Wednesday Distractions with Videos

It’s Wednesday. Because it’s mid-week, it’s really easy to get distracted. So don’t blame me if any of the videos suck you in. 🙂

On TechNet Radio – Windows Server 2016 Storage Space Direct
On TechNet Radio – Windows 10 and App Compat: Part 1 (This is a 3-part series)
On the Ops Team – Episode #008 “Didn’t Get the Memo”
On DevOps Dimension – Tips for making the DevOps Transformation from Nordstrom
Tuesday’s With Corey – Security Center / RBAC Custom Roles

Enjoy!

The Imperfect Lab: Azure Networking – Two Ways

Around this time last year, I kicked off my “Imperfect Lab” and used it as a story to play around in Azure and get more comfortable with PowerShell. And then I got busy with some other work priorities (as we all do) and I shut down those VMs, with the hopes of dusting them off in the future to continue with more learning.

At any rate, with all the changes to Azure in the last year, it’s really time to reboot the Imperfect Lab and give it a new shine, using some of the fresh new tools – particularly the *new” Portal, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Azure PowerShell 1.0 and Templates.

Let’s recap what I have to start with (all in “classic” Azure Service Manager)

A cloud service and related virtual network
Two domain controllers (one using the minimal interface and one running core)
One member server that runs the AD Sync service
Traditional AD synced to Azure AD

So now where to begin?

When using ARM, it’s no longer possible for the creation of a VM resource without a virtual network, so it seemed fitting for me to start with the network. It’s also not possible to mix ASM and ARM resources, I’ll be using this network to deploy all the lab VMs I’ll be using in ARM going forward. For those of you who aren’t familiar with old-school Azure, the classic mode (aka Azure Service Manager or ASM) made it possible to create resources in a cloud service without an user-manageable virtual network.

One of the other tasks that was difficult using ASM was programmatically creating and updating networking. It required downloading and editing an XML file and I found that generally distasteful. With ARM, you’ve got two options – straight up PowerShell or an ARM Template.

If you don’t know where to begin with an ARM Template, you can check out this repository of Azure Quickstart Templates. To create a basic network with two subnets, I used this one – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/templates/101-two-subnets/

You can deploy this template using the Azure portal (which will allow you to adjust the parameters to your liking) or you can edit the template to your meet your needs or you can deploy it as is via PowerShell. If you want more details on the ways you can deploy templates, I recommend reading this – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/resource-group-template-deploy/

The other option is use just vanilla PowerShell from the command line or via ISE. I used the following, which is using PowerShell 1.0:

$vnetName = "ImperfectRMNet"
$RGroup = "ImperfectRG"
$Location = "West US"

New-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name $RGroup -Location $Location

$subnet1 = New-AzureRmVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name SubNet6 -AddressPrefix "192.168.6.0/24"
$subnet2 = New-AzureRmVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name SubNet7 -AddressPrefix "192.168.7.0/24"

New-AzureRmVirtualNetwork `
 -Name $vnetName `
 -ResourceGroupName $RGroup `
 -Location $Location `
 -AddressPrefix "192.168.6.0/23" `
 -Subnet $subnet1, $subnet2

Take note that with PowerShell 1.0, there is no “Switch-AzureMode” cmdlet and all of the “New” commands include “RM” in the cmdlet somewhere to differentiate between creating classic Azure resources. There is nothing else to this basic network, no external IP address or load balancer that would normally come default with a cloud service in ASM.

In with December!

When I return to the office after Thanksgiving, I’m always both shocked and pleased to see the holiday lobby decorations have magically appeared in all the office building lobbies downtown. They are always different and certainly start off the month of December with some cheer.

If you need some events to attend in December to round out your year, this is what I have on my radar:

December 8th – LearnIT! Tech Adoption Summit and Open House (all day)
December 8th – Bay Area Azure Developers hosts Holiday Meetup with Lightning Talks (evening). This is a great opportunity to mingle with other local communities, like NorCal PowerShell, PacITPros, etc.
December 14th – HashiCorp User Group & DataDog Meetup (evening)

Hope to see you around before the years end!

