Office

Microsoft News – 19 October 2015

It turns out that Microsoft has been doing some things that are not Surface-related. Here’s a summary of what’s been happening in the last while …

Hyper-V

Microsoft Loves Linux Deep Dive #2 – Linux and FreeBSD Integration Services Core Features: Talking about the services that are integrated into Linux guest OSs on Hyper-V.
Shared Hyper-V virtual disk is inaccessible when it’s located in Storage Spaces on a Windows Server 2012 R2-based computer: A hotfix is available.
Recover From Expanding VHD or VDHX Files On VMs With Checkpoints: Tut tut!
Find All Virtual Machines With A Duplicate Static MAC Address On A Hyper-V Cluster With PowerShell: A handy tip from Didier to avoid networking hell.
Microsoft Loves Linux Deep Dive #3: Linux Dynamic Memory and Live Backup: Dynamic Memory for Linux guests and backup VMs with file system consistency without shutting them down.
Virtual Network Appliances I Use for Hyper-V Labs: A post by Didier Van Hoye.
Microsoft Loves Linux Deep Dive #4: Linux Network Features and Performance: More about open source on Hyper-V.
KB3095308 – VMs may not get additional memory although they’re set to use Dynamic Memory in Windows Server 2012 R2: You experience a poor performance, and IIS servers may run out of memory at peak times.
KB3093571 Update to replicate multiple VM groups and VMs that use shared VHDs in Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2012: This article describes a hotfix that enables multiple virtual machine (VM) groups replication and the ability to replicate VMs that use shared Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs) in Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2012. This is BIG – I’ll have more on this topic later.
Windows 10 Build 10565 Adds Nested Hyper-V: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
KB3093899 – VMs that run on CSVs fail if DCM can’t query volumes in Windows Server 2012 R2: This article describes an issue that occurs when Desired Configuration Management (DCM) can’t query volumes in Windows Server 2012 R2.
KB961804 – Virtual machines are missing, or error 0x800704C8, 0x80070037, or 0x800703E3 occurs when you try to start or create a virtual machine: This problem may be caused by antivirus software that is installed in the parent partition if the real-time scanning component is configured to monitor the Hyper-V virtual machine files. Follow Microsoft’s guidance on antimalware for Hyper-V hosts, and stop being a “yes sir, no sir” gombeen kow-towing to the know-nothing security “expert”.
Trunking With Hyper-V Networking: Trunk the virtual switch port to allow a virtual appliance connect to multiple VLANs at once.
Remove Lingering Backup Checkpoints from a Hyper-V Virtual Machine: A recovery snapshot stays and you cannot apply or delete it.
Hyper V Amigos Podcast Episode 1 – Ben Armstrong: Hyper-V MVP Carsten Rachfahl interviews Microsoft PM, the Virtual PC Guy.

Windows Server

Windows Server Containers, what are they and where do they fit? Read the Microsoft explanation, and then read my one.
Memory Compression in Windows 10 Threshold 2: Improving resource utilization with TH2, the next major Windows release, coming in November.
“Not enough server storage is available to process this command” error when you try to access file shares on an SOFS-configured server : You ignored the guidance and used SOFS as an end-user file server. Seriously – try reading!
New Windows Server 2016 Storage Video Series: A set of videos on WS2016 storage.
KB3091057 – Cluster validation fails in the “Validate Simultaneous Failover” test in a Windows Server 2012 R2-based failover cluster: This hotfix changes some timing of the “Validate Simultaneous failover” test to more accurately verify the storage compatibility with the failover cluster.
How to setup Nano Server to send diagnostic messages off-box for remote analysis: Troubleshooting Nano server will be fun if you cannot log into it. So don’t log into it.

Windows Client

Windows 10 Enterprise Feature – Credential Guard: Using VSM to protect LSASS.

