Windows Server 2003 End-of-Support is quickly approaching on July 14th, 2015 ... does your organizations still have Windows Server 2003 servers running key infrastructure services, such as Active Directory, DNS and DHCP? The process for migrating these key services to Windows Server 2012 R2 may be easier than you think!
 

Migrating Active Directory, DNS and DHCP to Windows Server 2012 R2

In today's article in our Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud series, Tommy Patterson steps through the general process for migrating Active Directory, DNS and DHCP services from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012 R2.  Along the way, he also provides links to additional helpful tools and resources.
 

READ TOMMY'S FULL ARTICLE HERE!

In today's episode of our Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud series, Blain Barton and Tommy Patterson discuss how to get started migrating server workloads to Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Azure. Join us for this great session on server migration from on-premises to the cloud or a combination of both.  Learn which option is best for your organization as well as what tools are available to make this process as efficient as possible.
 

Migrating Server Workloads to Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Azure

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• [04:13]  What does end of support for Windows Server 2003 mean?
• [05:23] Migration vs. Upgrade. Which option is best?
• [15:02] What migration tools are available?
• [16:01]  Migrating foundation services (Active Directory, DHCP, DNS, File Services & DFS, Web Servers, SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint

WATCH THIS FULL EPISODE HERE!

In today's article in our Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud series, Dan Stolts steps through the configuration of System Center 2012 R2 for monitoring workloads cross-premises in the Hybrid Cloud.
 

Step-by-Step: Monitoring Hybrid Cloud with System Center 2012 R2

From Dan's article: "Hybrid Cloud monitoring tools give us the capability of seeing ALL of our application workloads: on-premises machines, virtual machines and even all of our cloud infrastructure.  Not only can we see how they are doing and anticipate failure, but we can audit (track who changed what) and even evaluate performance. By seeing our complete hybrid infrastructure, we can proactively make sure it all stays running to meet our SLAs and  we keep our jobs and prosper ..."
 

READ DAN'S FULL ARTICLE HERE!

Make it so! Traditional configuration management of server and application workloads can be complicated. In the past, configuration management has often required us to build and maintain lots of scripts with complex conditional logic to handle all possible states of a server when deploying a new configuration to it.  PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) simplifies configuration management in the Hybrid Cloud by defining a declarative description of the end-state of our servers.  DSC automatically determines which components needed to be added, removed or updated based on the current state of servers to which this definition is applied. What's more, DSC can be leveraged across your Hybrid Cloud to provide a consistent approach for managing the configuration of on-premises hosts, virtual machines, application roles and public cloud fabrics! 
 

Configuration Management with PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC)

In today's article in our Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud series, Kevin Remde steps through leveraging PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) to define the configuration of a server, apply that configuration, and then periodically verify (and remediate, if necessary) that the configuration is still in-place.
 

READ KEVIN'S FULL ARTICLE HERE!

When migrating to Hybrid Cloud, developing automated standards for provisioning and managing application workloads is key to accelerating the predictable deployment of new business solutions.  As you begin developing scripts and workflows, being able to do so with consistency across on-premises datacenters and public cloud platforms is important to promote reusability and agility when migrating these workloads.
 

Get Started with Hybrid Cloud Automation

In today's article in our Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud series, follow along with Yung Chou and I as we walk through the steps to get started with Windows PowerShell and the Azure PowerShell module for automating both Azure Pack private clouds and Microsoft Azure public clouds via the tenant service management  API.  We'll provide PowerShell code snippets so that you can easily try this out in your own Hybrid Cloud, too!
 

READ THIS COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE!