Operations Manager | Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Microsoft News – 20 January 2015

I’ve let the news build up a little bit. I think the holiday lull is starting to lift.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V Script to move everything off of a physical disk: Drain anything that is located on a particular disk.
Announcing DSC resources to deploy Hyper-V converged virtual network: This is an interesting third-party offer. I am wary of deep integrations such as this because I am worried about lock-ins that prevent upgrades when/if there are significant changes from Microsoft.

Windows Server

You are invited to participate in the Windows Server 2003 Modernization offering: The Partner Technical Services team is excited to share a new initiative focused on helping you migrate from Windows Server 2003 before end of support.
Work Folders for iOS – iPad App Release: Great add-on for iOS, giving businesses their own version of DropBox based on WS2012 R2 file servers and Workplace Join.
Win2012R2: STOP 0x133 and STOP 0x9E caused by too many NBLs in a DPC: Microsoft has been seeing an increase in STOP 0x133 (on non-clustered) and 0x9E (on clustered) cases, where the root cause is that there are too many NBLs indicated in a DPC. This causes the DPC watchdog timer to expire, resulting in mentioned STOP errors.
Announcing Message Analyzer 1.2: I really dislike this replacement for NetMon. It’s too difficult to use, even after you’ve sat through a briefing. My advice to Microsoft: start from scratch … again.

Windows Client

Windows 10: What We Know So Far: I’ll give a hoot about Cortana when it works outside of 4 or so countries. Microsoft should either fix that limitation or move the developers to something more important than a gadget feature.

System Center

Configuring VMM logical switch with bandwidth limit virtual port: Enable VM QoS.
Monitoring Text and CSV log files in System Center Operations Manager: Very useful.
Cluster overcommit algorithm in System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager: This article describes four approaches for the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) cluster overcommit algorithm in Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager.

Azure

Try ExpressRoute Free of Charge with this Promotion: Microsoft launched a promotional offer for Azure ExpressRoute, making it easier to get started with fast, private network connections between your on-premises environment and Azure.
New Application Insights functionality on Azure Websites with the Application Insights Website extension: This feature is designed to help development teams get 360° views of their applications across Availability, Performance and Usage with fast & powerful troubleshooting, diagnostics and usage insights.
Saving Money with Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines: In this article I will look at some methods you can employ to save money when you deploy virtual machines into Microsoft Azure.
Microsoft Azure App Enables Workplace Join Connections for Android Devices: Give controlled Android users access to on-premises resources with a hybrid cloud service.
Azure AD Workplace Join, now with Android Support: The official announcement.
Connect servers directly to Operational Insights: Easy to set up from-the-cloud server management.
How to easily spin up an Azure AD Premium Trial: So you’d like to demo Azure AD to your customers or want to get the feel of it? Perhaps you have Azure via MSDN and would like to spin it up on the fly for a demo environment?

Office 365

Participate in the Office 365 Practice Accelerator for SMB offering: A new initiative focused on helping Microsoft partners learn the fundamental deployment principles and processes that lead to repeatable successful deployments of O365 for Small and Medium customers.

Intune

Enrolling iOS Devices Via Apple Configurator In Microsoft Intune: A step-by-step. Been a while since I did this, but it was easier than enrolling Windows Phone!

Events

#GlobalAzure Bootcamp 2015: The 2015 #GlobalAzure Bootcamp kicks off on April 25th and you can participate and organize a location too!

Miscellaneous

Paul Thurrott’s last post on WinSuperSite.com: It’s the end of an era for that important site. But Paul continues tomorrow on thurrott.com.
Blue Whale Web Partners with Paul Thurrott to Launch Thurrott.com Technology News Site: So I am now a work colleague of Paul Thurrott!!! Thurrott.com has launched as a sister site of Petri.com and Paul is also writing news articles for the site.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,PowerShell,Scripting,Windows Server 2003,Active Directory,Networking,Windows 10,System Center,VMM,Operations Manager,Failover Clustering,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,Office 365,Intune,Events

Microsoft News – 14 January 2015

Here’s the Microsoft updates from the last few days.

Windows Server

Advances in Active Directory since Windows Server 2003: Features that people have been asking for since 2003 … some have been there since Windows Server 2008!

