Cloud – Page 2 – Tom on Tech

Windows Server “8” Beta released

This morning, Microsoft announced the release of the Windows Server “8” beta. Windows Server “8” is the successor to Windows Server 2008 R2 and is a member of the Windows 8 family.

Microsoft has four pillars around the release of Windows Server “8”:

– Windows Server “8” goes beyond virtualization – With this release, Microsoft is building an infrastructure capable of running much more than a simple virtual machine. Features are being built in that enable new public and private cloud based scenarios.

– Windows Server “8” brings the power of many servers and the simplicity of one – New features are added that enable users to take better advantage of commodity storage, provide simplification to server management, and provide uptime in a better and more cost-effective manner.

– Windows Server “8” is designed for every app and every cloud – Server “8” will enable flexibility in deploying applications on-premise or in the cloud or a combination thereof using similar tools and frameworks. Windows Server “8” will be highly scalable and elastic providing for better density and efficiency, as well as providing a better platform for hosting providers.

– Windows Server “8” enables the modern workstyle – Server “8” enables enterprises to offer access to corporate data and applications on any device while providing a secure and seamless experience no matter where users are in the world.

Microsoft’s Bill Laing has a post for more on Windows Server “8” that I highly suggest reading.

If you want to download and evaluate Windows Server “8”, click here.

Imagine Cup 2011–Day 1–Opening Ceremony

Imagine Cup 2011 – Day 1

Tonight in New York City, Steve Ballmer along with Jon Perera, General Manager of Microsoft Education, Arthur VanderVeen, CEO of the Office of Innovation at the New York Department of Education, Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and Dennis Crowley, co-founder and CEO of Foursquare officially opened the 2011 Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals.

The energy in the room was electric. The passion and the excitement from the students here is incredible. As soon as Ballmer’s name was announced the noise level in the room intensified. It was crazy.

Ballmer talked to the students about how they are in a business that is constantly working to change the world. He talked about the importance of the cloud and the impact it is having on the world and the students’ projects by enabling real time collaboration, commerce, and social interaction. Ballmer also talked about how devices of the future would be dynamic, faster performing, and include more sensors and do more things. Ballmer also mentioned that Natural User Interfaces would open up new possibilities and enable even more people to use computers.

To close out his remarks, Ballmer gave the students three key pieces of advice. The first is that ideas matter. When you come up with an idea make note of it. Stick with it. The second is to be passionate about what your idea and what you do. The third is to be tenacious. Don’t give up. Stick with it and see the idea through until the end.

Jeffrey Sachs then came to the stage and talked to the students about how the world has changed and there are many challenges that we face. These challenges range from strain on world food supplies to population growth, climate change, hunger, and others. He told students they were being given a lifetime homework assignment, and that this assignment was to find ways to better the world and to solve these tough challenges.

To close out the evening, Dennis Crowley came to the stage and talked to the students about sticking with their ideas and seeing them through. He talked about his experience with startups and said that Foursquare’s success is “built off of 10 years of failure.” He told students to never give up on their ideas and that even if the present wasn’t the best time for their idea, it could be a year from now, two years for now, or even ten years from now, but to be persistent and stick with it.

Tomorrow the competition begins.

Taking a bite out of the Big Apple

I’ve arrived in New York City for the 2011 Microsoft Imagine Cup. For those of you just joining us, the Microsoft Imagine Cup is the premier student technology competition. I tend to tell people that it’s the Olympics of technology.

At the Imagine Cup, the top students from around the world come together to compete against each other in categories such as Software Design, Game Design, Embedded Development, and the Windows Phone 7 challenge just to name a few.

I’ll be here covering five teams and their progress throughout the Worldwide Finals. My teams are as follows:

The Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals begin this Friday, July 8th and end Wednesday, July 13th.

For more on Imagine Cup please visit www.imaginecup.com, or search for #ImagineCup on Twitter. You can also follow me on Twitter, @tziegmann, to follow along this week as well.

Microsoft Office 365: First Impressions

Yesterday in New York City, Steve Ballmer announced the general availability of Microsoft Office 365.

