Tag: Azure Stack

Nov142019November 14, 2019November 14, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Azure Hybrid Cloud Bus

An Overview at the New Azure Stack Portfolio

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Virtualization

Last week at the Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference, the Azure team announced a lot of new updates. One of the significant focus topics at this year’s Ignite was the investment in the Azure Hybrid Cloud offerings. Starting with the buses driving attendees to the conference venue, over the Ignite keynotes, to the expo floor and breakouts, Hybrid Cloud was everywhere. Today, organizations rely on a hybrid technology approach to take advantage of utilizing cloud innovation in combination with their on-premises investments. Azure is Hybrid by design, and Microsoft is continuing the investment in our hybrid cloud technologies with the announcements of Azure Arc (link) and the new Azure Stack portfolio (link). I already was able to get an early look at Azure Arc for Servers, in this post, I am going to focus on the new Azure Stack portfolio with Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack Edge, and Azure Stack HCI.

At and after Microsoft Ignite 2019, I got a lot of questions around the Azure Stack announcements. So in this blog, I want to give you a quick overview of that, and if you want to know more, check out the blog post from Talal Alqinawi, Senior Director Azure Marketing.

Azure Stack Portfolio

Azure Stack Portfolio

The Azure Stack family now consists of three members, Azure Stack Hub, formerly known as Azure Stack, Azure Stack HCI, and Azure Stack Edge (formerly known as Azure Databox Edge). This offers customers new capabilities, form factors, and solutions in the Azure Stack portfolio, to ensure that the customer has the right solutions for their edge infrastructure.

Azure Stack Hub

Azure Stack Hub (formerly known as Azure Stack) will continue to be the cloud-native offering for enterprise and public sector customers, especially those interested in operating a cloud environment that is disconnected from public internet or meeting regulatory and compliance requirements. It will continue to bring Azure services to locations where you need them. The Azure Stack Hub team also announced some new capabilities and features, which the team is working on:

  • Working on support for N-Series virtual machines (VMs) which included GPU support
  • Event Hubs Public Preview in 2020
  • Azure Stream Analytics Public Preview in 2020
  • General Availability (GA) of Kubernetes on Azure Stack with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) engine to automate the creation, update, and scaling of Kubernetes clusters.
  • Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) Private Preview
  • Azure Data Services with Azure Arc Private Preview

Azure Stack HCI

A couple of months ago, I already wrote a blog post about Azure Stack HCI, which enables customers to run a highly efficient hyper-converged virtualization infrastructure. From small 2-node deployments up to high-performance and high capacity clusters, the Azure Stack HCI catalog offers solutions for every scenario. Together with Windows Admin Center, you can also easily connect Azure hybrid solutions and services. With the new automated deployment of Azure Stack HCI clusters, it becomes even easier to deploy new installations. I had the chance to talk about this new feature with Cosmos Darwin on the Microsoft Ignite Live stage, and you can watch the recording here.

I also have an article on ITOpsTalk.com about how Azure Stack HCI fits into the Azure Hybrid Cloud offering.

Azure Stack Edge

Azure Stack Edge (formerly known as Azure Databox Edge) is an Azure managed appliance that brings the compute, storage, and intelligence of Azure to the edge.

Azure Stack Edge

Azure Stack Edge

This is a first-party appliance which customer can order and run as an Azure service with no upfront costs (billed monthly with your Azure bill). In addition to the name change, the Azure Stack Edge team also announced that it soon will be supporting new compute and AI features and capabilities like:

  • Virtual machines on Azure Stack Edge
  • Kubernetes clusters
  • NVIDIA GPU support
  • Support for high-availability

The Azure Stack Edge will also be available in a rugged version as well as in a battery-powered form-factor that can be carried in a backpack.

Azure Stack Edge Rugged series

Azure Stack Edge Rugged series

Azure Stack Edge Rugged series with battery

Azure Stack Edge Rugged series with battery

Next to talking to Cosmos Darwin about Azure Stack HCI, I was also able to have Stephanie Krieger and Chris Dickens on the Microsoft Ignite Live stage to talk about Azure Stack Edge. You can watch the recording here.

