Azure AD and Microsoft Accounts

I often get questions about Microsoft Azure accounts and best practices around setting upp access to a Microsoft Azure Subscription. Today I read a really useful article explaining the whys and the whats about how to adress the challange many have with Azure Accounts.

Ariel Gordon (Twitter: @askariel) summons it up and gives really good advidvice around when and how to use Azure AD accounts and Microsoft Accounts.

I added Ariels conclusion and reccomendations from his article, make sure to follow him on Twitter, i just did 🙂

Conclusion and recommendations

These changes are part of bigger investments we’re making to converge our identity systems. We’ll share more details later this year.

If you’re an IT pro, do not bulk create personal Microsoft accounts for your employees. We’ve helped many customers through hard usability and security problems because they had done this. If you’re configuring Windows devices for your employees, you should take advantage of the self-service set up and automatic MDM enrollment we’ve built into Windows 10 using Azure AD.

If you’re an IT pro, don’t ask your employees to create personal Microsoft accounts with their work email address. It creates confusion about who owns the associated content and resources. We understand that there are still a few Microsoft services that require creating personal accounts with a work email address, and as mentioned above we’re working hard to address this and have short-term exceptions in place.

If you’re an end user who has created a personal Microsoft account using your work email at of convenience, please consider renaming your account.

If you’re an app developer, you should probably support both personal and work accounts from Microsoft. Check out this post to learn more about the work we’re going to converge our identity stacks.

Read the full article for more details: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/09/15/cleaning-up-the-azure-ad-and-microsoft-account-overlap/

Free training resources.

The Windows Server 2016 release is getting closer.

Jeffrey Snover told the attendees at PowerShell Conference EU that the next Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview (TP) is coming soon and that it will be the last TP before the release version.

I have gathered some resources for you to get started.

First and foremost I would urge you to download the Free E-book Introducing Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/microsoft_press/2016/04/20/free-ebook-introducing-windows-server-2016-technical-preview/

Then head over to the TechNet Virtual Labs and take a look at:

• OMS-Hybrid-Management
• Windows Server 2016: Configuring Storage Spaces Direct, Storage Quality of Service, and Storage Replication
• Installing and Managing Nano Server
• Managing Windows Server Containers with Docker
• Managing Windows Server Containers with Windows PowerShell

One you have done that start investigating on your own by signing up for the FREE Microsoft IT Pro Cloud Essentials annual subscription

This is a fantastic resource that enables you to learn. What do you think about this?

With IT Pro Cloud Essentials, you receive free access to cloud services, training, and expert-level support:

•	Cloud services—get your hands on the cloud with Microsoft Azure and extended trials of Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility Suite.
•	Education benefits—increase your cloud knowledge with Pluralsight and Microsoft Virtual Academy training courses and get certified.
•	Expert support—take advantage of a free support incident and expert assistance on TechNet forums to help you succeed.

Looking to evolve your career in cloud technologies? Make sure your skills are relevant and marketable with the Microsoft IT Pro Career Center—an online resource to help you map your career and follow a learning curriculum at your own pace.

2016 has kicked off in an awesome way

Tomorrow I’ll fly out to Copenhagen to attend a Microsoft DevOps Hackaton. https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x62435714f

Between in February 3-5 I’m off to Oslo for the NIC Conference http://www.nicconf.com were Niklas and I have two sessions:
Managing your Azure workloads with Chef and PSDSC
http://www.nicconf.com/managing-your-azure-workloads-with-chef-and-psdsc 
Sharpen your Chef Knife! Cooking dinner with Azure Resource Manager
http://www.nicconf.com/sharpen-your-chef-knife-cooking-dinner-with-azure-resource-manager

February 15-16 we have three sessions at TechX Azure http://www.techx.se/
Introduction to Operations Management Suite
Azure Stack – Here comes Azure for real to your datacenter
Managing your Azure workloads with Chef and PSDSC

Finally the 24:th me and Niklas (the Ops guys) will be joined by two awesome Dev guys, Jakob Ehn & Mathias Olausson to form a DevOps team and deliver a full day DevOps workshop. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/framtiden-for-effektiva-team-kom-igang-med-devops-tickets-20070603716

If you haven’t already Sign up for them!
Remember if you see me, don’t be a stranger! I really would like to meet you. 🙂

TechDays Sweden 2015

First and foremost I would like to thank all of you that attended mine and Niklas presentation.

