Linux | Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Microsoft News – 25-May-2015

It’s taken me nearly all day to fast-read through this lot. Here’s a dump of info from Build, Ignite, and since Ignite. Have a nice weekend!

Hyper-V

What’s New in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Linux Integration Services 4.0 Announcement: As part of this release Microsoft has expanded the access to Hyper-V features and performance to the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Oracle Linux versions.
Linux Integration Services Version 4.0 for Hyper-V: New version of LIS supported Linux distros.
Windows Server 2016 Failover Cluster Troubleshooting Enhancements – Active Dump: This enhancement has significant advantages when you are troubleshooting and getting memory.dmp files from servers running Hyper-V
What’s New in Windows Server Hyper-V: The official statement from Microsoft.
PowerShell Direct – Running PowerShell inside a virtual machine from the Hyper-V host: I wish I had this feature for my WS2012 R2 demos at Ignite.

Windows Server

How to Install Windows Server 2016 Nano in a VM: How to install Nano, the refactored minimal install option for Windows Server designed for cloud apps and micro services.
How Many CSVs Should a Scale-Out File Server Have? A post I wrote for Petri.com
Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS): The “Local Administrator Password Solution” (LAPS) provides management of local account passwords of domain joined computers. Passwords are stored in Active Directory (AD) and protected by ACL, so only eligible users can read it or request its reset.
Security Thoughts: Microsoft Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS, KB3062591): A step by step guide.
Storage Spaces Direct: Get the story straight from the PM of this new storage architecture, S2D.
Next-generation storage for the software-defined datacenter: Hear from the boss of the PM of S2D.
Windows Server 2016 Failover Cluster Troubleshooting Enhancements – Cluster Log: This log is valuable for Microsoft’s support as well as those out there who have expertise at troubleshooting failover clusters.
What’s new in SMB 3.1.1 in the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2: In this blog post, you’ll see what changed with the new version of SMB that comes with the Windows 10 Insider Preview released in late April 2015 and the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2 released in early May 2015.
How to display ipconfig on Nano Server every time it boots: At least you’d have some indication that the thing has powered up!
Data Deduplication in Windows Server Technical Preview 2: See what’s currently in the works for WS2016.
What’s new in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2: A subset of features.

Windows Client

Windows 10 and Azure Active Directory – Embracing the Cloud: Since Windows 10’s capabilities to leverage AAD are now starting to appear in the Windows 10 preview builds, this is a great time to explore them in more detail
Azure AD on Windows 10 Personal Devices: How to use Windows 10 with both a personal and a work account at the same time.
Windows 10 Security: Microsoft Passport and Virtual Secure Mode – the latter is based on Hyper-V Shielded VM technology.

System Center

Announcing the availability of System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1 and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2: Now generally available and can be downloaded on the Microsoft Evaluation Center. These service packs deliver full compatibility with existing features for Windows 10 deployment, upgrade, and management. Also included in these service packs are new hybrid features for customers using System Center Configuration Manager integrated with Microsoft Intune to manage devices.
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Management Pack for Windows Server Storage Spaces 2012 R2: Finally!
Windows Azure Pack Websites V2 Update Rollup 6: This release introduces a new MMC application that can be used for install, upgrade and configuration.
Announcing the Microsoft Azure Stack: The new cloud solution from Microsoft, replacing Widows Azure Pack.
Azure Stack – What’s new and what’s changed: A nice description of Azure Stack.
Update Rollup 6 for System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager is now available: And allegedly has bugs – I’m stunned!

