2013: In Tweets

It wouldn’t be the last day in 2013 without some kind of recap, now would it?  Sometimes I wonder about some of the things that pass me by in the fire hose of information on the Internet these days, so maybe you missed something here! (Some techy, some not!)
January:

• WIRED ‏@WIRED - Jonathan Coulton explains how Glee ripped off his cover song — and why he’s not alone. http://oak.ctx.ly/r/21k1

February:

• Safer Online by MSFT ‏@Safer_Online - Looking for a great way to teach your toddler #OnlineSafety? Look no further than "Digiduck's Big Decision." http://bit.ly/XpCfNX #PDF
• Elecia White ‏@logicalelegance - Why is the best book I've read lately about Rabies? Good book, neater subject than I expected. http://www.amazon.com/Rabid-Cultural-History-Worlds-Diabolical/dp/0670023736/

March:

• Ben Goodman ‏@benontech - Boxes sealed with ATHEIST tape lost by USPS 10X more often than controls - This will make @samj 's head explode http://bgis.me/16YcUSI
• Stephen Foskett ‏@SFoskett - Good read: The truth about the TSA’s pointless knife fight http://bit.ly/XuPPjy

April:

• Leaping Woman ‏@leapingwoman - Today my kid sister sent me the link to @zefrank’s chillout song. Her timing couldn’t have been better http://j.mp/ZTRHlA

May:

• BuzzFeed ‏@BuzzFeed - 19 photos you'll have to explain to your kids one day http://bzfd.it/YFQTH4 pic.twitter.com/Eb3saRW7dA

June:

• Hans Vredevoort ‏@hvredevoort  - New blog on how to use Boot from VHDX to quickly take advantage of #WinServ #12R2 and Windows 8.1: http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/hvredevoort/2013/06/windows-server-2012-r2-and-windows-8-1-boot-from-vhdx/ … #TEE13 #teched

July:

• mars_seven ‏@mars_seven - The Pixar Theory: Every Character Lives in the Same Universe http://zite.to/12tJJG0 via @zite
• Marques Lyons ‏@tromboneforhire - RT @MSFTnews: Kinect connects sign-language users with their computers http://spr.ly/6016Znuu

August:

• In the Cloud ‏@InTheCloudMSFT - IT Pros, trust me on this: it's well worth your time to read this post about apps, dev tools, & how to lead. http://aka.ms/og659z
• Melody Bliss ‏@melodybliss - Don't text & drive - From One Second To The Next - Texting While Driving Documentary - Werner Herzog http://youtu.be/Xk1vCqfYpos

September:

• laen ‏@laen - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/government-betrayed-internet-nsa-spying … <-- The US Government has betrayed the Internet. We need to take it back, an essay by @Bruce_Schneier

October:

• The Doctor ‏@virtadpt - Male #knitting in a coffee shop questioned by #police, turns out very differently than expected: https://madmanknitting.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/i-was-questioned-by-the-police/ …
• Heather Akers-Healy ‏@abbynormative - Extremely interesting read: Acquiring Forensic Evidence from Infrastructure-as-a-Service Cloud Computing http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~dykstra/DFRWS_Dykstra.pdf … #NSA

November:

• WIRED ‏@WIRED - Bye bye. These are tech sounds you'll never hear again. http://wrd.cm/1iVJisc #WIREDclassic
• Bill Oakley ‏@thatbilloakley - Describing today to someone from 1953: Every six seconds all your friends send you a telegram and a brand new LIFE magazine is thrown at you

December:

• WIRED ‏@WIRED - The IT department is dead. Long live the IT department http://wrd.cm/1feuZyy
• Daniel Donda ‏@DanielDonda - How to Install Hyper-V on a Virtual Machine in Hyper-V - Gilson Banin - Microsoft Premier Field... http://fb.me/6ASPg6REU
• Dane Jasper ‏@dane - "This 100-year-old deal birthed the modern phone system. And it’s all about to end." http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/19/this-100-year-old-deal-birthed-the-modern-phone-system-and-its-all-about-to-end/

Here’s to another year of sharing information!

Happy Holidays!

It will be a light week here in blog land!  Lots of holiday cheer and keeping busy with family and friends. I hope you are spending part of your week relaxing and spending time with the people you love!

When you do get back to your desk and start reconnecting with the tech community, I hope you take a moment to check out the Microsoft Technical Community website at www.technicalcommunity.com.

If you are a User Group Leader looking for resources, this is the place to go. Register your group and you can get $100 worth of advertising monthly for your meeting or event.  Also, for each event you register you will earn 50 points to save and use toward swag for your group!  You can also request up to $250 in cash for some events - to cover food, etc.

If you are a subject matter expert looking to find places where you can get speaking opportunities, list yourself as a speaker and other leaders can contact you for possible engagements.  This is a one stop shop for connecting people who are interested in technology and getting rewarded for it!

See you in 2014!

Do You Need More Books? Of Course You Do!!

I’m sure you need a resolution for 2014 to read more books about technology!  If that happens to be one on your list, here are few that might interest you.

• FREE eBook - Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Technical Overview by Mitch Tulloch with Symon Perriman and the System Center Team. Read more about it at the Microsoft Press blog. This is also available in print format from Amazon, but you’ll need to pay for that.
• Practical IPv6 for Windows Administrators by Edward Horley.  Due out by the end of December, you can currently pre-order this title.  The Kindle version should be available in January.
• In early Spring, look for the release of Networking for VMware Administrators, by Chris Wahl and Steven Panto. While geared toward folks who work with VMware vSphere, I think it’s valuable to be able to understand virtual networking concepts and how they are used by various vendors, even if you aren’t a VMware shop. Estimated at about 350 pages, this isn’t going to be very light reading!

Do you have any reading recommendations? What’s on your list for 2014?

Future Users of Windows 8.1 - Ready, Set, Go!

A question that has been presented to me a lot lately is “How to I prepare the users I support for Windows 8.1?”

I will admit there isn’t a lot of “live” training out there for end users - when it comes to training for your business, you might want to consider my favorite way of getting users up speed on new tech - the “lunch and learn” or other optional/required training meetings.  With these models, you have the opportunity to figure out what features and changes are best to highlight for your office and customize it from there.

However, if you are looking for some online resources to get you started as you plan your training agenda or just want give people some online resources to reference themselves, here’s a short list:

• Windows 8.1 Business User Guide. This printable, 16-page quick guide provides a basic introduction to key Windows 8.1 features and capabilities in business settings such as how to get around, navigating menus, managing apps, working on the desktop, and personalizing Windows 8.1. Available in several formats so you can customize it fit your needs.
• How-To Video Tutorials. Each video is approximately 3 minutes long and demonstrates real-world business scenarios using touch, mouse, and keyboard guided by a voice over that provides additional information.
• Meet the new Windows
• Get around faster with the charms
• Your familiar desktop, only better
• Make Windows all about you
• From my friends over at Pluralsight.com - http://www.pluralsight.com/training/Courses/TableOfContents/windows-8-whered-it-go

Microsoft is also developing videos for more advanced Windows 8.1 features, like advanced desktop (file explorer, customizing taskbar, task manager), Internet Explorer 11, Windows To Go, device encryption, SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro, PC settings, and more.

