Tag: InfraOps

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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!

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

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 white paper entitled “Windows Feature Comparison” compares the features and capabilities of Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1 based on five categories: […]

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

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.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]