Life during my first year at Microsoft has been almost exactly as I imagined it might be, but as I always do at Christmas I reflected on the year past and particularly this year on my first 9 months as a Microsoft Employee. Whilst doing so I remembered exactly what prompted me to sign up to this fun...

Each month here in the @TechnetUk #ITPro office there is a mad scramble (bunfight / race / polite debate) to bid for the best blog topics for the month. Each quarter has a theme, this quarter it is ‘the right tools for the job’. I was lucky enough to see the email early and our editor Charlotte...

As IT Professionals, it is all too easy to lose sight of the impact our daily job can have on the poor, unsuspecting species known as the ‘user’. It could be said that having spent the last 20 plus years entirely working in or around the IT industry, I am both long in the tooth and set in...

IPAM Part 3 focuses on the integration of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 R2 into the IPAM managed environment. What exactly does this mean? IPAM covers the entire Microsoft DHCP and DNS environment and monitors, manages and audits the deployment. Prior to Windows Server 2012...

So, what IS new in IPAM in Windows Server 2012 R2? There is quite a long list here. One of the big additions is that IPAM now supports RBAC – Role Based Access Control, this now enables you to customise access and operations permissions for users and groups of users with granular control of IPAM...

You could be forgiven for thinking that the 8 th April 2014 is only really going to be remembered for the End of Support for Windows XP after almost 15 years of service. Time will tell, but I would venture that a large number of Virtualisation IT Pros are still rubbing their hands with glee at the release...

When we think of our 'dream job', then it’s all about finding something we're good at, we get paid to do and of course we love doing. We were lucky enough to spend some time with Matthew Reynolds, Head of IT at Southampton Football Club, we asked him a few questions on what he does...

Up until now in my Lab Ops series I have been using bits of PowerShell to create VM’s in a known state, however this requires a certain amount of editing and I would have to write a lot more code to automate it and properly log what is going on. Plus I would probably want a database to store variables...

Well done if you got through my last post, I bolted a lot of stuff together and it all looks a bit confusing particularly if you are moving from Hyper-V to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (VMM). For a start where’s my network settings? When I was testing my rig I found I couldn’t swap out...

In my last post I finished up where I had my host under management of Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and that was about it. As with Hyper-V I can’t really use VMM until I have my fabric configured and after adding in hosts the first thing we need to do is look at Networking. To recap my current setup...

In my last post I talked a lot about the way all of System Center works, now I want to look at one part of it Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) as VMs in a modern data centre are at the core of the services we provide to our users. In the good old days we managed real servers that had real disks connected...

I have to admit that I am not at all interested in football, but despite all the bad press some players get, there are many who understand how privileged they are and that they are essentially there to entertain their many loyal fans. A good example is something that Craig Bellamy said when asked about...

This post isn’t really about Lab Ops as it’s more theory than Ops, but before I dive in to the world of what you can do with System Center I wanted to stress one important concept: Use the right tool for the right job. That old saying that when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail can harm...

This post isn’t going to tell you how to install System Center screen by screen as there are some 434 of these to do a complete install and configure. That’s a lot of clicking with a lot of opportunity for mistakes and while I realise that not everyone needs to tear down and reset everything surely there...

Greg Charman is an ex-Opalis expert who now works for Microsoft. Read Greg’s thoughts about how Opalis works with System Center and other similar tools in the systems management space. In December 2009 Microsoft acquired Opalis, a specialist provider of IT Process Automation (ITPA) software.  ...

It’s been a busy week here at TechNet HQ, not least for Simon May who we’re thrilled to see has got his blogging hat back on and knocked out two great articles about Consumerisation of IT (consumer devices in the workplace to the rest of us)! We also brought you some interesting little tidbits about...

Join us live on 1 September for presentations and demos from Microsoft and systems management partners to get an understanding of the latest Microsoft System Center server management tools. These solutions capture and aggregate knowledge about the infrastructure, policies, processes, and best practices...

The latest TechNet Flash Newsletter is now out and available for you to take a look at online, this one was all about Private Cloud and the details of Systems Center RC.  You will also find a list of upcoming local UK events to get involved with and some offers and job vacancies. The Flash Newsletter...

Fresh from The Register's Windows Azure webcast and our trip aboard the pioneering Concorde to take your Cloud questions at twice the speed of sound, we're back with more free CloudOS events and chat on the 14th November. This time around the subject matter is Microsoft hybrid datacentre technologies...

Consumerisation is an amazing trend; the idea that anyone can make choices about the way they work and the tools they use to get their job done. From an IT point of view it can, at first, look like a scary proposition. All those people bringing in different bits of kit and making you look after them...

BUSINESS CHALLENGE Staffordshire County Council wanted to reduce costs through virtualisation—improving manageability and resilience by moving its infrastructure to the private cloud. It also looked to support shared services. SOLUTION Staffordshire County Council worked with Microsoft Gold Partner Risual...

I remember hearing about a Project Houston about a year ago, a cunning plan to allow Microsoft to check the heath of your SQL Server databases and the operating system it sits on. It is now live and it’s called System Center Advisor . It works by using ...read more

Featuring a wide range of customer references, covering Server Virtualization (Hyper-V), Datacenter Management (System Center), Identity & Security (Forefront), DirectAccess/BranchCache (Windows Server 2008 R2) and Desktop Virtualization (VDI), the Black Book of Core Infrastructure References is...

We are now all charged with looking at the best ways to deliver greater efficiency and flexibility. I.T. is a priority, our businesses depend upon it and we all look at how new technology can help us to deploy more efficient, scalable and flexible infrastructures. IT is rapidly transforming business...