System Center

Windows Azure Pack and it’s licensing: A post by MSFT employee (and co-author on the last Hyper-V book), Michel Luescher.
Microsoft Updating Intune and SCCM with an Eye Toward Windows 10: Mobility seems to be the focus.
Step-By-Step: Building A System Center Virtual Machine Manager Lab Part 1: Start to learn VMM
SCOM – New Windows Server OS Management Pack Available – BUT BEWARE!: A warning from Kevin Greene about a new (and recently pulled) update to the Windows Server OS management pack.

Azure

Azure Data Center Migration just got easier: It’s still a hack, so it’s not as simple as it should be.
AzCopy – Introducing synchronous copy and customized content type: AzCopy 3.1.0 and 4.1.0-Preview are now released.
Microsoft Azure Reaches New Industry-Leading Cloud Compliance Milestones: Compliance stuff.
Migrate Linux VMs to Azure with Migration Accelerator: Microsoft announced support for the migration of Linux physical and virtual machines to Azure.

Office 365

What’s new – December 2014: Quite a few things, despite the end of year holidays.

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2015,Active Directory,Windows Server 2003,WAP,System Center,Intune,Configuration Manager,VMM,Private Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Operations Manager,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Linux,Office 365

Microsoft News Summary – 1 October 2014

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

Hyper-V

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

Windows Server

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

Windows Client

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

System Center

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

Azure

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

Security

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

Office 365

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

The Funnies

America’s CBS attempts to out-dumb CNN:

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

Microsoft News Summary – 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

Windows 9 Technical Preview Screenshots Leak: An Analysis (Part 1): Mainly more of what we have already seen, but with the additional of virtual desktops.

System Center Operations Manager

(New) Guided walkthrough for troubleshooting UNIX and Linux agent discovery in System Center 2012 Operations Manager: If you experience issues with UNIX and Linux agent discovery issues in OpsMgr 2012 then this troubleshooter is a great place to start.

System Center Data Protection Manager

DPM server randomly shuts down and restarts on a Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2-based cluster: First you must install KB2919355 and then you can install this hotfix.

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.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows,System Center,Operations Manager,Linux,DPM,Backup,Azure,Hybrid Cloud,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Storage,Intune,O365,Security

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

Boot a Hyper-V Virtual Machine Using PXE: A post I wrote for Petri.com

System Center Operations Manager

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

Azure

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Data Protection and More: A new white paper provides in-depth information about protecting critical data in Azure at every layer, whether structured or unstructured, in-transit, or at-rest.
Microsoft Azure Hybrid Connection Client: This download installs the Hybrid Connection Client which enables your Azure VM or a Web/Worker Role instance to access your on-premises data & services using Hybrid Connections.
Windows Azure Poster: I’m sure this will be out of date by the end of the week (if not already).
Scaling Azure VM with Azure Automation, with help of Azure SQL: Using Azure Automation to power down/up VMs when they are not needed, i.e. save money.
Step-By-Step – Enabling A Primary AD FS Server in Azure for Office365 Single Sign-On: This Step-By-Step will provide instruction to setup a primary AD FS 3.0 server on a Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual machine in Azure. This is how you can overcome dependency on HQ Internet connection for roaming O365 users.

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.

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2012 R2,Windows Server 2012,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Deployment,System Center,Operations Manager,Windows Phone,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Hybrid Cloud,RDS,PowerShell,Scripting,Active Directory,Microsoft

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

Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud – Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 R2 (Part 7): A significant percentage of our JBOD sales are going to cloud implementations where €/TB is important.
Best Practices for Windows Server 2003 End-of-Support Migration: Windows Server 2003 End-of-Support is right around the corner (July 2015).
Windows Server 2003 support is ending July 14, 2015: The official website.

System Center Operations Manager

Version 3.0 of PowerShell Script to Download All SCOM Management Packs: By Damian Flynn and Stanislav Zhelyazkov (both MVPs). Remember to read the instructions for each MP before importing!!!

Windows 9

Windows ‘Threshold’ and cadence: How fast is too fast? I’m all for staying up to date, but asking businesses to upgrade every year is mad.
Big Windows 9 leak reveals ‘awesome’ upgrade pricing for XP and Windows 8 users: Rumour central on pricing and more features.

