows Server 2016 is the only supported OS, please do not install other versions as this will not work.

Module 11: Infrastructure as Code & DevOps

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this module, we cover Azure: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and DevOps. This module focuses more on development on Azure, with less emphasis on automation and IT management. While IaC and DevOps might seem less exciting at first, they are essential for modern cloud-based application development and operations, helping streamline deployments, ensure consistency, and integrate continuous delivery pipelines.

Azure Management Tools

There are multiple environments to manage Azure and its resources:

Module 10: Monitoring and Security

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this module, i want you to understand all the possibilities of Monitoring and some Security features of Microsoft Azure. We know that Security these days is a very hot topic and monitoring is not really unimportant either. Very valuable information for you, i hope :).

Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor is a service in Azure that enables monitoring. With it, you can monitor various resources and quickly identify potential issues during an outage. Azure Monitor supports almost all resources in Azure and can, for example, retrieve event logs and metrics from the guest operating system of virtual machines.

Module 9: Databases & AI

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this we will explore various possibilities of Databases and AI in Microsoft Azure.

Types of data and structures

Data in general can be stored in different ways for various purposes.

Relational: Relational data consists of rows and columns following a predefined schema. The schema is represented as a table, which is essentially a type of spreadsheet where the rows contain entities and the columns store properties. For example, in an online webshop, orders would be represented as rows (entities), while columns would contain data such as the order ID, customer address, timestamp, payment method, etc.
- Examples: SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL
Non-relational: Non-relational data is less structured, such as a document or a JSON file. However, it is self-descriptive, meaning the file itself makes it clear how the data is stored.
- Examples: NoSQL, MongoDB, Gremlin, Cosmos DB
Unstructured: Unstructured data consists of various file types where the structure is not clearly defined.
- Examples:.docx, .xlsx, .jpg, .mp4 and other standalone files

Databases in Microsoft Azure

In Microsoft Azure, there are different ways to deploy a database where each type has it’s own charasteristics and requirements:

Module 8: Application Services and Containers

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This module is about application services in Microsoft Azure. It mainly focuses on containers and containerized solutions but also explores other serverless solutions. These are solutions where, as a customer or consumer of Microsoft Azure, you do not need to manage a server.

Statefull vs. Stateless

We can categorize servers/VMs into two categories: Stateful and Stateless:

Stateful: Stateful servers are uniquely configured and have a specific role, for example:

Module 7: Virtual Machines and Scale Sets

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This module explicitly covers virtual machines and virtual machines in combination with VMSS (Virtual Machine Scale Sets). Also we cover most of the VM family names, their breakdown, and advanced VM features.

Virtual Machines (VMs)

Virtual Machines are one of the most commonly used services in Microsoft Azure. This is because a customizable virtual machine allows for nearly unlimited possibilities, and most software requires a real desktop environment for installation.

Solved - FSLogix release 25.02 breaks Recycle Bin - Azure Virtual Desktop

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This issue has been solved in the newest release of FSLogix 25.04: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fslogix/overview-release-notes

Please use this newer version instead of version 25.02. This fixes the bug in this article without any change in policies and settings.

The problem/bug described

When testing the new FSLogix 25.02 version, I came across a very annoying problem/bug in this new version.

“The Recycle Bin on C:\ is corrupted. Do you want to empty the Recycle Bin for this drive?”

Save Azure costs on Virtual Machines with Start/Stop

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 45 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription
One or more Azure VMs to automatically start and stop
Basic knowledge of Azure
No fear of JSON configurations
Some drink of your choice

Introduction to the Start/Stop solution

The Start/Stop solution is a complete solution and collection of predefined resources built by Microsoft itself. It is purely focussed on starting VMs and stopping VMs based on some rules you can configure. The solution consists of some different resources and dependencies:

Module 6: Networking in Microsoft Azure

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Module 6, we will explore all the possibilities of Azure regarding networking, VPNs, load balancing methods, proxies, and gateways. This chapter also covers most the topics and solutions included in the AZ-700 exam, the Azure Networking certification.

Check out the AZ-700 Azure Networking Certification at: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/azure-network-engineer-associate/?practice-assessment-type=certification

Introduction to generic Networking

A network is described as a group of devices who communicate with each other. In Microsoft Azure, we have to create and design networks for our resources to communicatie with each other. We only use TCP/IP networking, which works with IP addresses, DHCP, routing etcetera.

