Intune

Webinar Recording – An Introduction to Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS)

I recently presented a webinar, hosted by my employer MicroWarehouse, on an introduction to Microsoft EMS. The timing worked out pretty sweetly – Microsoft had just announced:

The renaming of EMS from Enterprise Mobility Suite to Enterprise Mobility + Security, emphasising that security is most of what EMS does.
The new E5 EMS bundle that will be released in Q4 of 2016.

We have posted the recording of the session on learn.mwh.ie, along with the PowerPoint deck, and some follow up links for reading and learning. EMS is a great suite to learn about, and a great package to consider adopting for securing the endpoints (devices and users) against attack. And you’d be amazed how often the elements of EMS are the answers to security questions.

Speaking of security, our next webinar is coming on July 21st at 2PM UK/Irish time, 3PM CET or 9AM Eastern:

Technorati Tags: Security,Event Notes,Intune,EMS

Webinar: Introduction to EMS

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.

Technorati Tags: Events,Active Directory,Intune,Security

Microsoft News – 30 September 2015

Microsoft announced a lot of stuff at AzureCon last night so there’s lots of “launch” posts to describe the features. I also found a glut of 2012 R2 Hyper-V related KB articles & hotfixes from the last month or so.

Hyper-V

The uptime value of the Hyper-V Management console changes to the resume time of the last pause on Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2: The uptime value of the Hyper-V Management console changes to the resume time of the last pause instead of the time when backup completed
A virtual machine that is running on Windows Server 2012 R2 may not start: Not enough memory in the system to start the virtual machine ‘<Virtual Machine Name>’.
Non-queued commands are sent to disk controller on a Windows Server 2012 R2-based Hyper-V host server: A solution to a non-described issue – how weird!
Cluster service stops during the VSS backup in a Windows Server 2012 R2-based Hyper-V cluster: When multiple VSS backups are in progress, the cluster service may crash because of inconsistent state in the CSV VSS provider. Then, all virtual machines go offline because of the CSV failure.
Hyper-V storage migration failure and “ERROR_BAD_COMMAND” error in Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2012: You get “Migration did not succeed. Not enough disk space at ‘\’. ” when doing Storage Live Migration to a CSV or Hyper-V Replica stops with ERROR_BAD_COMMAND.

Windows Server

Applications can’t perform I/Os in Windows Server 2012 R2: When a disk fails or isn’t responsive and a large number of I/O port transitions are pending, I/Os may be stalled because the storage adapter is paused and will be resumed after a time-out period as specified by the miniport.
Changed cluster properties revert to default values on cluster nodes that run Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2008 SP2: ameSubnetDelay, SameSubnetThreshold, CrossSubnetDelay, or CrossSubnetThreshold properties revert to original values.
Cluster services go offline when there’s a connectivity issue in Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2012: The cluster nodes in both datacenters lose quorum and fail when a connectivity issue occurs between datacenters.

Azure

Using Azure Automation to take action on Azure Alerts: Reduce human effort by automation solutions to recurring problems.
Announcing expanded Microsoft Azure support for financial services customers: Adding European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) Information Assurance Framework (IAF) and the Shared Assessments Program (formerly known as BITS Shared Assessments).
Microsoft ExpressRoute – Office 365, Azure Government Cloud, more partners, simplified billing: Place equipment (e.g. SANs) in Microsoft “Meet-Me” locations with low latency connections (1-2 ms) to Azure.
Azure Container Service – Now and the Future: Azure Container Service builds on our work with Docker and Mesosphere to create and manage scalable clusters of host machines onto which containerized applications can be deployed, orchestrated, and managed.
Making the cloud more secure: Azure Security Center—a new Azure service that gives you visibility and control of the security of your Azure resources without impeding agility, and helps you stay ahead of cyber threats even as they evolve.
Azure File Storage, now generally available: Shared storage for APPLICATION data. This is not for user files.
How to use Azure File storage with Windows: Here are the Linux instructions.
Azure Storage Improvements: A roundup, including Premium Storage improvements and region support of Import/Export.
Monitor your Azure RemoteApp environment with OpInsight – Part 3: Monitoring the usage of your Azure RemoteApp collection.

Office 365

Announcing general availability of ExpressRoute for Office 365: This direct connection offers customers more predictable network performance, an SLA for guaranteed availability and additional data privacy.
Office 365 release options: Why am I not getting the Office 365 Click-To-Run update from Office 365? Are you in the Standard Release or First Release update rings?

EMS

Microsoft Intune Company Portal for Android: A new version.

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,Windows Server 2012 R2,Windows Server 2012,Backup,Failover Clustering,DR,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,PowerShell,Scripting,Networking,Containers,Storage,Remote Desktop Services,Office,Office 365,EMS,Intune

Microsoft News – 28 September 2015

Wow, the year is flying by fast. There’s a bunch of stuff to read here. Microsoft has stepped up the amount of information being released on WS2016 Hyper-V (and related) features. EMS is growing in terms of features and functionality. And Azure IaaS continues to release lots of new features.

