Active Directory | Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Guest on RunAs Radio Talking Azure RemoteApp

Richard Campbell, the host of the RunAs Radio podcast, saw a tweet from me talking about Azure AD, and thought he should ask me back on to have a chat. I had been working on developing training materials on RemoteApp. The use-case that caught my interest was the ability to use RemoteApp to remove the effect of latency. We talk for half an hour about this.

The “design” I talk about in the podcast (recorded a few weeks ago) works, and I’ve presented using it. I’ve written some posts on Petri.com about my experiences:

In the design, virtual DCs, file server, and application servers run as VMs in an Azure network. RemoteApp publishes applications on another network. A VNET to VNET VPN connects the server and RA networks, enabling the RA session hosts to join the domain. Users log into RemoteApp, and then it’s all normal RDS at that point:

GPO applies
Log in script runs
Published applications have fast access to application servers
Users save data in the company’s Azure VMs

It’s a nice solution!

Technorati Tags: Azure,Remote Desktop Services,Active Directory,Networking

Microsoft News – 13 March 2015

Quite bit of stuff to read since my last aggregation post on the 3rd.

Windows Server

Enable and Use Remote Commands in Windows PowerShell: For when you get the error “Unable to connect to the server using Windows PowerShell Remoting”.

Hyper-V

KB3031598: Hyper-V host crashes and has errors when you perform a VM live migration in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Wait before deploying, as with all hotfixes, unless this issue is breaking stuff for you (test and decide).
Update Emulex VMQ Issue – They finally did it: It’s only taken 1.5 years for Emulex/HP to sort this disaster out. Choose better hardware 🙂
Best practices for migrating a datacenter from VMware to Microsoft Hyper-V: From the System Center Virtual Machine manager team.
Checking and Correcting Virtual Hard Disk Fragmentation: By Ben Armstrong
How Hyper-V Backup Got Better in 2012 R2 (but now requires a SCSI controller): By Ben Armstrong
Hyper-V and "Event ID: 58 – The disk signature of disk 2 is equal to the disk signature of disk 0": By Ben Armstrong

Windows Client

Sluggish Tablet Market Will See Some Windows 10 Gains This Year: By 2019, IDC expects Android to lead with 62.9 percent of the tablet market. iOS will show weaker growth (23.0 percent), while Windows will gain "significant share" (14.1 percent) yet still remain in third place, according to IDC.
Microsoft to accelerate its release pace for Windows 10 preview: Microsoft appears to be on the verge of releasing an updated Windows 10 preview build. And this time, the company says, it’s serious about picking up the pace.
MDT 2013 Update 1 Preview – What’s Changed: In case you missed it at, the new preview of MDT 2013 Update 1 is now available for download from the Connect website. This new release works with the new ADK preview for Windows 10, which is available on the download center.

Azure

New A10/A11 Azure Compute Sizes: Two new high-spec standard A series VMs
Reduce RTO by using Azure Traffic Manager with Azure Site Recovery: Using Microsoft’s load balancer to failover name resolution of external services from primary site to Azure. Clever stuff!
Simplifying Virtual Machine Troubleshooting using Azure Log Collector: The Azure Log Collector extension can collect and upload logs from Cloud Service instances or Virtual Machines without requiring to log into the remote Virtual Machine.
Introducing Email notifications for Azure Site Recovery: Email notifications are a new feature for Azure Site Recovery that allows you to easily monitor the replication health of your protected virtual machines.
Azure Active Directory Solutions Architecture White Paper: This white paper describes the Microsoft Azure Active Directory Identity and Access Management solutions offered to customers of Azure, Office 365, Intune, Microsoft CRM and all Microsoft Online services.
Azure AD Conditional Access preview updated: Now supports On-Premises and Custom LOB apps: Conditional Access is powerful policy based evaluation engine that lets you create access rules for any Azure AD connected application. More sensitive apps can be assigned stricter policies, such as requiring Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) from a registered device while less sensitive apps can have more open policies.
Final Word on IOPS in Azure: Striping multiple data disks.
Planned Maintenance – Azure Style: How Microsoft does maintenance.
ADFS Publishing via Azure Traffic Manager: He doesn’t say but I think the endpoint of Damian’s post is to make a geo-resilient ADFS farm.
New Active Directory Assessment Intelligence Pack in Azure Operational Insights: Designed to assess the risk and health of AD environments on premises, in the cloud or hybrid, it will scan weekly, and present information as a monthly rollup. The report provides a prioritized list of recommendations tailored to your environments.
Replicating Hyper-V Virtual Machines to Microsoft Azure: A post I wrote for Petri.com
5 Reasons Why I Like Microsoft Azure RemoteApp: An edited post of an article I wrote for Petri.com
How to preserve the drive letter for protected virtual machines that are failed over or migrated to Azure: Azure use will the next available drive letter for the temp drive.