Azure

Step-By-Step: Automate Azure with Runbooks: This functionality can, not just make life easier, but save you money!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows Server 2003,Windows Server 2012 R2,Storage,Storage Spaces,Failover Clustering,Operations Manager,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing

Microsoft News Summary – 15 August 2014

Here’s the latest from the last 24 hours:

New – Configurable Idle Timeout for Azure Load Balancer: Microsoft announced that the Azure Load Balancer now supports configurable TCP Idle timeout for your Cloud Services and Virtual Machines. This feature can be configured using the Service Management API, PowerShell or the service model.
Integrate System Center Advisor into Operations Manager Dashboards: Drive System Center Advisor search using Operations Manager dashboards.
Introduction to Azure Backup: What we expect to be the hottest selling Azure feature for SMEs.
Old IPv4 Router Settings May Be Causing Internet Slowdowns This Week: The number of routes across the Internet is beginning to exceed the number that IPv4 routers were set to handle.
Understanding the files collected by the Test-StorageHealth.ps1 PowerShell script: Understand the results of health and capacity tests done to a Storage Cluster based on Windows Server 2012 R2 Scale-Out File Servers.
Bare Metal Post-Deployment – Running the Post-Deployment Automation and Bonus – Part 5: Final part in this VMM series.
Businesses Using Windows Server 2003 Could Face VISA & MASTERCARD Backlash: End of support in July 2015 = 2015 no more security patches = security vulnerabilities = no PCI compliance = bankruptcy.
Edge Show115 – Azure AD Connect Preview (configuring hybrid identity with Azure AD): This video takes an exclusive look at Azure AD Connect to implement hybrid identity. Jen Field (Senior Program Manager Azure AD Fabric) takes us through using the new deployment tool to deploy Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS), Directory Sync (DirSync / AAD Sync), Azure AD and the accompanying SSL certificates. These are components that you’ll commonly deploy for Office 365, Windows Intune and more.
Replacing TMG with IIS ARR for an Exchange Hybrid: Lots of people looking to replace the now-dead Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway.

Technorati Tags: Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Networking,System Center,Operations Manager,Backup,Hybrid Cloud,Storage,Storage Spaces,Windows Server 2012 R2,Deployment,VMM,Windows Server 2003,Active Directory,Security,Exchange,IIS

Microsoft News Summary – 30 July 2014

The big news here for MSFT techies are the releases of update rollups for SysCtr 2012 SP1 and SysCtr 2012 R2. Please wait 1 month before deploying to avoid the inevitable issues (history indicates that I am probably right) and use that time to carefully review the installation instructions.

Using PowerShell to Provision Member Servers in Microsoft Azure: How to provision a new member server using a couple of simple commands.
Getting Started with Azure Automation: Automation Assets: What is says on the tin.
New Office 365 admin tools: You can now receive Office 365 service communications in Microsoft System Center by importing the newly available Office 365 Management Pack. And you can integrate Office 365 service communications into your monitoring systems and tools by interfacing with the Office 365 Service Communications API.
How to Setup a Microsoft Azure Virtual Network: This article show you how to setup a Microsoft Azure virtual network and talk about the new Azure point-to-site and site-to-site VPN.
Microsoft Azure Growing Faster than Amazon, IBM, and Google in Cloud Services: A news article I did on Petri.com that also covers Azure in Open Licensing.
Update Rollup 7 for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1: Wait 1 month and read the instructions CAREFULLY before deploying.
Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 R2: Wait 1 month and read the instructions CAREFULLY before deploying.
System Center Management Pack for Office 365: Monitor O365 using OpsMgr/SCOM. Through Operations Manager, datacenter admins can monitor the health of their Office 365 subscriptions and provide alerts when subscribed services may be experiencing an outage.
System Center 2012 R2 Management Pack for Virtual Machine Manger Host and Virtual Machine Dashboards: Two new dashboards focused on visualizing resource consumption of virtualization hosts and VMs.
Best Practices for Task Sequences in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager R2: Create and manage SCCM 2012 R2 task sequences using Microsoft best practices.
Avoiding IP Blacklisting with Azure Web Sites: In a multi-tenant environment where customers share a number of IP addresses, it’s not uncommon to have malicious content on a site or two. In some case they may be result of compromise and in other cases this may be intentional. Either way, this can lead to one or more shared IP addresses getting added to the lists of the various black list services that exist on the web. Once a shared IP is blacklisted, this would typically affect innocent sites as well.
Analyst: Cloud Backup Services Should Be a Consideration: Organizations should strategically consider using public cloud services for backup and disaster recovery (DR) scenarios, according to a Tuesday Forrester Research webinar that was sponsored by Microsoft.
MICROSOFT: The (US) Government Has A Sneaky Way Of Forcing Tech Companies To Turn Over Your Emails: Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday night that the company will fight a tactic used by the U.S. government to force tech companies to turn over customers’ emails stored on remote servers.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,Scripting,Azure,Cloud,Cloud Computing,Office 365,Networking,System Center,ConfigMgr,Configuration Manager,Operations Manager,OpsMgr,Deployment,Backup,Microsoft

