With the powerful big data platform that Microsoft provides through Azure HDinsight, and with the wide range of data scientists and statisticians utilizes R, this Post is who to bring the best of both and connect R to HDinsight through Hive connector. so that you can analyze hive tables in R where they resides on the Azure HDinsight cluster so let’s see the steps

1. Download Microsoft Hive ODBC driver from here
2. Install the Microsoft Hive ODBC driver use either the x86 or the x64 ( take care of the version to use the same with R)
3. Configure your DSN in the ODBC Data Sources
1. go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > ODBC Data Sources (64-bit)
2. open System DSN click add
3. choose Microsoft Hive ODBC Driver and click Finish
4. enter the fields
1. Data Source Name: the data source name we’ll use in R so name it anything i’ll call it now HiveOnAzure
2. Description: write your desription
3. Host: get it from your Azure Manage site [yourclustername].azurehdinsight.net
4. port: leave it 443
5. Database: leave it “default”
6. Hive server type: use Hive Server 2
7. Mechanism: Windows Azure HDinsight (it automatically configures the port and Database above)
8. HTTP Path: leave it blank
9. username: your username that you entered while creating the cluster
10. password: your password that you entered while creating the cluster
11. then test the connectivity you should receive a connection successful established message
12.  
1. Now after establishing the ODBC driver connectivity to Azure we’ll shift to R

• Open RStudio (make sure to use the same x64 or x86 version as you’ve configured in the ODBC drivers)
  1. install the RODBC package

 > install.packages("RODBC")

 > library(RODBC)

1. create the ODBC connection in R

 > myconn <- odbcConnect("HiveOnAzure",uid="[YOUR_USERNAME_HERE]",pwd="[YOU_PASSWORD_HERE]" )

1. run your HiveQL Query and return the data into a data frame

 > alldata <- sqlFetch(myconn,"Select * from hivesampletable")

1. inspect the retrieved data

 > head(alldata,10)

Now you’ve successfully connected your R to the Hive on HDisnight on Azure to pass your HiveQL Queries and start doing the analysis you want to create. 

1-Sabbour, can you introduce yourself to our readers?

I’m the Azure guy and occasionally I’m also the Apps guy. I guess that embodies Microsoft becoming a Devices + Services company! Officially, I’m a Technical Evangelist for Azure.
 

2- What do you love the most about technology?

What I love about technology is that it evolves at a rapid pace, forcing us to keep learning otherwise we become obsolete.

3-Can you give us a small introduction to know Microsoft Azure better?

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform and has Infrastructure as a Service & Platform as a Service capabilities as well as various App Services that together enable you to create and run innovative solutions. These solutions can either be all running on the public cloud, or running in a hybrid-cloud model where some are hosted on your own premises.

4-Can you provide us any links that can help introduce us and expand our knowledge with Microsoft Azure?

Azure is a very comprehensive offering. Definitely check out the Azure infographics: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/infographics/ they picture how all the different Azure components can work together and provide innovative solutions.

5- What is the newest updates for Azure this year?

The great thing about Azure is that you get updates almost every month! Whenever that happens, Scott Guthrie (now EVP for Server and Tools business) blogs about it on his blog http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/

The newest thing being the new Azure management portal, that can give you insights about how your applications are running at a glance, designed like a Windows 8 app:

6-Away from technology, do you have any other hobbies or passions?

I’m a foodie. I love exploring new restaurants, reviewing and critiquing their food. I also like to cook, and do BBQ. Naturally, I also take photos of my food ;)
 

7- Any advice to anyone that wants to be an IT guru?

Would you like a fish or a fishing rod? My one advice for anyone is to keep searching, keep reading, keep trying and failing. Eventually it will work and you would have learnt a lot in the process.

8- How can people contact you for any technical inquiries?

Ping me over twitter @sabbour

Thank you so much Sabbour :)

1- Youssef, can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

It is almost my third year as a Microsoft Technology Solutions Professional covering the West, East and Central Africa (WECA) region. I have started as a Unified Communications technical presales and had the chance to be one of the first Microsoft Center of Expertise Office 365 specialists. This move from on-premises solutions to cloud solutions and embracing the future before it actually happens was mainly due to my passion for technology and its new trends.

2- What do you love the most about technology? 

It’s not secret that computers, the web, and social media have all dramatically changed the way we work. What we used to compose on papers and typewriters (remember those?), we now take care of completely electronically with just a few keystrokes and a click of the mouse button. What you used to do by writing, printing, folding, putting in an envelope, stamping and mailing, you can now do by simply composing and clicking Send - and the message reaches the other person almost instantly. Technology has transformed our globe to a small village where you can interact with anyone and anytime - this is what I love the most about technology.

3- Can you introduce us to Office 365?

Office 365 is Microsoft’s smart and simple answer to cloud computing. Using the various programs in Office 365, you can do all the tasks you’re used to doing in your favorite Office applications - write documents, create presentations, check email, manage your calendar, and more – and then share what you create in real time on a team site, design and publish a website, and even create and host live online meetings while you’re traveling on the train, sitting in a coffee shop, or simply moving around and connecting through your phone.

Office 365 enables businesses to create a cloud computing approach that offers just what their business needs require with the four main technologies – Office, Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync.

4- Can you provide us with any links that can help expand our Office 365 knowledge?

Never start learning a new technology before test driving it, follow this link and signup for your Office 365 free trial account.

After doing that, I recommend going through the Office 365 service descriptions, they will keep you busy for a while. The topics here provide detailed descriptions of the services and features that are available with Office 365.

5- What are the newest updates for Office 365 this year?

This year has been a busy one with almost all the different services across Office 365 seeing updates. The biggest news is the real time co-authoring across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Web Apps, now you can see people working together on a document simultaneously.  OneNote for Windows Store received a bunch of new features including better capture of documents, whiteboards and other physical text and bringing that directly into your notebooks. We enhanced Office Web Apps, so you can get things done more easily from anywhere.

And we added a new Partner Admin Center in Office for business, to help Partners manage their customers more efficiently. Partners now have a central place to see all their customers, monitor customer service health, administer a customer’s service, help manage and resolve support issues, and build their business with trial and subscription offers to send to their customers.

6- Away from technology, do you have any other hobbies or passions?

Hunting is my hobby. In winter, nothing is more exciting than spending the weekend in the middle of nowhere hunting wild ducks - check out my trophies :) I also have a passion for Africa and its natural beauty.

7- Any advice to anyone that wants to be an IT guru?

Be flexible because the world you know is changing faster than ever – you need to embrace new technologies and be flexible enough to not get stuck in the old ways of doing things and get rusty.

And definitely read a lot and stay up to date. But nothing replaces a hands-on experience… so go out there and start engaging!

8- How can people contact you for any technical inquiries?

Here is my email v-yoelit@microsoft.com, feel free to send through your questions/inquiries.

Thank you Youssef for the lovely interview :)

1-Moez, can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

I am a Technical Solution Specialist with a Ninja Black Belt for Customer Management Solutions acting in Middle East and Africa. Before this I was a Senior Consultant in Europe on a wide area of technologies mainly Dynamics CRM and SharePoint Server and Subject Matter Expert on software design and ASP.NET.

2- What do you love the most about technology?

Technology is the key driver for modern world, the way it reflects and accelerates real world connections and shortens distance between everyone. Before we were in a world were technology is governed by requirements and business usage, today we have changed it so it reflects sentiments, touch communication and direct contact.

3- What is CRM? Can you give us a small introduction?

Customer Relationship Management is the best solution when an organization needs to gain intelligence on their customer ecosystem and segment profitability. So it sharpens the way they are selling products and services in collaborative and Dynamic Fashion. CRM Solutions amplifies customer satisfaction and customer knowledge, automates multichannel contact and drives business performance. Today we can see CRM Apps in Small, Mid-Size and Large businesses in various industries like banking, telecommunication and governments.

What is really distinguished in Dynamics CRM is the ability to be “Polymorph” meaning the ability to translate real world situations and challenges to Technology Based efficiency. With Dynamics CRM we talk about Patient Relationship Management, Student Information Systems, Case and Records Management, Citizen Relationship management and so on. I truly believe that Dynamics CRM is the future for all businesses.

4- Any links that can help expand our Unified communications CRM knowledge.

Never miss that you can have CRM online on crm.dynamics.com

I invite everyone to see this video http://youtu.be/C3gxpUYrjM4

5- What is the newest updates for CRM this year?

Social with Microsoft Social Listening and the acquisition of Parature a Multichannel contact center software that will be pre-shipped with Dynamics CRM.