Hyper-V

The Mysterious Case of Infrequent Network Connectivity Issues on 2 Hyper-V VMs Out of 40 Guests: Some PowerShell troubleshooting.
Storage Migration “Operation not allow for VM because Hyper-V State is yet to be initialized from Virtual Machine Configuration” (0x80070015): A fix or workaround to solve this problem.
Missing Hyper-V VMs on Windows 10 – Build 10547: A bug in this insider build hides non v5.0 VMs.
Hyper-converged with Windows Server 2016: Run your storage (Storage Spaces Direct, not SOFS) and Hyper-V cluster on the same hardware.
Configuring site awareness for your multi-active disaggregated datacenters: Solving one of the biggest issues with using Failover Clustering as a DR solution.
Introduction to Linux and FreeBSD on Hyper-V: The Linux Integration Services (LIS). Note that LIS 4.0 can be installed on some distros that have previous versions of LIS built in.
Running Hyper-V on Nano in Windows Server 2016 TP3: For you large scale customers that can afford to lose a host.
Running Nano from Windows Server 2016 TP3 on Hyper-V: Teeny tiny VMs for running born-in-the-cloud services.
Do you know how fast your disks are? I’ve seen expensive customer deployments with over-specced hosts and sh1te SANs where one ordinary VM could effectively shut down the cluster because the SAN couldn’t keep up.
Virtual Machine Storage Resiliency in Windows Server 2016: A very nice resiliency feature from the Hyper-V storage folks.

Windows Client

Windows 10 servicing and deployment guidance now available: Learn about Windows as a Service.
Introduction to Windows 10 servicing: How enterprises can keep devices current with the latest feature upgrades, make better use of Windows Update, and what the new servicing options mean for support lifecycles.
Windows 10 – Reducing the disk footprint: how to deploy Windows 10 with the new smaller installation footprint – great for machines with smaller storage (tablets and ultrabooks)

Azure

Azure Backup – Announcing general availability of backup for Azure IaaS VMs: This vital service for VMs has gone GA with a number of improvements.
Azure Backup of IaaS VMs Generally Available: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Remote Desktop Services DR Solution using ASR – Guidance: A best practices guide from Microsoft.
SharePoint DR Solution using ASR – Guidance: A best practices guide from Microsoft.
Microsoft Exchange DR Solution using ASR – Guidance: A best practices guide from Microsoft.
A VM that Azure Site Recovery helps protect goes into a resynchronization state: Each VHD must be 1023 GB or less.
Source Control Integration in Azure Automation: Manage your automations scripts.
Monitor your Azure RemoteApp environment with OpInsight – Part 1: A nice hack.
Monitor your Azure RemoteApp environment with OpInsight – Part 2: Continuing the hack.
Microsoft showcases the Azure Cloud Switch (ACS): Linux? Linux! Linux?! Yes; Linux.
September update – Azure Preview Portal improvements: Ibiza continues to evolve in the very long preview. This is starting to feel like the GMail beta. There are some good improvements here, but the lateral scale of the UI needs to be chopped by 80%, or we should get an 80″ Surface Hub for free with every Azure subscription.
Use Azure as Virtual DR Site for VMware and Physical Servers: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
August updates to Azure RemoteApp: Some updates.
How does Azure RemoteApp save user data and settings? I really do not like this solution – I prefer to use a virtual file server with domain membership on the VNet because I have some measure of control.
ADFS Publishing via Azure Traffic Manager : Ah yeah, geo-redundant ADFS.

System Center

Near Real-time Performance Data Collection in OMS: Could this be the start of the replacement of SCOM with a cloud service?
Deploy Software Defined Networks using Virtual Machine Manager : A document based on TP3 of System Center 2016.
2nd Edition of Microsoft System Center: Building a Virtualized Network Solution now available and free to download: Featuring Irish MVP, Damian Flynn.
How to Deploy Host Guardian Service using Service Templates in VMM Tech Preview 3: The new WS2016 Hyper-V security feature.

Office 365

The New Office is Here: In case you missed it, Office 2016 launched this week. O365 customers will get is based on which servicing branch they are in. You might not see it for months if you are in the Current Branch for Business (Pro Plus plans default to this).
What’s new in Office 2016: Why should you upgrade, and what should you look for if you have upgrade rights?
Admins—get ready for Office 2016, rollout begins September 22: I’d tweeted several months ago that I’d heard September was the month, so I am not surprised at all.
Announcing the Office 365 Service Trust Portal: STP is a service feature in Office 365 designed to provide deeper information on how Microsoft manages security, compliance and privacy.
Office 365 Import Service—migration to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business just became easier: An out-of-band transfer using hard disks, similar to the Azure import service.
Introducing Office 365 Planner: A “simple and highly visual way to organize teamwork”.
Step-By-Step – Setting up AD FS and Enabling Single Sign-On to Office 365: Set up single sign-on.
How to use your Office 365 subscription with Azure RemoteApp: There’s a new “with O365” template that you can use now. Use your ProPlus installation rights in Azure’s RDS.

