RCFMARTIN

Debloating Active Directory Stale Accounts, Orphaned Groups, and the Cleanup Pipeline

Inventory, classify, quarantine, delete a repeatable cleanup pipeline for the accumulated sediment every long-lived AD carries, with retention windows, drift tracking, and none of the "oops I deleted production" stories.

#powershell#activedirectory#cleanup

RM

Jun 22, 2026

Powershell 15 min read

Active Directory Security Baselines as Idempotent Scripts

Tiered admin, ACL hardening, Protected Users, AdminSDHolder the AD security controls that matter, encoded as Get/Test/Set scripts that audit first and enforce second.

#powershell#activedirectory#security

RM

Jun 15, 2026

Powershell 15 min read

Active Directory Certificate Automation Templates, Enrollment, and Rotation

Automate ADCS end-to-end idempotent certificate templates, auto-enrollment plumbing, scheduled rotation, CRL/OCSP publishing, and a pipeline that keeps every cert in the estate under two months old without a human in the loop.

#powershell#activedirectory#pki

RM

Jun 08, 2026

Powershell 13 min read

WMI Filters as Code The Silent Half of Group Policy

WMI filters live in their own LDAP container with a hand-encoded `msWMI-Parm2` blob, no shipped cmdlets, and a habit of silently dropping GPO scope when malformed. This post automates them with the same Get/Test/Set discipline the rest of the series uses.

#powershell#activedirectory#grouppolicy

RM

Jun 01, 2026

Powershell 14 min read

Group Policy as Code Export, Diff, Apply

GPOs are normally edited in GPMC and live only in SYSVOL. This post turns them into text files on disk exported, normalized, diffable in pull requests, and applied idempotently from CI.

#powershell#activedirectory#grouppolicy

RM

May 25, 2026

Powershell 15 min read

Active Directory Structure as Code OUs, Groups, and ACLs

A single YAML or JSON file describes the target directory. A reconciler applies it idempotently, safely handles renames and moves, and produces a diff anyone can read in a pull request.

#powershell#activedirectory#iac

RM

May 18, 2026

Powershell 13 min read

Idempotent Active Directory Automation with PowerShell

Idempotency is the property that turns one-shot AD scripts into CI-safe building blocks safe to rerun, dry-run-able, and honest about what changed. This post defines what that actually requires, then builds a disciplined Get/Test/Set pattern that delivers it.

#powershell#activedirectory#idempotency

RM

May 11, 2026

Powershell 14 min read

Managing and Reporting Linux Patch Levels with PowerShell

Patch reporting across a mixed Debian, RHEL, and SUSE fleet, with a single PowerShell toolkit that normalizes per-distro output into one object schema, ships a dashboard on a cron, and applies updates with a snapshot-then-rollback safety net.

#powershell#linux#patching

RM

May 04, 2026

Powershell 16 min read

From Blank Linux Server to Hardened Baseline with PowerShell

A fresh Ubuntu install, a single pwsh session, and an hour of scripting turn a default server into one that no longer fails a baseline audit. Users, groups, sudoers, SSH hardening, a UFW firewall, fail2ban, and unattended security updates, all idempotent, all reviewable in git.

#powershell#linux#hardening

RM

Apr 27, 2026

Powershell 14 min read

PowerShell Custom Types Without Classes

Build strongly typed, IntelliSense-friendly PowerShell objects using PSCustomObject + PSTypeName + factory functions + Update-TypeData + Format.ps1xml no class keyword required.

#powershell#ets#types

RM

Apr 20, 2026

Powershell 18 min read

Building a Powershell Module with Sampler The Complete Solution

Sampler scaffolds a production-grade Powershell module InvokeBuild, ModuleBuilder, Pester, PSScriptAnalyzer, GitVersion, ChangelogManagement, and CI pipelines for GitHub Actions / Azure DevOps all wired up from one Plaster template.

#powershell#sampler#modulebuilder

RM

Apr 14, 2026

C# 13 min read

Testing C# Cmdlets Pester for Behavior, xUnit for Internals

A two-layer testing strategy for binary modules xUnit for pure C# logic, Pester for end-to-end cmdlet behavior, with a small fake host that lets you assert against WriteObject, WriteError, and the streams.

#powershell#csharp#dotnet

RM

Apr 07, 2026