Microsoft | Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Microsoft News – 23 October 2014

It’s the calm before the storm of announcements from TechEd Europe 2014.

Window Server

Step-By-Step – Creating a Windows 2012 R2 Lab in Azure: Do it on a budget.

Desktop

Windows 10 – Security and Identity Protection for the Modern World: With this release Microsoft will have nearly everything in place to move the world away from the use of single factor authentication options, like passwords.

Azure

Instance-Level Public IP Address: VMs now can have dedicated public IPs and not rely just on the cloud service VIP.
Migrate Azure Virtual Machines between Storage Accounts: It’s not pretty but the supplied PoSH will abstract that for you.
WebJobs goes into full production: You can start uploading tasks to run in your web hosting plans.

Events

What to Expect at Microsoft TechEd Europe 2014: An article by me on Petri.com

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Azure,Windows 10,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Networking,Storage,Events

Microsoft News Summary – 22 October 2014

Hyper-V

Hot Add & Remove Static Memory in a Hyper-V vNext Virtual Machine: You can do this in vNext.

Windows Server

SmbStorageTier.ps1: A simple way to pin files to tiers in Scale-Out File Servers

Azure

Azure’s getting bigger, faster and more open: G series super-RAM VMs, premium storage, CoreOS Linux, Docker, and Cloudera coming to Azure.
5 Ways to Move Virtual Machines into Microsoft Azure: An article I wrote for Petri.com.
Attaching disks to a VM in Azure: Yes, you can.

System Center

System Center Advisor Just Got Even Better: The SC Advisor team are doing their own hard work to make it better and better each week.
Microsoft Partners with Dell on New ‘Cloud in a Box’: The so-called Azure is actually WAP/SysCtr/Hyper-V on Dell h/w.
Cloud Platform System (CPS) – Azure Innovation Now in Your Data Center: The official statement.

Microsoft Partners

Signature Cloud Support Benefit Overview: How competency-holding partners can get free support for Azure and Office 365

Miscellaneous

Microsoft’s Patch Problems Continue: Sigh.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,WIndows Server 2015,Storage,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,System Center,Hardware

Finishing Preparations Of My TechEd Europe Presentation

I am in the midst of finishing off my presentation for TechEd Europe 2014, CDP-B329 From Demo to Reality: Best Practices Learned from Deploying Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V.

The session drills into all the things that make previous big announcements & demos possible, and talks about those lesser known features that solve real problems. I’m covering a lot of stuff in this session. I submitted the draft deck a while ago, thinking that I’d have to cull a lot of it to fit within the limit of 75 minutes. Well, I did my first timed rehearsal tonight and I have a bit of wiggle room, maybe to even add in some more demos.

Speaking of which … my demos Open-mouthed smile Fast networking, good host hardware, and LOTS of PowerShell. All my demos are driven by PowerShell. Don’t think “ugh, boring!”. Nope. It’s all very visual, I assure you! There are ways, means, and tricks to show you the goodies even with a scripting language! Heck! PowerShell is even a part of the product that I want to demo! Right now I have 9 demos to show, and that might expand.

If you are coming to TechEd then I hope to see you at CDP-B329. Right now, I’m scheduled for Wednesday morning, but I heard I might be moved to the timeslot of doom on Friday at 08:30 Please check the box for my session on the Schedule Builder to try change their mind before the move me!!!!! My session is confirmed for Wednesday at 10:15 in Hall 8.0 Room A2 (seats 1174 people!!!) – hit the schedule builder and check my session (CDP-B329) if it sounds interesting to you.

And by the way – a huge THANK YOU to Didier Van Hoye (aka @workinghardinit at http://workinghardinit.wordpress.com/) for his help. He helped me sort out some problems in 2 of my demos. Didier is a class example of an MVP working in the community.

Technorati Tags: Events,Microsoft,Windows Server 2012 R2,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,PowerShell

Microsoft Ignite Becomes the New Microsoft Uber-Conference

It’s a reuse of the Office partner training label, but it’s simple and I like it: Microsoft Ignite. Hopefully my Speaker Idol win carries over, I don’t screw up in Barcelona, and I get to speak there!

This is bigger than MEC, TechEd, and the other tech conferences being merged:

Azure
Exchange
Intune
Lync
Office 365
Project
SharePoint
SQL Server
Surface
System Center
Visual Studio
Windows
Windows Server
And more

At the same prices as TechEd, this is a much higher value ticket because of the bigger breadth of content that you can absorb.