Azure

Disaster Recovery to Azure enhanced, and we’re listening: Support for Generation 2 VMs, vSphere, physical servers, and more changes coming.
ASR Now Supports NetApp Private Storage for Microsoft Azure: Replicate on-premises NetApp SAN to an NetApp Private Storage appliance in Azure, and orchestrate it using Azure Site Recovery.
New features and innovation: Azure Resource Manager allows deployment of IaaS from JSON templates
Microsoft Azure Marketplace – new features and enhancements: Making the store bigger and more interactive
Introducing App Service Environment: A new scalable and secure environment for Web Apps, spanning the worlds of IaaS and PaaS.
IaaS Just Got Easier. Again: I don’t know about “easier” but JSON templates should be quicker – once you learn this language and syntax.
Build 2015 Azure Storage Announcements! Premium Storage is GA. Azure Files has support.
Azure shines bright at Ignite! A host of announcements from Ignite, including Azure DNS.
Application-Aware Availability Solutions with Azure Site Recovery: Azure Site Recovery solutions have been tested and are now supported for SharePoint, Dynamics AX, Exchange 2013 (single server – AF), Remote Desktop Services, SQL Server (non-replica/cluster members – AF), IIS applications and System Center family like Operations Manager.
Azure Automation – New Graphical and Textual Authoring Features: Revealing Automation through the Ibiza Preview Portal.
Azure Site Recovery at Ignite 2015: The breakout sessions that featured ASR.
Avoid Running Out of Azure Open Credits: A post by me on Petri.com
5 Things That Would Improve Microsoft Azure: A post by me on Petri.com
System Center Orchestrator Migration Toolkit: A collection of tools for migrating integration packs, standard activities, and runbooks from System Center 2012 – Orchestrator to Azure Automation and Service Management Automation.
Azure Cloud App Discovery GA and our new Privileged Identity Management service: How Azure AD can help you and your organization detect and manage risk related to access to cloud resources.
RDP to a Linux Server in Azure: Very handy guide on how to get onto GUI of a Linux VM.
April updates to Azure RemoteApp: Plenty of updates here, some which made the service much easier to use.

Office 365

Modern productivity–Office news at Ignite: What the Office group had to launch at the conference.
Manage change and stay informed in Office 365: Microsoft is adding a new “Select people” option to First Release.

Intune

Announcing support for Windows 10 management with Microsoft Intune: Microsoft announced that Intune now supports the management of Windows 10. All existing Intune features for managing Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 will work for Windows 10.
Announcing the Mobile Device Management Design Considerations Guide: If you’re an IT Architect or IT Professional and you need to design a mobile device management (MDM) solution for your organization, there are many questions that you have to answer prior to recommending the best solution for the problem that you are trying to solve. Microsoft has many new options available to manage mobile devices that can match your business and technical requirements.
Mobile Application Distribution Capabilities in Microsoft Intune: Microsoft Intune allows you to upload and deploy mobile applications to iOS, Android, Windows, and Windows Phone devices. In this post, Microsoft will show you how to publish iOS apps, select the users who can download them, and also show you how people in your organization can download these apps on their iOS devices.
Microsoft Intune App Wrapping Tool for Android: Use the Microsoft Intune App Wrapping Tool for Android to modify the behavior of your existing line-of-business (LOB) Android apps. You will then be able to manage certain app features using Intune without requiring code changes to the original application.

Licensing

Disaster Recovery Rights and License Mobility: Fail-over server rights do not apply in the case of software moved to shared third party servers under License Mobility through Software Assurance.

Miscellaneous

Microsoft Ignite 2015 Keynote Highlights for IT Pros: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Getting Started with Microsoft Operations Management Suite: I don’t know if this falls under Azure or not!
Populating machines in Microsoft Operations Management Suite: The next step after getting started.
Protecting your datacenter and cloud from emerging threats: This level 100 post covers a number of areas.

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2012 R2,Windows Server 2016,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Storage,Linux,Storage Spaces,PowerShell,Scripting,Deployment,Security,Networking,Windows 10,Active Directory,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,System Center,Configuration Manager,VMM,Azure Stack,DR,Office 365,Intune,Licensing

Microsoft News – 23 April 2015

I’ve been really busy either preparing training, delivering training, on customer sites, or prepping my two sessions for Ignite. Here’s the roundup of recent Microsoft news for infrastructure IT pros:

Hyper-V

Microsoft Announces Nano Server: A post by me on Petri.com
Microsoft Announces Hyper-V Containers: A post by me on Petri.com

Windows Server

The Deprecation of SMB1 – You should be planning to get rid of this old SMB dialect: This blog post summarizes the current state of this old SMB dialect in Windows client and server.
Windows PowerShell equivalents for common networking commands (IPCONFIG, PING, NSLOOKUP): A VERY useful post.

Windows 10

Windows 10 Security Innovations at RSA – Device Guard, Windows Hello and Microsoft Passport: More security.

