My Thoughts On IT…

I have always been impressed with the WAN compression technology that Riverbed offers. Wan compression can save you lots of bandwidth and speed up your network at the same time. This can save you money or make your slow WAN connections usable.

I just read a really interesting whitepaper that charted the effectiveness of using two Riverbed Steelhead appliances with Hyper-v Replica to reduce the amount of traffic as you replicate server changes from a primary server to your replica server.

If you have seen me demo Hyper-v then you have most likely seen me demonstrate Hyper-v Replica. I often refer to it as poor man’s geo clustering, because it is similar to the geo replication you can do with two SANs, but it costs about $230,000 less. It is included in Windows Server at no additional charge.

The primary scenario for of Hyper-V replica is for disaster recovery. With Hyper-V Replica all of the changes from a primary virtual machine are replicated to another host server. This replication occurs every 5 minutes so there is a possibility of up to 5 minutes of data loss. Not as good as a real-time replication engine that waits for commits from the remote system but way better than going to last nights tape backup. If something happens at the primary site you just startup the replica VM.

In Hyper-v Replica we can compress that data that is copied between the two host servers but if you add in a Riverbed appliance it delivers amazing reduction in traffic. Over and above the built-in compression technology provided by Hyper-V Replica, the Riverbed devices were able to reduced traffic by up to 98% with 70% being typical for sustained and varied workloads. Wow! That is awesome!

Check out the Whitepaper, the link is:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36786

I hope you find it as interesting as I did.
-Brian

I found some global tablet shipment numbers today on http://microsoft-news.com. I always enjoy looking at the raw numbers for myself to see what trends I can find. Numbers can always be spun for example I could point out that Apple iOS grew it’s shipments by 7.7 million devices or I could point out that Apple iOS dropped 14.9% Market share.

In just 6 months of Windows 8 tablets releasing, Microsoft has obtained 7.5% of the market with 3 million Windows tablets shipping in Q1 2013. Is that spin? You decide.

*Shipments are in Millions of units

I came across an interesting article on computer security today. There are 3 things I found notable about it.

1. The Chinese government had an “a-team” of hackers try to access information at Microsoft to see what information the US government court ordering Microsoft to deliver on their undercover operatives. Presumably because this would attract less attention than hacking the FBI.
2. Security continues to grow as an area of concern in computers. There is no end of unexpected system exploits in sight. There is no room for complacency in cybersecurity.
3. Computer security is the new arms race where governments are involved.

In my view, the acceptance of cracking into systems as a legitimate and legal occupation along with the deep pockets of government funding will ultimately have a huge impact on the internet. I haven’t drawn a conclusion on what it will cause but I am sure it will be significant.

Read the article from CIO magazine here:
http://www.cio.com/article/732122/_Aurora_Cyber_Attackers_Were_Really_Running_Counter_Intelligence

I just read an excellent blog post by Shannon Fritz on how to setup an Azure site to site VPN using Windows Server 2012 as your corporate side endpoint. While currently this is not a supported configuration, many of us don’t have the supported routers laying around that we can test this with.

With Azure Virtual Machines you can create servers running in Microsoft datacenters that can be added to your corporate with a site to site VPN. This is done, just like many of you do to add your remote office or datacenter to your network, by using a site to site VPN. Many customers link their  offices together this way because it is much less expensive than using a dedicated line.

If you want to test Azure Virtual Machines and have those machines available on your corporate network then Shannon’s post is a great how to step by step post. Just follow the link below.

Site-to-Azure VPN using Windows Server 2012 RRAS
http://blog.concurrency.com/featured-post/site-to-azure-vpn-using-windows-server-2012-rras/

Great news for those of you that have been playing with Servers in Microsoft’s Azure Cloud. For those of you who don’t know what Azure IAAS is you can watch this 12 minute video \ demo, from channel 9, which will give you a good understanding of what Azure Infrastructure As a Service is.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Windows-Azure-Virtual-Machines-and-Networking-Tutorials/Introduction-to-Windows-Azure-Virtual-Machines

Here is part of an official announcement email I received:

Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, Virtual Machines and Virtual Network, now are generally available!

Today is a major milestone for Windows Azure and all of our customers and partners. We are excited to announce that Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Windows Azure Virtual Network now are generally available. These new services make it possible for you to move your applications into the cloud as is. We also want to update you on a new price commitment we’ve made.