Azure

Monitor your Azure RemoteApp environment with OpInsight – Part 4: Monitor the User Profile Disks.
Learn how to back up your IaaS VMs in five minutes: It’s simple: create a backup vault, discover VMs, register VMs, create a policy.
Microsoft Azure Backup Server: Download the MAB (based on DPM) to get on-premises backup of Hyper-V, SQL, Exchange, SharePoint and clients that you can forward to Azure Backup vaults.
September updates to Azure RemoteApp: New features in the RDS service. Note that Office 2016 is not supported yet.
A VM that Azure Site Recovery helps protect goes into a resynchronization state: “Resynchronization is required for the machine X. Resume replication to start resynchronization” and “Resynchronization for virtual machine ‘VMName’ was marked corrupted by the service.”.
Inside Azure File Storage: Learn more about this application data sharing facility.
Azure RBAC is GA: Implement just enough administration (JEA) in your Azure subscription.
Azure RemoteApp Custom Image Licensing Error: When you make your own RemoteApp image from scratch.
Introducing Microsoft Azure Backup Server: A post I wrote for Petri.com on “Project Venus” progress.
Azure AD Domain Services is now in Public Preview – Use Azure AD as a cloud domain controller: We’re getting closer to Server Zero. Note the lack of integration with legacy AD.
The Azure AD App Proxy just keeps getting better and better: Cloud-enable legacy apps.
KB3090067 – Azure Backup performance update: Update MARS to avoid when incremental backups by using the Azure Backup agent may run slowly for servers that have many files.
User Environment Management in Azure RemoteApp – Part 1: Using UE-V with the user profile disks.
IIS and Azure Files: Can I host my IIS web content in the cloud using Azure Files? Yes you can put your websites in Azure Files and use shared configuration for shared web content between a farm of auto-scaling, load balanced VMs in an availability set with auto-scaling enabled. Yum!
Get Fast + Easy Support with OMS: Add Microsoft support users to a workspace so they can see the same thing as you.

Office 356

Cloud security controls series – OneDrive for Business: Compliance and security stuff.
Data Loss Prevention in OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online and Office 2016 is rolling out: PDB is finally starting to improve.
Share with the click of a button in Office 2016: How to edit cooperatively.
What’s new – September 2015: A bit of a quiet month in Office, right? It was just Office 2016, Exchange 2016, …
I sync therefore I am…: A preview of the new ODB sync client
Azure PowerShell 1.0 Preview: A preview of v1.0 which appears to focus on improving admin of Azure Resource Manager.

Miscellaneous

A message to our customers about EU – US Safe Harbour: A comment by Microsoft’s legal honcho, Brad Smith, following the recent ECJ ruling that Safe Harbour is “invalid”.

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 13-August-2015

Hi folks, it’s been a while since I’ve posted but there’s a great reason for that – I got married and was away on honeymoon 🙂 We’re back and trying to get back into the normal swing of things. I was away for the Windows 10 launch, happily ignoring the world. Windows 10 in the businesses is not a big deal yet – Microsoft needs to clear up licensing and activation for businesses before they’ll deliberately touch the great new OS – I’ve already had customers say “love it, but not until we get clarification”.

Hyper-V

What’s New for Hyper-V on Windows 10: The new features in Windows 10 Client Hyper-V.
Why Does Hyper-V Have Network Issues with 1 GbE NICs? Because OEMs write crappy drivers and firmware.
PowerShell Direct – handling authentication for better scripting: 4 options for authenticating your remote access.
Using PowerShell Direct for Script Locking: Stop your script until the VM is responsive.
Sending a script file into the VM using PowerShell Direct: Copy a script file into a VM to run it.
PowerShell Direct + Hot Add NIC == Give me an IP address: Add a NIC to a VM and configure it.
PowerShell Direct & Waiting for an IP Address: Wait for a VM to get an IP address before running your PowerShell.
Upgrading your Virtual Machine version: A new manual step to allow your VM to use new features.
Production Checkpoints in Windows 10: A new way of doing checkpoints where a restore is like restoring a VM from backup.
Integration components available for virtual machines not connected to Windows Update: Out of band methods for updating the Hyper-V ICs for VMs on Windows 10 or WS2016.
Hyper-V Storage QoS in Windows Server 2016 Works on SOFS and on LUNs/CSVs: Distributed Storage QoS will also work with block level storage (CSV required).

