Tag: Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft News–13 July 2015

I don’t have all that much for you, but the big news is the Azure Site Recovery (ASR, Microsoft’s DR site in the cloud) now supports VMware virtual machines and physical servers, without using System Center. You do need to run some stuff on-prem and in the cloud to make it work though, so there will be a tipping point where the solution becomes affordable.

Azure

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System Center

Office 365

Microsoft Modifies The Azure Backup Announcement

Yesterday I posted an “Aidan Smash” article about the messed up Azure Backup Announcement. Microsoft had originally stated in their announcement of improvements that were coming to Azure Backup. Let’s remind ourselves what Microsoft said:

image_thumb[1] Why did I take a screenshot of the text instead of copying/pasting it? I’ve learned that when Microsoft makes a controversial announcement, or something that is just plain dumb, that text can change without any notice.

Controversy? Yes; Microsoft pretty much stated that the requests for feature improvements in Azure Backup that would make the product marketable to the breadth market (that will actually use Azure Backup) was going to be restricted to System Center customers that paid extra for OMS Add-On for Azure (not the breadth market).

That sounded pretty stupid. I reached out for a correction but did not get one within the 24 hours before I posted my rant. So it seemed that someone had made yet another dumb packing/pricing decision with a Microsoft online service.

24 hours later, the announcement was changed by Microsoft:

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Note that the post does not say the following anymore:

… we are now announcing new Azure Backup services that are available today to OMS customers.

In fact, all mention of OMS in this section and the bullet points has been removed. Queue cautious celebration!

How do I read this (as a person that does not have access to OMS Add-On and cannot verify what OMS customers have access to)?

  • The new features will not be restricted to OMS Add-On customers
  • The new features are not available yet

This is much better. Now if only the author had bothered to communicate clearly in the first place – I’m guessing they were made walk the plank.

[Update]

Microsoft confirmed that the improvements to Azure Backup will be coming to everyone. These features will be coming before the end of the calendar year. I look forward to trying them out, and hopefully selling them.

Microsoft News – 29 June 2015

As you might expect, there’s lots of Azure news. Surprisingly, there is still not much substantial content on Windows 10.

Hyper-V

Windows Server

Windows Client

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Azure

Office 365

EMS

Misc

Choosing Azure Management Tools

In this post, I will share with you some details on the different options for managing Azure. It’s not all-encompassing; I’m leaving programing REST API and Visual Studio to the nut jobs.

Account Portal

This is where you start off creating your subscription (under Open or direct-billing), and where you go to get a breakdown on your billing. You get a simple UI to break down your costs in this period, and the ability to download a deeper dive.

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Management Portal

The Management Portal is historically where techies have gone to get stuff going. You get a pretty easy to use UI, with each major element of Azure having it’s own section. When you deploy something in here, there’s usually a Quick Start, some of which can be really simple to use.

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You might have noticed that there is a second UI portal – yes; it can be confusing. Here’s how I think of things:

  • The management portal is where I go to work with new things like Azure Site Recovery or Remote App
  • The preview portal is where I go to have the best marketplace experience
  • The preview portal is where new sub features often get surfaced, e.g. assigning a reserved IP to a virtual machine

Preview Portal (Codename Ibiza)

Microsoft launched the “Preview Portal” around 14 months ago. It’s gone through many redesigns. Rather than being quick to navigate, it’s got a very “Windows 8” crossed with PhotoShopped-insane UI. But the reality is, if you want to work with new sub-features via a UI, then this site is where you go. If you want as much stuff presented to you as possible, this is where you go. And it does seem that more effort goes into this site as time goes by.

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PowerShell

There are at least 2 types of PowerShell that you’ll use with Azure:

  • The MSOL module for Azure Active Directory
  • The Azure PowerShell module

With PowerShell you really can do things much more quickly. Creating, changing (if you can), and removing things in Azure is painfully slow via the UI tools. PowerShell isn’t much quicker, but it allows you to script a number of things you want done while you get coffee or work on something else.

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There are other options, but as an IaaS person, I’m focused on the above tools.