Office 365 is the long-awaited successor to Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS). BPOS at the core was Exchange Server 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 in the cloud. Also included was Office Live Meeting which could be used for hosting conference calls and presentations.

Office 365 in some ways is an evolution of BPOS, but there is so much more to Office 365 that I see it as an entirely new offering. The offerings in Office 365 are much improved from a cloud services architecture standpoint I’ve included a chart below listing the differences between the two products.

With Office 365, collaboration and communication are on a whole other level. By combining Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync in a cloud solution, Microsoft has made it easy for small businesses to have access to enterprise size technologies at a reasonable price and without having to deal with any of the infrastructure, licensing, and personnel overhead.

What do I mean by enterprise size technologies? Let’s take a look.

Mail, Contacts, and Calendar powered by Exchange 2010
Instant Messaging, Live Meetings, and Audio / Video conferencing powered by Lync 2010
Collaborative Team Sites powered by SharePoint 2010

Best part about Office 365 though, is that they have a pricing model to fit everyone’s needs. Starts out at $2/user all the way up to $27/user based on the services provided. For small businesses and individuals, it’s only six bucks a month!

I’m currently in the process of migrating my single person Google Apps account to Office 365 and will then be migrating my personal e-mail over and then I’ll be relying entirely on the cloud. So far so good. The only hitch I have run into is that I signed up as a partner and there is a bit of a lag between account setup and when the actual licenses show up and are available to be used. Not a big deal. Other than that, I strongly recommend that users keep control of their DNS settings and manually set the appropriate Office 365 settings. I’ve seen too many comments in the Office 365 forums about inability to modify when MS Online has control.

Once I start using Office 365 on a daily basis, I’ll post more of my thoughts, but so far, it’s been pain free.

For more on Office 365, visit http://www.office365.com

If by some chance, you’re a small business in Arizona, and want to talk more about Office 365 and how it might fit in your business, send me an e-mail. tom (at) tomontech (dot) com

Hands-On Labs at TechEd 2011 | How does it all work?

This week at TechEd 2011, an attendee favorite are the Hands-On Labs. I met with the good guys from XB Velocity to get a behind the scenes look at how everything works.

At the highest level, the labs are stored in an on-site private cloud and then accessed through Internet Explorer on each PC in the lab. Lets dive in and look at things at a deeper level.

What’s the hardware involved?

HP Bladesystem C7000 Enclosure with 16 blades
HP StorageWorks 4400 EVA with ~ 15TB of available storage
HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator providing Enclosure Management, Flex Fabric Management, and HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO)

What’s in each blade?

2 physical processors each with 6 cores (Intel Xeon X5670, 2.93 GHz, with Hyper-Threading)
128GB of RAM
2 146GB hard drives
1 320 GB HP IO Accelerator Card, powered by Fusion IO (provides 150,000 IOPS, Read speed 750MB/s | Write speed 550MB/s)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter SP1 w/ HyperV

How’s the infrastructure managed?

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 – Used for reporting and deploying updates to lab clients
System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 – Used to monitor all servers involved
System Center Service Manager 2010 – Used to run help desk and provide incident routing during the show
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta – Used for monitoring lab VMs and managing / monitoring infrastructure VMs

The Nitty Gritty:

The hands on labs this year are all running on a private cloud setup using the aforementioned hardware and software. This private cloud serves 350 users located in the lab area. All of the base lab VHDs (Virtual Hard Disks) are stored on the SAN, and differencing disks that point to these base VHDs are stored on each blade’s IO Accelerator card. When someone wants to start a lab, a copy of the virtual machine (already in a saved state for quick starts) is made, pointed to a differencing disk on the IO Accelerator, and the VM is then turned on and available to the end user. By doing it the this way, the labs are able to be run at optimal speed and there is little risk of any damage to the Base VHDs stored on the SAN. For better memory management within the VMs, Dynamic Memory is enabled to allow the VMs to take more RAM if they need it, and to give up RAM they don’t need.