Microsoft News Summary-2 July 2014

It’s been a long times since I posted one of these! I’ve just trawled my feeds for interesting articles and came up with the following. I’ll be checking news and Twitter for more.

What Is Microsoft Azure RemoteApp? Learn about this new RDS offering in Microsoft Azure
What are Hyper-V Virtual Machine Integration Services? My post on the Petri IT Knowledgebase
What are Hyper-V Extended Port ACLs? My post on the Petri IT Knowledgebase
Killing A Frozen Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Virtual Machine: My post on the Petri IT Knowledgebase
Performing Out-Of-Band File Copies to Hyper-V Virtual Machines: My post on the Petri IT Knowledgebase
Hyper-V Router Guard and DHCP Guard Explained: My post on the Petri IT Knowledgebase
Getting Started with Microsoft Azure Automation: Automation via PowerShell is the future. Learn how Microsoft Azure does it.
How to Deploy a Non-Clustered Hyper-V Host: Part 1 of a series by me on the Petri IT Knowledgebase.
SQL 2014 Licensing Update: The objective of this article is to review the publicly available documentation available on SQL Server. LOTS of changes, particularly for license mobility within server farms.
Cluster Shared Volume Performance Counters: This gargantuan post covers performance monitoring of a CSV.
Announcing the Data Classification Toolkit for Windows Server 2012 R2! A kit to help you control access to files.
Recommended hotfixes, updates, and known solutions for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV) environments: This article documents recommended hotfixes, product updates, and known solutions that are currently available for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV) environments.
VDS Basic Provider event ID 1 is logged on a Hyper-V guest operating system: A KB article for when you have W2008 R2 or Windows 7 running as a guest OS and you get Event ID 1 from the source of System/VDS Basic Provider.
FIX: Backups are unsuccessful when you use Microsoft Azure Online Backup: When you try to back up data by using Microsoft Azure Online Backup, the backup process is unsuccessful.
Update rollup package adds features to Microsoft Azure Online Backup in System Center 2012 SP1 DPM and in Windows Server 2012: This article describes an update rollup package that adds the following features to the Microsoft Azure Online Backup for Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Data Protection Manager (DPM) on a computer that is running Windows Server 2012.
ODX file transfers run slower than expected in Windows Server 2012: Microsoft is currently investigating some performance improvements for the TRIM and the UNMAP commands. However, this functionality is very dependent on the storage vendors’ implementation. Therefore, you should make sure that your storage software and firmware are up to date.
Emulex driver and firmware update: The latest news from Hyper-V.nu on the shockingly awful lack of responsiveness to a critical failure by Emulex, affecting most blade customers trying to use WS2012 R2 Hyper-V.
Ubuntu 14.04 in a Generation 2 VM: Canonical released Ubuntu 14.04 was the first Linux release to support running inside of a Generation 2 virtual machine. Note that CentOS 7 and RHEL 7 have also joined the generation 2 VM club.
Allowing non-Administrators to control Hyper-V–Updated: It’s really easy to delegate Hyper-V administration rights on WS2012 and WS2012 R2 Hyper-V
How to get the best disk performance with Linux on Hyper-V: Based on information from Best Practices for running Linux on Hyper-V.
Can you run Windows Server 2012 R2 on Windows Server 2008 R2? No.
Azure Site Recovery – FAQ: Pay attention to the details. This service might not be for you unless some serious changes are made by Microsoft.
The VMM team wants you…to tell us what you want: Be nice 🙂
VDI VMs deployed through RDS do not appear in the VMM 2012 console: After you create Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) based virtual machines (VM) in new Collections by using Remote Desktop Services (RDS), the VM intermittently fails to show up in the System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM 2012) console.
Contribute your feature suggestions for Windows Azure Pack! A smaller audience, but still …
Public IP Address Requirements within a Windows Azure Pack environment: Giving VMs access to the net.
Operations Manager team – Looking to talk to Storage, Network or Application Administrators: These areas need development in the monitoring space.