Office 365

What’s new: February 2015: Lots of new stuff.

Intune

March updates coming this week to Microsoft Intune: Should be live now.
Conditional Access for SharePoint Online with Microsoft Intune: With this feature, you can restrict access to SharePoint Online to only those users who have enrolled their devices in management with Microsoft Intune and are compliant with IT policy.

Miscellaneous

Revenue and usage numbers for Microsoft’s most important new business: Following up the revelations of the not-so-secret methods of sales to hit targets.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2012 R2,Networking,Hardware,System Center,VMM,Windows 10,MDT,Deployment,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,DR,Storage,Active Directory,Remote Desktop Services,Office 365,Intune

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 – 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 – 23 January 2015

If you’ve just emerged from a cave or from under a rock, then you might like to read about Windows 10 and HoloLens. It’s been amazing to see how in “90 minutes”, the image of Microsoft has done a 180 degree turnaround. The carefully orchestrated and timed announcements on Wednesday were very effective.

System Center

Multiple domain names and themes on a single Tenant portal: More WAP-tastic extensibility.

Windows Client

Microsoft Provides a Much More Complete Look at Windows 10: Paul Thurrott
Windows 10 will be Free Upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8 Users: MSFT wants everyone to have the best access to online services.
Hands-On with Microsoft HoloLens: Paul Thurrott had an hour with the augmented reality headset.
Windows RT Will Not Be Upgraded to Windows 10: As I predicted quite a while ago, Windows RT went the way of Windows for MIPS processors.
The next chapter of Office on Windows: Universal touch-first apps included in Windows 10 for free (phone and small tablets – license probably limited to personal usage).

Azure

Setting up Active Directory for a Disaster Recovery Environment: Talking about how to get AD up and running consistently in your DR site.
Best Practices for Process Server Deployment when Protecting VMware and Physical Workloads with Azure Site Recovery: Getting the InMage Process Server configured for your replication from vSphere.

Office 365

New Office Visio Stencil: These stencils contain more than 300 icons to help you create visual representations of Microsoft Office or Microsoft Office 365 deployments including Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, Microsoft Lync Server 2013, and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013
Azure RMS Migration Guidance: The Azure RMS Migration guidance contains a whitepaper with step-by-step guidance and links to cmdlets and tools to migrate on-premises Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) server key and templates to Azure Rights Management services (Azure RMS) while preserving access to protected content.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows 10,WAP,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hardware,Azure,DR,Hybrid Cloud,VMware,Office 365,Active Directory,Office

Microsoft News – 20 January 2015

I’ve let the news build up a little bit. I think the holiday lull is starting to lift.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V Script to move everything off of a physical disk: Drain anything that is located on a particular disk.
Announcing DSC resources to deploy Hyper-V converged virtual network: This is an interesting third-party offer. I am wary of deep integrations such as this because I am worried about lock-ins that prevent upgrades when/if there are significant changes from Microsoft.

Windows Server

You are invited to participate in the Windows Server 2003 Modernization offering: The Partner Technical Services team is excited to share a new initiative focused on helping you migrate from Windows Server 2003 before end of support.
Work Folders for iOS – iPad App Release: Great add-on for iOS, giving businesses their own version of DropBox based on WS2012 R2 file servers and Workplace Join.
Win2012R2: STOP 0x133 and STOP 0x9E caused by too many NBLs in a DPC: Microsoft has been seeing an increase in STOP 0x133 (on non-clustered) and 0x9E (on clustered) cases, where the root cause is that there are too many NBLs indicated in a DPC. This causes the DPC watchdog timer to expire, resulting in mentioned STOP errors.
Announcing Message Analyzer 1.2: I really dislike this replacement for NetMon. It’s too difficult to use, even after you’ve sat through a briefing. My advice to Microsoft: start from scratch … again.