EMS

Coming soon – New features for managing Windows 10 and iOS devices: New features between September 25 and October 5.
Day Zero Support for iOS 9 with Intune: Manage your iPhones and iPads.
Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration: Inter-company federation via Azure AD.
Azure AD Premium Dashboard is in preview: Microsoft has turned on the Azure Active Directory Premium Dashboard – available in North America only at this point.
Azure AD B2C and B2B are now in Public Preview:
Learn all about the Azure AD B2B Collaboration Preview: Learn more about the Biz-2-Biz preview.

Security

Tracking a Bluetooth Skimmer Gang in Mexico: A whole new way of skimming your card at the ATM, thanks to the ATM engineers.
Tracking Bluetooth Skimmers in Mexico, Part II: More on this story.
Who’s Behind Bluetooth Skimming in Mexico? A very professional criminal operation.

Miscellaneous

Microsoft heads back to court on September 9th: A post I wrote about the Irish datacenter and US warrant appeal.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Failover Clustering,Storage,Storage Spaces,Linux,Windows 10,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,Backup,Remote Desktop Services,DR,Active Directory,System Center,VMM,Security,Office,Office 365,Licensing,EMS,Intune

Microsoft News – 7 September 2015

Here’s the recent news from the last few weeks in the Microsoft IT Pro world:

Hyper-V

Configuring Default Checkpoint type in Windows 10: How to automatically get the legacy style checkpoint behaviour – might be useful in test/dev/demo labs.
Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Versus Virtual NUMA: The two incompatible memory optimization techniques. A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Workgroup and Multi-domain clusters in Windows Server 2016: Note: Workgroup clusters do not support Live Migration (hence useless to most).
Site-aware Failover Clusters in Windows Server 2016: Making stretch clusters more suitable. An interesting option is “preferred site” of a (entire) cluster.
Linux Integration Services 4.0 Update: An update to the Linux integration components for Hyper-V.

Windows Server

How to enable and disable SMBv1, SMBv2, and SMBv3 in Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012: You might disable SMBv1 in totally modern deployments, but I prefer to stay on the well walked path.
Announcing Windows Server 2016 Containers Preview: Post by Scott Guthrie.
Microsoft and Mesosphere partner to bring Mesos container orchestration across Windows and Linux worlds: Container orchestration comes to Windows.
Microsoft and Intel showcase Storage Spaces Direct with NVM Express at IDF ’15: 4.2 million IOPS with S2D.
Data Deduplication in Windows Server Technical Preview 3: BIG improvements for scalability and backup.
Comparing Work Folders and Offline Files: I bet you’ve never heard of Work Folders – what I call “company owned DropBox”.
Work Folders encryption on Windows: Security with replicated files.
Windows Server 2016 Installation Option Changes: Our feedback was listened to.

Windows

Adjusting the Network Protocol Bindings in Windows 10: I guess the same applies to Windows Server 2016.
Windows 10 Pre-Upgrade Validation using SETUP.EXE: Using /Compat ScanOnly.
MDOP 2015 and more tools are now available: Windows 10 support.

System Center

DPM 2012 R2 UR7 re-released: Wow, a System Center update rollup had issues. Whoda thunk it?!?!?!

Azure

Mandatory update for Azure Backup to avoid an authentication error for ongoing backups: You must have a MARS agent that released August 19 2015 or later.
AzCopy – Introducing Append Blob, File Storage Asynchronous Copying, File Storage Share SAS, Table Storage data exporting to CSV and more: AzCopy 3.2.0 and AzCopy 4.2.0-preview are now released.
Azure Backup update – New features in IaaS VM backup support: Support for up to 16 data disks, retention up to 99 years, improved performance, and reporting.
Azure Premium Storage expanding in more regions: Adding Central US, East US, East Asia, and North Europe.
Announcing the GS-Series: Adding Premium Storage Support to the Largest VMs in the Public Cloud: Big and fast.
Boot Diagnostics for Virtual Machines: Needed because there’s not KVM access.
A Look at Microsoft’s New Hybrid Cloud Features: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
How to Link an Azure RemoteApp collection to your existing Azure Virtual Network Without Domain Join: If you have applications that don’t require domains. Beware that this will cause messy session hosts without GPO to control user access/storage from a central point.

Office 365

What’s new – July 2015: Apps galore.
What’s new – August 2015: The education SKUs are getting a “shake up”.
Microsoft is reducing its number of portals, merging Intune with Office 365: Good idea … but I am sceptical of the success/future of this.

Windows 10, Azure AD and Microsoft Intune: Automatic MDM enrollment powered by the cloud: See the new Active Directory in action.
Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics in now GA: This EMS bundle member is now available for detecting nefarious usage of company identity.

Events

Meet AzureCon: A virtual event on Azure on September 29th, starting at 9am Pacific time, 5pm UK/Irish time.

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Failover Clustering,Linux,Windows Server 2016,Windows Server 2012 R2,Storage,Networking,Windows 10,Deployment,DPM,System Center,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,Backup,Remote Desktop Services,Office 365,Intune,Active Directory,Events

Microsoft News – 29 June 2015

As you might expect, there’s lots of Azure news. Surprisingly, there is still not much substantial content on Windows 10.

