Compare Windows Patches in Two Computers

 Microsoft release windows patches every month and it's important that we keep our systems with the latest patch as they fix vulnerabilities and errors in windows and associated software.

Keeping our windows with the latest patch level by installing the hotfixes helps to prevent our systems from malware, thefts, and attacks.

In an enterprise, we use windows clusters to make our critical application highly available by using the clusters fail-over feature. Systems that are part of the cluster need to be very similar in terms of configuration, patch level, etc.

Sometimes while troubleshooting the issues with a cluster node or with any system we require comparing the patches in the two systems, performing this comparison manually is a complex and time-consuming task, so we have come up with a PowerShell script that will compare the hotfixes in the 2 systems and give you a nice HTML report with the patch comparison in the 2 systems.

We just need to provide the names of the 2 computers as input and modify the script with the SMTP server and the email addresses from which you want to send the email and the email address of the recipient.

Hope you all find your solution for How to compare hotfixes in 2 computers.

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Cleanup all SRV DNS records for a DC in your domain

SRV(Service) records are custom DNS records. They are used to establish connections between a service and a hostname. When an application needs to find the location of a specific service, it will search for the related SRV records.

Active Directory creates SRV records in _msdcs.Domain_Name zone where <Domain_Name is the name of your domain. These srv records are created in the below folders

• Forward Lookup Zones/Domain_Name/_msdcs/dc/_sites/Default-First-Site-Name/_tcp
• Forward Lookup Zones/Domain_Name/_msdcs/dc/_tcp

The SRV or service records will appear for the _kerberos and _ldap services at the above locations. There will be 2 separate records for the above services in each of those folders at all the AD Sites in your domain.

When we force demote a domain controller by metadata cleanup, we need to remove the SRV records manually. Checking all the SRV records in a domain is a tedious and time-consuming task.

So to simplify the above complexity of checking the SRV records we came up with a PowerShell script that will find all the records for a domain controller in your domain and then deletes them to save you time and effort.

Below is the script where you need to provide the hostname of the DC that you have demoted forcefully and the IP address of that DC and the script will fetch and delete all the records associated with that DC.

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