Marketing, Multichannel Campaign and Social too with Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, this is an essential too when it comes to use Marketing as a Service.

On the contact center side we are adding new features and business scenarios that will make the Contact Center experience better. We also are into shipping in the next few weeks Microsoft Dynamics Service Desk a new addition that was known as the Desktop Agent, and here is a solution that handles dynamic CTI integration and business requirements.

6-Away from technology, do you have any other hobbies or passions?

Part from technology I am an amateur swimmer I compete summertime in locals in Susah my hometown, like to hang out with friends and French & Italian cuisine.

I am also a passionate traveler. This summer, my destination is Norway to climb on top of the Pulpit Rock.

7- Any advice to anyone that wants to be an IT guru?

Be passionate about what you are doing, our job is challenging and full of adrenaline. Most important think in being a guru is sharing, in fact what I learned is that we can never be a Guru by ourselves but with the amount of information exchange we are having every day.

8- How can people contact you for any technical inquiries?

I am very active in MSDN Forums as well as ASP.Net (http://asp.net) and you can contact me through my profile http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/profile/Moez+Tounsi .

1-Mahmoud Moussa, can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

My Name is Mahmoud Moussa I’m a Technology Solution Professional in Microsoft MEA Devices Application Team, A person with a passion for science, and how it can benefit business, I’ve been in Information Technology Industry for 11 Years Playing Multiple Roles, Developer, Support, Team Leader , Architect, Business Intelligence Consultant, Till I joined Microsoft and Started a Technical Presales track. Which is not only about selling technologies, but more about how you technology can benefit your customer.

Away from technology I love playing sports like Table Tennis, Squash, Volleyball and cycling, Photography, Listening to music especially 90’s and watching movies and TV shows. I married and have a little princess called “Karma”.

2- What do you love the most about technology?

Innovation is the magic word, technology as technology is a consumer kind of gadgets, but the idea of how it’s built, and ways to customize it to meet exactly your needs is my main passion, there is no limits to the ideas you can generate with technology just remove that barrier from your mind and you can do magic.

3-Can you give us a small introduction to better understand what are device Applications all about?

 Well devices his a general word that group anything that contains a CPU that can do some computing power for you. Let’s get back in time a little bit, the early days of Computers, the main frame was called a super computer, a Large PC connected to many screens and keyboards was used for work. But People needed to go more mobile, computer power started to grow, so they moved to PCs and Servers Model where you can have a client PC with nice capabilities to do your work locally and send it to the server to store it, then for more mobility we moved to Laptops. And now we are living in the internet world with data available all around us. In 2012 we generated“11 Zeta bytes of information, which equals 66,000 Miles of Dvds stacked on top of each other’s. This amount of data needs to be accessible all the time, so we are moving to the Cloud, using “Phones and Tablets” to access this information anywhere and anytime.

 There are more than 1 Billion Devices connected to the internet at this very moment. Can you imagine the business opportunities you have with these 1 Billion customers? Targeting devices is a huge business opportunity don’t let that slip away,

4-Can you provide us with any links or sources that can help us understand more about devices application?                                

Technologies are evolving I would recommend always to look for the basics of technology before technology itself .Basics can help you move from one technology to the other easily.

To Get Started use http://dev.windows.com it’s your starting point to learn everything you need to know about developing applications for Mobile Devices.

5- What is the newest or most interesting updates for devices Application this year?

The Snapdragon processors, it’s a New processor architecture that can allow you to run a Tablet as long as ARM based tablets with the power of a PC, so Imagine you can have your PC in your hands on the go everywhere.

There are things that I personally wait for but I don’t know if it will land this Year or not, like bendable LCDS, with may allow you to open a 50 inch display from your pocket, Integration of Nano Technology into displays that can allow you to move your display from just a flat into having buttons physically exist on your display. Holograms this will change the way we look to the future.

6- Away from technology, do you have any other hobbies or passions?

Doing Sports “Swimming, Table Tennis, Squash, Volleyball and Lately I started cycling”

Photography, I can’t call myself an Artist but I’m good in photography because it is a weird mix between science and art and I enjoy that A lot.

Maybe I’m in 30’s but I live with the heart of early 20’s I can Have some personal time for Music, TV shows and Movies

7- Any advice to anyone that wants to be an IT guru?

Just 2, Focus on basics and Read.

Technology is evolving every day, but basics does not change often. So do not learn how to write C# but learn how to architect an app. If you did that, you can learn all programming languages easily, tomorrow a new version of C# will come out but coding is still a foundation that changes less oftenJ.

Reading, Can keep you up to date with what’s coming which is what you really need. Know everything generally, do not lock your eyes on one topic and go deep.

8- How can people contact you for any technical inquiries?

v-mamous@microsoft.com is my Email Address, Contact me and I’ll reply if I can help.

Thank you Moussa :)

First of all, thanks to Danny Jessee for tons of information to succeed in this assignment.

If you don’t know, SharePoint 2010/2013 can authenticate against identy providers such as Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook like a charm with no coding using Windows Azure Access Control Service (ACS) using Claims Based Authentication.

I see this will drive adoption of websites and therefore makes them successful.

Prerequisites

• Facebook App, any app, check the Facebook Developers application
• A Facebook account integrated with the app you will do.
• A Windows Azure account with an ACS namespace created (these can be created using the Service Bus, Access Control & Caching section of the portal) This will be used to be our host for Claims Identity Providers
• SharePoint 2013 Farm. (can work with 2010)
• An X.509 certificate to be used by Azure ACS and SharePoint to digitally sign tokens (and explicitly trusted by SharePoint)

Facebook Application Steps

• Within the Facebook Developers application, click Create New App.   
• Give the app a Name and a Namespace. Click Continue.
• After passing the Captcha check, select Website with Facebook Login in the next screen and enter the URL to your Azure ACS Service Namespace (e.g., https://{your namespace}.accesscontrol.windows.net). Click Save Changes.
• Take note of the App ID and App Secret values that appear at the top of this screen. You will need to use these to configure Azure ACS to leverage this application. That’s all we need to do within Facebook!

Azure ACS Steps

Within Azure ACS, we must configure the following four things:

• Facebook as an Identity Provider.
• SharePoint as a Relying Party Application.
• Claims Rule Groups to determine how Claims are passed from the identity provider to the relying party application.
• The Token Signing Certificate that Azure ACS will use to prove that it is indeed the issuer of the SAML token that SharePoint receives.

Identity Provider

• From within your Azure ACS management portal (e.g., https://{your namespace}.accesscontrol.windows.net) and select Identity providers from the Trust relationships section in the left navigation. In the next screen, click Add.
• In the next screen, choose Facebook application and click Next.
• In the next screen, enter the Application ID and Application secret values from the Facebook application you created above. You should also provide a Display name (for use within the ACS management portal) and a comma-separated list of Application permissions (note that email is the only required permission to enable Facebook users to sign in to SharePoint). You can, however, request additional permissions to do lots of fun and exciting things. Those permission strings are defined here.
• You do not need to specify values for Login link text or Image URL unless you plan to configure more than one Azure ACS identity provider to use with SharePoint. If you have already configured your Relying party applications within Azure ACS, you may select them at the bottom of this screen. Otherwise, we will configure SharePoint as an RP in the next step.
• Press Save to save changes.

Relying Party Application

From within your Azure ACS management portal (e.g., https://{your namespace}.accesscontrol.windows.net) and select Relying party applications from the Trust relationships section in the left navigation. In the next screen, click Add.

In the next screen, provide a name for the relying party application (I often just use the fully-qualified domain name of my SharePoint web application) and choose to Enter settings manually. In the boxes below, enter the following values:

• Realm – URL of your SharePoint web application (note that a URN can also be entered here and, in many cases, is the preferred approach)
• Return URL – URL of your SharePoint web application + /_trust – this is the endpoint for SharePoint’s STS, which is where Azure ACS will send the SAML token it creates. The " /_trust " is very important, if you put only web application URL, in SharePoint you will have an error that token is not from a trusted issuer.
• Token format – SAML 1.1
• Token lifetime – enter a value greater than the default 600 seconds, I would say 3600

In the Authentication Settings section, select the Identity provider you configured above and choose to Create a new rule group. Under Token Signing Settings, choose whether to Use service namespace certificate (if you have already configured a certificate within Azure ACS) or Use a dedicated certificate if you would like to use a different X.509 certificate exclusively for this relying party application.

Click Save to save changes.

