Azure and PowerShell

Been working into Azure and using PowerShell the last couple of weeks, so therefore I thought that I would share some of my scripts that found in handy.
First of you need to make sure you have installed Azure Powershell cmdlets and connected to your account. https://msandbu.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/managing-windows-azure-via-windows-powershell/
You can read my previous post to get started, but some scripts I’ll make post later in the post.
But also make sure that you visit the documentation on Microsoft site à
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj152841.aspx

I also recommend that you take a look at Michael Washam’s blog à
http://michaelwasham.com/

Get Datacenter Location
Get-AzureLocation

Shows what kind of Locations and what services it has available.
End
List out Image names available from Quick Wizard
Get-AzureVMImage | ft Imagename

Create Quick VM (Before you do this you need to select a storage account Get-AzureStorageAccount | Select StorageAccountName ) or Set-AzureStorageAccount -StorageAccountName
New-AzureQuickVM -Windows
-ServiceName konge -Name msandbutest2222222 -ImageName fb83b3509582419d99629ce476bcb5c8__Microsoft-SQL-Server-2012SP1-Web-CY13SU04-SQL11-SP1-CU3-11.0.3350.0 -Location “West Europe” -Password SupermanUpandAtom.
This will create a VM with with the service name of Konge and the vm name of msandbutest2222222.cloudapp.net and use the default image for SQL server 2012 and located in West Europe and with the password of SupermanUpandAtom.

Add Endpoint to a VM
Get-AzureVM -ServiceName konge
-Name “msandbu222222″ | Add-AzureEndpoint -Name “HttpIn”
-Protocol “tcp”
-PublicPort 80 -LocalPort 8080 | Update-AzureVM

VM Batch Creation
(First we have to define a config for a VM and create a VM there or we can create a batch)

New-AzureVMConfig -Name $vm1 -InstanceSize Medium -ImageName $img |
Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -Windows
-Password $pwd |
Add-AzureDataDisk -CreateNew
-DiskLabel ‘data’ -DiskSizeInGB 10 -LUN 0 |
Add-AzureEndpoint -Name ‘web’ -PublicPort 80 -LocalPort 80 -Protocol tcp |

New-AzureVM -ServiceName $newSvc -Location $location (Now we could either use all the config here and create a new VM or we could define multiple varibles for batch provisioning with a defined instancesize.

$vm1 = New-AzureVMConfig -Name ‘myvm1′ -InstanceSize ‘Small’ -ImageName $img | Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -Windows
-Password $pwd
$vm2 = New-AzureVMConfig -Name ‘myvm1′ -InstanceSize ‘Small’ -ImageName $img | Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -Windows
-Password $pwd
$vm3 = New-AzureVMConfig -Name ‘myvm1′ -InstanceSize ‘Small’ -ImageName $img | Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -Windows
-Password $pwd

New-AzureVM -CreateService
-ServiceName $cloudSvcName -VMs $vm1,$vm2,$vm3 -Location $dc.

Or we can use an array to create multiple VMs;

$vmcount = 5
$vms = @()
for($i = 0; $i -lt 5; $i++)

{

$vmn = ‘myvm’ + $i
$vms += New-AzureVMConfig -Name $vmn -InstanceSize ‘Small’ -ImageName $img |
Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -Windows
-Password $pwd |
Add-AzureDataDisk -CreateNew
-DiskLabel ‘data’ -DiskSizeInGB 10 -LUN 0 |
Add-AzureDataDisk -CreateNew
-DiskLabel ‘logs’ -DiskSizeInGB 10 -LUN 1

}

New-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName -VMs $vms -Location $dc.

VM Provisioning config setup
New-AzureVMConfig -Name "MyDomainVM" -InstanceSize Small -ImageName $img ` | Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -WindowsDomain –Password $Password -ResetPasswordOnFirstLogon -JoinDomain "test.local" -Domain "test" -DomainUserName "domainadminuser" -DomainPassword "domainPassword" -MachineObjectOU 'OU=AzureVMs,DC=test,DC=no' | New-AzureVM -ServiceName $svcName

(Note that the domain part here requires that a DNS server can fully locate the domain controller)

or we can also define DNS server settings

Deploy a new VM and join it to the domain

#Specify DC's DNS IP (10.4.3.1)

$myDNS = New-AzureDNS -Name 'testDC13' -IPAddress '10.4.3.1'

# Operating System Image to Use

$image = 'MSFT__Sql-Server-11EVAL-11.0.2215.0-08022012-en-us-30GB.vhd'

