A blog covering Azure, Hyper-V, Windows Server, desktop, systems management, deployment, and so on …
I’ve been asked to deliver a webinar this week, focusing on an overview of Microsoft Azure. This overview sessions will talk about what Azure is, what it isn’t, and the types of services that it delivers. I will be focusing on Azure, as sold through the CSP channel (an ARM-only implementation of Azure).
The webinar will be under 1 hour long, starting at 2pm (UK/Ireland) and 3PM (CET), on Thursday 6th October.
All the details and registration are here.
I’m delighted to announce that my employers are running the community launch of Windows Server 2016 (WS2016) in Dublin, Ireland, on October 26th, starting promptly at 10:30.
You might have heard that Microsoft announced general availability yesterday at the Ignite conference in Atlanta, USA – actual GA is mid-October with the pieces being on the October price list. Unfortunately, this will be another Windows Server and System Center release that will not be publicly launched by Microsoft Ireland. In that absence, MicroWarehouse and a selection of expert speakers from around Europe will be gathering at the Marker Hotel in Dublin to share their knowledge. These folks have been working with the technology since the first public preview nearly 2 years ago, and some have a deep knowledge that they’ve built up by working closely on testing the products, shaping their futures, and even running the previews in production!
Quite honestly, there has never been a panel of speakers put together like this before for a Microsoft event in Ireland. So far we have confirmed:
There will be a keynote followed by 2 tracks of breakout sessions. The two tracks are based on the fact that WS2016 + the new Azure Stack complete Microsoft’s hybrid cloud vision:
I cannot tell you how much new stuff there is in WS2016 – it’s a huge product, and there’s loads more to learn about in Azure! If you are paying attention, then it’s time to update awareness of what the new platforms can do, and this launch is the place to start.
Anyone from anywhere that wants to increase their awareness of what Windows Server 2016, Azure Stack, and Microsoft Azure can do:
There is a small fee to ensure that those who register online intend to attend the event and to discourage the “muffin munchers” that are more interested in free snacks.
The event will not be streamed online and will not be recorded.
I’m presenting in a webinar by DataON Storage later today at 6PM UK/Irish time, 7PM Central Europe, and 1 PM Eastern. The focus is on how small-medium businesses can switch to an all-Microsoft server stack on DataON hardware and greatly reduce costs, while simplifying the deployment and increasing performance.
There are a number of speakers, including me, DataON, a customer that made that jump recently, and HGST (manufacturer of enterprise class flash storage).
You can register here.
We just wrapped up delivering our latest webcast, which will be shared on the MicroWarehouse site in the next few days, along with the deck and digital handout. And we’ve already scheduled the next webinar, which will be the first in a series of webinars focusing on Windows Server 2016 ahead of the launch at Microsoft Ignite on 26th of September – probably followed up by being on the “new sales” price list on October 1st.
The first WS2016 webinar will focus on Hyper-V – further sessions will be scheduled on storage, clustering, networking, etc. And I’m going to be doubly brave. I’m going to do demos based on a technical preview release (what an idiot!), and I’m going to do them live in the webinar (what a moron!). Hey – it’s all fun, right?!?!?
So come on and join us on August 25th at 14:00 (UK/Ireland), 15:00 CET and 09:00 Eastern, to see if it all blows up in my face and maybe learn something new about where virtualization is going in this era of cloud computing.
Register here and download the calendar reminder.
I will be presenting another MicroWarehouse webinar on August 4th at 2PM (UK/Ireland), 3 PM (central Europe) and 9AM (Eastern). The topic of the next webinar is how to make highly available Hyper-V clusters affordable for SMEs and large enterprise branch offices. I’ll talk about the benefits of the solution, and then delve into what you get from this hardware + software offering, which includes better up-time, more affordability, and better performance than the SAN that you might have priced from HPE or Dell.
Interested? Then make sure that you register for our webinar.
A recording of this webinar can be viewed here, along with the slides and follow up reading/learning.