Penetration testing Defender for Identity and Active Directory

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

At least one Microsoft Defender for Identity running
- For a step by step guide of this, refer this guide!
A domain controller (vm-jv-mdi)
A workstation (ws-jv-mdi)
Around 30 minutes of your time

Starting out

So I want to mention, that most of the attacks to Active Directory can be easily prevented if everybody locks their computer everytime they walk away from it and also use good enough authentication methods. Some other attacks cannot always be prevented but we can do the most of it detecting them and acting in a greatly manner.

Deep dive into IPv6 with Microsoft Azure

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Basic knowledge of Azure and IPv4 and IPv6
- Reading this guide prior is recommended: https://justinverstijnen.nl/basic-ipv6-explaination/
Around 45 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription to test and succeed on
A cup of coffee or drink of your choice :)

Creating a Virtual Network (VNET) with IPv6

By default, Azure pushes you to use an IPv4 address space when creating a virtual network in Azure. Now this is the best understandable and easy version of addressing.

How to monitor your Active Directory with Defender for Identity

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

An Microsoft 365 tenant
A traditional Active Directory (AD DS) environment which meets the system requirements and is Server 2016+
A license that has Defender for Identity included, like;
- Enterprise Mobility & Security E5
- E5 or E5 security add-on
- Standalone Defender for Identity license
- F5 Security add-on with F1 or F3 license already in place
- Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-for-identity/deploy/prerequisites#licensing-requirements
Around 60 minutes of your time
A drink of your choice

What is Microsoft Defender for Identity (MDI)?

Microsoft Defender for Identity (MDI for short) is a comprehensive security and monitoring tool which is part of the Microsoft XDR suite that defends your Windows Server-based Active Directory (AD DS). This does it by installing agents on every domain controller and so monitoring every authentication request.

The Basics and Benefits of IPv6

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 15 minutes of your time
Basic networking knowledge is great

IP addressing with IPv4 and IPv6

When we speak of a network, we speak of a set connected devices (we call them clients/nodes) where each device has its own use. Also there are some fundamental components every network has:

Router (this device connects your network to other networks like the internet)
Client

Like i said, your network contains several devices and each devices has to know how to connect to an other device. This will be done using an IP address. Using IP addresses enables you to have a very efficient network in terms of cabling. In the past there some coaxial based networks where every device was physically connected to each other.

Using Azure Update Manager to manage updates at scale

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Update Manager is a tool from Microsoft and is developed to automate, installing and documenting Windows updates or updates to Linux server on Azure. This all in a single pane of glass and without installing any additional software.

Requirements

Around 15 minutes of your time
An Azure subsciption
An Azure server or Azure Arc server

Supported systems

Azure Update Manager supports the following systems for assessments and installing updates, therefore managing them:

Active Directory FSMO roles

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What are the FSMO roles of Active Directory?

FSMO stands for Flexible Single Master Operations. Active Directory is normally multi-master, meaning changes can be made on any domain controller. However, some operations must be handled by one specific domain controller at a time to avoid conflicts. These special responsibilities are called the FSMO roles.

There are five FSMO roles:

Two forest-wide roles
Three domain-wide roles

Let’s look at them all and explain what their function is:

Get Device serial number on Windows 11 24H2 and up

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To get your device’s serial number, use the following command in Windows PowerShell:

POWERSHELL

Get-WmiObject win32_bios | select SerialNumber

Its as simple as that!

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10 ways to use tags in Microsoft Azure

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What are Tags in Azure?

Tags are a pair of editable values in Microsoft Azure. These are in this pair-convention:

Name : Value

We can define ourselves what the Name and Value actually are, if we stay within these limits:

Name: maximum of 512 characters
Value: maximum of 256 characters
- Half these values for storage accounts
These characters are not supported: <, >, %, &, \, ?, /

An example of a resource in my environment using tags:

Stop OneNote printer from being default printer in AVD

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This can be very annoying for our end users and ourselves as we want real printers to be the default printer. Today I will show you how to delete this printer for current and new session hosts permanently.

The issue itself

The issue is that OneNote automatically creates a printer queue in Windows at installation for users to send information to OneNote. This will be something they use sometimes, but a physical printer will be used much more often. The most annoying part is that the software printer for OneNote will be marked as default printer every day which is annoying for the end users.

