If you’ve ever dealt with Unix Epoch time in PowerShell, you know it can be a hassle. By default, Get-Date doesn’t output or accept Epoch time, forcing users to manually calculate the seconds between 1970 and their target date. PS C:\> # Examples of Previous ways to calculate current Unix Time PS C:\> [int][double]::Parse((Get-Date -UFormat %s)) 1724142672 PS C:\> [System.Math]::Truncate((Get-Date -UFormat %s)) 1724142720 Fortunately, there’s a better way. The .NET DateTimeOffset class provides an efficient method to handle Unix Epoch timestamps directly in PowerShell.

Introduction In today’s fast-paced IT environment, maintaining up-to-date backups is crucial for data protection and disaster recovery. Veeam Quick Backup functionality offers a streamlined solution for efficiently backing up individual VMs or groups of VMs. This feature is designed to be quick and user-friendly, making it an excellent tool for system administrators who need to perform ad-hoc backups without disrupting their regular backup schedules. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the Quick Backup feature, focusing on how to leverage it using PowerShell.

In this article, I delve deeper into affordable object storage by exploring the configuration of Synology’s CloudSync app on a Synology NAS for data backup to the Synology C2 Object Storage service. To follow along, you can easily sign up for a 15GB trial account. Setting Up a C2 Object Storage Bucket Let’s kick off by establishing the Object Storage bucket. We’ll log in to the C2 website, where the URL for the APAC region is https://object.

With Synology’s C2 Object Storage, the company continues its tradition of delivering a solution that strikes the perfect balance between simplicity and cost-effectiveness in a dynamic market. Having relied personally on Synology NAS devices for over a decade, I’ve consistently experienced their impressive capabilities. These devices embody a set-and-forget ethos, providing seamless updates throughout their lifespan and never experiencing a failure outside of normal HDD issues. Their inherent simplicity ensures that, unlike the IT challenges I have to navigate at work, managing storage at home is a hassle-free experience.

Last month, Microsoft unveiled Windows Server Insider build 26040—the inaugural preview branded as Windows Server 2025. As seasoned Windows Server enthusiasts, we’re eager to delve into the enhancements and evolutions this release brings. In this Part 1, we’ll deploy the fresh Windows Server build, meticulously compare available Windows Features and Roles, and scrutinize any modifications to in-box PowerShell modules. Buckle up for an insightful journey through the latest iteration of Windows Server!

I was setting up Veeam Backup & Replication the other day, testing out the Plug-in for VMware Cloud Director (VCD) to provide Self Service backup and restore, and I hit an unexpected issue when trying to access the extension from the VCD Tenant Portal. Access to XMLHTTPRequest has been blocked by CORS policy After some digging, I came across a single post on the Veeam Forums that made reference to the same issue.

Every year, Microsoft holds its annual BUILD conference where they “announce new tools and solutions to empower developers to solve real world problems”, it’s also a great time to pick up some new skills and connect with the wider developer communities. If you’ve attended any of the Microsoft conferences in the last few years, you would’ve seen a steady increase in hybrid content and solutions, as the world starts to realise that ‘Cloud-native’ doesn’t need to mean ‘Cloud-only’.

One of the awesome features of Azure VMs has been that they have their own identity in Azure AD, much like traditional servers on-prem have had computer accounts in Active Directory, and these identities can be used to authenticate against other Azure services such as Azure KeyVault. Thanks to this native ability, it’s been possible to securely store objects such as secrets for User accounts, API Keys and things like Certificates in KeyVault and access them from other Azure Resources without having to create and store credentials those services.

As some of you might have seen earlier this month, I tweeted my excitement at the fact that the Azure Stack HCI 20H2 preview included a newly rebuilt SConfig utility, written in PowerShell! Incase you missed it, #AzureStackHCI includes a completely re-written version of SConfig! The best part? It's written in #PowerShell, so why not start extending it? :D I spent a couple of minutes and added a little extra menu for my own use#MVPBuzz #AzSHCI pic.

So you’ve set up an Azure Stack HCI Cluster and everything’s running great, but there is this nagging feeling in the back of your mind. It’s a hybrid setup, with some type of flash cache sitting in front of spinning disk, and you start to wonder how hard you’re pushing that cache, and how long it will last. Thankfully with Windows Server 2019, there are many in-built tools and commands to help work out just that!