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Russell Smith

Editorial Director

Editorial Director at Petri IT Knowledgebase. Russell has more than 20 years' experience working in IT. From small business to large government IT infrastructure projects.

Russell started his writing career for Windows IT Pro magazine in the early 2000s. Since then, Russell has contributed to a variety of publications, including Petri, CDW's list of publications, and various industry blogs including Netwrix, BeyondTrust, and others.

In addition to more than 1000 articles Russell has authored, he has also written a book on Windows security and co-authored another for Microsoft's MOAC series. Russell has also authored several courses for Pluralsight.

LATEST

Managing Windows Server with Puppet Part 4: Working with Files and ACLs

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith shows you how to use the file resource and manage permissions on files and folders.

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Managing Windows Server with Puppet Part 3: Edit the Site Manifest

In today’s Ask the Admin, Russell Smith shows you to install modules on your Puppet master and how to open and edit the main site manifest using Secure Shell.

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Package Management in Windows Using Chocolatey

In today’s Ask the Admin, Russell Smith looks at the Chocolatey package manager for Windows, what it does, and how it can simplify software deployment on servers and end-user devices.

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Managing Windows Server with Puppet Part 2: Log Into Puppet Master, Accept Node Certificate, and Test Connectivity

In today’s Ask the Admin, Russell Smith shows you how to log in to Puppet master using Secure Shell, accept the certificate from the Windows Server node, and how to test connectivity between agent and master.

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Everything You Need to Know About Windows –- February 2018 Edition

This month is all about Redstone 4, always-connected PCs, and changes to the SKU lineup and licensing.

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Managing Windows Server with Puppet Part 1: Configure Puppet Master and Bootstrap the Puppet Agent in Windows Server

In today’s Ask the Admin, Russell Smith shows you how to set up Puppet Enterprise Master in Azure and provision Windows Server so that it bootstraps with the Puppet agent installed.

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Patch Tuesday February 2018

This month’s cumulative update for the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update sees the OS build bumped to version 16299.248.

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PowerShell DSC and Puppet — Why It Is Not Either/Or

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith discusses why Puppet and DSC together is often the best configuration management solution in mixed Windows/Linux environments.

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Microsoft DSC Environment Analyzer Creates Compliance Reports for Power BI

Compliance is always a hot topic, so in this Ask the Admin, I’ll look at how Microsoft’s DSCEA can be used to create compliance reports for servers configured using PowerShell DSC.

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Set Up Active Directory to Support Tiered Administration and Privileged Access Workstations

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith discusses setting up Active Directory to support a secure tiered administrative model and Privileged Access Workstations.

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