$service = 'myazuresvcindomainM1'

$AG = 'YourAffinityGroup'

$vnet = 'YourVirtualNetwork'

$pwd = 'p@$$w0rd'

$size = 'Small'

#VM Configuration

$vmname = 'MyTestVM1'

$MyVM1 = New-AzureVMConfig -name $vmname -InstanceSize $size -ImageName $image | Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -WindowsDomain -Password $pwd -Domain 'corp' -DomainPassword 'p@$$w0rd' -DomainUserName 'Administrator' -JoinDomain 'test.local '| Set-AzureSubnet -SubnetNames 'SubnetName'

New-AzureVM -ServiceName $service -AffinityGroup $AG -VMs $MyVM1 -DnsSettings $myDNS -VNetName $vnet

Add new Data Disk to existing Virtual Machine (Make note that a datadisk has a 1 TB max limit)

Get-AzureVM -ServiceName 'myvm1' |   Add-AzureDataDisk -CreateNew
					-DiskSizeInGB 10  -DiskLabel 'myddisk' -LUN 1 |   Update-AzureVM 

Get RDP file for VM
Get-AzureRemoteDesktopFile -ServiceName "myservice"
											-Name "MyVM-01_IN_0" –Launch 


To be updated…..

Managing Azure with Linux

Microsoft has done a lot of work behind and Azure and particularly on the management part. I have previously written about how to manage Microsoft Azure via PowerShell in Windows,
this post is going to show how to manage it using Linux (In this case the latest release of Ubuntu) 

 

First, we need to install some prerequisites, open terminal and install node.js

 

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties python g++ make
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nodejs

After that is done, you can install the azure-cli

 

sudo npm install azure-cli –g

 

Now after that is done you can run the azure command from terminal.

Now the command prefix is “azure command” you can use azure help to get a list of commands available. Now in order to actually do something against our Azure account we need to download our publish settings.
Go get it we have to run the command

azure account download

This command will redirect you to a website and there you will need to login and it will generate a publish file.

Now we have to import the publish file. Run the command

azure account import filename

Now that we have that in place we are now free to play around. Let’s start by creating an VM from one of the images in the Azure store.
For instance 2008R2, we start by listing out the images.

azure vm image list (This will show all the images available from the Azure Store)

Next we should to have an affinity-group to bind the VM to, in my case I already had a group in place, if you need to create one just run the command

azure account affinity-group create

If not we can just specify a location during the creation. So lets create an VM with the 2008r2 image with the command

azure vm create “nameofvm” “imagename” “username” –location “West US” and then you need to specify a password during the creation.

We can now see that the VM is running in the management portal

if we use the command azure vm list we can see all the vm’s

Now I did create a endpoint for this computer in the management portal (but you can do so by using the command)
azure vm “vmname” endpoint create 3389 3389 (This will create an endpoint which is public accessible on 3389 (which is the RDP port)

Then I can fire up rdesktop to my Azure server.

Now that is great I’m all set. I have RDP available and I have CLI based management, so what about Linux VM’s?
Linux is mostly managed using SSH and in order to use this against Azure we need to create a digital certificate.
So by using the openssl tool we create a certificate file that we need to upload to Azure

Run the command

openssl –req –x509 –nodes –days 365 –newkey rsa:2048 –keyout myPrivateKey.key –out myCert.pem

(The Pem files needs to be uploaded to Azure and we use the Privatekey to authenticate.

Run chmod 600 to change the security of the key file (For safety reasons)
Now we can either create a linux vm with the management portal or using CLI

If we go with the CLI approach we using the same command as before but use the –e 22 (for enabling SSH on port 22) and –t and specify the cert file.

With the management portal we have a option to upload a certificate file.

After the VM is provisioned and running to can use any SSH client to authenticate against it, (Just remember to specify the key file)

ssh –l “username” –i mykeyfile –p portnr dnsname.

And there we go, SSH available as well.
A bit concerning that Azure supports rdesktop (Don’t get me wrong that good) by that means that NLA is not activated by default and the last year we had a lot of security holes with the RDP protocol where NLA was not enabled.

Dell Integration with SCCM 2012

There

A lot out there are using some sort of Dell hardware; it is either regular clients (laptops etc) or servers. What many do not know is that Dell has a bunch of integration packs that you can use directly in System Center. I thought I would give you a quick walkthrough of what these integrations can do and what else you can do in general with Dell and System Center 2012 SP1.