Do you have a short list of things users need to know to get started? What are your pain points with user training?

The Dell Venue 8 Pro: Ups, Downs and In Betweens

Shortly after it became available I purchased a Dell Venue 8 Pro. I partly blame Ed Bott, who had one at MVP Summit and it was a lot of fun to play with. The form factor is great for consuming content and playing games and I thought it would be great to keep at home so that family members would stay off my work-issued Surface Pro.

Setup was quick an easy, as it is for Windows 8.1 and my Mac-loving hubby enjoyed using it for about a week. The screen is awesome, the battery life is great and it’s small enough to use comfortably when reading in bed or as a “coffee table” device.

Then one evening when I wasn’t home, I got a message from my husband about it being stuck in Narrator mode (where it reads the screen if you are visually impaired).  I assumed he turned that on my accident and he left it aside for me to fix when I got home.

When I had time to look at it, I started out to fix this, the device was acting a little sluggish and I was having trouble navigating. I mostly blamed this on not being familiar with dealing with Narrator and decided to simply restart the device.  It was prompting for updates at the time, so I selected to install them and restart.

At the next restart it presented me with BSOD. It didn’t recover after another reboot and then attempted to self-repair. No love.  I tried a few more reboots without much success and resigned myself to contacting Dell Support. I used the “chat” method of contacting Dell, which is serviceable, particularly for me since I really don’t want to be tied up on the phone.

The representative had me want through the diagnostics testing, with no real issues. I got a complaint about the battery, but the device was likely not fully charged and wasn’t plugged in at the time. (To get into that menu, press the Volume Up key before the Dell logo appears after a reboot. Once in the menu, the Volume Down button acts as the Enter key.)

He suggested resetting the device and the unfortunately there isn’t any way to kick off that process from the diagnostics menu. The recommendation was to restart the device twice, each time after I got the spinning wheel at the boot screen, which did eventually kick off the Windows Advanced Repair options. I selected to “Reset” the OS, which was going to wipe everything.

Because Window 8.1 tablets are BitLocker protected by default, I was prompted to get my BitLocker recovery key. The Dell representative asked me if I needed a Product Key.
Our conversation went like this --

Agent: "Is it asking for a product key while resetting the system?"

Jennelle: "It's asking for the recovery key (Bitlocker)"

Agent: "I see. Let me check what best we can do for you in this case. May I please place this interaction on hold for 3-5 minutes; I need to do some research on this issue?"

Jennelle: "Sure."

Meanwhile, I recovered the BitLocker key using the Microsoft ID system.

Agent: "Thank you for staying online. I appreciate your patience."

Jennelle: "I got the key myself. It's currently resetting my PC."
Agent: "May I know from where did you get the key?"

Jennelle: "With Windows 8.1 the devices are already encrypted and it's tied to your Microsoft Live ID. There is a website you go to and can recovery the key there."

Agent: "Okay."

Jennelle: "I'd be surprised if you'd have a way to get that for callers, but it can be challenging if you have to explain to someone else where to get it."

Agent: "I appreciate your expertise in resetting and getting the key, Jennelle. Please let me know the current status."

Jennelle: "It's 64% done on the recovery. If the OS doesn't work properly or it crashes again after this recovery I'll just contact support again.

The agent assured me that I’d get a follow up call the next day and I continued on with the process. Once it was working again, I ran all the current Windows Updates and it crashed again.  I tried starting another recovery, but couldn’t get it to kick off properly and sent the device aside for the day.

The next day I did get a call back from Dell. I reported that the device was continuing to have trouble recovering the operating system and the representative immediately made plans to send me a replacement, which should arrive this week.

So while I’m not impressed with the knowledge level of the first tier support when it comes to BitLocker and Windows 8.1, they do want to make sure customers are happy and taken care of.

Stay tuned.  There is a lot I like about Dell Venue Pro 8 and I’m hoping the replacement will work without issue!

West Coast Virtualization Camps Come to a Close

Yesterday, I finished my last presentation of the Microsoft Virtualization Camp for 2013 in Los Angeles. Special thanks to Jessica DeVita, an LA local and Microsoft MVP who spent the day helping out as a lab proctor.  The day wouldn’t have be as smooth without her!

Here is a recap of some of the links and resources I’ve mentioned during my presentations:

• The VMware vs. Microsoft Blog Series - the entire series covers many of the differences between the products and goes deeper on some features than we were able to cover at the one day event.  Of particular interest is the “Shopping for Private Clouds” post.
• The Comparison Whitepaper - A pretty comprehensive feature comparison, good place to start your research.
• Microsoft Virtual Academy - there are at least 4 new sessions specifically around System Center.
• Build It Yourself - If you want to do a similar setup of the HOL environment at your desk or in you lab you can download Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 or the full version of Windows Server 2012 R2 using the links in the right side navigation bar. --->>  For tips on getting started, visit this post. (The contest is over, but the instructions can still get you started!)
• If you want some additional instructions for building labs in-house, please visit Tommy Patterson's Blog, where he provides lots of step-by-step guides. Tommy is one of my IT Pro Evangelist colleagues on the East Coast.

If you missed the opportunity to attend one of these camps in your area or you think someone else from your company might benefit from some of the content, please check out the Virtualization Camp Online being held next Wednesday, December 11th.

Fellow Evangelists Matt Hester and Tommy Patterson will be presenting and while you won’t be able to be “hands on” yourself, Matt and Tommy will doing some of the demos.  Keith Mayer, Yung Chou and I will be manning the chat room, so feel free to say hello!

For future virtualization related events coming in 2014, be sure to visit TechNet Events.

Found a Bunch of Smart People in a Room? You must be at MVP Summit!

This week I had the honor of attending the MVP Summit in Bellevue, Washington. This was my 5th Summit, though my first as a Microsoft blue-badge. I was very excited to be able to spent the week with so many smart people in the tech industry, but sad to know that I can’t be an MVP and an Microsoft employee at the same time. Over the last 4 years, I’ve made some great connections through the program and Summit is one of my favorites ways to catch up with colleagues that I only see on-line or via social media.

For those of you who’ve never heard of it, the MVP Program is a reward program for tech-minded people who also spend time contributing to the community. Participating in forums, writing blogs or authoring books, and running user groups that are involved with Microsoft products are some of the ways MVP Awardees make their mark.

Below you'll find a list of the people I've crossed paths with at Summit this year. I've listed them primary by Twitter handle because they span the globe and are worthy of you following them if you also use Twitter.  If you aren’t a Twitter user, check out their profiles anyway, you’ll often find links to their blogs and other resources!

First, those who need little introduction:

• @edbott (Ed Bott) - the tech journalist powerhouse and his lovely wife, @judybott (Judy Bott). 
• @mminasi (Mark Minasi) - the man behind MR&D, dozens of books on Microsoft server products and an endless number of keynote speeches.

For the 2nd year in a row, Ed Bott combined forces with three other MVP Eds, because we know four Ed’s are always better than one! So don’t forget to check out the workings of:

• @ehorley (Ed Horley) - Networking geek, IPv6 expert and soon to be author. Pre-order his book, Practical IPv6 for Windows Administrators.
• @Pluralsight_Ed (Ed Lieberman) - Technology trainer at Pluralsight and it turns out I’ve only known him for 10 months, though it seems like 10 years.
• @itpromct (Ed Gallagher) - Whom I met at my very first MVP Summit in a session on Exchange Server, but only learned this year that in addition to technology, he also hand-makes the most FABULOUS jewelry.

