Building a Production Email System with Amazon SES, SNS, and Your Application Most web applications eventually need to send email. At first, it seems simple enough. Configure an SMTP server, provide a username and password, and send a message. But once an application starts supporting things like memberships, newsletters, account notifications, contact forms, business outreach,…
For decades, the IT services industry ran on a simple and reliable engine: specialized knowledge, sold by the hour, delivered by people. It worked. Until it didn’t. We are now deep enough into 2026 to say this with confidence: the AI era isn’t coming for IT services — it’s already here. And the organizations navigating…
Designing cloud infrastructure has traditionally been a code-first experience — writing Terraform, CloudFormation, or ARM templates line by line. But a new category of tools is emerging that flips this paradigm: you draw your infrastructure, and the platform builds it for you. Ultimately, these visual designs are converted into infrastructure-as-code under the hood so they…
This is a shout-out to Karthik Rangarajan Daniel Tobin for bringing the topic of InfraOps in their Derbycon 2015 presentation: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love InfraOps Excellent job – loved the presentation! Their position: In the last two years, the ideal organization of security amongst other teams has been hotly debated….
I just ran into a great summary of the History of DevOps by Damon Edwards. Very nice explanation he published back in Sep 17, 2012 (Very glad it is still available) It is cool he mentions Andrew Shaffer, and his 2008 presentation called “Agile Infrastructure” — His talk can be seen in YouTube here With all of…
Good quick summary chart from Microsoft on the Windows 10 features by version.. Windows 10 Enterprise will come with key features for enterprises, including Direct Access, AppLocker, BranchCache, and Start Screen Control with Group Policy. However, Windows 10 Pro also comes business-ready features, like Domain Join, Bitlocker, Enterprise Mode Intenret Explorer, Assigned Access 8.1, and…
Thought this might be of interest… An Microsoft Surface review was published by http://anandtech.com in early February… Anand was interviewed in a recent Tekzilla Episode (forward to timestamp 15:40) to talk about the pros and cons of the device… Check it out… Comparison of versions against the iPad follow: See also their: Microsoft Surface Pro…
Back in December Microsoft released System Center 2012 SP1 (Service Pack 1) to manufacturing. Much has been written about it since… The good news is that it was officially released (general availability) yesterday. With System Center 2012 SP1, you get the most cost effective and flexible platform for managing your traditional datacenters, private and…
If you are in this business, you are well aware of the great work Brian Madden and his team have done in producing fantastic content and guidelines on the topic of Virtualization… A recent blog article, Brian Madden makes some excellent points regarding the current state of Mobility Management, IT Consumerization and Desktop Virtualization. Mobility Device…
Just received note that a new course was published to get tech-folks ready for enterprise-level deployments of Windows 8, specifically on how to go about Windows 8 upgrades. The course, now available at the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA), is under the heading Planning and Preparing for Windows 8 and consist of the following modules: Assessing Compatibility of…
I have been using Windows 8 on my primary laptop for about 30 days now, and have been very pleased with the experience. I am a semi-typical knowledge worker / technology consultant who travels a lot. My office is wherever I can find a small desk area and an internet connection. My laptop is configure…
Microsoft teams have been doing a fantastic job keeping the webcast events on System Center available for playback if you were not able to make it when live. I think this series is a must for all of us working with System Center TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Deploying Windows 7 Using System Center…
As mentioned in an earlier post, Microsoft is doing a great job at letting folks that could not attend TechEd 2012, access the great content that was presented.. There is a ton that is changing… exciting times for sure!! Now they have made most session available on their MSDN Channel9 site which you can…
Article Written by: Rob West If you are a Lync system administrator or IT Pro, you’ve probably heard about Lync Mobility clients being released. Such a cool thing. One-click conference joining, mobile presence, etc. Why wouldn’t you just roll it out, organization wide to everyone with a mobile phone or tablet? Well, just slow down…
Article written by Rob West If you’ve got Lync, or another Voice over IP and collaboration solution in your organization, you’ve likely also got another video conferencing solution. Or, let’s say that you only have one, but your clients and partners have another one or two or three. What happens when you want to bridge…