Azure

Leveraging Azure Site Recovery with SQL Always On Availability Groups for Disaster Recovery to Azure: A very good read on DR plans for SQL and multi-tier apps to Azure.
Furthering Azure Security at the RSA Conference: New appliances and Key Vault partners.
Docker Client for Windows is Now Available: Microsoft is making the Docker command line interface available on Windows starting with the Docker 1.6 release.
Azure Premium Storage, now generally available: You can store VMs on SSD now.
Integrate your on-premises infrastructure with Azure: A detailed interactive diagram.
How to Force an Azure VM Shutdown: Use PowerShell for forcefully stop an Azure virtual machine.
Azure AD Application Proxy now supports custom domain names: This has been the single biggest request from customers and Microsoft is excited to make it available.
Docker Client Setup for Windows: A step-by-step guide.
Azure Site Recovery with Hyper-V Generation 2 VM Support: In a limited preview at the moment, but a welcome addition.

Office 365

What’s new: March 2015What’s new: March 2015: You can now preview Office 2016 for Mac, send information in Gmail messages straight to OneNote, preview your notes in OneNote for iPhone, capture web content more easily with OneNote Clipper 2.0, and more.
Rights Management Services Analyzer Tool: se the RMS Analyzer tool to help you analyze the settings, configuration, and behavior of your Rights Management services (RMS) and the client applications that use RMS. The tool works with both AD RMS and Azure RMS. Users can check the RMS settings on their computers, then diagnose and fix any problems they are having with files or emails that are protected by RMS.
Larger messages and Enhanced NDRs come to Office 365: Some useful improvements.
Outlook for Android comes out of preview: That was quick!
Microsoft Announces New Office 365 Security and Transparency Features: Unveiled at this year’s RSA security convention, Customer Lockbox will force any data access by Microsoft to be approved by customers.

Intune

Conditional Access for On-Premises Exchange using Microsoft Intune: This blog post (originally published in December 2014) has been updated to include new Intune features introduced in April 2015.
New Intune features coming over the next week for Android and more: A new April service update introduced several new features for Android devices plus much more.

Miscellaneous

The Curse of Zune: Is Microsoft too Focused on the US Market? A post I wrote for Petri.com
Digital Wars by Charles Arthur: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Microsoft Irish data case raises critical issues for cloud computing: Notes from the RSA conference and the importance of independent encryption.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2012 R2,Windows Server 2016,Virtualisation,Storage,Networking,Windows 10,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,DR,SQL,Security,Linux,Office 365,Office,Intune

Microsoft News – 8 April 2015

There’s a lot of stuff happening now. The Windows Server vNext Preview expires on April 15th and Microsoft is promising a fix … the next preview isn’t out until May (maybe with Ignite on?). There’s rumours of Windows vNext vNext. And there’s talk of open sourcing Windows – which I would hate. Here’s the rest of what’s going on:

Hyper-V

Removing a Missing Network Adapter: A result of moving a VHD without the configuration file.
Hyper-V and “Event ID: 157 – Disk x has been surprise removed”: Install your updates!!!

Windows Server

Windows Server vNext Technical Preview Due in May: Mark your diaries.
Troubleshooting Cluster Shared Volume Recovery Failure – System Event 5142: When CSV recovery does not succeed, an Event 5142 is logged to the System event log.

Windows Client

Microsoft’s ‘Redstone’ – An update to Windows 10 due in 2016: After Threshold comes Redstone. And after that, Windows “Googly”? Yes, they’ve switched from Halo to Minecraft.

Azure

Service Healing – Auto-recovery of Virtual Machines: How Azure monitors VMs. An interesting read.
Azure Marketplace is now available to more Enterprise Customers: Some confusing terminology in here.
Viewing VM Reboot Logs: When and why did your Azure VM reboot?
Connecting Multiple Networks in Microsoft Azure: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Azure Site Recovery – Protect from VMware sites or physical servers to Azure: Some techie info on VMware support in ASR.
Linux Integration Services v4.0 Preview for Microsoft Azure: A preview for CentOS 6.0-6.6, 7.0-7.1 x64 running on Azure.
March update to Azure RemoteApp: New features and capabilities were added to Azure RemoteApp.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows Server 2016,Windows Server 2012 R2,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Storage,Networking,Failover Clustering,Windows 10,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,DR,VMware,Linux,Remote Desktop Services

Microsoft News – 3 March 2015

Here’s the latest in the Microsoft world!

Hyper-V

Enabling Secure Boot on Linux with the Windows Technical Preview: Making use of Generation 2 VM security.

System Center

Choose between differencing disks or dedicated disks: New functionality for SCVMM/WAP.