It’s hard to pin these guys down for long, but I was lucky to get at least quick moments with:

• @jeremymoskowitz (Jeremy Moskowitz) - The man behind GPAnswers.com, he’s usually so busy he never comes to Summit so I was pleasantly surprised to spend a moment with him!
• @grouppolicyguy (Darren Mar-Elia) - Known for his GPO prowess, Darren also speaks regularly about PowerShell, Desired State Configuration and Cloud.
• @JPBruzzese (J. Peter Bruzzese) - The only Exchange MVP on my list, Peter and I often orbit each other at conferences never crossing paths for more than a few minutes at time. MVP Summit was no exception. If you can pin him down, ask him about Exchange or his book, The Conversational Geek.

My friends from the “North” aka Canada:

• @darcy_lussier (Darcy Lussier) - My first conversation with Darcy was oddly about his hair, which is good because he’s an ASP.net MVP and I can’t talk about that at all.
• @jason_miller (Jason Miller) - Jason specializing in the SMB market and is active in the UG communities in Winnepeg.
• @ToddLamo (Todd Lamothe) - I met Todd two Summits ago when I was crazy sick and he kept me going by sharing his stash of cold medication.  Turns out he can deploy Windows pretty well too.

My California Cohorts and PacITPros Members:

• @UberGeekGirl (Jessica DeVita) - Do you live in SoCal? Do you need help with your computer? Call Jessica and consider it solved. Seriously.
• @jldeen (Jessica Deen) - The Bay Area is lucky to have someone who can walk between the Apple and Windows support worlds so easily!
• @scevans (Steve Evans) - Everything I might happen to understand about IIS I probably learned for Steve. Also, I think he understood DevOps long before it was a buzz word.
• @dougspindler (Doug Spindler) - The long time leader of PacITPros.org, college instructor and MCT, Doug lives to make sure IT Pros keep learning.
• @the_yeti (Jeremy Anderson) - Do you have an question about small business server or Server Essentials? This is your guy. I know people who swear by him, I’m not kidding.
• @alexlewis (Alex Lewis) - I swear I think I’ll followed him on Twitter long before I met him in person, Alex specializes in Unified Communications and Lync and is active in several user groups in the Bay Area.
• @richardhicks (Richard Hicks) - Another Enterprise Security MVP who’s be a repeat speaker at PacITPro.org events and other popular conferences.

Worlds apart, but they answer to the same name:

• @ftp_Alun (Alun Jones) - First introduced to me by Ed Horley, Alun always seems to be one of the first people I run into at Summit.  He’s a Washington local who specializes in Enterprise Security.
• @alanburchill (Alan Burchill) - I met Alan on the shuttle bus at my first Summit and for a while I ONLY ran into him on the shuttle bus. One of the few Group Policy MVPs, Alan makes the trip from Australia and does way more than just ride buses around campus! Remember, when it's midnight in the US and you are stuck in group policy bind, it's like 4pm where he is.

Where Tech is “Concentrated”:

• @concentratdgreg (Greg Shields) - Looking for Greg? Look no further than the popular conference, TechMentor Events. Not only does he act as Chair for that event, you shouldn’t miss a chance to hear him talk about Remote Desktop Services.
• @theJasonHelmick (Jason Helmick) - The first time I met Jason about two years ago, he taught me some PowerShell. Let him teach you some PowerShell and you won’t regret it.

Since I can’t program my way out of a box, it pays to know some developers:

• @RobinDotNet (Robin Shahan) - My list wouldn’t be complete with out an Azure MVP. Robin runs the Bay Area Azure Developers group and one of these days I swear, I’m going to make one of her meetings.
• @scottcate (Scott Cate) - Another ASP.NET MVP, Scott is also the founder of EventDay.com, an event management tool.
• @m_rosenberg (Mark Rosenberg) - Long time developer and certified trainer, I almost didn’t recognize Mark this year sporting his “Texas” beard!

And finally, these guys could easily stand alone, but what fun would that be?:

• @joe_elway (Aidan Finn) - I met Aidan for the first time when he came to present at a PacITPros event in San Francisco and it might be safe to say he knows more about virtual machines than you do.
• @SFoskett (Stephen Foskett) - Every time I talk to him I understand Storage more and more. Plus he’s a pretty awesome speaker.

Phew... no wonder I needed a weekend to recover from Summit. It's truly special to be able to spend nearly a week with people who not only understand technology, but also get that a thriving community is the only way technology grows.  If I missed you at Summit or accidentally omitted you in my list here... so sorry!  I didn't even include all the folks from Microsoft that I spent time with this year, for fear that you'd stop reading in exhaustion.

If you've gotten this far, I think I might owe you a coffee or something.

Sold Out! Microsoft Virtualization Camps (So Get it Online!)

If you’ve had the chance to attend one of the Virtualization IT Camps I presented in Silicon Valley, San Diego or San Francisco, I hope it was a day well spent.  If you are scheduled to attend the event in Los Angeles on December 5th, I’m looking forward to a packed house, as registration is full and has been closed.

Now, if you are bummed to be missing the event, don’t despair – On December 11th, Matt Hester and Tommy Patterson will be doing an ONLINE version of the event from 9am to 12pm.  They will be covering the same content and showing demos of the hands-on components.

Yeah, I know, it's not quite the same as in person, but the condensed format will be awesome for those of you who might not be able to commit to a whole day event!

Go to http://aka.ms/virtitcamponline to register!

Windows Server 2012 R2 Brings Improvements to DNS and DHCP Management

DNS and DHCP - they are like two sides to same coin.  At the core, DNS maps human friendly names to IP addresses so we can find resources on the Internet easily, the other hands out IP addresses and other configuration information to computers so they can be accessible on the network.
Both have been around since what seems like the beginning of time, but both have some new improvements with Windows Server 2012 R2.

First, there have been some improvements for DNSSEC support. In Server 2012, the Key Master role only existed for AD-integrated zone, but now that has been extended to support file-backed multi-master zones as well.

Also, the key management service (key generation, storage, retirement) has been isolated to only the key master of a zone.  All other primary DNS servers for zone can continue signing a zone by accessing the keys managed by the master.

Next, let's bring on the PowerShell improvements.  While DNS on Windows Server 2012 already has a substantial list of statistics available using the Get-DnsServerStatistics, new Zone related statistics have been added for zone query stats, zone transfer stats and zone update stats.

There are also some brand new cmdlets for controlling DNSSEC, to support some of the improvements, like managing Trust Anchors. You can find the complete list of the cmdlets on TechNet, at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn305898.aspx

For the DHCP Server, new PowerShell cmdlets have been added for managing superscopes and multicast scopes, as well as improvements in some of the existing commands for changing failover relationships and interacting with DNS. There are over a dozen new additions, but some of the cmdlets include:

• Add-DhcpServerv4MulticastScope
• Add-DhcpServerSecurityGroup
• Get-DhcpServerv4MulticastScopeStatistics
• Get-DhcpServerv4SuperscopeStatistics

But it’s not all about PowerShell improvements. There are two DHCP improvements that enhance client DNS registrations. 