Hyper-V

What is the Windows Server Network Controller? A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Virtual Machine Compute Resiliency in Windows Server 2016: Dealing with transient cluster failures and keeping VMs online.
NEW RDS deployment model – Personal Session Desktops: A VDI scenario without using a client OS. In Windows Server 2016 additional improvements have been added to the Desktop Experience feature to make the Server OS look even more as a (Windows 10) Client OS. You will “… essentially be able to do “VDI” in Azure where every user will have a fully persistent desktop with options to allow user installed applications or maybe even local admin privileges”.
Script – Image Factory for Hyper-V: A handy solution from Ben Armstrong.
Handy Tool for Converting KVM / VMware Images to Hyper-V: A solution for V2V conversions from KVM to Hyper-V for when you’ve realised that your boss was an idiot.

Windows Server

DNS Server Startup Time Improvements in Windows Server 2012 R2: Tuning for those people running HUGE DNS databases (40,000 to 50 million records!).
PowerShell Script to build your Nano Server Image: Deploying Nano Server
How to use WDS to PxE Boot a Nano Server VHD: Do a network boot with Nano Server – How UNIX-y!
Microsoft Support for Secure Shell (SSH): Light on details: ” the PowerShell team will support and contribute to the OpenSSH community”.

Windows Client

Most IT Pros Expect To Deploy Windows 10 Within 2 Years: “40 percent of IT pro participants were planning to deploy Windows 10 within the first year of release … [another] 33 percent were planning Windows 10 deployments within two years”.
Windows 10 – What’s next for Microsoft’s Insider testers: Microsoft gets it “right” on the 3rd attempt. Maybe.
Azure AD, Microsoft Intune and Windows 10 – Using the cloud to modernize enterprise mobility: Azure AD is the glue (a common theme).

Azure

Azure RemoteApp – User Connection Error: For “With VPN” or hybrid deployments, sort out your UPNs to ensure that the AAD and the LAD user accounts match up. First a user signs into AAD via the RemoteApp client, and then they sign into AAD using Remote Desktop.
Azure RemoteApp – App-V Support Part 1: Deliver apps to RemoteApp using virtualization. App-V Standalone.
Azure RemoteApp – App-V Support Part 2: Full App-V infrastructure.
Step through creating a Resource Manager-based Azure Virtual Machine with PowerShell: A LOT of code is required, but once you have it, it’s quicker to create VMs using PoSH than via the GUI.
Container Apps now available in the Azure Marketplace: It’s Docker time!
Troubleshoot Secure Shell (SSH) Connections to a Linux-based Azure Virtual Machine: Steps to fix this complex scenario.
Sync Azure RemoteApp Collection Membership with Azure Automation: A clever solution to populate an App Collection with the members of an AD group.
How to Create and Validate a Microsoft Azure Active Directory Domain: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
How To Upload Files to Microsoft Azure: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Wormhole Area Networking and Microsoft Azure: Pending patent – a post I wrote for Petri.com.
Easier Azure VM Deployment with the Custom Script Extension: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Using the Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer Tools: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Sharing Files in the Cloud using Azure Files: How to use the Storage Accounts Files service between VMs.
Improving Microsoft Azure File Server Performance with BranchCache: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Enable Distributed BranchCache on a Microsoft Azure File Server: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Does Azure Backup Work? A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Microsoft Launches New Microsoft Azure VM Pricing Tool: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
Key Vault is now generally available: This HSM in the cloud offering is now GA. Example usage: central SSL cert storage and VM full disk encryption (coming soon).
Azure Active Directory Premium reporting now detects leaked credentials: Detect when your users have lost control of their usernames and passwords.
DevOps Basics – Infrastructure as Code: Deploying VMs using ARM templates via the Ibiza portal.
DevOps Basics – Infrastructure as Code – The PowerShell Method: An alternative to the previous.
Azure AD Conditional Access preview update – More apps and blocking access for users not at work: Note conditional access to Azure RemoteApp.
May updates to Azure RemoteApp: What changed?

Office 365

Announcing auto-expanding, highly scalable archives for Office 365 email: To accommodate customers who require very, very large archiving storage, Microsoft announced new auto-expanding, highly scalable archiving.
Exchange Online Advanced Threat Protection is now available: A new subscription service for unknown malware, real-time protection against malicious URLs, and reporting.
7 new Exchange Online Protection enhancements: Improving the basic service.
What’s new – May 2015: A summary of O365 improvements.
Introducing Compliance Search in Office 365: A faster and more lightweight way of searching within your organization’s data in Office 365.
Rights Management Service departmental templates comes to Office 2013: A feature that allows organizations to define different policies that will be deployed to different departments (or roles) for their use in documents and emails, now natively supported in Office 2013.
New Intune capabilities for Outlook on iOS and Android: Customers using Outlook for iOS and Android can now use built-in MDM for Office 365 or Microsoft Intune to secure email data on mobile devices within their organization.