Windows Server

Introducing pen remoting for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016: Handy.
Receive Side Scaling for the File Servers: Enable RSS on file servers with 10 GbE or faster networks.

Windows

Windows 10 – Available for Business Today: Unfortunately, no one has the answers on volume licensing upgrades, product keys and activation.
90 day Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation: Handy to have access to for demos, trials, etc.
Announcing the availability of System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1 and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2: Adding support for Windows 10.
Step-By-Step – How to Clean Install Windows 10: This is not easy, thanks to licensing and activations. I have no idea how this will work in mid-large businesses.
Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 10: Automate a large-scale deployment of Windows 10 – when you’ve figured out the licensing.
Windows 10 ADK and Configuration Manager: Large scale image deployment.
Find and Update Your KMS Service Host Key To Activate Windows 10: A post by Didier Van Hoye, MVP.

Azure

Working with Marketplace Images on Azure Resource Manager: Include templates in your mass deployments.
Azure Marketplace announces new features and functionality: Big thing here is the ability to deploy Multi-VMs.
Azure Site Recovery GA – Move VMware, AWS, Hyper-V and Physical Servers to Azure: Not just a DR solution, but also an official migration solutions for Hyper-V, vSphere, and AWS. The post is quite unclear about the mechanisms/methods being employed (aka Marketing Gone Wild).
Can’t recover VMs in Azure with volumes greater than 1TB? Use Storage Spaces: I am not sure that this is supported on Hyper-V, so I am advising caution.
Enterprise Grade Disaster Recovery with Azure Site Recovery, EMC VMAX, VMAX3 and SRDF – Now Generally Available: SCVMM/Hyper-V environments that use EMC VMAX and VMAX3 SAN arrays can leverage industry leading technology in SRDF with ASR to protect complex multi-vm applications in a group consistent manner while ensuring that the most stringent RPO and RTO SLA requirements are met.
Tagging on Compute, Network and Storage Resources: Consistent use of tags on Compute, Network, and Storage resources created through the Azure Resource Manager allows organizations to track their usage in a new way.
Scheduling Azure Automation Runbooks with Azure Scheduler: Scheduled automation.
Azure Backup enables backup of large volumes, VMs, databases and more: Data sources up to 54400 GB now supported. Note that file servers with > 1 million files in a volume may require up to 20% of that volume for caching.
Microsoft’s Project Venus – Extending Azure Backup Features: How Microsoft will extend the functionality of Azure Backup, using a free DPM as a stepping stone.
Budgeting Struggles with Cloud Computing: Azure prices went up 10% in the Euro zone and 26% in Australia this month.
Azure Virtual Machines SLA – A Primer: People are making assumptions about SLA that will get them into trouble.
July updates to Azure RemoteApp: Not much that I can see.
Step-By-Step – Protect physical servers with Azure Site Recovery: Using Azure as a DR site for physical servers.

System Center

Description of Update Rollup 7 for System Center 2012 R2: Wait at least one month before installing. And make sure you read the instructions.

Office 365

Office 2016 for Mac is here: Those of you with overpriced handbag laptops get an Office update.
Office Mobile apps for Windows 10 are here: Office is now a universal app. Can’t wait to try this on a phone with Continuum.

Miscellaneous

Windows 10’s Continuum Killed the Personal Computer: An opinion piece I wrote for Petri.com.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2016,Windows 10,PowerShell,Scripting,Networking,Storage,Deployment,RDS,Licensing,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud Computing,DR,Backup,System Center,Office

Microsoft News – 16 July 2015

It’s been a busy week with WPC driving announcements that affect partners.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V Survey – Why do you turn VMs off? The Hyper-V team wants to know.