The first one extends DHCP polices to configure conditions based on the FQDN of the clients. Or clients can be registered using a different DNS suffix than the one configured on the client.
The second enhancement enables you to configure the DHCP server to register only A records for clients with the DNS server.  This can avoid failed attempts to register PTR records when a reverse lookup zone isn’t configured. PTR record registration can be disabled for all clients of a DHCP server, or by specific subnet or attribute.

Overall these new features can give you better granular control of devices on the network, including workgroup and guest devices. 

Looking for more information about what's new with Windows Server 2012 R2?  Check out the full list of blog posts in this series, Why Windows Server 2012 R2?.  Also, don't forget to take a moment to download the Server 2012 R2 bits so you can try it all out for yourself.

Close, But Not Too Close! Azure Affinity Groups and Availability Sets

Microsoft has several regional datacenters for hosting Azure IaaS. There are two on the west coast, two on the east coast and two each in Europe and Asia. When you create a VM you are required to select a region, at minimum, where your VM will be located.  If you just go with a regional selection, you leave it up to the Azure fabric to control where your machine is placed.

For more granular control, you have two other components you need to take advantage of – Affinity Groups and Availability Sets.

By creating an affinity group, you are giving the Azure fabric some additional logic to keep your VMs physically closer together within the datacenter. This might be important if you are hosting an application or service that has multiple server components and you want them to closer together to reduce any potential latency across the internal network.

To create an affinity group, you provide a name and create a network that is associated with it.  Then all the VMs added to that affinity group also will be given addressing from the associated virtual network. Affinity groups are created in your Azure settings area.

Having your servers close together in the physical fabric is good, but being TOO close could be bad.  For high availability, you’ll also want to make sure that your servers aren’t all on the same rack or within the same fault domain in the datacenter.  If a whole rack goes down due to a hardware issue, you wouldn’t want an entire cloud service to go with it.

That’s where “Availability Sets” come in.  An “availability set” allows you to define a group of servers that perform the same role and Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available. 

You can set up availability sets in two places: within the autoscale properties for a cloud services (as they are required for autoscale to function), or from the configuration settings of an individual server.

Used with Affinity Groups, you can then get all your servers close together for performance, but separate enough to ensure that your environment can survive fabric maintenance windows or fault events. 

Close, but not too close. Perfect!

Help Shape the Future Microsoft Virtualization, Cloud, and Datacenter Management Products

Got some great ideas about what Microsoft should do with virtualization, the cloud and the datacenter?  Do you actively virtualize systems or want to get more in-depth with the future of virtualization?

Microsoft Windows Server and Systems Center Customer Research team is looking for ITPros to participate on an IT Pro panel.

As a member of the panel, you will have the opportunity to provide vision and feedback to the Cloud and Data Center Management Product team through surveys, focus groups, usability sessions, early design concept reviews, and customer interviews.

The research team is looking for very specific expertise profiles. Use of Microsoft products IS NOT required. To help identify if you qualify, start by completing a short survey.

Please note, this is only for customers located in the US but there is work toward extending to an international audience soon. Once again, you do not have to use Microsoft products to participate.
Interested? Want to learn more? Click to access the survey.

Northern California Powershell Users Group in SF!

Tonight, I had the honor of hosting the Northern California Powershell Users Group in San Francisco.  The topic was using Azure with Powershell.

For those of you who were there, a lot of conversation revolved around provisioning and managing Azure and I wanted to mention that Microsoft (via Technet Events) just finished up a round of IT Camps for Azure IaaS.

At those events, attendees build out a dev/test environment in Azure and while most of the lab guide detailed everything out with using the GUI, there was a bonus challenge at the end that included doing everything with Powershell.

If you are looking to start using Azure with Powershell and want a good place to start experimenting, I suggest getting a free Azure Trial and then downloading the lab manual to give it a shot yourself.  You can find a copy of the lab manual at http://aka.ms/SlidesPlus under the “Azure Camp – Fall 2013” folder.

You’ll find the “Challenge Exercise” and instructions on where to find the necessary Powershell, towards the end of the manual.

Enjoy!

Build a Hyper-V Lab for a Chance to Win a Surface Pro!

This is for US residents only, but here's a chance to get in on the "IT Pro Cloud OS Challenge" and will some nice prizes while learning about Hyper-V Server. The content runs through the month of November and you can find all the details below!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Build your very own Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 for FREE and Enter for a chance to win* one of the following fantastic prizes:

• Three Grand Prizes: One of three Microsoft Surface Pro 64GB devices with Type Cover keyboard cover ($828.99 USD Retail Value)
   
• Twenty-Five First Prizes: One of twenty-five Microsoft Certification Exam Vouchers ($150.00 USD Retail Value)

You could win a Microsoft Surface Pro or Certification Exam Voucher!

But Wait! There’s More! In addition to a chance to win one of the prizes above, EVERY ENTRANT will receive our Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 enterprise-grade bare-metal hypervisor software completely free.  This is a fully functional virtualization hypervisor that supports scalability up to 320 logical processors, 4TB physical RAM, live migration and highly-available clustering. Hyper-V serves as the virtualization foundation for Private Clouds leveraging Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.

You can enter the IT Pro“Cloud OS Challenge” Sweepstakes by completing all of the THREE EASY TASKS below to download and build your Private Cloud foundation with Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.  Be sure to complete the last task to submit your proof-of-completion for entry into this sweepstakes.

• Entries must be received between November 1, 2013 and November 30, 2013 to be eligible. One entry per individual.
• This Sweepstakes is open to all IT Professionals Age 18 and over that are legal residents of the United States.
• Estimated Completion Time: 20 minutes

TASK 1 – Download Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

Download the Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 installation bits using the link below.

DO IT: Download Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

TASK 2 – Install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

Install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 in your lab environment using the installation steps linked below.

DO IT: Install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

TASK 3 – Submit Proof-of-Completion

Complete the steps in this task to submit your proof-of-completion entry into the IT Pro “Cloud OS Challenge” Sweepstakes for a chance to win one of the exciting prizes listed above.

1. At the console command prompt of your new Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 server, run the following command to collect your server's configuration:
   
   systeminfo >CloudOSConfig.txt
    
2. Copy the CloudOSConfig.txt file created in Step 1 above to a USB storage device or other location that is accessible for sending an email.
    
3. Send a new email message to CloudChallenge@microsoft.com
    
4. IMPORTANT: In the body of the email, include this exact text:
   “I’ve completed the Microsoft IT Pro Cloud OS Challenge for Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.”
    
5. IMORTANT: Attach the file created in Step 1 into the body of the new email message created above.
    
6. Click the Send button in your email client to submit the email message as your proof-of-completion and sweepstakes entry.

Upon submitting your entry, you will receive a confirmation email within 24-hours.

COMPLETED! But … Want more?
Now that you’ve installed Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, continue your learning and evaluation with these additional resources.

• Want to learn more about Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Private Cloud?
  • COMPLETE this Step-by-Step Guide for Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.
  • MANAGE Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 with local console tools.
  • CLUSTER Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 for highly available virtual machines.
  • MIGRATE Virtual Machine workloads to Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.
  • BUILD Your Private Cloud with System Center 2012 R2.