EMS

New features coming to Intune over the next week: Starting June 22 and ending July 2.
Microsoft adds Advanced Threat Analytics to its Enterprise Mobility Suite: More security coming to EMS (cloud) and ECS (on-prem).

Misc

Samsung Accused of Blocking Security Updates in its PCs: Are OEMs stupid, ignorant, or do they just not care? IMO, this one is a grey area.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2016,Windows Server 2012 R2,DNS,Virtualisation,PowerShell,Deployment,Remote Desktop Services,Scripting,Linux,Failover Clustering,Windows 10,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,Networking,Security,Backup,Active Directory,Office 365,Intune

Microsoft News – 25-May-2015

It’s taken me nearly all day to fast-read through this lot. Here’s a dump of info from Build, Ignite, and since Ignite. Have a nice weekend!

Hyper-V

What’s New in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Linux Integration Services 4.0 Announcement: As part of this release Microsoft has expanded the access to Hyper-V features and performance to the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Oracle Linux versions.
Linux Integration Services Version 4.0 for Hyper-V: New version of LIS supported Linux distros.
Windows Server 2016 Failover Cluster Troubleshooting Enhancements – Active Dump: This enhancement has significant advantages when you are troubleshooting and getting memory.dmp files from servers running Hyper-V
What’s New in Windows Server Hyper-V: The official statement from Microsoft.
PowerShell Direct – Running PowerShell inside a virtual machine from the Hyper-V host: I wish I had this feature for my WS2012 R2 demos at Ignite.

Windows Server

How to Install Windows Server 2016 Nano in a VM: How to install Nano, the refactored minimal install option for Windows Server designed for cloud apps and micro services.
How Many CSVs Should a Scale-Out File Server Have? A post I wrote for Petri.com
Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS): The “Local Administrator Password Solution” (LAPS) provides management of local account passwords of domain joined computers. Passwords are stored in Active Directory (AD) and protected by ACL, so only eligible users can read it or request its reset.
Security Thoughts: Microsoft Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS, KB3062591): A step by step guide.
Storage Spaces Direct: Get the story straight from the PM of this new storage architecture, S2D.
Next-generation storage for the software-defined datacenter: Hear from the boss of the PM of S2D.
Windows Server 2016 Failover Cluster Troubleshooting Enhancements – Cluster Log: This log is valuable for Microsoft’s support as well as those out there who have expertise at troubleshooting failover clusters.
What’s new in SMB 3.1.1 in the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2: In this blog post, you’ll see what changed with the new version of SMB that comes with the Windows 10 Insider Preview released in late April 2015 and the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2 released in early May 2015.
How to display ipconfig on Nano Server every time it boots: At least you’d have some indication that the thing has powered up!
Data Deduplication in Windows Server Technical Preview 2: See what’s currently in the works for WS2016.
What’s new in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2: A subset of features.

Windows Client

Windows 10 and Azure Active Directory – Embracing the Cloud: Since Windows 10’s capabilities to leverage AAD are now starting to appear in the Windows 10 preview builds, this is a great time to explore them in more detail
Azure AD on Windows 10 Personal Devices: How to use Windows 10 with both a personal and a work account at the same time.
Windows 10 Security: Microsoft Passport and Virtual Secure Mode – the latter is based on Hyper-V Shielded VM technology.

System Center

Announcing the availability of System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1 and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2: Now generally available and can be downloaded on the Microsoft Evaluation Center. These service packs deliver full compatibility with existing features for Windows 10 deployment, upgrade, and management. Also included in these service packs are new hybrid features for customers using System Center Configuration Manager integrated with Microsoft Intune to manage devices.
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Management Pack for Windows Server Storage Spaces 2012 R2: Finally!
Windows Azure Pack Websites V2 Update Rollup 6: This release introduces a new MMC application that can be used for install, upgrade and configuration.
Announcing the Microsoft Azure Stack: The new cloud solution from Microsoft, replacing Widows Azure Pack.
Azure Stack – What’s new and what’s changed: A nice description of Azure Stack.
Update Rollup 6 for System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager is now available: And allegedly has bugs – I’m stunned!