Windows Server

Microsoft Issues Final Patch Tuesday Updates for Windows Server 2003: No more security updates!
Bye Windows Server 2003, In Remembrance: My look back on W2003 for Petri.com. I was an early adopter, it was great, but it would have held me back if I didn’t upgrade.

Windows Client

Announcing Windows Update for Business: A post from May that you should read.
Microsoft releases new license terms for Windows 10 – Biggest surprise? No gotchas: Good news, everybody!
Step-By-Step – Building Windows 10 Provisioning Packages: Windows 10 Provisioning Packages have the ability to prepare one or more devices for corporate use.
Windows 10 KMS Client Setup Keys: For those of you on volume licensing.

Azure

Cloud security controls series: Azure Active Directory‘s Access and Usage Reports: AAD Premium edition compliance features.
Azure RemoteApp Core Skills Jump Start now available on-demand: On the Microsoft Virtual Academy.
Learning Windows PowerShell Workflow: Learn how to automate on Azure.
My first runbook: Use the new graphical UI to create your first runbook in Azure Automation.
Using Azure Resource Manager in Azure Automation Runbooks: Automate ARM.
Working with Marketplace Images on Azure Resource Manager: Quite a wordy article that defies summary.
Azure Marketplace announces new features and functionality: A few different things here for deploying stuff.
Expanding Linux and OSS Support on Azure: Limited technical support for major (Azure-supported) Linux distributions, third party and Open source technologies on Azure.
Manage your Azure Linux VM logs through Operations Management Suite: OMS has added the capabilities to be able to manage your Azure Linux VMs logs which you can now consume through the Operational Insights dashboard.

System Center

Datazen Enterprise Server: Datazen Enterprise Server is a collection of web applications and Windows services. Acts as a repository for storing and sharing dashboards and KPIs.

Office 365

What’s new – June 2015: Office for Android phone, Advanced Threat Protection, and more!
Microsoft delivers final Office for Windows 10 apps: Here comes Gemini, the touch version of Office.

Licensing

MPSA Gets Event Better, Major Cloud-Focused Enhancements Are Here: Improvements for the Select replacement.

Miscellaneous

WPC 2015 – 5 Announcements IT Pros Should Care About: Things at this partner conference that affect us all.
Surface Announces New Plans to Expand Business Channel: Microsoft finally is increasing the channel, and this could cause sales to explode.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Windows Server 2003,Security,Windows 10,Deployment,Licensing,Azure,Scripting,PowerShell,Linux,Office,Office 365

Microsoft News–13 July 2015

I don’t have all that much for you, but the big news is the Azure Site Recovery (ASR, Microsoft’s DR site in the cloud) now supports VMware virtual machines and physical servers, without using System Center. You do need to run some stuff on-prem and in the cloud to make it work though, so there will be a tipping point where the solution becomes affordable.

Azure

Announcing the GA of Disaster Recovery for VMware Virtual Machines and Physical Machines to Azure using ASR: Now you can replicate VMware virtual machines and physical servers to Azure for disaster recovery (DRaaS) or business continuity (BC).
Availability of Linux RDMA on Microsoft Azure: If you want to do HPC or push big data on Azure Linux VMs, limited to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 (SLES12) right now.
Azure Batch Generally Available: I think it’s more of interest to those writing on-prem or cloud based mass processing apps.
Building Linux-Based Solutions on Azure Jump Start: An online event to get you going with Linux on Azure.
Try the new Azure Authenticator application: A new oAuth app for multi-factor authentication, not just for AAD, but also other services including Google.
Designing Your Network Infrastructure For Disaster Recovery: A whitepaper to guide you on this critical step.
Backups or replications that use Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent fail after December 9, 2015: Uh, whoops! Carry out those updates.
”Run As” with Azure Automation Hybrid Worker: A method for executing runbooks on-premises with specific non-system permissions.
You can now ingest Syslog data into OMS from Azure Linux VMs: If you use Azure Diagnostics, Operations Management Suite can ingest syslog data from storage accounts configured to store your diagnostics data. As of the publication of this blog post, OMS can ingest all logs routed through syslog or RsyslogD.