Technorati Tags: Azure,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2012,Windows Server 2012 R2,Virtualisation,Cloud,Cloud Computing,SQL,Licensing,Failover Clustering,Storage,Backup,Networking,System Center,Hardware,VMM,Operations Manager,RDS,VDI,Linux

Microsoft News Summary – 7 May 2014

Between a bank holiday and some travel, I’ve been unable to post, but I’ve saved up the headlines from those days:

Windows Server Backup does not work correctly after you perform a bare metal recovery: This problem occurs because the Windows Server backup engine (Wbengine.exe) crashes when the partition information in the catalog is not what WBEngine.exe expects.
Support Tip – Some or all Cluster resources are not discovered by the OpsMgr agent: If a Cluster has orphaned object entries in ClusterHive registry key, the System Center Operations Manager agent may not discover some or all Cluster resources. This can occur with System Center Operations Manager 2007 (OpsMgr 2007) or System Center 2012 Operations Manager (OpsMgr 2012).
Enabling Database as a Service with the Microsoft Private Cloud Stack: Now is the time to bring everything together, and summarize some ways to enable Database as a Service with the Microsoft Private Cloud stack! Get the free downloadable eBook.
System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Support Center Tool Has Been Released: This tool is used to help troubleshoot SCCM or ConfigMgr clients.
"Unable to execute the embedded application" error when you try to install the Windows Azure backup agent: When you try to install the Windows Azure backup agent on a server that’s running Windows Server 2008 R2, the attempt fails.
How to configure volume mount points on a server cluster in Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2: This article describes how to create volume mount points on a server cluster in Windows Server 2008 by using the NTFS "volume mount points" functionality. By using volume mount points, you can graft or mount a target partition onto a folder on another physical disk. You can also exceed the 26-letter limitation for drive letter references.
Hyper-V events at TechEd North America: As you would expect, the Hyper-V team will have a strong presence at TechEd North America next week.
New Veeam Management Pack™ v7 for System Center Adds Microsoft Hyper-V Support: Veeam has shamed Microsoft by finally bringing us a System Center Operations Manager (SCOM/OpsMgr) management pack for Hyper-V that is exactly what Microsoft should have produced back in 2008-2010.
Hyper-V Virtual Machine Virtual Network Adapters Explained: A post by me on the Petri IT Knowledgebase
Default Hyper-V Storage Paths Explained: A post by me on the Petri IT Knowledgebase.
Azure team at TechEd NA 2014: Here’s a listing of Azure sessions in Houston next week.
Nadella expected to launch the Surface Mini on May 20th: Yup, an 8" Surface with ARM processor & (rumoured) stylus is coming.
Meet Office Mix: A simple way to turn your PowerPoint slides into interactive online lessons and presentations.
How credible is HP? HP’s enterprise backup still doesn’t support WS2012 R2 Hyper-V. Their 3Par is troublesome with advanced WS2012 features (ODX). And blades with Emulex NICs crash with VMQ enabled. Hmmm.
Get your early bird ticket to System Center Universe: A System Center event run in Switzerland.
Microsoft cheaper to use than open source software, UK CIO says: " … every time government people compare open source and Microsoft products, Microsoft products always come out cheaper in the long run".

Technorati Tags: Backup,Operations Manager,System Center,Azure,Hyper-V,Virtualisation,Cloud,Configuration Manager,Windows Server 2008 R2,Events,Storage,Hardware,Office,Linux