Azure AD Connect is Generally Available

Thenews that AADConnect is now GA is great for anyone battling with synchronizing to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD or AAD). This tool really is going to be the start of connecting your business to Microsoft’s cloud solutions:

  • Azure
  • Office 365
  • Intune
  • RMS
  • CRM
  • And many more, including third-party solutions via AAD single sign-on

Why? Because you need to get users into the common AAD before these services become meaningful. I’ve used AAD in two different preview releases and found it really simple to get going. Any work that I’ve done with Azure RemoteApp has be done with this tool. Why didn’t I use DirSync? Because I found it to be unreliable. AADConnect solves a big problem too – which AD sync tool should I use – now you use just one tool.

According to Microsoft:

With a rich set of sync and write-back capabilities, you can:

  • Enable your users to perform self-service password reset in the cloud with write-back to on premises AD
  • Enable provisioning from the cloud with user write back to on premises AD
  • Enable write back of “Groups in Office 365” to on premises distribution groups in a forest with Exchange
  • Enable device write back so that your on-premises access control policies enforced by ADFS can recognize devices that registered with Azure AD. This includes the recently announced support for Azure AD Join in Windows 10.
  • Sync custom directory attributes to your Azure Active Directory tenant and consume it from your cloud applications

You can also use AADConnect to connect different AD forests.

In related news Azure AD Connect Health was also released to help customers troubleshoot what’s going on with ADFS. This new feature is included in Azure AD Premium.

This release for ADFS has 3 key capabilities:

  • Alerts based on events, configuration information, synthetic transactions and perf data. So, when something goes wrong, or is about to go wrong, we let you know.
  • Graphs of login activity that you can pivot multiple ways for easy viewing. These “usage insights,” are accessible when you enable auditing on your ADFS servers. They are based on audits generated when user’s login and tokens are generated for applications.
  • Access to key performance indicators across multiple servers, including token request counters, processor, memory, latency, and so forth

Microsoft News 28-May-2015

Very little to cover here, except one possibly controversial article on Hyper-V that you long-time readers might expect me to write an angry response to …

Hyper-V

Windows Server

Azure

Office 365

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

Windows Server

Windows Client

System Center

Azure

Office 365

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

Miscellaneous

My Microsoft Ignite 2015 Session Content

Microsoft recorded and shared a video of my session, The Hidden Treasures of Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V, along with the slides.

My second session, End to-End Azure Site Recovery Solutions for Small-Medium Enterprises in one of the community theatres, was not recorded so I have placed the slides up on slideshare.

All The Details On My Two Ignite Sessions

Thanks (I think!!!) to John at MicroWarehouse (my employer) for sticking this on the company website:

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I think he even Photoshop slimmed me Smile

Here’s the details of both my sessions:

The Hidden Treasures of Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V

  • When: 5:00PM – 6:15PM, Tuesday, May 5th
  • Where: E451A
  • Session code: BRK3506

My first session is a 75 minute level 300 session focusing on lesser known features of the version of Hyper-V that you can deploy now, and leaves you in the best position to upgrade to vNext. Don’t worry if you’ve seen by TEE14 session; this one is 50% different with some very useful stuff that I’ve never presented on or blogged about before.

It’s one thing to hear about and see a great demo of a Hyper-V feature. But how do you put them into practice? This session takes you through some of those lesser-known elements of Hyper-V that have made for great demonstrations, introduces you to some of the lesser-known features, and shows you best practices, how to increase serviceability and uptime, and design/usage tips for making the most of your investment in Hyper-V.

 

End-to-End Azure Site Recovery Solutions for Small & Medium Enterprises

  • When: 12:05PM – 12:25PM, Thursday, May 7th
  • Where: EXPO: Lounge C Theater
  • Session Code: THR0903

My second session is 20 minutes on Azure DR solutions for SMEs in the community theatre. I’ve done lots of lab and proof-of-concept work with ASR in the SME space and this presentation focuses on the stuff that no one talks about – it’s easy to replicate VMs, but what about establishing services, accessing failed over VMs, and more?!?!?

In this session I will share some tips and lessons that I have learned from working with Azure Site Recovery services to provide a complete disaster recovery solution in Azure for Hyper-V virtual machines in a small/medium enterprise.

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

Windows Server

Windows 10

Azure

Office 365

Intune

Miscellaneous