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If you can extend your datacenter into the cloud using a secured network path and Windows Azure , it sure should follow that you can take advantage of cloud-based virtual machines to perform some of your more common infrastructure tasks.  For example: File Servers. “Yeah, I get it, Kevin. ...

As many of you may already know, this month my Microsoft US DPE Central Region teammates ( Matt Hester , Brian Lewis , and Keith Mayer ) and I are blogging about “ 20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services ”. Throughout this month I’ll be adding links, making any updates...

Did you know that virtual machines can also be clustered?  “Really?” Yep.  We call it “guest clustering”, where a cluster of application-hosting computers, sharing storage, are actually virtual machines.  In this way we provide a “whole ‘nuther level of high availability” in the fact that...

You may ask, “How easy is it to set up a cluster of virtualization hosts for Hyper-V virtual machine high availability?” “How easy is it to set up a cluster of virtualization hosts for Hyper-V virtual machine high availability?” I’m glad you asked. Short answer: Very Longer answer: Let’s let my friend...

In part 7 of our " 20+ Days of Server Virtualization ”, Keith Mayer gives us some powerful PowerShell commands to turn on the iSCSI initiator, connect, and use iSCSI storage from our Hyper-V host.  Read His Article: Speaking iSCSI with Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V

I’m sure some of you are more well-versed in the area of storage than others.  And no matter where you fall on that continuum, you may be wondering what kinds of storage are available for Hyper-V   Virtualization . “Hey Kevin – What kinds of storage are available for Hyper-V virtualization...

The term 'datastore’ is one that many of you who work with VMware are familiar, but which doesn’t really translate to the world of Microsoft’s Hyper-V .   “Since Hyper-V does not require a different formatting of the underlying physical disk structure like VMFS(VMware’s proprietary disk format...

To kick off our series of “ 20+ Days of Server Virtualization ” articles, I’m going to introduce you to Hyper-V .  “Introduce?  It’s not new!” True.  But even though many of you may have heard of Microsoft ’s virtualization solution, you may not know much about it.  And so to start...

As you may remember, last month my team blogged an entire month on using Windows Azure as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS – pronounced “EYE-yazz”) in our “ 31 Days of Servers in the Cloud ” series. As part 12 of our 19-part " Migration and Deployment ” Series...

How fast? “Yeah? How fast is it?” Before I answer that question, I need to briefly define what the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol is, for those might be unfamiliar with it. SMB is the old reliable networked file system protocol. It is the protocol in use when you access file...

What an amazing platform and opportunity for learning. Creating virtual machines in Windows Azure is a great platform for trying out functionality that would otherwise be hard or expensive to do in your own test lab or on your own hardware. So in this Part 27 of our “ 31 Days of Servers in the...

Something important to be aware of when you’re using Windows Azure is: How much is this costing me?  And in particular, which items cost me what amount? One of those items that might be easy to overlook is the amount of storage you’re currently using.  If you’ve got a lot of old .VHD files...

Yes, you read that subject line correctly. We’ve actually improved the volume error detection so much in Windows Server 2012 that you’ll rarely if ever have to run a CHKDSK command to fix it. And if you do, it will run fast and get out of your way. In our 29th installment of “ 31...

So you have files to secure… “Yeah..” And forever you’ve been using security groups in Active Directory , and file and/or share permissions in Access Control Lists (ACLs), right? “Uh huh. What’s wrong with that?” Nothing. But what if I were to tell...

How much do you depend on a file share to be available at all times? “Not much. After all, I don’t use them for anything much beyond file storage due to the performance of that kind of resource.” Ah.. but back in Part 17 of our series, we told you that with the new SMB 3.0 protocol...

NTFS is getting a little long in the tooth . It has been, and continues to be, a rock-solid file system on which most of the world’s data on disk is stored. And it is still the default disk format for installations of Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 . Enter ReFS – the new Resilient File...

In Windows Server 2012 Microsoft includes many improvements, but also many new capabilities “in the box”. One of the new things we’re including is built-in support for data deduplication. “Wait.. you mean like when a process makes more efficient use of the space used on a storage...

Happy Saturday! But that doesn’t mean we get a break. We promised 31 days of our favorite things in October, and we’re going to give you 31 days of our favorite things in October. “Seriously?” Yep. I hope you had a super weekend, and that you’re reading this on Monday...

Yessir!  According to the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform page, And that’s today!  Go to THIS PAGE to set up a reminder that at 8:00AM Pacific (10:00AM Central) time, the launch is happening. “Where will the Windows Server Launch be taking place?” Online.  Go to www.windows-server...

Dan asked this at a TechNet Event IT Camp a few months ago… For those of you not familiar with it, ODX stands for Offloaded Data Transfer (or, I suppose, “X-fer”). It is a capability that some storage vendor solutions have to offload the transfer of data. “Um.. duh!”...

In this final day of Shark Week! on Full of I.T., we will do a quick comparison of storage capabilities between Hyper-V and VMware ’s vSphere 5.0.  Hyper-V 3.0 in Windows Server 2012 and in the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 have some new capabilities and new capacities in the storage arena...