Jan022020January 2, 2020January 2, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Microsoft Ignite The Tour Milan 2020

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2020 Shenzhen

Posted in Certification, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Events, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Virtualization, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019

One of our big projects this year is going to be Microsoft Ignite The Tour (MITT) 2019-2020. After our leading Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference in Orlando in November 2019, we started to bring Microsoft Ignite The Tour to 30 cities around the world. I am happy and honored that my first stop on Microsoft Ignite The Tour will be in Shenzhen.

  • Date: January 13–14, 2020
Shenzhen

Microsoft Ignite The Tour Shenzhen

Our industry-leading conference is hitting the road—and coming to a city near you. You don’t want to miss the very latest in cloud technologies and developer tools with guest speakers, industry experts, and more. Get on the list today!

I will be speaking in the Microsoft Ignite The Tour learning paths. I am thrilled to show you some really cool stuff about PowerShell, Windows Server 2019, Windows Admin Center, Azure Arc, and much more!

MITT

MSI20 - Hybrid management technologies

Tailwind Traders has now migrated the majority of their server hosts from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2019. Now, they are interested in the Azure hybrid technologies that are readily available to them. In this session, learn how Tailwind Traders began using Windows Admin Center and Azure Arc to manage its fleet of Windows Server computers and integrated hybrid technologies, such as Azure File Sync, Azure Site Recovery, and Azure Update Management, to improve deployment performance and manageability.

MITT

MSI30 - Migrating IaaS workloads to Azure

Now that the migration of their server hosts from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2019 is complete, Tailwind Traders wants to begin the process of “lift and shift”: migrating some of their on-premises VMs they’ve been running in their datacenter. In this session, learn about how Tailwind Traders began the process of migrating some of their existing VM workloads to Azure and how this allowed them to retire aging server hardware and close datacenter and server rooms that were costing the organization a substantial amount of money.

I am looking forward to speaking at Microsoft Ignite The Tour (MITT) 2019-2020 in Shenzhen, China. Let me know in the comments if you are going too; I hope to see you there!


Dec312019December 31, 2019December 31, 20192Commentsby Thomas Maurer
My 2019

My 2019 – See you in 2020

Posted in Blog, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Thomas Maurer

This is my last blog in 2019. I just came back from my last trip this year to Amsterdam, and I am happy to spend a couple of relaxing days with my friends and girlfriend at home before we start in 2020. 2019 was a fantastic, intense, and challenging year, with a lot of learnings and a lot of good things happening. Since I have joined Microsoft in February 2019, I had the opportunity to face new challenges and work with great people around the world.

I want to take the time to thank all my friends, colleagues, supporters, blog readers, and followers for everything. People who read, like, comment, and share my blogs and tweets. People who listen to my talks and videos. People with who I had the chance to have great conversations. People who tell me what I can do better. You all give me the motivation and energy to keep on doing this.

2019 Year

I had the chance to travel around the world, engage with the community, learn, make new friends, and being love. For that, I am happy and thankful and that the hard work pays off.

2019 was full of highlights, like the Windows Insider MVP award, joining Microsoft, my first presentations working for Microsoft, traveling, speaking at community conferences and events, Microsoft Ignite 2019, new devices, and many more. It is hard to name them all, so I just named a few.

I am looking forward to 2020 and starting a new decade full of new challenges and experiences and start traveling to different cities around the world.

Happy New Year! 🥂🎉🥳 And keep learning Azure!

– Thomas


Dec272019December 27, 2019December 27, 20197Commentsby Thomas Maurer
How to Learn Microsoft Azure in 2020

How to Learn Microsoft Azure in 2020

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Certification, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Work

The year 2019 is almost over, and usually, we take the time to look back at the year and also to find some New Year’s resolutions for the new year. Why not take all that energy and prepare for the cloud computing era and advance your career by learning Microsoft Azure. In this post, I try to give you a quick look at how you can get started to learn Microsoft Azure in 2020.

Azure hands-on experience

There is nothing better than hands-on experience, so get started with a free Azure account. Your Azure free account includes a limited quantity of free services for 12 months. Within these limits, you have the flexibility to use the free services in various configurations to meet your needs.

Learn with Free Azure services

Learn with Free Azure services

To learn more, see the Azure free account FAQ

Free Azure Account

Create free Azure Account ☁

Create your Azure free account today and get started with 12 months of free services!

Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Learn was introduced at Ignite 2018 as a free learning platform for a lot of different Microsoft technologies, not just Azure. Microsoft Learn provides you with various learning paths depending on your job role or the skills you are looking for. Most of the learning paths give you a hands-on learning opportunity so that you can develop practical skills through interactive training. And it is free! You get instant in-browser access to Microsoft tools and modules, no credit card required.

Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Learn 🎓

Up your game with a module or learning path tailored to today’s IT Pro, developer, and technology masterminds and designed to prepare you for industry-recognized Microsoft certifications.

Become Microsoft Azure Certified

Another great option to learn and verify your skills is to take Microsoft Azure certification exams. A couple of months back, I wrote a series of blog posts on why you should become Microsoft Azure certified, how you prepare for Microsoft Azure exams, and how you take and pass Microsoft certification exams. Taking the new role-based Microsoft certification exams will help you to find the right topics and structure to learn, depending on your current or future job role you are looking for.

Microsoft Certification

Microsoft Certification

Earn certifications that show you are keeping pace with today’s technical roles and requirements.

If you are just getting started with Azure, have a look at the AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam. You can also have a look at my experience with the different Azure exam certifications:

More resources to learn Azure in 2020

There are a couple of more resources I want to point you to, to get started and learn Microsoft Azure in 2020.

Azure Architecture Center

Azure Architecture Center

  • Azure Architecture Center – The Azure Architecture Center contains guidance for building end-to-end solutions on Microsoft Azure. Here you will find reference architectures, best practices, design patterns, scenario guides, and reference implementations.
  • Cloud Adoption Framework – The Cloud Adoption Framework is the One Microsoft approach to cloud adoption in Azure, consolidating, and sharing best practices from Microsoft employees, partners, and customers. The framework gives customers a set of tools, guidance, and narratives that help shape technology, business, and people strategies for driving desired business outcomes during their adoption effort. This guidance aligns to the following phases of the cloud adoption lifecycle, like Strategy, Plan, Ready, Migrate, Innovate, Govern, and Manage.
  • Azure Migration Center – Get all the tools and resources you need to migrate your apps, data, and infrastructure at your own pace, with confidence.
  • Azure Architecture Framework – A successful cloud solution requires to focus on these five pillars of architecture excellence: Cost, DevOps, Resiliency, Scalability, and Security. The Azure Architecture Framework helps you to build on these pillars.
  • Application architecture guide – The Azure Application Architecture Guide presents a structured approach for designing applications on Azure that are scalable, resilient, and highly available. It is based on proven practices that we have learned from customer engagements.
  • Azure Cloud Design Patterns – The Azure Cloud Design Patterns are useful for building reliable, scalable, secure applications in the cloud. Each pattern describes the problem that the pattern addresses, considerations for applying the pattern, and an example based on Microsoft Azure. Most of the patterns include code samples or snippets that show how to implement the pattern on Azure.
  • Azure Reference Architectures – The Reference Architectures are a set of recommended architectures for Azure. Each architecture includes best practices, prescriptive steps, and a deployable solution.
  • Architectural decision guides – The architectural decision guides in the Cloud Adoption Framework describe patterns and models that help when creating cloud governance design guidance.
  • Cloud Operating model – Establish an operating model for the cloud
  • Get started guide for Azure developers – The get started guide helps developers to get started with Azure and tools.
  • Azure Quickstart Templates – Deploy Azure resources through the Azure Resource Manager with community contributed templates to get more done. Deploy, learn, fork, and contribute back.
  • Code samples – Get started with Microsoft developer tools and technologies. Explore our samples and discover the things you can build.
  • Azure Hybrid – Learn about Azure Hybrid Cloud with features and services like Azure Stack, Azure Arc, and many more.
  • Azure for AWS Professionals – This article helps Amazon Web Services (AWS) experts understand the basics of Microsoft Azure accounts, platform, and services. It also covers key similarities and differences between the AWS and Azure platforms.
  • Azure Security – Learn about Azure and security
  • Azure compliance – Get an overview of compliance in Microsoft Azure, with more than 90 compliance offerings
  • Azure privacy – Learn more about Azure data privacy and protection.
  • Service Level Agreements (SLA) – Read the SLAs to learn about our uptime guarantees and downtime credit policies.
  • Azure pricing – learn about how Azure pricing works and how you can save costs and get the best value at every stage of your cloud journey.
  • TCO Calculator – Estimate the cost savings you can realize by migrating your workloads to Azure.
  • Azure Support Plans – Explore the range of Azure support options and choose the plan that best fits, whether you’re a developer just starting your cloud journey or a large organization deploying business-critical, strategic applications.