Rule Group

• From within your Azure ACS management portal (e.g., https://{your namespace}.accesscontrol.windows.net) and select Rule groups from the Trust relationships section in the left navigation. In the next screen, click Default Rule Group for {your web application}
• Note that no rules are added by default. Click Generate and select the identity provider you created above.
• Click Generate to generate Claims rules for the 5 values Azure ACS can obtain from a logged in Facebook user:

1. AccessToken – the Facebook Graph API access token
2. emailaddress – the email address associated with the user’s Facebook profile
3. expiration – the expiration date/time of the AccessToken granted above
4. name – the Facebook user’s display name
5. nameidentifier – the Facebook user’s unique profile ID (integer)

• Press Save to save the rules.
• Upload Token Signing Certificate
• If you haven’t already, you will need to configure Azure ACS to utilize an X.509 certificate to digitally sign the tokens it generates. Optionally, you can also specify certificates to use for token encryption and decryption. I generated a self-signed certificate using the makecert utility FOR DEMO. DO NOT DO THIS IN PRODUCTION! I then uploaded this certificate by going to the Certificates and Keys link under Service settings in the ACS management portal.
• Click Add to upload your certificate. This page allows you to specify where the certificate should be used, what type of certificate it is, and how to make it the primary token-signing certificate. It even includes the specific makecert command you need to run to generate a self-signed certificate (again, I cannot overemphasize how important it is that you NOT use a self-signed certificate in production!)

SharePoint 2013 Steps

New Web Application

• From SharePoint 2013 Central Administration, create a new web application. Should be Claims and Claims is the default.
• Make sure the host header matches the host header for the Return URL specified in the Azure ACS relying party application setup. Enable Integrated
• Windows Authentication with NTLM at this step. You’ll notice no Trusted Identity providers exist at this point.
• Create a new site collection at the root of the web application and choose a Windows identity for the primary Site Collection Administrator.
• Configure Azure ACS as a new Trusted Identity Provider
• In order to enable us to select Azure ACS as a trusted identity provider for the web application, we need to run some PowerShell. The script to run appears below.

$realm = "http://www.contoso.com"

$signinurl = "https://[your name space].accesscontrol.windows.net:443/v2/wsfederation?wa=wsignin1.0&wtrealm=http%3a%2f%2fwww.contoso.com%2f"

$certloc = "C:\contoso.cer"

$rootcert = Get-PfxCertificate $certloc

New-SPTrustedRootAuthority "Facebook Azure ACS" -Certificate $rootcert

$cert = New-Object System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2($certloc)

$map1 = New-SPClaimTypeMapping -IncomingClaimType "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/emailaddress" -IncomingClaimTypeDisplayName "Email" -SameAsIncoming

$map2 = New-SPClaimTypeMapping -IncomingClaimType "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name" -IncomingClaimTypeDisplayName "Display Name" –LocalClaimType   "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/givenname"

$map3 = New-SPClaimTypeMapping -IncomingClaimType "http://www.facebook.com/claims/AccessToken" -IncomingClaimTypeDisplayName "Access Token" -SameAsIncoming

$map4 = New-SPClaimTypeMapping -IncomingClaimType "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/nameidentifier" -IncomingClaimTypeDisplayName "Name Identifier" –LocalClaimType   "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/upn"

$map5 = New-SPClaimTypeMapping -IncomingClaimType "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/expiration" -IncomingClaimTypeDisplayName "Expiration" -SameAsIncoming

New-SPTrustedIdentityTokenIssuer -Name "Facebook" -Description "Facebook" -Realm $realm -ImportTrustCertificate $cert -ClaimsMappings $map1,$map2,$map3,$map4,$map5 -SignInUrl $signinurl -IdentifierClaim $map1.InputClaimType

Keep in mind:

• Ensure the value for $realm matches the realm value used when creating the relying party application within Azure ACS.
• Ensure the X.509 certificate used here is the same as the token signing certificate used when creating the Relying Party application within Azure ACS.
• Ensure the value for $signinurl is set properly for your SharePoint web application.

Run this PowerShell script from the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell (as an Administrator). If you don’t see red text, then we are good to go

Return to the list of web applications in SharePoint 2013 Central Administration. Select the web application and press Authentication Providers.

Choose the appropriate zone and scroll down. Facebook should now appear in the list of trusted identity providers.

Select Facebook and press Save. You have now configured Azure ACS as a new trusted identity provider, and SharePoint knows it can trust SAML tokens signed with your Azure ACS token-signing certificate.

Set User Access Policy

• In order for the users to access your SharePoint 2013 site once they have authenticated via Facebook, we must grant them the appropriate level of authorization. To do this, I recommend setting a “Full Read” policy for all users who authenticate to SharePoint via our “Facebook” trusted identity provider. Start by selecting the web application in Central Administration and go to User Policy.
• Choose Add Users, then select the appropriate zone (All zones) and press Next.
• Select the address book icon beneath the Users text box to bring up the Select People and Groups dialog.
• Select All Users, then choose All Users (Facebook). Press Add to select the group.
• Check the box for Full Read in the permissions section and press Finish.
• The new policy is now displayed at the bottom of the list.

We are ready to test :)

Sign in to SharePoint 2013 with Facebook

• Navigate to the home page of the web application. The default sign in page will appear.
• Choose Facebook from the drop down list. The user will be redirected (through the Azure ACS portal) to a Facebook-hosted login page.
• Enter your Facebook credentials and press Log In. The first time a user attempts to log in to your SharePoint site with Facebook, he or she will be prompted to grant the Facebook application access to the user’s basic information and email address (this is based on the permissions we set up when we initially defined the Facebook identity provider in the Azure ACS management portal).
• Press Go to App. The user should be redirected back to Azure ACS, which then redirects the user back to SharePoint…logged in with Facebook credentials!
• Note the user’s display name is the email address associated with the user’s Facebook account. This is because we set EmailAddress as the IdentifierClaim in the PowerShell script we ran to configure Azure ACS as a trusted identity provider.

Brief of Steps

Setting up this integration requires configuration steps to be performed in three different places:

1. Within Facebook, an application must be created that supports “Website with Facebook Login.”
2. Within the Azure ACS management portal, a new Identity Provider (IP), Relying Party (RP) application, and Rule Group must be created to inform Azure ACS about: a. The Facebook application created above. b. The SharePoint environment to be configured with Azure ACS integration below.
3. Within SharePoint, we must create a new web application with Claims (in SharePoint 2013, Claims is the default authentication mechanism) and configure it to point to our Azure ACS setup as a Trusted Identity Provider.

You can use some codeplex webparts that requires this technique , http://facebookwebparts.codeplex.com/ 

Feel free to post any questions in the comments!

 1-Mohamed, can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

 Hello to all! I am Mohamed Khairy and I am one of the Data Center Technical Solutions Experts Team @ CoEX. I was studying Computer science in Modern Academy in Maadi because of my love to computers and technology and graduated in 2005 and since then and I work in this fascinating field and I had 4 work experiences in different countries before joining CoEX.

 2- I understand that you are passionate about IT and Technology, what fascinates you most?

I’ve grown up with technology and simply find it amazing. I find it amazing how I can search for anything I want on the web. I find it amazing that I can learn how technology works and use it to solve problems and make useful things and solutions.

Think to yourself - how proud would you feel if you had an issue and you discover how to solve it using technology products.  You can then turn it into a solution model that can be used by many people to fix things that annoy them in their daily operations. This is how I would define passion.

I want to make a difference in this world and to improve myself as a person, and I believe that technology and IT can take me anywhere I would like. Security, programming, web design... the possibilities are endless. 

Passion to me is to believe strongly in something and it makes you feel great. For me helping people and customers by providing them with a super solutions and helping them also get tech that can improve and better the quality of their environment is a something that makes me feel so great.

3- Can you explain to us how Identity and access management solutions work?

Identity and access management (IAM) is the security discipline that authorizes users to access corporate systems and information. It helps prevent fraudulent access and use of data that could potentially affect the business, its partners, or even worse, its customers.

Identity and access management (IAM) also brings great values to organizations in reducing IT management cost, enhancing employee productivity, and increasing compliance efficiency. 

Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 (FIM) can help you to standardize identity and access management across your organization by delivering self-service identity management for users, automates lifecycle management across heterogeneous platforms for administrators, and provides a rich policy framework for enforcing corporate security policies on users, devices, enterprise applications, data center servers and business processes.

4-Can you provide any links that can help introduce us and expand our knowledge about FIM?

1-      Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2

2-      TechNet Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2

3-      What's New in Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 SP1

 6-Away from technology, do you have any other hobbies or passions?

