Hello folks, Windows has been reimagined to be all about you and your style of working.  That means that you can “personalize” your experience.  Here is my start screen. I have all the apps I use everyday at the right side to give me really quick access to them.  that is just one of the things I do to make my experience better. No matter what you want to do, you can get it done quickly...

I've always been a great fan of Group Policy Objects.  They are a fantastic way to retain control of your environment.  With Windows Server 2012 the good things keep coming.  Today we will look at some of what’s new in Group Policy in Windows Server 2012. more specifically we will discuss the following: Remote Group Policy Update Group Policy infrastructure status Local Group Policy...

Over the past few months we have made a big deal about the storage features of Windows Server 2012, including how the built-in iSCSI Software Target allows you to build a low-cost software-SAN (storage area network) for small environments, and how that lets you create a Hyper-V Failover Cluster without the expense of an actual SAN appliance. We have also made a huge deal about building a Private Cloud...

Hello Folks, Today we will look at some of the new features and enhancements in Active directory with Windows Server 2012. As usual, I suggest you download the evaluation of Windows Servers 2012 and use the info in this post to setup your own lab and start exploring what’s new in Active directory. Let’s get going… Here are the points , In my own opinion, that are the most impactful enhancements of...

Many of you know that used to do a lot of VMware training… primarily for a company called VMTraining.  So I was thrilled when they reached out to me recently and asked if I was willing to do a webinar on Hyper-V for their customers… and for anyone else who was interested.  While it is not in response to it, the webinar does follow a similar one done recently by one of their senior instructors...

I love this time of year. The days are getting longer, warmer and the deck is calling my name. (these are my feet….) At my house, summer months are very busy. The kids are home, my wife is at home (she’s a teacher) so I tend to hide in my office with the door shut so I can get work done. It’s busy at home but in a lot of IT shops, things slow down a bit. With the majority of Canadian...

While delivering an CANITPRO Camp not to long ago, an IT administrator shared his story as to why he had decided to move his organization's SQL backup to the cloud. It seemed that his predecessor was very diligent in switching the backup tapes every morning. He insured backups were created daily, weekly and monthly as well and locked the tapes in a fire proof safe at his home nightly. One day the organization...

TechEd is Microsoft's leading IT Professionals and Enterprise Developers technical conference being hosted on June 3rd -6th in New Orleans, LA. Those who have attended TechEd in the past have always found it rewarding in the aspect of professional development and industry networking. Those who have yet to attend or are on the fence in deciding to attend, here’s a small summary as to what to...

BranchCache enables remote offices to have centralized access to file-shares over the wide area network at faster speeds and using less bandwidth. Included in Windows Server 2012 and in some editions of Windows 8, BranchCache is part of a collection of solutions known as “wide area files services” or WAFS solutions. These type of solutions can be expensive but are included in the box with...

Chatter around cloud computing has increased as of late as more organizations are investigating how to harness the power of the cloud. Having an always on, always operational infrastructure based in the cloud provides piece of mind for most. With Microsoft's recent announcement around Price Reductions for Virtual Machines and Cloud Services, Microsoft Cloud Services have been on top of mind of many...

There is a lot of new stuff in Windows Server 2012 Active Directory. Active Directory management enhancements Active Directory Administrative Center Active Directory Recycle Bin management Fine-Grained Password Policy management Windows PowerShell History Viewer Dynamic Access Control Group Policy enhancements Kerberos constrained...

Sharing knowledge amidst social media is a passion of mine. I challenge myself to try and spark a conversation via any of the most widely used social media avenues available. So when a request for a Step-By-Step post on Active Directory migration following the previous Step-By-Step post on DHCP Migration , Pierre, Mitch and I were only too happy to oblige. Before detailing Active Directory migration...

Anyone who has attended one of our #CANITPRO Camps provided across Canada has been appreciative of the fact that actual hardware is provided to run all labs. Attendees are also appreciative of the amount of hours that Pierre, Mitch, and I put forth in setting up said hardware in every city. This practice however, is slowly coming to an end and we are currently exploring options to utilize "the cloud...