I hope these resources give you a great summary of how you can start learning Azure in 2020. If you have any questions, or you feel that some resources are missing, let me know in the comments. Also, subscribe to my blog to learn about the latest updates.


Dec242019December 24, 2019December 24, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Video Microsoft Ignite Live 2019 - Azure Stack HCI

Video Microsoft Ignite Live 2019 – Azure Stack HCI

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Server Core, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019, Work

At Microsoft Ignite 2019, I had the chance to interview different people across the Microsoft product groups on the Microsoft Ignite Live stage. In the next couple of weeks, I will share with you the links to the recordings of these videos. In this video, I was able to speak to Cosmos Darwin from the Windows Server team about how to get started with Azure Stack HCI. Azure Stack HCI is another part of the Microsoft Azure Stack portfolio, next to Azure Stack Hub and Azure Stack Edge.

Microsoft Ignite Live

Video: Azure Stack HCI

Hyperconverged infrastructure is rapidly becoming the most common way to deploy servers. Join Cosmos Darwin from the Azure Stack HCI team to how affordable and approachable HCI can be!

Azure Stack HCI is a hyper-converged Windows Server 2019 cluster that uses validated hardware to run virtualized workloads on-premises. You can also optionally connect to Azure services for cloud-based backup, site-recovery, and more. Azure Stack HCI solutions use Microsoft-validated hardware to ensure optimal performance and reliability and include support for technologies such as NVMe drives, persistent memory, and remote-direct memory access (RDMA) networking.

Azure Stack HCI is a solution that combines several products:

  • Hardware from an OEM partner
  • Windows Server 2019 Datacenter edition
  • Windows Admin Center
  • Azure services (optional)

I hope this gives you a short overview of Azure Stack HCI. You can check out the following links to get more information:

Microsoft Ignite 2019 was a lot of fun, and you can also watch my session about Hybrid Cloud Management at Microsoft Ignite. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.


Dec192019December 19, 2019December 19, 20193Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Surface Pro X Windows 10 on ARM WSL 2

How to Install WSL 2 on Windows 10 on ARM

Posted in Hardware, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Surface, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10

This is just a quick blog post about the experience on running the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) on Windows 10 on ARM, which comes on devices like the Surface Pro X. Since I got many questions from developers and IT Pros about the Surface Pro X and how it can handle different workflows on Windows 10 on ARM, I decided to write a blog post, on how you can install WSL 2 on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X.

Requirements

You need a device that runs Windows 10 on ARM like the Surface Pro X. Yes, WSL 2 works on the Surface Pro X, and you can run Ubuntu 18.04, which comes as an ARM compiled distro. But you will need to install at Windows Insider build (19041 or higher, also known as Windows 10 20H1 or Windows 10 version 2004). And yes, if you are running an Intel or AMD based machine, you can also install and run WSL 2 on Windows 10.

Install Windows 10 on ARM Windows Insider Build

Install Windows 10 on ARM Windows Insider Build

To run Windows 10 Insider Builds, you can go to Settings, Update & Security, and the Windows Insider Program and join the program. If you get asked to choose the Ring, you will need to select the Insider Slow Ring. You will need to reboot your machine and check for updates, to install the Windows Insider builds.

Install WSL 2 on Windows 10 on ARM

To install the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2), you need to follow these tasks.

  • Enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux Optional feature (WSL 1 and WSL 2)
  • Install a distro for the Windows Subsystem for Linux
  • Enable the ‘Virtual Machine Platform’ optional feature (WSL 2)
  • Configure the distro to use WSL 2

Enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux and Virtual Machine Platform

Windows 10 on ARM Control Panel WSL2

Windows 10 on ARM Control Panel WSL2

You can enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and the Virtual Machine Platform feature in the Control Panel or with PowerShell.

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
 
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform

These commands will need a reboot of the machine.

Install a Linux distro for the Windows Subsystem for Linux

If you don’t already have installed a WSL distro, you can download and install it from the Windows 10 store. You can find more here: Crazy times – You can now run Linux on Windows 10 from the Windows Store.

Install Ubuntu ARM WSL 2 Windows Store on the Surface Pro X

Install Ubuntu ARM WSL 2 Windows Store on the Surface Pro X

If you want to run a full Ubuntu virtual machine on Windows 10 Hyper-V, you can check out my blog post.

Set WSL distro to use version 2

After you completed the first two steps, you will need to configure the distro to use WSL 2. Run the following command to list the available distros in PowerShell:

wsl -l -v

If this command doesn’t work with the -v parameter, you don’t have the right Windows 10 build installed.

