If you’re using android devices, this freebies may suitable for you. we found out some free ebook available on Google Play Store. These ebook is available for FREE and you can view it using Google “Play Book” app. The experience to view it on tablet was great and experience is similar like view it on Kindle.
Here is the screenshot of Microsoft Azure and System Center ebook that might interest you.
Just head to here to get it. Enjoy!
Today we had a workshop organized by Microsoft Malaysia. The workshop session was about Windows Server 2003 End of Support and here is our agenda.
I’ve presented three session during this workshop.
Feel free to view the slide
Session 1:- How Secure is Azure?
In this session, we have talked about security of Microsoft Azure that most customer concern with. We go through on physical security, communication traffic, storage, virtual machine, data, identity and access.
Session 2:- Common Scenario to Start With
In this session, we have talked about few customer scenario on migration and few scenario to migrate Windows Server 2003 workload to on-premise, Azure and Hybrid Cloud.
Session 3: MAP Toolkit
In this session, we have walkthrough on how MAP toolkit play an important roles to perform inventory, performance assessment and server consolidation on desktop, server, virtualization and VM readiness at Microsoft Azure
During NIC 4th Edition Conference, Ben Armstrong has presented on two sessions. Credit to Charbel who share the link.Feel free to view the recording.
Topic 1 :- Microsoft, Container and You
Topic 2:- Getting the best performance out of Hyper-V
Enjoy!
1. StarWind V2V Converter Update
StarWind V2V Converter allows the user to convert VMs from one format to another, basically "cloning" them and keeping the original copy intact. It comes either with any version of StarWind Virtual SAN, or as a standalone free tool. We have just updated StarWind V2V Converter to version V8 Build 161, adding a number of convenient features.
Here is the list of latest improvements:
Download StarWind V2V Converter V8 Build 161 here!
2. Newly Released Technical Paper “Near-FT Support of OLTP Applications using StarWind Virtual SAN and a Hyper-V Cluster”
If you consider yourself to be an advanced StarWind user, please check this technical paper out and find out how to use StarWind Virtual SAN in OLTP applications and what the best configurations for this case are.
Moreover, the analysis contains testing data that’s completely relevant to real business conditions.
So, trust us, it is worth reading!
3. Tap Room Meeting: How to get more from Microsoft SoFS with StarWind
(26 Feb, 11 am PT / 2 pm ET)
Host: Anatoly Vilchinsky, Head of Support Department of StarWind Softwarу
Imagine there is no CapEx, Neo.
This Thursday we will taste the single malt scotch while discussing how exactly StarWind helps to improve the IT infrastructure for Microsoft fans and users. Our base line here – piece of cake.
*The only place where it's allowed to put the elbows on the table while dining*
4. Webinar: 10x faster back-ups: Virtual Tape Libraries
(3 Mar, 11 am PT / 2 pm ET)
Speaker: Max Kolomyeytsev, Product Manager, StarWind Software Inc.
Tapes will never die. They are ideal for long-term vaulting and are an absolute winner in the capacity/price competition versus any disk storage.
But even being long lasting and cost-effective, tapes are considerably slower compared to even commodity hard disks. As amounts of data used by companies are constantly growing, tape backup speed becomes a major vulnerability in modern BC and DR strategies. As soon as a backup job exceeds its backup window, it starts consuming application performance during business hours. The problem is solved by rebuilding and extending the tape backup infrastructure, but it’s extremely cost-consuming. Or you can implement Virtual Tape Library to complement physical tape storage.
Join StarWind Product Manager Max Kolomyeytsev and learn how to:
[Updated 16 Feb 2015]
Recently we have been given an access by 5Nine to test 5Nine Cloud Security Azure Pack Extension (Release Candidate) on our WAP environment. Here is our test lab environment setup
[Preparation]
[WAP – Admin Portal]
With 5Nine Cloud Security Azure Pack Extension,it provide a security solution that enables its users to manage firewall configurations and protect their Windows and Linux virtual machines.
Tenant has an option to subscribe Cloud Security on their WAP Plan.
At the moment of writing the extension only include with Virtual Firewall functionality only which provide a protection to isolate VMs and control traffic. Leverage integration into the Hyper-V Virtual Switch on the host and monitor all traffic flowing to and from the VMs to provide agentless security. Click here to check out the virtual firewall features.
With the plan created and set to Public, it is time for Tenant to subscribe.
