Matt Hester's WebLog

Register Now: John Savill’s upcoming Master Class Certified training session in Dallas on 7/8/2013

Matt Hester — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:53:00 GMT

I just found out about this and had to pass it on! John and I have been colleagues for years and I am certain that this will be an incredible training. This intensive one week event is designed to give attendees the skills required to architect, deploy and manage a Microsoft centric environment. By the end of the event you will understand all the capabilities available, how they work best together and be able to take your environments to new levels of functionality. While there is a cost to the training, I think it was well worth it! You can learn more and register here: Master Class Certified training session in Dallas on 7/8/2013

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20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (IaaS): Deploy Web Server Solutions (IIS or Apache) in the Cloud

Matt Hester — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:03:00 GMT

One of the more common workloads the cloud handles fantastically is for your web service. Whether you want to have your website external or internal facing using Azure web services can help to alleviate the workload on your local infrastructure. The web could even help alleviate even some of the workload for your websites. So for the post today I wanted to take you through how to deploy a web application with load balanced web servers. Also this will be the Instructor led lab I will be delivering at TechEd: Join Me at TechEd North America and Come to my Session: June 3-6 New Orleans!

In the following guide you are going to learn how to deploy a simple ASP.NET MVC 4 Web application to a Web server hosted in Windows Azure, using SQL Server and configuring load balancing. The guide below is geared to Windows Server 2012 and IIS (Internet Information Services), however you can also do the lab with Apache and Linux. Take a look at this guide here: HOL-IntroToWindowsAzureVirtualMachinesLinux.

Once you've complete this step-by-step guide, you'll have a cloud-based virtual SQL Server 2012 lab environment that you can use to explore the other new DBA and BI capabilities in this latest version of SQL Server!

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NEW! Hands-On Datacenter Scenarios and Windows Azure Events

Matt Hester — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:27:17 GMT

This just in…

The demand has been so great for more information about using Windows Azure Infrastructure Services as an extension of your datacenter and IT Operations, that we’ve decided to schedule a few more FREE events to close out the end of our fiscal year here in Central Region Microsoft US DPE. The four of us (Brian Lewis, Keith Mayer, Matt Hester and I) are holding events at four locations at the end of this month (and one in mid-June):

Southfield, MI (Detroit), May 21, 2013, and
Irving, TX (Dallas), May 30, 2013
Edina, MN (Minneapolis), May 31, 2013, and
Downers Grove, IL (Chicago), June 13, 2013

Each of these days will be made up of two half-day events on two different topics, giving you three different registration options.

“Huh?”

You can register for the morning session. You can register for the afternoon session. OR you can register for the full-day.

“Cool. What are the topics?”

I’m glad you asked…

Morning Topic: Using Windows Azure as a server and datacenter backup solution – Windows Azure Backup. We’ll talk briefly about, and then walk through a hands-on example (you will follow along and do this on your own computers) of enabling, configuring, and leveraging Windows Azure Backup.

Afternoon Topic: Building a Microsoft SharePoint 2013 lab entirely in Windows Azure. Again, at the end of this you will have a Microsoft SharePoint 2013 lab configured in your own cloud based lab in Windows Azure.

As I said, you can register for either one, or register for the full day. PLEASE just register one time, so that we can get an accurate estimate of attendance.

Okay, here are the registration links:

May 21 – Southfield, MI

OR

May 30 – Irving, TX

OR

May 31 – Edina, MN

OR

Downers Grove, IL

OR

Space is limited, so register early. And make sure you heed the requirements prior to coming. You’ll need at least some Internet and Remote-Desktop capable hardware, and a Windows Azure subscription. (Get a free 90-Day Trial here)

See you there!

20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (IaaS): Replicate File Server Content to the Cloud with DFS-R

Matt Hester — Wed, 08 May 2013 06:39:00 GMT

Distributed File System (DFS) is of the more powerful functions of your Windows Server. DFS has been around for quite a few years. If you are unfamiliar with DFS it has two main underlying functions that provide a lot of power for your infrastructure. DFS is made up of DFS Namespaces and DFS Replication.