During MMS Dell promised that, they would release the Integration pack for Configuration Manager any time soon, and it was recently released.
It is free and it can be downloaded from Dell here à http://dell.to/15baoKx

This pack gives us
* Warranty Status
* Out-of-band management
* OMCI
* CCTK (Which is Dell’s solution to BIOS configuration)
* New Task sequences and reports.

And we also have the server deployment pack à
http://dell.to/161KDvM

* Which can be used to create task sequences
* Import drivers from ISO images
* Create RAID setup for Dell Servers.

Now after you have installed these “addons” on the Configuration Manager Server you will get some new views in the Console.
Under Packages you now have the possibility to create a PowerEdge Server Deployment.

The Deployment Toolkit Configuration Wizard allows you to integrate a DTK package into a custom image.
The two Client Integration Packs offer you an import function from an existing config that is created for the two.

For instance CCTK can be used to create an client package on clients computers on what options it should have, for instance create BIOS Passwords. Enable TPM on computers and passwords etc.
You can see more about it here à
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/m/white_papers/20209083.aspx

If we check on the OS deployment pane we have a lot of options for Server deployments.

When creating a PE Server deployment template you can automatically create much of the config.

If you are unsure of how you create the XML files needed you can just click view on the sample files, they are pretty intuitive.

The Client Integration pack also comes with a Intel AMT plugin which can be used to create USB drives with an AMT configuration (For instance deploying CA files in order to set it up)

There is also an other integration pack for Servers, which can be used to communicate with the OpenManage products à

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/software/b/software/archive/2012/04/02/dellopenmanageintegrationsuiteformicrosoftsystemcenter.aspx
Make note that this does not work with Service Pack 1 of System Center.

For instance the LifeCycle controller integration is still not Service Pack 1 ready as well à
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails?driverId=G9KT7

Other info:
SCVMM 2012 and Dell Equallogic integration à
http://dell.to/18eoaLo
Leveraging PowerShell and Dell CIM à
http://dell.to/ZMmEJt
Management Pack for SC Operations manager à
http://dell.to/11E2nre

Atlantis ILIO

So I just recently attended a technical training of Atlantis ILIO and I had just a minor clue of how the stuff worked before I attended the training. Atlantis has been in the marked a couple of years and has already won a lot of awards at both VMworld and Citrix Synergy. Therefore since I didn’t fully understand it myself I thought I would spend this post to explain how Atlantis works.

Their main products are Atlantis ILIO Persistent VDI and Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI. (In addition, a couple of other products, which I will come back to later.
Now the entire idea behind Atlantis is using RAM as Storage for VDI environments. Sound like a good idea right?
In a traditional VDI environment, I would have a pretty decent SAN where I would store all my VDI’s and a virtualization host and some redundant network equipment in between.

So here I would need a good setup between the desktops running on the virtualization hosts, the network and the SAN in the backend. So If I deploy a VDI environment on really high performance virtualization hosts and a really high speed network but on a slow SAN solution im screwed.
The desktop for the users, would most likely behave like an old faction computer running on a 7200 RPM disk. If you remember those running on PATA cables they can deliver around 75 – 100 IOPS. Most users today are used to using SSD on their laptop computers and they except that a centralized computer environment with expensive equipment should be at least as quick as their regular computer (because if it is slower then they are used to, they will switch back to their regular computers)

Now an SSD drive have a MUCH higher IOPS then a regular drives since they don’t have spindles. My SSD drive can deliver about 6700 IOPS (Via IOmeter). (On 4KB) so which of them deliver the best performance my SSD or the 7200 RPM disk? J

So back to Atlantis, what it does is that it uses RAM as primary storage for VDI. Meaning that it exposes RAM on the virtualization host as a storage unit for the virtual desktops (Now RAM is volatile meaning that data is erased when the system is turned off but I’ll come back to the later how Atlantis handles this) Now Atlantis is a virtual appliance which runs on the virtualization host (Vmware, XenServer or Hyper-V 2) and you give it as much RAM as possible for use at storage.

So we setup Atlantis we define how we want to expose the RAM disk to the hypervisor (Which is either accessible via iSCSI or NFS) and then we need to connect this “storage” to the hypervisor and then start creating virtual desktops on the newly created storage. Atlantis also has a couple of features like inline deduplication & compression, which reduces the actual usage of ram to a minimum. (Since in many virtual desktops environment a lot of the data is duplicate (OS, Data, apps) we can save up to maybe 80% data.

