This is the first of these since the 8th – my life consists of constant event/tradeshow/conference preparation at the moment so there’s little time for anything else.
Hyper-V
- “The RPC server is unavailable” with Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter: Windows Firewall shenanigans.
- Windows Server 2012 R2 Clustering brings improved CSV diagnosability: Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) have can go into different redirected access modes for several reasons. Now a lot of people get (or got) worried about seeing “redirected access” in the GUI. Most of the time however this is due to normal operations such as backups or maintenance (defragmentation) not only losing disk access.
- First experiences with a rolling cluster upgrade of a lab Hyper-V Cluster (Technical Preview): No need to migrate/create new clusters to do an "upgrade".
- Microsoft Releases Virtual Machine Converter 3.0: An article by me on Petri.com.
Windows Server
- DiskSpd, PowerShell and storage performance: measuring IOPs, throughput and latency for both local disks and SMB file shares: DiskSpd is a flexible tool that can simulate many different types of workloads. And you can apply it to several configurations, from a physical host or virtual machine, using all kinds of storage, including local disks, LUNs on a SAN, Storage Spaces or SMB file shares.
- The Curious case of QoS and the intermediate devices: An interesting support case involving with QoS and DSC.
- Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Storage Foundations: This document discusses the storage infrastructure components that are relevant for a Microsoft IaaS infrastructure and provides guidelines and requirements for building an IaaS storage infrastructure using Microsoft products and technologies.
- Automate and manage Windows operating system deployments: For you neanderthals that still deploy physical application servers. Wait – you probably don’t have Internet access so I should stop referring you to this guide.
- Desired State Configuration (DSC) Nodes Deployment and Conformance Reporting Series (Part 4): Using Operations Manager to check for configuration enforcement.
- Storage Replica Guide Released for Windows Server Technical Preview: MSFT unveiled a new feature, Storage Replica and released a step-by-step guide to match.
Azure
- One-Click Orchestrated Failover of Virtual Machines to Azure: This short blog will look at how you can take advantage of a Azure Site Recovery feature called the Recovery Plan to make disaster recovery to Azure consistently accurate, repeatable and automated.
- Docker and Microsoft: Integrating Docker with Windows Server and Microsoft Azure: I don’t get it – it’s just an open source Server App-V and that wasn’t exactly a raging success.
- New Windows Server containers and Azure support for Docker: An yes, Docker will be on Windows Server vNext.
- Accessing and Using Azure VM Unique ID: Microsoft recently added support for Azure VM unique ID. Azure VM unique ID is a 128bits identifier that is encoded and stored in all Azure IaaS VM’ SMBIOS and can be read using platform BIOS commands. Useful for ISVs that want to license s/w.
- Azure Traffic Manager available within Azure in China: Remember that Azure China is run by a partner, not by Microsoft.
- Azure AD Enhanced Auditing and Activity Logging now in preview: This first preview includes key directory events. In subsequent updates you’ll see us add quite a few more events.
- Automatic Scaling of Remote Desktop Session Hosts in Azure Virtual Machines: MSFT published a sample PowerShell script on TechNet Script Center that can be used to automatically scale an RDS deployment on Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Services.
- What You Need to Know Before Migrating VMs to Microsoft Azure: An article by me on Petri.com.
System Center Data Protection Manager
- Guided Walkthrough for Troubleshooting Data Protection Manager console issues: DPM games – May the odds ever be in your favour.
- How to troubleshoot scheduled backup job failures in DPM 2012: DPM Games 2: Backups on Fire.
Windows Microsoft Intune
- Windows Intune to be renamed to Microsoft Intune: Will anyone notice?
- Managing iOS 8 Devices Via Microsoft Intune: Intune supported iOS 8 management on the day of launch.
Office 365
- Evolving Exchange Online Protection (EOP) to protect against tomorrow’s threats: The ever-expanding world of attacks keeps changing and, to better protect your email against these malicious threats, Microsoft keeps changing Exchange Online Protection, too.
- Step-By-Step – Enabling A Secondary AD FS 3.0 Server in Azure for Office365 Single Sign-On: Additional servers can be introduced into the AD FS farm.
Security
- Signed Malware = Expensive “Oops” for HP: HP is revoking a digital certificate because the cert was used to sign malware in 2010. Nice one, HP!
- And every retail chain in the US has been hacked. At least that’s what it seems like. Maybe the US banks will join the rest of us in the 21st century?
Miscellaneous
- Twitter sues US government in bid to share more information on state surveillance: Well done, Twitter! You’ll lose but the pressure must be applied to the totalitarian state. Governments should fear their civilians, and people should
- Microsoft Partner Internal Usage Rights Calculator: Find out your benefits as a MSFT partner (launch this in IE).
- Roku rolls out screen mirroring beta for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices: I’m looking forward to getting a Roku 3 to try this out.
- NFL Player Befuddled by Microsoft Surface Tablets: The Chicago Bears’ quarterback isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the box to begin with, but this is happening all over the league and in TV coverage.