Software-Defined Storage Calculator and Design Considerations Guide

Microsoft has launched an Excel-based sizing tool to help you plan Storage Spaces (Scale-Out File Server) and guidance on how to design your Storage Spaces deployments.

Here’s the sizing for a very big SOFS that will require 4 x SOFS server nodes and 4 x 60 disk JBODs:

image The considerations guide will walk you through using the sizing tool.

Some updates are required – some newer disk sizes aren’t included – but this is a great starting point for a design process.

When Will Cortana Come To Ireland and Other Countries?

Every presentation I’ve seen on Windows 10 has spent half of the time talking about and demonstrating Cortana, Microsoft’s latest “The Curse of Zune” feature. Cortana, first introduced in Windows Phone, only works in a few countries. On Windows 10, as far as I know, it only works in the USA, and we can bet that won’t go beyond the “big market” countries any time soon.

How is Microsoft faring with voice control? This might give us a clue as to when to expect Cortana in other countries:

  • Windows Phone 8.1 Cortana was released in April 2, 2014, and is still restricted to Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United States (10 countries). Microsoft has had 14 months to increase the number of countries, and failed.
  • Xbox One was released in November 2013. Voice commands are limited to USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia (10 countries). and  That was a whopping 20 months ago.

So, my bet is that Windows 10 Cortana won’t make it to Ireland and other similar countries in 2015, 2016, and probably not 2017. So here’s my advice: if you work for Microsoft, and you are going to demonstrate Windows 10 in Zune-cursed countries such as Ireland, don’t become guilty of “switch and bait” by demonstrating a feature that we cannot use here without screwing up our regional settings.

FYI, we have had Siri in Ireland since 2011 – just sayin’.

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Introducing @Cloud_Girl_MWH

Hey folks, if you’re interested in keeping up with the goings on in Office 365 then please let me introduce you to Nicole Sheridan, aka @Cloud_Girl_MWH. Nicole is one of the big reasons that Ireland is one of Microsoft’s most successful markets for Office 365. No; she doesn’t work for Microsoft (so it’s not all marketing). Nicole is on Twitter as @Cloud_Girl_MWH and is now blogging for MicroWarehouse.

Go on; giver her a follow! I promise that’s she’s a lot less narky than I am 😀

The August 1st Microsoft Price Increases Continue – Office 365 & More

I learned today that the price of Office 365 is increasing, at least in the Euro zone. The breakdown is as follows:

  • Every SKU except E3/E4 is going up by 10%
  • E3 and E4 are going up by 8%
  • 365 Pro Plus is not increasing

As well as that we will see other online prices going up:

  • CRM Online by 10%
  • EMS by a whopping 26%

We already know that user (not device) CALs for on-prem products are going up by roughly 13%:

  • Core CAL Suite
  • Enterprise CAL Suite
  • Exchange Server Standard & Enterprise CALs
  • Lync Server Standard, Enterprise, & Plus CALs
  • Project Server CAL
  • SharePoint Standard & Enterprise CAL
  • System Center Configuration Manager
  • System Center Endpoint Protection
  • System Center Client Management Suite
  • Windows Server CAL
  • Windows RDS & RMS CAL
  • Windows MultiPoint CAL

VDA pricing is going up by 9% approximately.

My advice: if you’re buying soon then buy now, and enter a volume license agreement that locks in your pricing for X years. A good distributor or LAR can give you the correct advice. That’s fine for the on-prem stuff, but cloud services are subject to fluctuation, even in volume licensing.

To any “journalist” that decides to quote this post: my name is Aidan Finn.

As usual, I will not be answering licensing questions. That’s the job of your reseller, LAR, or distributor.

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MVP Whitepaper – Cloud Consistency with Azure Resource Manager

MVPs Kristian Nese and Flemming Riis have written a whitepaper on Azure resource groups. This white paper will prep you to use Azure Resource Manager (ARM) in Azure now, and in Azure Stack in the future.

I’ve recently started dipping my toe in these waters. Honestly, this is large scale stuff, but it’s interesting how much control it can give you.

The paper is a substantial piece of work (currently clocking in at 51 pages) and it looks like updates will come in the future. Thanks Flemming and Kristian!

Thinking About Or Using Azure? Then Give This A Vote

Microsoft has some of the dumbest boundaries between the licensing deployments of their cloud products. If you deploy direct-billing (MOSP, and this includes MSDN) Azure then you cannot switch your services to Open licensing. If you are in syndicated Office 365 then you cannot switch to volume licensing. Basically, the Microsoft imaginary cloud boundaries that I know of are as follows:

  • Syndicated
  • CSP
  • Open
  • Enterprise Agreement
  • MOSP/direct-billing

Whatever you deploy in one plan is stuck there. And that sucks, considering that:

  • Customers will develop something on direct-billing or MSDN, like it, and then want to go “production”, and then hit the Microsoft licensing barrier.
  • Customers do move up/down/across the various forms of Microsoft licensing.