 Two, Squash and Shooting. 

 7- Any advice to anyone that wants to be an IT guru?

 The first piece of advice I have is that, if you are interested in technology, you should pay attention to whatever aspect of the industry you plan on entering. Read books, browse the Internet for information on your field of choice, and practice them, whether it is hardware, software technology, or programming. It never hurts to stay informed J

8- How can people contact you for any technical inquiries?

You can email any questions or inquiries to my email:  v-mkhair@microsoft.com

Thank you so much Mohamed Khairy

 1 -Mostafa, can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

  I have been working in the IT business for over 7 years now. I started as a Senior Technical Service Engineer. My responsibility was building Datacenters, such as Servers, Storage Systems, Backup solutions and  Virtualization, for many vendors such as Microsoft, HP, Dell, IBM, VMware and Symantec. Today I am a Regional Technology Solution Professional at CoEx - Microsoft Middle East & Africa, with the focus on Datacenter workload such as Windows Server, Windows Azure and System Center.

  2-What do you love the most about technology?

  I love thinking with customers, how to apply appropriate technology to solve their pains that they are facing in the IT world.

  3-Can you give us a small introduction to better understand what is Hyper-V?

 Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 is a hypervisor-based server virtualization product that enables you to consolidate workloads, helping organizations improve server utilization and reduce costs.

Hyper-V is a role in Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Server® 2012 that provides you with the tools and services you can use to create a virtualized server-computing environment. This type of environment is useful because you can create and manage virtual machines, which allow you to run multiple operating systems on one physical computer and isolate the operating systems from each other.

4-Can you provide us with interesting links that can help us know more and introduce us to Hyper-V?

Check out those 2 links

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/windows-server-2012-r2/default.aspx#fbid=haC-6YeeyTw

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/hyper-v-server/

5- What are the newest updates for Hyper-V this year?

We announced Windows Server 2012 R2 – a major release of Windows Server. We’ve already made significant virtualization improvements around Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 – across the board, including scale, availability, management, storage and networking. There is also a lot of new and enhanced capabilities for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2 release.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn282278.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/system-center-2012-r2/default.aspx#fbid=haC-6YeeyTw

 6-Away from technology, do you have any other hobbies or passions?

 I love travelling and Scuba diving, here is a picture of me under water :)

 7-Very Nice picture! Do you have any advice to anyone that wants to be an IT guru?

 Here is one of my favorite quotes "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother"… Albert Einstein

 Therefore, my advice is you must read, practice and then read again and practice a lot.

8-How can people contact you for any technical inquiries?

You can reach out to me by e-mailv-mostay@microsoft.com , and I will start blogging on my team blog  http://blogs.technet.com/meacoex .

Thank you Mostafa!

Also, check out the Facebook post  and our twitter account :)

On a fait la connaissance de Chervine lors d'un atelier, quand il s'est mis en avant comme chef d'équipe de 3 développeurs. Il les a soutenu et coacher afin qu’ils puissent acquérir les connaissances et les techniques nécessaires les permettant de développer des applications Windows Phone –  Pendant qu’on demandait au minimum 4 applications de chaque équipe, cette équipe a développée plus d’une dizaine applications.  Ce qui est plus impressionnant, c'est qu'à la fin, il a réussi à faire partager sa passion pour le développement avec son équipe. Lisez ce blog pour savoir plus sur Chervine et sa passion

1. Chervine, pourriez-vous vous introduire dans un petit paragraphe ?

Je suis Chervine Bhiwoo et j’ai 24 ans. J’ai obtenu ma licence à l’Université de Maurice en 2012 et actuellement je suis ingénieur en informatique dans une des entreprises informatiques les plus réputées à Maurice. L’informatique et les nouvelles technologies sont mes plus grandes passions. Je passe beaucoup de mon temps libre à lire des articles sur le net, à développer de nouvelles applications ou à partager des idées avec mes amis.

2. Comment êtes-vous devenu aussi passionné par la technologie et le développement ?

J’ai découvert ce monde fabuleux d’informatique quand j’avais seulement 15ans. Ce qui m’intriguait et qui me rendait adepte c’était la logique derrière. Souvent j’entendais parler de java ou de VB et j’étais curieux de savoir ce que c’était. J’ai donc emprunté un livre sur VB à un ami où j’ai découvert le monde de la programmation. Tout a commencé à partir de cette curiosité et de cette envie d’apprendre. . Aujourd’hui je suis doué sur les technologies du web, mobiles et Cloud.

3. Quel est votre langage de programmation préféré ?

C#, C’est un langage moderne avec les pouvoirs du Framework .net qui rend le développement d'applications plus facile et a également des fonctionnalités de débogage de Visual Studio. Ensemble, ils améliorent l'expérience de développement et accroit la productivité des développeurs.

4. Comment avez-vous commencé à travailler sur Windows Phone ?

J’ai eu l’occasion de connaître ce produit (Windows phone 8) à travers un cours organisé pour les programmeurs à Maurice.

Dès le premier jour, on nous a demandé de mettre une équipe sur pied et je me suis porté volontaire pour le faire car j’avais déjà une notion de C #. Depuis, l’évangéliste technique de Microsoft, Arnaud Meslier, nous a guidés afin de développer des applications Windows 8. Vu que je connaissais déjà la programmation, j’ai vite compris le concept et par la suite, j’ai commencé à guider les membres de mon équipe pendant toute une semaine. Mon équipe et moi-même avons développé 13 application Windows phone 8 en 2 mois.

5. Comment avez-vous eu les idées pour vos applications ?

Le travail d’équipe a favorisé l’échange d’idées, ce qui nous a permis de créer nos applications... L’inspiration venait des problèmes qu’on rencontrait chacun dans notre vie quotidienne. On essayait de trouver des solutions et de créer une application pour ces problèmes.

Pizza Mania

Casela

Devinette

Vroom Vroom Maurice

Love Messages

Mauritius News

UoM Guide

Hello Doc

Zistoire Nu Zil

Mauritius Malls

Mauritius Night Events

Tourist Kit

Mauritius Hotels

6. Pourriez-vous nous faire un petit tour pour mieux comprendre votre application préférée ?

Il y en a deux que j’aime bien.

Mauritius News : Nous lisons tous les journaux quotidiennement et actuellement il y a plusieurs pages web pour chaque journal. Donc, j’ai eu l’idée de créer une application pour réunir toutes les nouvelles que l’on trouve sur ces sites. Ainsi chaque matin quand je voyage, je vais seulement sur cette application pour lire les nouvelles.

Pizza mania : L’idée est venue pendant le Windows Phone 8 Boot camp lors d’une conversation. Pizza mania est une application qui regroupe les coordonnés et le menu de chaque pizzeria, ce qui facilite la commande.

7. Quels sont vos intérêts outre que la technologie ?

J’adore aller à la plage et pratiquer la natation. J’y vais une fois par mois.. Mis à part le foot, le cinéma et le cyclisme, j’aime également passer mes week-ends en famille ou avec mes amis qui m’apportent beaucoup de soutien

8. Avez-vous quelques astuces à partager avec les lecteurs du blog ?

Le mot clé c’est passion ! Si cela vous passionne, essayer de trouver un peu de temps pour apprendre quelque chose de nouveau et travailler en équipe pour vos projets. Cela permet de créer des liens et de partager la passion.

9. Comment la communauté peut-elle vous rattraper ? (en ligne ou hors ligne)

http://about.me/chervine

Je suis souvent présent lors des événements de Microsoft Maurice tels que les Dev camps.

1-Ahmed, can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

I graduated from The American University in Cairo in 2007; Majoring computer science and minoring Business Administration. I have been working on the technical sales and consultation side of the business since then.

2- What do you love the most about technology?

To me technology is meant to make people’s life better. Unfortunately, many organizations are still technologically boxed in the 90s or even worse – some still rely on paperwork! I’d say technology is a vital pillar for the economy of any country, and I’d love to be one of the builders of the economy of MEA (Middle East and Africa).

3-Can you give us a small introduction to better understand what is BP?

BP is short for Business Productivity. The main essence of BP is to help organizations unleash from the rigid old-school culture of work and limitations of their IT environments. We aim to make all employees with smart devices [be it a laptop/tablet/smart phone] more productive, and work hand in hand with others to achieve the goal of their business. Microsoft is addressing that through a wide range of products that complement each other to deliver a complete productivity suite.

4-Can you provide us any links that can help introduce us and expand our BP knowledge?