Windows Client

Windows 10: What We Know So Far: I’ll give a hoot about Cortana when it works outside of 4 or so countries. Microsoft should either fix that limitation or move the developers to something more important than a gadget feature.

System Center

Configuring VMM logical switch with bandwidth limit virtual port: Enable VM QoS.
Monitoring Text and CSV log files in System Center Operations Manager: Very useful.
Cluster overcommit algorithm in System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager: This article describes four approaches for the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) cluster overcommit algorithm in Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager.

Azure

Try ExpressRoute Free of Charge with this Promotion: Microsoft launched a promotional offer for Azure ExpressRoute, making it easier to get started with fast, private network connections between your on-premises environment and Azure.
New Application Insights functionality on Azure Websites with the Application Insights Website extension: This feature is designed to help development teams get 360° views of their applications across Availability, Performance and Usage with fast & powerful troubleshooting, diagnostics and usage insights.
Saving Money with Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines: In this article I will look at some methods you can employ to save money when you deploy virtual machines into Microsoft Azure.
Microsoft Azure App Enables Workplace Join Connections for Android Devices: Give controlled Android users access to on-premises resources with a hybrid cloud service.
Azure AD Workplace Join, now with Android Support: The official announcement.
Connect servers directly to Operational Insights: Easy to set up from-the-cloud server management.
How to easily spin up an Azure AD Premium Trial: So you’d like to demo Azure AD to your customers or want to get the feel of it? Perhaps you have Azure via MSDN and would like to spin it up on the fly for a demo environment?

Office 365

Participate in the Office 365 Practice Accelerator for SMB offering: A new initiative focused on helping Microsoft partners learn the fundamental deployment principles and processes that lead to repeatable successful deployments of O365 for Small and Medium customers.

Intune

Enrolling iOS Devices Via Apple Configurator In Microsoft Intune: A step-by-step. Been a while since I did this, but it was easier than enrolling Windows Phone!

Events

#GlobalAzure Bootcamp 2015: The 2015 #GlobalAzure Bootcamp kicks off on April 25th and you can participate and organize a location too!

Miscellaneous

Paul Thurrott’s last post on WinSuperSite.com: It’s the end of an era for that important site. But Paul continues tomorrow on thurrott.com.
Blue Whale Web Partners with Paul Thurrott to Launch Thurrott.com Technology News Site: So I am now a work colleague of Paul Thurrott!!! Thurrott.com has launched as a sister site of Petri.com and Paul is also writing news articles for the site.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,PowerShell,Scripting,Windows Server 2003,Active Directory,Networking,Windows 10,System Center,VMM,Operations Manager,Failover Clustering,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,Office 365,Intune,Events

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 – 6 January 2015

A few little nuggets to get you back in the swing of things. And yes, I have completely ignored the US-only version 1.2 Azure Pricing Tool that suffers from “The Curse of Zune”.

Hyper-V

Setting up Port Mirroring to Capture Mirrored Traffic on a Hyper-V Virtual Machine:A handy but rarely discussed feature
Large Scale VDI deployment using Hyper-V with Storage Tiers and Data Deduplication: Need some help planning a large scale, highly efficient Personal Desktop deployment that leverages Storage Tiers and Data Deduplication?

Windows Server

WorkPlace Join vs. Domain Join: The new way (personal and mobile client devices) and the old way of authenticating machines against Active Directory.
Case Studies on Storage Spaces, Scale-Out File Servers with SMB3 or both: Need some proof?

System Center

Deduplication of DPM Storage – Reduce DPM Storage Consumption: DPM does not do deduplication of its own storage; instead a virtual DPM places data storage (VHDX files) on deduplicated SMB 3.0 (only) volumes. This is the only supported scenario.
Azure Pack Wiki Available Via OneNote: Courtesy of Hyper-V.nu

Windows Client

Microsoft is building a new browser as part of its Windows 10 push: Say by bye to IE

Azure

Use Microsoft Azure Backup with Recovery Services: An article I wrote for Petri.com on how to backup PCs to Azure

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtualisation,Hyper-V,Networking,VDI,Remote Desktop Services,Storage,Active Directory,Windows Server 2012 R2,Failover Clustering,System Center,DPM,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Private Cloud,Windows 10,Internet Explorer,Azure,Backup,Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft News – 17 December 2014

Things have settled down a little after last week’s surprise Azure announcements.

