Richard Qi

As Microsoft Technical Evangelist covering Private Cloud, System Center, Hyper-V, Azure and Datacenter, Richard is a recognized industry expert in server infrastructure, datacenter management, cloud and virtualization

How to Network Boot Surface Pro to Install Corporate Image

Some of you might already got a Surface Pro device as it is now available in Singapore. If you are a good corporate citizen like me, the first thing you might want to do is to install corporate image on it to use for work. :) Traditionally to install network image on any PC, you will hit on the F12 Key during boot in order to network boot Surface Pro. Well, there is no F12 Key on Surface Pro Keyboard. ...

Windows Azure - Automating SharePoint Deployments using PowerShell

Previously I shared a script to Migrate SharePoint to Windows Azure IaaS. What if you want to deploy new SharePoint on Azure? Here is a sample script that allows you to do it quickly. This is created by Michael Washam, Senior Program Manager for Windows Azure. He did a blog post here about the script. Here is how it works How does this help me? If you need a sharepoint quickly for testing purpose before rolling out to production, you can leverage Azure and test out including any custom sharepoint Apps. After testing, you can move these VHD back to your on-premise datacenter and use this directly without requiring any other modifications. ...

Setup Custom Domain Name for Windows Azure Websites or Services

I talked about few times about using Azure for Websites and Host Services like build Wordpress blog easily with Windows Azure Websites. Recently few people asked me how to create a custom domain name for the Azure Websites or the Services/Apps hosted on Azure. For example, take my blog as an example. When I created the my blog on Azure, it will give me a URL like http://ricqi.azurewebsites.net. It is not too bad, but it is a bit too long for me to promote my blog to everyone i meet. I do have a registered domain name http://ricqi.com. Ideally I would like to use that for my Azure hosted blog. There two detailed documents about this ...

PowerShell script to migrate SharePoint to Azure IaaS

Recently at the Windows Azure Global Boot Camp, I talked about how to migrate sharepoint from on premise to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Some of you reached out to me after the session for the scripts, so this article helps you to create that script. Important: Do NOT copy the script blindly. You need to change some variables for you environment. Read through the script and optimize for your own environment. Tweet to me @richardqyc if you have any suggestions to make the script better :) First thing first, download and install the Windows Azure Command Line Tools. After the Command Line Tools installed, prepare to get the Windows Azure subscription file publishing settings. Here is how to do it: ...

Azure IaaS - Deploy Tier1 Workload and Create VPN Connectivity

On April 16th 2013, the Windows Azure team has announced that Windows Azure Infrasructure Services ( Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks ) has been released for General Availability ( GA )! The local Azure User Group also held a Azure Global Boot Camp on 27th April. New VM Sizes There are two new VM size being released to support memory-hungry VMs on Windows Azure, such as SQL Server and SharePoint Server workloads, ...

Windows Azure Active Directory Delivers single sign-on (SSO) for Cloud Services

Well, there are a lot of great Cloud Services out there that organization can leverage today. Two typical examples are Office 365 and Windows Intune. Both are great public cloud services that can bring huge benefits to different business. While using these services, you would want to provide a Single Sign-On (SSO) experience to the end users. That is where Windows Azure Active Directory comes in. Windows Azure Active Directory allows you to deliver that SSO experience for Cloud Services. Below diagram illustrates how Windows Azure AD helps to integrate into different Cloud Services. Here comes the fun part, how to configure the AD to integrate with Windows Azure Active Directory ? Below diagram illustrates the architecture of setting up a single forest integration. It looks simple. When you get your hands dirty, you will notice it is not that straight forward to configure this. Luckily one of our fellow Evangelist David Tesar created a step by step guide and most importantly a PowerShell script to configure this from Zero to end state. The step by step deployment guide can be found at http://aka.ms/AD2AAD PowerShell scripts to configure this end to end http://aka.ms/AD2AAD-PS

The New Office: Garage Series for IT Pro

Well, I always like Geek TV Shows like Top Gear. Together with Commerical Release of Office, here is a fantastic Microsoft produced weekly Geek TV show called The New Office Garage Series for IT Pro. Who said we cloud not have fun while learning technology!! Every Wednesday (Singapore Time Thursday) from 27th Feb, Jeremy and Yoni will talk about what is new, what is different from the Garage where the new office is designed :) Putting Technology, TV and Garage together, I am sure geeks out there will enjoy the show like I do. Here is a promo video for you if you are still skeptical. Prefer reading? No problem, they post everything in writing together with the video at the Garage Series Official Blog. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDYcyAh5owc[/youtube] ...

