Tag: Microsoft

Microsoft Private Cloud Computing – Book Review

During and after the holiday I had the chance to read the book Microsoft Private Cloud Computing. The book is authored by Aidan Finn, Hans Vredevoort, Patrick Lownds and Damian Flynn. All of the authors are well known experts in Hyper-V and VMM space. The book is 408 pages long and it is divided in 3 parts with a total of 13 chapters. The main focus of this book is System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 so it is VMM book. The reason why VMM is not mentioned in the title is because VMM is presented in the concept of the Private Cloud. This means that all the examples in the book are shown in a way that you can us them to build and managed your Private Cloud with Virtual Machine Manager.

The first two chapters explain the concept of the Private Cloud and the Microsoft Private Cloud in particular. If you are familiar with them you can skip these two chapters but I would suggest you to read them because you can always find something new that will be useful. These two chapters are the first part of the book.

Next 6 chapters are the second part of the book. These chapters describe every feature and configuration of System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager. Along with the descriptions there are detailed steps of how to configure and use these features. Screenshots are also not missing in the book which I think is always necessary to get a clear picture of the tool while reading. In fact the best way of reading this book is in front of the computer with test System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Environment. That way you will be able to execute every instruction in the book and get more familiar with VMM.

The third part of the book consists of four chapters. These chapters are about explaining how you can leverage VMM and other System Center components as a Private Cloud Solution. Included are examples with VMM Self-service portal, App Controller and System Center 2012 Service Manager with Cloud Services Process Pack. The chapters does not show how you can do some complex tasks as there are different scenarios in the Private Cloud. Instead they give you the elements which you can use and how to connect them to fit in your Private Cloud.

The biggest value of the book is that you can always turn to it if you face some challenges with building your Microsoft Private Cloud. In all in the book you will find also PowerShell scripts so you can leverage automation. I recommend this book for those who are not familiar with the Microsoft Private Cloud concept or System Center Virtual Machine Manger 2012. The book is also suitable for those advanced engineers who want to have a reading to which they can refer in time of need.

The book can be bought from Amazon:

Microsoft continues the battle with VMware with more videos from MVA about SC 2012 SP1 and Hyper-V

Uploaded just a minutes ago there are new videos from MVA on TechNet. The videos compare Microsoft technologies with VMware technologies. Previous MVA released such course with videos where Hyper-V was compared with ESXi and vSphere. Now we can see the same approach with Microsoft Private Cloud over the VMware vCloud compare and by Microsoft Private Cloud it is meant freshly released System Center 2012 SP1:

 

Obviously Microsoft is determined to win this battle or at least to show that they are all in the Private Cloud.

More videos were added to compare Hyper-V with VMware vSphere 5.1:

Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer 2.1

There is a new version of Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer. You can download the installation files and the documentation from here.

Microsoft apologizes for making mistake in packaging System Center 2012 UR3

In System Center 2012 Update Rollup 3 Microsoft reported fixing these 3 issues in Service Manager:

  • Memory leak in Service Manager 2012 console when opening/closing incidents
  • Service Manager 2012 console crashes with an OutOfMemoryException because of form control objects rooted in the GC heap
  • Poor Service Manager 2012 console performance when opening incident forms with the console is open through Citrix

Apparently that was not true as instead of packaging the binaries that are fixing these issues some old binaries were packaged for UR3. Microsoft apologizes for this mistake and it is promising to re-release UR3 for System Center 2012 with the right binaries as soon as possible. The full statement you can see here.

Steven Sinofsky Leaves Microsoft!

I usually do not post such news but I think this news worth it. Steven Sinofsky is leaving Microsoft and this probably will have a huge impact on the company. As a head of Windows Division he was accountable for Windows 7 and Windows 8. Here is the official press release from Microsoft:

Microsoft Corp. today announced that Windows and Windows Live President Steven Sinofsky will be leaving the company and that Julie Larson-Green will be promoted to lead all Windows software and hardware engineering. Tami Reller retains her roles as chief financial officer and chief marketing officer and will assume responsibility for the business of Windows. Both executives will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

 

Here is the official statement from Steve Ballmer and Sinofsky himself:

“I am grateful for the many years of work that Steven has contributed to the company,” Ballmer said. “The products and services we have delivered to the market in the past few months mark the launch of a new era at Microsoft. We’ve built an incredible foundation with new releases of Microsoft Office, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Microsoft Surface, Windows Server 2012 and ‘Halo 4,’ and great integration of services such as Bing, Skype and Xbox across all our products. To continue this success it is imperative that we continue to drive alignment across all Microsoft teams, and have more integrated and rapid development cycles for our offerings.”

“It is impossible to count the blessings I have received over my years at Microsoft. I am humbled by the professionalism and generosity of everyone I have had the good fortune to work with at this awesome company.” Sinofsky said.

 

Although this departure is probably planned months ago will definitely have impact on Microsoft and Windows as a product.