Azure

Disaster Recovery to Azure enhanced, and we’re listening: Support for Generation 2 VMs, vSphere, physical servers, and more changes coming.
ASR Now Supports NetApp Private Storage for Microsoft Azure: Replicate on-premises NetApp SAN to an NetApp Private Storage appliance in Azure, and orchestrate it using Azure Site Recovery.
New features and innovation: Azure Resource Manager allows deployment of IaaS from JSON templates
Microsoft Azure Marketplace – new features and enhancements: Making the store bigger and more interactive
Introducing App Service Environment: A new scalable and secure environment for Web Apps, spanning the worlds of IaaS and PaaS.
IaaS Just Got Easier. Again: I don’t know about “easier” but JSON templates should be quicker – once you learn this language and syntax.
Build 2015 Azure Storage Announcements! Premium Storage is GA. Azure Files has support.
Azure shines bright at Ignite! A host of announcements from Ignite, including Azure DNS.
Application-Aware Availability Solutions with Azure Site Recovery: Azure Site Recovery solutions have been tested and are now supported for SharePoint, Dynamics AX, Exchange 2013 (single server – AF), Remote Desktop Services, SQL Server (non-replica/cluster members – AF), IIS applications and System Center family like Operations Manager.
Azure Automation – New Graphical and Textual Authoring Features: Revealing Automation through the Ibiza Preview Portal.
Azure Site Recovery at Ignite 2015: The breakout sessions that featured ASR.
Avoid Running Out of Azure Open Credits: A post by me on Petri.com
5 Things That Would Improve Microsoft Azure: A post by me on Petri.com
System Center Orchestrator Migration Toolkit: A collection of tools for migrating integration packs, standard activities, and runbooks from System Center 2012 – Orchestrator to Azure Automation and Service Management Automation.
Azure Cloud App Discovery GA and our new Privileged Identity Management service: How Azure AD can help you and your organization detect and manage risk related to access to cloud resources.
RDP to a Linux Server in Azure: Very handy guide on how to get onto GUI of a Linux VM.
April updates to Azure RemoteApp: Plenty of updates here, some which made the service much easier to use.

Office 365

Modern productivity–Office news at Ignite: What the Office group had to launch at the conference.
Manage change and stay informed in Office 365: Microsoft is adding a new “Select people” option to First Release.

Intune

Announcing support for Windows 10 management with Microsoft Intune: Microsoft announced that Intune now supports the management of Windows 10. All existing Intune features for managing Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 will work for Windows 10.
Announcing the Mobile Device Management Design Considerations Guide: If you’re an IT Architect or IT Professional and you need to design a mobile device management (MDM) solution for your organization, there are many questions that you have to answer prior to recommending the best solution for the problem that you are trying to solve. Microsoft has many new options available to manage mobile devices that can match your business and technical requirements.
Mobile Application Distribution Capabilities in Microsoft Intune: Microsoft Intune allows you to upload and deploy mobile applications to iOS, Android, Windows, and Windows Phone devices. In this post, Microsoft will show you how to publish iOS apps, select the users who can download them, and also show you how people in your organization can download these apps on their iOS devices.
Microsoft Intune App Wrapping Tool for Android: Use the Microsoft Intune App Wrapping Tool for Android to modify the behavior of your existing line-of-business (LOB) Android apps. You will then be able to manage certain app features using Intune without requiring code changes to the original application.

Licensing

Disaster Recovery Rights and License Mobility: Fail-over server rights do not apply in the case of software moved to shared third party servers under License Mobility through Software Assurance.

Miscellaneous

Microsoft Ignite 2015 Keynote Highlights for IT Pros: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Getting Started with Microsoft Operations Management Suite: I don’t know if this falls under Azure or not!
Populating machines in Microsoft Operations Management Suite: The next step after getting started.
Protecting your datacenter and cloud from emerging threats: This level 100 post covers a number of areas.

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2012 R2,Windows Server 2016,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Storage,Linux,Storage Spaces,PowerShell,Scripting,Deployment,Security,Networking,Windows 10,Active Directory,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,System Center,Configuration Manager,VMM,Azure Stack,DR,Office 365,Intune,Licensing

Microsoft News – 23 April 2015

I’ve been really busy either preparing training, delivering training, on customer sites, or prepping my two sessions for Ignite. Here’s the roundup of recent Microsoft news for infrastructure IT pros:

Hyper-V

Microsoft Announces Nano Server: A post by me on Petri.com
Microsoft Announces Hyper-V Containers: A post by me on Petri.com

Windows Server

The Deprecation of SMB1 – You should be planning to get rid of this old SMB dialect: This blog post summarizes the current state of this old SMB dialect in Windows client and server.
Windows PowerShell equivalents for common networking commands (IPCONFIG, PING, NSLOOKUP): A VERY useful post.

Windows 10

Windows 10 Security Innovations at RSA – Device Guard, Windows Hello and Microsoft Passport: More security.

Azure

Leveraging Azure Site Recovery with SQL Always On Availability Groups for Disaster Recovery to Azure: A very good read on DR plans for SQL and multi-tier apps to Azure.
Furthering Azure Security at the RSA Conference: New appliances and Key Vault partners.
Docker Client for Windows is Now Available: Microsoft is making the Docker command line interface available on Windows starting with the Docker 1.6 release.
Azure Premium Storage, now generally available: You can store VMs on SSD now.
Integrate your on-premises infrastructure with Azure: A detailed interactive diagram.
How to Force an Azure VM Shutdown: Use PowerShell for forcefully stop an Azure virtual machine.
Azure AD Application Proxy now supports custom domain names: This has been the single biggest request from customers and Microsoft is excited to make it available.
Docker Client Setup for Windows: A step-by-step guide.
Azure Site Recovery with Hyper-V Generation 2 VM Support: In a limited preview at the moment, but a welcome addition.

