SCOM - Updated Community Windows Azure Pack MP V2

A few weeks back, I published a post about Oskar Landman's awesome new community MP for Windows Azure Pack and the big man's been at it again - this time giving us a fully redesigned Version 2.

If you liked the original MP, then this one gives you so much more - he even took the time to use some of my Visio stencils for Windows Azure Pack that I released last year (you can get the stencils from the following link):

http://kevingreeneitblog.blogspot.ie/2014/02/new-wap-azure-visio-stencils-available.html

This MP comes with all the classes, discoveries, monitors and rules that you should need to deliver comprehensive monitoring of your Windows Azure Pack environments.

Check out Oskar's full blog post on SystemCenterCentral.com at the following link:

http://www.systemcentercentral.com/windows-azure-pack-scom-management-pack-v2/

You can download the MP directly from the TechNet Gallery here.

Awesome work again Oskar - thanks for this super contribution :)

SCOM - New Community Windows Azure Pack MP

Another super community contribution - this time from my buddy Oskar Landman - here's a picture of me towering over him at the MVP Summit a few years back...

Noticing that the existing Windows Azure Pack MP was seriously lacking functionality, Oskar took it on himself to rewrite it completely and then release a new version to the community for free!

He's added diagram views, performance views and enough state views to keep everyone happy..

If you or your customers have deployed Windows Azure Pack and are using SCOM, then this MP is an absolute no-brainer to import.

Check out Oskar's full post on SystemCenterCentral.com from the link below:

http://www.systemcentercentral.com/windows-azure-pack-scom-management-pack/

You can download the MP directly from the TechNet Gallery here.

'Unlock the Value of System Center and Azure Pack' - Free Online Event - Register Now

On Friday March 20th, Microsoft are running a free online education and training event titled 'Unlock the Value of System Center and Azure Pack'.

The event comprises eight sessions delivered by well known System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP's from across the UK and Ireland.

The content presented aims to help you understand how the professionals plan, deploy and use System Center and Windows Azure Pack to make IT service management processes and tasks easier.
Here's a run-down of the agenda for the day:

09.30 Cloud Platform and System Center Keynote – Chris van Wesep from Microsoft Corp

09.35-10.15 Key Management Scenarios – What you can do with System Center – Damian Flynn

10.30-11.25 Deploy System Center in a matter of days – Steve Beaumont

11.30-12.30 Provision and Configure your Datacenter Fabric Infrastructure – Simon Skinner

2.30-13.00 - Break

13.00-14.00 Monitor your Cloud Infrastructure and Applications – Kevin Greene

14.05-15.00 Improve your Users’ Experience through Self-Service – Paul Keely

15.15-16.15 Improve your Management and Service Delivery through Automation – Damian Flynn

16.20-17.15 Manage your Private Cloud with Windows Azure Pack – Gordon McKenna

The online event runs for the whole day and is open to anyone who wants to register.

Interested? If so, then check click here for more information and registration info and we'll see you then!

Free Online Training at TechDays Online 2015

There's only a few weeks left until we get to immerse ourselves in some free online training through the Microsoft-run 'Tech Days Online 2015' event. It will be live-streamed from the UK with a number of very well known speakers on the agenda.

What I love about these events are the fact that there's no traveling involved to attend, and it's all free! There's three tracks - split over three days - with some awesome presenters to walk you through the content.

Here's what's happening on each day...

Day 1 (Tuesday February 3)

Devices and Managing a Mobile-First World

09:30-09:40         Overview of the Day

09:40-10:15         Keynote: The repositioning of Microsoft & what this means for IT Pros &                             Devs - Mary-Jo Foley, Tech Journalist and Microsoft watcher

10:30-11:05         Devices, Devices Everywhere    

11:20-11:55         Windows 10 Client Innovations 

12:10-12:45         Enterprise Mobility - Justin Zarb

13:30-14:05         The Internet of Things - Paul Foster, MSFT UK & Robert Hogg

14:20-14:55         Microsoft Azure Remote App - Richard Astbury, (MVP)

