Todd's Blog

Todd's Tips for System Adminstrators

Hybrid Cloud for IT Pros – A Series on Azure

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Microsoft Tech Evanglists in the US are posting a series on Azure called Hybrid Cloud for IT Professionals. The link to it is http://blogs.technet.com/b/it_pro/archive/2015/03/07/the-hybrid-cloud-and-the-it-professional-the-blog-series.aspx?linkId=12794611.

Azure is capable of many things. I use it to host websites and also use it to host some of my own domain controllers and some of my ADFS infrastructure. Learning to schedule how to turn off resources when not needed is a skill that will help you save money using Azure as well.

I find Azure is a great tool, helping me deploy things quickly but I find not all customers are able to take advantage of it. Some have regulatory hurdles (data sovereignty) and some just don’t have the man power or knowledge to do that. If you find you are the latter, get in contact with me and I can help with that.

The New Outlook app for IOS and Android

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Microsoft announced last week a new outlook client for IOS and Android. It’s very slick and really nice. I like the way it handles multiple mail servers (Exchange, O365, Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud and Outlook) and adds support for Dropbox, Box and OneDrive for file storage. Like I say it’s really nice (graphical wise) and I’ve been playing with it on my phone.

But

For the nice interface it does have, stuff some stuff is missing; namely Contact Sync. I need that and love the way the older OWA client did that. Setting Out-of-Office doesn’t work either with this app. These features are not in there yet. I imagine they are coming soon though.

Now, the ugly. If you have MDM policies or corporate policies regarding storage of credentials, this app might not be for you. Right now it only supports ActiveSync remote wipe. It won’t prevent email from coming down on a device with no unlock code from an exchange server that requires an unlock code. It’s a feature that is planned and is coming. No ETA. It also only identifies the app not the device behind it, so it may not be ready for primetime in your corporate environment. It also stores AD credentials in the cloud. Again, a show stopper for some orgs. Check the comments in the Office blog post “A deeper look at Outlook for iOS and Android” for details on this. Also there is a document for IT Pro’s on Yammer which covers this as well. I made a quick link for it @ http://bit.ly/OutlookYammerThread

Also to point out there will be a YamJam on Feb 4th @ 9am PST.  They will be covering security and other features on this date. If you are interested in finding out more or seeing the direction this app is going in, I would suggest attending. The link to Yammer I posted above will take you to the details.

New Announcements in Microsoft Desktop Virtualization

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Microsoft has an announcement on their Press site with regards to new features with Desktop Virtualization. As I travel across Saskatchewan this week doing the Windows 7 Deep Dives, one of the topics is Windows XP mode within Windows 7.  Windows XP mode had required hardware virtualization to work correctly. That left me in the cold on my little Toshiba laptop. It works great but lack virtualization technology which meant that I couldn’t run Windows XP mode. As part of the release today, they have announced that you won’t need Virtualization Technology to use Windows XP mode.

This is a good change. It allows those who would like to go upgrade to Windows 7 but have applications that need Windows XP the ability to upgrade and continue to keep the apps running in an XP environment. For me, its more about being able to demo the Windows XP mode than actually utilizing it, all my applications work under Windows 7.

The full press release can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/mar10/03-18DesktopVirtPR.mspx