This announcement is a significant step in our cloud computing strategy, which has been influenced directly by our discussions with customers and partners around the world. One point holds true in every one of our discussions with you – the cloud should be an enabler for innovation, and an extension of your organization’s IT fabric, not just a fancier way to describe cheap infrastructure and application hosting. This brief video explains what we mean by extension of your organization’s IT fabric.

You’ve also told us that you don’t want to have to choose either a low price or good performance; you want a low price and good performance. That’s why today we are also announcing a commitment to match Amazon Web Services prices for commodity services such as compute, storage and bandwidth. This starts with reducing our GA prices on Virtual Machines and Cloud Services by 21-33%.

You can find the general availability announcement and the price reduction details at Windows Azure Blog.

If you want a free account to start playing with Azure and see how it works you can follow my step by step guide at: http://mythoughtsonit.com/2013/04/step-by-step-guide-to-setting-up-a-windows-azure-free-trial/

Enjoy –Brian

Below are some events that are happening near you! Can’t find an event that interests you? Visit Microsoft Events, for additional in-person and virtual events. Choose a topic and refine your search with the Filter Tools.

Virtual / Online Events

• Learn how Perficient increased Website engagement by implementing Sitecore CMS Apr 18
• Microsoft Dynamics GP Collections Management Apr 23
• How the Digital Worker is Transforming Manufacturing Operations Apr 24
• Moving from Live Meeting to Lync: Making the Most of your Online Meetings Apr 24
• Hands-on Lab Online: Debugging Applications in Windows Azure Apr 24
• Windows Server 2012: Big Storage Capabilities to Reduce Cost & Complexity Apr 25
• Enrollment for APP Plat EAP and ECI Apr 25
• Best Practices for Microsoft Lync 2010 Conferencing Apr 25
• The New Office: Run it the Way You Want, Securely and Without Compromise Apr 25
• Consumerization of IT: Leveraging Windows 8 to Unlock Your Mobile Workforce Apr 29
• Windows Intune: Manage and Secure Your PCs & Mobile Devices from the Cloud Apr 30
• CRM for Manufacturing Webinar: 4 Ways to Help Manufacturers Increase Sales Apr 30
• Virtualization in Windows 8 May 1
• The How, What, and Why of Performance Testing Your Applications May 2
• Deliver 1:1 Computing Leveraging Existing Infrastructure May 2
• Hands-on Lab Online: Introduction to the Windows Azure Access Control Service May 8
• Hands-on Lab Online: Introduction to Windows Azure Virtual Machines May 9
• Microsoft Dynamics GP Collections Management May 9
• Quality Coding: What’s New with Visual Studio 2012 May 9
• Windows Intune: Manage and Secure Your PCs & Mobile Devices from the Cloud May 14
• Windows 8 Security May 15
• Hands-on Lab Online: Windows 8: Controlling Access with AppLocker May 16
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM & ERP – Better Together May 16
• Hands-on Lab Online: Introduction to Cloud Services May 22
• How to Get the Most out of Your Business Management Solution May 23
• Windows Intune: Manage and Secure Your PCs & Mobile Devices from the Cloud May 28
• Modern Applications in the Enterprise May 29
• Top Business Benefits of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) June 3

This article is part of the Running WordPress on Microsoft’s Azure Public Cloud–The Series

Running WordPress on Azure is Cost effective, Scalable, and Easy! In this article we will go step by step in creating a WordPress blog on Azure. We are using Azure Web Sites to create this WordPress site so it will continue to run for free even after your 90 day trial has expired. You can run up to 10 free Azure Websites with this account. The one limitation of the free account is that your DNS name is fixed. That means I would have to use http://mythoughtsonit.azurewebsites.net instead of my http://mythoughtsonit.com address. This is easily changed by upgrading to a paid subscription.

Create a web site in the portal

1. Create an Azure Free Trial Account. Click this link for details on creating your 90 day trial account

2. Login to the Windows Azure Management Portal.

3. Click on the “WEB SITES” Section in the left side column.

   

4. Click the New icon on the bottom left of the dashboard.
   

5. Click the Web Site icon, and click From Gallery.

   

6. Locate and click WordPress in list, select it and then click Next.

   

7. On the Configure Your App page, enter or select values for all fields:

   • Enter a URL name of your choice
   • Leave Create a new MySQL database selected in the Database field
   • Select the region closest to you

   

8. Then click Next.

9. On the Create New Database page, you can specify a name for your new MySQL database or use the default name. Select the region closest to you as the hosting location. Select the box at the bottom of the screen to agree to ClearDB’s usage terms for your hosted MySQL database. Then click the check to complete the site creation.

