Tag: Microsoft

Microsoft News Summary – 12 September 2014

The big news yesterday was the leaking of screenshots of Windows “Threshold” (9). Most of them were more of the same, but we saw confirmation of some recently rumoured changes.

Windows

System Center Operations Manager

System Center Data Protection Manager

Azure

  • StorSimple Snapshot Manager: StorSimple Snapshot Manager is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that simplifies data protection and backup management in a Microsoft Azure StorSimple environment. You can use StorSimple Snapshot Manager to configure backup schedules and retention policies, generate on-demand backups, and clone or restore volumes.
  • The Microsoft Azure Sales Strategy for Small and Medium Enterprises: An article by me on Petri.com
  • Announcing Long Term Retention for Azure Backup: Previously, we had announced long term retention for cloud backups from DPM. With this month’s release of the Azure Backup service, we are extending that capability to cloud backups from all currently supported SKUs of Windows Server and Windows Server Essentials.
  • Getting started with Azure Backup: It’s nice and easy, but resellers really could use a central portal.

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Retaining my backup of PowerShell scripts for 9 years!

Windows Intune

  • Intune to support iOS 8 on Day 0: Next week iOS 8 will be released to the public, and the Windows Intune service will be ready on Day 0 to manage devices on this new version of the platform. With Managed Domains, enterprise data will be tracked from its source, which will allow management systems to better separate corporate from personal data. Document Extensions will provide significant interaction between applications, introducing new extensibility opportunities that iOS hasn’t had previously.
  • Day Zero Support for iOS 8 with Intune: Earlier this week Apple released iOS 8 to developers (public release on 9/17), and the Windows Intune service is ready to support your use of it.
  • Data sent to and from Windows Intune and System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager: As a Windows Intune customer, you have entrusted Microsoft to help protect your data. Microsoft values this trust, and the privacy and security of your data is one of our top concerns.

Office 365

  • Microsoft withdrew KB2889866 from Windows Update: "We are investigating an issue that is affecting the September 2014 update for Microsoft OneDrive for Business. Therefore, we have removed the update from availability for now. We apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause." < You wouldn’t care if you followed my "wait 1 month before approving updates" advice.
  • Office 365 Certificate Update Will Affect Some Exchange Deployments: On Sept. 23, 2014, Microsoft is planning a certificate change to the Microsoft Federation Gateway. Organizations that have hybrid networks combining Office 365 services with Exchange Server or that use the Microsoft Federation Gateway to establish trust relationships need to set up a certificate update process before the Sept. 23 deadline to "avoid any disruption" in service, according to Microsoft’s Wednesday announcement.

Security

  • Azure Rights Management Administration Tool: Azure Rights Management Administration Tool installs the Windows PowerShell module for Azure Rights Management. Azure Rights Management provides the ability to enable the use of digital rights management technology in organizations that subscribe to the Office 365 services.

Miscellaneous

  • Microsoft stock hits highest price since 1999: With that in mind, Microsoft’s stock has hit a 52-week high today (Sept 6th), coming in at $45.93 at the time of closing, suggesting that Wall Street appears to approve of new CEO Satya Nadella’s direction for the company. FYI – the stock is now at $47.
  • Forget Conventional Wisdom, Microsoft (MSFT) Is A Growth Stock Again: Microsoft sales are growing at an annualized rate of over 25 percent again and the stock is up over 30 percent in the ensuing 7 months, well over double the increase in the broader market during that time.
  • (UK Government, William) Hague reassures MPs of data safety in Microsoft’s Dublin Data Centre: William Hague, the leader of the House of Commons, said there is nothing to fear after an MP said he was concerned about the security of parliamentary data stored on Microsoft’s Cloud-based servers in Europe. Billy-boy should read the news more, as one of his colleagues points out. This is exactly why Microsoft is fighting the US government on foreign-located data access.

Microsoft News Summary – 11 September 2014

More Azure changes. Keeping up with this is difficult!

Azure

  • More changes announced: VPN Support for Azure Websites, Scalable CMS in the app gallery, role-based access control, and more stuff were announced yesterday.
  • Update for Azure Backup for Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent: The agent now supports weekly backups with 120 retention points, and 9 years of retention (one recovery point every 4 weeks). You can use this version of the agent together with the Microsoft Azure Site Recovery service to protect virtual machines that are running on Windows Server 2012 R2 CORE SKU and Microsoft Hyper V Server 2012 R2 into Azure.

Office 365

Legal

Microsoft News Summary – 10 September 2014

In other news, Apple proves that wearable devices are a pointless Gartner-esque fad, and those preachy tax-avoiding frakkers, U2, suck donkey balls.

Hyper-V

System Center Operations Manager

  • OM12 Sizing Helper: This is a Windows Phone app version of the OpsMgr 2012 Sizing Helper document.