DFS Namespaces (DFS –N): DFS-N enables you to group shared folders that are located on different servers into one or more logically structured namespaces. Each namespace appears to users as a single shared folder with a series of subfolders. However, the underlying structure of the namespace can consist of numerous file shares that are located on different servers and in multiple sites.
DFS Replication (DFS-R) Enables you to efficiently replicate folders (including those referred to by a DFS namespace path) across multiple servers and sites. DFS Replication uses a compression algorithm known as remote differential compression (RDC). RDC detects changes to the data in a file, and it enables DFS Replication to replicate only the changed file blocks instead of the entire file.

With such a fantastic tool, it is only logical that you can also leverage the cloud for the is functionality. Specifically using DFS-R with your file servers in Windows Azure Infrastructures Services provides a natural target for your replication. It also provides a natural Disaster recovery environment for your DFS data. The best thing about using DFS-R in Windows Azure is that after a few steps to get your systems networked together, the setup is nearly identical to setting up on premise servers. The advantages of having your DFS replications in the cloud are very similar to when you backup data to the cloud in that the DFS replicas are offsite and they are automated.

Getting Started:

Extend your Active Directory to the Cloud via a Windows Azure Virtual Network: Step-by-Step – Extend On-Premise Active Directory to the Cloud with Windows Azure
Add a new Windows Server 2012 member server VM to the Windows Azure Virtual Network and Active Directory domain that you extended in Step 1 above. Great tips here: Complete this training on Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks for assistance.
Install the DFS-R service role (you will find this under the File and Storage Services on the Azure VM provisioned in Step 2 above. You will also have need to have these roles installed on your on premise server, chances are thay they are already installed.

After you have the server in Windows Azure installed with the role, it is now a matter of creating the replication partnership between your on premise network and Windows Azure.

On your on premise DFS primary server open the DFS management tool from the Tools menu in server manager.
Right click on the Replication node and select New Replication Group
For this scenario just Multipurpose Replication Group and click next
Give the group a name and select the domain and click on next
Add the On-premise server and the server you created in Azure previously and click next
Select Hub and Spoke for the methodology click next
On the add Hub members select your on premise server and click add to make it the hub server, click next.
You can modify the connections for the spoke members and click next
On the replication schedule you can modify the replication schedule and bandwidth used. I would recommend you control the bandwidth based on your available bandwidth click next
Select your on-premise server as the primary member and click next
Select the folders you want to replicate and click next
Set the local path for the replica servers and click next
Review the settings and click create
Verify the confirmation and click close.

Remember you can contribute to the series. Let us know what scenarios are you interested in seeing? Are you currently using Windows Azure, if so how are you using it? Let us know and email me mhester@microsoft.com or comment on this post. We will try to include them in this series.

Also remember to sign up for your free Window Azure trial: Get Started TODAY with a FREE 90-DAY Windows Azure Subscription

You can find the full series here: 20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure

Join Me at TechEd North America and Come to my Session: June 3-6 New Orleans!

Matt Hester — Fri, 03 May 2013 05:35:00 GMT

TechEd 2013 North America will take place June 3-6 in New Orleans. TechEd is Microsoft’s premiere conference for IT Professionals and Enterprise Developers, offering the most comprehensive technical education across Microsoft's products, solutions, tools, and services.

I have had the privilege to speak at TechEd the last couple of years and this year I was also able to get a session

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20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (IaaS): Leveraging the Cloud for Backing Up Your Data.

Matt Hester — Thu, 02 May 2013 07:56:00 GMT

One of the key scenarios that you can leverage the cloud for is backup and that is what we are going to take a look in this post. Backup is something that should be doing everyday in your datacenter. Regardless of the size of your datacenter, you backup your data. You can backup your data to a variety of locations and media. Are you prepared if you lose your backup volumes or misplace the tape or if disaster strikes?

You can now include the cloud into your thought process as a storage destination for your data. It is secure and easy scenario to dip your toe into using the cloud. The cloud backups instantly provide you a disaster recovery environment and a great place to store your data. These tools provide you automated backups that are offsite.

