Tag: Windows 10

Microsoft News Summary – 8 October 2014

Welcome to today’s cloud-heavy Microsoft news compilation.

Windows Server

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Windows Client

Azure

  • Introducing the Azure Automation Runbook Gallery: The time it takes to create functional, polished runbooks is a little faster thanks to the new Azure Automation Runbook Gallery.
  • More Changes to Azure by Scott Guthrie: Including support for static private IP support in the Azure Preview Portal, Active Directory authentication, PowerShell script converter, runbook gallery, hourly scheduling support.
  • Microsoft Certification Test Tool Preview for Azure Certified: The Microsoft Certification Test Tool for Azure Certified is designed to provide an assessment of compliance to technical requirements as part of the Azure Certified program. The test tool includes a wizard style automated section and questionnaire section to assess characteristics of a Virtual Machine image running in Microsoft Azure and generate results logs. More information on the Azure Certified program is available.
  • Announcing Support for Backup of Windows Server 2008 with Azure Backup: Due to feedback. Please note that this is x64 only and that there are system requirements.
  • Hybrid Connection Manager ClickOnce Application: ClickOnce installer for the Hybrid Connection Manager.
  • D-Series Performance Expectations: The new D-Series VMs provide great performance for applications needing fast, local (ephemeral) storage or a faster CPU; however, it’s important to understand a little about how the system is configured to ensure you’re getting an optimal experience.
  • Cloud App Discovery – Now with Excel and PowerBI Support: One of the top customer requests was to be able to perform analytics on the data collected in tools like Excel and PowerBI. Now you can take cloud app discovery data offline and explore and analyze the data with tools you already know–Excel and PowerBI.
  • A new region will open in India by the end of 2015: It makes sense; there are 1 billion people and some big corporations there.
  • Microsoft Azure Speed Test: Which Azure region is closest to you (remember that Internet geography is different to the planet’s geography. For example, where I work is a few miles from Europe North (Dublin), but the test shows me that Europe West provides me with lower latency (beaten, obviously, by CDN). My own testing using Azure Traffic Manager with geo-dispersed websites has verified this.

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Office 365

Miscellaneous

My Early Windows 10 Experiences

I took the plunge yesterday while preparing an Azure presentation – I performed an in-place upgrade of Windows 8.1 on my Toshiba KIRAbook to Windows 10. Initially I tried to do it via USB, but I’d not prepared a UEFI stick for the device (thanks for the tip Hans Vredevoort). I copied the install files onto the laptop and ran it – within half an hour I had a fully upgraded machine with all my apps, programs, data, and settings in place. I think the only thing I had to do was re-install LastPass for IE.

The performance of the technical preview is excellent. Reboots were already blisteringly fast on this machine and now it’s not much more than a slow blink.

The start menu works as expected. I doubt I’ll use multiple screens much but it’s easy to use too. The weird experience was that I kept expecting to see the start screen when I clicked on Start. I have the ability to go back to the Win8 behaviour but I won’t; instead I just pinned my usual warm apps to the start menu, while my usual hot apps were on the task bar as they were before the upgrade.

I was out on a customer site today performing a health audit of a hosting infrastructure. I had the KIRAbook with me, taking my notes in OneNote. It behaved normally and was stable. Performance was good, and as usual for this hardware, the battery was excellent.

This afternoon I was back in the office and showed the machine to my colleagues. While they are not IT people, most of them are comfy with tech because that’s what they sell. The Start Menu seemed like a hit. One odd reaction I got was “I want to be able to expand the start menu to a start screen”. The reasoning was that it was easier to search for something in a bigger screen if you had loads of stuff installed. I can understand that one.

Anyway, so far, so good. And like many others have said already, Windows 8 would have been a hit if it was like this.

Somewhere, Steven Sinofsky and Julie Larsson Green are seething.

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

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How you can currently use ASR

Office

Miscellaneous

Enable CTRL Keys in Windows 10 Command Prompt

In case you didn’t know, you can use CTRL + V to paste into Windows 10. This is off by default. You can enable it:

  1. Open Command Prompt
  2. Open the properties of the command prompt (right-click the top left corner)
  3. Browse to the Experimental tab
  4. Check the box for Enable Experimental Console Features. The CTRL key option is the only one checked by default. You can enable others if you want.
  5. Restart the Command Prompt

Yeah! Now you have copy/paste via the keyboard. My laptop has a very high screen res. Before the upgrade the text in the window was TINY and was not adjusted. By enabling experimental features, the text has been increased in size to make it legible.

Windows Server vNext Technical Preview is Available

You can see the features of the next version of Hyper-V (and related parts of Windows Server) here.

I just checked and you can find:

  • Windows Server (Standard) Technical Preview
  • Windows Server Datacenter Technical Preview
  • Hyper-V Server Technical Preview

The Windows 10 technical previews are also there.

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An image is available in the Azure gallery for the Windows Server Technical Preview. I deployed it in Europe North and it works fine.

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You can also get the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 10 Technical Preview.

What’s New in the Windows Server Technical Preview

The System Center preview (minus SCCM) is also available to download from MSDN. Note that App Controller no longer exists, and Windows Azure Pack should be used instead.

Edit#1

Microsoft has released the Windows Server & System Center previews to the general public.

Microsoft News Summary – 1 October 2014

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

Hyper-V

Windows Server

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Windows Client

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System Center

Azure

Security

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:

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Windows 10 Is The Next Version of Windows

There’s no Windows 9. It’s called Windows 10. I know there’s got to be a story behind this, probably one that we’ll never here, and probably related to a change in management, and possibly direction.

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Thank frak they did not call it “Windows” or “Windows One”, both of which were teased during the event.

You can see a video of Windows 10 in action here:

Not much was shown that we didn’t already know about. This is a very early build. I think this in conjunction with the skip of Windows 9, suggests to me that there was a re-planning quite late in the process.

The technical preview (a very early build) is out tomorrow (Oct 1st). Join the Windows Insiders program to get your hands on this, probably unstable and frequently updated, build and contribute feedback.

The goal of this build is to show that Windows 7 users can move to Windows 10, like moving from a Prius to a Tesla without re-learning to drive.

The only mention of Windows Server Threhsold was that the preview will be out after the release of the Windows 10 preview.

On the schedule of Windows 10:

  • Tech preview on Oct 1st
  • Consumer preview in early 2015
  • GA in mid-late 2015 … further convincing me that there was a re-start on planning because we originally thought RTM would be around April 2015

Joe Belfiore will be one of the keynote speakers at TechEd Europe. I think we’ll hear much more then regarding enterprise features.

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EDIT #1

Microsoft released a recording of today’s event. Why oh why could they live stream this over Azure if they were going to even bother having cameras there?

EDIT#2

Another video was released, showing the concept of Continuum, the adaptive UI experience for convertible devices.