Could not attend MMS2012 in Vegas this year? Not to worry! Microsoft has posted all of the PowerPoint and videos for free at http://www.mms-2012.com/digitalmms regardless if you attended or not. You can register and browse through the sessions… Thank you Microsoft!! For those of you that want to download the content for offline viewing: Videos:…
The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides series have been updated to reflect the version upgrades and changes to the Microsoft product line in the past few months. Definitely worth the review: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc196387.aspx As a reminder: The series is a collection of documents that leads the reader through a sequence of core decision points to…
When considering VMware to address the Server Virtualization environment, take a moment to consider another more cost effective alternative: Microsoft Virtual Server. Although Virtual Server does not currently offer VMware features such as VMotion, Site Recovery, Converter, etc. Microsoft is spending a lot of development dollars making sure that the Virtual Server environment is in…
This is a common topic of conversation and it comes up every time I start a project… Best advice I have found follows: As the Project Manager you need to know what to, who should do what, when it should be done, why it should be done, the cost for it and a variety…
Just in case you missed it, Microsoft released the Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V which will is required for sequencing and deploying Office 2010 client products with Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V). The toolkit must be installed on the App-V sequencing station prior to monitoring the Office 2010 client installation, and on the…
The beta version of Windows Intune, formerly known as System Center Online Desktop Management, it is now officially part of the Microsoft Online Services. is now in full beta. Windows Intune simplifies how businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7—so your computers and users can operate at peak performance. Windows…
If you have been using the Beta versions of the Office 2010 WebApps as of yesterday – you are in the company of 400 million friends! Yes – in a very unexpected announcement, Microsoft and Facebook made available http://docs.com – which allows Facebook users to collaborate using Office 2010 Web Apps. Now you can discover,…
The beta version of Windows Intune is now in full beta. Windows Intune simplifies how businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7—so your computers and users can operate at peak performance. Windows Intune delivers cloud-based management and security capabilities that can be administered through a single Web-based console, enabling your…
Two years after being acquired, the Calista team and product set are finally coming out for air! The upcoming version of Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 will incorporate the RemoteFX – a set of RDP technologies which will vastly improve the user experience when accessing remote sessions – most prominently graphics virtualization. The…
A qiick post, with something I learned today…. I am not sure if you have noticed or not, but on Technet and the VLSC download site, you will notice a downloaded titled “Windows 7 N” The N version represents a version of Windows 7 that does not have Windows Media Player included and is intended…
Article written by Rob West This is a thought-provoking article from LORI MACVITTIE on SOAWorld Magazine that poses an interesting point-of-view: …the US postal service doesn’t determine whether postage may be due or not until the package arrives at its destination. If the addressee isn’t willing/able to pay that postage due, the package is of course…
One of our colleagues sent us a highly bookmarkable list of Win7 resources that’s definitely worth checking out. There’s great stuff on Deployment, USMT 4.0, etc. http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2009/12/08/windows-7-useful-links.aspx Let us know of any others –
If you were at any of the Microsoft partner events in the last couple of years, you would know that Microsoft has been in the process of revamping the Microsoft Partner Program and its ecosystem. The changes officially started this past July when they renamed the Microsoft Partner Program to Microsoft Partner Network (MPN), partly…
Microsoft announced that is cutting the price of its BPOS services today Exchange Online from $10 per user per month to $5 per user per month. BPOS bundle — Online: Exchange, SharePoint, Communications and Live Meeting — from $15 per user per month, to $10 per user per month This is a 30% price drop and is fantastic…
As we have mentioned in the past, many organizations are now moving from on-premises to a hosted solution (cloud computing). One of the greatest values out there (for what it contains) is Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) — We expect to have many, many customers to continue to migrate into this platform. With a set of…
As part of the Run IT on a Virtual Hard Disk – Test Drive Program, a pre-configured VHD that enables you evaluate Microsoft Windows 7 for 90-days was released yesterday. What is notable is that this VHD requires Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, or the R2 to use this virtual machine, because…