I am presenting a webinar on Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) on Friday at 2pm UK/Irish time, 3PM Central European, and 9am EST.
My job has many threads. Sometimes I am down-deep in the weeds on techie stuff. Sometimes I’m delivering training. Part of what I do is raise awareness. This webinar falls into that category; the target audience is sales and technical staff that know little-to-nothing about EMS and what Microsoft can do for device/application management, identity and security from the cloud.
So if you want to find out what EMS can add, then tune in for this 1 hour webinar.
I’ll be joining fellow Cloud and Datacenter Management (Hyper-V) MVP Andy Syrewicze for a webcast by Altaro on June 14th at 3PM UK/Irish time, 4PM CET, and 10AM Eastern. The topic: What’s new in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V (and related technologies). There’s quite a bit to cover in this new OS that we expect to be release during Microsoft Ignite 2015. I hope to see you there!
I spent Saturday afternoon in the offices of Microsoft Ireland at the very successful Azure Global Bootcamp event in Dublin. Other speakers covered a variety of topics for the 160 (approx) attendees and I wrapped up the day with a session on using Azure Site Recovery as a virtual DR site in the cloud for Hyper-V, VMware, and physical servers.
I was pretty exhausted going into the session, but it was good fun for me to do it. The crowd was engaged, and they even laughed at one or two of my attempts at humour. There was loads of engagement afterwards which was as much fun, even if maybe 95% of the audience were developers 
You can find my PowerPoint deck on SlideShare:
Here are a few photos that some folks took:
Starting off [Image credit: Niall Moran, Microsoft]
One of the two rooms used on the day [Image credit: Ryan Mesches, Microsoft]
I stood between the audience and food – so I had some fun [Image credit: Rob Allen, Unity]
Vikas Sahni (organiser & speaker), Bob Duffy (SQL MVP and speaker), and me.
About 95% of the audience identified themselves as developers to one of the previous speakers. Around 40% of the room claimed to already have DR services in place. So I’m curious why so many stuck around for an IT pro topic on DR. Maybe they wanted a cheaper, cloud-based alternative?
Yesterday the news was that Microsoft had cancelled Ignite 2016 in Chicago. The event was previously scheduled for May 2016. Last night, Microsoft announced that Ignite 2016 was rescheduled. Now the event will be held in Atlanta on September 26-30.
Microsoft also announced the rest of their big event schedule for 2016:
Note that you can register now for Ignite. If you register early then the price is $1920 USD. That’s just €1,677 at this morning’s exchange rate.
Microsoft has a lot of experience of running large events in Atlanta. MGX is regularly held here, and this brings thousands of Microsoft’s sales staff from around the world to party hard at this internal event.
In my experience, Atlanta has an excellent international airport. I’ve transited trough Atlanta many times on the way to the west coast – there really is (or was) a leaf blower in the “do not try to bring one of these on board a plane” display case. The airport has large terminals with lots of services, unlike Chicago’s O’Haire which reminds me of a dungeon – narrow aisles with no seating, and angry shouty women staffing the teeny pre-packaged dodgy sandwich stalls (the international terminal).
I’ve never visited the city, but I get the feeling that there’s lots to see and do in this large southern city. Plus it’ll be September – maybe there’ll be an NFL game the weekend before – the Falcons are pretty good this year.
One of my theories yesterday was that Microsoft was shifting the schedule to suit product releases. I’ve always thought that Windows Server was on track to be released for the original schedule of Ignite – the core features are pretty good in TPv3. There’s some bug fixing to do, some polishing for new features like SET, and Containers and nested virtualization need some work, but there’s a fair amount of time left.
The real issue fro Microsoft is that System Center appears to be way behind, with the most recent technical preview indicating that they have just gotten started. And we still haven’t seen a public preview release of Azure Stack, the strategic glue for all the new cloud features of Windows Server 2016, such as the network fabric or Azure-consistent storage.
