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“Hey Kevin… I would like to use Windows Azure as a location where I set up a SQL Server database mirror.  Is this something I can do?” Absolutely, yes!  In fact, it doesn’t even require anything fancy as far as setting up special connectors or site-to-site VPN in order to try this out (though...

Today Microsoft is unveiling a new global brand.  The old is history.  Sure, you’ll see it around for quite awhile (like on my formerly-official presenter shirts), but going forward, this is the new face of Microsoft: “Seriously?  You’re changing the logo after all these years?” Yessiree...

Back in part 23 of our series I wrote about Windows Azure , and some of the tools that IT Pros have at their disposal for the sake of managing and monitoring it. One of those tools of course is PowerShell . And today in part 27, Matt Hester writes about how PowerShell (one of his favorite things) can...

Are you concerned that the cloud will eat your job ? Perhaps. Every time there is a shift in how things are done based on improvements in technology or new options for efficiency, economics, scale… there is always someone crying foul. Or probably more appropriately, they’re worrying about...

Microsoft has some pretty interesting new direction with regard to what “the cloud” can do. For example – how about an Internet-based service that let’s you monitor, manage, and deploy software to the workstations you’re responsible for? “Yeah.. I’d love to...

Back in Part 10 of our “Cloud on Your Terms” series, I discussed the goals of building my own test environment – which I refer to as my “ Private Private Cloud ”. It was the first in a series of screencasts and blog posts showing the process of building your own test environment...

Back in part 10 of our cloud series , I described how I configured my own “Private Private Cloud”. One of the important elements of my test lab was to have a foundation that would support Windows Failover Clustering and the Live Migration of virtual machines. To do this in my “test...

Have you ever wondered how Microsoft supports so much scale online for our online services such as Hotmail, Windows Azure, Windows Live, Windows Updates, etc.? “Yes, I have. You must have a massive datacenter!” Actually, we have many massive datacenters. “More than 10, but less...

Have you ever been puzzled by some problem only to find out that it was related to how your network is configured? “Yes. All the time.” Of course you have. And when you add the potential complexities of supporting a Private Cloud in your datacenter, let alone extreme virtualization...

Today in part 18 of our cloud series , John Weston bemoans the mistakes one might make while suffering the effects of datacenter hypothermia. “What?” I guess Texans don’t work well under 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Read his post HERE. And if you have missed any of the series posts...

Today in Part 17, It’s Brian Lewis ’s turn to admit some “Doh!” moments and, more importantly, share what he learned from them during our build-out of our test datacenter in San Jose. So if you don’t think sysprep is all that important, you should read his post HERE ...

Disclaimer : This is a re-post of my Oct 4, 2011 blog post . But it fits our series, and it’s my content. So I am giving myself permission. Okay.. I feel like sharing this because it’s pretty stupid, but in a geeky-sort-of-way the solution was interesting enough to share. Think Chicken...

For those of you who missed any of these and want to catch up, here is a list that I will keep updated with links to the team’s (Me, Brian Lewis , John Weston , and Matt Hester ) posts. And don’t forget to go to http://aka.ms/evals if you want to evaluate any of the foundational software...

Okay.. I feel like sharing this because it’s pretty stupid, but in a geeky-sort-of-way the solution was interesting enough to share.  Think Chicken & Egg. (or “Catch-22”). As the title of this post suggests, the subject is Windows Failover Clustering.  For those of you who are not familiar...