15:10-15:45         Microsoft Azure RMS    

16:00-16:35         Microsoft Azure AD - Rick Hepworth, (MVP)

16:50-17:25         Microsoft Intune/SCCM - Steve Beaumont, (MVP)

17:25-17:30         Wrap up of day 1 - Part 1 - Ed Baker, MSFT UK

Day 1 Evening (Tuesday February 3)

An evening with Office 365

18:30 – 19:05      Migration of your mailboxes to Office 365

19:15 – 19:50      Building online collaboration inside Office 365

20:00 – 20:35      Keeping in touch with the online world

20:35 – 20:45      Final thoughts for the day

Day 2 (Wednesday February 4)

The Journey to the Cloud-first World

09:30-09:40         Overview of the Day - Andrew Fryer, Microsoft UK

09:40-10:15         What’s new Windows Server /Hyper –V - Gordon McKenna, (MVP)

10:30-11:05         How to find out what’s happening in your datacentre with Azure Insights                                - Sam Erskine, (MCT)

11:20-11:55         Host your own cloud with the Windows Azure Pack
                           - Damian Flynn, (MVP)

12:10-12:45         Taking scripting to the next level with Service Management / Azure                                     Automation - Jonathan Noble, (MVP)

13:30-14:05         A new home for your old applications - Susan Smith, Microsoft UK

14:20-14:55         20% + of Azure runs on Linux  - why is this important and how to do it                                 well? - Boris Devouge, (MVP)
15:10-15:45         DevOps in Microsoft Azure with Chef and Puppet for heterogeneous cloud                           environments - Tarun Arora  (MVP)

16:00-16:35         Make Azure your DMZ - Simon Skinner, (MVP)

16:50-17:25         Microsoft Corporate Keynote - Jeffrey Snover, Distinguished Engineer

17:25-17:30         Wrap up of Day 2 - Andrew Fryer, Microsoft UK


Day 3 (Thursday December 5)

Multi-device, Cross-platform Development

09:30-09:40         Overview of the Day - Martin Beeby, Microsoft UK
09:40-10:25         Creating x-platform apps with Visual Studio - Martin Hinshelwood, (MVP)

10:35-11:20         Vsual Studio ALM - Richard Fennell, (MVP)
11:30-12:15         Building next-generation apps with .NET and ASP.NET                                                       - Omar Al Zabir, (MVP)

13:00-13:45         Debugging web apps - Bianca Furtuna & Martin Kearn, Microsoft UK

13:55-14:40         ’Roslyn’ .NET compiler update 

14:50-15:35         Data Science Track - Andrew Fryer, Microsoft UK

15:45-16:30         Dev. community feedback - session based on community ideas

              - Martin Beeby, Microsoft UK

16:45-17:20         Microsoft Corporate Keynote - Scott Hanselman

Pretty impressive lineup eh?

So, if you're interested in joining the fun and learning more about your chosen track, then you can register for the event here.

Anyone that signs up and attends at least one day will also be entered into a draw to possibly win a new Surface Pro 3 so there's even more incentive to get registered.

See you all online there!

Useful Recent CloudOS News and Blogs

Well, after a few weeks away from work on vacation, I've finally managed to filter through the majority of my unread emails and Twitter feeds. What I've come across from browsing through just a few short weeks of them is a number of very useful and cool updates and community offerings for System Center 2012 R2, Windows Azure Pack, Azure and Windows Server 2012 R2.