---

*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to IT Professionals who are legal residents of the 50 U.S. states or D.C., 18+. Sweepstakes ends November 30, 2013.  For Official Rules, see http://aka.ms/CloudChallenge201311Rules.

Ins and Outs: Azure Input Endpoints

Go ahead, say that three times fast! Yes, it’s a tongue twister and when it comes to virtual machines and cloud services, it can be a bit of mind-bender too.  (If you haven’t had a chance to read my previous posts about Cloud Services for IaaS and Virtual Networks and DHCP, you might want to check those out for background.)

In a nutshell, input endpoints are openings in your cloud service firewall.

Because a cloud service has only one external IP address, port forwarding is used to direct various access requirements to the right location.

In this screen shot, you can see that my single cloud service (with a public IP of 137.135.42.10) has four endpoints open, two for the server named “sabina” and two for “franka”.

In this case, the port numbers were randomly assigned and as this is a Windows Server the default ports are for RDP and PowerShell.

By looking at the specific endpoints assigned to “Franka”, we can se that Remote Desktop is using the public port 58155 and PowerShell is using 58392.

Because this Windows Server was spun up using the image from the Azure gallery, I can trust that the Windows Firewall on the OS has the appropriate rules open to allow traffic that is passed through the Azure endpoints to be received by the server.

If I was to add on a different service, like HTTP or FTP, I would need add the endpoint to Azure AND add the appropriate rules to server OS, so it will listen on the proper port. When creating a new endpoint, Azure will suggest the default port numbers, but they can be customized easily.

An important point to remember is that opening the endpoint in Azure won’t guarantee your server will be accessible via that protocol.  You must open the corresponding listener port from within your operating system. This is critical if you are bring your own server image to Azure, as it’s important to make sure that RDP (or your management protocol of choice) is also open on the OS otherwise you will be unable to manage your server once it’s in the cloud.

If you require more fine tuning of your endpoint access with customized ACL lists, that’s not available via the Azure GUI.  However, you can use PowerShell for that level of detail – read more here.

Depending on the work that your servers are doing within your cloud service, you can also configure basic round-robin load balances on those endpoints.  Learn more about that here.

Haven’t tried out Azure yet? Sign up for a free trial today.

New System Center Training on Microsoft Virtual Academy

If you don’t regularly check in with the Microsoft Virtual Academy, you are missing out on a great way to learn at your own pace.  If System Center is something you are getting into, or even if you’ve been using it for years, you might want to look at some of the new recordings available.  Here are a few that are fresh this week!

Infrastructure Provisioning (with Kenon Owens)
http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/infrastructure-provisioning-and-management-with-system-center-2012-r2
Many organizations have a very diverse underlying infrastructure. From different pieces of hardware, to different hypervisors. Regardless of this, they need to be able to manage everything in a consistent way. With System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager, they are able to have a consistent management experience across these multiple hypervisors. This course will address deployment of compute, storage, and networking resources, and how to construct all of the different resources that we have and construct them together into a private cloud. Finally the course will delve into day-to-day operations to keep the infrastructure up and running, and deploying services to the end users as well as the architecture behind it all.

Infrastructure Monitoring (with Won Huh)
http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/infrastructure-monitoring-with-system-center-2012-r2
This course covers new monitoring capabilities and opportunities offered in Systems Center 2012 R2. Moving away from physical boxes being monitored only by individual teams, this course goes over all monitoring opportunities, including Private Cloud Monitoring, Public Cloud Monitoring, Hybrid Cloud Monitoring, OS and Workload Monitoring. Also included in this course is information about proactive monitoring integrated through System Center Advisor, and an overview of the new customized widget dashboard.

The Blog Series: Why Windows Server 2012 R2?

Well, why not?  Join the Microsoft IT Pro Evangelists as they embark on another blog series hosted by Dan Stolts. 

Check out Dan’s official landing page to learn about Active Directory Certificate Services, iSCSI Target Server, Scale-out File Server, Tiered Storage Spaces and more!

The series runs from now until Thanksgiving so check in with Dan often for the newest post.

Meanwhile if you need the bits to Server or Hyper-V Server... get them here:

• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

Getting Comfortable with Azure Virtual Networks and DHCP

One of the great features of Azure IaaS is being able to extend your existing internal network to the cloud over a site-to-site VPN. You can bring your own IP addresses, but remember, the devil is always in the details. Or rather, knowledge is power!

Azure IaaS supports the standard private IP network ranges - 10.x, 172.x and 192.x – so you can easily give your Azure network a range that is comparable to the network range you are using in your data center.

However, Azure expects all guests to receive their IP address via DHCP. This took me a bit to grow comfortable with, as I spent years in smaller datacenters were each server was lovingly assigned an IP address that had been selected from a master spreadsheet. (Old school, I know!)  My favorite servers were given “choice” addresses with easy to remember numbers.

But networking is changing and we must change with it, so I’m becoming more comfortable with having less control over the particular address assigned to a given machine. This is key thinking when it comes to network virtualization.  By abstracting away some of the nuts and bolts of the network, the ability to be more flexible is introduced – which is good.  Someone I was talking to at a conference recently compared it to the adoption of IPv6.  IPv6 addresses are so long you would never statically assign them to a machine, that is all automated.

But, can I give my Azure VM a static address? Well, lets just say nothing is stopping you. You can go into your VM IP settings and do whatever you want.  But the risk of introducing a future IP address conflict is high and you will eventually lose the ability to connect to your VM.  Azure expects to get periodic DHCP renewal requests and when those stop the Azure fabric will remove that IP as active and stop forwarding traffic to it. There is no way to connect to the “console” of your Azure VM, so lost remote access to a machine due to an addressing issue will make for a very unhappy day.

Let’s say my internal network for my servers is 192.168.10.x/24.  I have two basic options for my Azure network:

1. Configure 192.168.10.x/24 in Azure, with a subnet for 192.168.10.128/25. I would need to make sure that everything in my physical datacenter was assigned IPs in the beginning half of the range, leaving 192.168.10.128 – 192.168.10.255 under Azure control. Azure also grabs a few other address out of the range for internal use, so I’d likely want to make sure I wasn’t using those in my physical network either. I think this option is messy and prone to errors. Also, I’m sure someone who does networking configuration all day will tell me it makes them cringe for more than one reason.
2. Create an different address range for Azure and make sure my internal switching gear is set up to route to it, like 192.168.20.x/24.  This would allow me to use a numbering scheme that makes sense within my organization, but also makes it easy to quickly identify resources that are internal vs. Azure based.

Keep in mind that any server in Azure will be assigned a persistent private IP address from your range with an infinite lease time, so if you are worried about domain controllers or other servers where the current “best practice” is to have a static assigned address, you can relax.  The only time a machine would loose it’s IP lease is when it’s in the “Stopped – Deallocated” state.

Finally, keeping with my “plan twice, create once” mantra, once your add a machine to an Azure network, you can only make limited changes - like adding new subnets or adjusting subnets that are not yet used.

For more information visit the Windows Azure Virtual Networks Overview.

Get the Bits!