Brian Madden has done a quick test to show actually how much a virtual desktop uses.
(On a per desktop basis, this means that each VM is using 28GB on average (40GB allocated) of virtual storage, but that is consuming only 1.5GB of physical RAM per desktop.)

Now we can increase the density of virtual desktops on a hypervisor and they will have major improved IOPS since they all run in RAM. You can look at a test done here à
http://vimeo.com/34231558 to see the difference, with and without ILIO.
So this means that it easy to “move” to using Atlantis in an environment since it’s just a piece of software. Just have to create a VM with the amount of ram and create new desktops and you are ready to go.

A quick calculation of how many VD you can have on one host à

Virtual Desktops Supported = ( 512 GB in the host.
– 6 GB Reserved for Atlantis ILIO
             – 2 GB Reserved for the hypervisor) /
( 2 GB (For east VD) + 0.6 GB for RAM disk allocation) = 193 Desktops
This is with a 40 GB master image for Windows 7.

Now do not think that you now don’t need storage (You still do!) The Atlantis VM and the Hypervisor still needs to be placed somewhere, and if you are doing persistent VMs, you need to deploy Atlantis in another mode.
In the earlier releases, Atlantis did not do persistent desktops, only stateless but! they have a own release for persistent desktops where they have sorted out the placement and HA function of the VMs.

In this case (with persistent) we would need a Replication host in between that would sync all the persistent data from the other ILIO instances and deliver it to our SAN solution. This data is compressed and deduped so it does not use much storage.
We can also use this solution with XenApp and PVS. In that case, you would need to redirect the Write cache to the RAM disk.
Now we are talking cool stuff! J

So far, we have only been speaking about VDI solution, what if we could use this for other solutions? What if we could use this for other products like SQL databases, exchange or file servers?
Well its coming à
http://www.atlantiscomputing.com/products/flexcloud

BTW: You can read a reference guide for a huge Atlantis implementation here à
http://www.atlantiscomputing.com/downloads/10kSeat_Diskless_Reference_Implementation.pdf

Monitoring Hyper-V with Veeam One

I’m a huge fan of using Operations Manager for monitoring infrastructure, but in many cases, it’s just overkill.
However, I’m also a huge fan of Veeam, which has the right solution in place for the job, Veeam One.

Now veeam one which recently came out in version 6.5 allows you to monitor Vmware and Hyper-V infrastructure (with support for the latest version vSphere 5.1 and Hyper-V 2012)
It also allows for integration with Veeam backup and replication from the same console.

And it is pretty straightforward, it consist of the Veeam one server, which contains the database, and the server components which collects the data and does all the calculations and reports.
Then you have the Web UI, which is used to create reports against the one server. Then you have the Monitor Client which is the primary tool you are going to use to setup your infrastructure and this is the tool you are going to be using when adding your virtual infrastructure.

Now before you install these components check the firewall, there are some ports that you need to open

The installation is super easy and it installs all the prerequisites needed and SQL express as well,
After everything is installed you open the Veeam One Monitor client.

Make sure that the user are using to start the console with has rights on the Veeam One administrator or Veeam One users group on the veeam one server.

From here click client settings -> and enter the name of the veeam one server. After that is connected you can right click on virtual infrastructure and choose add server.

So in my case I have only hyper-v,

Next define a user which has admin access on the hyper-v server and choose connect.
So almost instant is starts gathering data about the server and the VM’s running on it.

You also have console access directly from this console.

It also comes equipped with many default alarms, which you can adjust, you can also make it send e-mail notifications or trigger a script or have it do multiple steps.

So a pretty easy and straight forward deployment of a complete monitoring solution for hyper-v and Vmware with the possibility of integration with Veeam Backup & Replication.

Customizing Storefront Interface for a stormtrooper

Since Citrix is going to kill of its previous web interface (version 5.4) solution, which is End of Maintance in 2014 (But hasn’t come with a new release since 2011) This is going to be replaced with StoreFront.
Storefront is also a part of Cloud gateway and is a key part of the remote access solution for Citrix.
And in Web Interface 5.4 we had huge options for customization, and therefore we have to explore the options we have with Storefront as well.

So this is how the default GUI looks like. Just like the Citrix receiver looks like but does not always fit everyone’s need.
So let’s go customizing. First of let’s declare where we can find the config files.

The web interface is installed by default in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\citrix\(“nameofstorefrontweb”)
And it contains numerous folders.

And as with web interface a lot can be done in the web.config file, like for instance define a path to Receiver clients.

And if you open default.html you can change the title and which JS and CSS the site uses.