Azure

Real World Site debugging using Application Insights on an Azure Website: Video where they cause some real errors in an Azure Website and then root-cause the issues by instrumenting the production site with Application Insights.
Azure Disk IOPS and Virtual Machines in IaaS Part II: How many IOPS can be squeezed out of these machines.
Configure Single Sign-On to Enterprise Apps using Azure Active Directory: VERY useful for controlled access to third-party SaaS.
Microsoft Azure Network Security Whitepaper version 3 is now available: This updated white paper provides information on how customers can use Azure’s native network security features to help protect their information assets.
Create Reports of Your Automation Activity: Due to the importance of the automated tasks, it’s important for you and your team to be up-to-date on how your runbooks are performing.
Announcing Azure Preview Portal Improvements (February Update): This post contains a detailed description of the changes.
SQL Server High Availability in Windows Azure Iaas: When deploying SQL Server in Windows Azure you must consider how to minimize both planned and unplanned downtime.
Using Azure Key Vault to Encrypt Data in the Cloud: Azure Key Vault gives organizations access to Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliances in the cloud, providing the ability to better secure VMs and SQL Server data.

Office 365

3 Ways to Connect to the Office 365 Reporting Service from Excel: One option for viewing Office 365 reports using Microsoft Excel.
Microsoft cracks down on sell-and-go Office 365 VARs: Microsoft is worried about O365 implementation rates at large customer sites where O365 is sold as a bundle, and not necessarily seen as essential by the customer/partner.

Miscellaneous

What Would Steve Jobs Have Done With Microsoft? A post by me on Petri.com

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2016,Linux,System Center,VMM,WAP,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,Storage,Active Directory,Networking,Security,PowerShell,Scripting,SQL,Office 365,Licensing

Microsoft News – 26 February 2015

In today’s cloudy link aggregation I have news on Windows Server (2003 end of life to Azure), Private Cloud bugs, Azure, and Office 365.

Windows Server

Be Prepared for Tomorrow’s Business: Prioritize Your Windows Server 2003 Migration: Although 75% of IT professionals are aware that support for Windows Server 2003 is ending July 14, 2015, there are still a lot of questions about just how urgent the need to move is.

System Center

Hotfix for known issues in Update Rollup 5 for System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager: Whoda thunk it? An update rollup from Microsoft has issues. How weird!!!! But instead of making it too easy by withdrawing and re-publishing the offending update, they’ve released a hotfix. Hmm how fantastic for anyone that charges by the hour and thinks of looking for the update!

Azure

Microsoft Azure Disaster Recovery Replication Methods: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Enabling Hyper-V to Azure DR Replication: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Create and pre-configure Azure virtual machines the easy way with PowerShell: Yet another post on this subject. I haven’t tested/looked at the code but I have yet to see a fully working example, anywhere.
Sunny and Swarmy in Azure: Microsoft is joining Docker, Inc. in announcing the beta releases of Docker Machine and Docker Swarm on Azure and Docker Machine support on Hyper-V.

Office 365

Utilizing Office 365 Staged Migration to Mitigating Risk: A very low risk alternative to the cutover scenario if the Hybrid configuration is not an option.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows Server 2003,Azure,System Center,VMM,Storage,DR,PowerShell,Scripting,Linux,Office 365

Microsoft News – 24 February 2015

Here is the latest news in the world of Microsoft infrastructure:

Hyper-V

Hyper-V receives Red Hat certification: Add RHEL 7.0 to the list on WS2012 R2 Generation 1 and Generation 2 VMs, along with WS2012 and W2008 R2 SP1.

Windows Server

Storage Spaces Performance Tuning: A post I wrote on Petri.com

System Center

Windows Azure Pack vNext: A post by Azure MVP Marc van Eijk.
Support for SQL Server 2014 with System Center 2012 R2 Update Rollup 5: Here is the current and planned state of SQL 2014 support in System Center, assuming the latest UR is installed

Azure

Azure Site Recovery Now Supports SAN-to-SAN Replication: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Hyper-V Requirements: A post I wrote for Petri.com

Office 365

Microsoft Changing Its Retention Policy for Deleted Office 365 E-Mails: Deleted e-mails always will be recoverable.
Automated Hybrid Troubleshooting Experience: A new automated troubleshooting experience for hybrid Office 365 deployments.
Extended email retention for deleted items in Office 365: With this update, the length of time items remain in the Deleted Items folder is extended to indefinitely or according to the duration set by your administrator < Certain headlines don’t mention that bit!

