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Part 1: When installing the Fortigate Single Sign-On Agent you need to configure the service account as a local admin on the server where it's being installed.  Fortinet support states that the account has to be a domain admin, but I have confirmed that it only needs local admin rights, and not domain admin rights. 

Part 2:  When installing the Duo Authentication agent on a server to use multi-factor authentication with a Fortigate, it uses port 1812 to communicate with the Fortigate for Radius authentication.  If you have already installed the Fortigate SSO Agent on that same server it will already be using port 1812 to communicate with DCs on the network.  This will cause the Duo agent to fail to start each time you attempt to start the service.There are a couple of possible fixes to this:

  1. Change the port on the Fortigate SSO agent to another port (1813).  This will also require that you specify that port on the Fortigate DC Agents installed on your domain controllers.
  2. Change the port used by the Duo agent to another port.  This can be done in the configuration file found in the Duo installation directory.  This will also require that you change the default Radius port on the Fortigate via CLI to match what you specified in the Duo configuration.  This may cause issues if your Fortigate uses multiple Radius clients/agents.
Fortigate, Duo,
 

In older versions of vCenter (and associated VMware products), installing corporate certificates was a pain. It was an extremely manual process to update each component. Just take a look at https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2034833 to get an idea. 

With vSphere 6.x, certificate replacement is considerably simpler. You still need to have a certificate for each of the components, but VMware has automated a lot of the pain points into a simple certificate wizard. In addition, instead of creating individual certificates for each piece, you simply sign a certificate (created with a special template model), replace the root VMCA certificate with your custom signed one, and regenerate all the subordinate certificates signed by your custom signed root VMCA certificate. 

It's only slightly more complex when you have a separate PSC and vCenter appliance setup, but only in that you need to update all the PSCs before updating vCenter so that the connectivity between the two appliances remains secure. Check out https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147542 for all the details. 

vSphere, VMware,
 

I was working on a Windows 10 PC connected to a domain. This PC could be pinged by DNS name and IP address.  RDP was also working.  There were no other issues on network.  No domain policies were in place that should have been keeping PC admin shares from working.  But it was still failing after registry settings changes, removing and re-adding to domain, etc.
 
I found an article about shares not working if there is a misconfigured DNS entry somewhere.  I looked on the secondary DNS server and there was an old, incorrect entry for that PC.  Removed the DNS entry and shares began to work.
Windows,
 

If you're frustrated with trying to edit text on your mobile device and placing the cursor in the correct location, try this:
  • Press and hold the space bar on the virtual keyboard
  • When the keyboard goes blank (on iOS), drag the cursor where you want to edit then release
  • This also works in all directions so you can move the cursor up and down, or left/right. You don't have to stay in the area of the virtual keyboard.
Android, Apple, iPhone,
 

As iPhone models have advanced, Apple has been changing the process for resetting (rebooting) iPhones. Up until the 6s model it was a matter of pressing and holding the power button and the home button, at the same time, until the phone screen turned off and the Apple logo appeared.
 
With the iPhone 7 you would press and hold the Volume Down button and the Power button and wait for the screen to turn off and the Apple logo to appear.
 
Beginning with the iPhone8, the process has changed to a sequence. Press and release Volume Up then Volume Down then press and hold the Power button until the Apple logo appears.
 
Knowing how things have changed is important because now, should you resort to the old "press and hold" technique, the results are much different. I learned this when I was attempting to reset my new phone. I pressed and held a volume button and the power button and as I waited I noticed an emergency call (911) was being initiated. Fortunately the screen shows a countdown and you can release the buttons without calling 911.
 
During the same "how do I reset my phone" episode, I pressed the power button rapidly several times (at least five times). I learned this also (by default, although it can be disabled) starts an emergency call. Since the call was in progress I stayed on until the call was answered and I explained the call was an accident. (I didn't get in trouble.) Should you accidentally call 911, don't hang up. Emergency service dispatchers must treat every call as an emergency. If you hang up, it takes time and resources as they have to call you back and if they can't reach you may send out the police to check on you.  
 
By the way. If you initiate the Emergency SOS feature TouchID or FaceID is disabled and you will need to enter your passcode to unlock your phone. This feature keeps a malicious person from access to your phone by pointing the phone at your face or placing your finger on the reader.
 
This is an example of "version freeze." Many (most) users may never realize software and device enhancements as we continue to do things out of habit. Usually based on the version we first learned. 
 
iPhone,
 

I was working with a customer who was upgrading all of their PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Many of the existing programs were old, outdated, and incompatible with Windows 10.
 
One particular issue we had was installing their Digital Persona fingerprint scanner to work with the TIB website. It turns out that on HP devices that have HP Protect Tools, or any of the built in HP security software features, those must be uninstalled first before the fingerprint reader software will install.
 
