Microsoft News – 29 June 2015

As you might expect, there’s lots of Azure news. Surprisingly, there is still not much substantial content on Windows 10.

Hyper-V

• What is the Windows Server Network Controller? A post I wrote for Petri.com.
• Virtual Machine Compute Resiliency in Windows Server 2016: Dealing with transient cluster failures and keeping VMs online.
• NEW RDS deployment model – Personal Session Desktops: A VDI scenario without using a client OS. In Windows Server 2016 additional improvements have been added to the Desktop Experience feature to make the Server OS look even more as a (Windows 10) Client OS. You will “… essentially be able to do “VDI” in Azure where every user will have a fully persistent desktop with options to allow user installed applications or maybe even local admin privileges”.
• Script – Image Factory for Hyper-V: A handy solution from Ben Armstrong.
• Handy Tool for Converting KVM / VMware Images to Hyper-V: A solution for V2V conversions from KVM to Hyper-V for when you’ve realised that your boss was an idiot.

Windows Server

• DNS Server Startup Time Improvements in Windows Server 2012 R2: Tuning for those people running HUGE DNS databases (40,000 to 50 million records!).
• PowerShell Script to build your Nano Server Image: Deploying Nano Server
• How to use WDS to PxE Boot a Nano Server VHD: Do a network boot with Nano Server – How UNIX-y!
• Microsoft Support for Secure Shell (SSH): Light on details: ” the PowerShell team will support and contribute to the OpenSSH community”.

Windows Client

• Most IT Pros Expect To Deploy Windows 10 Within 2 Years: “40 percent of IT pro participants were planning to deploy Windows 10 within the first year of release … [another] 33 percent were planning Windows 10 deployments within two years”.
• Windows 10 – What’s next for Microsoft’s Insider testers: Microsoft gets it “right” on the 3rd attempt. Maybe.
• Azure AD, Microsoft Intune and Windows 10 – Using the cloud to modernize enterprise mobility: Azure AD is the glue (a common theme).

Azure

• Azure RemoteApp – User Connection Error: For “With VPN” or hybrid deployments, sort out your UPNs to ensure that the AAD and the LAD user accounts match up. First a user signs into AAD via the RemoteApp client, and then they sign into AAD using Remote Desktop.
• Azure RemoteApp – App-V Support Part 1: Deliver apps to RemoteApp using virtualization. App-V Standalone.
• Azure RemoteApp – App-V Support Part 2: Full App-V infrastructure.
• Step through creating a Resource Manager-based Azure Virtual Machine with PowerShell: A LOT of code is required, but once you have it, it’s quicker to create VMs using PoSH than via the GUI.
• Container Apps now available in the Azure Marketplace: It’s Docker time!
• Troubleshoot Secure Shell (SSH) Connections to a Linux-based Azure Virtual Machine: Steps to fix this complex scenario.
• Sync Azure RemoteApp Collection Membership with Azure Automation: A clever solution to populate an App Collection with the members of an AD group.
• How to Create and Validate a Microsoft Azure Active Directory Domain: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
• How To Upload Files to Microsoft Azure: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
• Wormhole Area Networking and Microsoft Azure: Pending patent – a post I wrote for Petri.com.
• Easier Azure VM Deployment with the Custom Script Extension: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
• Using the Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer Tools: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
• Sharing Files in the Cloud using Azure Files: How to use the Storage Accounts Files service between VMs.
• Improving Microsoft Azure File Server Performance with BranchCache: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
• Enable Distributed BranchCache on a Microsoft Azure File Server: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
• Does Azure Backup Work? A post I wrote for Petri.com.
• Microsoft Launches New Microsoft Azure VM Pricing Tool: A post I wrote for Petri.com.
• Key Vault is now generally available: This HSM in the cloud offering is now GA. Example usage: central SSL cert storage and VM full disk encryption (coming soon).
• Azure Active Directory Premium reporting now detects leaked credentials: Detect when your users have lost control of their usernames and passwords.
• DevOps Basics – Infrastructure as Code: Deploying VMs using ARM templates via the Ibiza portal.
• DevOps Basics – Infrastructure as Code – The PowerShell Method: An alternative to the previous.
• Azure AD Conditional Access preview update – More apps and blocking access for users not at work: Note conditional access to Azure RemoteApp.
• May updates to Azure RemoteApp: What changed?

Office 365

• Announcing auto-expanding, highly scalable archives for Office 365 email: To accommodate customers who require very, very large archiving storage, Microsoft announced new auto-expanding, highly scalable archiving.
• Exchange Online Advanced Threat Protection is now available: A new subscription service for unknown malware, real-time protection against malicious URLs, and reporting.
• 7 new Exchange Online Protection enhancements: Improving the basic service.
• What’s new – May 2015: A summary of O365 improvements.
• Introducing Compliance Search in Office 365: A faster and more lightweight way of searching within your organization’s data in Office 365.
• Rights Management Service departmental templates comes to Office 2013: A feature that allows organizations to define different policies that will be deployed to different departments (or roles) for their use in documents and emails, now natively supported in Office 2013.
• New Intune capabilities for Outlook on iOS and Android: Customers using Outlook for iOS and Android can now use built-in MDM for Office 365 or Microsoft Intune to secure email data on mobile devices within their organization.

EMS

• New features coming to Intune over the next week: Starting June 22 and ending July 2.
• Microsoft adds Advanced Threat Analytics to its Enterprise Mobility Suite: More security coming to EMS (cloud) and ECS (on-prem).

Misc

• Samsung Accused of Blocking Security Updates in its PCs: Are OEMs stupid, ignorant, or do they just not care? IMO, this one is a grey area.