Technorati Tags: Events,Microsoft

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

Hyper-V did not find virtual machines to import from the location . The operation failed with error code ‘32784’: Didier Van Hoye reminds you that you should have tested your rollback plans and not made assumptions.

Windows Server

Getting started with Windows Volume Replication? here are two main scenarios for Storage Replica in the Windows Server Technical Preview. This is one of the more interesting features in Windows Server vNext for me.

Office 365

What’s New – September 2014: What did MSFT do last month?
Announcing availability of new Office 365 plans for small and midsized businesses: Here’s the official announcement. There is A LOT of confusion out there. Customers of MicroWarehouse can talk to Nicole to get the facts that even MSFT don’t have!

Miscellaneous

HP to split into two companies, one focused on PCs/printers and one on enterprise computing: A story that the WSJ started on Sunday

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,WIndows Server 2015,Office 365,Hardware,Licensing

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

Windows Server Technical Preview – Storage Survival Guide: Links to articles, blogs, downloads.
Microsoft Announces Windows Server and System Center Plans: Microsoft has started releasing information on the next versions of Windows Server and System Center, as well as details on how Windows 10 can be managed using System Center Configuration Manager and Windows Intune.

System Center

Automation–Windows Azure Pack & Service Management Automation–Automated Tenant Deprovisioning: This topic is one that has been coming up more and more as the usage of Windows Azure Pack (WAP) increases.

Windows Client

Install Windows Server Technical Preview in Microsoft Azure: How to get the new technical preview of Windows Server up and running in the cloud.
Microsoft’s Windows 10: More on the ‘under the covers’ security, Store features: Mary Jo Foley copy/oasted a Microsoft blog post before it was removed.
Windows 10 preview for phones and ARM devices isn’t due until ‘well into 2015’: According to Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore

Azure

Disaster Recovery to Azure using Azure Site Recovery is now GA: The virtual DR in Azure solution is now in production & supported.

How you can currently use ASR

Office

Announcing Office Sway – reimagine how your ideas come to life: This reminds me of a Google service … it’ll be gone in 2 years.
Microsoft’s New Office 365 Plans for SMBs Now Available: Microsoft’s Office 365 subscription plan reorganization for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) took effect yesterday.

Miscellaneous

Nobody Can Win The Cloud Pricing Wars: The cost is getting so low, it’s almost trivial for anyone to absorb the costs of running infrastructure in the cloud, but you have to wonder as the cloud pricing wars continue, how low can they go and if it’s a war anyone can win.
Introducing Roku Screen Mirroring Beta for Microsoft Windows and Android Devices: As a Rocku customer (working for a Roku distributor) I cannot wait for this.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,WIndows Server 2015,System Center,WAP,Windows 10,Azure,DR,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,Hardware

Microsoft News Summary – 1 October 2014

There’s not all that much news to cover this morning. Oh … hold on …

Hyper-V

Hyper-V Virtual Switch Performance – Dynamic VMQ: A feature designed to provide optimal processor utilization across changing workload that was not possible with static processor allocation for VMQ as done in Windows 7 (or Windows Server 2008 R2 release)
Changing Ubuntu Screen Resolution in a Hyper-V VM: A nugget of info from Ben Armstrong.
Hyper-V Failover Cluster Validation – think twice: CSVs will be offlined for the tests.

Windows Server

What is Windows Server ODX? A post by me on Petri.com
How to use the Test-StorageHealth.ps1 PowerShell script with different configurations: Test a SOFS with different configurations.
Storage Spaces Survival Guide (Links to presentations, articles, blogs, tools): Jose Barreto shares his favorite links related to Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 R2.
Windows 2003? Let it go! Didier Van Hoye offers more reasoning to start your upgrade ASAP.

Windows Client

Introducing Windows 10 for Business: I have links to more stuff on my post.
An IT Pro’s Perspective on Windows 10: A post by me on Petri.com.
Windows 10 – Great news for partners: Advice for partners on the new OS.

