Today’s Tip… ReFS (Resilient File System), which first debuted with Windows Server 2012, was a server only file system. In Windows 8.1, the x64 version has ReFS as well. However, just like in Windows Server 2012, there will not be a ‘convert’ process...

Today’s Tip… Windows Server 2012 R2 has a neat little treat for in store for engineers. Hyper-V now has the ability to issue a virtualized Non Maskable Interrupt (NMI) to a virtual machine. This is done by using the new Windows PowerShell cmdlet, Debug...

Last week I mentioned some of the functionality that FSUtil.exe was giving up to Windows PowerShell in Windows 8.1/Server 2012 R2. But FSUtil.exe has a couple of new tricks as well. Some storage tiering switches have been added, and I’ll talk about tiering...

Today’s Tip… This was one of the first things that I got excited about in Windows Server 2012 R2. Although the iSCSI software target was part of the Windows Server 2012 release, it only supported the standard VHD format, unlike the rest of the product...

Today’s Tip… Windows Server 2012 introduced Storage Spaces as a method of having virtualized storage. In this initial release there were three choices for storage layout Simple Mirroring (both 2-way and 3-way) Parity One of the improvements in Windows...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Performance Guidance for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines One of the most resource intensive applications you can run on Windows is SQL Server. To some extent, this is demonstrated by the vast amounts of performance guidance...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Hybrid Search In SharePoint Online Customer will always take a phased approach to move their On-premise infrastructure to cloud . A mix of some cloud and some on-premises solutions will always co-exist. For end users it becomes extremely...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip… Where is Windows Azure available? Windows Azure is accessible from anywhere in the world and has datacenters in the following locations (( https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/trust-center/privacy/ ): In addition, Windows Azure...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip… Where is Office 365 available? Although Office 365 is a cloud service, so technically accessible from anywhere in the world, only customers in the following 92 countries/regions can purchase user licenses: Algeria, Argentina, Australia...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip… Same sign-on vs. Single sign-on Customers can leverage Directory Synchronization (DirSync) to keep their local Active Directory and Windows Azure Active Directory in sync. The DirSync application runs on a regular basis and copies...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip… If you have users that already exist in the cloud and want to start directory synchronization and have these users map to users on-premises, you must match the SMTP address. The SMTP address must be the same for the on-premises user...

Today’s Tip… With the latest version of Azure Active Directory Synchronization tool (6862.0000), you can now import the PowerShell module for Directory Synchronization. To do this, on the server where Azure Active Directory Synchronization tool is installed...

Today’s Tip… Microsoft Azure Active Directory Graph API Client library provides easy to use functionality for your applications to programmatically access your directory information from Azure Active Directory. To install Microsoft Azure Active Directory...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Another improvement in the Gartner IaaS Magic Quadrant If you want to see a validation of the cloud story we are telling in the Azure space, check out the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for IaaS. Although we are still trailing Amazon...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Allowing Resellers to resell Azure cloud services Starting August 1st, we will allow resellers to resell Azure services. They will be able to leverage a token system to sell the services to their customers and then their customers...

If you have installed the Windows 8.1 on multiple devices(Laptop, RT, Surface Pro, etc..) and login with your MSA account on those devices you may have noticed that your start screen is getting re-organized. One of the new features in 8.1 is the ability...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Federated vs. Managed Users Office 365 authentication has the concept of two types of users – federated and managed. Federated users are ones for whose authentication Office 365 communicates with an on-premises federation provider...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip… What applications can I run in PaaS? PaaS roles abstract away the OS and infrastructure components and provide a platform on which you can layer your code. Although not a perfect analogy, one way to think about them is to think about...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…What Windows roles can I run in IaaS? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2721672 lists the Windows Server roles supported and not supported in Windows Azure. Just like the supported applications list, this list changes rapidly, so be...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Security of customer data in Office 365 We employ all of the follow methods to secure customer data in Office 365: Network segmentation to ensure physical separate of back-end services and devices from public-facing interfaces BitLocker...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip… What applications can I run in SaaS? This is kind of a trick question. SaaS implies that you are purchasing access to a fully-functional application. In Microsoft’s case, our biggest and highest profile SaaS applications is Office...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip… Running Oracle in Windows Azure The announcement just came out a while back, but I thought it was momentous enough to stick into the rotation. From http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2013/06/24/partners-in-the-enterprise...

Today’s Tip… A FDD (fixed data drive) policy can now be configured to allow automatic unlocking of a drive without having had a password set for the drive. Users will not be prompted for a password prior to encrypting the FDD, and the FDD will be secured...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…On-Premises Hang out in the cloud space for even a brief amount of time and you will hear someone make a comparison between cloud services and traditional applications installed locally. What you won’t hear is consistency on how to...

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Sign up for Office 365 Customers can sign up for Office 365 at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ . They can start out by signing up for a free preview and then can convert it to a paid subscription after that. MSDN subscribers can...