Richard Qi

Everyone loves the great features in Windows Server 2012, things like Network Virtualization, Share Nothing Live Migration, Hyper-V replica, AD Cloning, and many more. Many people overlooked the basics (including me): the installation experience of Windows Server 2012 is also improved. Here is a video by Matthew Hitchcock showing the installation of WS2012 comparing to WS2008 and WS2003. The installation of WS2012 completed before he could finish a cup of tea including boiling the water :) Sit back and enjoy

Software Defined Networking (SDN) has become a hot buzz phrase in the industry. SDN is being touted as a game changing technology that will transform private, public and hybrid cloud. We agree. We’ve known the importance of Software Defined Networking by virtue of the fact that we run the largest datacenters in the world and see the challenges of end to end network management on a datacenter and global scale. It’s one thing to enable a few VLANs and apply QoS to a couple of racks of servers. It’s another thing to manage traffic flows, provide logical segmentation that exceeds VLAN limits manifold, provide IP portability between datacenters, Live Migrate VMs across physical subnets without service interruption and do all of this on a global scale with hundreds of thousands of servers all while continuously adding/removing more nodes to the infrastructure. There is a great post on the Windows Server Blog explains SDN and what are the Microsoft Technologies from Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1 to enable SDN. http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/08/22/software-defined-networking-enabled-in-windows-server-2012-and-system-center-2012-sp1-virtual-machine-manager.aspx ...

I just received an email informing me that MAP 7.0 is live, and it now supports assessment to help you plan the deployment of Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. You can start planning now, with the products coming down the pipe soon. The new version which you can download now allows you to: Understand your readiness to deploy Windows Server 2012 in your environment Determine Windows 8 readiness Investigate how Windows Server and System Center can manage your heterogeneous environment through VMware migration and Linux server virtualization assessments Size your desktop virtualization needs for both Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and session-based virtualization using Remote Desktop Services Ready your information platform for the cloud with the SQL Server 2012 discovery and migration assessment Evaluate your licensing needs with usage tracking for Lync 2010, active users and devices, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 Assessment is a critical early step in a virtualization project, be it XenServer, VMware, or Hyper-V. MAP is a FREE and Agentless discover and assessment toolkit that really comes handy. Apart from assessing virtualization, MAP has wide coverage in this release. We can use MAP to assess SQL, MYSQL, Oracle, and Sybass. Application summary and Performance metrics will show details of Applications and performance in the environment. Try it out within your infra environment and see its magic!

Thank you everyone who attended Cloud Summit 2012. It was a great event. I hope you guys enjoyed the keynote and all the breakout sessions. Next up is TechDays. Look out our blog for details of the event. Below is the Presentation decks from all presenters. Feel free to download and keep as reference. Keynote - http://sdrv.ms/P8UO82 Application Management with System Center Configuration Manager - http://sdrv.ms/N7FHvV Incident problem, Change and Asset Management - http://sdrv.ms/NyMe0Z Managing Private and Public Cloud - http://sdrv.ms/NAxZZv Microsoft Big Data - http://sdrv.ms/NrUm3z Service Delivery and Automation - http://sdrv.ms/NAyuTz SQL 2012 Always on High Availability Solution - http://sdrv.ms/NAz4ke SQL Server for Private Cloud - http://sdrv.ms/NOQ1pC The next generation of virtualization with Windows Server 2012 - http://sdrv.ms/NAzO95 Windows Azure Application Platform - http://sdrv.ms/NOQkRp Windows Azure Hybrid DC - http://sdrv.ms/NAAcEy

I know many of you had licensing questions. There are couple of new Licensing Courses available now on http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com FREE to help you understand the fundamental of Volume Licensing. Microsoft’s new Licensing Training and Accreditation for customers will help you build foundational knowledge on licensing programs and solutions, and enable you to maximize the value of your software investments. Stand out from the crowd, and become a trusted advisor in your organization. Build expertise on Microsoft volume licensing and match your organization’s needs with the right licensing solution. Take this training at any time at no cost to you, enhance your skills, and become a Microsoft Licensing Expert. Preview Microsoft Licensing Programs Fundamentals and Licensing the Private Cloud today! ...