System Center

What’s new in System Center Configuration Manager Technical Preview 2: Available now. Lots of interesting stuff including “Support for installing Configuration Manager on Azure Virtual Machines”.
Setting up Multicasting in Microsoft Configuration Manager 2012: Love this feature. Save some bandwidth and speed up those mass deployments.

Office 365

Announcing archiving for non-Microsoft data in Office 365: Thanks to extensive collaboration and deep integration with Actiance and Globanet, Office 365 extends its rich and comprehensive archiving solution to cover a wide array of third-party data sources.
Announcing preview of new Skype for Business services in Office 365: Skype Meeting Broadcast, PSTN Conferencing (The Curse of Zune), and Cloud PBX with PSTN Calling (also suffering The Curse of Zune). So that’s just Skype Meeting Broadcast.
Office 2016 Preview—Update 2: New charts, live view co-authoring, Excel/PowerPoint Insights, Tell Me, Hand writing conversion for equations.
Announcing compliance toolset for public folders: The Office 365 archiving and eDiscovery toolset is being extended to include public folders.
Announcing new activity logging and reporting capabilities for Office 365: Summarising a number of corporate compliance tools.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,VMware,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,DR,Linux,Networking,Security,Scripting,PowerShell,Configuration Manager,Deployment,Office,Office 365

My First Blog Post Written & Posted Using OneNote

Hey genius, I know that the text of this article is clipped. Why don’t you read why before commenting?

Late yesterday afternoon, Microsoft announced that they had released a OneNote Publisher plug-in for WordPress that allows you to:

Write your blog post using OneNote on any device of your choosing
Log into your WordPress admin page and directly import your post from your online OneNote account to publish it, formatting and all.

How well does it work? I’ll let you be the judge of that because this is the very first post that I’ve written for AidanFinn.com that wasn’t written using Microsoft Live Writer.

You install the plugin as normal in WordPress. Then follow the help to configure a link to your OneNote account. The plug-in adds a button to the Add New Post page in WordPress. Click that button to connect to OneNote and select your article.

A pop-up window opens. This requires you to log into your Microsoft Account, and the very first access will require you to link your site with your OneNote account. Give it a few seconds, and the window will populate with all your notebooks, sections, and pages. Select the page that is your article and click OK.

It takes about 20 seconds for the article to appear in the Add New Post window, with most of your formatting – text formatting is fine but image location (centre) is lost, and more bad things happen which become apparent after clicking Publish (see later).

At this point, format your images, and sort out the metadata and SEO stuff in wp-admin and you can publish your article.

What do I think of this integration? I love the ability to write on any device, even offline, and have my work available on any other device. I’ve often started a post in place A and finished it in place B on a different device, requiring me to either remember to “post draft to blog” or use remote connectivity to get to the first machine.

What do I not like? I am losing some of the metadata stuff that Live Writer makes easy, but the silver lining on that cloud is that it would force me to do that stuff better in wp-admin. Formatting of line spacing is poor. And if your text box in OneNote is too wide then the article line width gets messed up. You should see some of that here.

Am I going to try use this new method of writing and posting? I’ve actually changed my mind about this. I originally posted “absolutely”. Now I have to say “absolutely; when Microsoft sorts out some of the bugs”. The potential for a GREAT solution is there, but right now, it’s just potential.

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 – 27 March 2015

Welcome to the Azure Times! Or so it seems. Lots of Azure developments since I posted one of these news aggregations.

Windows Client

Reducing Windows Deployment time using Power Management: Saving up to 50% of time.