How to upload PowerShell script to Gallery with Github Actions

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When using the PowerShell Gallery to upload and publish your scripts and PowerShell modules to the world it’s recommended to use Github Actions for CI/CD to automatically update your live packages on the PowerShell Gallery. At first, this looked somewhat complex to me but it’s relatively easy.

On this page I will show how I’ve uploaded scripts from Github to the PowerShell Gallery with using a Github Action.

Requirements

Around 30 minutes of your time
Github account
Powershell Gallery account
A PowerShell script for testing to actually upload to the PowerShell Gallery

Introduction to PowerShell Gallery

In short, the PowerShell Gallery is a public repository which contains PowerShell scripts and modules which all PowerShell users can download and install. All of this using some simple commands:

Azure VPN Gateway Maintenance - How to configure

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Why configure a maintenance configuration?

We would want to configure a maintenance configuration for our VPN gateway to Azure to prevent unwanted updates during business hours. Microsoft doesn’t publish when they perform updates to their infrastructure, so this could be any moment.

Microsoft has to patch or replace their hardware regularly, and by configuring this maintenance configuration, we tell them: “Hey, please only do this for us in this window“. You could understand that configuring this is essential for availability reasons, but also don’t postpone updates too long for security and continuity reasons. My advice is to schedule these updates daily or weekly.

Create AD users with on demand script

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today I have a PowerShell script that creates users by asking the user what to fill in. This works by having a fully prepared “New-ADUser” command with all the properties filled in to have all users using the same attributes.

I will explain how this script works on this page.

The create AD users on demand script

For the fast pass, the script can be downloaded from my GitHub page:

Module 5: Storage in Azure

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This module focuses purely on the various storage services that Azure offers and provides. Additionally, we will explore the different options available to increase redundancy and apply greater resilience.

The importance and types of storage

Storage fundamentally exists in three different types:

Structured: Structured data is information stored according to a specific structure or model, allowing queries to be written to retrieve data.
- Examples: Databases, Database tables
Semi-structured: Semi-structured data is not stored according to a strict schema, but each file contains a clear structure, making the data understandable.
- Examples: XML files, JSON files
Unstructured: Unstructured data consists of individual files, each containing its own data.
- Examples: Text files, Video files, Images, Emails

In this chapter, we will primarily focus on Unstructured data.

Managing Hyper-V server without Active Directory

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When you use Hyper-V server, you want to manage this with the management tools. However, by default Hyper-V only allows connections from domain-joined machines by design because of security and trust reasons.

We can bypass this requirement by building these trust ourselves and so managing the server from a machine that isnt even in a domain but Entra ID Joined or in a workgroup.

Installing Hyper-V management tools

When you use Windows 11 Pro/Education/Enterprise, you have the option to install Hyper-V on your machine. This can be done through the features on demand window:

Set a domain alias for every user in Microsoft 365

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Logging in Exchange Online Powershell

To configure a alias for every user, we need to login into Exchange Online Powershell:

POWERSHELL

Connect-ExchangeOnline

If you don’t have the module already installed on your computer, run the following command on an elevated window:

POWERSHELL

Install-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement

Source: https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/ExchangeOnlineManagement/3.7.2

Adding the 365 domain alias to every user

After succesfully logged in, run the following command:

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (EASM)

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (EASM) is a security solution for an organization’s external attack surfaces. It operates by monitoring security and operational integrity across the following assets:

Websites
IP addresses
Domains
SSL certificates
Other digital assets

In addition to these components, EASM can also forward all relevant information and logs to SIEM solutions such as Microsoft Sentinel.

It is also possible to manually input company-specific data, such as all domain names and IP addresses associated with its services.

Azure Key Vault

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Key Vault is a type of vault used to store sensitive technical information, such as:

Certificates
Secrets
Keys

What sets Azure Key Vault apart from a traditional password manager is that it allows software to integrate with the vault. Instead of hardcoding a secret, the software can retrieve it from the vault. Additionally, it is possible to rotate a secret every month, enabling the application to use a different secret each month.

The MITRE ATTACK Framework

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The MITRE ATTACK (ATT&CK) Framework is a framework which describes all stages and methods cyberattacks attacks are launched on companies in the last 15 years. The main purpose of the framework is to help Red and Blue security teams to harden their systems and to provide a library of known attacks to help mitigate them.