I've got a few easy links for you to visit if you haven't had a chance to check out Windows Server 2012 R2 or Hyper-V 2012 R2.  I've also included a few other links of interest as well!
(Note: As of Oct 18th, these links will take you the non-Preview version.)

• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Hyper-V Server 2012 R2

If you haven't gotten an Azure trial yet, you can find that here - http://aka.ms/NewAzureTrial and for some extra learning, check out the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

Need something else? There is always the TechNet Evaluation Center.  The Windows 8.1 Enterprise Evaluation is available there now.

The Not So Black Box: Azure Cloud Service

You’ve probably been virtualizing things on-premise for a while now and it’s pretty straightforward.  You spin up a VM, connect it to a network much like a physical machine, configure it as you need it and go on your way.  Depending on it’s role you might configure  your perimeter firewall so that it has some ports open on an Internet routable IP address.

And that pretty much sums it up. In Azure, a lot of that is same.  Except for the whole “Cloud Service” thing. A Cloud Service is a key part of the Azure fabric and if you’ve been working with PaaS for a while, it’s likely very familiar.  But if you are coming from the data center, it’s a new idea. Or at least, it was for me.

If you’ve taken one of the free Azure IT Camps or gotten a similar presentation on Azure IaaS you’ve likely seen this graphic:


What this shows is that a cloud service is a container that holds your VM.  This container is the “steward” of several key components that make your server room in the cloud work. A cloud service holds an external IP address and unique DNS name, is tied to a physical location in the Azure global fabric and acts as a firewall boundary.

You can create a cloud service first and add a VM to it, or you can create a VM and a matching cloud service will be made for it.  I prefer making the cloud service first (and I’ll explain why) but first, let’s break those things down:

• Physical Location – When you create a cloud service, it's tied to one of Microsoft’s eight worldwide data centers.  They are grouped in pairs (US – West Coast, US – East Coast, Europe and Asia).  At minimum, you must select the region your cloud service lives in.
• DNS Name – Each cloud service has an external DNS name in the cloudapp.net name space. By default, creating a VM will automatically create a cloud service with a matching external DNS name, if the DNS name is available.  (If not, you’ll be prompted to name it differently.) The DNS name does not have to be the same as the server name.

Up to 50 VMs can live inside a single cloud service, so if you are using a cloud service to host some servers for a website, you might want your external DNS name to be something meaningful for the service those servers provide.


For example, only one cloud service is needed for “mywebsite.cloudapp.net", but inside it contains four servers that are all available to service requests to the same site.

• External IP Address – Once your cloud service is populated with at least one running VM, it will be assigned an external IP address.  This address has a lifetime lease, however I recommend using the DNS name as the best way to reference the service from other systems.
• Firewall Boundary – The cloud service is used as the boundary where all the input endpoints are opened so you can access the VMs within it using the protocols of your choosing.  By default, RDP and Powershell is open for Windows operating systems, but this is all configurable by either using the Azure portal or via Powershell. Depending on what service you’ll be providing, you’ll need to open other ports.

Now, why do I like making an empty cloud service first?

Because it allows me to create the *.cloudapp.net DNS name separate from the machine creation process and think about how I want my VMs and applications to be grouped and accessible BEFORE I get started spinning up machines. Whenever I’m creating a cloud service in conjunction with VM creation, I nearly always end up with a DNS name I don’t like. 

Creating VMs in Azure is an almost trivial task, but the placement of them isn’t, so taking the time to understand cloud services, endpoints and other factors before getting down the business of creating VMs is something I consider a personal best practice. 

Azure doesn’t allow for name and location changes once a cloud service or VM is created, so correcting that requires deleted your work and starting over.  I’m crossing my fingers that some basic edits are built into Azure in the future, but for the moment, I like to “plan twice, create once!”

Pieces of Azure

Once upon a time, a very short time ago, I had a data center of my very own. If you’ve read this blog often enough, you know that before I joined Microsoft I was part of a NetOps team that had it’s own little server room.  We had some applications and servers that were still stand-alone on physical hardware, lots more servers virtualized on VMware.  Cables and VLANs and a phone system… all the usual stuff.

Also once up a time, several years before, Microsoft started talking about Azure.  And I looked at it with curiosity and saw that it was all platform-as-a-service geared toward mostly Developers.
And then my brain tuned out.

Click! Back to the things that mattered to my data center.

And then, not so long ago, Microsoft started talking about IaaS in Azure. It started to seem more relevant to me, so I started to look closer. And now I’m working for Microsoft and I’ve been learning a lot more about Azure IaaS. And I realize that if I was still sitting outside my server room door, Azure would probably be one of the things topping my list of projects.  It’s THAT relevant.

But coming from a “classic” data center mindset, there are bits of Azure that take a moment to get your head around.  A little shift of thinking.  Because there are some things I was really comfortable with in my data center that Azure just doesn’t do the same way.

Check back tomorrow when I touch on Cloud Services, the first thing in my list of high level Azure concepts that I’m learning to love.

VMware or Microsoft?–The Complete Quick List

The VMware or Microsoft blog series has come to an end, for now.  Below is the complete list of posts for your convenience.  You'll find lots of great information and you can never be too informed when making decisions that affect the company and services you support.

1. Series Introduction
2. What is a “Purpose-Built Hypervisor?
3. Simplified Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 Host Patching = Greater Security and More Uptime
4. Reducing VMware Storage Costs WITH Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces
5. Does size really matter?
6. Let’s talk certifications!
7. Virtual Processor Scheduling
8. FREE Zero Downtime Patch Management
9. Agentless Protection
10. Site to Site Disaster Recovery with HRM
11. Destination: VMWorld
12. Get the “Scoop” on Hyper-V during VMworld
13. VMWorld: Key Keynote Notes
14. VMWorld: Did you know that there is no extra charge?
15. VMWorld: A Memo to IT Leadership
16. Moving Live Virtual Machines, Same But Different
17. Not All Memory Management is Equal
18. Can I get an app with that?
19. Deploying Naked Servers
20. Automated Server Workload Balancing
21. Thoughts on VMWorld
22. Shopping for Private Clouds
23. Dynamic Storage Management in Private Clouds
24. Replaceable? or Extensible? What kind of virtual switch do you want?
25. Offloading your Storage
26. VDI: A Look at Supportability and More!
27. Agentless Backup for Virtual Environments
28. How robust is your availability?
29. VM Guest Operating System Support
30. How to license Windows Server VMs
31. Comparing vSphere 5.5 and Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V At-A-Glance
32. Evaluating Hyper-V Network Virtualization as an alternative to VMware NSX
33. Automation is the Key to Happiness
34. Comparing Microsoft’s Public Cloud to VMware’s Public Cloud
35. What does AVAILABILITY mean in YOUR cloud?

Welcome Campers!

To be more specific, IT Azure Campers! :-)

If you are visiting Techbunny for the first time because you spent the afternoon with me in LA, let me just say it was a pleasure to talk to you about Windows Azure.  I hope it was an afternoon well spent and you left with some new things to think about.  If you are looking the slide deck and other notes and URLs from the event - check back later this week, I'll be working to put up a page with IT Camp specifics for you to reference.