I think part of the decision to delay Ignite was to wait for the release of System Center and Azure Stack. Microsoft really needs to get the messaging of these products out there, and having Ignite 6 months before their release would have been a huge missed opportunity.
Let’s not forget Windows 10. By next September, Microsoft will have released Threshold 2 (this November) and Redstone 1 (June 2016), and Redstone 2 is expected in November 2016. That means there will be a lot of stuff to cover then so the timing will be fortuitous for IT pros that are currently managing or planning to manage Windows 10.
What does the schedule of Ignite mean to Windows Server? In case you’re unaware, Windows Server 2016 has adopted a similar development cycle to Azure, Office, and Windows 10. Windows Server will never be “finished”, but there will be interesting points in it’s life, as with Windows 10.
I think Microsoft will GA WS2016 in April. Some of the headline features that have been announced, or will be in coming months, might not be done yet, but they’ll come in later (let’s call them ..) Redstone updates and more (Glowstone or something else from Minecraft?!?!) in 2016 and beyond.
This will update System Center fans, but they should realize that a finished product is better than an unfinished one. And let’s get real here – updating WS2012 to WS2016 will be easy. Updating System Center is never easy, so they’re going to need time for planning, testing, and documenting the upgrade process of the elements of System Center that they use.
It’s fantastic news that Ignite continues. We’re in an era of permanent constant change (perma-change?) now. There’s so many things for us IT pros to keep up with: Windows Server (and the plethora of features), System Center, Azure Stack, Azure IaaS, EMS, Windows 10, OS deployment, Azure AD, Office 365, … the list goes on an on. It’s impossible to keep up so an event like Ignite gives us a week to concentrate and a change to get a start on new stuff.
Thanks Microsoft – I’m looking forward to Ignite. And remember, even if you cannot go, you can watch the keynote live, many interesting sessions live, and every breakout session 24 hours later via stream or download.
[EDIT] Microsoft later announced that Ignite 2016 was rescheduled from May to September and moved from Chicago to Atlanta.
The Chicago Tribune (hidden behind a pay-wall, but accessible via some apps on mobile platforms) is reporting that Microsoft has cancelled Microsoft Ignite for Chicago in 2016. I’ve not seen the news on any other reputable news sites, but the Tribune is one of the big newspapers in the USA. I’m guessing that they heard the news via a leak in one of the city offices in Chicago – a city with a *cough* certain reputation – the number of politicians, civil servants and union leaders that had to be on stage and have their say when Microsoft announced Chicago as the venue for 2015 was laughable.
The venue, McCormick Place, got awful reviews from people. The local staff at the venue screamed at delegates like they were prison guards. Note that the “MSFT” staff (in purple shirts) were actually very friendly and helpful. The venue was miles from most of the hotels. The bus service was irregular. Taxis ripped people off, charging $65 for $12 trips. The food was horrendous – the McDonalds in the venue ran out of food one day! And the party was a collection of 45 minute long queues to get a food sample that was single-bite sized.
Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed the content. But the venue, McCormick Place, was rubbish. Opinions on Chicago seemed to depend on where you were from. Any Americans I spoke to didn’t like the city – some called it “a bit stabby”, but keep in mind that those issues were in other areas. Most foreigners liked the city. It’s easy to get to with lots of direct international (and national) connections via the dreadful international terminal at O’Haire airport. We arrived in on the Friday and enjoyed the sights of the city, despite some unfriendly locals, and our hotel room was simply a place to sleep.
Why did Microsoft cancel? The Tribune said that Microsoft declined to comment. Maybe the Tribune got the scoop before Microsoft is ready to talk.
Possibly:
Whatever happens, Microsoft needs in-person technical events. These big events educate and excite, and despite all the negativity about McCormick Place, Ignite 2015 had a lot of material to keep me interested. There is simply no way that I could have spent that much time watching webcasts – I still have stuff I haven’t watched from the last 6 months because of lack of time.
I guess we’ll have to wait on Microsoft to make some kind of formal announcement/leak to find out what’s really going on.
