Month: October 2014

Finishing Preparations Of My TechEd Europe Presentation

I am in the midst of finishing off my presentation for TechEd Europe 2014, CDP-B329 From Demo to Reality: Best Practices Learned from Deploying Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V.

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The session drills into all the things that make previous big announcements & demos possible, and talks about those lesser known features that solve real problems. I’m covering a lot of stuff in this session. I submitted the draft deck a while ago, thinking that I’d have to cull a lot of it to fit within the limit of 75 minutes. Well, I did my first timed rehearsal tonight and I have a bit of wiggle room, maybe to even add in some more demos.

Speaking of which … my demos Open-mouthed smile Fast networking, good host hardware, and LOTS of PowerShell. All my demos are driven by PowerShell. Don’t think “ugh, boring!”. Nope. It’s all very visual, I assure you! There are ways, means, and tricks to show you the goodies even with a scripting language! Heck! PowerShell is even a part of the product that I want to demo! Right now I have 9 demos to show, and that might expand.

If you are coming to TechEd then I hope to see you at CDP-B329. Right now, I’m scheduled for Wednesday morning, but I heard I might be moved to the timeslot of doom on Friday at 08:30 Sad smile Please check the box for my session on the Schedule Builder to try change their mind before the move me!!!!! My session is confirmed for Wednesday at 10:15 in Hall 8.0 Room A2 (seats 1174 people!!!) – hit the schedule builder and check my session (CDP-B329) if it sounds interesting to you.

And by the way – a huge THANK YOU to Didier Van Hoye (aka @workinghardinit at http://workinghardinit.wordpress.com/)  for his help. He helped me sort out some problems in 2 of my demos. Didier is a class example of an MVP working in the community.

Microsoft Ignite Becomes the New Microsoft Uber-Conference

It’s a reuse of the Office partner training label, but it’s simple and I like it: Microsoft Ignite. Hopefully my Speaker Idol win carries over, I don’t screw up in Barcelona, and I get to speak there!

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This is bigger than MEC, TechEd, and the other tech conferences being merged:

  • Azure
  • Exchange
  • Intune
  • Lync
  • Office 365
  • Project
  • SharePoint
  • SQL Server
  • Surface
  • System Center
  • Visual Studio
  • Windows
  • Windows Server
  • And more

At the same prices as TechEd, this is a much higher value ticket because of the bigger breadth of content that you can absorb.

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KB2964439 – Hyper-V VM Backup Leaves The VM In Locked State

A new KB article by Microsoft solves an issue where a Windows 8.1 Client Hyper-V or Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V virtual machine backup leaves the VM in a locked state.

Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:

  • You’re running Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM).
  • You start a backup job in DPM to back up Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs).

In this scenario, DPM sometimes leaves the VM stuck in the backup state (locked).

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft Support. To apply this update, you must first install update 2919355 in Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2.

Microsoft News Summary – 8 October 2014

Welcome to today’s cloud-heavy Microsoft news compilation.

Windows Server

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Windows Client

Azure

  • Introducing the Azure Automation Runbook Gallery: The time it takes to create functional, polished runbooks is a little faster thanks to the new Azure Automation Runbook Gallery.
  • More Changes to Azure by Scott Guthrie: Including support for static private IP support in the Azure Preview Portal, Active Directory authentication, PowerShell script converter, runbook gallery, hourly scheduling support.
  • Microsoft Certification Test Tool Preview for Azure Certified: The Microsoft Certification Test Tool for Azure Certified is designed to provide an assessment of compliance to technical requirements as part of the Azure Certified program. The test tool includes a wizard style automated section and questionnaire section to assess characteristics of a Virtual Machine image running in Microsoft Azure and generate results logs. More information on the Azure Certified program is available.
  • Announcing Support for Backup of Windows Server 2008 with Azure Backup: Due to feedback. Please note that this is x64 only and that there are system requirements.
  • Hybrid Connection Manager ClickOnce Application: ClickOnce installer for the Hybrid Connection Manager.
  • D-Series Performance Expectations: The new D-Series VMs provide great performance for applications needing fast, local (ephemeral) storage or a faster CPU; however, it’s important to understand a little about how the system is configured to ensure you’re getting an optimal experience.
  • Cloud App Discovery – Now with Excel and PowerBI Support: One of the top customer requests was to be able to perform analytics on the data collected in tools like Excel and PowerBI. Now you can take cloud app discovery data offline and explore and analyze the data with tools you already know–Excel and PowerBI.
  • A new region will open in India by the end of 2015: It makes sense; there are 1 billion people and some big corporations there.
  • Microsoft Azure Speed Test: Which Azure region is closest to you (remember that Internet geography is different to the planet’s geography. For example, where I work is a few miles from Europe North (Dublin), but the test shows me that Europe West provides me with lower latency (beaten, obviously, by CDN). My own testing using Azure Traffic Manager with geo-dispersed websites has verified this.

