TechCamp 2013 - Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 Launch Event

There's only a few days left to purchase tickets to the Irish Community launch event in Dublin's Citywest Hotel & Conference Centre for Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1

Seats are filling up fast, we've a number of sponsors on board and the speaker line-ups have all been confirmed. It's an MVP driven event and will have some great speakers presenting content across two tracks on the day.

Tickets cost a mere EUR 25.00 and all proceeds from registration goes to our designated charity - Camara. If you're in two minds about attending and are thinking about holding off till the live stream or recordings become available, then you'll be sorry to hear that we won't be streaming or recording any of the sessions so make sure you get registered to attend if you want to learn about what's new in your chosen track.

You can learn more about and register for the event at the official website here:

http://techcamp2013.wordpress.com/

Here's the agenda:

Time	Windows Server & System Center	Windows 8.1 & Device Management
08:00-9.00	Registration
09:00-09:40	Keynote   Speaker: Dave Northey, Microsoft   Learn how the entire package from Microsoft fits together
09:45-11:00	Windows Server 2012 R2 Speaker: Aidan Finn, MVP What does WS2012 R2 bring to virtualisation, cloud, storage and networking?	Windows 8.1 in the Business Speaker: Damian Flynn, MVP How Windows 8.1 Pro and Enterprise can enhance user experience an enable BYOD.
11:00-11:30	Break Get a drink/snack & meet the sponsors.
11:30-12:45	System Center Virtual Manage Manager & Hybrid Cloud Speaker: Damian Flynn, MVP Start deploying and taking control of the entire data center with VMM 2012 R2!	Windows 8.1 Devices Speaker: Paul Shanahan, Microsoft Devices are a central ingredient to the “Windows 8.1 in the business” story. What are Microsoft and partners doing?
12:45-13:30	Lunch Get something to eat & meet the sponsors
13:30-14:45	System Center Service manager & Self-Service/Automation Speaker: Paul Keely, MVP See how System Center can automate repetitive processes, optimise time planning for IT, and change the business.	Windows Intune Speakers: David McCormick & Patrick Herlihy, Microsoft Windows Intune is a much bigger solution than you think, including branch offices, BYOD, and covering all kinds of devices (Windows & others).
14:45-15:00	Break Refuel for the afternoon push & meet the sponsors.
15:00-16:15	System Center Operations Manager & Service Management  Speaker: Kevin Greene, MVP It delivers a service, but just how is that service performing?	System Center Configuration Manager Speaker: Niall Brady, MVP Take control of every device in your enterprise like you’ve always dreamed, but keep the users happy with self-service?  That’s not possible, right? Wrong!

New SCOM 2012 R2 APM & Networking Visio Stencils Available for Download

Due to attending the MVP Summit in Seattle, I'm just getting a chance to post these new Visio stencils for SCOM 2012 R2 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Network Monitoring. If you're looking for some other Visio stencils related to System Center 2012 R2,  then you can find them here:

SCVMM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils

DPM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 Infrastructure Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 Application Visio Stencils

Windows Azure Pack (WAP) & Azure Visio Stencils

The APM set contains images for things like Server and Client Side monitoring, services, Web Application transactions and WCF functions.

You can download the stencil from the TechNet Gallery at the following link:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/System-Center-2012-R2-57f8418e

If you find this stencil useful, please take the time to give it a Star rating on the TechNet Gallery :)

In the Network Monitoring stencil, you get images for network devices such as routers, switches, VLAN's, fans, memory etc.

Download this one from:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/System-Center-2012-R2-a159ebae

If you find this stencil useful, please take the time to give it a Star rating on the TechNet Gallery :)

Enjoy!

New SCOM 2012 R2 Application Visio Stencils Available for Download

This is the second batch of SCOM 2012 R2 stencils that I've created based on some of the different applications that SCOM monitors. If you're looking for some other Visio stencils related to System Center 2012 R2,  then check out these links:

SCVMM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils

DPM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 Infrastructure Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 APM & Networking Visio Stencils

Windows Azure Pack (WAP) & Azure Visio Stencils

This set contains images for applications such as Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Lync. You'll also find some generic application images in there that can be handy when creating Visio diagrams for your SCOM proposals and technical documentation.

You can download the stencil from the TechNet Gallery at the following link:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/System-Center-2012-R2-0608df9a

If you find this stencil useful, please take the time to give it a Star rating on the TechNet Gallery :)

New SCOM 2012 R2 Infrastructure Visio Stencils Available for Download

In my recent posts I shared some new System Center 2012 R2 Visio stencils and if you haven't seen them yet, you can download them from the following links:

If you're looking for stencils for other System Center 2012 R2 products, then check out these links:

SCVMM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils

DPM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 Application Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 APM & Networking Stencils

Windows Azure Pack (WAP) & Azure Visio Stencils

Continuing on with the same theme, this post contains new SCOM 2012 R2 infrastructure stencils to help you enhance your technical documentation and presentations. Now, there's already a number of SCOM Visio stencils doing the rounds out there and most recently, Larry Rayl updated the original SCOM 2007 ones to reflect the new SCOM 2012 roles. I'm not going to recreate the wheel here and just redo Larry's stencils as they are more than sufficient for most people's needs and if you want to download them, you can do so here.

What I wanted to do was to create some Visio stencils for SCOM 2012 R2 that reflect how SCOM sees the world through it's own diagram views. When I started working on this I quickly realised that I'd need to create more than one stencil set due to the large number of different components and roles in SCOM, so this post is the first of four that I'll share here in relation to SCOM stencils.