End-User Experience:

When the user sits down in front of a lab station they are presented with a list of categories and labs to choose from. When they find the lab they click the Take Lab Now button and that begins the backend VM creation and startup process. Once the VMs have launched, another window opens on the second screen with the lab manual. If there are multiple VMs involved, there is tabbed navigation between each of the lab’s VMs. After the user finishes the labs, the VMs are shut down and then destroyed, or if a user leaves without ending their session, the system will automatically destroy the VMs after 40 minutes of inactivity. I’ve included some screenshots and photos of the setup below.

The Serverquarium at TechEd 2011 Lab menu on left, lab manual appears on right

Running lab at TechEd 2011 Screenshot of the Lab selection menu

Screenshot of running lab showing multiple VMs Hands-on Lab Private Cloud

Inside of one of the blades 320GB HP IO Accelerator Card

SCOM diagram of BladeCenter enclosure Hyper-V performance metrics

HP IO Accelerator Card Performance Mosaic showing all running VMs in HOL area

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,TechEd,Hands-On Labs,XB Velocity,Systems Management,Virtual Labs,Virtual Machines,System Center,Hyper-V,SCOM,SCVMM,HP,BladeCenter,Cloud,Fusion IO,HP IO Accelerator,StorageWorks,Hyper-V Mosaic

Windows Intune–What is it and why should you care?

One of the major focuses this week at TechEd and for Microsoft in general is cloud computing and cloud based services. One of the services getting some real love this week is Windows Intune. In this post I’ll be introducing the Intune service and explaining how it can benefit you.

Windows Intune is a service that provides security and management capabilities through the cloud and a web-based management console. With Intune, you get malware protection, policy management, system health alerting and more.

Key Features:

Centrally manage deployment of Microsoft updates
Malware protection using the same engine as Forefront Endpoint Protection
Provide Remote Assistance to your users from anywhere
Track PCs and track software license usage
Centrally manage firewall and malware settings for PCs connected to the service

I’ve just started using the service today, but what I like I about it is the usability. Unlike deploying Windows Server Update Services, Forefront Endpoint Protection and System Center Operations Manager locally to achieve the same integration, managing Windows Intune is a breeze. Most of the hard stuff is done for you, freeing you up to take care of what matters the most.

Installation of the Intune client is a breeze. One click to download a ZIP file that has the executable and necessary files to associate the client, and then installation takes place seamlessly and silently.

Windows Intune supports Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs and is reasonably priced at $11 per device per month.

Windows Intune

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Tech-Ed North America 2011: Day 0 – Recap

After following the very poor directions given to me about finding the shuttle to bring me to the hotel, and being lied to and ripped off for 20 bucks (yes, I’m bitter.), I made it to my hotel, the Marriott Marquis in Downtown Atlanta. Check in was fairly effortless, and I’ve got a very nice room on an upper floor of the hotel with a great view of the city. For the week, Microsoft has invested in custom room keys, sponsored by Windows Intune, with an attached map of the downtown area.

After getting settled in my room, I met up with Randy Guthrie, Academic Developer Evangelist and some Imagine Cup USA Finals winners as well as other invited students, and had a quick bite to eat while waiting for everyone to arrive. Once everyone arrived, we made the 15 minute walk over to the Georgia World Congress Center, and along the way passed by CNN Center, World of Coca-Cola, and the Phillips Arena. While at the GWCC, took a quick walking tour of where keynote would be, the exhibit hall, bloggers lounge, etc. After the tour was over, we went out to dinner and then made final arrangements for the morning.

On Day 1 we’ll see announcements from Jason Zander and Robert Wahbe and from what I’m hearing these announcements will be interesting.

Here are some photos from Day 0:

TechEd North America – Day 0

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What’s new with Windows Azure?

Last week at PDC 2010, Microsoft announced some new features in Windows Azure. Here’s a quick rundown of those new features along with my take.

