Microsoft News Summary – 14 July 2014

After a week’s break in Finland, I am back with news from the last 10 or so days. It was a busy period!

• Setting up a Highly-Available VMM 2012 Environment: This article will guide you through the recommended way to setup and configure a typical, highly available (HA) System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) installation.
• Introducing Microsoft Azure File Service: Learn about this SMB 2.01 shared configuration/settings/diagnostics feature.
• Persisting connections to Microsoft Azure Files: Making the authentication survive logouts.
• Virtualization Fabric Design Considerations Guide: This guide details a series of steps and tasks that you can go through to design a virtualization fabric that is able to host many virtual machines. Throughout the steps and tasks, the guide presents options available to you to meet functional and service quality requirements.
• Windows Azure Pack Infrastructure as a Service Jumpstart: This clashes with the much more important presentation by me with Petri and sponsored by Veeam.
• Using deduplication for Hyper-V Replica out-of-band (OOB) initial replication: A hack to squeeze more VMs into your removable media.
• Azure Site Recovery – case of the “network connection failure”: A handy tip for the few that can run ASR.
• Step-by-Step: RemoteApp Hybrid Deployment–Part 1: Deploying the managed RDS in Azure.
• Introducing Microsoft Azure StorSimple: Introducing the new niche scenario tiered storage models THAT ARE NOT A SAN REPLACEMENT – they are a supplement for the storage of suitable data.
• Free ebook – Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model: How the Microsoft Cloud OS is and the needs of cloud computing scale and availability have changed the needs and capabilities of storage in the enterprise and hosting environments.
• Best practices for setting up Remote Desktop Licensing (Terminal Server Licensing) across Active Directory Domains/Forests or Workgroup: This article provides information on the questions around the supportability (or recommended approach) of setting up Remote Desktop (RD) Licensing across domain, forest or workgroups.
• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 and System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager now support Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP2.
• "Not enough disk space" error when you run a V2V conversion to a CSV in Virtual Machine Manager: When you try to perform a virtual to virtual (V2V) conversion to a cluster shared volume in Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, the cluster that you selected may have a placement rating of zero stars (unacceptable). File this under FFS.
• Beware Keyloggers at Hotel Business Centers: The U.S. Secret Service is advising the hospitality industry to inspect computers made available to guests in hotel business centers, warning that crooks have been compromising hotel business center PCs with keystroke-logging malware in a bid to steal personal and financial data from guests.
• 6 Important Things To Know About Microsoft’s New Volume Licensing Program: The program for >250 users that is replacing Slect Plus, MOSA, and MBSA, is slowly being rolled out worldwide.
• Create a NIC Team Inside of a Hyper-V Virtual Machine: A post by me on Petri.com
• Using the Microsoft Azure IaaS Cost Estimator Tool: A post by me on Petri.com
• Pinning a File in Tiered Microsoft Storage Spaces: A post by me on Petri.com
• Pause and Drain Actions on Windows Server 2012 R2 Clusters: A post by me on Petri.com
• Live Exporting Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V VMs: A post by me on Petri.com
• Evolving Office 365 plans for small and midsized businesses: Renaming and repackaging of SME O365 plans. This is a confusing read to most – MicroWarehouse Ltd customers in Ireland should talk to Nicole to get a breakdown.
• Nadella Outlines Microsoft Organizational Changes: Major engineering and organizational moves will be made by Microsoft over the next month, according to CEO Satya Nadella.
• Microsoft Enhancing Azure Management, Expanding U.S. Locations: Microsoft is adding improvements to its Azure Portal preview, which are expected to arrive next week.
• Report: Windows, PCs to Rebound in 2015: PC sales to increase in 2015, but tablet sales to pass those of PCs for the first time, according to Kool-Aid distributor, Gartner.