Training: Microsoft Azure IaaS Deep Dive Jump start

If you havent’ looked at this training, then I would recommend you to have a get a broad overview of the cloud, along with working definitions of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS). The experts also discuss portals, subscription, costs, and Azure data centers. Using this training you can learn how to integrate Windows Azure virtual machines (VMs) into your infrastructure. If you’re an experienced IT Pro but you haven’t spent much time with Windows Azure VMs, you’ll appreciate these real-world examples on Windows Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

Cheryl McGuire and Ronald Beekelaar walk you through the basics of creating and configuring VMs, virtual networks, and cross-premises communication. They discuss the “what, why, and how” of virtualization, along with details about managing VMs, how they behave in Windows Azure, and how to configure good network communication to get things up and running in the cloud. 

https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses-embed/microsoft-azure-iaas-deep-dive-jump-start-8287/-Azure-Virtual-Machines-S1oXqFXy_2804984382

Happy deep diving!!

Windows Azure – Digital Chalk Talks

Windows Azure Virtual Machines – Part I (Windows)

Corey Sanders, Principal Program Manager, Windows Azure : Learn how to create and manage Windows Virtual Machines in Windows Azure

Windows Azure Virtual Machines – Part II (Linux)

Henry Jerez, Sr. Program Manager, Windows Azure : Learn how to create and manage Linux Virtual Machines on Windows Azure

Windows Azure Web Sites with ASP.NET

Scott Hanselman, Principal Program Manager, Windows Azure : Learn how to quickly and easily publish an ASP.NET website to Windows Azure Web Sites

Windows Azure Web Sites with node.js

Glenn Block, Sr. Program Manager, Windows Azure – Learn how to build and deploy a node.js application to Windows Azure Web Sites using git on Mac OS

Windows Azure Web Sites – OSS Apps & WebMatrix

Vishal Joshi, Principal Program Manager Lead, Windows Azure : Learn how to create a new php & MySQL web site from the OSS gallery, edit locally and re-publish with one click using WebMatrix

Windows Azure Cross-Platform Command Line Tools

Yavor Georgiev, Program Manager, Windows Azure : Learn the basics of how to manage Windows Azure Web Sites and Windows Azure Virtual Machines from a Mac OS or Linux command line

Cloud Services

Vijay Rajagopalan, Principal Program Manager Lead, Windows Azure: Learn what’s new in Windows Azure Cloud Services

Apache™ Hadoop™ Based Services for Windows Azure

Mike Flasko, Sr. Program Manager Lead, Data Platform : Learn how to use Hadoop™ running on Windows Azure to process large volumes of structured and unstructured data

Team Foundation Service Preview Introduction

Aaron Bjork, Principal Program Manager Lead, Team Foundation Server : Learn the basics of the new Team Foundation Service Preview.

Windows Azure Web Sites – Continuous Integration with Team Foundation Server

Brad Millington, Sr. Program Manager, Windows Azure : Learn how to configure continuous integration with Team Foundation Server and Windows Azure Web Sites

Windows Azure SQL Database Introduction

Greg Leake, Director, Product Marketing, Data Platform: Learn how to configure/manage highly available relational databases using Windows Azure SQL Database

Windows Azure Storage Introduction

Jai Haridas, Principal SDE Manager, Windows Azure:  Learn the basics of Windows Azure storage and how it enables you to build highly scalable applications

Refer: http://www.meetwindowsazure.com/DigitalChalkTalks

Developer Hub: Download Windows Phone Developer tools SDK 7.1 (Mango) beta & 7.0

Now you can download the new Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 (Mango) Beta can be used to develop Applications for both 7.0 and 7.1 version of Windows Phone OS releases.  You can experiment with the latest tools release for Windows Phone. WPDT 7.1 Beta provides the tooling necessary to target the upcoming Windows Phone OS release (codenamed “Mango”) in addition to productivity enhancements such as an app profiler and an improved emulator.

Although not required, the Windows Phone Developer Team strongly recommends that you install WPDT 7.1 Beta on a separate machine. Apps built for 7.0 by using the 7.1 beta tools should certify and behave similarly to those produced by your current WPDT environment, but these are beta tools and your apps may behave inconsistently. If you encounter an issue between the beta tools/emulator and production phones, please report the issue on the App Hub ‘tools for wp7’ forum.

The Windows Phone Developer Tools includes the following,

• Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 (Beta)

• Windows Phone Emulator (Beta)

• Silverlight 4 SDK and DRT

• Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh Windows Phone Extensions

• Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone 7.1

• WCF Data Services Client for Window Phone 7.1

Please note:

1) Windows Server, Windows XP & Virtual machine platforms are not supported

2)  If you are installing Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows® Phone 7.1 alone, you can install it on any drive. If Visual Studio 2010 Professional or higher is already installed on your development computer, Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta is installed on the same drive as the existing Visual Studio installation.

3) If you just need WP 7.0 SDK, then you can Download the Windows Phone 7.0 SDK (Windows Phone Developer Tools), then download and install the Windows Phone Developer Tools January 2011 Update and the Windows Phone Developer Tools Fix. The January 2011 Update should only be applied after you’ve installed the Windows Phone Developer Tools.