Office 365

What’s new: March 2015What’s new: March 2015: You can now preview Office 2016 for Mac, send information in Gmail messages straight to OneNote, preview your notes in OneNote for iPhone, capture web content more easily with OneNote Clipper 2.0, and more.
Rights Management Services Analyzer Tool: se the RMS Analyzer tool to help you analyze the settings, configuration, and behavior of your Rights Management services (RMS) and the client applications that use RMS. The tool works with both AD RMS and Azure RMS. Users can check the RMS settings on their computers, then diagnose and fix any problems they are having with files or emails that are protected by RMS.
Larger messages and Enhanced NDRs come to Office 365: Some useful improvements.
Outlook for Android comes out of preview: That was quick!
Microsoft Announces New Office 365 Security and Transparency Features: Unveiled at this year’s RSA security convention, Customer Lockbox will force any data access by Microsoft to be approved by customers.

Intune

Conditional Access for On-Premises Exchange using Microsoft Intune: This blog post (originally published in December 2014) has been updated to include new Intune features introduced in April 2015.
New Intune features coming over the next week for Android and more: A new April service update introduced several new features for Android devices plus much more.

Miscellaneous

The Curse of Zune: Is Microsoft too Focused on the US Market? A post I wrote for Petri.com
Digital Wars by Charles Arthur: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Microsoft Irish data case raises critical issues for cloud computing: Notes from the RSA conference and the importance of independent encryption.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2012 R2,Windows Server 2016,Virtualisation,Storage,Networking,Windows 10,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,DR,SQL,Security,Linux,Office 365,Office,Intune

Microsoft News – 13 March 2015

Quite bit of stuff to read since my last aggregation post on the 3rd.

Windows Server

Enable and Use Remote Commands in Windows PowerShell: For when you get the error “Unable to connect to the server using Windows PowerShell Remoting”.

Hyper-V

KB3031598: Hyper-V host crashes and has errors when you perform a VM live migration in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Wait before deploying, as with all hotfixes, unless this issue is breaking stuff for you (test and decide).
Update Emulex VMQ Issue – They finally did it: It’s only taken 1.5 years for Emulex/HP to sort this disaster out. Choose better hardware 🙂
Best practices for migrating a datacenter from VMware to Microsoft Hyper-V: From the System Center Virtual Machine manager team.
Checking and Correcting Virtual Hard Disk Fragmentation: By Ben Armstrong
How Hyper-V Backup Got Better in 2012 R2 (but now requires a SCSI controller): By Ben Armstrong
Hyper-V and "Event ID: 58 – The disk signature of disk 2 is equal to the disk signature of disk 0": By Ben Armstrong

Windows Client

Sluggish Tablet Market Will See Some Windows 10 Gains This Year: By 2019, IDC expects Android to lead with 62.9 percent of the tablet market. iOS will show weaker growth (23.0 percent), while Windows will gain "significant share" (14.1 percent) yet still remain in third place, according to IDC.
Microsoft to accelerate its release pace for Windows 10 preview: Microsoft appears to be on the verge of releasing an updated Windows 10 preview build. And this time, the company says, it’s serious about picking up the pace.
MDT 2013 Update 1 Preview – What’s Changed: In case you missed it at, the new preview of MDT 2013 Update 1 is now available for download from the Connect website. This new release works with the new ADK preview for Windows 10, which is available on the download center.

Azure

New A10/A11 Azure Compute Sizes: Two new high-spec standard A series VMs
Reduce RTO by using Azure Traffic Manager with Azure Site Recovery: Using Microsoft’s load balancer to failover name resolution of external services from primary site to Azure. Clever stuff!
Simplifying Virtual Machine Troubleshooting using Azure Log Collector: The Azure Log Collector extension can collect and upload logs from Cloud Service instances or Virtual Machines without requiring to log into the remote Virtual Machine.
Introducing Email notifications for Azure Site Recovery: Email notifications are a new feature for Azure Site Recovery that allows you to easily monitor the replication health of your protected virtual machines.
Azure Active Directory Solutions Architecture White Paper: This white paper describes the Microsoft Azure Active Directory Identity and Access Management solutions offered to customers of Azure, Office 365, Intune, Microsoft CRM and all Microsoft Online services.
Azure AD Conditional Access preview updated: Now supports On-Premises and Custom LOB apps: Conditional Access is powerful policy based evaluation engine that lets you create access rules for any Azure AD connected application. More sensitive apps can be assigned stricter policies, such as requiring Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) from a registered device while less sensitive apps can have more open policies.
Final Word on IOPS in Azure: Striping multiple data disks.
Planned Maintenance – Azure Style: How Microsoft does maintenance.
ADFS Publishing via Azure Traffic Manager: He doesn’t say but I think the endpoint of Damian’s post is to make a geo-resilient ADFS farm.
New Active Directory Assessment Intelligence Pack in Azure Operational Insights: Designed to assess the risk and health of AD environments on premises, in the cloud or hybrid, it will scan weekly, and present information as a monthly rollup. The report provides a prioritized list of recommendations tailored to your environments.
Replicating Hyper-V Virtual Machines to Microsoft Azure: A post I wrote for Petri.com
5 Reasons Why I Like Microsoft Azure RemoteApp: An edited post of an article I wrote for Petri.com
How to preserve the drive letter for protected virtual machines that are failed over or migrated to Azure: Azure use will the next available drive letter for the temp drive.