I've broken my favourites down into categories to make things easier to reference and if you haven't seen some of these posts yet and are working with CloudOS products, then I'd strongly advise you to check them out:

SCOM

Jalasoft – Xian SNMP Device Simulator V5

New SCOM dashboard community on the TechNet Gallery

Integrate System Center Advisor into Operations Manager Dashboards

Kemp LoadMaster Monitoring Management Pack (Community MP)

Kevin Holman: Update Rollup 3 for SCOM 2012 R2 – Step by Step

OpsMgr Dashboard Fun: Performance Widget Using SquaredUp

SCOM Enhanced Email Notification Script Version 2.1

Everything you ever wanted to know about group calculations (GroupCalc) in OpsMgr

System Center 2012 R2 UR3 releases with new Operations Manager updates (New Office365 and VMM Dashboards)

SCOM 2012 – Fun Jukebox Dashboard With PowerShell Widgets

SCOM 2012 – Display & Download MPs Using PowerShell Widgets

System Center Advisor

Blog Series: System Center Advisor Restarted

System Center Advisor - Limited Preview: Saved Searches, Cloud Attach Status and Usage, and more!

VMM

Download the VMM Network Builder

Blog Series: Bare Metal Post-Deployment

SCSM

Point SCSM DW & WAP Request Management to new SQL server

How to check if a Service Manager Notification Template is associated to a Workflow or Notification Subscription

How to create System Center 2012 Service Manager Knowledge Base report

DPM

New version of DPMBackup.exe required when you deploy Update Rollup 3 to DPM 2012 R2


Orchestrator

Online Orchestrator Clinic


Windows Azure Pack

VM Cloud is missing in Windows Azure Pack

Windows Azure Pack Firewall Port Requirements

Download the v1.2 release of GRIT to Import and Configure VM Role Gallery Items in Windows Azure Pack

The New World of Tenant Provisioning White Paper

Windows Azure Pack configuration with a named instance and a non-default SQL port

Azure

Install or update Microsoft Azure Powershell Module with Powershell

What is Azure API Management?

Microsoft Azure Now Available Through Open Licensing

Acquisition of InMage Systems

Migrate On-Premise Virtualized Workloads to Azure using Azure Site Recovery

Auditing in Azure SQL Database

Microsoft Azure – Use Azure Active Directory Application Proxy (AADAP)

Windows Server 2012 R2

Update to add a new performance counter feature for Tiered Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 R2

Storage Spaces – Not Just For SMEs

ADFS Authentication Via Azure

Announcing: Veeam Task Manager for Hyper-V

PowerShell

Announcing the “100 Days of DevOps with PowerShell” Series

Conferences

System Center Universe Europe – The Microsoft CloudOS Event you shouldn’t miss

The System Center Universe 2014 Europe session planner is now online!

Registration for ITDevConnections in Las Vegas is Open!

So that's it in a nutshell for now - and although it's not a comprehensive list of everything that's been happening over the past month or so, there's still a lot of very impressive community content around CloudOS.

Enjoy!

TechCamp 2014 Dublin

Day 1 for our TechCamp 2014 event has just finished and each session had a great turnout of attendees. Microsoft Ireland's Art Coughlan kicked off with a keynote speech on how Microsoft can help people with their journey to the cloud and he gave some great real-world examples of well known global brands using Cloud Technologies such as Azure, Hyper-V and System Center.

After the keynote this morning, Aidan Finn gave a really interesting session on Windows Server Storage Spaces and Scale Out File Servers. He walked through building the solutions in his demo step-by-step to give people an idea of how easy it is to get started.

After Aidan's presentation, it was my turn to get down and dirty and shake with datacentre automation in my 'Service Automation Using System Center' session. I first spoke about getting your automation processes properly mapped out and including the right teams to plan the process. Then I went into a demonstration that incorporated System Center Orchestrator, Service Manager and Windows Azure Pack. Thankfully my themed Windows Azure Pack Tenant Portal went down well and I received some nice attendee comments during lunch about it:

The 'New Hire Onboard' process that I automated was made possible using System Center Orchestrator and Service Manager integrated into Windows Azure Pack. The secret sauce to surface the request management in the WAP Tenant portal was delivered using the awesome new GridPro Request Management - check it out here: http://www.gridprosoftware.com/en/products/requestmanagement)

After lunch, Damian Flynn took to the stage and gave a full overview to the audience on how all the System Center components integrate with each other and then he went into the Windows Azure Pack Framework and all it's moving parts - a very enjoyable session for the attendees with the 'F Bombs' dropped kept to a minimum ;)

The final presentation of the day saw Aidan get back up for more heckling as he spoke about this time on Hybrid Cloud using Microsoft Azure. Some really interesting demo's delivered to the audience configuring public-cloud VM's and virtual networking on the fly.