So in order to change something the easiest way to find out it so use Internet Explorer and fire up developer tools or Chrome (Or Firefox with Firebug) (Since it makes it easier to inspect elemets).

This will show you what attribute is connected (if it is added by CSS or by a media file) but what I can start with is to change the background image, which is located in the “media” folder. First of the image bg_bubbles is the image file that is used in the background. Therefore, I downloaded a star wars image, changed its name to bg_bubbles.jpg, and changed the name of the previous one in the images folder. Make also note that a lot of the media is also contained in the uiaareas\ folder as well.

There much better! J

Now I wish to change the text that is displayed in the attributes domain\user is not particular useful.
Go to the inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\Authentication\App_Data\resources and look in the ExplicitCommonsForms.resx and you can alter the value.

So now let’s add some customization to the CSS file under contrib and customstyle.css
First advice as I said before use Firefox + Firebug, Chrome or IE with Developer tools to find what CSS container you need to change.

If we wish to change the logontext add this to your customstyle.css

/* Logon text color, alignment and size. */ #logonbox-logonform label{

color:red;

display:table-cell;

font-size:20px;

height:20px;

vertical-align:bottom;

}

Now if we wish to change the logo that appears when authenticating on the left side we have to go to the inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\MinWeb\uiareas\Authentication\media folder and change the logo_notagline picture
Not really pretty but It works.

Customizing Storefront Interface for a stormtrooper

Since Citrix is going to kill of its previous web interface (version 5.4) solution, which is End of Maintance in 2014 (But hasn’t come with a new release since 2011 ) This is going to be replaced with StoreFront.
Storefront is also a part of Cloud gateway and is a key part of the remote access solution for Citrix.
And in Web Interface 5.4 we had huge options for customization, and therefore we have to explore the options we have with Storefront as well.

So this is how the default GUI looks like. Just like the Citrix receiver looks like but does not always fit everyone’s need.
So let’s go customizing. First of let’s declare where we can find the config files.

The web interface is installed by default in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\citrix\(“nameofstorefrontweb”)
And it contains numerous folders.

And as with web interface a lot can be done in the web.config file, like for instance define a path to Receiver clients.

And if you open default.html you can change the title and which JS and CSS the site uses.

So in order to change something the easiest way to find out it so use Internet Explorer and fire up developer tools or Chrome (Since it makes it easier to inspect elemets). This will show you what attribute is connected (if it is added by CSS or by a media file) but what I can start with is to change the background image, which is located in the “media” folder. First of the image bg_bubbles is the image file that is used in the background. Therefore, I downloaded a star wars image, changed its name to bg_bubbles.jpg, and changed the name of the previous one in the images folder. Make also note that a lot of the media is also contained in the uiaareas\ folder as well.

There much better! J

Now I wish to change the text that is displayed in the attributes domain\user is not particular useful.
Go to the inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\Authentication\App_Data\resources and look in the ExplicitCommonsForms.resx and you can alter the value.

So now let’s add some customization to the CSS file under contrib and customstyle.css
First advice as I said before use Firefox + Firebug, Chrome or IE with Developer tools to find what CSS container you need to change.

If we wish to change the logontext add this to your customstyle.css

/* Logon text color, alignment and size. */ #logonbox-logonform label{

color:red;

display:table-cell;

font-size:20px;

height:20px;

vertical-align:bottom;

}

Now if we wish to change the logo that appears when authenticating on the left side we have to go to the inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\MinWeb\uiareas\Authentication\media folder and change the logo_notagline picture
Not really pretty but It works.

Changing base URL on Citrix Storefront

When setting up storefront for the first time you might forget to bind it to a certificate and make it over HTTPS.

So If you get a certificate and wish to change this to HTTPS later you have no visual options to change this.
You have to run a PowerShell script to change this. First, you have to alter the site binding on the IIS manager and allow for https traffic and bind it to a certificate.

Then you have to open a PowerShell promt as administrator à
Then run the set-executionpolicy unrestricted

Then run the script SetHostBaseUrl.ps1 from the folder C:\program files\citrix\receiver storefront\scripts
And this script requires so-called ‘dot-sourcing’ so you have to type the command as

. .\sethostbaseurl.ps1 “https://nameoftheurl.domain.domain”

After this is done you can refresh the Storefront console and voila!

Study Resources for 70-415 and 70-416

If you are planning (as myself) to go for the MSCE Desktop Infrastructure there is some core technologies that you need to be pretty familiar with.