Hello folks, In this series, we’ve looked at deploying or leveraging the goodness of Windows Server 2012.  we’ve looked at VDI, Data Deduplication, DirectAccess, Hyper-v among others… Today we’ll look at ReFS.  It’s part of the Windows Server 2012 Storage Platform. It has been designed from the ground up to meet a broad set of customer requirements, for all the different ways that Windows...

Hello folks, A new feature of Windows Server 2012 called Storage Spaces is designed to change the storage task for enterprises by providing an in-box storage virtualization that can use low-cost commodity storage devices. We’ve covered Storage Spaces a few time already: Storage Pools… Dive right in! Windows Server 2012 IT Camp – Lab #3 - Thin vs. Fixed provisioning…...

Mitch, Pierre and I have been delivering #CANITPRO camps for some time now and we are thoroughly enjoying connecting with the IT community across Canada. Many IT professionals we have encountered have enjoyed both version "A", concentrating on Hyper-V, and version "B", centered around Windows Server 2012 tools and management, and have been enthusiastic to learn how Microsoft's latest server offering...

Hello Folks, This is a re-post of a great article that our friend Mitch Tulloch wrote for the BizTech Information Technology site.   We are reproducing it with his blessing. Mitch is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and lead author of several books including “The Windows 7 Resource Kit” and “Introducing Windows Server 2012” ( this one can be for free (get the PDF here )!! ) from Microsoft...

What is desktop virtualization? Its many things to many people. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Session Virtualization RemoteApp In this post we will only cover what desktop virtualization is and what components, needs and challenges are addressed by desktop virtualization. The Microsoft Virtual Academy has a great jumpstart session on VDI.  here is the overview recording.(see the link at...

A colleague asked me earlier today if I knew off the top of my head how many roles and features there are in Windows Server 2012 , and I had to admit that I did not know.  As Albert Einstein once said, why memorize what you can reference.  However as a quick exercise I decided to not only count them, but type them up into an article for Kalvin… and for all of you! NOTE: I included all of...

Everyone runs Windows… okay, that is not entirely true, but by 2012 it is the rare datacentre that does not have any Windows running. I have been crisscrossing the country and indeed traversing the globe telling people how wonderful Hyper-V and Microsoft’s virtualization story is as good as or better than it’s competition, whether that be VMware or KVM or whoever else. That often...

Those who attended one of the Windows 8 #CANITPRO Camps earlier this year were privy to seeing the setup and enablement of a Windows-To-Go USB key as one of the presented demos. What makes this offering compelling is the fact that one could literally walk up to any computer, plug in your USB key and boot up into your work environment. There is a new option available with the introduction of Windows...

Wow… Calgary was a blast, and after three great sessions it is great to be home… temporarily. The next two weeks are a whirlwind of craziness. First up, I am presenting two sessions on System Center in Toronto on Monday. At the end of the day I hop into my car to head to the airport to catch my flight to Edmonton. Tuesday and Wednesday I am presenting sessions on Windows Server during...

One of our influencers in Montreal Alexandre Brisebois, wrote this article on Tuesday. With his permission we are re-publishing it here, without any changes. Merci Alexandre! -M Earlier this month Amazon cut prices on Virtual Machines and I compared both Windows Azure and Amazon yearly pricing for Windows Virtual Machines . At the time Microsoft had not made any announcements about changes to their...

Since it was in pre-release I have been evangelizing Windows Server 2012 . I have gone from sea to shining sea talking about it at Launch events, at Partner showcases, in IT Camps, at user groups talking about how much better it is than Windows Server 2008, but more importantly I chiefly discuss the improvements to Hyper-V over previous versions, and how it (and System Center 2012) compares to VMware’s...

On Tuesday Microsoft made a huge announcement with regard to Windows Azure and Virtualization.  The following release is from Jeff Woolsey: The Microsoft Cloud OS Vision just took a huge step forward today. Today, we are announcing: >> General Availability of Azure IaaS worldwide << Furthermore, to eliminate price as a discussion when comparing to the competition, namely AWS, we made...