The New version of WIM2VHD is now available for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Download the tool from here What is WIM2VHD? It is a tool that allows you to create sysprepped VHD and VHDX images from any official build of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012. This new release is completed rewritten in PowerShell. Support for creating VHD and VHDX images from .ISO files has been added! One more thing for those who prefer UI, A new (and completely optional) graphical user interface has been added, making the creation of VHD and VHDX images as simple as a few mouse clicks! Here is how it works 1. Run PowerShell as Administrator on your Windows Client or Windows Server. Run the following commands to allow PowerShell Scripts to run on your PC: set-executionpolicy unrestricted 2. Go to the directory where the WIM2VHD script is stored. Run the following PowerShell commands: .\convert-WindowsImage.ps1 -ShowUI 3. The UI tool will be loaded. Choose the .WIM file. For Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, you can find the file at .\Sources\install.wim You can choose different parameters like VHD or VHDx Format, Fixed or Dynamic disk. 4. Just wait for the PowerShell Commands to be fully executed and you will have a VHD or VHDx file ready

System Center was voted at TechEd North America this year as the Best Microsoft Product. At TechEd NA 2012, System Center 2012 SP1 CTP2 was announced, there are many exciting new features coming up with CTP2. There is a recorded session from TechEd NA on Channel 9 covering what is new in SP1 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2012/VIR201 Below is list of key new features. All components now support Windows Server 2012 RC and SQL Server 2012. ...

Join us at this special SQL User Group event in collaboration with BigData.SG User Group, an Analytics and Real Time Computing Community of Singapore. To find out more about BigData.SG User Group, do visit http://www.bigdata.sg/ Often, when companies speak of “big data” it implies the need for a strategy for dealing with large quantities of data. Join us in this session and hear about Microsoft and its Big Data vision and strategy. William Tay, Principal, Application Platform, Microsoft Singapore will show how to unlock business insights from all your structured and unstructured data, including large volumes of data not previously activated, with Microsoft’s Big Data solution. Microsoft’s end-to-end roadmap for Big Data embraces Apache Hadoop™ by distributing enterprise class Hadoop based solutions on both Windows Server and Windows Azure. Our solution is also integrated into the Microsoft BI tools such as SQL Server Analysis Services, Reporting Services and even PowerPivot and Excel. This enables you to do BI on all your data, including those in Hadoop. Xavier Conort will be talking about Data Analysis competitions on Kaggle. Xavier is currently ranked #2 worldwide on Kaggle! http://www.kaggle.com/users/17379/gxav-xavier-conort Details of the event: Day/Date: Tuesday, 19th June 2012 Time: 1830pm - 2130pm Buffet Dinner will be provided at 1830pm – 1900pm Venue: One Marina Boulevard, NTUC Center, #21-00 The BigData.SG User Group will also be trying something new and interspersing the presentations with a few lightening talks from BigData.SG members in attendance. Lightening talks are 1-5 minute talks that summarize a topic. Pick something that’s interesting to you: a book you read, an algorithm you learned, a project you are working on–and share! It’s very informal and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a great way for the other members to know about cool and interesting things you have stumbled upon! RSVP on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/318172111600955/ Website: http://www.bigdata.sg Google News Group: https://groups.google.com/group/bigdatasg/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bigdatasg/ See you at the event!

Windows Server and System Center forms the platform of Microsoft Private Cloud. One of the key capabilities that System Center 2012 delivers is heterogeneous management. You are empowered to manage different hardware, three major hypervisors in the market, different flavor of Enterprise grade OS, and different apps. I always got asked how System Center 2012 manages VMWare environment. While here is a quick Demo video that I made to show you how System Center 2012 can do. I showed two key capabilties ...

Microsoft just announced Windows Azure preview capabilities in a blog post from Bill Laing and a feature article on the Microsoft News Center. I am all excited about this preview capabilities especially capabilities to create Linux VM and Website. I just login my Azure account and created a WordPress Blog within 2 minutes. Here is how. I login to the Azure manage portal, activate the preview feature under Account. There I get to see the new Azure management portal. Go to website services and select create a website. There are options of creating website, VM, and storage etc. I select Web site -> From Gallery. I just choose BLOGS and select WordPress. Of course there are other options like ECOMMERCE, FORUMS, and CMS as shown in below. It will go ahead and install WordPress, then prompt me for some basic information like site title. Admin name and password. Once it is done, and I have my WordPress ready. I can then go in and install themes and plugin just like any other WordPress site.