Wow – It is hard to believe how fast the summer came and went. As you can probably gather from the frequency of posts, it was a very busy time for all of us at the InfraOps team. Busy working with clients and getting to know updated technologies. Lots of activity, including some much needed…
Some of us have been using it already, but just in case you did not know, MAP 4.0 is now officially released. As you would expect,most of the changes are around Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, but there is much more. Definitelly a good upgrade! According to the official release, key new features…
We thought you might be interested in the latest webcast produced by our colleagues at CompuCom and in close cooperation with Microsoft. It took place online on June 2, 2009, and it was about Microsoft’s latest release of Data Protection Manager. It covered a lot of ground and there was a number of interesting questions…
Look me up on https://connect.digitalwpc.com/ if you’d like to meet up! Or, tweet me: http://twitter.com/infraops/
Microsoft TechNet’s site has changed the way in which they present the solution accelerators. You can now sort according MOF Service life cycle and by discipline – A very good move we think! Also we just heard that the upgrade to MAP (4.0) is right around the corner! More info on this can be…
Upcoming Webcast: How Microsoft IT Deploys Application Virtualization The MDOP team has announced that on May 26th TechNet will host a webcast to discuss how Microsoft uses App-V 4.5 and ConfigMgr 2007 to deploy and manage applications within their environment. if it is anything like the one at MMS2009 it should be an interesting one. Click…
For those of us using OneNote and Groove, there was an announcement made today that would very much interest you… 1) Groove will becomes SharePoint Workspace 2) OneNote and SharePoint Workspace now a part of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 More info at: Microsoft Office 2010 Blog
The Office 2010 Teamblog opened to the public a nice and simple “hello world” message. In that message they posted their first insights: … preliminary system requirements for Office 2010. 1. Office 2010 will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. 2. Office 2010 will run on Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista,…
Office 2010 is finally coming out for air now – check out the newly released Office 2010 Official Blog site – This announcement prompted me to do a bit of a quick online check as to what’s ahead in the near future. Several new versions of Microsoft software are currently in beta mode, release release…
One of our esteemed contributors, Jorge Pereira, has the good fortune of being at #MMS09 this year, and has been energized by what he’s heard. He’s probably gearing up for some posts outlining his thoughts on what’s happening in the center of the Microverse.
If you’re a twitaholic, and you like our posts, you may want to follow us on Twitter: Tweets by infraops We’re doing more of the short one-off posts there, and expanding the more interesting bits into articles here. Hope you’ll tune in and tweet with us!
A new version of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) was realsed early April and includes includes MED-V v1.0, a cummulative update to App-V andupdate to AIS. This update has been a much anticipated primarily because of MED-V which is finally available under the Microsoft name. The official posting at the MDOP blog…
Article by Rob West …was reborn this month. We’ve been traveling, speaking and writing so much that we haven’t had enough time to write to this blog. Well, that’s dumb, and has to stop, so I’m personally committing at least 2 hours of my week to doing the bare minimum: hunting down a few cool…
PDF of a slide deck on Microsoft’s vision for the Optimized Desktop. This sounds very familiar to us old hats. Download details: The Microsoft Optimized Desktop Strategy by Jeff Johnson, Enterprise Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation Presentation Deck The Microsoft Optimized Desktop Strategy by Jeff Johnson, Enterprise Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
A stunning piece of news that I would have been incredulous to hear if I hadn’t been there when they said it. I think Microsoft is taking some great steps in a thought-leadership position. Sure, they’re buying their way into markets, but that’s what they excel at, and if you’re watching closely, and ignoring the…
Microsoft really is getting it when it comes to OS deployment and emphasis on the client side of things. Most of my daily activity deals with this kind of thing, and it’s nice to have a starting place. This is pretty old now, but in case you haven’t seen it: Windows Client TechCenter Home Springboard…
I always visit SMS SCCM Expert in my rotation of must-check-for-update websites. They really develop some excellent addons and enhancements for my favorite systems management platform. One of their products that I had not really heard too much about struck me today. Let me back up: I’ve been wondering more and more about what part…