I'm looking forward to having great camps in Irvine tomorrow and in San Diego on Thursday. If you aren't able to make this round of events, please visit www.technetevents.com for upcoming camps near you.

I know with all this talk of the "cloud" doing stuff on-premises might not be as fun. However, if you need evaluation copies of the soon to be released next versions of Windows Server, please visit the links below:

• System Center 2012 R2 -  http://aka.ms/MSSC2012R2
• Windows Server 2012 R2 - http://aka.ms/MSWS2012R2
• Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 - http://aka.ms/MSHVSR2

 

Virtualization Strikes the Bay Area

I’m serious, you can’t turn around without finding yourself in range of an upcoming event around virtualizing your datacenter.

If you missed the free Azure IT Camp in San Francisco on September 5th, you can join me in Mountain View on October 8th from 9-4pm. Register at www.technetevents.com. 

Also in October, PacITPros will be bringing Steve Evans and Nick Hawkins back for a full TechDay of “Hyper-V in the Real World”. This low cost event ($99) doesn’t pull any punches and gives you the lowdown on how to use Hyper-V effectively in your datacenter. Register at www.techdays.org.  Stay tuned for a two-day Hyper-V TechDays event in mid-November, as well.

Sadly, the October PacITPros meeting is cancelled for October.  There is a perfect storm of calendaring events that have Doug, Ed, Jochen and I all out of town.  Hope to see you on October 11th instead.

Azure IT Camp - Mountain View - October 8th - Be There!

Would you rather learn about Azure in October? The Azure IT Camp is also being held in Mountain View, CA on October 8th. This one is extra special, because I'll be presenting!

Agenda Topics will include:

• Azure Storage
• Azure Virtual Networks
• Azure Virtual Machines
• Managing and Monitoring Azure
• Hands On Lab: Building a Test/Dev Farm in the Cloud (SharePoint Farm)

For dates, locations and to register, visit www.technetevents.com. 

Thoughts on VMworld

As promised, I've been formulating some closing thoughts about my first VMworld conference.

Overall, it was a fun experience. Going to conferences "at home" always prove to be more difficult logistically than going out of town. I was still on the hook for some of my morning and evening home responsibilities, so I didn't attend many of the evening events or the concert at AT&T Park. A bit bummed to have missed Imagine Dragons and Train, so maybe next time!

I can't say I was a big fan of the system where you registered for a seat in sessions. While I could see this being a boon for the event planners, it was frustrating as an attendee. I had difficulty deciding if I wanted to try to get into other sessions as "stand by" and risk giving up a registered seat elsewhere.  While not a big deal on the first day, as the conference progressed I found that my interests changed and I wanted more freedom in attending other sessions.

Also, I found that many of the sessions weren't very technical. I admit I did attend a few "business solutions" level sessions to get an overview of some of the topics I wasn't very familiar with, but even the "technical" and the "advanced technical" left me wishing for a bit more meat.

I attended sessions mostly around NSX, vCloud Hybrid Service and VSAN. With all of these technologies, VMware is clearly looking to make it as easy as possible for existing companies already virtualizing on VMware to embrace making their datacenters more automated. None of the ideas are "net-new" and many of the vendors that were in the Solutions Exchange area already have products that are functioning in that space or providing similar features, but I can understand why VMware would want to be able to provide similar technology options to their customers directly. I spent some time chatting with some vendors and the attitude was cordial, but at the same time it was clear that many will just be waiting to see if VMware can prove themselves in the market.

Looking at NSX, Windows Network Virtualization capabilities that are included in Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1 compare directly with the VMware offering. In the R2 release (coming October 18th) it's been extended to include a free network virtualization gateway in Windows Server 2012 R2 and integrate top-of-rack network switch configuration and remediation. Also in the R2 release, there is full support with the Cisco Nexus 1000V while using network virtualization.

With regards to vCloud Hybrid Services, VMware seems to be directly targeting customers who are looking at using AWS for public cloud. By making it easy to move virtual machines into vCloud instead of AWS, they are open to capture companies that have lots of VMware infrastructure in place and are just starting to look at utilizing public cloud services. A marketing message that I got from the Solutions Exchange show floor was that AWS was a great "playground" for developers, but production level applications belonged in your datacenter and then scaled to the vCloud.

However, with less than a half-dozen US-only datacenter locations mentioned for vCloud, I can't see the solution being a suitable for companies looking for a more global footprint. Right now, Windows Azure has eight datacenters in the US, Europe and Asia, with and additional 6 centers in the works for Japan, Australia and mainland China. Azure is available for use by customers in 89 countries and territories.

VSAN is offering some compelling features for pooling storage from multiple disk locations and using different tiers of storage like SSD and traditional spindles to provide a virtualized storage solution. Without reinventing the wheel, I found a few interesting links on the web that you might want to reference for more information about how it works (also here) and some products it could compete with.

From Microsoft, there is the StorSimple product which allows you to use an appliance to introduce tiered storage levels as well as connect to the cloud for an additional level of storage. For an option that doesn't require an appliance, Storage Spaces was introduced with Windows Server 2012 and will be updated with additional features in Windows Server 2012 R2.

Overall, I really enjoyed the opportunity to attend VMworld and take the time to see what other product and offerings are going to be "on the menu" for IT Professionals working to make their datacenters more streamlined and cost effective.  For more detailed information about how Microsoft and VMware compare and contrast, make sure you check out the IT Evangelist Blog Series - "VMware or Microsoft?"

Windows Azure Camps for IT Pros - In September, Near You

Ready for more Azure? Single day "IT Camps" on Windows Azure are being held in various locations across the US during the month of September.  Depending on locations, seating could be limited.

Agenda Topics will include:

• Azure Storage
• Azure Virtual Networks
• Azure Virtual Machines
• Managing and Monitoring Azure
• Hands On Lab: Building a Test/Dev Farm in the Cloud

For dates, locations and to register, visit www.technetevents.com.  I'll be presenting in the SoCal locations at the end of the month.

On the Heels of VMworld!

Today, I'm playing catch up, which always happens after a multi-day conference. I always think I'll have enough downtime during the conference to keep my inbox and to-do list under control, but it never happens.

I do have an official "post-VMworld" post brewing in my head (vCloud, VSAN, NSX, oh my!) but first here is a couple Azure and Hyper-V related events that are coming up soon, really soon!  Both events will be held in the San Francisco Microsoft office.

PacITPros September Meeting (9/3, 6pm) - Hyper-V in the Real World!  Join Steve Evans and Nick Hawkins as they give a preview of a day long class they will be doing in October. Please be sure to RSVP if you'll be attending.

Cut past the hype and let’s talk about the real world design decisions you need to make when building your Hyper-V infrastructure. We won’t just prescribe the solution, but talk through the decisions and the pros and cons of the different options. The event will cover networking, storage, management and lessons learned.

** If you want more than an hour of Hyper-V, consider the full day event on October 11. It's $99. **

Azure IT Camp (9/5, 8:30am - 4pm) - Discover Key Hybrid Cloud Solutions for IT Pros. Late notice I know, but the Azure IT Camp has some extra seats available and you are welcome to them!  One of my IT Pro Evangelist colleagues, Brian Lewis, will be presenting. 