That wraps up Day 1, tomorrow's track of 'Software as a Service' should be a blast!

TechCamp 2014 - An Awesome Irish Cloud Community Event

After the success of our last TechCamp 2013 event, a week from tomorrow (Thursday 19th of June), we kick off TechCamp 2014 in Dublin's Citywest Hotel and Conference Centre.

This year we've decided to span the event out over two days and into two separate tracks - Hybrid Cloud & Software as a Service - and we have an awesome line-up of speakers presenting on some very relevant topics.

Day 1 (Hybrid Cloud Track)

I'll be delivering a session on Day 1 for the Hybrid Cloud track titled - 'Service Automation using System Center'. In it, you can expect to see some (hopefully impressive) demo's around System Center, Windows Azure Pack and Service Management Automation (SMA).

Day 1 also sees me share the stage with two good friends and excellent presenters - Aidan Finn and Damian Flynn. Aidan will be talking about Storage Spaces, Scale Out File Server and Hybrid Cloud and Damian will be digging into the new and seriously cool Windows Azure Pack in his presentation.

Day 2 (Software as a Service Track)

On Day 2 (Software as a Service), Nathan Winters - author, former Exchange MVP and now working for Microsoft UK - will be talking about Office365 Exchange & Lync. Later in the day there's a presentation from Sean O'Farrell - a colleague of mine in Ergo - who's making a lot of noise in the Office365 community and he'll be talking about using Office365 SharePoint & Yammer in the real world.

To finish off Day 2 and the overall event, we have Bob Duffy - who in his own words is an 'all-round SQL dude' but in my words - 'the one person on this planet that I've met that knows more about SQL than anyone else!'

Bob is an SQL Ranger/MVP/MCA/MCM/Maestro - so if you're interested in learning something new about SQL you'll definitely want to listen to what he has to say! His session is titled 'Power BI for Office365' and is sure to be filled with plenty of demo's and useful insights.

Registered Yet?

If I've got your attention and this event sounds like something you'd like to attend, then check out the agenda here and purchase your tickets from this link:

http://techcamp2014.azurewebsites.net/purchase-tickets

Like at TechCamp 2013, all proceeds from ticket sales are going to the very worthy charity - Camara. Also, none of the sessions will be recorded or streamed so if you don't attend, you don't get to see the sessions online at a later date - not to mention missing out on some excellent networking opportunities with peers and presenters alike.

So, like Aidan says - Don’t Be An IT Dinosaur – Attend TechCamp 2014 On June 19/20!

See you there :)

New Windows Azure Pack (WAP) & Azure Visio Stencils Available for Download

Well, it's been a few months since I last had a chance to work on some new Visio stencils and finally, I've managed to put one together for the relatively new Windows Azure Pack (aka WAP) and have bundled into the same stencil, some graphics for Windows Azure too.

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

SCOM 2012 R2 Networking Visio Stencils

SCOM 2012 R2 APM Visio Stencils

This stencil contains images that cover things like the WAP Admin & Tenant portals, SPF Web Server, SMA, Service Bus and Workflow Manager.

I've also thrown in things like Visual Studio Online with its Global Service Monitor and APM capabilities, Orchestrator, VMM, AppController and standard Windows Azure roles and functions.

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

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Windows-Azure-Pack-Windows-813d13a8


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.

Download Free Windows Azure Active Directory Whitepapers

Microsoft has just released four new free whitepapers to help you get to grips with Windows Azure Active Directory. The whitepapers are broken down into an initial overview of Active Directory in the cloud and then ramping up the technical level to give you an understanding of how to leverage multi-factor authentication.