Office 365

What’s new: February 2015: Lots of new stuff.

Intune

March updates coming this week to Microsoft Intune: Should be live now.
Conditional Access for SharePoint Online with Microsoft Intune: With this feature, you can restrict access to SharePoint Online to only those users who have enrolled their devices in management with Microsoft Intune and are compliant with IT policy.

Miscellaneous

Revenue and usage numbers for Microsoft’s most important new business: Following up the revelations of the not-so-secret methods of sales to hit targets.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2012 R2,Networking,Hardware,System Center,VMM,Windows 10,MDT,Deployment,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,DR,Storage,Active Directory,Remote Desktop Services,Office 365,Intune

Microsoft News – 16 February 2015

I was away on vacation for a little bit, photographing eagles in Poland. And then I came back and had to dive deep into Azure Site Recovery to prep a training class.

I’m back in the normal swing of things so here we go …

Hyper-V

Getting Hyper-V Integration Components via Windows Update: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Hyper-V and Wireless networking: Ben Armstrong explains why your Wi-Fi NIC or DHCP might not be working correctly with Hyper-V virtual machines.
Troubleshooting Hyper-V Networking: A post by me on Petri.com
Hot Memory Resize with Windows 10: You can hot-resize memory of vNext guest OS VMs with static memory.
Memory Demand in Windows 10: You can easily see actual memory usage of a guest OS VM with static memory.
Docker on Ubuntu on Hyper-V 2012 R2: Application containers in virtual machines.

Windows Server

Using PowerShell to select Physical Disks for use with Storage Spaces: Using PowerShell speeds up your deployment.
New version of Microsoft Assessment and Planning 9.2: Get information for a migration or upgrade.
Why 1.6 million people will miss Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003 date with fate: Article I was interviewed for on The Register.

Windows Client

Microsoft Announces FIDO 2.0 Support Coming to Windows 10: Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance – transitioning away from passwords and to a stronger form of identity.

System Center

Hyper-V local storage available for placement in SCVMM: Avoid VMs being accidentally placed on host-local storage, e.g. the D: drive on bare-metal-deployed hosts.
Cumulative Update 4 for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager: Now available.
Some disks are not enumerated when you try to add them to a Data Protection Manager disk pool: When you have disks that are physically attached to a server that is running Microsoft System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager (DPM 2012 or DPM 2012 R2), the disks are displayed in Disk Management as expected, however when you try to add them to the Data Protection Manager disk pool, Data Protection Manager may not enumerate some of the disks.
How to work with Hyper-V network virtualization and Hyper-V replicas in VMM 2012: Although VMM 2012 does not manage Hyper-V replicas natively without ASR, you can still use Hyper-V replica PowerShell cmdlets to automate Hyper-V replica-related operations. Such operations include failing over a VM by using a Hyper-V replica but without using ASR.
Update Rollup 5 is released for System Center 2012 R2: Exercise caution and read ALL of the installation instructions.

Azure

Exploring the Azure RemoteApp User Experience: With Azure RemoteApp, you can run Windows applications in the cloud and deliver them to your users on iOS, Mac OS X, Android in addition to Windows, and Windows Phone.
Managing On-Premises Systems with Azure Automation: Thanks to the Windows PowerShell Remoting feature, Azure Automation can not only manage your Azure resources at an infrastructural level, but also reach inside VMs and execute commands. Think of this as SMA in the cloud, without having to install WAP.
New set of Hybrid Cloud Test Environments: A set of topics for hybrid cloud test environments are now published.
Replicate Azure Pack IaaS Workloads to Azure using ASR: he integration of ASR and Azure Pack also enabled Service Providers to offer DR as a value added service, opening up new review streams and the ability to offer better Service Level Agreements (SLA) to their end customers.
Managing Traffic for Workloads in Azure: Huge solution, a few clicks.
Load balancing workloads in Azure: Expensive solution made affordable and easy by Azure.
New Azure Backup update supports offline disk shipment and increases the number of backup copies and retention policies in Windows: Seriously good update.

Office 365

What’s new – January 2015: Office has gone x-plat and more.

Intune

How to Set Up Per-App VPN using Microsoft Intune: IT Professionals can specify which managed apps can use VPN on an Intune managed iOS device and makes the connection experience seamless for the user by abstracting the steps taken to connect to a VPN server when accessing corporate documents.
February update to Microsoft Intune: New Intune standalone (cloud only) features were made available as part of this service.

Miscellaneous

Proposed bill limits reach of US search warrants on overseas servers: Proposal to save US owned public clouds from bankruptcy caused by ill-thought-out spying.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows Server 2012 R2,Windows 10,Windows Server 2016,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Networking,PowerShell,Scripting,MAP,Windows Server 2003,Security,System Center,Configuration Manager,VMM,RDS,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Office 365,Intune