See all previously recorded content at: http://www.youtube.com/ITProRocks
In this step-by-step guide, I’ll be working through the approach of adding a new Windows Server 2012 Replica Domain Controller to the Windows Server Active Directory Forest built in the prior Step-by-Step guide referenced above. When complete, the cloud-based lab environment will resemble the below diagram with two Active Directory DCs.
Lab Scenario: Active Directory DCs on Windows Azure
Often times, applications that we’re deploying to the cloud may expect Windows Server Active Directory to be present for authentication and identity management. With Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks, we can deploy Windows Server Active Directory on the Windows Azure cloud platform to support these security needs. Best of all, you can test and pilot this scenario for FREE by using our Windows Azure 90-Day Free Trial program.
In this article, we’ll be working through the steps involved with provisioning a new Windows Server 2012 Active Directory Forest in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks ...
With the many of us being out for the holidays over the past few weeks, I wanted to make sure that you didn't miss this important Live Meeting update for Windows 8 and Office 2013. If you regularly use Live Meeting for webcasts, you'll want to make sure you apply these updates if you're running Windows 8, as they address important fixes to resolve screen update issues when sharing desktops from within a Live Meeting session ...
Virtual Machine Guest Clustering allows us to extend the high availability afforded to us by Windows Server 2012 Failover Clustering directly to applications running inside a set of virtual machines that are hosted on a Hyper-V Host Cluster. This allows us to support cluster-aware applications running as virtualized workloads. In this article, I’ll walk through the advantages and implementation steps for Virtual Machine Guest Clustering. Along the way, we’ll explore some new features in Windows Server 2012 Failover Clustering that enhance Virtual Machine Guest Clustering: Virtual Fibre Channel SANs, Anti-Affinity and Virtual Machine Monitoring.
There's a handy new tool available from our free CodePlex Open Source community repository that can be leveraged for basic management of Hyper-V Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 Server Core from a local GUI console. In this article, I'll describe the capabilities of this new tool and provide the steps for download and installation ...
In today's TechNet Radio show, I'm back again for another episode in our System Center 2012 ConfigMgr SP1 series with Wally Mead, Senior Program Manager from the System Center Client Management team and all-around ConfigMgr Guru. Tune in as we discuss how to upgrade to Service Pack 1 of System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.
In this episode, we'll be covering ...
How is Task Manager different in Windows Server 2012?
Server, Application and Process Monitoring at your Fingertips!
In Windows Server 2012, the product team has taken the most frequently used features of the former Task Manager, Resource Monitor and Performance Monitor tools, and they've merged them together to make them more easily accessible on busy servers. As a result, the Task Manager tool in Windows Server 2012 ( and Windows 8 ) has been completely redesigned to roll-up key statistics on ...
In this article, we'll step through the new features in Task Manager in Windows Server 2012 together ...
If your shop is like ours, data is the lifeblood of your business and data growth is one of your top management challenges. In recent years, average volume sizes, file sizes and number of files stored on disk are now many times larger than even a short time ago. Lots of organizations are now pushing for more and more of their data to remain stored on-disk, where it can be kept more directly accessible to users.
Storage capacity is expected to continue to double in size every three years, and recent studies have estimated that the world's global data footprint is over 600+ EB ... that's over 600 Exabytes, or 600 billion gigabytes, of stored data. A stack of CD's containing this much data would stretch all the way past the moon and back!
Can you imagine how long it would take to CHKDSK 600+ EB of data? Me either ... I don't have that much time! And, that's where ReFS comes in ...
This week, we released a new FREE Windows 8 App into the Windows Store for IT Pros with Windows 8 PC's - Server Posterpedia! Here's the details ...
What is the Largest Single Cost Category in Your IT Hardware Budget?
If you're like most of the enterprise customer organizations we surveyed when we were designing Windows Server 2012, your answer is probably the same as theirs: STORAGE! For the organizations we surveyed, we found that as much as 60% of their annual hardware budgets were allocated to expensive hardware SAN solutions due to ever-increasing storage requirements.
Wouldn't it be nice to have some of that budget back for other IT projects? YES! We agree too ... that's why the server team included "Storage Spaces" in Windows Server 2012 ...
Hyper-V Replica is a new built-in feature of both Windows Server 2012 and our FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 products. Hyper-V Replica enables Hyper-V hosts or clusters to enable distance replication of running VMs to remote Hyper-V hosts over a standard IP WAN connection. It provides a very cost-effective disaster recovery solution in the event of a primary data center outage. To get this feature in the VMware world, we'd pay gobs of extra money to license "Site Recovery Manager", but in Hyper-V it's just included as part of the core feature set - no extra cost.
In this article, I'll step through the process of implementing an automated Disaster Recovery solution using Hyper-V Replica and PowerShell 3.0 in Windows Server 2012 ...
Quick update ... The Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows Server 2012 is now available for Windows 8 RTM ...
I've been talking with IT Pros in my community about integrating ADFS 2.0 with Office 365 to establish single sign-on capabilities. Because the process involves a number of tasks and steps, I wanted to share three resources that I've personally found helpful in planning, installing and configuring ADFS for use with Office 365 ...