To set a distro to WSL 2, you can run the following command:

wsl --set-version DistroName 2
Convert to WSL 2

Convert to WSL 2

You can also set WSL 2 as the default. You can also run the command before you start the Linux distro for the first time, which will give you faster setup speeds.

wsl --set-default-version 2

To find out more about installing WSL 2, check out the Microsoft Docs page.

After you have enabled WSL 2 you can see that WSL 1 was running kernel version 4.4.0.

WSL 1 Kernel Version

WSL 1 Kernel Version

 

WSL 2 is running Linux kernel version 4.19.84

WSL 2 Kernel Version

WSL 2 Kernel Version

You can also see, that this is an ARM version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu ARM

Ubuntu ARM

Conclusion

I hope this helps you and gives you a quick overview on how you can install WSL 2 on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments and check out the WSL 2 FAQ. The Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Kernel is also open-source, you can follow the project on GitHub.

By the way, you can now also start using Docker Desktop together with the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 and even use WSL 2 on Windows Server.


Dec172019December 17, 2019December 17, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Video Microsoft Ignite Live 2019 - Hyper-V Containers

Video Microsoft Ignite Live – Hyper-V and Containers

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Containers, Docker, Hyper-V, Kubernetes, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Server Core, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Work

This is the last set of recordings of Microsoft Ignite Live stage recordings I am going to share. Today I am going to share two videos, in one I had the chance to speak with Craig Wilhite and Vinicius Apolinario about why you should care about containers and how to get started. In the second one, I spoke with Ben Armstrong from the Hyper-V team about some of the great fun bits the team is doing.

Microsoft Ignite Live

Video: Windows Container

A lot has been said about containers recently, but why should you care? Containers are not an “all or nothing” situation and understanding when they can be beneficial is key to a successful implementation. Come and learn from the containers team how you can get started with this technology and some tips and tricks that will help you with your containerization journey!

Microsoft Ignite Live

Video: Hyper-V

Ben Armstrong, Principal Program Manager on the Hyper-V team talks about some of the challenging, interesting, quirky, and just fun changes that have happened in virtualization over the last year.

I hope this gives you a quick look at some of the fun parts the Hyper-V team is doing with containers and Hyper-V. You can check out the following links to get more information:

Microsoft Ignite 2019 was a lot of fun, and you can also watch my session about Hybrid Cloud Management at Microsoft Ignite. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.


Dec112019December 11, 2019December 11, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Azure Advent Calendar Azure Arc

Azure Advent Calendar 2019 – Azure Arc for Servers

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

The Azure Advent Calendar is a great initiative by Microsoft MVPs Gregor Suttie and Richard Hooper. Over the course of 25 days, the community creates and released 75 videos about Azure technologies and topics. I am happy to be part of the community and release an Azure Advent Calendar 2019 video on Azure Arc for Servers.

 

Azure Arc for servers allows customers to manage and govern servers across their hybrid cloud environment, Windows and Linux servers running in Azure, on-premises, at the edge, and in a multi-cloud environment. You can use the Azure cloud-native management technologies included in Azure Resource Manager to manage and govern server on any infrastructure.

Azure Arc consists of a set of different technologies and components like:

  • Organize and govern all your servers – Azure Arc extends Azure management to physical and virtual servers anywhere. Govern and manage servers from a single scalable management pane. You can learn more about Azure Arc for servers here.
  • Manage Kubernetes apps at scale – Deploy and configure Kubernetes applications consistently across all your environments with modern DevOps techniques.
  • Run data services anywhere – Deploy Azure data services in moments, anywhere you need them. Get simpler compliance, faster response times, and better security for your data. You can learn more here.
  • Adopt cloud technologies on-premises – Bringing cloud-native management to your hybrid environment. You can learn more about Azure Arc for servers here.
Watch now!

Watch Azure Arc Video

Here you can watch the Azure Arc Video from the Azure Advent Calendar 2019.

You can find and watch the video about Azure Arc for servers here. If you want to see more Azure Advent Calendar videos, you can check the Azure Advent Calendar website and the Youtube channel.

I hope you enjoy the video if you have any question about the Azure Advent Calendar 2019 video and Azure Arc for servers, please feel free to leave a comment.



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    Thomas Maurer

    My name is Thomas Maurer. I am a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. I am part of the Azure engineering team (Cloud + AI) and engage with the community and customers around the world. I am located in Switzerland. I am focusing on Microsoft technologies, especially cloud and datacenter solutions based on Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack and Windows Server. Opinions are my own.

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