New Management Portal: Azure’s management portal is getting a much needed facelift and better integration. If you’ve used Azure at all, you’ll know that there are three different management pieces and having to go back and forth can be a pain. Well, that’s all changing. Coming soon, the new portal will be Silverlight powered and the three sites will be integrated into one. I think this is great, and I wonder why this wasn’t done sooner. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

Admin Mode: I’m excited about this one. Currently, if you develop an application for the Azure cloud and deploy it and issues occur there currently are not many ways to diagnose the failure. Admin Mode, essentially Remote Desktop, changes things. With Admin Mode, you are able to RDP into your Web Roles and manage them just as if they were being run on a physical server in your own datacenter. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

Full IIS Support: Currently when an application is deployed into the Azure cloud, it is deployed into a highly customized version of IIS. With the new Admin Role, Microsoft is extending Full IIS support. Meaning that you’ll be able to deploy your application into the Azure cloud with the same flexibility as deploying an app in-house. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

Multiple Administrators: Right now, Azure is limited to two administrators per service account. Microsoft will now allow multiple administrators per service account. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

VM Role: Microsoft will now offer the ability to create a Virtual Machine and host it in the Azure cloud. Windows Server 2008 R2 VMs will be supported first with Server 2003 coming later. Key caution is that these are not stateful VMs, they revert to the uploaded image upon restart. Expect CTP availability sometime before the end of 2010 and a final release in 2011.

Extra Small Compute Instance: Microsoft is now offering an extra small instance that includes a 1GhZ processor, 768MB of RAM, and 20GB of disk space, all for $0.05/hr. I think this is a great starter option and can be used for smaller scale cloud applications. Available now.

These are in my opinion some of the top new features in Windows Azure. There are many more, such as SQL Reporting Services support in SQL Azure, finalization of the SQL Azure Database Manager, and some updates to the Azure AppFabric.

For more information, I highly suggest visiting the Microsoft PDC website and viewing sessions related to Azure. Click here to visit the Microsoft PDC website.

Windows Server Code Name “Aurora” Public Preview now available

Today along with the release of the August Preview build of Windows Home Server “Vail”, Microsoft has released the first public preview of Windows Small Business Server “Aurora.”

Windows Small Business Server “Aurora” is what I’m going to call the younger brother of Small Business Server. Aurora is designed to be the “bridge to the cloud,” with on-premise features such as network monitoring, remote access, PC backup, and cloud features, such as e-mail and collaboration through services such as Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services Standard Suite (BPOS).

Aurora is designed for small businesses with less than 25 users and do not have the resources or budget for an SBS or even higher setup.

Aurora and Vail share the same code base so there is some feature overlap, and in the case of Aurora, the “home” features such as media sharing have been removed. Some of the features of Windows Small Business Server “Aurora” are listed below.

Active Directory integration for enterprise grade user and resource management.
Remote Web Access to files, computers, and applications created by third parties
Integration with Microsoft’s online service offering, BPOS
Client Connector and PC Backup of Mac OS X clients (must be using 10.5 or above)
Launchpad for quick access to common tasks
Drive Extender storage technology, first introduced with Windows Home Server v1, for easy upgrades and management of server storage

While this release is a public preview, it is not recommended that you use Aurora for production use as there is no support and there are some issues around server storage. I’ve listed those issues below.

There is a QFE available along with this build that addresses an issue where saving files to an Aurora server may fail when a large amount of data is present on the server. It is advised that this QFE be installed immediately after installing Aurora.
Storage Check and Repair is broken in this release, as under certain conditions, there may be data loss.
If a hard drive goes missing from the storage pool and you attempt to remove that missing hard drive from the storage pool, the removal wizard may inadvertently remove the wrong files from your server.

For the build number curious amongst us, this is Build 7657 and is available from Microsoft Connect today. The CRC and SHA1 hashes for the ISO have been posted below along with steps to check the integrity of the downloaded ISO.

Hashes for today’s release:

Volume label: GR0SAAxFRE_EN_DVD
CRC: 0x15C92BAA
SHA1: 0x83D7341DB9916145749A02B010981494227F1166

To run MSCDCRC against an ISO file that you have downloaded follow these steps.

Download MSCDCRC to the same folder that you downloaded the Vail ISO to. (Click here to download MSCDCRC)
Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to the folder from Step 1
Type "MSCDCRC InstallDVD.iso" (without quotes)
The integrity check will take a few moments to complete. After the check is complete compare the CRC and SHA hashes to the hashes posted below
If the hashes match then you have successfully downloaded the ISO