MITRE is the organization who is in charge of this community-driven framework and is a non-profit organization. ATT&CK stands for:

The Zero Trust-model

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Zero Trust model is a security model to enhance your security posture by using 3 basic principles, and segmenting aspects of your IT environment into pillars.

The 3 primary principles are:

Verify Explicitly
Least privileged access
Assume Breach

At first, those terms seem very unclear to me. To further clarify the principles, i have added some practice examples to further understand what they mean:


Principle	Outcomes
Verify Explicity	Ensure people are really who they say they are Audit every login attempt from specific users Audit login attempts Block access from non-approved countries
Least privileged access	Assign users only the permissions they need, not more Assign only the roles when they need them using PIM Use custom roles when default roles expose too much permissions
Assume breach	At every level, think about possible breaches Segment your network Password-based authentication only is too weak

The model is the best illustrated like this:

Module 4: Resiliency and Redundancy in Azure

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This module is all about resiliency and redundancy in Microsoft Azure. Resiliency literally means flexibility. It refers to how resistant a solution is to certain issues and failures. We want to build our solutions redundant, because we don’t want outage in a system so a customer can’t do their work.

Areas to implement resilliency

The different layers where you can and should apply resiliency and how you can improve the area are:

How to Export Active Directory (AD) users fast and easy

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes we need to export all of our AD users. The one time for applying changes, sometimes for monitoring the inventory but often for licensing purposes.

At this page I will show you how to export all your AD users fast and easy.

The Export AD users script:

For the fast pass, I uploaded the script to my Github page:

Download script from GitHub

How to export the AD users by hand

To export the users without using a script, navigate to your Active Directory management server and open up Powershell. We will do all the action the script above does, but then by hand and type in every command separately.

Module 3: Governance in Microsoft Azure

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction to Govenance in Azure

Governance in Azure refers to the enforcement of rules and the establishment of standards in solutions, naming conventions, technology, etc. This is achieved through the management and importance of Management Groups, Subscriptions, Resource Groups, Policies, RBAC, and Budgets.

In the cloud, Governance is crucial because processes and behaviors differ significantly from on-premises hardware. Additionally, certain services can be made publicly accessible, which requires an extra layer of security.

Configure DNSSEC and SMTP DANE Microsoft 365

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)

DNSSEC is a feature where a client can validate the DNS records received by a DNS server to ensure a record is originated from the DNS server and not manipulated by a Man in the Middle attack.

DNSSEC is developed to prevent attacks like in the topology below:

Here a attacker injects a fake DNS record and sends the user to a different IP-address, not the actual IP-address of the real website but a fake, mostly spoofed website. This way, a user sees for example https://portal.azure.com in his address bar but is actually on a malicious webserver. This makes the user far more vulnerable to credential harvesting or phising attacks.

Module 2: Identity in Azure

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This Azure Master Class (AMC) chapter is all about Identity in Microsoft Azure. This means we discuss the following:

Users
Groups
Devices
Enterprise Applications
Service Principals
Authentication

What is identity?

For every service that a user accesses, it is necessary to have an identity. Access needs to be determined, and the service must know who the user is in order to open the correct environment.

Best practice is to always assign the least possible privileges. A person who performs 3 tasks does not need permissions for 200 tasks, but for the 3 tasks only. “Least privilege” is one of the 3 key principals of the Zero Trust model.

Module 1: Fundaments of Cloud and Azure

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This chapter is about the term “Cloud” and the fundamentals of Microsoft Azure and Cloud Services in general.

What is “the Cloud”?

The Cloud is a widely used term to say, “That runs elsewhere on the internet.” There are many different definitions, but the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States has identified five characteristics that a service/solution must meet to call itself a cloud service:

Set correct language and timezone on Azure VM

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

By default, all Azure VMs are set to English language and UTC/Zulu timezone. This will work for a great portion of the Azure VM users but there are users in other parts of the world too. Like in the Netherlands, where I live we are 1 or 2 hours ahead of that timezone depending on the season.

Also, in the case of Azure Virtual Desktop, we want to present our users their native language as system language. For this case, I have made a script to correct those settings.

Automatic AVD/W365 Feed discovery for mobile apps

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Did you know we can automate this process? I will explain how to do this!

