A comprehensive guide to Windows VPS usage, from beginner to advanced levels, covering practical tutorials on server configuration, software installation, security hardening, and performance optimization. Ideal for newcomers to get started quickly, while also serving as a technical reference for advanced users.
Memory Integrity, the user-facing switch for Hypervisor-Enforced Code Integrity, moves kernel-mode code-integrity checks into a virtual trust level that the guest kernel cannot write to. On a VPS nested inside a hypervisor, that means a second layer of translation and a measurable penalty on older CPUs without the right extent-table features. This article measures the … Read more
IIS routes URLs through NTFS, and NTFS treats /Products and /products as the same file. That is convenient on a case-insensitive filesystem and a source of subtle bugs when URL rewrite rules, canonical-host redirects, and application routes are written with case-sensitive assumptions copied from Linux. The result is often a rewrite loop that returns 500.19 … Read more
DHCP is one of those roles that everyone uses and few people configure deliberately. A default installation hands out addresses, but it also hands out your old DNS server, the wrong gateway, and a lease time that starves your subnet of free IPs. On a Windows server instance used as an internal network service, a … Read more
Compression is one of the cheapest performance wins on an IIS-hosted site, and it is also one of the most commonly left on the default. Windows Server ships IIS with static and dynamic compression modules that support gzip out of the box, while Brotli only arrives through cross-platform .NET hosting or third-party modules. Choosing between … Read more
DNS is the most hit service on any internal Windows network and the easiest to leave at defaults. A resolver answering in 40 ms instead of 4 ms multiplies across every login, every API call that resolves a hostname, and every site-to-site lookup. On a single Windows VPS the DNS Server role is often installed … Read more
Two built-in Windows features restrict what software may run: AppLocker and Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC, formerly Device Guard Code Integrity). They overlap enough that teams pick the wrong one and then fight it. AppLocker is policy-through-Group-Policy and readable by anyone who understands file paths and publishers. WDAC is kernel-enforced code integrity with a signed … Read more
A two-node Windows Server Failover Cluster is achievable on VPS infrastructure, but the constraints are different from a datacenter build. Shared storage usually does not exist, quorum is a design decision rather than an afterthought, and network latency between nodes sets the practical ceiling for what can fail over cleanly. This is the design reference … Read more
Network faults on a Windows VPS usually show up as a single symptom — “the app can’t connect” — while the cause sits somewhere between DNS, the firewall, the listener, and the provider’s edge. Three tools cover most of that ground: Test-NetConnection for end-to-end reachability, Get-NetTCPConnection for local listener state, and netsh for the lower-level … Read more
IIS client certificate authentication — mutual TLS, or mTLS — lets you authenticate users and services with certificates instead of, or in front of, Windows credentials. It is the strongest access control IIS offers without a VPN, and it fails in three confusing ways: 403.16 when the server rejects the client certificate chain, 403.7 when … Read more
HTTP/2 is enabled by default on Windows Server 2016 and later, but HTTP/3 is not, and both need specific registry keys to behave correctly behind a proxy or load balancer. This guide covers enabling HTTP/3 over QUIC on IIS, verifying HTTP/2 is actually negotiating, and the TLS cipher suites that must be present for either … Read more