Hey Deploymentfolk – Getcher red-hot documentation updates for the WAIK. The following site links to Microsoft downloads, and provides replacement documentation for the RTM version. Download details: Windows AIK User’s Guide and Unattended Setup Reference (Documentation Update 1) The Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) is designed to help Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), system builders,…
A neat little Excel worksheet for calculating the total amount of RAM you’ll want for a deployment of Hyper-V. Could use some polishing, but would make a great start for your documentation. TONYSO : Hyper-V RAM Calculator Joeelway’s blog links to a handy Hyper-V RAM Calculator you can use to plan your Hyper-V deployment. Easy…
There’s a new buzz buzzing in the SaaS world: the death of browser-based applications. I’m seeing more and more of this kind of thing. Exciting times! What do you think? SaaS vendor quits browser to boost sales | Software as Services | ZDNet.com Any SaaS CEOs who are feeling bruised after reading Sarah Lacy’s Business…
Say it ain’t so… SOURCE: John Coyne’s Embedded Blog : It’s the End for 3.11!! It’s the End for 3.11!! for those that were not aware, we recently announced that effective November 1st, 2008, OEM’s will no longer be able to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. Now we all know that…
We heard today that Compucom has agreed to aquire Getronics’ North American operations including operations in the United States, the operations in Canada and the Global Service Centre in Mexico. You can see the press release from both companies at the following: Compucom: CompuCom Systems Signs Definitive Agreement Getronics: Getronics enters into strategic partnership…
We are extremely pleased and honored that Microsoft has recognized Getronics work and continued support in fiscal year 2008. Specifically for our USA team, we were selected as a finalist in the category of Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Systems Management (LiveID required) for our Getronics Virtualization Services : Enabling adoption and management of virtualization technologies in enterprise…
Although we typically work in the enterprise customer space, we have to acknowledge (and thank) the posting of www.virtualization.info team for their article “Is Microsoft MDOP slowing down virtualization adoption?” for bringing this issue to light. The article speaks to the fact that that the small / medium business market segment has little to no…
Not to brag, but we’ve been preaching this message since we were knee-high to a rack full of blades. It’s good though: the more this story gets out there, the more everyone who listens will win. Tech-Ed Keynote Highlights ‘Dynamic IT’ and Virtualization June 10, 2008 • by Kurt Mackie Microsoft’s Tech-Ed North America event…
Hot off the presses, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 has had a critical update that will allow it to manage Hyper-V RC1 hosts (but, as a caveat, will not allow you to manage RC0 hosts…) [MSFT-BE] Arlindo’s Blog – IT Pro Evangelist : SCVMM 2008 Beta – Hotfix for Hyper-V RC1
Windows Vista has been out for a while now and hardware and software vendors have had time to update their drivers, apps, interface, etc. to the new operating system. Nevertheless (and this happens all the time) some specialized application vendors still will not support Vista and as a result, Windows XP and 2000 will remain…
With 150 million licenses shipped in FY’2008 (see Steve Balmer’s report,) we are always looking for news on Vista adoption. A list of recently posted articles on the Microsoft site follows: The paper entitled “Windows Feature Comparison” compares the features and capabilities of Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1 based on five categories: Security,…
Just listened to an MP3, er, uh boss – I was working on the word doc you wanted me to update and was multi-tasking. Ya, that’s it. I was working and learning at the same time. Technet Radio has a soup-to-nuts coverage of SoftGrid and AppVirt and it’s best practice application for where it fits…
Last week we had the pleasure of spending time with Shanen Boettcher, General Manager of Windows Product Management for the enterprise at the Redmond stop of his week-long press tour.. It was great to see first hand how much has MDOP plays a strategic role in the Microsoft’s desktop stack… He told the press that…
In a recent survey done by Gartner of 260 enterprises, 90% of enterprises worldwide have remote workers, but 25% of those organizations don’t know exactly who those remote workers are. Again, according to the survey, the IT departments often have no idea who they’re providing remote access to. Are they executives, sales, engineering, etc. ?…
Now on Microsoft Connect, the beta of the excellent new SCVMM 2008. The sign up for the beta is easy and installation is simple and fast on Server 2008 (which I am way digging these days). What’s the coolest thing about SCVMM 2008? Probably the ability to manage non-Microsoft hypervisors (e.g. ESX.) Top 10 Features…
And it’s the Wild West out there with all of the different devices, the lack of control and every one of them wants into your network. Business factors demand choice and IT factors drive the need for security and supportability. Is there a compromise here?