Azure

Creating a Recovery Plan for Hyper-V VM failover to Microsoft Azure: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Getting the Most Out of Azure Site Recovery: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Microsoft Azure uses Error-Correcting Code memory for enhanced reliability and security: With details on testing for an exploit called "Rowhammer" .
Protecting large data disks using Azure Site Recovery: How to overcome the issue that Azure has with data disks larger than 1 TB. Also check the comments on "write order consistency".
New additions to the Azure VM PowerShell DSC Extension: The Azure PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) Extension team has announced some new additions to provide a seamless experience for using DSC on Azure Windows VMs.
Allocation Failure and Remediation: Weird crap that can happen when creating, starting, or resizing a VM or adding new web instances.
How to Create an Azure RemoteApp Template: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Create an Azure RemoteApp Template from an Azure VM: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Introducing RemoteApp PowerShell Cmdlets and SDK: Very useful for automating the provisioning of RemoteApp app collections
Announcing the Preview of Disaster Recovery for VMware Virtual Machines and Physical Servers to Azure using ASR: DR in the cloud via Azure is COMING to vSphere.
Azure VM OS drive limit has octupled: Meaning that you can migrate or replicate those badly configured VMs you created on-premises.
New troubleshooting Remote Desktop connections topic: Figure out why you can’t RDP to an Azure VM.
Announcing Azure App Service: Lots of stuff merging in with Websites.
How to Create a Hybrid RemoteApp Collection: A looong post by me on Petri.com
Backing Up Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines: A much needed feature on Azure finally arrives, even if it is a little ropey on day #2.
Azure AD Connect Preview 2 is available: I’ve used Preview 1 to quickly connect on-prem AD to AAD for demo labs.
What’s the best way to connect to Office 365 and Azure? Some stats on what people are actually doing.

Announcing the Office 2016 IT Pro and Developer Preview: Announcing he IT Pro and Developer Preview of Office 2016 for the Windows desktop.

Office 365

Get ready for Skype for Business: Lync is rebranded and a new client is in preview.
Office Delve—discover exactly what you need, when you need it: A machine learning-based way of finding stuff has gone live.
ExpressRoute for Office 365: Bringing Azure’s hybrid WAN to O365.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft. MDT,Deployment,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,DR,Networking,Storage,PowerShell,Scripting,RDS,Backup,Office,Office 365

Microsoft News – 19 February 2015

Here’s the latest in the Microsoft world. Shame on Lenovo for pre-installing adware that is a man-in-the-middle attack. Crapware must die!

Hyper-V

Hyper-V Backup doesn’t interrupt running virtual machines (anymore): A post on the improved backup in Hyper-V, moving to a file-based backup.

System Center

Manage Tenant Database Workloads with Resource Governor in Azure Pack: As of the Azure Pack Update Rollup 5 release, WAP administrators can now use the functionality of SQL Server 2014 Resource Governor in WAP to manage tenant workloads on the same SQL Server.

Azure

New updates to Cloud App Discovery: Improvements to the third most actively used feature of Azure AD.
New features in Azure Backup – Long term retention, offline backup seeding and more: The official announcement of the Feb 9th update to the agent, plus features with DPM 2012 R2 UR5.
Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Bandwidth Requirements: A post I wrote for Petri.com
Enterprise-Grade Array-Based Replication and Disaster Recovery with ASR and System Center – Now Generally Available: With System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and Azure Site Recovery, our customers can get seamless end-to-end storage array-based replication and disaster recovery.

Office 365

Office everywhere, encryption everywhere: An update on availability and security.
Microsoft Adds Management Capabilities to Outlook Apps for Android and iOS Devices: Microsoft this week announced some new IT controls for its Outlook apps running on Android and iOS devices.

Microsoft Partners

Practice Accelerator – a Microsoft Partner Network Training asset for IT managers: An online, interactive training that provides managed partners with Microsoft Consulting Services-defined deployment best practices and guidance, to help you grow profitable businesses around a specific Microsoft solution.

Miscellaneous

Microsoft adopts first international cloud privacy standard: Microsoft Azure, both Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online are ISO/IEC 27018 compliant.
Latest innovations in Office 365 compliance: Following on from above.
Lenovo Accused of Installing Adware on New PCs: Crapware must be stopped.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Backup,System Center,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,DR,Storage,Office,Office 365,Security