Microsoft - Aidan Finn, IT Pro

The End Of An Era – Bye Bye TechNet Subscription

I wouldn’t be where I am today without the TechNet subscription. I signed up for it way back when I first decided to become a contractor and I started this blog. I needed content that I could use in a lab. I needed that content to be up to date and, most importantly, affordable. That was TechNet. It allowed me to install software from scratch, learn how it worked, and dive deeper than a canned lab could ever allow.

As we all know, the TechNet subscription was killed off by Microsoft, seen by many as a stab at the heart of IT pros.

This email came in to me over the past hour or so. It’s sad; we may never see IT pros gain the same access to on-premise software again for test and evaluation purposes.

Microsoft News Summary – 8 May 2014

Here’s the news for the last 24 hours. I suspect things will remain quiet until the keynote at TechEd. Even then, I’d expect news to be limited to cloud services.

Avoiding Disk Performance Issues in Storage Spaces: One of my posts on the Petri IT Knowledgebase
What Are Virtual Machine Manager Service Templates? An overview of how System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) service templates work, including an introduction to Service Template Designer and how to use service templates in VMM.
Top 5 Free Tools for Hyper-V: One of my posts on the Petri IT Knowledgebase
Deploying Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 Update (KB2919355) Using System Center Configuration Manager: This cumulative update is available for deployment using the software updates management (SUM) feature built into Configuration Manager.
Microsoft To Announce Mobile Device Management Improvements This Month: At this month’s TechEd event, Microsoft plans to describe how it will use "native containers" to separate corporate content from personal content in BYOD scenarios.

Technorati Tags: Storage,Windows Server 2012 R2,System Center,VMM,Windows 8.1,Configuration Manager,Intune

Microsoft News Summary – 7 May 2014

Between a bank holiday and some travel, I’ve been unable to post, but I’ve saved up the headlines from those days:

Windows Server Backup does not work correctly after you perform a bare metal recovery: This problem occurs because the Windows Server backup engine (Wbengine.exe) crashes when the partition information in the catalog is not what WBEngine.exe expects.
Support Tip – Some or all Cluster resources are not discovered by the OpsMgr agent: If a Cluster has orphaned object entries in ClusterHive registry key, the System Center Operations Manager agent may not discover some or all Cluster resources. This can occur with System Center Operations Manager 2007 (OpsMgr 2007) or System Center 2012 Operations Manager (OpsMgr 2012).
Enabling Database as a Service with the Microsoft Private Cloud Stack: Now is the time to bring everything together, and summarize some ways to enable Database as a Service with the Microsoft Private Cloud stack! Get the free downloadable eBook.
System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Support Center Tool Has Been Released: This tool is used to help troubleshoot SCCM or ConfigMgr clients.
"Unable to execute the embedded application" error when you try to install the Windows Azure backup agent: When you try to install the Windows Azure backup agent on a server that’s running Windows Server 2008 R2, the attempt fails.
How to configure volume mount points on a server cluster in Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2: This article describes how to create volume mount points on a server cluster in Windows Server 2008 by using the NTFS "volume mount points" functionality. By using volume mount points, you can graft or mount a target partition onto a folder on another physical disk. You can also exceed the 26-letter limitation for drive letter references.
Hyper-V events at TechEd North America: As you would expect, the Hyper-V team will have a strong presence at TechEd North America next week.
New Veeam Management Pack™ v7 for System Center Adds Microsoft Hyper-V Support: Veeam has shamed Microsoft by finally bringing us a System Center Operations Manager (SCOM/OpsMgr) management pack for Hyper-V that is exactly what Microsoft should have produced back in 2008-2010.
Hyper-V Virtual Machine Virtual Network Adapters Explained: A post by me on the Petri IT Knowledgebase
Default Hyper-V Storage Paths Explained: A post by me on the Petri IT Knowledgebase.
Azure team at TechEd NA 2014: Here’s a listing of Azure sessions in Houston next week.
Nadella expected to launch the Surface Mini on May 20th: Yup, an 8" Surface with ARM processor & (rumoured) stylus is coming.
Meet Office Mix: A simple way to turn your PowerPoint slides into interactive online lessons and presentations.
How credible is HP? HP’s enterprise backup still doesn’t support WS2012 R2 Hyper-V. Their 3Par is troublesome with advanced WS2012 features (ODX). And blades with Emulex NICs crash with VMQ enabled. Hmmm.
Get your early bird ticket to System Center Universe: A System Center event run in Switzerland.
Microsoft cheaper to use than open source software, UK CIO says: " … every time government people compare open source and Microsoft products, Microsoft products always come out cheaper in the long run".