This stencil is based on the SCOM infrastructure side of things and along with the usual management server and agents, it contains images for things like the Data Access & Configuration Services, different entity types and groups.

I've also added in some images around the 'often-not-used' but sometimes pretty useful Application Exception Monitoring (AEM) functionality as this can come in handy when creating new sales proposals that need to include information on it.

You can download the stencil from the TechNet Gallery at the following link:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/System-Center-2012-R2-44552676

If you find this stencil useful, please take the time to give it a Star rating on the TechNet Gallery :)

Enjoy!

New DPM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils Available for Download

I've been working a lot with System Center and Visio lately and had some time to create some new Visio stencils that can be used for technical documentation and presentations of the newly released System Center 2012 R2.  If you're looking for stencils for other System Center 2012 R2 products, then check out these links:

SCVMM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 Infrastructure Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 Application Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 APM & Networking Visio Stencils

Windows Azure Pack (WAP) & Azure Visio Stencils

In this post, I'm sharing a stencil for DPM 2012 R2 which contains the following ten images:

You can download the stencil from the TechNet Gallery at the following link:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/System-Center-2012-R2-Data-ef61aa5d

If you find this stencil useful, please take the time to give it a Star rating on the TechNet Gallery :)

New SCVMM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils Available for Download

As a consultant, my job involves working closely with our sales and pre-sales teams to deliver comprehensive technical documentation for our customers around the solutions that we deliver. Good documentation is always more powerful when you include some decent Visio diagrams that give the reader a proper visualisation of what you're proposing.

Working with System Center over the last few years, I've learned quite a few tips and tricks to help me create nice visualisations by leveraging System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and some nifty PowerShell scripts. Using these methods, I've created a number of Visio stencils that I think might be worthwhile sharing with the community and in this first post (hopefully I'll get around to doing a few more of them over the next week or so), I'd like to share my Visio stencil for the recently released System Center 2012 R2 - Virtual Machine Manager.

The stencil contains twenty images that should cover off all the roles and components of SCVMM 2012 R2.

You can download the stencil from the TechNet Gallery at the following link:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/System-Center-2012-R2-7a5f1fcd

If you find this stencil useful, please take the time to give it a Star rating on the TechNet Gallery :)

Let me know if you have any suggestions or problems with the stencil by posting in the comments section below.

If you're looking for stencils for other System Center 2012 R2 products, then check out these links:

DPM 2012 R2 Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 Infrastructure Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 Application Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 APM & Networking Visio Stencils

Windows Azure Pack (WAP) & Azure Visio Stencils

Enjoy!

Download the VM Role Authoring Tool for Windows Azure Pack

A few days ago, the new VM Role Authoring Tool for Windows Azure Pack (WAP) and System Center 2012 R2 has been released on Codeplex. This tool is used to author the VM Role 'Resource Definition' and 'Resource Extension' artifacts.

Here's a description of the tool taken from Codeplex:

The release of the Virtual Machine Role in Windows Azure Pack and System Center 2012 R2 introduces a cloud service application deployment model to deploy virtual machine workloads that will be deployable on premise and in Windows Azure in the coming year.

 

Hand-crafting these packages against the published schemas of the model is a slow and tedious task.

 

You can download it from here: https://vmroleauthor.codeplex.com/

If you want to see this tool in action, then I highly recommend you check out this series of tutorials from Microsoft's Charles Joy here:

Creating a Linux VM Role Resource Definition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrGjA1mYN4M

Creating a Linux VM Role Resource Extension
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdVsmF4GeYE

Creating a Windows Server VM Role Resource Definition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66zznivfh_s

Creating a Windows Server VM Role Resource Extension  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCilD2P8vhE

Updating a Virtual Machine Role Gallery Item
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAm38TMz8RU

When you've watched the video's, I'd recommend that if you're interested in WAP and System Center 2012 R2, then you subscribe to Charles' YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/charlesjoyMS) to keep up to date with anything new he releases.

Available Now on Pre-Order: Mastering Windows Server 2012 R2

If you've been hiding under a rock for the last few months, then you might not be aware that Microsoft have just recently announced the General Availability of Windows Server 2012 R2. The amount of new feature enhancements and additions that come with this release when compared to its  'not-so-long-ago released' predecessor (Windows Server 2012) are unreal.

Late last year and not too long after our 'Mastering System Center 2012 - Operations Manager' book hit the shelves, I was given the opportunity to head up an excellent team of authors to work on a book that would cover the original release of Windows Server 2012. The book was essentially an update to the excellent 'Mastering Windows Server 2008 R2' book that was led by well known author and speaker Mark Minasi with co-authors like Aidan Finn working their magic throughout. (No pressure on us then!)

This updated Windows Server 2012 book was due to hit the shelves by March/April of this year but when Microsoft announced the upcoming Windows Server 2012 R2 release (codenamed Windows Blue), we just knew we had to re-do our work on the book to keep it consistent and current. What we didn't realise is the sheer volume of extra work that the new R2 release had landed us with and suckers like me who had 8 chapters to work on pretty much had to do a re-write of everything - not to mention labs being rebuilt/upgraded too!

Anyway, all that madness is behind us now and the book is available for pre-order on all the usual channels with discounts up to 33% knocked off the RRP on Amazon.

If you want to learn how to master Windows Server 2012 R2, then this is the book for you and you can get it here:

http://amzn.to/1dZcssL