Miscellaneous

Tales from Tech Support: A competition by Microsoft to find the funniest/worst in IT.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2012 R2,Virtualisation,Windows Server 2012,Windows Server 2008 R2,Linux,Storage,System Center,WAP,SQL,Azure,Cloud,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud Computing,DR,Office 365,Exchange

Microsoft News – 2 February 2015

The big news of the last few days was the announcement that the next version of “Windows Server and System Center” won’t be released until 2016. This is quite disappointing.

Windows Server

Windows Server and System Center roadmap update: We won’t see new versions of Windows Server and System Center until 2016 🙁
New Guided Walkthrough for troubleshooting problems relating to Slow copying from a shared folder over a network: This article is intended for IT administrators to help diagnose and resolve situations in which users may experience slow file copying over a network.

Windows Client

Windows 10 for Enterprise – More secure and up to date: How businesses will get and can control updates for Windows 10 features.
Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) for Windows 10 Technical Preview: The Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) is a collection of tools that you can use to customize, assess, and deploy Windows operating systems to new computers
Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 10 Technical Preview (January 2015): Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 10 Technical Preview enables IT administrators to manage roles and features that are installed on computers that are running Windows Server Technical Preview from a remote computer that is running Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Azure

Announcing Azure Preview Portal Improvements: Codename Ibiza has been improved based on feedback.
New Cloud Platform Roadmap Site: See what’s coming (that Marketing has allowed to be announced) in the Cloud OS.
Automating Azure Virtual Machine Deployment with Chef: But what does "Infrastructure as Code" mean and how do I leverage this concept with Azure?
Microsoft Azure makes business productivity easier and more secure with updates across SQL Server, Enterprise Mobility, and Azure Media Services offerings: Marketing post – just look at the title.
Linux Virtual Machine Management with Kundana Palagiri: Channel 9 video covering how to have Azure automatically run shell scripts on Azure VMs as they provision without having to manually SSH into each machine, Chef and Puppet.
Azure Websites and the "Deploy Button" with Elliot Hamai: Channel 9 video on how to easily deploy websites from GitHub.
Azure AD Conditional Access and Azure AD Connect Health – Now in Preview: Conditional Access for SaaS Apps and Azure AD Connect Health.

Licensing

IaaS Gotchas: Compliance gotchas as it pertains to providing infrastructure as a service.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows Server 2015,System Center,Networking,Windows 10,Deployment,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Linux,Active Directory,Licensing

Microsoft News – 14 January 2015

Here’s the Microsoft updates from the last few days.

Windows Server

Advances in Active Directory since Windows Server 2003: Features that people have been asking for since 2003 … some have been there since Windows Server 2008!

System Center

Windows Azure Pack and it’s licensing: A post by MSFT employee (and co-author on the last Hyper-V book), Michel Luescher.
Microsoft Updating Intune and SCCM with an Eye Toward Windows 10: Mobility seems to be the focus.
Step-By-Step: Building A System Center Virtual Machine Manager Lab Part 1: Start to learn VMM
SCOM – New Windows Server OS Management Pack Available – BUT BEWARE!: A warning from Kevin Greene about a new (and recently pulled) update to the Windows Server OS management pack.

Azure

Azure Data Center Migration just got easier: It’s still a hack, so it’s not as simple as it should be.
AzCopy – Introducing synchronous copy and customized content type: AzCopy 3.1.0 and 4.1.0-Preview are now released.
Microsoft Azure Reaches New Industry-Leading Cloud Compliance Milestones: Compliance stuff.
Migrate Linux VMs to Azure with Migration Accelerator: Microsoft announced support for the migration of Linux physical and virtual machines to Azure.

Office 365

What’s new – December 2014: Quite a few things, despite the end of year holidays.

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2015,Active Directory,Windows Server 2003,WAP,System Center,Intune,Configuration Manager,VMM,Private Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Operations Manager,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Linux,Office 365

Microsoft News – 2 January 2015

Welcome to the “Happy New Year 2015” edition of my Microsoft News posts. I hope you have a nice time off from work – it FLEW by for me; I could do with a holiday to recover from my holiday.