Technorati Tags: Backup,Operations Manager,System Center,Azure,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Cloud,Configuration Manager,Windows Server 2008 R2,Events,Storage,Hardware,Office,Linux

Microsoft News Summary-2 May 2014

The big news yesterday was the general release of the new patch for IE on XP. Personally, I think this is a stupid mistake by Microsoft, and it will lead to some laggards to reason that Microsoft has reversed course on the end of support. Microsoft can comment all they want; most people never read blogs, press, or attend events. The mistake has been made, and it was one of the dumbest releases since Bob.

Windows XP is still on 26.29% of the world’s PCs: According to NetMarketShare. That’s a lot of machines not to get the patch for the recent zero-day IE bug.
Whitepaper and Webinar “VMM (Fabric) Management and Resource Pooling”: By MVP Thomas Maurer
Microsoft Issues Fix for IE Zero-Day, Includes XP Users: This is to fix the recent headline grabbing zero day bug.
Microsoft-SUSE Alliance: Linux and Windows Interoperability for More Than 1,000 Customers: Microsoft extended an agreement with SUSE through 2016 to remain committed to working in tandem on solutions that help customers manage critical workloads in mixed-source environment.
Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2014 Now Available: A new version of MDOP is out.
MDOP 2014 delivers improved BitLocker management with MBAM 2.5: The Springboard blog talks about the improved centralized management of BitLocker with Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring 2.5, included in the new Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2014.
5 Reasons To Choose Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V over VMware vSphere 5.5: A ever-so-slightly snarky op-ed post by me on the Petri IT Knowledgebase.

Technorati Tags: Windows XP,VMM,System Center,IE,Linux,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Deployment,Security,VMware

Microsoft News Summary-1 May 2014

Happy May Day, comrades! I was tied up with events the last couple of mornings so here is two days worth of news. Note the new beta for System Center Advisor. The security functionality looks very interesting!

Virtual Processor Scheduling – How VMware and Microsoft Hypervisors Work at the CPU Level: Have you ever wondered how virtual machines get access to the physical processor cores in the server? Ever wonder why one or two VMs run slow sporadically? The topic today is Virtual Processor Scheduling.
Automating VM Customization tasks using Custom Script Extension: Custom Script Extension can automatically download scripts and files from Azure Storage and launch a PowerShell script on the VM which in turn can install additional software components.
Window Azure Fault Domain and Upgrade Domain Explained for IT Pros (Reprised): These two terms represent important strategies in cloud computing for deploying and upgrading applications.
Get a sneak peek at the new Microsoft System Center Advisor Security Intelligence Pack: It looks like some sort of security solution is being added to System Center Advisor: collect security logs, ID patterns, correlate data, change history, and mitigate issues.
38% of surveyed financial companies have not budgeted for a DR plan: Wow!
Disaster Recovery Rights for SPLA: Microsoft has clarified the licensing rules for disaster recovery under the hosting licensing program.
Hyper-V Virtual Machine Storage Controllers Explained: My latest post on Petri.
Linux Integration with System Center 2012 R2: This video provides an inside scoop on Linux integration with System Center 2012 R2 for unified management across on-premises and Microsoft Azure cloud environments.

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,VMware,Virtualisation,PowerShell,Azure,System Center,DR,Licensing,Storage,Linux

Microsoft News Summary-29 April 2014

There is a lot of reading material this morning.

"Not enough disk space" error when you run a V2V conversion to a CSV in Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012: When you try to perform a virtual to virtual (V2V) conversion to a cluster shared volume in Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM 2012), the cluster that you selected may have a placement rating of zero stars (unacceptable).
VDI Starter Kit v1.0 is now available for download: The VDI SK is a Windows PowerShell-based kit that automates the non-production deployment of a Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) VDI solution for the purposes of evaluation or testing.
Why and How to Use Linux Integration Services: Brad Anderson has some links on Hyper-V case studies and an article in a Linux magazine.
Basic Tier Virtual Machines: Microsoft recently launched this lower cost, fewer features VM specification. This blog runs on one of these kinds of Azure VMs.
Microsoft announces expansion of OneDrive for Business: Expands from 25 GB to 1 TB. O365 ProPlus now customers get it as a part of their subscription. They mention something about migration, but AFAIK, only the USA data centers have such a facility – it’s a courier partnering challenge.
Microsoft must release email data held on Dublin server: This is a reminder that data centers owned by American corporations must comply with USA court orders – NO MATTER WHERE THE DATA CENTRE IS LOCATED … no exceptions.
Availability of Update to Windows Intune for Windows Phone 8.1 and Samsung KNOX Standard: Microsoft started rolling out an update to Windows Intune which will provide support for Windows Phone 8.1 as well support for Samsung Galaxy devices supported with the KNOX platform.
Getting the most out of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory: My Petri post discusses various strategies for configuring Dynamic Memory.
Azure vs Amazon vs Rackspace vs HP vs Google: Cloud Storage Infographic: A nice summary of how these storage systems in the cloud stack up against each other. I can’t say I’m surprised that a certain storage company came in last.
E2EVC 2014 Los Angeles Agenda: The community virtualization conference is coming to the USA for the first time.
Offline Servicing of VHDs against WSUS: A handy script to update offline virtual hard disks.
Hyper-V Amigos Episode 3 – Live Migration: A couple of MVPs talk Hyper-V Live Migration.

