Category Archives: Azure

Azure, Fixes, Hardware, HyperV, Online Tools, Registry Hacks, SBS 2008, SBS 2011, Security, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, Server 2012 R2, Server Essentials, SBS, Useful Links, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server

Meltdown and Spectre

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Happy New Year … Not!

With the New Year comes a new class of malicious attack that can impact IT systems. This time, the attack is hardware based, affecting mostly Intel based systems, and to some extent, AMD systems as well.

Here is a list of resources that highlight what it is all about and how to mitigate against this new threat. In the words of Microsoft, “Don’t panic.”

Azure

Azure RemoteApp will be deprecated in August 2017

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The Remote Desktop Team have just put out a blog announcing a partnership with Citrix in providing XenApp “express”. In the process, Azure RemoteApp will be deprecated. Final purchased will be available up to 1 October 2016, while support will be available until 31 August 2017.

See the announcement here – https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/08/12/application-remoting-and-the-cloud/

Azure, Business, Cloud, Featured, Windows 10, Windows Server

PowerBiz Solutions gains Microsoft Silver Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions competency

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SilverSMSC

PowerBiz Solutions today announced that it has successfully achieved the Microsoft silver Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions competency. Partners demonstrating professional and proficient capability in assisting small and medium sized businesses moving to the Cloud can attain this certification upon satisfying established performance criteria and providing customer references.

The competency demonstrations the continued dedication and commitment to excellence in enabling businesses to use technology as a business advantage to achieve their targets and objectives. PowerBiz Solutions continues to provide high quality technical expertise to enable small and medium business to be efficient and effective in the use of Microsoft on-premises and cloud technologies based on Windows Server, Windows 10, Office 365 and Azure.

 

 

Azure, Business, Cloud, HyperV, Office 365, Server 2012 R2, Server Essentials, SBS

PODCAST: Hybrid Cloud Strategy options

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I spoke with Robert Crane from CIAOPS – Need to Know podcasts on the options that are available to small businesses in creating a cost effective hybrid IT solution.

Listen to the podcast here – http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-78-boon-tee/

Azure, HyperV, Server 2012 R2

Protect your Virtual Machines to the Cloud with Azure Site Recovery

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Great news!

Microsoft have now made it possible to protect your Virtual Machines running on a Hyper-V server with Windows Server 2012 R2 by replicating them to Azure. In the past, this was only available for larger organizations that had access to System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Now, SMBs can take advantage of this service out of the box from Hyper-V without the need to purchase the SCVMM components.

Here is the link to the documentation on how to set this up – http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hyper-v-recovery-manager-hypervsite/

Azure, Cloud, Server 2012 R2

Migration and Disaster Recovery to Azure using Azure Site Recovery

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Microsoft Azure have announced the general availability of Azure Site Recovery services. The announcement by Abhishek Hemrajani is as follows.

“I am excited to announce the GA of the Disaster Recovery to Azure using Azure Site Recovery. In addition to enabling replication to and recovery in Microsoft Azure, ASR enables automated protection of VMs, remote health monitoring, no-impact recovery plan testing, and single click orchestrated recovery – all backed by an enterprise-grade SLA.

The DR to Azure functionality in ASR builds on top of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Windows Server Hyper-V Replica, and Microsoft Azure to ensure that our customers can leverage existing IT investments while still helping them optimize precious CAPEX and OPEX spent in building and managing secondary datacenter sites.

The GA release also brings significant additions to the already expansive list of ASR’s DR to Azure features:

  • NEW ASR Recovery Plans and Azure Automation integrate to offer robust and simplified one-click orchestration of your DR plans
  • NEW Track Initial Replication Progress as virtual machine data gets replicated to a customer-owned and managed geo-redundant Azure Storage account. This new feature is also available when configuring DR between on-premises private clouds across enterprise sites
  • NEW Simplified Setup and Registration streamlines the DR setup by removing the complexity of generating certificates and integrity keys needed to register your on-premises System Center Virtual Machine Manager server with your Site Recovery vault”

The following scenarios are supported.

Costing can be found here – http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/site-recovery/

You can read more from the blog post here – http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/02/disaster-recovery-to-azure-using-azure-site-recovery-is-now-ga/