•        Microsoft Overview on Business Productivity
•        Business Productivity Infrastructure
•        Discover Office 365

5- What is the newest updates for BP this year?

With the strategic acquisitions, Microsoft is complementing its arsenal. Microsoft is fusing a Social dimension within the work environment of the employees where they can share their knowledge and benefit from the wisdom of the crowd. This is catered for through SharePoint 2013, and the acquisition of Yammer; the biggest Enterprise Social Platform. On a parallel track, Microsoft is to acquire Nokia’s Smart devices to be self-dependent when it comes to hardware for smartphones and tablets. Moreover, the continuous investment in cloud computing through the Office 365 offering that will allow users to access their resources and colleagues from virtually anywhere. This year Microsoft had an unprecedented number of releases on all levels. I’d only highlight the release of Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and the all-new Office 2013 among a lot of other great stuff. Microsoft is leaving its fingerprint all the way from bottom up. You can see that when it comes to Devices, Operating Systems, Infrastructure, Smart Phones, Document Processing software, collaboration platform, and even on the cloud! I believe Microsoft is moving forward with steady steps to prove that it is one of the leading players in the market.

6-Away from technology, do you have any other hobbies or passions?

I’m very passionate about football, cars, horseback riding, and shooting :)

7- Any advice to anyone that wants to be an IT guru?

Reading is definitely the main source of information. However, most of the things you learn is not there in the books – You have to go out there and get your hands dirty!

8- How can people contact you for any technical inquiries?

You can contact me by email v-ahafif@microsoft.com

Thank you so much Ahmed Afifi, and good luck in building MEA's economy through technology :)

Active Directory Import (AKA Active Directory Direct Import – ADDI) is one of the new features in SharePoint 2013 allowing you to import users from active directory into your SharePoint User Profile Service Application.

Background

In SharePoint 2010, there was only one method allowing you to sync user profiles between your user repository and your SharePoint environment which was essentially a lightweight version of FIM.

With SharePoint 2013, there are now three methods that you to carry out the aforementioned sync operation.

• SharePoint Profile Synchronization (lightweight FIM)
• Active Directory Import
• External Identity Manager (C#)

While the focus of this article is Active Directory Import, the amount of enhancements that have been done especially with regards to the performance of lightweight FIM elicit mentioning.
One of the most important areas of enhancements is regarding how FIM retrieves data from BCS.

In SharePoint 2013, import operations from BCS are done as batches rather than one by one.
Furthermore, indexes were added to user properties that eliminated full table scans. A number of unused provisioning steps were also removed.
The end result? One piece of anecdotal evidence show that 300K users took less than 7 hours for a full import operation, previously it took nearly three weeks.

Active Directory Import

Active Directory Import allows you to import users from active directory into your SharePoint 2013 environment. The logical question would then be what are the pro and cons of ADI and when should I used it over FIM. The table below summarizes these points.

I now use ADI for any development/PoC environment. I would also highly recommend it for any production environment that leverages only AD DS and doesn’t require writing back to AD.

Great! How do I enable ADI?

Enabling ADI is done over essentially 4 steps. These 4 steps are done against an instance of the user profile service application with the exception of the first step.

1. Configure AD DS permissions.
2. Enable Active Directory Import
3. Configure the connection properties
4. Map the user properties between AD and UPSA

1. Configure AD DS permissions

In this step, you grant the security permissions (Replicate Directory Changes permission) to the account that SharePoint uses to connect to AD DS during profile synchronization.

Step by step instructions are provided here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh296982.aspx (Grant Active Directory Domain Services permissions for profile synchronization in SharePoint Server 2013)

2. Enable Active Directory Import

In this step, we select ADI as the import mechanism for the user profile service application instance that we accessing.

1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group.
2. On the SharePoint Central Administration website, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.
3. On the Manage Service Applications page, click the User Profile service application name.
4. On the Manage Profile Service page, in the Synchronization section, click Configure Synchronization Settings.
5. On the Configure Synchronization Settings page, in the Synchronization Options section, select the Use SharePoint Active Directory Import option, and then click OK.

3. Configure the connection properties

The lightweight FIM component that comes with SharePoint 2013 stores its connection configuration in the Sync DB, however ADI stores its connection configuration in the profile DB and therefore on changing the sync mechanism from FIM to ADI the first time, you will need to configure the connection properties for ADI.
These properties include the credentials used to connect to AD DS (these should be the same credentials that were given the permissions in step 1) as well as which items to sync.

On subsequently switching between FIM and ADI the connection properties are retrieved for each respectively.

The complete steps for doing so are provided in “Configure profile synchronization by using SharePoint Active Directory Import in SharePoint Server 2013” http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219646.aspx

4. Map user properties between AD and UPSA.

In this step, you determine how the properties of SharePoint user profiles map to the user information that is retrieved from AD DS.

1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group.
2. On the SharePoint Central Administration website, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.
3. On the Manage Service Applications page, click the User Profile service application name.
4. On the Manage Profile Service page, in the People section, click Manage User Properties.
5. On the Manage User Properties page, right-click the name of the property that you want to map to a directory service attribute, and then click Edit.
6. To remove an existing mapping, in the Property Mapping for Synchronization section, select the mapping that you want to remove, and then click Remove.
7. To add a new mapping, do the following:
1. In the Add New Mapping section, in the Source Data Connection list, select the data connection that represents the directory service to which you want to map the user profile property.
2. In the Attribute box, type the name of the directory service attribute to which you want to map the property.
3. Click Add.
   
8. Click OK.
9. Repeat steps 5 through 8 to map additional properties.

Tips and Tricks

1. Each time you change the sync mechanism from FIM to ADI the user profile synchronization service is stopped. You will need to restart it if you have switched to FIM.
   
2. If you are mapping attributes and are using FIM, all of the attributes from AD are listed in the drop down box. However if you are mapping the attributes using ADI, you will need to type the attributes in the textbox. The drop down is still displayed, however empty. This is not an indication that there is something wrong with your security.
3. When setting up the connection details, you will be prompted for the FQDN, this doesn’t include the machine name. If you add the machine name to the FQDN you will be presented with a “No containers to display” error message.

Hi,


If anyone is interested to upgrade his VM to be SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU4 to be
able to use the PowerView for OLAP.

I encountered several issues so below is the safe path J


1- First check your SQL Server 2012 version: (Very Important as I didn’t notice
and it costs me lots of time)


The easiest way to check is “select @@version” in BIDS


2- If not SP1 then install the SP1 update (below is the link for x64 sql server
only):

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3557…


File Name: SQLServer2012SP1-KB2674319-x64-ENU.exe


For other scenarios please check the below link:


http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200106(v=sql.15…



3- Then Ensure the SP1 is successfully installed by running the same query (1)
in BIDS



4- Now to install the Cumulative Update 4, you will download the first option
from the below link:



http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2833…



this one:



SQL Server 2012 All (Global) x64 SQLServer2012_SP1_CU4_2833645_11_0_3368_x64



5- Then create a data connection “Report data source” and choose "Microsoft BI Semantic Model for Power View"

6- You can use windows credentials and if it doesn’t work then create role and
assign user with full admin capabilities in the Role section of the project
from SSAS and check the “windows credentials” box.

7- Now just click on the new connection and will work.



Side Notes:



Once you finish you will notice that DQS and MDS doesn’t work:



Please read the below link and it will resolve your issues:



http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfebi/archive/2012/11/20/what-happen…


hope this helps,

Best Regards,

Mahmoud El-Wessimy (Center of Expertise) | Technology Solution Specialist |
Data Platform |Microsoft Corporation

Virtual Machine Manager enables you to deploy and manage virtual machines across multiple hypervisor, including VMware ESX and ESXi hosts. The purpose of this post is to demonstrate how to add a VMware host from System Center Virtual Machine Manager. The process is rather easy and requires a few steps. This post assumes you have already setup your VMware environment including; VMware host and vCenter Server.  For this demonstration we will use ESXi 5.1.

First step is to add a VMware vCenter Server. In the navigation pane in VMM click on Fabric, Add Resources, click on VMware vCenter Server

Fill in the computer name of the vCenter server. You will need to create a RunAs account that has permission to logon the vCenter Server.

You will prompted with Importing a certificate. Click Import.

Following the import of the certificate the job windows will display as follow:

After you have added the vCenter Server, you will need to add the ESX host. Right-click on All hosts in the Fabric navigation pane, click Add VMware ESX hosts and Clusters.

You will need to provide a RunAs account that has permission on ESX host itself. This is usually the root account of the ESX host. Click Next

Select your ESX host and click next.