Blain Barton’s “To the Cloud” Series Continues!

In Part 6 in the “To the Cloud” series, Blain Barton, Tommy Patterson and Dan Stolts, provide an overview of the benefits of running servers without the physical hardware using Microsoft Azure. Learn how large and small to mid-sized companies can rent compute, storage, and networking resources by using datacenter hardware to deploy virtual machines (VMs).

[10:25] DEMO: Azure Virtual Machine Gallery

If you’re interested in learning more about the products or solutions discussed in this episode, click on any of the below links for free, in-depth information:

Websites & Blogs:

Videos:

Follow the conversation @MS_ITProBecome a Fan @ facebook.com/MicrosoftITPro Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, Stitcher, or RSS

TechNet on Tour: Resources for Backup/DR in the Cloud

If you attended (or didn’t get a chance to attend) the TechNet on Tour series covering Backup and Disaster Recovery in the Cloud, I wanted to list out some of the resources that are available if you’d like to review the slides or try out the labs.

Hands on Lab Guide – http://aka.ms/labguides
Videos of HOLs – http://1drv.ms/1WPmFvt
Slides – http://aka.ms/technetontour

Learn Quick with Azure Documentation Short Videos

It’s hard to carve out 45 minutes (or more!) to watch a video training or webcast. Sometimes 10 minutes or less is all you can spare. So look no further than the Azure Documentation Shorts. You’ll find quick, to the point videos showing you how to perform specific tasks in Azure. New videos are added weekly. Here’s a sample:

Azure Resource Manager Overview

Attaching a Data Disk to a Windows VM

One of these days, I’ll figure out how embed videos. But meanwhile, just click. 🙂

Business Continuity and the Cloud

This week marks the start of TechNet on Tour, coming to twelve cities. The full day workshops include lecture and hands-on-labs where you can learn about some of the ways you can utilize Microsoft Azure to help with your disaster recovery planning.

But let me tell you about the first “business continuity” plan I was part of. It involved a stash of tapes, daily backups on a two week cycle with the Friday backups being held for a month. The nightly backup job fit on two tapes and every morning, I ejected the tapes from the machine and dropped them in my bag. They went home with me, across town, and came back every day to be swapped with latest ones. Whenever I took a vacation, I designated an available person to perform the same task.

That was it. The tapes were rarely looked at, the data never tested and fortunately, never needed. We were partying like it was 1999. Because it was.

Still, the scenario isn’t uncommon. There are still lots of small businesses, with only single locations and still lots of tapes out there. But now, there is more data and more urgency for that data to be recovered as quickly as possible with as little loss as possible. And there are still only 24 hours in the day. How annoying to arrive at work in the morning, only to find the overnight backup job still running.

As I moved through jobs and technologies evolved, we addressed the growing data and lack of time in many ways… Adjusting backup jobs to capture less critical or infrequently changing data only over the weekends. More jobs that only captured delta changes. Fancier multiple-tape changers, higher density tapes, local “disk to disk” backups that were later moved to tape, even early “Internet” backup solutions, often offered by the same companies that handled your physical tape and box rotation services.

We also chased that holy-grail of “uptime”. Failures weren’t supposed to happen if you threw enough hardware in a room. Dual power supplies, redundant disk arrays, multiple disk controllers, UPS systems with various bypass offerings. Add more layers to protect the computers, the data.

Testing was something we wanted to do more often. But it was hard justify additional hardware purchases to upper management. Hard to find the time to set up a comprehensive test. But we tried and often failed. And learned. Because each test or real outage is a great opportunity to learn. Outages are often perfect storms… if only we had swapped out that dying drive a day before, if only that piece of hardware was better labeled, if only that was better documented… and each time we made improvements.