Fast path for URL: https://rdweb.wvd.microsoft.com/api/arm/feeddiscovery

The problem explained

When downloading the apps for your mobile devices, we get this window after installing:

After filling in our emailadress that has access to a Azure Virtual Desktop hostpool or Windows 365 machine, we still get this error:

We couldn’t find any Workspaces associated with this email address. Try providing a URL instead.

Now the client wants a URL, but we don’t want to fill in this URL for every device we configure. We can automate this through DNS.

Azure Stack HCI - Host your Virtual Desktops locally

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction to Azure Stack HCI

Azure Stack HCI is a solution for Microsoft Azure to host Azure resources on your own hardware and location. This sounds traditional but can help to boost your Azure resources for your customer and/or use case.

For example, with Azure Stack HCI it is possible to host some Azure Virtual Desktop hosts in your own network to boost performance by decreasing latency. Also it is possible to use GPU enabled software on this.

How to solve DeletingCloudOnlyObjectNotAllowed error Entra Connect Sync

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Now and then we come across a problem with Entra Connect Sync which states “DeletingCloudOnlyObjectNotAllowed”. This error looks like this:

This error will be shown if opening the Syncronization Service and email messages of this error will aso be sent to your tenant’s technical contact.

In this guide, I will explain the cause of this problem and the options to solve the issue.

Cause of this problem

The cause of this problem is mostly an object that is first created cloud-only and then created in Active Directory, or a user that was synced previously but is deselected or deleted. Entra Connect Sync will not match the users correctly, and a the ImmutableId of the user in Entra still exists. In short; it still wants to sync a user that not exists.

Solved - Microsoft 365 tenant dehydrated

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

What is “Tenant dehydrated”?

Microsoft sometimes will dehydrate Microsoft 365 tenants where things will not often change to the tenant. This closes some parts of the tenant for changing, even if you have Global Administrator permissions.

The cause of this is for Microsoft to save on infrastructure cost. They will set the tenant in this sort of “sleep mode” where everything works properly but some configuration changes cannot be done. You can get this error with all sorts of changes:

How to learn Azure - My learning resources

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

To give a quick overview of all the training resources I used throughout the years and give you different types and sorted the resources from beginning to end:

Text based
Video’s
Labs and Applied Skills

1. Starting out (Video and text-based)

When starting out, my advice is to first watch the following video of John Savill explaining Microsoft Azure and giving a real introduction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x1V2ny8FWM

After this, there is a Microsoft Learn collection available which describes the beginning of Azure:

Solved: August 2024 updates breaks GPO Item level targeting - user in group

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

If you are managing Windows Servers, Group Policies are a great way to distribute settings to your endpoints. However, a recent update of August 2024 in Windows Server 2022 and 2019 breaks user filtering in Group Policy (GPO) Item Level Targeting

The problem itself

When applying printers, registery settings or drive maps to users, we use Group Policy Item level targeting to filter users so only users with a group membership gets the policy applied.

Solved - Windows Store applications on FSLogix/Azure Virtual Desktop

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 15 minutes of your time
An Azure Virtual Desktop or Remote Desktop Services environment with FSLogix
Some basic knowledge about Windows, Azure and Active Directory
Session host must have winget installed

Default behaviour and why applications disappear

So the problem with Microsoft Store applications on any FSLogix based system is that the application can be installed like expected and they will work. After signing out of the session and logging in again, the applications will be gone. Under water, the applications are still installed on the computer, only Windows doesn’t know to show them to the user.

Migrate Group Policies to a new server or domain like a pro

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Once in a while, we as IT administrators need to export and import our Group Policies of Windows Server to another server. Sometimes to copy a great policy you’ve built, or to migrate a customer to a new server.

By default, the only option Microsoft has built in into Group Policy Management (gpmc.msc) is the backup option. This creates some administrative tasks.

The Export and Import scripts

I have created two scripts with Powershell that fully exports and imports all Group Policy Objects (GPOs). This with 2 seperate scripts. These can be found and downloaded from my Github page:

Optimize Windows 11 for Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD)

Sun, 04 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction to the Group Policy template

Assuming you run your Azure Virtual Desktop environment by using the good old Active Directory (AD DS), you can manage the hosts with Group Policy.