Hybrid Cloud in combination with Azure Arc

In conjunction with Azure Arc, which brings Azure services and management to any infrastructure. With Azure Arc, you can deploy Azure Data services on any Kubernetes cluster. Azure Arc and Azure Stack portfolio are complementary.

You can combine the benefits of Azure Arc with Azure Stack portfolio where Azure Arc can manage virtual machines, containers, and run Azure Data Services on Azure Stack portfolio of validated and integrated systems while leveraging the compute and cloud capabilities of Azure Stack.

If you want to know more about Azure Arc, check out my blog post, Azure Arc – Cloud-native Management for Hybrid Cloud, or you can watch my Microsoft Ignite 2019 session about Hybrid Cloud Management.

I hope this gives you an overview of the new Azure Stack portfolio, which was announced at Microsoft Ignite 2019. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.


Nov072019November 7, 2019November 7, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
CloudSkills FM Azure Arc and Hybrid Cloud Management

CloudSkills.fm Podcast – Azure Arc and Hybrid Cloud Management

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Blog, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Speaking

This week I am at Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando, where we launched great new products and services like Azure Arc. I was honored to be part of a CloudSkills.fm Podcast episode with Microsoft Azure MVP Mike Pfeiffer. CloudSkills.fm is a weekly podcast with technical tips and career advice for people working in the cloud computing industry. This show is for developers, IT pros, or anyone making a career move into the cloud.

CloudSkills.fm is a weekly podcast with technical tips and career advice for people working in the cloud computing industry. This show is for developers, IT pros, or anyone making a career move into the cloud. Episodes will be short and to the point and will regularly feature experts who share their experiences.

This show is hosted by Mike Pfeiffer, a twenty-year tech industry veteran, entrepreneur, Pluralsight author, and Microsoft Azure MVP. If you enjoy the show and want more tips delivered to your mailbox every week, subscribe to Cloud Computing Weekly at askmike.io/subscribe.

In this episode, we were talking about the new Hybrid Cloud announcements at Microsoft Ignite 2019, like Azure Arc, Azure Stack, and the new Performance Monitor in Windows Admin Center. Check out our episode right here.

CloudSkills.fm

CloudSkills.fm

046: Azure Arc and Hybrid Cloud Management In this episode I chat with Thomas Maurer, Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, about the new Azure Arc service and how to get started with hybrid cloud management. Azure Arc – Cloud-native Management for Hybrid Cloud New Performance Monitor for Windows Server Mastering Azure with Cloud Shell

It was a pleasure to meet Mike in person and be part of his fantastic podcast. So listen in and let me know what you think!


Oct312019October 31, 2019October 30, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Azure Stack Migration Series YouTube Playlist

Learn about Azure Stack Migration in this Video Series

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, SQL Server, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019

Together with Tiberiu Radu from the Azure Stack Product Group, I worked on a series of videos to show how you can migrate workloads to Microsoft Azure Stack. This includes basic workloads like Active Directory Domain Controllers, File Servers, and SQL Servers. We are not only adding videos about Azure Stack Migration, but we also added a couple of tips on how you can take advantage of some of the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) features on Azure Stack, like Azure Resource Manager templates and extensions.

The journey to the cloud provides many options, features, functionalities, as well as opportunities to improve existing governance, operations, implement new ones, and even redesign the applications to take advantage of the cloud architectures.
This video series was created in the context of the End of Support (EOS) motion for Windows Server 2008/2008R2 and SQL Server 2008/2008R2, with the target to highlight some of the migration options. The EOS program could be a good opportunity to start this process and it’s not only about the lift-and-shift or move your servers and forget about them, instead it could be the start of a modernization journey. As part of the EOS motion, Azure VMs running Windows 2008/R2 and SQL 2008/R2 on Azure and Azure Stack, offer 3 years of free Extended Support Updates. That means you can enable the same operational processes, use ARM templates, and use the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform on both Azure and Azure Stack, to start this journey.
– Tiberiu Radu

Azure Stack Migration Introduction

Check out my Azure Stack Migration introduction video, which will give you a quick overview of migrating workloads to Azure Stack.