I remember, after a lengthy call with a co-location facility that wanted us to sign a year agreement even though we only wanted space for 3 months to run a recovery test, how I wished for something I could just use for the time I needed. It’s been a little over 5 years since that phone call, but finally there is an answer and it’s “the cloud”.

Is there failure in the cloud? Of course, it’s inevitable. For all the abstractness, it’s still just running on hardware. But the cloud provides part of an answer that many businesses simply didn’t have even five years ago. Business that never recovered from the likes of Katrina and other natural or man-made disasters, might still have a shot today.

So catch a TechNet Tour if it passes through your area. Look at taking advantage of things like using the cloud as target instead of tape, or replicating a VM to Azure with Azure Site Recovery. Even starting to dabble in better documentation or scripting with PowerShell to make your key systems more consistently reproducible will go a long way. Do a “table top” dry run of your existing DR plan today.

Sysadmins don’t let other sysadmins drop DLT tapes in their bags. Let’s party like it’s 2015. Because it is.

Server 2016 TP3, Containers and Azure – All Together

Sometimes I think I’ll never get caught up. Every day, there are new, interesting announcements from the technology companies we use every day, plus we have to juggle the tasks, fires and projects we have at work. It’s really hard to keep up. I’ll bet you are feeling that way right now.

This week, it’s possible for you to check a few new things off your list – ALL AT ONCE! (And it’s already Friday!)

Try out Azure
Check out Server 2016
Learn about Containers

Ready?

First make sure you have an Azure subscription or trial. If your company has an enterprise agreement with Microsoft, you might have credits to use in Azure and not even know it. So check there first. If not – go to http://aka.ms/NewAzureTrial to sign up for $200 you can use for the next 30 days.

Once you’ve got access to Azure, you’ll find we have two web portals for accessing it. The “classic” or current portal at http://manage.windowsazure.com and the preview portal at http://portal.azure.com. Depending on what you need to do, the feature set varies between portals. But for this, it doesn’t matter.

Whichever portal you pick, you’ve opened the door to the easiest way to test out new versions of Windows Server. No hunting around for free hardware, no downloading ISO images and practically no wait. Just take advantage of your own personal datacenter in the “cloud”.

Next, look for the Server 2016 versions – there are two of them. One is the Full GUI version, listed as Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3. (In the new portal, the Full GUI version can be found in the Marketplace.) The other one is listed as “Windows Server Container Preview”.

If poking around with the new full version is your goal, spin that up and get started. RDP to it and you are good to go. If you need a walk-thru on how to set up a VM on either portal, you can find it here : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-windows-tutorial/

If your company develops software and is thinking about micro-services and “containers” are new buzzword in the office, you’ll want to spin up the Container Preview. And even if your company doesn’t fit that description and you just want to see what this container/Docker thing is all about, spin up the Container Preview too.

Once that machine is up and running, you’ll log into to find yourself at a command prompt window and nothing else. Containers are supported only on the Windows Core (and eventually Nano) versions. To get you started, take some time to review this documentation (http://aka.ms/windowscontainers) and dust of your command line skills.

Viola! Now go check off that list. 🙂

Note: With the preview, there is A LOT of work to be done still, so don’t be surprised when things aren’t super polished and feature-rich yet. And seriously, don’t try to use any of this for production. This is just the tip of the iceberg to come.

Summer Reads!

Ah, summertime…. Vacations, relaxing on the patio, fruit salads, sparkly drinks and learning. Right? I spent some time by the beach and the pool recently and then came back to a pile of interesting things I wanted to read or try out.

There are also two new video blogs available on Channel 9 that will keep adding new content you might want to check out.

Raw Tech – Lots of Dev stuff, but a pretty interesting assortment.
Azure Documentation Shorts – Quick videos covering the how-to of what’s documented for Azure.

TechNet on Tour – Disaster Recovery!

We technical evangelists are at it again! This September and October, we will visit 10 cities to talk about using Microsoft Azure as part of your disaster recovery plan.

Attendees will receive a free Microsoft Azure pass and the opportunity to complete several disaster recovery related labs during the course of the workshop.