   

After you click Complete Windows Azure will initiate build and deploy operations. While the web site is being built and deployed the status of these operations is displayed at the bottom of the Web Sites page. After all operations are performed, A final status message when the site has been successfully deployed. It usually takes less than a minute. 

Launch and manage your WordPress site

1. Click on your new site from the Web Sites page to open the dashboard for the site.

   

2. On the Configure tab to change your PHP version from 5.3 to 5.4.

   

3. On the Dashboard management page, scroll down and click the link on the left under Site Url to open the site’s welcome page.

   

4. Enter appropriate configuration information required by WordPress and click Install WordPress to finalize configuration and open the web site’s login page.

   

5. Login to the new WordPress web site by entering the username and password that you specified on the Welcome page.

6. You’ll have a new WordPress site that looks similar to the site below.

   

Have fun check out the rest of the series on what you can do next.
This article is part of the Running WordPress on Microsoft’s Azure Public Cloud–The Series

You can try Microsoft’s Azure Public Cloud service for free by setting up an Azure Free Trial Account. This account offers the ability to run 10 Azure Web Sites for free in a multi-tenant environment. Further you can seamlessly upgrade to a paid Shared multi-tenant or Reserved instance model as your traffic grows.

In addition to the free websites you get a free 3-Month trial with these consumption Limits.

• compute / 750 small compute hours per month
• SQL server / 750 hours of web, standard, or enterprise
• web sites / 10 web sites
• mobile services / 10 mobile services
• relational database / 1 SQL database
• SQL reporting / 100 hours per month
• storage / 70 GB with 50,000,000 storage transactions
• backup / 20 GB
• data transfer / unlimited inbound & 25GB outbound
• media services encoding / 50 GB (input & output combined)
• cdn / 20 GB outbound with 500,000 transactions
• cache / 128 MB
• service bus / 1,500 relay hours and 500,000 messages

Steps to Sign up for your Azure Free Trial

1. First step is to have a Microsoft ID. A hotmail account or the new outlook.com account etc. If you don’t have one you can go here to create one: http://signup.live.com
   
2. Sign up your Microsoft ID for the Azure Free Trial here: http://aka.ms/AzureFree 
   
3. You need a mobile phone and a credit card for verification when you signup. Click the arrow in the bottom right corner to continue.
   

4. Fill in your Phone number and click “Send text message”
   Then enter the verification code that will be texted to you and click “Verify code”
   Lastly click the arrow at the bottom corner.
   
5. Lastly please enter your credit card information. This will not be charged unless you specifically enable it to be charged. Further you can set a monthly spending limit so that if it goes beyond an amount you set your Azure services will go inactive and you will stop being billed. Click Next.

   

6. Now you will be logged into your Azure Portal. Have Fun!

   

Part of the Running WordPress on Microsoft’s Azure Public Cloud–The Series

If your wondering where in the world is this magical space we call the Azure Public Cloud. It is all over the world. We have datacenters all around the United States as well as in other countries.

There are a lot of reasons to have datacenters all around the world.

• Disaster Protection / Data redundancy
• Disaster Protection / Servers redundancy
• Data Laws / regulations
• Power Needs are too high for a single location
• Speed of Light is just too slow – (network latency becomes an issue as you travel great distances)

I have had the luck to tour two of our datacenters and I can say with conviction that this video is the next best thing to a real tour. This video takes your on a tour is of multiple Microsoft datacenters and you don’t even need to have the background check, so sit back and travel the world visiting several of our datacenters.

This next video shows the Generation 4 Modular Data Center plans. This is our vision is the foundation of our cloud data center infrastructure we have been building and have up and running in production. We believe it is one of the most revolutionary changes to happen to data centers in the last 30 years.

It is really interesting in how we are changing the cost structure in datacenters and commoditizing the datacenter to have both a low cost and a low environmental impact. For more details on Microsoft’s Datacenters around the world see the global foundation services website at: http://www.globalfoundationservices.com/