Note: French, Italian, German, and Spanish versions of the tools are available at the Microsoft Download Center.

                                                                                                        blogged using my Windows Live Writer 2011…

Improve Server Utilization & Reduce Infrastructure Costs with Virtualization

Predicting resource requirements for a new business application, especially one that is customer-facing is a tricky task. It’s hard to know if you have the new Facebook or your hands. You make your best estimates, then spend money on new hardware and hope your estimates were right. Only actual usage tells whether your server infrastructure is running efficiently.

What makes this process more painful is the knowledge that your existing environment probably has the capacity to deliver this application if only the servers were used in a more efficient manner.

Private cloud computing built on virtualization technology provides ways to reduce the capital cost involved in this process by allowing you to utilize more of your existing resources. Using Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and System Center Self-Service Portal 2.0, you can convert your existing workloads into virtual machines and manage where and when they run.

Grouping servers together on hardware as a collection of virtual machines can lower costs and improve performance. The need to increase the performance of some applications to keep up with new demand has traditionally led to hardware purchases or going through a performance tuning exercise. Both involve additional cost that could be avoided with virtualization. Most environments have servers running well under capacity. Pooling these services on fewer servers using virtualization and sharing idle hardware resources across workloads can enable organizations to reduce capital and maintenance costs. Virtualization delivers a higher return on investment and more elastic IT service.

To take advantage of this cloud computing scenario requires some planning to deploy and configure the products to deliver true IT as a service in a private cloud scenario. Finding all the resources to implement this type of solution is can be time consuming. To help, TechNet has created a new virtualization scenario based hub. This one stop location has the resources and content to help you enable different virtualization scenarios. It’s updated  with new content and new scenarios.The scenario mentioned is covered in more detail on the How to Improve Server Utilization and Reduce Infrastructure Costs with Virtualization page.

My View : Office 2010, what’s up, buddy?

Whenever our discussion turns towards Office 2010, most of my customers ask, “What’s up with Office 2010? Any new features? Some thing new for end users? What’s up buddy?”

There are many new features, user experiences available with each application/product of Office 2010 suite, which i reported couple of them earlier. Additionally I want to share couple of my experiences, that i personally tried.  

Regarding Office 2010, you can see new features, mobility, productivity and provide new dimensional user experiences:

• Outlook Conversation view: I like this feature a lot, which helps me to keep track of conversation regarding a topic – whole thread for my view.
  
  


• Use anywhere: Expect the best productivity experience across PCs, Phones and browsers.
  
  


• Office anywhere: Find a new hands-on experience with Office Web Apps – people will be able to view, access, share and work with their Office documents from virtually anywhere.
  
  


• Better Social Connectivity: It’s a social networking age, so our applications do. You can manage the professional, personal and social networks together with Outlook using Outlook Social Connector (OSC).
  
  


• Mobile Office: You can have your whole office related work using Windows Mobile Office.
  
  


• SharePoint Mobility: It’s just not Office, you can use SharePoint Mobility to access documents, lists, calendars on SharePoint 2010, performing people and document searches and receiving SMS alerts on SharePoint content.
  
  


• x64 bit Office: As 64-bit processors and operating systems are becoming the standard for systems ranging from servers to desktop computers, 64-bit Office will be able to take advantage of everything that 64-bit systems have to offer. Microsoft Office 2010 marks the first time Office will be shipping in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
  
  


• Virtualization & Office: Per Takeshi Numoto, CVP in Office, “App-V 4.6 provides Office customers with a robust set of features to tackle core challenges including application upgrade, application coexistence, and user readiness. It’s an exciting, powerful new way for IT to deliver Office 2010 quickly without impacting user productivity”
  
  


• Office Graphics: With Office 2010, i do see lot of improvements for using Pictures – cropping pictures, background removal in Office 2010 (Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook).
  
  


• My custom ribbon: I can create, customize and personalize my own Ribbon that suits my Office 2010 client applications.
  
  


• Click-to-Run: This new software delivery mechanism introduced with Office 2010. It based on MS App-V (again, virtualization and streaming technologies). Already i discussed regarding this.
  
  


• UI Extensibility: With new Backstage View, you can provide support for customization and extend the UI per your custom requirement.
  
  


• Product Key-card: Using this single license card (with no DVD media), we can access and experience Office 2010 on new PC’s pre-loaded with Office 2010.
  

I know the list above is few, but i like them more, as they help me to improve the productivity.

Hope this helps. I wish you to try new Office 2010 suite and have a wonderful user experience with Office 2010!!

Preview : Click-to-run technology

Microsoft introduces “Click-To-Run” technology for downloading trial and purchasing. For people who want to try or buy Office 2010 on existing PCs, Microsoft is unveiling Click-to-Run, a new and enhanced download experience for consumers.