We had a really good time with some really interesting DevOps discussions before and after our presentation. The video of the presentation has been published and you can watch it on Channel 9 and all the other sessions as well.
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechDays-Sweden/TechDays-Sweden-2015/Managing-your-Azure-workloads-with-Chef-and-PSDSC/player

Since the presentation screen was blanked out during most of our presentation we have decided to record it again. So stay tuned.

In the meantime you can get/view the PowerPoint slides here

Microsoft Ignite: My session is in the Session Catalog

How cool is this? My session on Chef can now be found and added to the schedule.

So if you are wondering what Chef is and are attending Microsoft Ignite, make sure to add it to your schedule.

See you in Chicago.

WordPress App for Windows Phone

I saw a tweet from my good friend and TechEd Roundtable member Dieter Rauscher about a good app for Windows Phone.

I gave a quick search and found that the app I had in mind wasn’t there to be found. Anyway here is a link to the App so you can install it on your phone.

Once installed you have options to start a new blog at WordPress.com, add your blog hosted on WordPress.com or add your self-hosted wordpress blog.

I have blogged about creating a Azure hosted WordPress blog in 7 clicks if you would like to try that out.

When you have created your blog or added your existing one you get to the Actions page, from there you are given options to:

• Add a post
• View Stats
• Add a page
• Blog Settings
• View Admin
• View Site

Swiping to the sides takes you to Comments, Posts and Pages.

To add a new blog post tap the tile and start blogging from Windows Phone to your WordPress Blogg.

My blog 2.0

I powerful lab doesn’t have to be expensive.

The reason I started blogging was that I wanted to help a friend of mine getting started with a lab setup and it turns out that that post has been one of the more popular ones. I have decided to be more active on my blog and share the things I find.

What would be better then start off the 2.0 version of the blog where I once started.

Building your own Azure in the living room

In a series of articles I will build a home lab complete with operations system, management software and virtual machines. I will use Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2. I will use evaluation software downloaded from TechNet Evaluation Center More on that in the next part of the series

Part 1: The hardware

I wanted two machines so that I could build a cluster. I got the hardware for the lab little over a year ago and have complemented the purchases since then. Each of the machines are equipped with a Intel i5 processor, 32 GB RAM and three hard drives, one mechanic large drive for more static content, ISO, templates and such and two blistering fast SSDs.

Some of the hardware is a little bit old at the moment so you might need to get some newer parts if you want to build the machines. On the other hand used parts are now a bit cheaper and the speed of this rig is pretty awesome so that might be a cheaper way to go.

I wanted to get some relative small form factor and decided to go with the Shuttle XPC Barebone PC.
The integrated motherboard and the ability toadd up to 32 GB RAM and the necessary expansion slots/functions needed for the lab. Based on my experience you can never get enough RAM so to lower the cost of the rig I decided to go for the i5 processor and get all the RAM at once.

The components I complemented the PCs with are listed below.

Processor:
Intel Core i5-2320 Quad-Core Processor 3.0 GHz 6 MB Cache LGA 1155 – BX80623I52320 (EOL)

Memory:
Corsair XMS3 — 32GB DDR3 Dual/Quad Channel Memory Kit

Storage:
OCZ Agility 3 – SATA III 2.5″120 GB (EOL)
INTEL 530 240GB SATA SSD MLC
WD Green WD20EARX 64MB 2TB

I use the smaller SSD drive for the OS and the Intel SSD for the VM:s as mentioned before the 2 TB spinning disk are used to store images and tools and less intensive VMs

Stay tuned for the next part in the Building your own Azure in the living room series.

Part 2: The Windows 2012 R2 installation

By the way my wife approves of keeping the machines in the living room.

System Center App Controller – Free eBook

Microsoft Press has released a new ebook:

Cloud Management with App Controller

The book is a great introduction to Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Solutions and how to use and implement System Center App Controller.

DOWNLOADS

PDF here

Mobi file  here

ePub here

How about a Blog in the Cloud in 7 clicks!

The process of getting an 90 day free evaluation account for windows Azure is described at the Windows Azure website.

The Windows Azure interface is really great and intuitive and when you have logged on you are good to go.

Since my blog is a WordPress blog I will use that in my

Now to business Get your own blog hosted in Windows Azure:

1. In the bottom right corner click NEW
2. Choose COMPUTE –> WEB SITE
3.  

   

4. Choose FROM GALLERY
5.  

   

6. Scroll down and choose WordPress
   
   
7. Enter the name of your blog
8.  

   

9. In The Create new database, leave default or change to what you like.
10.  

    

11. Tick the box
12.  

    

13. Finish (Or in my case Swedish)
14.  

    

You can now start building your blog or importing one you already have.

That’s it and that’s that.