Today on TechNet Radio – MSIT Talks about Running a Private Cloud

In this episode, I talk with Jenny Dooley from the Microsoft IT team as she shares their experience with using Windows Azure Pack for developing, deploying and supporting internal lab environments for product development at Microsoft. Listen in as we chat about how MSIT was able to provide a scalable private cloud for dev and test to enable rapid and agile product development.

[0:45] What do you and your team do at Microsoft?
[1:11] So why did your team build an internal private cloud?
[2:20] How big of a lab are we talking here?
[3:13] Wow! Implementing something this large has to have some challenges. Can you tell us about some of the road bumps you encountered?
[5:20] Doing charge backs at this level has to be pretty tricky to implement, right?
[7:00] How did you start using Windows Azure Pack? Was there anything special you had to do?
[8:41] How did this help your team overall?
[10:08] How do you see this evolving in the future?

Week 5 of Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud

This is the 2nd to last week of the “Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud” series and in part 5, Yung Chou and Keith Mayer demonstrate ways in which you can manage and automate your hybrid cloud environment. Tune in for this demo heavy session as they showcase System Center, Microsoft Azure and the Windows Azure Pack as well as PowerShell for Azure, PowerShell DSC for configuration management and Azure Automation for automated runbooks.

[1:15] When architecting a Hybrid Cloud infrastructure, what are some of the important considerations relating to management and automation?
[4:09] You mentioned PowerShell for automation … how can PowerShell be leveraged for automation in a Hybrid Cloud?
[7:54] Is PowerShell my ONLY choice? Are there other automation and configuration management solutions available for a Hybrid Cloud?
[11:12] DEMO: Let’s see some of this in action

Brief tour of System Center and Azure / Azure Pack management portal interfaces
Getting started with PowerShell for Azure, Azure Pack automation
Intro to PowerShell DSC for configuration management
Intro to Azure Automation for automated runbooks

Also upcoming for the blog posts related to this week:

Tue: Getting Started with On-Demand Private Clouds with Azure Pack by Keith Mayer
Wed: Automating the Hybrid Cloud with PowerShell and Azure Automation by Keith Mayer
Thu: PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) by Kevin Remde
Fri: Monitoring the Hybrid Cloud by Dan Stolts

Software-Defined Networking with Windows Server and System Center Jump Start

Just wanted to make sure you knew about this upcoming, free online event with live Q&A with the WAP team: http://aka.ms/WAPIaaS. It’s two half-days – Wednesday July 16^th & Thursday July 17^th – 9am-1pm PST

The details: IT Pros, you know that enterprises desire the flexibility and affordability of the cloud, and service providers want the ability to support more enterprise customers. Join us for an exploration of Windows Azure Pack’s (WAP’s) infrastructure services (IaaS), which bring Microsoft Azure technologies to your data center (on your hardware) and build on the power of Windows Server and System Center to deliver an enterprise-class, cost-effective solution for self-service, multitenant cloud infrastructure and application services.

Join Microsoft’s leading experts as they focus on the infrastructure services from WAP, including self-service and automation of virtual machine roles, virtual networking, clouds, plans, and more. See helpful demos, and hear examples that will help speed up your journey to the cloud. Bring your questions for the live Q&A!