Microsoft News – 27 March 2015

Welcome to the Azure Times! Or so it seems. Lots of Azure developments since I posted one of these news aggregations.

Windows Client

• Reducing Windows Deployment time using Power Management: Saving up to 50% of time.

Azure

• Creating a Recovery Plan for Hyper-V VM failover to Microsoft Azure: A post I wrote for Petri.com
• Getting the Most Out of Azure Site Recovery: A post I wrote for Petri.com
• Microsoft Azure uses Error-Correcting Code memory for enhanced reliability and security: With details on testing for an exploit called "Rowhammer" .
• Protecting large data disks using Azure Site Recovery: How to overcome the issue that Azure has with data disks larger than 1 TB. Also check the comments on "write order consistency".
• New additions to the Azure VM PowerShell DSC Extension: The Azure PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) Extension team has announced some new additions to provide a seamless experience for using DSC on Azure Windows VMs.
• Allocation Failure and Remediation: Weird crap that can happen when creating, starting, or resizing a VM or adding new web instances.
• How to Create an Azure RemoteApp Template: A post I wrote for Petri.com
• Create an Azure RemoteApp Template from an Azure VM: A post I wrote for Petri.com
• Introducing RemoteApp PowerShell Cmdlets and SDK: Very useful for automating the provisioning of RemoteApp app collections
• Announcing the Preview of Disaster Recovery for VMware Virtual Machines and Physical Servers to Azure using ASR: DR in the cloud via Azure is COMING to vSphere.
• Azure VM OS drive limit has octupled: Meaning that you can migrate or replicate those badly configured VMs you created on-premises.
• New troubleshooting Remote Desktop connections topic: Figure out why you can’t RDP to an Azure VM.
• Announcing Azure App Service: Lots of stuff merging in with Websites.
• How to Create a Hybrid RemoteApp Collection: A looong post by me on Petri.com
• Backing Up Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines: A much needed feature on Azure finally arrives, even if it is a little ropey on day #2.
• Azure AD Connect Preview 2 is available: I’ve used Preview 1 to quickly connect on-prem AD to AAD for demo labs.
• What’s the best way to connect to Office 365 and Azure? Some stats on what people are actually doing.

Office

• Announcing the Office 2016 IT Pro and Developer Preview: Announcing he IT Pro and Developer Preview of Office 2016 for the Windows desktop.

Office 365

• Get ready for Skype for Business: Lync is rebranded and a new client is in preview.
• Office Delve—discover exactly what you need, when you need it: A machine learning-based way of finding stuff has gone live.
• ExpressRoute for Office 365: Bringing Azure’s hybrid WAN to O365.