Video Series

You can find the full playlist with the complete Azure Stack Migration video series on YouTube.

Azure Stack Migration Series YouTube Playlist

Azure Stack Migration Series YouTube Playlist

If you want to read more, check out my blog post on ITOpsTalk.com. There we have some detailed blogs on these videos. I also recommend that you check out the IaaS blog series from the Azure Stack team, which includes different features around running virtual machines on Azure Stack.

If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.


Oct102019October 10, 2019October 23, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI MVPDays

Speaking at the Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI MVPDays

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Microsoft MVP, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Virtualization, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019

I am happy to let you know that I will be speaking online at the Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI Day. The Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI is an online event, organized and presented by Microsoft MVPs as part of the MVPDays. MVPDays was founded by Cristal and Dave Kawula back in 2013. It started as a simple idea; “There’s got to be a good way for Microsoft MVPs to reach the IT community and share their vast knowledge and experience in a fun and engaging way”.

The Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI MVPDays is a full-day online event on October 23. you can find out more here. In my session, I will be speaking about Azure hybrid management services and how you can connect your Windows Server and Azure Stack HCI environment with Microsoft Azure.

MVPDays

Hybrid Management Technologies using Azure Stack HCI

Windows Server, Azure Stack HCI and Windows Admin Center not only provide you with great hyper-converged solutions but also enable you to connect to Azure Hybrid Cloud services. In this session, Thomas Maurer will show you how you can connect Azure services like Azure Site Recovery, Azure Backup, Azure File Sync, Azure Monitor and many more to your on-prem Windows Server and Azure Stack HCI environment.

As soon as it is available you can watch my session here:

And you will find the full MVPDays online event here.

If you want to know more about it check you the following blog posts:

I hope you will join us at the Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI MVPDays. Let me know if you have any questions.


Aug052019August 5, 2019August 5, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Techmentor 2019 Redmond

Speaking at Techmentor 2019

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Events, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Speaking, Virtualization, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019

I am currently on the Microsoft Redmond campus for some internal meetings and training, during the same time, there will be the Techmentor 2019 Microsoft HQ conference in Redmond. I am happy to announce that I will be one of the speakers during that conference. Since I am already on the Microsoft campus it is great to take some time to speak about some cool Azure things. Techmentor 2019 is a 5-day conference from August 5-9, 2019 on the Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond.

My Sessions at Techmentor 2019

I will be delivering two sessions about Cloud Shell and Azure Stack, as well as being part of a panel discussion.

TechMentor

A Look into the Hybrid Cloud Lifestyle of an Azure Stack Operator

Microsoft released Azure Stack as an Azure appliance for your datacenter. Learn what Azure Stack is, what challenges it solves, how you deploy, manage and operate Azure Stack in your datacenter. Learn about the features and services you will get by offering Azure Stack to your customers and how you can build a true Hybrid Cloud experience. In this presentation, Thomas Maurer (Microsoft MVP) will guide you through the highly anticipated innovations and experiences during the Azure Stack Early Adaption Program and Azure Stack Technology Adoption Program (TAP). You will learn: How to integrate Azure Stack into your Datacenter How to operate Azure Stack and how it is managed How to troubleshoot Azure Stack installations

TechMentor

Mastering Azure Using Cloud Shell, PowerShell, and Bash!

Azure can be managed in many different ways. Learn your command line options like Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI and Cloud Shell to be more efficient in managing your Azure infrastructure. Become a hero on the shell to manage the cloud!