Microsoft Server 2008 Core could be thought of ‘server lite’, but that wouldn’t be the whole story. Sure Core doesn’t have the GUI interface we’ve all come to rely on with Windows, but even though it’s all command line interface, it still gets the job done for those servers that do specific tasks like network…
AppVirt Enthusiasts, rejoice! At MMS this year, they announced that RC1 of Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 will be made available via Microsoft Connect in June.
Microsoft’s “Virtualization in Banking Survey 2008,” conducted by independent, Washington, D.C.-based research firm KRC gives some insight into virtualization findings for US and UK banking institutions: TMCnet had this to say about key finding from the survey: 53 percent of those implementing virtualization reported that it eases centralization of deployment and management of applications as…
The folks over at TechNet have published a very clear, very concise guide to proper and rational OU design. If you are approaching an Active Directory project, do yourself a favor and read this advice. It’s getting hard-bookmarked on my end. Designing OU Structures that Work by Ken St. Cyr
OVA is one component of the new Unified Messaging server role now included in this latest version of Microsoft’s email server. Unified messaging’s goal is to consolidate as many communication types as possible into a single inbox and Exchange does this by treating email, faxes, and voicemail as just another message which can be accessed through corporate Outlook, Outlook Anywhere (Formerly Outlook over the Internet), Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile Access and now using just using your phone while on the run.
Desktone (http://www.desktone.com/) and more pointedly the generic term DaaS or desktop as a service is being bandied about and will help (I say “help” in jest) to muddy the terminology waters and give us a new buzz word. Really, I think DaaS has legs and will see favorable acceptance with the “greening” of IT with…
I decided to take a chance on the possibility that I could get MAV 4.5 Beta running on Server 2008 before a demo I have to give in Dallas this week, so I spent a rainy Sunday putting it together in a Virtual PC VM. Well, after several hours and re-dos, I got it, and…
Infrastructure Optimization opens the door for Green Computing with the ability to reduce overall costs via reducing power consumption through virtualization and by making better use of IT resources by more efficiently distributing workload amongst idle system resources rather than introducing additional systems.
Seen on The Deployment Guys: An excellent video containing a walkthrough on how to set up SCCM 2007 OS Deployment and integrating Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008. Download Video Here (51.28 MB) Great kick-start for those of you just getting into this.
These are exciting times – when the humble world of HTML and JavaScript have been leveraged to the hilt, and AJAX applications now rival traditional executables in functionality and behavioral metaphors. Stoneware seems poised to deliver what many of us have dreamed about for as long as bandwidth has been increasing.
If you’re a user of Microsoft Deployment 1.x and upgrading to Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2008, then you’ll want to pop over to Michael Niehaus’ blog, where he’s posted instructions on this scenario. Seems they included BDD to MDT migration, but not MD to MDT migration. One thing of note from this posting (as we…
I certainly hope this is the last of the name thrashing on this product for awhile. For those of you just getting used to the name change from Business Desktop Deployment Solution Accelerator to Microsoft Deployment, the folks in Redmond have changed the name of this product again, and it’s now being referred to as…
Brian Tinham over at Manufacturing Computer Solutions leads with a posting about Window’s 2008 Server Core offering – cool stuff. Even cooler for the virtual-set is the prospect of using the application formerly known as SoftGrid in a “what if” scenario to virtualize OS’es in a way that we don’t have in today’s Microsoft SoftGrid….