You CAN have the best of both worlds! With Windows Azure, IT Pros can easily extend an on-premises network to embrace the power and scale of the cloud – securely and seamlessly. You’ll hear the latest on the Microsoft cloud platform, dive deep into Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, and participate in hands-on labs that demonstrate the power of this on-demand, scalable compute infrastructure. Includes Windows Azure Storage, Virtual Machines and Virtual Networking. If participants complete all of the hands-on labs, they have a fully functional Windows Server 2012 cloud-based test lab running Windows Azure.

Destination: VMWorld

I really enjoy conferences and if you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know I've been a long time attendee of Micosoft TechEd. Before I joined Microsoft, my previous company was (and still is) virtualizing on VMWare. But VMworld was the conference of choice for my teammate, who primarily handled the storage and virtualization infrastructure. So even though VMWorld is often hosted right in my backyard, I've never been.

So for the first time, I'll be attending VMWorld next week. This is the 10^th Annual US VMWorld and since I missed attending my 10^th TechEd this past June, this seems apropos.  I mentioned this to some friends, who immediately said, "What? Are you some kind of spy now?"

A Spy? Really?

If you've been reading the "VMWare or Microsoft?"blog series this week, you'll know that Evangelists here at Microsoft take virtualization pretty seriously. But truly, it's all about taking TECHNOLOGY seriously. VMWare has been around for a pretty long time in "technology years" and they've brought a lot of stuff to the table that's worth learning about.

I know it's easy to get "religious" about the technologies you know best. As an IT Professional it's important to look at a variety of solutions before deciding which one is best for your company or the particular problem you are trying to solve and there are often a lot of factors to take into consideration.  When dealing with those types of decisions myself, I valued the opinions of people who had taken the time to really understand what's out there along with the pros and cons - particularly for products I wasn't as familiar with.

Like many large multi-day conferences, the sessions and tracks are vast at VMWorld and it's been hard to decide how best to spend my time. In doing a little preparation for this event, it seems that VMWare historically had a habit of talking about technologies at VMWorld that ended up not being released in a reasonable time frame.

Apparently there has been shift in recent years to concentrate only on technologies that will come to fruition in the next year, so I'm happy to find out that my time at the conference will be well spent learning about things that will be out there for IT Pros sooner than later. The software-defined datacenter and Infrastructure-as-a-Service look like they are going to be hot topics.

I'm looking forward to catching sessions around these areas:

• vCloud Hybrid Service - There is a "Jump Start" series of 5 breakout sessions covering topics like architecture, networking and security, deploying workloads and cloud management of the VMWare vCloud product. In addition to the jump start, there are many other sessions around this service that look like good picks.
• Storage and Data Protection - sessions around the VMWare Virtual SAN and SSD, Software-defined Storage and data protection and other storage advancements.
• Operations Management - Sessions around cloud computing management, building your infrastructure, cloud economics, the evolution of the data center.
• Virtualizing Active Directory - There is one session that caught my eye about Active Directory (always near and dear to my heart), so I probably won't be missing that one.

I learned from my former teammate that session seating is prioritized for people who put sessions in their Schedule Builder tool, so I'm hoping I've chosen wisely. I generally don't recommend session hopping at these type of events and this reinforces my plan to get a few good takeaways from every session I attend.

So to answer the question from earlier - Am I spying on VMWare? Nah, far from it.

Like every other conference I've attended throughout my career, I'm forever a student of technology. Be it Microsoft technology or not, I don't think I can ever go wrong looking for opportunities to learn. I can’t be good at my job and you can’t be good at yours unless we all take the time to learn about what’s out there and are open to comparing a variety of solutions.

So that's why I'll be at VMWorld. Meanwhile, I hope you'll continue to check out the posts in the "VMWare or Microsoft?" series.  On Twitter, the hashtag is #VMWorMSFT.  And for news of the conference, follow the tweets of @VMWorld.

And since I’m a VMWorld newbie, if you think there is something I shouldn’t miss, let me know!

It's All New on October 18th!

What's all new on October 18th?  Windows, of course!

Check out these announcements made this morning:

• The "Blogging Windows" blog announced the date for the general availability of Windows 8.1.
• "In the Cloud" blog announced that Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 will also be released then, along with an update to Windows Intune.

With all the downloading that will be going on that day, there won't be time for much of anything else. :-)

VMWare vs. Microsoft?

For the next 6 weeks, the US Microsoft Evangelists are teaming up to do a blog series comparing VMware technologies to Microsoft. We'll be tackling the myths and mysteries surrounding the virtualization technologies and then you can decide which one is best for your organization. 

Kevin Remde is keeping the full list of them in this "Complete Series" post, but you'll be touring the blogs of all the evangelists as the topics are posted.

Enjoy!

Home Tech Support: What happen to my picture thumbnails?

You know you have to do it.  Your parents, your sister, grandpop... they all ask for help with their computers when you are around.  So here's a quick one I got during my family vacation last week - The thumbnail view of a folder my father kept pictures in wasn't showing the photos anymore.

Somehow the setting for "Always show icons, never thumbnails" was selected in the Folder Options settings, under the View tab. 

I'm guessing an application change it, though I wouldn't be totally surprised to find out he was mucking around in there.

Another reason thumbnails might not show up is if the hard drive is mostly full.  Windows will stop generating thumbnails to save space.  That was the first thing I checked, but wasn't the issue in this case.

Get a Head Start this August... Evaluations, Training and Events

Time flies when you've started a new job, let me tell you! I've been spending a lot of my days learning new LOB applications, trying to read up on new technologies and brush up on some current technology that I haven't needed to pay much attention to in the past.  I've even booked a slot to take my next certification exam, Upgrading your MCSA to Windows Server 2012.

So what am I using for all of that?

Well, I always fall back to books and articles on TechNet, but this time around I'm also doing a course on at the Microsoft Virtual Academy.  I'm also going to take the TechNet Virtual Labs  for a spin as well.

I'm also playing around with the previews of Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2. You can get download evaluation version of that software and trying it out for yourself. There are a slew of great new features in each of those products that I'm looking forward to seeing in action. If you need a place to spin that stuff up, sign up for your Azure trial.

• Azure -  http://aka.ms/NewAzureTrial
• Windows Server 2012 R2 - http://aka.ms/MSWS2012R2
• Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 -  http://aka.ms/MSHVSR2

If you are looking for some in person events, check out my calendar of events in the sidebar. I've been trying to fill in dates for some of the events coming up this summer. Here are some highlights for August:

•  August 1st - VTUG Summer Slam
• August 6th - PacITPros Monthly User Group Meeting
• August 8th - SF SharePoint User Group Meeting

Now, back to work for me!

  

Sysadmin Appreciation Day Coming!

Don't forget that Sysadmin Appreciation Day is on Friday, July 26th!  If you are a sysadmin, this might be a great time to take advantage of a floating holiday you've been saving. 

If you AREN'T a sysadmin you might want to take a look around for your nearest helpdesk support person, the guy who last fixed your misbehaving keyboard, the person who helped you solve that problem with your voicemail, the gal who configured your mobile phone with corporate email, or the guy who restored that file you were looking for from last week's backup.

If you need ideas for how to celebrate or appreciate your neighborhood sysadmin, visit http://sysadminday.com/.