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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The Windows Time Service (W32Time)
Windows · Time Sync The Windows Time Service (W32Time) How W32Time keeps every computer in a domain on…
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Group Policy Preferences Drive Maps Not Applying — Item-Level Targeting
Active Directory · Troubleshooting Group Policy Preferences Drive Maps Not Applying — Item-Level Targeting When a Group Policy…
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Automating WordPress Publishing with Claude Code
Claude Code · Automation Automating WordPress Publishing with Claude Code How to build an AI writer and an…
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PowerShell String Formatting — Here-Strings, -f, and Interpolation Gotchas
PowerShell · Basics PowerShell String Formatting — Here-Strings, -f, and Interpolation Gotchas A practical guide to the three…
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Building and Importing Your Own PowerShell Modules
PowerShell · Modules Building and Importing Your Own PowerShell Modules A practical guide to packaging reusable PowerShell functions…
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Performance Monitor and Data Collector Sets
Windows · Performance Monitor Performance Monitor and Data Collector Sets A practical guide to Windows Performance Monitor’s Data…
Index of topics
Full sitemap →Everything the manual covers — counts update automatically as new notes publish.
- Active Directory (43)
- AD Concept Series (13)
- AI Tools (21)
- Claude Code (10)
- Codex (9)
- DevOps (13)
- Terraform (13)
- Homelab (5)
- Proxmox (2)
- NTP (4)
- PowerShell (16)
- PowerShell Basics (6)
- PowerShell Scripts (7)
- Troubleshooting (20)
- Windows (17)
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 →