The job windows will appear indicating that ESX host is being added.

In the navigation, click on Fabric,  vCenter Server. Notice you will see the number of managed hosts. In our case, we only added one ESX host.

That’s all. In the following post I will demonstrate how to deploy virtual machines on our new managed ESX host through VMM.

In the meantime, you can find lots of information at the following link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610683.aspx

VMware has just released a white paper titled “why choose VMware for server virtualization” with detailed comparison between VMware Vsphere 5.1, windows server 2012 hyper-v and Citrix Xen server 6. The white paper is available here http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmware_advantage.pdf

Microsoft has previously published a very similar white paper previously titled “competitive advantage of windows server 2012 hyper-v over VMware Vsphere 5.1”. The white paper is available here http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/8/E/E8ECBD78-F07A-4A6F-9401-AA1760ED6985/Competitive-Advantages-of-Windows-Server-Hyper-V-over-VMware-vSphere.pdf

A lot of the information in VMware white paper is misleading, especially that it is comparing against the capabilities of windows server 2012 without the muscle power of system center suite, which completes Microsoft virtualization and cloud solution.

I encourage you to read both white papers to have an overview of the visions and virtualization capabilities of both solutions.

I am going to run through the comparison tables in the VMware white paper point by point and explain my personal opinion on each point commenting on both Microsoft and VMware, I am not going to commend about Citrix Xen server.

The information below represents my personal view and analysis and does not represent Microsoft’s opinion

Table 1. Comparison of Key Hypervisor and Security Features among Virtualization Platforms

1- Scalability: windows server 2012 hyper-v is far more scalable than Vsphere 5.1, I tried to sum up some of the important scalability number is the below table

To make a fair comparison, from numbers perspective both platforms are very scalable to handle current business critical applications with the exception of VMware 2TB virtual disk limitation which can be a limitation in the near future.

Although the white paper doesn’t show a red mark at Microsoft's side, but now I am wondering why there is even a right check mark on VMware side :)

2- Purpose-build hypervisor

VMware claims that hyper-v relies on windows OS. Hyper-v is a role component of windows server , the moment you enable hyper-v on a windows box you will be asked to restart multiple times , during these restarts the system architecturally changes where the hypervisor is slid between the hardware and the windows OS which is referred to as the parent partition after you enable hyper-v. The parent partition seamlessly integrates with guest operating systems (VMS) to provide high-performance enlightened I/O for storage, networking, graphics, and input subsystems from VM through to hardware via a high-speed in-memory VMBus.  This microkernelized Hyper-V architecture enables the highest performance for mission-critical workloads running on a bare-metal hypervisor. In fact designing hyper-v as a role in windows server added a lot of enhancement to the overall solution where hyper-v can benefit from windows server 2012 features like Power Shell, de-duplication, storage spaces enhancement with server 2012 and SMB v 3.0 which allows you to store virtual machines on a file share. So I don’t see any deficiently in enhancing hyper-v capabilities with the already robust and feature rich windows server platform and changing the architecture of the system when hyper-v is enabled to a bare-metal hyper-visor technology.

3- Simplified patching

The document is mentioning that Microsoft is having unrelated patching, meaning updates that are not related directly to hyper-v. This can be eliminated by using hyper-v server 2012 edition, which doesn’t include all of the other windows components in the parent partition but only binaries for hyper-v, so you wouldn’t get updates for printer drivers and PowerShell for example, but you’d only get updates that are directly related to hyper-v.

System center manages patches and updates across physical hosts, virtual machines and client desktops, now extending the capabilities to UNIX, Linux and Mac OS X  devices with SP1 release, also allowing extra capabilities like using distribution points hosted on windows azure (public cloud) which makes a lot of sense to desktop users always out of office.  VMware is a company that is only offering solutions related to virtualization, so Microsoft extending their patching system beyond that might not make sense to them, but it would certainly make sense to customers demanding a solid single patching solution for their virtual, physical and desktop environments.

4- Advanced memory management

Microsoft uses dynamic memory to enhance memory utilization by dynamically adjusting the amount of memory available to virtual machines in response to changes in the workloads. The benefits of Dynamic Memory include higher virtual machine consolidation ratios and increased flexibility. VMware indeed uses a lot of techniques for memory improvements, but some of them really brings no value to the applications running.

Let’s for instance discuss, VMware Transparent page sharing: so how does TPS work? if you are running multiple VMs on the same server, the hypervisor would scan the Rams drop out duplicates from all the VMs and uses references to only one copy, think of it as storage de-duplication but for memory so if you have multiple VMS running the same OS there is a very high chance of finding duplicate areas in memory, sounds like a cool technology, right?. Now, the amount of RAM in VMs has increased dramatically since this technology came out. Memory was arranged in pages that were 4KB in size, the hypervisor would scan RAM, drop out duplicates, and track them very simple and neat. Nowadays, for several performance reasons, memory is arranged in much larger pages like 2MB. The chances of finding identical blocks of memory that are 2MB in size is very very low that the computing costs of doing that would cancel out any benefits from finding them so it became a computing overhead and not a benefit for performance. Because having large quantities of RAM is the norm and is not going away, Microsoft chose not to implement transparent page sharing which would end up as a computing overhead. Moreover technologies like ASLR (address space layout randomization) really leave minimum benefit of transparent page sharing.

5- Small attack surface area

The disk foot print should not be considered as performance measure or a measure for the attach surface, let me tell you why, the +5 GB the whitepaper is referring to as hyper-v foot print it not related to hyper-v at all, it’s related to windows operating system disk foot print which contains dormant files like un enabled roles or services, drivers for thousands of devices. This is what customers asked for, they wanted to be able to add role or features, install a new device seamlessly without needing to insert the windows CD or go online to fetch some files. So these files are dormant files, they resides on hard disk and they are never executed in memory unless they’ve been asked to do, so they don’t act as an attach surface , what really counts as an attack surface is the bits loaded into memory not disk. Microsoft virtualization stack loaded in memory is about 20 MB, where around 600 KB of them are for the hypervisor.

I’ve previously posted a separate blog about the foot print comparisons, for more information please check

http://blogs.technet.com/b/meacoex/archive/2010/10/16/microsoft-hyper-v-and-vmware-vsphere-footprints.aspx

6- Centralized security management

the white papers claims that Microsoft is using separate tools for security management, the truth is that these tools are components of the system center suite, and they are not only used to manage security for the virtual infrastructure but also for the physical infrastructure as well and with SP1 update system center endpoint protection is extended to Mac OS X and certain flavors of Linux. Microsoft’s focus is not limited only to the virtual infrastructure, but it offers a complete management suite for the physical and virtual infrastructure.

7- Agent less virtual machine protection

VMware claims the Microsoft hyper-v cannot be extended into having an agent less antivirus , this is very untrue , windows server 2012 hyper-v introduced the hyper-v extensible switch With built-in support enabling independent software vendors (ISVs) to create extensible plug-ins (known as Virtual Switch Extensions) that can provide enhanced networking and security capabilities, For example 5 nine has released a security manager for windows server 2012 hyper-v which provides agent less

antivirus, virtual firewall and intrusion detection.

http://www.5nine.com/Docs/5nine_Security_Manager_White_Paper.pdf

Other vendors has released extensions for the hyper-v extensible switch like Cisco, NEC and InMon

8- Software defined security

VMware claims that hyper-v doesn’t have software defined security features, well security isn’t just different because the machine is virtualized, Microsoft offered unified end to end security solutions for both virtual and physical infrastructures not just virtual machines like VMware, making things more simple again using the windows server 2012 hyper-v extensible switch hyper-v security features are extended covering a lot of advanced security features. For example here is the cisco nexus 1000V plug-in extension for hyper-v http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9902/index.html

Conclusion

We’ve discussed the first comparison table posted by VMware and ran through the comparison points one by one. Microsoft offers end to end management solutions for datacenters where it include virtual and physical environments or maybe an extension to public cloud, a lot the points VMware claims that Microsoft does not offer as part of windows server 2012 hyper-v is actually true, Microsoft does not think of these capabilities from a virtualized environment perspective only. Microsoft understand that each customer will have a mix of virtual, physical and public cloud environment and that’s why Microsoft does not offer these as part of windows server 2012 hyper-v but as part of system center suite which makes it easier for the customer to manage their heterogeneous environments , when you closely think about it , VMware just adds complexity introducing new set of tools for customers to manage only their virtual environment , while using other existing tools to manage their physical environment.

