Month: September 2014

Microsoft News Summary – 9 September 2014

It’s a slow day, so here’s your updates for today. I think the Azure Automation post should be useful – I’ll sure be ripping it off inspired by it for future demos Smile

Hyper-V

Azure

Licensing

Intel 18-Core CPUs Surely Will Affect Microsoft Server Licensing

Read MVP Didier Van Hoye’s take here.

I’ve been thinking for some time (I think VMware even quoted my blog a few years ago) that Microsoft would eventually switch to per-core licensing for Windows Server. I think the emergence of 18-core CPUs makes that inevitable. Right now, if you want 36 cores, you’re probably looking at using 4 x 10-core CPUs, which is 2 Windows Server licenses (each license covers 2 CPUs). Those new CPUs halve Microsoft’s revenue on the upper end of the market.

I would be surprised if, come April, there isn’t an announcement of a change to Windows Server licensing, in conjunction with the GA of Windows Server “2015” (Threshold) in (maybe) May.

The key things here would be:

  • There must be a smooth transition process – when MSFT switched SQL Server to per-core it was quite confusing for resellers and customers. Note that resellers choosing to work with a good distributor helps out quite a bit here, and in turn helps their customers get best value and stay legit!
  • The price for smaller deployments cannot increase. In my opinion, the cost of Windows Server Standard/Datacenter must stay the same on a machine with 2 x 6-core CPUs before and after the release of Threshold. If one dual-CPU (covering 2 6-core CPUs) copy of WS2012 R2 costs $882, then a per-core license should cost $73.50. We can then license that same server with “WS2015” for 12 x 73.50 ($882).

If Microsoft gets it right, then the transition could be smooth. To be honest, I think it might even simplify licensing – the non-techy people who buy licensing struggle with the per-dual CPU model of WS2012 and WS2012 R2.

However, if the ivory tower residents get it wrong (i.e. those same folks think that only Fortune 1000’s and cloud hosters run servers – kids, drugs are baaaad) then we could be looking at a VMware vRAM type of backlash that would do serious damage to the current hot streak that the cloud OS is on.

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Could Not Upload Certificate To Azure – AKA Lessons in Swearing

I’m doing to test work in the lab with Microsoft Azure at the moment, trying to tell which part of Microsoft is telling the truth about certain aspects of pricing. A necessary step in my tests was to upload an administrative certificate. I used MAKECERT to create the cert. The private cert is in Personal on the server that I’m working with. The public cert was on my PC. I opened the Azure portal and attempted to Manage Certificate to upload the .CER file but this failed after about 5 seconds. Recreate the cert, try again, fail again. No joy.

Then after I taught some of my Eastern European colleagues some new ways to swear in English, I had a realization that some dev in Microsoft probably did something dumb.

I bet they expect the private cert to be installed on the machine that you’re uploading the cert from … because we all browse from our servers, right? (WRONG, I hope).

So I exported the PFX to my PC, imported the cert, and attempted the upload again. And it finally worked.

Dumb. I can imagine “private” certs flying all around the network, and admins browsing from servers if this isn’t fixed by Microsoft.

On the bright side, my colleagues now are equipped with the verbiage to accompany flipping off your PC with the double bird.

Microsoft News Summary – 8 September 2014

It’s been 5 days since my last of these updates – events, meetings and travel take their toll!

Below you will see an announcement on how to deploy DPM in Azure to backup stuff from within Azure VMs (not a host level backup). Please note that this is licensed using on-premises SysCtr SML licenses and cloud management licensing is not the same as on-premises licensing. A SysCtr Datacenter SML covers 8 VMs in the cloud, so you might need lots more SysCtr licensing to manage Azure.

Microsoft has also launched a Migration Accelerator for Azure based on the InMage acquisition. Right now, the preview is limited to the USA. That’s pretty dumb; anyone who knows MSFT virtualization knows that Europe is the place to be.

Oh – the MSFT versus FBI Irish data centre case rumbles on. It’s clear that the motivations of the US government were not speed (the Irish government would have been quick to help) but are more along the lines of “Mine! MINE! MINE!!!! MY PRECIOUSSSSS!”.

Windows Server

SCVMM

Azure

Office 365

Hardware

Legal

Microsoft News Summary – 3 September 2014

The idiotic US government is continuing in their quest to kill off all US interests in cloud computing, thanks to “justice” Plesk contemplating placing contempt of court charges on Microsoft. Sad thing is, the contempt is justified.

Hyper-V

System Center

Azure

Microsoft

Video – Introducing Windows Server Software-Defined Storage

This is a video that I recorded for my employers, MicroWarehouse, a distributor in Dublin Ireland (nothing to do with a similarly named UK company). In it, I introduce the software-defined storage techs of Windows Server 2012 R2, focusing on Storage Spaces, Scale-Out File Server, Cluster-in-a-Box and Hyper-V on SMB 3.0, all built using hardware by DataOn Storage. There are some sample designs, and some indicative RRP pricing.

Note that this is strictly a high-level video that is intended to introduce concepts.

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Microsoft News Summary – 1 September 2014

Frak! It’s September already!?!?!?! Here’s my first update in a since last Wednesday – travel and events took priority.

The big news broke late on Friday and Saturday. The moron judge presiding over the FBI/Microsoft case cancelled the stay on the order to force Microsoft to turn over data from the Dublin data centre to the US feds, thus breaching privacy and violating Irish and European laws. Microsoft is refusing to comply and is appealing to a higher court in the USA.

Hyper-V

Legal

Azure

Windows Intune

PowerShell

Surface

  • What’s the Future for Surface Tablets? IMO, doom. It’s impossible to sell a business machine to business users if you don’t give businesses a way to buy the device and an SLA-enforced mechanism to support it. First of you to say "BYOD" gets a kick in the groin for drinking 2-year old Gartner KoolAid.

Licensing

VMware

Consumer