Here’s the recent news from the last few weeks in the Microsoft IT Pro world:
Hyper-V
- Configuring Default Checkpoint type in Windows 10: How to automatically get the legacy style checkpoint behaviour – might be useful in test/dev/demo labs.
- Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Versus Virtual NUMA: The two incompatible memory optimization techniques. A post I wrote for Petri.com.
- Workgroup and Multi-domain clusters in Windows Server 2016: Note: Workgroup clusters do not support Live Migration (hence useless to most).
- Site-aware Failover Clusters in Windows Server 2016: Making stretch clusters more suitable. An interesting option is “preferred site” of a (entire) cluster.
- Linux Integration Services 4.0 Update: An update to the Linux integration components for Hyper-V.
Windows Server
- How to enable and disable SMBv1, SMBv2, and SMBv3 in Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012: You might disable SMBv1 in totally modern deployments, but I prefer to stay on the well walked path.
- Announcing Windows Server 2016 Containers Preview: Post by Scott Guthrie.
- Microsoft and Mesosphere partner to bring Mesos container orchestration across Windows and Linux worlds: Container orchestration comes to Windows.
- Microsoft and Intel showcase Storage Spaces Direct with NVM Express at IDF ’15: 4.2 million IOPS with S2D.
- Data Deduplication in Windows Server Technical Preview 3: BIG improvements for scalability and backup.
- Comparing Work Folders and Offline Files: I bet you’ve never heard of Work Folders – what I call “company owned DropBox”.
- Work Folders encryption on Windows: Security with replicated files.
- Windows Server 2016 Installation Option Changes: Our feedback was listened to.
Windows
- Adjusting the Network Protocol Bindings in Windows 10: I guess the same applies to Windows Server 2016.
- Windows 10 Pre-Upgrade Validation using SETUP.EXE: Using /Compat ScanOnly.
- MDOP 2015 and more tools are now available: Windows 10 support.
System Center
- DPM 2012 R2 UR7 re-released: Wow, a System Center update rollup had issues. Whoda thunk it?!?!?!
Azure
- Mandatory update for Azure Backup to avoid an authentication error for ongoing backups: You must have a MARS agent that released August 19 2015 or later.
- AzCopy – Introducing Append Blob, File Storage Asynchronous Copying, File Storage Share SAS, Table Storage data exporting to CSV and more: AzCopy 3.2.0 and AzCopy 4.2.0-preview are now released.
- Azure Backup update – New features in IaaS VM backup support: Support for up to 16 data disks, retention up to 99 years, improved performance, and reporting.
- Azure Premium Storage expanding in more regions: Adding Central US, East US, East Asia, and North Europe.
- Announcing the GS-Series: Adding Premium Storage Support to the Largest VMs in the Public Cloud: Big and fast.
- Boot Diagnostics for Virtual Machines: Needed because there’s not KVM access.
- A Look at Microsoft’s New Hybrid Cloud Features: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
- How to Link an Azure RemoteApp collection to your existing Azure Virtual Network Without Domain Join: If you have applications that don’t require domains. Beware that this will cause messy session hosts without GPO to control user access/storage from a central point.
Office 365
- What’s new – July 2015: Apps galore.
- What’s new – August 2015: The education SKUs are getting a “shake up”.
- Microsoft is reducing its number of portals, merging Intune with Office 365: Good idea … but I am sceptical of the success/future of this.
Intune
- Windows 10, Azure AD and Microsoft Intune: Automatic MDM enrollment powered by the cloud: See the new Active Directory in action.
- Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics in now GA: This EMS bundle member is now available for detecting nefarious usage of company identity.
Events
- Meet AzureCon: A virtual event on Azure on September 29th, starting at 9am Pacific time, 5pm UK/Irish time.