System Center

Windows 10 enterprise management with System Center Configuration Manager and Intune: I think SCCM management is going to become more important with the arrival of frequent OS updates.
Windows Azure Pack VM Deployment Tip: VMM VM Template + Default Network Configuration = Potential Issues; Workaround Enclosed: Covering a known issue [Failure when attempting to Deploy Standalone VMs (VMM VM Templates)] when leveraging the WAP tenant portal and VMM VM templates.
Updated SMA Runbook Toolkit (SMART) download, with new Visualization and Dependency Mapping Tool: The SMA Runbook Toolkit (SMART) has seen multiple component releases so far, and this time Microsoft is bringing them together in a single download package.
Designing VM Roles with SMA in mind: SMA Runbooks can be triggered by Windows Azure Pack events like VM Role creation. You can configure this by going to the VM Cloud automation tab and linking a runbook to an Azure Pack known object like “Microsoft VMRole“.
iOS 8 support now available for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager via Extension for Windows Intune: Manage those iDevices.
Cumulative Update 3 for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager: Is now available. See the changes. And here are the things to consider before deploying it.
New Guided Walkthrough for troubleshooting ConfigMgr 2012 software update synchronization issues: If you experience issues with software update synchronization issues in ConfigMgr 2012 then this troubleshooter is a great place to start.
Wish you knew what configuration change caused an issue? Or what changed on a server? (Now available in Advisor): Backed by popular demand we are proud to announce the availability of the Change Tracking Intelligence pack in System Center Advisor. With this intelligence pack you can now track all Software and Windows Service changes on your servers. Very nice!
Recommendations for antivirus exclusions that relate to Operations Manager: This article introduces some recommendations for antivirus (AV) exclusions that relate to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, System Center 2012 Operations Manager, and System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager.

Azure

Microsoft Azure Announced as Cloud Computing Winner at 2014 Tech Impact Awards: Seattle Business magazine announced Microsoft Azure as the 2014 Tech Impact Awards winner in the Cloud Computing category.
SAP on Microsoft Azure – announcing new certifications including Oracle Database: Starting yesterday, you can run SAP Business Suite, Business All-In-One, and NetWeaver Application Server using Oracle DB or SAP ASE on Azure.
Monitoring, Diagnosing and Troubleshooting Azure Storage: The Azure Storage service includes sophisticated capabilities to help you to manage the challenges of building services in the cloud.
Microsoft Offers Price Reductions on Select Azure Services: We like price reductions. Some of them are significant.
Troubleshooting Common Configuration Issues with Azure Backup: This blog post helps resolve common configuration issues with the Microsoft Cloud Backup Solution, Azure Backup. Customers typically encounter them at the time of Azure Backup installation or registration.
New D-Series of Azure VMs with 60% Faster CPUs, More Memory and Local SSD Disks: A new type of Azure VMs for those who need more read speed from temporary caches, e.g. SQL Server.
New D-Series Virtual Machine Sizes: More on the D-series VMs.
Open Sourcing Automation Tools for Testing Linux Images on Microsoft Azure: Microsoft are open sourcing their test automation tools in a GitHub project, making it easy to validate Linux images for running in Azure. As noted in a recent blog post by SUSE, these test automation tools are Powershell, Python, and BASH scripts that allow Linux images to be tested for compatibility with Azure.
Step-By-Step – Creating a File Share in Azure: File storage in Azure offers shared storage for applications and virtual machines in Azure. The access to the share uses SMB 2.1 protocol. basically, apps and VM can access date using a mounted file share, and on-premise applications can access file data in a share via the File storage API.
Introduction to Migrating Server Workloads to Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Azure: A TechNet Radio … video.

Security

Blood-crazed Microsoft axes Trustworthy Computing Group: Microsoft is closing its Trustworthy Computing Group as part of the loss of 2,100 jobs in a restructuring plan unveiled on Thursday (19/09/2014).

Office 365

Delivering the first chapter of Groups in Office 365: Grouping of users will be rolled out to all customers that have an Exchange Online or Office 365 commercial subscription, both new and existing. Eligible Office 365 plans include the Office 365 Enterprise E1–E4 subscription plans (including the corresponding A2–A4 and G1–G4 plans for Academic and Government customers, respectively), Office 365 Business Essentials and Business Premium plans, Office 365 Small Business, Small Business Premium and Midsize Business plans and Office 365 Kiosk plan.
Step-By-Step – Setting up the new Azure AD Sync Tool: AAD Sync is Microsoft’s new directory synchronization tool that simplifies the process of connecting Azure AD to Windows Server AD. It also makes it more simple to connect complex, multi-forest deployments.

The Funnies

America’s CBS attempts to out-dumb CNN:

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,WIndows Server 2012 R2,WIindows Server 2015,Windows 10,System Center,WAP,Configuration Manager,Intune,PowerShell,Scripting,Operations Manager,Azure,Backup,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Storage,Storage Spaces,Linux,Security,Office 365,Active Directory

Microsoft News Summary – 19 September 2014

The positive highlight for me is the excellent TechNet article on managing tiered Storage Spaces. The lowlight was the unannounced price changes in Azure – (A) it was unannounced (B) there was no notice, and (C) it means that customers cannot plan; customers hate each and every one of those, especially the latter.

