Blain Barton's "To the Cloud" Series Continues!

In Part 6 in the “To the Cloud” series, Blain Barton, Tommy Patterson and Dan Stolts, provide an overview of the benefits of running servers without the physical hardware using Microsoft Azure.   Learn how large and small to mid-sized companies can rent compute, storage, and networking resources by using datacenter hardware to deploy virtual machines (VMs).

• [10:25] DEMO: Azure Virtual Machine Gallery

If you're interested in learning more about the products or solutions discussed in this episode, click on any of the below links for free, in-depth information:

Websites & Blogs:

• Blain Barton's Blog
• Tommy Patterson’s Blog
• Dan Stolts’ Blog
• Cloud Solutions Hub
• Building Clouds blog
• Check out the book! "Setting up your business in the cloud"

Videos:

• (Part 1) To the Cloud! What the Cloud can do for your Business
• (Part 2) To the Cloud! Getting Started with Office 365
• (Part 3) To the Cloud! Storing your files in the cloud with OneDrive for Business
• (Part 4) To the Cloud! Keeping track of customers with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• (Part 5) To the Cloud! Managing Devices in the Cloud with Microsoft Intune

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Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, Stitcher, or RSS

The Tech of Blogging

I've been blogging about technology for about 10 years now.  And the majority of that time has been on the Blogger platform.  I went with Blogger back in the day, because it was a simple platform that was flexible enough for what I needed without too much hassle.

But now, in 2015, I'm starting to hit some limitations. And sure, a lot of those limitations might be worked around and I'm a geeky person, but the reality is - out of all the things I like to geek out about, tweaking my blog platform and website just…. isn't it.

Also, my domain registrar starting charging for things that used to be free a while back (like probably close to two years ago) and I've been so busy with "life" that I just pay to keep the lights on so to speak, without really looking at the offerings and seeing how that ties in with what I'm doing with my blog.

So I starting thinking about how I wanted to manage it next… And never really thought about it much until Troy Hunt put it into words a bit earlier this month.

So I started thinking about my domain and blog related things that needed improvement. Some points…

1. I like the convenience of widgets and easy theme management.
2. I've dabbled with WordPress in the past, but not sure I want to go with the hosted version or run my own web server in the cloud.  And honestly, at the time I didn't really feel like learning another platform.
3. I did take a peek at ghost.io, but didn't feel it had the dashboard management that comes with WordPress and I kind of want to stay away from CSS editing if I can help it for theme adjustments.
4. I married a UX designer who's spent some time designing for WordPress (handy!).

So I quizzed the hubby about what he thought and recognized the fact that I really want my blog management to be as "non-techie" as possible, because it really has to be the least of my worries.   As fun as it might be to self-host my own WordPress instance in Azure, I don't want to have to deal with having to do any "webmaster" things - I don't want to be THAT responsible.  I just want to post when I need to post and change or update other elements of the site (like navigation and colors) without having to dig into HTML or CSS.

So that being said… I'll probably start looking at working out my migration to a new platform before the end of the year.  Let the side project begin!

TechNet on Tour: Resources for Backup/DR in the Cloud

If you attended (or didn't get a chance to attend) the TechNet on Tour series covering Backup and Disaster Recovery in the Cloud, I wanted to list out some of the resources that are available if you'd like to review the slides or try out the labs.

• Hands on Lab Guide - http://aka.ms/labguides
• Videos of HOLs - http://1drv.ms/1WPmFvt
• Slides - http://aka.ms/technetontour