I uninstalled Protect Tools, and tried to run the fingerprint scanner installer again, but received an error that HP Protect Tools was still installed. Research showed to rename certain folders in C:\programs and even to rename certain .dll files as well. Did all of that, and it still showed that Protect Tools was installed.
 
I called support for TIB since they were the ones that provided the initial troubleshooting steps, and it was their fingerprint scanner. They were unable to help beyond mentioning the .dll files to rename. I then called HP support to see if there were any particular registry keys that I might need to change to prevent the error. They said there were not any, and suggested that I would need to reinstall the OS to remove any of their preinstalled software. This was not a viable solution as I had spent hours already installing other software, and this was one of the last items remaining on our list of programs to install. I continued to research and one article suggested I would need to go to HP website and reinstall Protect Tools, and then uninstall it again.
 
I reinstalled Protect Tools and then went through the uninstall process again. This time I paid closer attention to the uninstaller. While the uninstaller is running, there are a few prompts that come up, asking for verification of uninstallation. One of those prompts is a little sneaky and turned out to be the culprit. It is a yes/no prompt and asks if you wish to proceed with uninstallation. It provides information about the uninstall, but if you keep reading, it says "Press Yes to save current settings and preserve data for future use, Press No to completely uninstall."  Those aren't the exact words, but something similar. I clicked No and after the Protect Tools uninstaller finished, the Digital Persona software installed without issues.
HP, Protect Tools,
 

VMware Content Libraries are a 6.x "new" functionality (I use quotations because 6.x has been out for a while) that I've really grown to enjoy. Content Libraries allow you to store objects such as ISOs, templates, etc. in a central repository that can be shared with other vCenter environments. One of the biggest use-cases is to clear up all those random "ISOs" folders on various datastores as engineers, who are searching for an ISO, look in just the wrong folder first and create their own. 

When Content Libraries were first released, there were a few issues that made it difficult to use. The main issue was that in order to use an ISO in the library, I had to download it first, and then connect it to through the web client. For that matter, I may as well just continue to use the locally stored ISOs on my system anyway. You could still deploy templates from the library, which helped, but ISOs were what I really was looking forward to. 

vCenter 6.5 (and 6.7) fixed this and allowed you to connect ISO images directly from a Content Library. When I stood up our 6.5 cluster internally, I started setting this up and created a repository on a FreeNAS device with the share exposed via NFS so that I could use some cheaper storage to hold this content. Growing excited, I tried to create my first VM with an ISO image stored in the library. And it didn't work. Turns out, in order to connect an ISO from a Content Library, the backend storage must either be a VMFS datastore directly connected to the host so that the VM can "see" it. 

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2151380?lang=en_US

VMware,
 

With our move to Nessus for our audit scanning, we are digging deeper into unsupported software. In these checks, there has been a software that has shown up across a majority of different customers which is unsupported Microsoft XML Parser and XML Core Services.
 
Microsoft XML Parser and XML Core Services are used to create and validate data in XML documents and have the ability to parse and process the data. More info can be found here: https://searchmicroservices.techtarget.com/definition/XML-Core-Services
 
One customer that I was working with had questions about the software because it was showing up as unsupported for a server that they just installed on the network. After doing some investigation, we found that the server did in fact have the unsupported Microsoft XML Parser and XML Core Services installed along with the current version of the software. After doing some additional research, it appears that when there is a new version of the software released, the update installs the new software, but does not remove the old unsupported software.
 
If the current version of the software is installed, then the unsupported versions can be removed manually.
 
Microsoft, XML Parser,
 

I recently built a new VM with Windows Server 2016 and installed Exchange Server 2016. As part of hardening the server, I implemented our normal security header and cipher suite hardening steps. The Exchange Control Panel (ECP) appeared to function properly after these changes were implemented, but about a week later I found an issue where one of the less commonly used pages would not open. The page would not load the style sheets and you could not navigate to the page when using the FQDN from the local server. The page mostly worked when accessing it via https://localhost/ecp or from the FQDN outside the network.

During troubleshooting, I decided to remove the security headers to see if that would resolve the issue and it did. I determined that adding the X-Content-Type-Options security header broke some pages in ECP. The only option for X-Content-Type-Options is "nosniff", so there is no alternate value to set. Basically, the Exchange style sheets aren't specifying the content in the style sheets and "nosniffs" tells the browser not to guess the MIME types. I implemented all of the other common security headers, but did not implement X-Content-Type-Options.

Exchange 2016,
 

After updating a laptop to Windows 10 1803, I had a user who could no longer right click within a RemoteApp window.  I found a suggestion to disable the group policy for "Use advanced RemoteFX graphics for RemoteApp". After disabling that policy and having the user log off/on, the user was able to right click within the RemoteApp window again.
RemoteApp, Windows 10,