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Russell Smith

Editorial Director

Russell Smith, the Editorial Director at Petri IT Knowledgebase, has over two decades of hands-on experience in IT, in both small business settings and government IT infrastructure projects.

Russell started writing for Windows IT Pro Magazine in the early 2000s. Since then, he has contributed insights to various IT publications, including Petri and CDW. His authoritative voice has resonated across industry blogs, where he dissects complex topics into an ‘easy read’.

Russell has authored over a thousand articles, each a testament to his depth of knowledge. His expertise doesn’t stop there: he wrote a book on Privilege Management and co-authored another for Microsoft’s MOAC series. Moreover, Russell’s commitment to education shines through in the courses he crafted for Pluralsight.

He is also presenter on his own YouTube channel, This Week in IT, and the current presenter of Petri Dish.

LATEST

Solving Group Policy Problems with the Group Policy Results Wizard

Last Update: Jun 05, 2025

Russell Smith shows us how to determine which Group Policy settings are actually being applied to devices using the Group Policy Results Wizard.

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How to Use Starter Group Policy Objects in Windows Server

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Russell Smith shows us how to create, load and save starter Group Policy Objects (GPOs) in Active Directory.

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Assigning Elastic IP Addresses to Amazon EC2 Instances

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Russell Smiths shares simple steps for assigning elastic IP addresses to Amazon EC2 instances.

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How to Create and Link a Group Policy Object in Active Directory

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Russell Smith shows us how to create and link a Group Policy Object in Active Directory in this step-by-step how-to article.

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Updating the Windows 10 Technical Preview to the Latest Build

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Russell Smith walks us through how to update the Windows 10 Technical Preview to the latest build from Microsoft.

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Using Internet Explorer 11 Edge Mode in Windows 10 Technical Preview

Last Update: Nov 19, 2024

Russell Smith shows us how to use Internet Explorer 11 Edge Mode in Windows 10 Technical Preview in this short tutorial.

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Enable IP between VPC Instances in Amazon Web Services

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Russell Smith shows us an easy way to configure Amazon Web Services security groups so that EC2 VPC instances can communicate with each other.

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Configure DHCP and DNS in an AWS Virtual Private Cloud

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Russell Smith shows us how to get DNS resolution working for Active Directory by creating a new DHCP options set in Amazon Web Services.

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Manage IP Addressing with Virtual Private Clouds in Amazon Web Services

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Learn how to provision a Windows Server 2012 R2 VM with a static private IP address in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), with the help of Windows PowerShell.

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How to Configure Windows Server as an iSCSI Target and Storage Server

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Russell Smith teaches us how to use iSCSI to configure Windows Server 2012 R2 as a storage server.

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Provision a Windows Server Storage Spaces Mirrored Volume with PowerShell

Last Update: Nov 19, 2024

Russell Smith shows us how to configure a Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces Mirrored Volume using PowerShell.

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Provision Windows Server in Amazon Web Services using PowerShell

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024

Russell Smith shows us how to provision a Windows Server instance in Amazon Web Services using PowerShell in this handy how-to article.

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