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Office 365

Miscellaneous

Lenovo Might Launch Windows 8.1 Version of Yoga Tablet

I love my Lenovo Yoga 8, an 8” Android tablet. It’s what keeps me sane while travelling, it’s my bedside reading machine, and it’s my “couch” machine for those evenings when I’m “meerkatting” in front of the TV.

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That’s why I was excited to see a story on WPCentral that thinks maybe that Lenovo might launch a Windows 8.1 version of one of the Yoga tablets (there is also a 10” version).

The Android tablet is ARM based – a low power ARM CPU. If Lenovo are releasing a Windows tablet in this form factor then I hope it is Intel-based and not ARM; ARM would require the soon-to-be-extinct Windows RT.

The original story on HDBlog.it (in Italian) thinks that this might be based on the 10.1” HD+ tablet, a larger cersion of my 8” entertainment and consumption machine, also with crazy long battery life and a built-in mini-kickstand.

WPCentral says that Lenovo has an announcement on Windows and Android tablets on October 9th. We won’t have long to see if this rumour is a fact.

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Microsoft News Summary – 6 October 2014

The big news today is that HP is “planning” to split. No, not leave, but divide into two.

Hyper-V

Windows Server

Office 365

Miscellaneous

My Early Windows 10 Experiences

I took the plunge yesterday while preparing an Azure presentation – I performed an in-place upgrade of Windows 8.1 on my Toshiba KIRAbook to Windows 10. Initially I tried to do it via USB, but I’d not prepared a UEFI stick for the device (thanks for the tip Hans Vredevoort). I copied the install files onto the laptop and ran it – within half an hour I had a fully upgraded machine with all my apps, programs, data, and settings in place. I think the only thing I had to do was re-install LastPass for IE.

The performance of the technical preview is excellent. Reboots were already blisteringly fast on this machine and now it’s not much more than a slow blink.

The start menu works as expected. I doubt I’ll use multiple screens much but it’s easy to use too. The weird experience was that I kept expecting to see the start screen when I clicked on Start. I have the ability to go back to the Win8 behaviour but I won’t; instead I just pinned my usual warm apps to the start menu, while my usual hot apps were on the task bar as they were before the upgrade.

I was out on a customer site today performing a health audit of a hosting infrastructure. I had the KIRAbook with me, taking my notes in OneNote. It behaved normally and was stable. Performance was good, and as usual for this hardware, the battery was excellent.

This afternoon I was back in the office and showed the machine to my colleagues. While they are not IT people, most of them are comfy with tech because that’s what they sell. The Start Menu seemed like a hit. One odd reaction I got was “I want to be able to expand the start menu to a start screen”. The reasoning was that it was easier to search for something in a bigger screen if you had loads of stuff installed. I can understand that one.

Anyway, so far, so good. And like many others have said already, Windows 8 would have been a hit if it was like this.

Somewhere, Steven Sinofsky and Julie Larsson Green are seething.

Microsoft News Summary – 3 October 2014

The dust has settled a little bit after the craziness of the past few days. Here’s some regular news.

Windows Server

System Center

Windows Client

Azure

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How you can currently use ASR

Office

Miscellaneous

More Information For You To Read on Windows Server & System Center Previews

As I blogged last night, Microsoft released the technical preview releases for the Threshold generation of Windows Server and System Center, as well as Windows 10. Maybe by now you’ve started your downloads and begun exploring.

Maybe you’d like a little bit of reading to prepare you for what’s to come? Here’s what I could find so far:

  • What’s New in the Windows Server Technical Preview: The content in this section describes what’s new and changed in Windows Server® Technical Preview. The new features and changes listed here are the ones most likely to have the greatest impact as you work with this release.
  • Release Notes: Important Issues in the Windows Server Technical Preview: These release notes summarize the most critical issues in the Windows Server® Technical Preview operating system, including ways to avoid or work around the issues, if known.
  • Release Notes for System Center Technical Preview: These release notes provide information about System Center Technical Preview. To evaluate System Center Technical Preview, you need to be running Windows Server® Technical Preview and Microsoft SQL Server 2014.
  • Features removed in System Center Technical Preview: The following is a list of features and functionalities in System Center Technical Preview that have been removed from the product in the current release. This list is subject to change in subsequent releases and may not include every removed feature or functionality.
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Enable CTRL Keys in Windows 10 Command Prompt

In case you didn’t know, you can use CTRL + V to paste into Windows 10. This is off by default. You can enable it:

  1. Open Command Prompt
  2. Open the properties of the command prompt (right-click the top left corner)
  3. Browse to the Experimental tab
  4. Check the box for Enable Experimental Console Features. The CTRL key option is the only one checked by default. You can enable others if you want.
  5. Restart the Command Prompt

Yeah! Now you have copy/paste via the keyboard. My laptop has a very high screen res. Before the upgrade the text in the window was TINY and was not adjusted. By enabling experimental features, the text has been increased in size to make it legible.