This is the last my post this year and I want to make a little summary about my blogging and public projects I’m running and to acknowledge some companies and people.
During this year I continued to focus on Public Key Infrastructure and it’s integration into Windows PowerShell. It is unfortunate that only few people pays attention to this aspect. While many Microsoft products and technologies have solid support in PowerShell, ADCS and PKI still has very poor support. Finally, Microsoft developed cmdlets for ADCS components installation (starting with Windows Server 2012) — it is a big win. However, built-in cmdlets still lacks in ADCS component management in PowerShell.
To be honest, cmdlets in PKI and AdcsAdministration modules are awful and don’t cover daily ADCS management tasks. On the other hand, it is a great field (opportunity) for me, to continue PowerShell PKI module development. During this year I shipped two releases of this module. Each new version implements new commands, features and resolves detected issues. New version is coming (release is planned in January).
Also I’m continuing to work on others projects and concepts. For example, PowerShell Cmdlet Help Editor. so far it is the only publically available help editor for 3rd party modules. Primarily I developed the editor to cover my own needs to create unified help content for PowerShell PKI module. First version covered just basic functionality. It wasn’t enough, so I added an ability to generate HTML code which can be pasted to your web site (for example, to CodePlex). However, I noticed that help content review (for typos or other inaccuracies) is not very easy, so I added a browser plugin to the editor, so you can select the cmdlet and view entire cmdlet help content in a user-friendly way. There are other improvements which I didn’t mentioned, the main idea is the same — make the editor more user-friendly and reduce the time on content writing and review.
In addition, you can check my little, but very useful scripts on TechNet Gallery: PowerShell File Checksum Integrity Verifier (PsFCIV) and Self-signed certificate generator (PowerShell), which are now a part of PKI module. Do not forget about my recent work: Verifying The SSL Certificates with a tool, which is outstanding and still, there are ways for improvement and enhancements (it requires a time).
All these projects require a lot of time. Since I’m working on them during my free time, I’m trying to spend the time more effectively. Also, the product should be easy to ship and install by end-users. Therefore I want to mention some companies which helped me with free NFR (Not For Resale) licenses for their products.
While I mentioned companies that helped me with products that reduces my time on project development, I want to mention two guys from Microsoft, who help me with their brains and who put reasonable effort in PKI module development. Probably you never heard about them, but I think you should know these “invisible” heroes:
Sometimes I’m writing about interesting behavior in Windows PKI which is not described anywhere and which I got from these guys. For example, Database log files are not truncated when you perform a full Certification Authority database backup, or String comparison in Certification Authority database queries.
Thank you all, who helped and continue to help me with your products or brains, your help is invaluable!
thank you Vadims for such an impressive range of tools packed with knowledge and unique sense of humor.
More thanks here... loving what you do... extremely interesting and helpful. I'm wondering how long it is before you go to work for the dark side (Microsoft) ;-)
thanks! I'm glad that someone likes what I'm doing. Yeah, it's a time (based on my friends experience who moved to Microsoft after 3-5 years being an MVP) to go to the dark side. But I have my own vision and it is better to stay out of Microsoft "roster" :)
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