[ WAP- Tenant Portal]
On Tenant Portal, you can enable cloud security on virtual machine that has deployed previously using WAP
By default, no rules has defined. Tenant has chance to configure security regulations themselves and increase their privacy. Now they can set up security policies, settings, and firewall rules directly through the Azure Pack portal.
To begin with, start by creating a “User defined security group”. By default, all Virtual machine will park under “All VMs” Group which will apply default rules when enable virtual firewall. We want to apply rules to certain member of the virtual machine.
Next step is create user define template which consist a set of rules that you want to apply to group.
In the templates, you can start to add rules/policy to it
End result:-Web server rules Template
With templates created, it is time to enable virtual firewall and apply to VM. Just click on Use Template and select “Web Server Rules template” and then click “Virtual Firewall ON”
That’s all for today. 5Nine Cloud Security Azure Pack Extension is free so give it a try and test on your Windows Azure Pack environment. Good luck!
More related post:-
To configure chargeback and use on Windows Azure Pack, the extension which support it is using Cloud Cruiser Express. During installation of Cloud Cruise Express, you will notice the installation will failed and to know more detail, you can click on the link which point to the installation log.
You will notice that error message mentioning about JRE issue on some part has skipped. Sorry, forget to take a screenshot and busy on troubleshooting to find the root cause. The log is located in C:\Program Files\CloudCruiser\Install\
We have encountered the same when performing the installation on a virtual machine running
[Resolution]
1. Newly Released Whitepaper
Read a new featured whitepaper by Jon Toigo "Microsoft Clustered Storage Spaces and StarWind Virtual SAN for a Complete Software-Defined Storage Solution"
Feel free to download it here.
2. Tap Room Meeting (Thu, Feb 19, 2015 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM EET)
Topic: Microsoft Clustered Storage Spaces, StarWind and a clear head in the morning
To blend or not to blend, that is the question!
Whether tis Nobler in the mind of suffer
The I/O blender and bottlenecks of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take StarWind against a Sea of troubles?
…the only tap room that welcomes laughing out loud from under the table.
Book a table here!
3. Webinar: Hyper-V Failover Clustering: Virtualizing ROBOs without Breaking the Bank
(Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 11:00 am PT / 2:00 pm ET
Speakers: Howard Marks, Founder and Chief Scientist, DeepStorage
Ryan Post, Inside Systems Engineer, Veeam Software, Inc.
Max Kolomyeytsev, Product Manager, StarWind Software
Regardless of whether you call them stores, branch offices, plants or something else, remote sites present a unique set of engineering challenges. Customer facing applications require high availability but replicating the solutions we use in the data center to tens, or thousands of sites would cost more than the GDP of a small country.
Hyper-converged architectures, which turn server local storage into highly available, shared storage, promise to be more affordable, but some appliance solutions cost as much or more than the traditional server and SAN solutions.
This webinar will explore how StarWind Virtual SAN can fulfill the promise of hyper-convergence providing a highly available platform for virtual machines while Veeam Backup and Replication protects it from the unexpected.
Two Webinar-"Service Management's role in the Private Cloud"- hosted by Microsoft MVP Steve Buchanan. The webinars will be co-hosted by Savision's co-founder and VP of Product Management, Dennis Rietvink.
Join the webinars to find out the right tools that IT professionals and management need to provide clean and mature processes that will enable them to become more agile and move down the path of realizing the benefits of Private Cloud.
The webinars will be held on two different dates and you can register now for either one:
Register for the US webinar: Wednesday, February 25th, 2015 | 2 PM EST / 8PM CET
Register for the EU webinar: Thursday, February 26th, 2015 | 9 AM EST / 3 PM CET
In addition to the webinars, you can also download Savision's complimentary whitepaper written by MVP Steve Buchanan here.
[Product ]
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2
Update to UR5
[Error]
Verify the integration between SCOM and VMM connection and status reported “Error”
[ Solution]
Remove the integration between SCOM and SCVMM and configure back the connection. This happen due to new MP version has updated after install UR5
Well, you may feel weird that got a request to convert Generation 2 VM to Generation 1 Virtual Machine. At this moment, we cannot find any tool to perform this task. However we found one!
One of the reason to convert Gen 2 to Gen 1 VM is due to migration an existing virtual machine to Microsoft Azure and at the moment of writing this article, only Gen 1 VM is supported. And you need to perform this type of conversion.
Meanwhile, If you have Vmware VM running EFI/GPT, you can convert to Generation 2 VM but not to Gen 1 by using some conversion tools.