Hyper-V

Another Update on the VMQ Issue with Emulex and HP: MVP Hans Vredevoort has the latest news for poor HP blade customers running Hyper-V.

Azure

Azure AD Connect – One simple, fast, lightweight tool to connect Active Directory and Azure Active Directory: A new preview tool to make life easier because the menu just got too big and complicated. There will no longer be separate releases of Azure AD Sync and Azure AD Connect. And we have no future releases of DirSync planned. Azure AD Connect is now your one stop shop for sync, sign on and all combinations of hybrid connections.
Azure Backup – Announcing Support for Windows Client Operating System: Support for backing up data to Azure from Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 machines.
Authoring Integration Modules for Azure Automation: Expanding Azure Automation. Heavy stuff.
Using Chef, Puppet and Docker for managing Linux VMs: This post provides information on creating Linux VMs in Azure and using tools like Chef, Puppet and Docker for managing Linux VMs.
Simplified workflow to configure backup to Azure from DPM: No need to create self-signed certs with Update Rollup 4 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager. Please read the FAQ.
Active Directory from on-premises to the cloud – Azure AD whitepapers: Identity management, provisioning, role management, and authentication are key services both on-premises and through the (hybrid) cloud.

Office 365

How to Configure S/MIME in Office 365: This post is for people who want to move from on-premises to Exchange Online and want to continue to use S/MIME.

Microsoft Partners

How to activate Microsoft Azure internal-use rights licenses? And Experience Azure: Discover and use those IURs. You can’t sell it if you don’t use it.

Licensing

Price increases in 2015!! SPLA/hosting licensing costs are going up. Hosters will have no choice but to pass that on to their customers.

Miscellaneous

Microsoft’s ‘Arcadia’ team is building a streaming app and game service: Sounds interesting.
Apple and Amazon (and others) back Microsoft in data row: Lots of interested parties are filing statements with the courts in support of Microsoft’s stance against the US government.
Business, Media and Civil Society Speak Up in Key Privacy Case: Official statement by Microsoft.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft. Hyper-V,Hardware,Virtualisation,Networking,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,Active Directory,Backup,PowerShell,Scripting,Office 365,Licensing

Microsoft News – 12 December 2014

It’s December, the month when Microsoft employees normally head away for a long vacation and nothing much happens. Or so we thought. Azure went wild last night, releasing loads of new features either into preview or GA. Oh yeah, loads of December updates from Microsoft have problems.

Windows Client

Microsoft ready to show off Windows 10 mobile SKU on January 21: Day-long event with some content being streamed live online. This is where the consumer stuff will be launched.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Error ID 1602 occurs and the Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Console does not start: Unable to connect to the VMM Management server server_name. The Virtual Machine Manager service on that server did not respond. Verify that Virtual Machine Manager has been installed on the server and that the Virtual Machine Manager service is running.

Azure

Premium Storage, RemoteApp, SQL Database Update, Live Media Streaming, Search and More: Scott Guthrie’s announcements about new Azure services in December.
Cloud + Enterprise Release Announcements for December 11, 2014: More on those announcements.
New Premium Storage-Backed Virtual Machines: Use SSD-based storage accounts for fast VMs
High-Performance Storage for Azure Virtual Machine Workloads: More on Azure Premium Storage. Here you will find mention of a new “DS” (not D) series VM with read caching to enhance storage performance (Premium or standard/Shared).
Wrapping up the year with a boat load of Azure AD news: Azure AD might finally become interesting to me.
Application Proxy General Availability and many more new additions: Taking the WS2012 R2 functionality, Azure Active Directory can now provide single sign-on and secure remote access to all kinds of web applications hosted on-premises.
Azure RemoteApp Now Generally Available: Some comments from the RDS team
Azure Backup now supports 64-bit editions of Windows client operating systems: After you apply this update (version number: 2.0.8694.0), 64-bit editions of Windows 8.1, Windows 8, or Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) now will support Microsoft Azure Backup.

Miscellaneous

KB 2553154, 2726958 clobber Excel ActiveX; KB 3011970 Silverlight, KB 3004394 Root Cert pulled: Just assumed that any update released in December is faulty – it’s easier that way.

Technorati Tags: Windows 10,SCVMM,System Center,Storage,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,RDS,Active Directory