Tag: Hardware

Microsoft News – 20 November 2014

There are a lot of upset people because of (1) the Azure outage and (2) how Microsoft communicated during the outage. We had a couple of affected customers. The only advice I can give to Microsoft is:

  1. Don’t deploy your updates to everything at the same time.
  2. Now you know how customers feel when bad updates are issued. Bring back complete testing.
  3. Communicate clearly during an issue – that includes sending emails to affected customers. You’ve got monitoring systems & automation – use them. Heck, you even blogged about how (Azure) Automation could be used by customers to trigger actions.

Hyper-V

Azure

Miscellaneous

Microsoft News Summary – 22 October 2014

Hyper-V

Windows Server

Azure

System Center

Microsoft Partners

Miscellaneous

Lenovo Might Launch Windows 8.1 Version of Yoga Tablet

I love my Lenovo Yoga 8, an 8” Android tablet. It’s what keeps me sane while travelling, it’s my bedside reading machine, and it’s my “couch” machine for those evenings when I’m “meerkatting” in front of the TV.

image

That’s why I was excited to see a story on WPCentral that thinks maybe that Lenovo might launch a Windows 8.1 version of one of the Yoga tablets (there is also a 10” version).

The Android tablet is ARM based – a low power ARM CPU. If Lenovo are releasing a Windows tablet in this form factor then I hope it is Intel-based and not ARM; ARM would require the soon-to-be-extinct Windows RT.

The original story on HDBlog.it (in Italian) thinks that this might be based on the 10.1” HD+ tablet, a larger cersion of my 8” entertainment and consumption machine, also with crazy long battery life and a built-in mini-kickstand.

WPCentral says that Lenovo has an announcement on Windows and Android tablets on October 9th. We won’t have long to see if this rumour is a fact.

Technorati Tags: ,

Microsoft News Summary – 6 October 2014

The big news today is that HP is “planning” to split. No, not leave, but divide into two.

Hyper-V

Windows Server

Office 365

Miscellaneous

Microsoft News Summary – 3 October 2014

The dust has settled a little bit after the craziness of the past few days. Here’s some regular news.

Windows Server

System Center

Windows Client

Azure

clip_image001

How you can currently use ASR

Office

Miscellaneous

RunAs Radio – Software Defined Storage with Aidan Finn

I recorded an episode of the RunAs Radio podcast as a guest with MVP Richard Campbell a couple of of weeks ago, where we talked about using Windows Server in conjunction with commodity hardware to build software-based storage solutions:

Richard talks to Aidan Finn about Software Defined Storage. Picking up he left off in April talking about Microsoft’s Scale-Out File Server, the whole concept of Software Defined Storage is abstracting the details of the storage hardware away from the actual storage process. Aidan digs into how mixtures of SSD and spinning drives to optimize performance using Windows 2012 R2 Storage Spaces reduces costs and simplifies getting significant amounts of storage without any custom gear. And as Aidan says, in the end, it’s all just Windows. Storage continues to evolve, and not just for the big enterprise folks – there are clustered storage solutions for small and medium businesses too!

Here is the whitepaper that I refer to where 1,000,000 IOPS was achieved with a single JBOD tray. Here is the video that I produced that Richard mentions.

You can subscribe to the podcast (RSS here) via all the usual means, and you can download the MP3 here.

Or maybe you would like to see how a new 2U Cluster-in-a-Box (for cloud, branch office and SME deployments) model from DataOn has hit over 2 MILLION IOPS?

New Microsoft Arc Touch Bluetooth Mouse

Microsoft just announced a bunch of new peripherals, including the new Arc Touch Bluetooth Mouse. I still have the original Arc mouse, which I’ve loved for the many years that I’ve had it. In case you don’t know – I really like Microsoft’s mice and keyboards, especially their substantial mice for desktop computers.

I just picked up the new Arc Touch mouse that is Bluetooth (4.0 low power) capable (working for a distributor has it’s benefits!). The fold-to-flat award-winning design is a space saver. It auto powers off the mouse, powered by 2 x AAA batteries. And it’s light. It paired straight away with my Windows 8.1 Toshiba KIRAbook, and the touch strip works nicely with the touch interface in Windows – there’s also a slightly audible scrolling noise to simulate a wheel movement with physical feedback. It’s working well on a wooden desk with no mouse mat.

ATBM

Embedded image permalink

Hopefully this new Arc mouse will last me as long as the last one has!

Technorati Tags: ,

Microsoft News Summary – 16 September 2014

Windows 9 steals the headlines this morning. No; it is not out. No; you cannot download a preview yet. And yes; the person you know who says otherwise is an idiot. We know what we know – Microsoft is planning a sneak peek event for the enterprise audience on September 30th. There are no more facts than that.

Hyper-V

  • Emulex’s crappy drivers saga goes on: They claimed they fixed the VMQ issue. It looks like they never did any tests involving Live Migration.

System Center

Windows

  • It’s Official – Microsoft to Unveil “Next Chapter” for Windows on September 30: I think Paul Thurrott was the first to report this. It will focus on the enterprise audience – the one currently sticking with Windows 7. I guess it will be no more than a show and tell. I still believe TechEd Europe is the bigger reveal, as I reported back at TechEd North America. In the meantime, ignore every rumour and “expert” that you work with or is in the general media.

Azure

  • Azure Websites Virtual Network Integration: This is big – Azure Websites is happy to announce support for integration between your Azure VNET and your Azure Websites. Now you can integrate your websites with your VMs – in preview and only for Standard websites with up to 1 VNet connected.
  • How to host a Scalable and Optimized WordPress for Azure in minutes: Deploy the new instance from the preview portal, and be able to scale WordPress out to meet demand. Very nice solution – I could have used that for this site!
  • Azure Active Directory Basic is now GA: Azure AD Basic is now available for purchase through the volume-licensing channel – if like Premium then it will only be available through large enterprise VL programs, i.e. not Open, etc, but I don’t think SMEs want this feature, although they would like Azure RMS.

Security

Gaming

clip_image001

 

Video – Introducing Windows Server Software-Defined Storage

This is a video that I recorded for my employers, MicroWarehouse, a distributor in Dublin Ireland (nothing to do with a similarly named UK company). In it, I introduce the software-defined storage techs of Windows Server 2012 R2, focusing on Storage Spaces, Scale-Out File Server, Cluster-in-a-Box and Hyper-V on SMB 3.0, all built using hardware by DataOn Storage. There are some sample designs, and some indicative RRP pricing.

Note that this is strictly a high-level video that is intended to introduce concepts.

image

Microsoft News Summary – 1 September 2014

Frak! It’s September already!?!?!?! Here’s my first update in a since last Wednesday – travel and events took priority.

The big news broke late on Friday and Saturday. The moron judge presiding over the FBI/Microsoft case cancelled the stay on the order to force Microsoft to turn over data from the Dublin data centre to the US feds, thus breaching privacy and violating Irish and European laws. Microsoft is refusing to comply and is appealing to a higher court in the USA.

Hyper-V

Legal

Azure

Windows Intune

PowerShell

Surface

  • What’s the Future for Surface Tablets? IMO, doom. It’s impossible to sell a business machine to business users if you don’t give businesses a way to buy the device and an SLA-enforced mechanism to support it. First of you to say "BYOD" gets a kick in the groin for drinking 2-year old Gartner KoolAid.

Licensing

VMware

Consumer