So what’s the tool to convert Gen 2 to Gen 1 Virtual Machine?
The answer is….. Platespin Migrate 11.
[ Platespin Migrate 11 Console]
[ Our test result- Successful]
Job status:-
Generation 1 VM :
To know more about Platespin Migrate, please click here.
Do you know other tools that can perform similar jobs? If yes, please let us know.. Stay tuned..
During our research at our lab environment, we got a request to convert Vmware Virtual Machine to Hyper-V for Ubuntu Virtual Machine. After browsing for a while, not many tool out there that can convert EFI/Generation 2 VM and work for Ubuntu operating system.
Let have a look on our scenario:-
[ Hypervisor]
[ Conversion tool ]
You may wonder why we choose MVMC vs 5Nine V2V Easy Convertor. Well, customer environment is running EFI/GPT Vmware Virtual Machine. Therefore, MVMC 3.0 is not suitable because it does not support EFI conversion. We almost lose hope however manage to get help from 5Nine to get our job done.
A quick comparison of different between MVMC 3.0 vs 5Nine V2V Easy Convertor (table get from 5Nine website):
For more information, you can refer to here
[ Deployment]
Select source (Vmware host)
Select Virtual Machine
VM Configuration
If
Select Host target
Select Host Resources
Note:
Do remember that Generation 2 Virtual machine is using VHDX.
If Vmware VM is EFI and you select VHD format, then the conversion will failed.
Review the summary and has an option to turn on VM after conversion
After click Finish, source VM will be turned off for conversion.
[ Conclusion ]
We waited for a while having a cup of coffee. When we are back, the conversion has completed successful.
As our conclusion of V2V conversion, we can converted
by just using 5Nine V2V Easy Convertor Tool. You can use this tool to try convert other operating system. 
System Center Universe APAC is back! Haven’t heard of the event? Here’s some sneak peak on what’s waiting for you:
TOP 10 reasons why you should attend:
EXCLUSIVE RATE just for you!
Register here and select Option 3: Registration with RSVP code
Let welcome our new blog sponsor: ArCycle Software.
ArCycle, the virtualized storage disaster recovery solution company has just released version 3.1 of its vmBackup. vmBackup is a backup and replication solution for the leading virtualization platform –Microsoft Hyper-V and Vmware vSphere.. The product effectively implements disaster recovery scenarios as well as addresses data deduplication and remote replication business tasks. Interested to know more, please feel free to click below
Guess how much does it cost? The product is distributed Free of charge. There are no hidden costs. They allow any type of use, including commercial use. The distributed version has no function or time restrictions. The only thing ArCycle charges for is premium support.
We was trying to deploy a VM from VMM 2012 R2 to Vmware host. We have completed the integration to Vmware Vcenter and imported Vmware VM Template. However encountered below error message when deploy a VM
Product:-
Error message:-
The virtualization software on host does not support setting NumLock. Specify a host that is running Windows Hyper-V and then try the operation again
ID: 10638
Resolution:-
It is time for us to look on how to restore Azure Virtual Machine Configuration. We assumed that you probably has accidentally delete the VM configuration however the virtual disk is still intact.
[Configuration]
Use Import-AzureVM cmdlet to restore and create backup VM Service Name and bind to existing virtual network. By default, Export-VM cmdlet does not export the configuration of the virtual network
| Import-AzureVM –Path “E:\Testbackup01.xml” | New-AzureVM –ServiceName “TestBackup01” –VnetName “ms4uvnet-azure” |
Condition for import to be successful:-
Error if import without vnet : “The virtual network ID cannot be null or empty”
[Result ]
Result after import
VM Configuration has successfully imported and VM will automatically power on. In our next round, we will check out on how to restore a virtual disk.
More information:-
Previously we have configure blob snapshot to backup virtual disk on Azure. Blob Snapshot did not backup the VM configuration. To do so, we need to use Export-AzureVM cmdlet.
[ Configuration ]
Get azure vm list and identify your virtual machine service name and name.
| Get-AzureVM |
Backup VM Configuration file and store at your local computer either when VM in power off state or running state.
| Export-AzureVM –ServiceName “VM Service Name” –Name “VM Name” –Path E:\vmname.xml |
[XML result]
| <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> |
Do keep the XML file in safe location and may come handy when restoration. Stay tuned for our next post about virtual disk restoration and configuration file
More information:-