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20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (IaaS): Getting Started!

Matt Hester — Wed, 01 May 2013 07:23:00 GMT

Another great month and another great series. This month we are going to be talking about Windows Azure IaaS. As many you may know on April 16th 2013, the Windows Azure team announced that Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks ) was released for General Availability ( GA ) for production workloads. You can read the product group post here: Windows Azure Infrastructure Services: The Power of ‘And’

One of the interesting things in the post is that it mentioned that over 200,000 customers are actively using Windows Azure as their cloud platform. So that got my teammates Kevin, Keith, Brian and myself thinking, what are 200,000 customers using Windows Azure for? What are some of the key scenarios that IT Pro’s like yourselves are using the cloud? What is the why behind some of the technologies?

Windows Azure VMs and Virtual Networks unlock a huge set of new capabilities for IT Pros exploring Hybrid datacenter scenarios. Today, most IT Pros are faced with on-premise datacenter capacity issues for new workloads, and are often looking to leverage off-site options for backup and DR as well. Windows Azure can be leveraged as a cloud-based extension of your on-premise datacenter for several key scenarios. So this month we are going to take a scenario approach to the technology focusing on the key scenarios (why’s) and the how’s you can leverage in Windows Azure. Here are some of the topics you are going to see this month:

Backup to the cloud and Windows Azure

Backup SQL Server Databases & Logs to the Cloud
Backup Server Data to the Cloud with Windows Azure Online Backup

Extend On-Premise Network to the Cloud with Windows Azure Site-to-Site VPN
Disaster Recovery with Windows Azure

Extend Your Windows Server Active Directory to the Cloud
Replicate File Server Content to the Cloud with DFS-R
SQL Database AlwaysOn or Database Mirroring
Build a Private Cloud Recovery Plan with Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager

Accelerate the Delivery of Cloud-based Web and File Server Content
Deploy SharePoint to the Cloud
Deploy Web Applications to the Cloud with Windows Azure

As you can see we hopefully have a lot of great scenarios to investigate this month. However, we want to hear from you!

ACTION ITEM: What scenarios are you interested in seeing? Are you currently using Windows Azure, if so how are you using it? Let us know and email me mhester@microsoft.com and will try to include you on the scenarios.

ACTION ITEM #2: As you can see a lot of the scenarios we are going to take a look at this month are things we hope you are interested in. More importantly you can follow along! You can sign up for a FREE Windows Azure 90-Day Trial here: Get Started TODAY with a FREE 90-DAY Windows Azure Subscription

So join us as we take a look at the cloud. You can find the full series here: 20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure

20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (IaaS):

Matt Hester — Wed, 01 May 2013 07:22:00 GMT

Here are all the parts of the Wndows Azure IaaS Series, please check as this post will be updated daily. If you want to see a particular scenario let us know and email me at mhester@microsoft.com . Also remember you can sign up for a FREE Windows Azure 90-Day Trial here: Get Started TODAY with a FREE 90-DAY Windows Azure Subscription

Altra Helping Boston to Keep Running

Matt Hester — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:43:27 GMT

As lot of you know I love to run, and know what it takes to complete a marathon. As you might imagine my thoughts just go out to everyone affected by the events in Boston. You also may have seen I fell in love with my new shoes from a great company called Altra. It was even my honor to become an Altra Ambassador to help promote these great shoes. I have to say after watching the following video, I am so proud of what Altra is doing for the Boston Running community and to be a part of such a wonderful company. If you want to get a shirt and contribute to the fund take a look here: The Boston Tech Tee with a100% of the proceeds from the shirts going to the The One Fund Boston

Up to 98% Reduction in Sync Traffic with Hyper-v Replica and Riverbed

Matt Hester — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:02:09 GMT

My teammate Brian posted a great article on Hyper-V replica and Riverbed. The article takes a look at a whitepaper we recently released. The whitepaper shows up to 98% reduction in sync traffic for your replica server with an average of 70% reduction for most workloads. Check out the article here:

Hyper-v Replica and Riverbed