To help you optimizing the experience on Windows 11, I have a predefined group policy available with lots of settings to help optimizing your Windows 11 session hosts. This group policy follows the official Microsoft best practices, alongside with some of my own optimizations which has been proven good in production.

Introduction to Azure roles and permissions (RBAC/IAM)

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When managing a Microsoft Azure environment, permissions and roles with RBAC is one of the basic ways to improve your security. At one hand, you want to have the permissions to do basic tasks but at the other hand you want to restrict an user to be able to do only what he needs to. This is called, the principle of “least-privilege”.

In this guide, I want to you to understand the most of the basic knowledge of managing access controls in Azure without very complex stuff.

Get Windows Product Key with PowerShell

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We simply can do this with one command in PowerShell:

POWERSHELL

(Get-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform").BackupProductKeyDefault

Please note that I am not encouraging software abuse or pirating, just sharing a tip to make our IT life a bit easier. It happens that a server or computer gets installed and we forget to document the product key or just to match it with our known information.

Network security in Azure with NSG and ASG

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

What does an Network Security Group (NSG) do?

A network Security Group is a layer 4 network security layer in Azure to filter incoming and outgoing traffic which you can apply to:

A single VM, you assign it to the NIC (Network Interface Card)
A subnet, which contains similar virtual machines or need the same policy

In a Network Security Group, you can define which traffic may enter or leave the assigned resource, this all based on layer 4 of the OSI model. In the Azure Portal, this looks like this:

Create a Catch all mailbox in Exchange Online

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I also created a full customizable PowerShell script for this task which you can find here:

Download script from GitHub

This way you can skip the guide for a faster solution. Otherwise, follow the steps below to do everything by hand and get a better understanding of the relevant steps needed.

Requirements

Around 20 minutes of your time
A Microsoft 365 environment
Basic knowledge of Exchange Online
Basic knowledge of PowerShell

How does this solution work?

The solution described in this guide works with 3 components:

Rename name-tags to resource groups and resources

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When it comes to naming your Azure Resource Groups and resources, most of them are not renameable. This due to limitations on the platform and maybe some underlying technical limitations. However, it is possible to assign a renameable tag to a resource in Azure which can be changed or used to clarify its role. This looks like this:

How to add those renameable tags in the Azure Portal?

You can add this name tag by using a tag in Microsoft Azure. In the portal, go to your resource and go to tags. Here you can add a new tag:

Microsoft 365 create a shared mailbox with same alias

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The problem of multiple shared mailboxes with same alias

Let’s say, we have a Microsoft 365 tenant with 3 domains;

domain1.com
domain2.com
domain3.com

When you already have a mailbox called “info@domain1.com” you are unable to create a “info@domain2.com” in the portal. The cause of this problem is that every mailbox has a underlying “alias” and that this alias is the same when created in the portal. I have tried this in the Microsoft 365 admin center, Exchange Online admin center and Powershell. I get the following error:

Migrate data to SharePoint/OneDrive with SPMT

Mon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

At the moment, SharePoint is a better option to store your files because it has the following benefits over a traditional SMB share:

Single permissions system (No SMB/NTFS permissions)
High available by default
No server infrastructure needed
Users can work at the same file simultaneously
Integration with Microsoft Teams

The Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool

Microsoft has a tool available which is free and which can migrate your local data to SharePoint. The targets you can specify are:

Introduction to the Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark (MCSB)

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the modern era like where we are today, security is a very important aspect of every system you manage. Bad security of 1 system can mess with all your systems.

So have a good overview of how secure your complete IT environment is, Microsoft released the Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark, which is an collection of high-impact security recommendations you can use to secure your cloud services, even when utilizing a hybrid environment. When using Microsoft Defender for Cloud, this MCSB is included in the recommendations.

Using PowerShell remote sessions

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Management computer/Priveleged Access Workstation
15-20 minutes of your time
Management server and endpoints are Active Directory joined

Starting out

Before we can use Powershell to administer remote computers, we need to enable two things:

1. WinRM service (Endpoint): This is a service in Windows that enables remote management. Powershell Remote relies greatly on this service so we have to enable this on the endpoint. By default it is disabled due to its security reasons.
2. Trusted Hosts (Management server): This has to be configured on your management server. This is a whitelist to protect against security threats who can abuse this option. Here you configure to what machines (name/IP-address) you can connect to.