Here’s the news from over the past week or so:

Hyper-V

5 Hyper-V Skills You Need To Learn for 2015: An article I wrote for Petri.com
About Hyper-V Virtual Processor Limitations: An article I wrote for Petri.com

Windows Server

VPN Interoperability guide for Windows Server 2012 R2: This document covers the working configurations for some of the popular third party VPN devices that can be deployed to work with Windows Server 2012 R2 VPN. The configuration for a Windows gateway is also included to server as a guideline for an interoperable deployment with the third party devices.

Azure

Microsoft Makes Azure Disaster Recovery For SMEs and Branch Offices: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Using Azure Storage on Linux: An update for Linux users on how to use Azure Storage
Running Critical Application Workloads on Microsoft Azure D-Series Virtual Machines: How to use these VMs that place their temp drive on host-local SSD storage. There is also a whitepaper.
Choosing Microsoft Azure Storage for IaaS: An article I wrote for Petri.com
Deploying a Microsoft Azure Storage Account: An article I wrote for Petri.com

Miscellaneous

The Top 7 Microsoft News Stories of 2014: An article I wrote for Petri.com

Microsoft News – 17 November 2014

I’ve had a crazy few weeks with TechEd Europe 2014, followed by the MVP Summit, followed by a week of events and catchup at work. Today, I’ve finally gotten to go through my news feeds. There is a LOT of Azure stuff from TEE14.

Hyper-V

What’s New in Windows Server vNext Hyper-V: A post by me on Petri.com
Cluster Shared Volume Failure Handling: How CSV handles storage failures and how it hides failures from applications.
Updating Integration Components over Windows Update: Microsoft announced that they would be releasing updated integration components over Windows Update from now on.
Windows 10 Technical Preview: Hot Add / Remove of Network Adapter: You can now add and remove network adapters from running Generation 2 virtual machines.

Windows Server

vNext Failover Clustering in Windows Server Technical Preview: A video with clustering master, Elden Christensen.
Storage Quality of Service Guide Released for Windows Server Technical Preview: A step-by-step guide.
RemoteFX vGPU Updates in Windows Server Next: Capabilities that improve the experience for end users in a Windows VDI environment for ‘Engineering/Designer’ application workloads that require OpenGL API support and all graphics applications (DX and OpenGL) that require higher video memory.

System Center

Update Rollup 4 for System Center 2012 R2: Wait 1 month. Trust me.
Update Rollup 8 for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1: See previous. Trust me.

Windows Client

Windows 10 – Making Deployment Easier: Using an in-place upgrade instead of the traditional wipe-and-load approach that organizations have historically used to deploy new Windows versions. This upgrade process is designed to preserve the apps, data, and configuration from the existing Windows installation, taking care to put things back the way they need to be after Windows 10 has been installed on the system. And support for traditional deployment tools.
Windows 10 – Manageability Choices: Ensuring that Windows works better when using Active Directory and Azure Active Directory together. When connecting the two, users can automatically be signed-in to cloud-based services like Office 365, Microsoft Intune, and the Windows Store, even when logging in to their machine using Active Directory accounts. For users, this will mean no longer needing to remember additional user IDs or passwords.

Azure

New Marketplace, Network Improvements, New Batch Service, Automation Service, more: TechEd announcement by Scott Guthrie
SAN Replication based Enterprise Grade Disaster Recovery with ASR and System Center: Enterprises that seek to leverage the snapshot and replication capabilities of their Storage Area Network (SAN) Arrays to enable high performance synchronous and asynchronous replication between their on-premises private clouds can now orchestrate end-to-end storage array-based replication and disaster recovery with ASR and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).