UPDATE: New Resources Included for System Center 2012 SP1
Getting ready to start prepping for the new System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Exam 70-243, but looking for some solid study materials? This study guide targets the certification objective domains for Exam 70-243 and is intended to assist in self-assessing your preparedness for this exam as well as providing FREE study resources for each objective area to quickly close knowledge gaps. I've assembled this study guide using the same materials that I used when I was preparing for this exam myself.
Windows Server 2012 and our completely FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 certainly have some really cost effective new storage options, with Storage Spaces and Hyper-V over SMB 3.0. However, many IT Pros have already invested in iSCSI shared storage and, as a result, many Hyper-V deployments also need to be able to leverage these existing storage investments.
iSCSI? No problem! Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012 include native support for a software iSCSI initiator as well as MPIO ( Multipath IO ) for resiliency and load balancing of storage IO over multiple network paths.
In this article, we’ll walk through the process of connecting Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012 to common iSCSI storage arrays. Because most of my IT Pro friends are running Hyper-V either on Windows Server 2012 Server Core or Hyper-V Server 2012, both options without a local console GUI, I’ll be providing my examples below in PowerShell.
NOTE: In this article, I make the assumption that your iSCSI storage array is already configured and that your Hyper-V host is already physically attached and zoned into your iSCSI storage network.
Windows Azure Active Directory ( WAAD ), a cloud-friendly REST-based implementation of Active Directory for identity management of cloud applications, is now generally available for production cloud apps as a FREE service. WAAD provides consistent centralized identity management for Microsoft Office 365, Windows Intune and your own cloud-based applications. In addition, WAAD can be integrated with an on-premise Windows Server Active Directory via DirSync and Active Directory Federation Services ( ADFS ) gateway components.
In this article, I’ll provide a set of resources that you can use to get started exploring and leveraging Windows Azure Active Directory for your applications …
This article is Part 2 in a two-part series on building a FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 Cluster to support highly available virtual machines as a foundation to a Private Cloud solution. If you missed it, be sure to check out Part 1 of this article series on the initial steps for building Hyper-V Server 2012 hosts in a Failover Cluster configuration.
In this article, we’ll walk through provisioning highly available virtual machines on our new FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 cluster and testing Live Migration failover scenarios ...
This study guide is provided as part of the Windows Server 2012 "Early Experts" Challenge and steps through the resources that I personally used when preparing for the following exam objectives on Exam 70-410, Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012:
Note: Many of these tasks share common documentation between Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2008. As a result, some of the resource links below may reference older versions of Windows Server, but they are still relevant Windows Server 2012. If you’re already confident in the basics of DHCP, scroll down to the bottom of this post to see What’s New in DHCP in Windows Server 2012.
NEW HOURS! Based on popular demand, we've updated the hours for "Early Experts" Virtual Study Hall assistance - Fridays each week from 11AM to 1PM Eastern Time.
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There’s so many cool features to explore in the latest Windows infrastructure offerings that it’s hard to find time to explore all of them. Beginning February 8th through June 2013, you can block time on Fridays on a weekly basis between 11AM and 1PM Eastern Time to join a Virtual Study Hall and work through real-world hands-on activities with live Q&A assistance from a field-experienced IT Pro Technical Evangelist!
In this article, I provide the details for getting started with our Virtual Study Halls ...
Earlier today, my friend and colleague, Harold Wong, did a great job outlining the requirements for installing the various editions of Windows 8 along with noting the additional requirements for key product features.
Be sure to check out Harold’s BLOG ARTICLE for the details.
Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise are both designed for business network environments. However, at many of my events, a common question among IT Pros relates to the specific differences between Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise. Below, I’ve included a chart that summarizes the key differences between the Professional and Enterprise editions for Windows 8.
In addition to building Virtual Networks on the Windows Azure cloud fabric for running Virtual Machines in the cloud, we can also securely extend those virtual networks to on-premise devices in a couple ways:
In this article, I’ll step through the configuration of Windows Azure Connect to securely connect one or more cloud-based virtual machines to one or more on-premise client or server endpoints.
Lab Scenario: Windows Azure Connect
This week, we’re joined by Jeff Roach, Senior Infrastructure Architect at Wright Robbins, Inc. As an experienced IT Pro, Jeff recently moved to a Microsoft Surface device as his primary work device. Check-in below with Jeff as he describes his journey …
Developing Windows 8 Apps for the Windows Store offers an unprecedented opportunity for developers and partners! As reported earlier this month on Blogging Windows, more than 60 Million Windows 8 licenses have been sold and over 1,700 certified systems are available from our OEM partners for Windows 8 and Windows RT, which fuels eager demand by consumers and professionals alike for new Windows 8 Apps.
Do you have a great idea for a new Windows 8 App, but don’t yet have hardware for running Windows 8 and the associated development tools? In this article, I’ll walk you through the process of building your Windows 8 application development lab in the cloud for FREE by leveraging our Windows Azure FREE 90-Day Trial Offer ...