1. Configure Windows Remote Management (WinRM)

On the endpoint you have to enable WinRM. This can be done manually with one simple command, or at scale with Group Policy.

Introduction to the Azure Well-Architected Framework

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Azure Well-Architected Framework is a framework to improve the quality of your Microsoft Azure Deployment. This does it by spanning 5 pillars so an architect can determine with IT decision makers how they can get the most Azure with the planned budget.

The 5 pillars of the Well-Architected Framework are:


Pillar	Target
Reliability	The ability to recover a system and/or contine to work
Security	Secure the environment in all spots
Cost Optimization	Maximize the value when minimizing the costs
Operational Excellence	The processes that keep a system running
Performance Efficiency	The ability to adapt to changes

How to enable Remote Group Policy update

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Group Policy update to multiple computers

Sometimes you want to force a group policy update on multiple computers. Often when i am configuring Azure Virtual Desktop Session Hosts i need this option instead of logging into all hosts and executing the command manually.

There is a option in Group Policy management to force a group policy update to all computers in a OU:

Actually, this only works after you configured this on the remote computers. The good part is, there is a way to do this with Group Policy!

Cloud Adoption Framework Introduction (CAF)

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

More and more organizations are moving to the cloud. In order to do this succesful, we can use the Cloud Adoption Framework which is described by Microsoft.

The framework is a succesful order of processes and guidelines which companys can use to increase the success of adopting the cloud. The framework is described in the diagram below:

The CAF has the following steps:

Strategy: Define the project, define what you want to achieve and define the business outcomes.
Plan: Plan your migration, determine the plans and make sure the environment readiness is at a good level.
Ready (and migrate): Prepare your new cloud environment for planned changes and migrate your workloads to the cloud.
Optimize: After migrating to the cloud, optimize your environment by using the beste solutions possible and innovate at this level.
Secure: Improve the security of your workloads and plan your perodical security checks.
Manage: Manage operations for cloud and hybrid solutions.
Govern: Govern your environment and its workloads.

Intention of use

Increase the chance of your cloud success
Gives you a best practice of how to perform the migration by proven methodology
Ensures you don’t miss a crucial step

Intended users/audience

IT Decision makers
Company Management Teams
Companies who want to profit from cloud solutions
Companies that are planning to migrate to the cloud
Technicians and project managers for planning the migration

For more information, check out this page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/scenarios/

Dynamic group for access to Windows 365

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Azure AD/Entra ID/Microsoft Graph Powershell module
- https://learn.microsoft.com/nl-nl/powershell/module/azuread/?view=azureadps-2.0
10 minutes of your time

What are Dynamic Groups?

The Dynamic Groups feature of Microsoft Entra is a great tool for auto-managing members of a group based on a single rule or collection of rules. Some examples of using dynamic groups:

Group for all users with the department “Office”
Group for all users with or without a specific attribute
Group for all users with a specific license assigned

Dynamic group don’t need any manual assignment or un-assignment. Instead of that, members will be automatically added based on the rules. Great feature for automation purposes!

Dynamic Distribution Groups in Microsoft 365

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes you want to have a distribution group with all your known mailboxes in it. For example an employees@justinverstijnen.nl or all@justinverstijnen.nl address to send a mail company wide. A normal distribution group is possible, but requires a lot of manual maintenance, like adding and removing users.

To apply a little more automation you can use the Dynamic Distribution Group feature of Exchange Online. This is a feature like the Dynamic groups feature of Microsoft Entra which automatically adds new user mailboxes after they are created to make sure every new employee is added automatically.

Change Evaluation version to Standard/Datacenter version

Wed, 03 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When you install a fresh Windows Server installation from a .iso file, it will be installing the OS as a Evaluation version. When you want to activate the installation with a key you need to rebuild the OS and set the edition to Standard.

Microsoft considers Standard and Standard Evaluation as different editions of Windows, because of this we have to change the edition before you can activate the installation. When you want to use the edition Datacenter, you can change the command to Datacenter which also works.

Bulk create Active Directory users with Powershell

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When it comes to creating users for Active Directory, especially in new implementations, you want to minimize the time needed to create the accounts. This is possible by creating the AD users with Powershell.

Requirements

Minimal knowledge of Powershell
An Active Directory environment

Full script for creating AD users

Here is the full script including CSV that creates the ad users:

Download script from GitHub

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