Hyper-V

Resource Metering in Hyper-V: A post that I wrote for Petri.com.
Importing a Virtual Machine with an Incompatible Saved State: A nugget of info from Ben Armstrong.
Clustered Hyper-V Virtual Machine Prioritization: A post that I wrote for Petri.com.
“Error applying Hard Drive changes” on Generation 2 VMs: Another nugget of info from Ben Armstrong.

Window Server

Monitor Storage Tiers Performance in Windows Server 2012 R2: AWESOME article. More please!

Windows

The September 30th Microsoft Event: Paul Thurrott (on Windows Weekly) confirmed that this event will not be streamed. Major mistake in my opinion. The attendees are a small set of media, and the subject matter is Windows “Threshold” in the enterprise. Sure … let’s not let the IT pros who will make the recommendation see the event. That’s reeeealllly sensible. Let the Windows 8 insanity continue.

Azure

Azure VM price changes: The general purpose instances went up in price (fractions of a cent per hour) and the memory intensive instances went down. At least that’s the case for Europe North. There was no announcement from Microsoft – I found it by accident. Thanks to Arto Roth (@artoroth) for the confirmation.
Microsoft Azure StorSimple Getting Started Guides: This should prove useful for both StorSimple customers.
Azure Automation – Controlling Runbook Streams for Testing and Troubleshooting: This post will cover some concepts and best practices for controlling runbook streams that will help you debug and troubleshoot your runbooks.
Enabling CDN for Azure Websites: Enterprise functionality made easy & affordable.

Office 365

Launch documents and get started right away with the new Office 365 home page: Microsoft is launching a new home page for O365 – I still have the old one.

Licensing

SPLA Audit start to finish: SPLA is based on an honour system – but audits have become a way of life with such licensing programs.

Miscellaneous

Larry Ellison has "Retired" as Oracle CEO – Or has he? The San Francisco Chronicle asks this question.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Failover Clustering,Windows Server 2012 R2,Storage,Storage Spaces,Azure,Licensing,Cloud,Cloud Computing,PowerShell,Scripting,O365

Microsoft News Summary – 17 September 2014

Microsoft’s patch woes continue. A September update for Lync was pulled this week. Please: do not approve updates immediately; wait 1 month and let some other mug find the bugs for Microsoft.

Azure

Scale is never a problem with Azure Websites: Starting today, Azure Websites supports above 10 load balanced instances.

Networking

Announcing the Message Analyzer 1.1 Release: The completely indecipherable replacement for Network Monitor has just been upgraded to v1.1. I find this replacement for NetMon to be a complete mystery and the UI looks like something Symantec would come up with (random). It’s no wonder WireShark remains the #1 choice.
Introduction to Message Analyzer 1.1: A YouTube video to give you a high-level introduction to Message Analyzer 1.1. Includes a run-through of the UI and an overview of general features.

Deployment

WDS multicasting deployment results in corrupted installation images on cluster nodes: Hotfix – Windows Deployment Services (WDS) multicasting deployment may result in corrupted installation images (Microsoft Windows Imaging (.wim) file format images), and this situation causes the installation to fail on cluster nodes.

Office 365

Azure Active Directory Sync is now GAAzure Active Directory Sync is now GA: According to this Microsoft post, AAD Sync is Microsoft’s new "one sync to rule them all".
Microsoft Azure Active Directory Sync Services: This AD to WAD synchronisation tool went GA on Monday and is a replacement for DirSync.

Miscellaneous

Round two of Microsoft layoffs coming September 18: More of the 18,000 are about to receive their notice.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Networking,Deployment,WDS,Failover Clustering,Office 365,Active Directory

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

The Windows Azure Pack VM Role – Part 3 Resource Definition: This is part 3 from the blog series written by MVP Marc van Eijk.

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

Intelligence agencies attempt to map Internet: More on how the British and USA governments are spying on everyone.

Gaming

Minecraft to Join Microsoft: It’s official, the digital Lego alternative that rules the lives of so many kids is now owned by Microsoft.
Grand Theft Auto V is on Next Gen Consoles on Nov 18th: I’ve already ordered my new copy, and am looking forward to my 1 million credits for upgrading from my soon-to-be-defunct Xbox 360. Watch out: joeelway is gunning for you in Sandy Shores!!!!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Hardware,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Networking,Windows,Active Directory,Security