How-To Geek

VirtualBox and VMware both create virtual machines with the NAT network type by default. If you want to run server software inside a virtual machine, you’ll need to change its network type or forward ports through the virtual NAT.

Want to secure your SSH server with easy-to-use two-factor authentication? Google provides the necessary software to integrate Google Authenticator’s time-based one-time password (TOTP) system with your SSH server. You’ll have to enter the code from your phone when you connect.

Most people know that you can enable or disable the optional Windows features through the Control Panel, but today we’re going to show you how you can do the same thing through the PowerShell command line.

The X server on Linux provides your graphical desktop. If it crashes, you’ll lose all unsaved work in graphical programs, but you can recover from the crash and restart the X server without restarting your computer.

On Linux, the magic SysRq key can send commands directly to the Linux kernel. You can use it to recover from freezes or cleanly restart your system, even if nothing appears to be responding.

As part of their ongoing push to simplify their product lineups, Microsoft is discontinuing their popular small office/home server platform Windows Home Server. On to see the new alternative for small volume users.

VPNs and SSH tunnels can both securely “tunnel” network traffic over an encrypted connection. They’re similar in some ways, but different in others – if you’re trying to decide which to use, it helps to understand how each works.

Windows 8 comes with a shiny new version of PowerShell, version 3. But while playing around with it, I have noticed a lot of scripts that I had written for version 2 are now throwing errors, so here’s how to get version 2 back while not losing version 3.

PowerShell Remoting allows you to run individual PowerShell commands or access full PowerShell sessions on remote Windows systems. It’s similar to SSH for accessing remote terminals on other operating systems.

PowerShell is quickly becoming the preferred scripting language and CLI of Power Users as well as IT Pros. It’s well worth learning a few commands to get you started, so we’ve got 5 useful cmdlets for you to learn today.

Forgetting your password is always a pain, but luckily there’s an easy way to reset your Domain Administrator password. All you need is a copy of the Windows Server 2008 R2 installation disk and one simple command line trick.

Windows 8 does away with the Start Menu we all know and love, and introduces a more “immersive” Start Screen. Since there’s no context menu on the Start Screen you may be wondering how to run applications as administrator–here’s how.

When Server Core originally shipped, a lot of Windows admins avoided it because you could only use the command line, but this changes with Windows Server 2012 which enabled the use of a hybrid mode.

SSH offers more than just a secure, remote terminal environment. You can use SSH to tunnel your traffic, transfer files, mount remote file systems, and more. These tips and tricks will help you take advantage of your SSH server.

We have already shown you how you can change your IP address from the command prompt, which required long netsh commands, now we are doing the same thing in PowerShell, without the complexity.

Ever have one of those days where programs just aren’t cooperating?  You try terminating a program, but it doesn’t respond?   PowerShell can give you some extra fire power on those days.

You have the latest drives for your server.  You stacked the top-of-the line RAM in the system.  You run effective code for your system.  However, what throughput is your system capable of handling, and can you really trust the capabilities listed by hardware companies?

This well documented build guide showcases the process of turning a rack-mounted UPS battery device intended for a server bank, into a super-charged whole-house UPS system with a massive 14 hours of backup juice.

The Microsoft evaluation releases of their products are incredibly valuable and useful tools as they allow you to have an unlimited number of test, demo and development environments to work with at no cost. The only catch is evaluation releases are time limited, so the more time you can squeeze out of them, the more useful they can be.

Have you ever wished that instead of having to manually login to a server in order to see the system log, the events would simply come to you? How-To Geek goes into how to setup a syslog collector.

When you download a script off the internet and try to run it, if you have not previously configured PowerShell, it will throw a nasty error in red font. This is enough to scare most users off, but there is an easy fix.

Since our home servers are constantly on, and often headless, it is nice to know when certain events happen on your server without having to log in and check all the time. This is where email notifications save the day.

Once a week we round up three excellent reader tips and share them with the greater How-To Geek audience. This week we’re looking at how to run an ebook server from the command line, scoring cheap HDDs, and tweaking Windows 8 menus.

Once you have Hyper-V installed the first thing you are going to want to do is start creating virtual machines. The process is mostly a next, next, finish matter, but just incase you are unsure, here’s a quick start-to-finish guide.

Windows Server 2008 R2 and later releases of the product ship with a virtualization platform called Hyper-V, which works quite well since it’s built into Windows. Today we’re going to show you how to install it.