Field notes from the far side of an outage.
Documented deep-dives on Active Directory, PowerShell, and the infrastructure that breaks at 3am — written by one SRE who records the fix and the reason it worked.
Come in by your situation
Four doors into the manual, phrased the way you’d actually arrive — pick the one that matches your day.
“I’m new to Active Directory.”
Start the 13-part concept series — forests and domains through Kerberos, replication, and trusts, sequenced so each idea rests on the last.
open the series → for the on-call“Something’s broken right now.”
Jump to the troubleshooting index — guides filed by the literal error text, so you search the symptom, not the theory.
search by symptom → for the automator“I need to script this away.”
PowerShell modules, functions, and pipelines pulled straight from the toolkit that runs the lab — built for real operational work.
open the toolkit → for the builder“I’m standing up a homelab.”
Proxmox, chrony/NTP, and Windows Server 2025 domain controllers — the same patterns as production, scaled to a single box.
open the homelab →Deep-dives that build in order
Not scattered posts — sequenced chapters, meant to be read front to back.
Fresh off the bench
All posts →Newest first — this feed keeps itself current as new notes publish.
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Proxmox Cluster Setup
Proxmox · Clustering Proxmox Cluster Setup A hands-on guide to building a Proxmox VE cluster with pvecm and…
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Windows Server Backup — VSS, System State, and Bare-Metal Recovery
Windows · Backup & Recovery Windows Server Backup — VSS, System State, and Bare-Metal Recovery Windows Server Backup…
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Lingering Objects Blocking Replication — Event 1988
Active Directory · Troubleshooting Lingering Objects Blocking Replication — Event 1988 A domain controller logs Event 1988 and…
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Windows Admin Center
Windows · Admin Center Windows Admin Center A practical guide to Windows Admin Center, the browser-based management gateway…
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Regex in PowerShell
PowerShell · Basics Regex in PowerShell A practical guide to pattern matching in PowerShell with -match, -replace, -split,…
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The Windows Time Service (W32Time)
Windows · Time Sync The Windows Time Service (W32Time) How W32Time keeps every computer in a domain on…
Index of topics
Full sitemap →Everything the manual covers — counts update automatically as new notes publish.
- Active Directory (45)
- AD Concept Series (13)
- AI Tools (21)
- Claude Code (10)
- Codex (9)
- DevOps (13)
- Terraform (13)
- Homelab (6)
- Proxmox (3)
- NTP (4)
- PowerShell (17)
- PowerShell Basics (7)
- PowerShell Scripts (7)
- Troubleshooting (21)
- Windows (19)
I run the systems nobody notices — until they break.
I’m Shankar, a Senior SRE in Mangalore. This manual is where I write down what actually fixed the problem and why, in plain language — the notes I wish I’d had at 3am, tested in a homelab before they reach you.
Read my full story →