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2012,Cloud,Office 365,Intune,Events,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Azure,Windows Server 2012 R2,VDI,Remote Desktop Services,Linux,System Center,VMM

Microsoft News Summary-28 April 2014

And here’s the news from over the weekend:

Tips for applying Update Rollup 2 to System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Azure Pack: By MVP Stanislav Zhelyazkov.
Work Folders is now available for Windows 7: For x86 and x64
Microsoft quarterly results: Azure grew by 150% and Office 365 grew by 100%.
Microsoft officially welcomes Nokia Devices and Services business: It’s official; Microsoft completed the acquisition of the Nokia phone business and just grew by 30,000 employees … for the moment.
Automation–Microsoft Azure Automation–The Evolution of Cloud Automation: Here are a few other links and references about this new Microsoft Azure Service, to help you get started with Azure Automation.
Desired State Configuration Blog Series – Part 1, Information about DSC: A “curated list” of links that would be valuable to anyone looking for a starting reference.
Microsoft Warns of Attacks on IE Zero-Day: Microsoft is warning Internet Explorer users about active attacks that attempt to exploit a previously unknown security flaw in every supported version of IE.

Technorati Tags: System Center,Windows 7,Windows Server 2012 R2,Hardware,Security,Internet Explorer,PowerShell

Microsoft News Summary–25th April 2014

Here’s the Microsoft news from over the last 24 hours.

Linux for Windows Server Admins: the basics of Linux and logging in and exploring mounted media, and how to change between users and manage users.
Windows Deployment Services (WDS) support for UEFI: This article discusses the support for deploying to UEFI-based systems from Windows Deployment Services (WDS).
Backup of a Replica VM: The backup of Replica VMs on Windows Server 2012 R2 hosts using Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 is now supported.
2003 Support for Data Protection Manager 2012 R2: Microsoft did not describe the process correctly. MVP Flemming Riis has the complete instructions.

BTW, there’s now some thought that a Microsoft Surface Mini tablet might appear soon. Amazon accidentally put up an item for a 3rd party tablet cover for such a tablet. TechEd or the week after in May would be good timing for such a release. At TechEd they could probably have 3 hour lines and sell 5000+ of them.

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2012 R2,Hyper-V,DR,DPM,WDS,System Center,Linux,Hardware

Beware of Windows Server and System Center Update Rollups

Tomorrow is the first Patch Tuesday of the quarter, and going on history, this is when we tend to see Update Rollups for Windows Server and/or System Center be released via Windows Update. While this type of release confuses people (normally QFEs/hotfixes must be manually downloaded and security fixes/service packs come via Windows Update – yes I know update rollup is a Windows Update category) this is not what I want to discuss.

I don’t know for certain that there will be any update rollups this month. But if I was a betting man, if there will be any, then I’d put money down on there being issues with any hypothetical update rollup. History has taught us that update rollups are dangerous. Cause in point, July:

Window Server 2012: One of the most common clustered Hyper-V host networking configurations was broken by a contained fix: Live Migration caused a bugcheck. You can imagine how painful that was to fix.
System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 SP1: Agents could not be updated.
System Center Data Protection Operations Manager 2012 SP1: An incompatibility with KB2775511 (Windows 7 and W2008 R2) caused agents to fail their heartbeat and grey out.
Exchange: Ask any Exchange MVP what the history of URs has been like for that product.

My advice: let the uninformed out there test any update rollup for you. Do not automatically approve update rollups. Do not push them out. Go reconfigure your auto-approval rules now. Watch the TechNet forums, Twitter feeds, and the usual blogs. And then after a month, you can deploy the release if it’s clean … or wait for V2 or V3 of the update with the required fix.

If you’re using System Center Configuration Manager, then configure your auto-approval rules to delay deployment for 30-45 days. That gives you automation and caution.

EDIT:

An update rollup actually was released for Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Windows RT. Another one was released for Windows Server 2012 Essentials. My advice stands: let some other mug test it for you, wait, and watch. Give it a month, and then deploy if all is well.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows Server 2012,System Center