* WDS 2012
* Configuration Manager 2012
* MDT 2012
* USMT 2012
* RDS + RemoteFX 2012
* WSUS 2012
* MAP 8
* App-V 5
* GPO

and how these solutions integrate with each other.
The exam is pretty much based around how to deliver a desktop or an application to the end-user with the technologies I mentioned above.
So here you will find some links to download and some resources I self-found useful

MDT 2012
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd407791.aspx

MAP (Is pretty much a agentless monitoring solution to see the usage of specific applications and see if your infrastructure is ready for migrate to the cloud or new versions of Windows)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd537566.aspx

Configuration Manager 2012
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682129.aspx (Technet site)
https://msandbu.wordpress.com/tag/sccm-2012/ (I also have numerous posts around the subject)
http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/4045-system-center-2012-configuration-manager-guides/ (Niall Brady also has a lot of guides you can find here)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh397288.aspx (Management of Boot Images)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg712266.aspx (Deployment PXE)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/systemcenter/bb741049.aspx (SCUP 2011)
http://blogs.technet.com/b/ptsblog/archive/2011/06/17/private-cloud-management-with-vmm-2012-part-3-adding-an-update-server-and-enable-orchestrated-update-management.aspx (Baseline with VMM 2012)

WDS 2012
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh974416.aspx (What new in 2012)

APP-V
http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2013/01/04/managing-app-v-5-virtual-applications-with-system-center-2012-configuration-manager-service-pack-1.aspx#.UXDX_LUo59U
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hh826068.aspx

WSUS
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720448(v=ws.10).aspx (Different deployment types.

RDS 2012
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831447.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2012/11/13/easier-user-data-management-with-user-profile-disks-in-windows-server-2012.aspx (User Profile disks)
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2012/11/26/remotefx-features-for-windows-8-and-windows-server-2012.aspx (RemoteFX)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ff817609%28v=ws.10%29.aspx (More RemoteFX)
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/7263.customizing-rd-webaccess.aspx (Customizing RDweb)
http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/windows-server-2012-virtual-desktop-infrastructure (VDI in Windows Server 2012)

ACT 5.6
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7352

Bitlocker Windows 8
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831412.aspx (What’s new)

Credential Roaming
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11483.credential-roaming.aspx
www.grouppolicy.biz/2012/03/how-to-configure-a-primary-computer-a-k-a-msds-primarycomputer-property-in-windows-8/ (Primary User in Windows 20212)

Working with ImageX
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749490%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

Event Viewer
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749408.aspx

Virtual Machine Servicing Tool
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30470

 

General Availability for Microsoft Azure IaaS

Microsoft just announced general availability of its IaaS solution on Microsoft Azure. Which allows you to host Virtual Machine in Azure.
In addition, this opens for more for a lot more possibilities for a hybrid cloud solutions think of the possibilities you have if you could migrate virtual machines to Azure when you are doing maintance or when you just do not have any resources available locally.
You can sign up for a free trial at 90 days -> microsoftazure.com to try it yourself

So what else is new in the Azure front?
Microsoft also announced some more exciting news.

• New VM Image Templates (including SQL Server, BizTalk Server, and SharePoint images)
  
• New VM Sizes (including Larger Memory Machines)
  
• New VM Prices (we’ve reduced prices 21%-33% for IaaS and PaaS VMs)
  

I have also written before about how to manage Windows Azure trough PowerShell https://msandbu.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/managing-windows-azure-via-windows-powershell/
Windows Azure as Disaster Recovery Solution à
https://msandbu.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/disaster-recovery-as-a-service-meet-azure/
And Integration with Orchestrator à
https://msandbu.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/azure-integration-pack-for-sp1-beta/

And Microsoft has also created a new management pack for deep monitoring on Azure resources including Virtual Machines. So these are truly exciting times.
One of the largest telecom company in the world (Telenor) which is primarily located in Norway has already embraced IaaS on Microsoft Azure; you can read more about how they used the cloud.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=710000002349

now in order to bridge the gap between your local cloud and the public cloud you need some form of gateway.
Citrix has recently announced that its platform Cloud gateway with added support for Azure, this allows you to bridge your Azure cloud with your private cloud.
https://www.citrix.com/downloads/cloudbridge/betas-and-tech-previews/cloudbridge-azure-integration (Note that this requires mycitrix login) This technology uses an IPsec tunnel to encrypt data back and forth and is transparent to all applications running over it.

Cloudbridge can be bought as an separate applicance or as a part of Netscaler.