Benefits:

• Click-to-Run makes it easier than ever for customers to try or buy Office digitally by significantly reducing the time and effort required to download Office 2010 over the Internet.
• Click-to-Run automatically downloads and installs any software patches when connected to the Internet, helping people maintain and keep their Office software up-to-date.
• Click-to-Run uses virtualization technology so it allows customers to maintain multiple versions of Office. This enables them to try Office 2010 side-by-side with the existing version of Office.

Video: You can know more this from the following Silverlight video.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/silverlightApps/videoplayer2/standalone.aspx?contentId=office14_click&src=/presspass/presskits/2010Office/channel.xml&WT.cg_n=Office14&WT.z_convert=embed

In this video. John Jendrezak and Trevor McDiarmid give us a first look at Click-to-Run, an innovative new Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) technology for Office 2010 that  utilizes Microsoft’s streaming and virtualization technology (AppVirt – you learned a great deal about this technology right here on Channel 9…).   It’s great to see application virtualization in the mainstream. Note that this is essentially a commercial for the new technology in Office 2010.

Exchange 2010 – Code complete & on its way for general availability

I went through the MS Exchange Team blog post http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/10/08/452775.aspx titled “Exchange 2010 is Code Complete and on its way to General Availability”.

It’s nice to hear that Exchange 2010 is Code Complete & it has been sent to early adopters for one final look before its public release. This Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone – way to general availability and the launch at Tech·Ed Europe 2009 (http://www.microsoft.com/europe/teched/) in early November. Wow, good job!!

Top ten reasons for Upgrade:
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is designed to deliver increased protection for your business and give anywhere access for your employees, while being operationally efficient to deploy, manage and maintain. Should you upgrade? Here are ten reasons for you to consider. http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2007/evaluation/topreasons.mspx 

Technical resources available:

 Read the Exchange 2010 Product Overview

 Review the Exchange 2010 FAQ

 Watch Exchange 2010 Videos

 Download the Release Candidate Today

To try, you have three options:

Trial Software:

The new Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate is here. Download this 120-day free release candidate version and try the new features in your own environment. When you register for the Exchange Server 2010 RC software you will automatically receive valuable product evaluation resources assembled in one convenient location.

Please review the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 system requirements before you proceed. The Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 RC software is available in the following language: English

Virtual Hard Drive

The Microsoft VHD Test Drive Program provides customers with an enhanced server-based software evaluation experience that’s faster, better supported, and more flexible. You can now access the entire catalog of pre-configured Microsoft and partner products and solutions in the VHD format and start evaluating and testing today.

Online Trial

Experience the new world of Software plus Services through Microsoft Exchange Online, which enables you to try all the messaging and calendaring functionality you need with none of the administrative burden.

Virtualize your Exchange 2007 SP1 environment?

With continuation of my previous article… now you can get support for Virtualized Exchange environment with the release of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, a virtualized Exchange 2007 SP1 server is no longer restricted to the realm of the lab; it can be deployed in a production environment and receive full support from Microsoft. This past August, Microsoft published our support policies and recommendations for virtualizing Exchange, but many people have asked us to go beyond that guidance and weigh-in on the more philosophical question: is virtualization is a good idea when it comes to Exchange?

Due to the performance and business requirements of Exchange, most deployments would benefit from deployment on physical servers. However, there are some scenarios in which a virtualized Exchange 2007 infrastructure may allow you to realize real benefits in terms of space, power, and deployment flexibility. Presented here are sample scenarios in which virtualization may make sense, as well as checklists to help you evaluate whether the current load on your infrastructure makes it a good candidate for virtualization.

For more information, you can read this article.

Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments

As you know Hardware Virtualization software enables you to run multiple, separate operating systems concurrently on a single physical machine. Please find the Microsoft support policies enclosed here for running currently supported versions of Microsoft Exchange Server in production in a hardware Virtualization environment & recommendations for running Exchange Server in production in a hardware Virtualization environment.

Apart from Microsoft based Hardware Virtualization, please find more details about the Microsoft support policy for third-party hardware virtualization software:

• Updated support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software environments


• Support partners for non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software

When i was reading this article from Virtualization team, i got more input some related information. So, what’s new… Thoughts on technical support..

As of today, you’ll see that we’re expanding tech support policy for (initial) 31 server applications for customers that run these apps on WS08 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server or any other validated hypervisor (type 1 or 2). The nut of it is … customers will be able to get the same level of tech support for virtualized workloads that they get today with non-virtualized workloads.

The kicker here, and where many journos reported inaccurate information, is that 3rd-party vendors’ hypervisors must first pass the validation test before customers can get cooperative support from Microsoft and that vendor. For example, it was reported that VMware signed an agreement to participate in the Server Virtualization Validation Program. That much is true. However, it doesn’t mean that cooperative support is now in place. First, ESX Server must go through and pass the validation test. Once validated, they’ll be added to KB article 944987, where we list “support partners for non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software.” Today only Novell is listed, and that’s due to the broader technical collaboration agreement in place between the companies.

The other thing to note is that the server application teams have posted configurations that will be supported running on validated hypervisors. For example, the Exchange team posted a blog about their policy, which can be summarized as: 

• Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 is supported on Hyper-V and other validated hypervisors when deployed according to the guidelines published on TechNet.