ASR SAN replication topology

Announcing the Azure Marketplace: Offers Microsoft Azure Certified and open-source community virtual machine images including SAP, Cloudera, DataStax, CommVault, Veeam, Trend Micro, and Core OS as well as virtual machine extensions including McAfee and Octopus Deploy.
Migrate your Websites to Azure in just a Few Clicks: A new tool from MSFT. See this Getting Started Guide & this video.
Windows Docker Client Demo Highlights Linux Containers on Azure: Docker, CoreOS, and Linux Documentation on Azure.
New Networking features and partnerships for Enterprise scenarios: A whole bunch of announcements: ExpressRoute enhancements include new strategic partnerships, a Meet-Me location in Australia, multi-site ExpressRoute for better disaster recovery, multiple subscriptions sharing the same ExpressRoute circuit, and support for 4,000 routes. We are improving overall security with Network Security Groups for easier subnet isolation in multi-tier topologies, Site to Site Forced Tunneling which sends network traffic back to on-premises for policy validation to meet compliance requirements, and VPN support for Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). A new high-performance gateway, multiple virtual NICs in a VM, access to VPN operations logs, nested Traffic Manager policies and Azure load balancer source IP affinity demonstrate our commitment to continually enhance Azure networking capabilities.
New – Azure Traffic Manager Nested Profiles: his feature enables you to create more flexible and powerful load-balancing and failover schemes to support the needs of larger, more complex deployments. Note you can also do hybrid site balancing now.
Azure Load Balancer new distribution mode: Adding a new distribution mode called Source IP Affinity (also known as session affinity or client IP affinity).
Azure Site Recovery – Announcing Windows Azure Pack integration and PowerShell Support: As part of update roll up of Windows Azure Pack UR 4.0, now cloud service providers will be able to offer Windows Azure Pack Plan or ADDONS with ASR capabilities. You now have the ASR PowerShell cmdlets for recovery solution between two on-premise hyper-V datacenters available as part of Azure PowerShell 0.8.10 release.
Using VNET integration and Hybrid connections with Azure Websites: This will outline the example of getting WordPress running on Azure Websites with a remote MySQL database and will be covered in two parts.
Microsoft Antimalware for Azure Cloud Services and Virtual Machines: Real time protection from the latest threats, on-demand scheduled scanning, and collection of antimalware events to your storage account via Azure Diagnostics at no additional charge.
Introducing PowerShell support for Azure Site Recovery: PowerShell support for recovery between two Hyper-V sites managed by Azure Site Recovery.
Red Teaming – Using Cutting-Edge Threat Simulation to Harden the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud: How Microsoft performs penetration tests on Azure and Office 365.
Deploying Your Own Private Docker Registry on Azure: In order to ship your containerized applications to the cloud, you use Docker tools to construct a Docker container image. Although the Docker Hub is a paid service for storing private images, Docker respects developers’ needs and provides the open source “Docker Registry” software used to build the Docker Hub. It is designed to store and provide container images, but the best part about it is that you can host your own private registry with it.
Offering Managed DR for IaaS Workloads with ASR and Azure Pack: Service Providers can now offer Managed DR as a premium service to their customers on top of IaaS workloads.
Deploy to Azure Button for Azure Websites: Deploying to Azure Websites from a Git repository just got a little easier with the Deploy to Azure Button.
Azure Websites Authentication / Authorization: Azure Websites Authentication / Authorization allows you to quickly and easily restrict access to your websites running on Azure Websites by leveraging Azure Active Directory.
Encrypting Azure Virtual Machines with CloudLink SecureVM: CloudLink SecureVM Agent which enables for disk encryption for your Azure Virtual Machines.
AzCopy – Announcing General Availability of AzCopy 3.0 plus preview release of AzCopy 4.0 with Table and File support
Create a VM with multiple NICs in Azure: Done using updated version of Azure PowerShell.
Monitoring Azure Site Recovery: The monitoring capabilities of Azure Site Recovery.
Microsoft announces Exchange Support for Azure VM as a Witness Server: As of January 1, 2015, Microsoft will support using an Azure laaS file server VM as a witness server for an on-premises DAG .

Office 365

Enterprise Mobility TechEd Announcements: Lots of stuff.
Configuring AD FS Servers in an Internal Load-Balanced Set in Azure for Office365 Single Sign-On: Third post in a series on how to enable hybrid single using-in solution using a hybrid Azure deployment.
Office 365 Business Users Getting New ‘Clutter’ E-Mail Feature: Don’t know if I’d trust this.
Microsoft To Rename Lync as ‘Skype for Business’ Next Year:

Intune

New Microsoft Intune capabilities coming this week: The Intune team will be rolling out a service update between November 17, 2014 and November 19, 2014 that introduces new capabilities to Intune standalone (cloud only).

Operational Insights

Microsoft Releases Azure Operational Insights Preview: Starting with a limited free option. The preview is available in the Azure U.S. East region.

Licensing

Microsoft to make per-user Windows licensing available to enterprise customers: A popular move.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Windows 10,Windows Server 2012 R2,WIndows Server 2015,Failover Clustering,Storage,RDS,System Center,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Networking,DR,PowerShell,Scripting,Linux,Security,Exchange,Office 365,Intune,Licensing