Azure

Miscellaneous

  • Microsoft rumored to be poised to buy Minecraft creator for $2 billion: This blocky game is the hottest thing with kids. I’ve spent many an hour *cough* helping *yes, helping* with constructions & adventures on an iPad and Xbox. And to be honest, it is a good problem solving game and it encourages kids to interact, based on what I’ve observed.

Intel 18-Core CPUs Surely Will Affect Microsoft Server Licensing

Read MVP Didier Van Hoye’s take here.

I’ve been thinking for some time (I think VMware even quoted my blog a few years ago) that Microsoft would eventually switch to per-core licensing for Windows Server. I think the emergence of 18-core CPUs makes that inevitable. Right now, if you want 36 cores, you’re probably looking at using 4 x 10-core CPUs, which is 2 Windows Server licenses (each license covers 2 CPUs). Those new CPUs halve Microsoft’s revenue on the upper end of the market.

I would be surprised if, come April, there isn’t an announcement of a change to Windows Server licensing, in conjunction with the GA of Windows Server “2015” (Threshold) in (maybe) May.

The key things here would be:

  • There must be a smooth transition process – when MSFT switched SQL Server to per-core it was quite confusing for resellers and customers. Note that resellers choosing to work with a good distributor helps out quite a bit here, and in turn helps their customers get best value and stay legit!
  • The price for smaller deployments cannot increase. In my opinion, the cost of Windows Server Standard/Datacenter must stay the same on a machine with 2 x 6-core CPUs before and after the release of Threshold. If one dual-CPU (covering 2 6-core CPUs) copy of WS2012 R2 costs $882, then a per-core license should cost $73.50. We can then license that same server with “WS2015” for 12 x 73.50 ($882).

If Microsoft gets it right, then the transition could be smooth. To be honest, I think it might even simplify licensing – the non-techy people who buy licensing struggle with the per-dual CPU model of WS2012 and WS2012 R2.

However, if the ivory tower residents get it wrong (i.e. those same folks think that only Fortune 1000’s and cloud hosters run servers – kids, drugs are baaaad) then we could be looking at a VMware vRAM type of backlash that would do serious damage to the current hot streak that the cloud OS is on.

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Microsoft News Summary – 3 September 2014

The idiotic US government is continuing in their quest to kill off all US interests in cloud computing, thanks to “justice” Plesk contemplating placing contempt of court charges on Microsoft. Sad thing is, the contempt is justified.

Hyper-V

System Center

Azure

Microsoft

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

An Old Post Of Mine On Ballmer That Makes Interesting Reading

I’ve just re-read a post I wrote in 2010 about the future of Steve Ballmer. My two topics of focus were Windows Phone 7 (released that day) and the lack of a Windows tablet at the time.

I thought WinPho would struggle behind iOS and Android, mainly because of apps. I was not wrong. Things have improved, but there’s still issues with app quality and availability.

We now know that Ballmer bought into the Sinofsky plan (sounds like some dodgy French plan to keep out invading forces, and we know how those tend to work out). Windows 8 came, Windows 8.1 came, Windows 8.1 Update 1 came, and still Microsoft struggles in the tablet market. I thought (and I was not along) that, despite everything, Microsoft should get WinPho working on tablet devices. Instead we got the confusing and failed Windows RT, which is now being killed off through a merger with Windows Phone for ARM devices.

Fun times!

Oh yeah, I completely underestimated the impact of smartphones and tablets on the consumer market.

Microsoft News Summary – 27 August 2014

The rumours on “Threshold” are swirling through the Ethernets. Take nothing seriously until you see it for yourself on your own monitor.

Windows Server

image

System Center Operations Manager

Windows 9

Azure

Microsoft News Summary – 26 August 2014

I know very few businesses deployed Windows 8, but any "upgrade" that requires a wipe & replace is not a service pack. However, that’s what Microsoft now thinks, and that’s had an impact on the Windows 8 support policy. Someone in Redmond needs a quick kick in the nether region, because coffee clearly won’t be strong enough.

And in other news on this slow morning, Steve Ballmer binged on a TV show featuring one of Hollyweird’s plastic surgery victims. Yeah; it’s always a slow period in the build up to big announcements.

Microsoft News Summary – 20 August 2014

The headline news from yesterday is that Steve Ballmer has resigned his new position from the Microsoft board to focus on “teaching” and his duties as the new owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA basketball franchise. He’s still the largest independent owner of MSFT stock.

Microsoft

Virtual Machine Manager

  • VMM 2012 Self-Service users cannot open a console session to a virtual machine: When you try to connect to the console session of a virtual machine (VM) that is running in Windows Server 2012 by using Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager or Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Service Pack 1 (SP1), the connection fails, and you receive the following error message – Virtual Machine Manager lost the connection to the virtual machine for one of the following reasons.

Azure

Office 365