Amy Newman over at ServerWatch.com in her VirtualzationWatch column helps to clear the virtual haze that is virtual presentation. Glad someone is speaking to this – in the 30 plus years of virtualization each market segment hasn’t been able to define itself all that clearly. Thanks Amy. The cool thing about application virtualization with Microsoft’s…
There’s a lot of truth to the following video, put together by the brains at Intel’s Emerging Compute Model center. Watch through to the end. I have a feeling we’ll be referencing that last bit in our own AppVirt discussions. If that doesn’t work out, however, I look forward to maximizing my bitwise calculations per…
In the old days, Softricity was a partner of Citrix. Citrix is a partner of Microsoft. And Softricity was a partner of Microsoft, but is now part of Microsoft. See where this is going? When Softricity was acquired, there was some industry speculation as to what would happen to the great interoperability between SoftGrid and…
Not to be left out of the Open Source buying frenzy, Sun has recently acquired an OS virtualization product called “VirtualBox” that looks to be a boon for developers and for IT Administrators looking for standalone lab environments. Sun already had a server consolidation virtualization product (datacenter grade) in xVM Server, but didn’t have a…
I thought some of you might be interested in a free event that our team is putting on, centered around the business value of virtualizing applications. For Infrastructure Optimization wonks like myself, this technology is poised to become the centerpiece of many future IO engagements for me and our team. Registration is free, and the webinar is an hour long.
Is your company struggling with its migration plan to move to Microsoft Vista or Windows Server 2008? Does your IT Staff dread the thought of having to deploy new hardware in your enterprise environment? Do you still have technicians that run around with a handful of CD’s to deploy a new PC in a remote…
If you haven’t already heard of it, you will: The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, or MDOP for short, is an add-on subscription for customers with Microsoft Software Assurance (SA) coverage for their Windows desktops. The five core components of MDOP are SoftGrid Application Virtualization, System Center Desktop Error Monitoring, Asset Inventory Service, Diagnostics and Recovery…
If application virtualization wasn’t on your IT radar screen with the previous 4.x versions that were Softricity SoftGrid I’d strongly suggest your IT enterprise get a POC (proof of concept) or pilot in place with the most current production version of AppVirt. More on this later – see MDOP near the end of the article….
Buckle up AppVirt drivers! Microsoft has just released a set of “hands-on labs” for those of us that need to break something before we learn it. Good thing it’s virtual! Books, papers and PDF’s are great but if you’re looking for a way to check out many of the features and concepts through a set…
This has been reported widely across the blogosphere, but if you haven’t yet linked this page, and you use Microsoft Deployment, stop what you are doing, and go here now. The MS Deployment dev team has posted a Technical FAQ based on questions they have received via Support calls and email. Lots of amazing tidbits…
Best Practice Alert – did you folks in the app-virtusphere know that Office 2k7 was not initially designed for virtualization? I’m a bit bemused by the SoftGrid Blog team using that phrase “not designed.” I just wonder, with my tin-hat on, waiting for the black helicopters – did MS do this with intention? Will Biff…
While I’ve not finished parsing it, Tarry Singh’s article caught my eye. I don’t normally read all of the links that come in through the ITToolbox newsletter, but anything with “virtualization” in the title tends to give me pause. Tarry’s article provides a (rather dense and obviously knowledgeable) collection of predictions for the future of…
During a client-call yesterday, once again, we heard the “very many challenges” that data centers have with all of the issues that come with the incredible and never-ending demand for application services within enterprises. A solution that’s well-tested and well-vetted for these ever-increasing demands for applications is the propping of virtual infrastrucutres. Nothing new here:…
Doing some research this week, I ran into a website called www.jumpbox.com which is a company that provides server-based software installations using Virtualization technology… Essentially they do all of the hard configuration and settings work, and provide a Virtual snapshot of the application ready for it to be used… They have several open-source server-based applications…
VMWare has recently purchased Thinstall. This puts some heavy muscle behind one of SoftGrid/AppVirt’s competitors. One can only speculate what the San Francisco to Palo Alto move will mean for the product, but personally, I hope they invest heavily in bringing Thinstall’s feature set into parity or dramatic competition with AppVirt.
Greetings, everyone! We’re the Infrastructure Optimization team at Getronics, and we’ve decided to start a blog. After years of internal discovery, we thought it might be a good idea to give back to the community, by sharing some of our thoughts and findings around the topic of Infrastructure Optimization.