Here's a description taken from the download page:

Windows Azure AD is the identity foundation for many Microsoft services like Office 365, Windows Intune, and others. Windows Azure AD is a comprehensive identity and access management cloud solution, utilizing the enterprise-grade quality and proven capabilities of Windows Server AD on-premises. It combines core directory services, advanced identity governance, security and application access management.

This series of whitepapers on Windows Azure AD offerings comprises:

• Active Directory from the on-premises to the cloud whitepaper.
• An overview of Windows Azure AD
• Leverage Multi-Factor Authentication with Windows Azure AD whitepaper.
• Leverage Multi-Factor Authentication Server on your premises whitepaper
• Leverage Windows Azure AD for modern Business Applications whitepaper.

There's also a zip file with some handy PoweShell scripts that complement the multi-factor authentication pieces.

Go get your hands on them all from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx

Enjoy!

Windows Azure Pack Troubleshooting on TechNet

Microsoft has just added nearly 50 new troubleshooting topics for Windows Azure Pack (WAP) and Service Provider Foundation (SPF) onto the TechNet library.

If you're new to Windows Azure Pack or SPF (as most people are!), and run into problems when deploying either of them, then this is as good a place as any to get started with your troubleshooting.

There's a multitude of categories to work from and some of the main ones are listed below:

• Accounts, Subscriptions, and Plans Troubleshooting
  
  Investigates issues that are related to onboarding tenants, establishing accounts, subscriptions to plans. Also includes issues regarding plan quota levels.
  
• Automation and Tools Troubleshooting
  
  Investigates issues that pertain to Service Management Automation and issues that are related to using runbooks, tools, and developer kits for use with Windows Azure Pack.
  
• Installation and Networking Troubleshooting
  
  Investigates Contains issues that are related to installation and post installation tasks and networking tasks.
  
• Security Troubleshooting
  
  Provides an overview for how to use credentials, and investigates issues that are related to authentication, claims-based authentication, tokens, certificates, and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).
  
• Service Provider Foundation Troubleshooting
  
  Investigates issues that are related to Service Provider Foundation and its usage with Windows Azure Pack.
  
• Virtual Machine Clouds Troubleshooting
  
  Investigates issues that pertain to provisioning virtual machine clouds, creating virtual machine roles, importing gallery items, and using Remote Console.
  
• Web Site Clouds and other Providers Troubleshooting
  
  Investigates issues that are related to deploying Web Sites, SQL Server, MySQL database, and providers for and features in Windows Azure Pack.

Check out the full new library content here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn554311.aspx

When you've managed to read through all this information, then why not take a look at the excellent Windows Azure Pack wiki for everything WAP related here.

 

Free Training on Azure and the Windows Azure Pack (WAP)

Yesterday I managed to get some time to participate in a very useful (and free) online webinar that was organised by my buddies over in the UK - Steve Beaumont and Simon Skinner - who run the excellent Cloud OS Community website and user group.

 

The guys managed to get my Irish MVP colleague Damian Flynn to put together a presentation on Microsoft's relatively new Windows Azure Pack (which is designed for on premise private cloud/ IT infrastructure management) and how it compares to the public cloud Windows Azure model. Although I've a pretty good understanding of the Windows Azure Pack, this session has come at a good time for me because I'm currently in the process of working through our own (Ergo's) deployments of it for our datacentre and customer offerings.

The session was just over an hour long with some very useful Q & A's throughout and not even a day after the event, the guys have uploaded the video along with all of the links that were mentioned during the session.

If you have some time and are interested in learning about this cool new technology, then I'd highly recommend checking out the content here:

http://www.cloudoscommunity.com/blogs/cid/3951/Windows-Azure-Pack-Webinar

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.

System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Azure Pack Evaluation Guide Available for Download!

With todays release of the new R2 (Blue) preview bits, Microsoft have also made available the System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Azure Pack Evaluation Guide.

This document contains a full walkthrough of the deployment process for the hardware and software required to deploy the new preview bits.

If you're planning on downloading and installing the R2 preview bits over the coming days/weeks, I'd highly recommend taking the time to review the contents of this guide to ensure you get them deployed properly.

You can get the guide here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39297