Tabletop Datacenter - Surface Pro Meets Hyper-V

This is a total geek experiment done by few Microsoft Redmond guys. They got 4 Surface Pro devices and built a server farm in about one hour. After that, they were just having fun and moving VM across the 4 Surface Pro devices. The key feature in Windows Server 2012 is Share Nothing Live Migration, which allows you to live migrate VMs without Cluster or share storage. If you want to try it out, here is the configuration guide. This is CRAZY, so sit back and enjoy the cool video! [youtube]http://youtu.be/4Uw7EDt86ss[/youtube]

System Center Universe 2013 Summary

Thank you for those who attended System Center Universe on January 31st. We had a full house! This is the first time that System Center Universe was hosted in Singapore and streamed to few countries in South East Asia. It was a fantastic day of technical presentations and demos. Topics covered including: Using System Center Operations Manager for Deep Application Monitoring and Diagnostics Choosing Network Options in the new Hyper-V 2012 and SCVMM Service Pack 1 is HERE! What can I use? Enabling Hosted and Shared Private Cloud using System Center 2012 SP1 Service Provider Framework Using SCCM 2012 to perform More Efficient Patch and Compliance Management How to lighten your IT workload footprint with System Center 2012 and Software Center We also launched the System Center User Group APAC. Join the group now to learn from community of experts on System Center: https://www.facebook.com/groups/31495111417/ if you missed out the session, you can access the speaker presentations and event photos from the link below: http://sdrv.ms/Y73uwD More importantly download and try System Center 2012 SP1: http://aka.ms/SC2012_SP1eval

Automate SCOM 2012 SP1 Prerequisites Installation with PowerShell

System Center 2012 SP1 is now available for public download. I am actually refreshing few demo labs I have. System Center Operation Manager is one those components in System Center actually has quite few prerequisites. Configuring these prerequisites can be frustrating, especially if you are doing it for the first time. There is a way to actually simply this by using PowerShell, which is pretty much the coolest tool for efficiency. The real credit of this goes to Ke****vin Greene, a system center MVP, who posted a details blog post on this. Here are the two scripts that I often use for Combined Management server deployment of SCOM2012 SP1. Windows Server 2008 - Combined Management Server, Operations Console and Web Console Roles PreReq Script #This section will install all the Windows Server 2008 Roles and Feature Prereqs for the Web Console Role# import-module servermanager Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework-Core,Web-Static-Content,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Dir-Browsing,Web-Http-Errors,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Request-Monitor,Web-Filtering,Web-Stat-Compression,AS-Web-Support,Web-Metabase,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Windows-Auth,AS-HTTP-Activation –restart #This section will download the Report Viewer Distributable Prereq for the SCOM 2012 SP1 Operations Console role on Windows Server 2008 to a folder on the C:\ drive called SCOM2012SP1Prereqs and will then install it automatically # $dwnld = “C:\SCOM2012SP1Prereqs” if (!(Test-Path -path $dwnld)) { New-Item $dwnld -type directory } $object = New-Object Net.WebClient $RPTurl = ‘http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/A/1/EA1BF9E8-D164-4354-8959-F96843DD8F46/ReportViewer.exe' $object.DownloadFile($RPTurl, “$dwnld\ReportViewer.exe”) Start-Process -FilePath “$dwnld\ReportViewer.exe” -ArgumentList /q -Wait #This section will download the .NET Framework 4.0 Redistributable Prereq for Windows Server 2008 to a folder on the C:\ drive called SCOM2012SP1Prereqs and will then install it automatically# $dwnld = “C:\SCOM2012SP1Prereqs” if (!(Test-Path -path $dwnld)) { New-Item $dwnld -type directory } $object = New-Object Net.WebClient $RPTurl = ‘http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/5/A/95A9616B-7A37-4AF6-BC36-D6EA96C8DAAE/dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe’ $object.DownloadFile($RPTurl, “$dwnld\dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe”) Start-Process -FilePath “$dwnld\dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe” -ArgumentList /q -Wait #This section will enable the ISAPI and CGI extensions for IIS and .NET 4.0 once the .NET 4.0 redistributable has been installed# c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config /section:isapiCgiRestriction /[path=`‘C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_isapi.dll`’].allowed:True Click here to download this PowerShell script as a .PS1 file ...