I've seen some mouse support issues on CentOS in Hyper-V. why reinvent the wheel if someone was kind enough to share the knowledge? Have a look...

Part 1: http://www.yusufozturk.info/linux-server/centos-5-6-desktop-installation-on-hyper-v-and-mouse-support-part1.html

Part 2: http://www.yusufozturk.info/linux-server/centos-5-6-desktop-installation-on-hyper-v-and-mouse-support-part2.html

Good luck :)

I've just came across this amazing set of Hyper-V Replica Runbooks. Give it a try and let me know how it went.

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Orchestrated-HVR-Planned-5ebecfc1

Enjoy!

One of the new features in SCCM 2012 sp1 is cloud based distribution point which is hosted on Microsoft public cloud Windows Azure. When you use a cloud-based distribution, you can :-

• Configure client settings to enable users and devices to access the content, and specify a primary site to manage the transfer of content to the distribution point.

• Specify thresholds for the amount of content you want to store on the distribution point and the amount of content you want to allow clients to transfer from the distribution point.
• Based on thresholds you defined, Configuration Manager can raise alerts that warn you when the combined amount of content you have stored on the distribution point is near the specified storage amount, or when transfers of data by clients are close to the thresholds that you defined.
• You can use a cloud-based distribution point for fallback content location.
• Support for both intranet and Internet-based clients.

However you can’t add PXE to cloud based distribution point.

In this blog I will show how you can step by step install and configure cloud based distribution point

1. You must have Azure account , you can create free trial account from windowsazure.com.
2. Let say that my primary site code is P01 and my SCCM server name is SCCM.coex.local. And we need to create cloud based DP named cloudDP.
3. Install offline CA and generate certificate with name “CloudDP.coex.local”.
4. Export “CloudDP.coex.local” twice one with Private Key “PFX” and another export without private key “.cer”.
5. Go to your Azure account –> settings --> and upload .cer certificate.
6. Copy you Azure subscription identifier.

7. Now we ready to provision Cloud distribution point on Azure , go to configuration manager console –> Administration  –>  expand Hierarchy Configuration and select cloud.

8. Right click on cloud and select “Create Cloud Distribution Point”.

9. Enter your Azure subscription identifier that we got in step 6.

10. Select “PFX” certificate “CloudDP.coex.local” that we exported in step 4.

11. Enter your service FQDN “CloudDP.coex.local” and press next.

12. Then Next.

13. SCCM will start to provision your new DP on Azure , Once “CloudDP.coex.local” status in Azure is running you can start distribute content to it.

14. Finally to allow your local client to communicate with new DP you must create “A” record for it in your local DNS.  Go to Azure and get the public IP of “CloudDP.coex.local” and create the “A” record.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how to migrate a Windows XP machine to Windows 7 using System Center Configuration Manager 2012. A few assumptions are made. You have a fully functional Configuration Manager site installed with USMT 4.0 packages installed (one of the prerequisites when install SCCM 2012). Your XP machine has Configuration Manager agent installed and active in the SCCM Console. You have a reference/captured image (Windows 7 image). (a post on how to do reference images soon)

What's the plan ?

Create a USMT Package

Distribute the USMT Package to a Distribution Point

Create a migration task sequence using an already captured Windows 7 image

Create, Edit, and Deploy an OS Migration Task Sequence

Create Deployment collection

Deploy the Task Sequence to the Migration Collection

Add Windows XP system to Migration Collection

Did it work ?

Create the USMT Package

Logon on the configuration manager machine, open the Configuration Manager Console

Navigate to Software library, Application Management, Packages

Right-Click Packages, Click Create Packages

On the Package screen, enter a name USMT 4.0

Select  This package contains source files, click Browse

specify the source folder of the USMT 4.0 . (Usually in C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\USMT unless you've this folder to share location)

On Program Type, select  Do not create a program. Click Next twice, then Close.

Distribute the USMT Package to a Distribution Point

Right-Click on USMT 4.0, click Distribute Content.  On the General Screen click Next.

On the Content Destination Screen, click Add.

Click Distribution Point. Select your distribution point. Click Ok, Next, Close.

Create, Edit, and Deploy an OS Migration Task Sequence

Navigate to Software Library, Operating System, Task Sequences

Click Create Task Sequence

On the Create Task Sequence screen, Select Install an existing image package and Click Next

Click Browse, select your image name, click Ok

Select Always use the same administrator password and type your local admin password, click Next

You can join a domain or leave it at workgroup, up to you. If you select Join a domain , next to domain click Browse.

You can leave the domain OU empty. Select Always use the same administrator password , click OK, Next.

On the Install Configuration Manager screen, click Browse and select Configuration Manager Client Package , click OK, Next.

On the State Migration Screen, click Browse and select the Microsoft USMT 4.0 package, click  OK.

Keep the remaining defaults and click Next.

On the Include Updates screen, if there are no software updates click next , otherwise select All software updates , Next.

On the Install Application screen, click Next, Next, Close

Select the task sequence you just created and click Edit

Select Apply Data Image 1 and click Remove

In the task sequence editor, select Partition Disk

Double-Click the second partition listed on the Properties tab

a new window will open Partition Properties

Select Use a percentage of the remaining free space (leave it to 100%)

Type OS in the Variable Name and click OK to close the partition properties.

Select the Apply Operating System task sequence step and change the Destination (at the bottom of the screen)  drop-down to Logical drive letter stored in variable.

Type OS in Variable Name, click ok to close the task sequence editor.

Create Deployment collection

 Navigate to Asset and Compliance, Overview, Device Collections.

Select Device Collections, and Click Create Device Collection

Enter a name of Windows 7 Migration

Click Browse next to limiting Collection

Select All Systems collections and then click Ok, then Click Next.

Uncheck the Schedule a full update on this collection group. Click Next

Ignore the warning for empty collection. Click Next, Close.

Deploy the Task Sequence to the Migration Collection

Navigate to Software library, Operating System, Task Sequences

Select the Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 with USMT task sequence

Right-Click , Deploy. Click Browse in the collection field , select the Windows 7 Migration collection. click ok.

Ignore the empty collection message. Click Next.

On the Deployment Settings screen, select Required as the purpose. (I.e unattended migration), click Next.

On the Scheduling Screen, Click New, Click Ok, Change the Return behavior to Never rerun deployed program.

Click Next four times and then Close.

Add Windows XP system to Migration Collection

Navigate to Assest and Compliance, Device Collections.

Select All Systems, click show members. Click Home.

Right-click xpmachine, Add selected items to an Existing Device collection select WIndows 7 Migration Collection.

Let the Magic begin ....

Logon onto the XPClient Machine with any user, but remember this user. You will logon with the same user after the migration.

Open Control Panel, Double Click Configuration Manager. On the action tab, select Machine Policy & Retrieval & Evaluation Cycle and click Run Now.

A lot of flickering is going to happen, and setup running in the background. Well done !

Did it work ?

Well, if you see Windows 7 and your pervious logon user still sees his/her files, then it worked!

Manage SUSE Linux with system center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1

One of the biggest enhancement in system center configuration manager is the supportability of managing non-windows machines like Mac OS, Linux and UNIX.  

Now you can manage using SCCM SP1 Mac OS 10.6 and 10.7 snow leopard and lion, and through that we can provide, push software distribution to the devices, settings management and also inventory capability so we have the ability for you to manage these devices, to push settings down to them that you need those devices to have but also pull back the rich reporting information that you’re used to getting in Configuration Manager with your Windows environment. 

Additionally and this will be the focus of this blog that you can manage some version of Linux and Unix as per table below. You can make distribution on the server side and we provide support for a number of variations there a number of variants and that support includes the hardware and software inventory as well as software deployment for these devices.  

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682077.aspx#BKMK_SupConfigClientReq

So below step by step guide how to manage SUSE Linux Version 11 with SCCM 2012 SP1 RTM

1-     I installed my SCCM 2012 SP1 as one primary site and all roles on the same server with site code “P01”

2-     Download SUSE Linux from  https://www.suse.com/  and install it as VM on top of Hyper-v. it’s not required to join to domain but you can if you want.

3-     Download Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Configuration Manager - Clients for Additional Operating Systems

4-     Extract SC 2012 CM SP1 RTM client for SLES.EXE and copy it to SUSE machine.