What can be done? I’ve heard stories that if you bought a big enough EA, then you could open a support call with Microsoft billing to move all of your deployment to that agreement. I’ve also read that customers in direct-billing could do the same to move to volume licensing.

Do you, like me, think that this sucks? I sure do – this should be something that is easy, and not dependent on a “favour”. If you agree then vote here, like I just did.

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Microsoft Modifies The Azure Backup Announcement

Yesterday I posted an “Aidan Smash” article about the messed up Azure Backup Announcement. Microsoft had originally stated in their announcement of improvements that were coming to Azure Backup. Let’s remind ourselves what Microsoft said:

image_thumb[1] Why did I take a screenshot of the text instead of copying/pasting it? I’ve learned that when Microsoft makes a controversial announcement, or something that is just plain dumb, that text can change without any notice.

Controversy? Yes; Microsoft pretty much stated that the requests for feature improvements in Azure Backup that would make the product marketable to the breadth market (that will actually use Azure Backup) was going to be restricted to System Center customers that paid extra for OMS Add-On for Azure (not the breadth market).

That sounded pretty stupid. I reached out for a correction but did not get one within the 24 hours before I posted my rant. So it seemed that someone had made yet another dumb packing/pricing decision with a Microsoft online service.

24 hours later, the announcement was changed by Microsoft:

image

Note that the post does not say the following anymore:

… we are now announcing new Azure Backup services that are available today to OMS customers.

In fact, all mention of OMS in this section and the bullet points has been removed. Queue cautious celebration!

How do I read this (as a person that does not have access to OMS Add-On and cannot verify what OMS customers have access to)?

  • The new features will not be restricted to OMS Add-On customers
  • The new features are not available yet

This is much better. Now if only the author had bothered to communicate clearly in the first place – I’m guessing they were made walk the plank.

[Update]

Microsoft confirmed that the improvements to Azure Backup will be coming to everyone. These features will be coming before the end of the calendar year. I look forward to trying them out, and hopefully selling them.

Cannot Verify A DNS Domain In Azure Because You Used .LOCAL or .INTERNAL

A lot of companies have used a non-public domain name for their Active Directory. This meant that they didn’t have to buy an public domain name (but they probably did eventually for email), they had company politics issues, or they wanted to separate public from private (making resolution of external services easier). But this causes a problem when you are trying to federate or sync with Azure Active Directory, and I’ll explain a way to solve that issue here.

The Issue

When we connect a legacy Windows Server AD (LAD) to AAD we need to have both domain names matching. So if the company has an AD called joeelway.internal then they cannot sync or federate that domain to an Azure AD called joeelway.com (the public DNS domain for the company) or joeelwayazure.onmicrosoft.com (a default domain name for an Azure subscription). This is because is we have a user, Barbara, then her UPNs would mismatch:

  • barbara@joeelway.internal VS barbara@joeelway.com OR
  • barbara@joeelway.internal VS barbara@joeelwayazure.onmicrosoft.com

Solution

Method one is extreme and disruptive:

  • Rename the domain and deal with any consequences (eek!)
  • Configure internal DNS to resolve names of company-owned external services
  • Re-educate people about their UPNs if they’ve been using UPN to log in

I think we can agree that method 1 is too disruptive. There is a softer approach that you can use:

  • Configure an additional DNS suffix for your domain
  • Change the UPN of users to use the new DNS suffix
  • Re-educate people about their UPNs if they’ve been using UPN to log in

Adding a suffix is easy:

  1. Launch AD Domains and Trusts
  2. Right-click on Active Directory Domains And Trusts (not the domain name) and select Properties
  3. Enter the desired domain name in Alternative UPS Suffixes and click Add

image

Next you’ll change the UPN of the users. You can do this in AD Users and Computers (very slowly) or Google some PowerShell to do it near instantly at scale.

image #

Users will now have a single UPN for LAD (Azure, Office 365, etc), AAD, (hopefully) their email, and any third party SaaS if you federate your AAD.

A Demo Lab

I bought joeelway.com for my demo lab so I can show the real world solution in classes. If you’re just experimenting, learning, or doing a quick demo, then you can use the Azure default domain name. The default domain name is based on the name of your Azure subscription, for example joeelwayazure.onmicrosoft.com. Use this domain name as the additional suffix in your LAD, and set the UPNs to use this, e.g. barbara@joeelway.onmicrosoft.com; use this UPN for logging into cloud services.

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