5-     Ensure that you have execute permission on install file, if not execute following command 

“chmod 777 install”

6-     Install SCCM agent with following command

“sudo ./install –mp sccm.coex.local –sitecode P01 –fsp sccm.coex.local ccm-SLES11x86.1.0.0.4014.tar”

7-      Once it finish will see the SUSE Linux machine in SCCM under all system collection

8-     Approve the SUSE Linux machine

9-     Then perform client  policy refresh  using following command “/opt/microsoft/configmgr/bin/ccmexec -rs policy”

10-  Once it finishes, request the hardware inventory

“/opt/microsoft/configmgr/bin/ccmexec -rs hinv”

11-  You can check log using "tail -f /var/opt/Microsoft/scxcm.log"

12-  Finally you will be able to  manage SUSE Linux machine

Introduction et aperçu du Déploiement de Test UC15

Ces guides étape par étape vont vous permettre d'acquérir une expérience pratique avec les nouveaux solutions et technologies des communications unifiées de Microsoft. Vous aurez la chance de passer par toutes les étapes requises pour déployer un environnement de test complet qui comporte Active Directory 2012 et Lync Server 2013. Vous aurez aussi la chance de découvrir comment exécuter une grande partie de ces étapes à partir de PowerShell.

Les guides étape par étape publiés vons vous permettre d'aboutir à l'environnement ci-dessous. Toutes les étapes sont basées sur Technet et mon expérience personnelle. Et bien évidemment, vous pouvez déployer ces serveurs dans un environnement informatique de serveurs virtuels.

 Aperçu des guides étape par étape

 Guide étape par étape 1 - Installation de Windows Server 2012 et Active Directory DS et CS

 Guide étape par étape 2 - Installation de Office Web Apps Server 2013 pour Lync Server 2013

 Guide étape par étape 3 - Installation de Lync Server 2013 Front End

Spécifications techniques et prérequis

Vous pouvez utiliser des serveurs virtuels pour le déploiement de cet environnement de test. Pour cela, vous aurez besoin d'un serveur physique de 8 à 12 Go de mémoire RAM et de 4 à 8 cœurs de processeur(s).

Le tableau ci-dessous indique les spécifications des serveurs virtuelles et les prérequis (sources d’installations) nécessaires.

Allez-y, commencez tout de suite !

When installed in a supported Linux virtual machine running on Hyper-V, the Linux Integration Services Components provide:

•Driver support: Linux Integration Services supports the network controller and the IDE and SCSI storage controllers that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.

•Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices now take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.

•Time Keeping: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain accurate by synchronizing to the clock on the virtualization server via Timesync service, and with the help of the pluggable time source device.

•Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager by using the “Shut down” command.

•Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use multiple virtual processors per virtual machine. The actual number of virtual processors that can be allocated to a virtual machine is only limited by the underlying hypervisor.

•Heartbeat: This feature allows the virtualization server to detect whether the virtual machine is running and responsive.

•KVP (Key Value Pair) Exchange: Information about the running Linux virtual machine can be obtained by using the Key Value Pair exchange functionality on the Windows Server 2008 virtualization server.

•Integrated Mouse Support: Linux Integration Services provides full mouse support for Linux guest virtual machines.

•Live Migration: Linux virtual machines can undergo live migration for load balancing purposes.

•Jumbo Frames: Linux virtual machines can be configured to use Ethernet frames with more than 1500 bytes of payload.

•VLAN tagging and trunking: Administrators can attach single or multiple VLAN ids to synthetic network adapters.

*Support Linux OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7, 5.8, 6.0-6.3 x86 and x64

CentOS 5.7, 5.8, 6.0-6.3 x86 and x64

*Supported Hypervisor: Win 2008 R2 to Win 2012

*limitation: TCP offload, Volume Snapshot Backup, Dynamic memory

Important to Note:

• Formatting a VHDX file with an ext3 file system might fail. To work around this issue, either use an ext4 file system, or create the .VHDX file with a smaller block size, such as 1 MB.  Using the ext4 file system is recommended for production deployments of Linux on Hyper-V.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) did not include support for 4K drives until version 6.0, so be careful when deploying 4K disks!
• The Hyper-V bridge.sys driver is not compatible with all WI-FI routers. This might result in a virtual machine not receiving an address through DHCP – this only occurs if the virtual switch is bound to a WI-FI NIC.  The workaround is to configure the WI-FI with a static IP reservation for the WI-FI NIC, and then statically defining that IP on the WI-FI NIC.
• If you want to use kdump functionality, configure kdump before installing the Linux Integration Services
• If you have virtual machines configured to use more than 7 virtual processors , you should add “numa=off” to the GRUB boot.cfg to work around a known issue in the Linux kernel.
• If you have virtual machines configured to use more than 30 GB RAM, you should add “numa=off” to the GRUB boot.cfg.

Content above from http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=13521

As part of the continuous interest of Microsoft to leverage business with its partner ecosystem and its commitment to enable its valued partners with all possible means, Microsoft Center of Expertise (CoEx) has launched its new initiative, PConnect.

PConnect is a FREE program designed and offered specifically to enable the Microsoft Partners Ecosystem in Emerging Markets. It creates unique opportunities for knowledge exchange with the Center Of Expertise Experts within the technical and presales fields.

PConnect aims to enhance your competencies as a Microsoft Partner throughout Microsoft's several workloads. To achieve our goal, we designed a set of FREE online sessions as well as “Ask the Experts” panels. Moreover, PConnect also serves as a communication channel between Microsoft and its Partners; accordingly it will help shed more light on your strengths and competencies.

Accordingly, we would like to ask you to nominate members of your team who will be attending our FREE online sessions in these different workloads:

Business Productivity Data Platforms Unified Communications Office 365 Data Center Optimized Desktop

Developers Tools Windows Apps Microsoft Business Solutions Microsoft Partner Sales Readiness

If you'd like to join the program please contact us at info@meapconnect.net and make sure to include your Partner Account Manager.

To be the first to know our latest news and updates, please make sure to visit our page on

• Facebook www.facebook.com/meaPC
• Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/meapconnect

Please feel free to contact the PConnect team with any inquiries that you may have regarding the PConnect Program at info@meapconnect.net

Microsoft MEA CoEx is now hiring “Developer Evangelist” position the mission of  the role is engaging the broad community of developers and driving excitement around  Microsoft developer tools and Microsoft platform technologies.

Job requirements:

• Excellent oral and written communication skills

• Excellent presentation skills to large, demanding technical audiences.

• A blend of passion, optimism, customer advocacy, curiosity and creativity

• Demonstrated track-record of developer community involvement

• Preferred qualifications include Computer Science/Engineering or related degree, 10+ years of hands-on developer experience

• Demonstrated hands-on software development experience with current and emerging web technologies is required

• Demonstrated hands-on software development experience with current and emerging Windows platform technologies, the .NET Framework and Visual Studio + other Microsoft technologies such as SQL Server, BizTalk Server, SharePoint, Smart Clients, Microsoft Office, etc.

• Experience with multiple, current programming languages

• Experience using non-Microsoft technologies (PHP, Flex/Flash, Linux, Eclipse, Java, Ruby a HUGE plus

• Experience with or knowledge of future Microsoft developer technologies a plus

• Microsoft certifications (MCSD, MCT, MCSE, etc.) a plus

Please email your resume at  b-monael@microsoft.com

Windows Azure Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content to help you learn how to use Windows Azure.

August 2012 Update
The August 2012 update of the Windows Azure Training Kit includes 41 hands-on labs and 35 presentations. Some of the updates in this version include:

• Added 7 presentations specifically designed for the Windows Azure DevCamps
• Added 4 presentations for Windows Azure SQL Database, SQL Federation, Reporting, and Data Sync
• Added presentation on Security & Identity
• Added presentation on Building Scalable, Global, and Highly Available Web Apps
• Several hands-on lab bug fixes
• Added the Windows Azure DevCamp 1-day event agenda
• Updated Windows Azure Foundation Training Workshop 3-day event agenda

Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8396

We are now hiring Technology Solution Professional (TSP),If you are a passionate technologist with a Business Intelligence /SharePoint or ERP  technology background and you have presales experience please email your resume at  b-monael@microsoft.com

Role scope:

Technology Solutions Professional (TSP)

Primary Accountability: Provide deep technical expertise while proving the value of Microsoft’s Solutions to customers providing technical contributions to solutions revenue goals.

Scope: Conducting self-research, learning and technical readiness related to solution area education and knowledge transfer. Participating in team planning activities and conducting Solution Briefings and demos, where the TSP is resourceful in driving cost-effective ways of moving opportunities forward. Orchestrating successful Proof of Concepts and/or providing deep Architecture Design Sessions to provide customers with the business values of the Technology Solutions.”

Please email your resume at  b-monael@microsoft.com