You will learn:

What cloud Shell is
Some new things in PowerShell Az
Tips and tricks on Azure command line options

TechMentor

Supercharging Hyper-V with quantum computing

Okay, I am not really talking about quantum computing, but hey there are some cool features in Hyper-V you should definitely know about! In this session, Thomas Maurer will talk about “hidden” Hyper-V features everyone should know about. This covers different features for Hyper-V on Windows Server as well as on Windows 10, like Containers, Windows Sandbox, WSL 2, VM Gallery and much more. Be prepared for a lot of demos!

TechMentor

Panel Discussion: The Future of IT

If something is certain in IT it’s change. With the current pace of getting new operating system versions twice a year and keeping the management tools around them up to date it’s no wonder one feels a little dizzy with the amount of things to learn. Take this opportunity to hear from industry experts what is most important to focus on and how to deal with this rapid change in real life. The panel includes experts on multiple technologies and topics and will include a Q&A portion to get all your questions answered.

Want to experience IT training at the mothership? Join TechMentor this August as it heads to Microsoft Headquarters for a full week of training, featuring our NEW full-day Hands-On Labs. I hope to see you there!


Jul242019July 24, 2019November 17, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Thomas Maurer Speaking at Experts Live Europe

Speaking at Experts Live Europe 2019 in Prague

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Office365, PowerShell, Speaking, System Center, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019, Work

Today, I am proud to announce that I will be speaking at Experts Live Europe 2019 in Prague on November 20 – 22, 2019. This is a great honor, and it will be my 7th Experts Live Europe event I am speaking at, all the way back to the first event, when it still was called System Center Universe Europe. I have presented several sessions at each event previously hosted in Bern, Basel, Berlin, and Prague. This will be the second time Experts Live Europe will be hosted in the beautiful city of Prague, Czech Republic. I am looking forward to speaking at this Microsoft community event again. The conference has a strong focus on Microsoft Cloud, Datacenter, Security, and Modern Workplace topics and brings together the community from all over the world.

This year the conference will be three days again, with a pre-conference day including a couple of different pre-conference deep dives, as well as two main conference days with over 70 breakout sessions in 6 parallel tracks. This year the conference will have not only over 40 top expert speakers but also a vast Microsoft presence. You will not just find Microsoft Cloud Advocates and Program Managers, but people from all across the organization. Guess what, this is a perfect time to connect and network with us, but also with other members of the Microsoft community.

Another big highlight for me this year is the track specifically focusing on Windows Server and System Center, presented by Cloud Advocates, Program Managers, and Microsoft MVPs.

My sessions at Experts Live Europe 2019

I am happy that I will be speaking at Experts Live Europe 2019 in a couple of different sessions, and speaking about different technologies and topics like Azure Arc, Hyper-V, Windows Server 2019, Azure Stack and Certification.

Experts Live Europe 2019

Windows Server 2019 - The Next Generation of Software-Defined Datacenter

Join this session for the best of Windows Server 2019, about the new innovation and improvements of Windows Server and Windows Admin Center. Learn how Microsoft enhances the SDDC feature like Hyper-V, Storage, and Networking and get the most out of the new Azure Hybrid Cloud Integration and Container features. You’ll get an overview of the new, exciting improvements that are in Windows Server and how they’ll improve your day-to-day job. In this presentation Thomas Maurer (Microsoft MVP) will guide you through the highly anticipated innovations in Windows Server 2019 and the Semi-Annual Channel including: ○ Windows Server Containers ○ Azure Integration ○ Hyper-V features ○ Storage ○ Networking ○ Security ○ Windows Admin Center And more!

Experts Live Europe 2019

How to become Azure Certified!

With Cloud Computing becoming more and more important, proofing your skills and becoming certified will not only boost your career but will also make you more successful in your job! In this session, you will learn why you should become Microsoft Azure Certified, what different Azure exam certification paths there are available, how you prepare, take, and pass an exam. This session will focus on the overall available Microsoft Azure Certifications.

Experts Live Europe 2019

Azure Stack Experts Panel

Join this global list of Azure Stack Experts for an open question and answer session as we discuss real world scenarios.

Experts Live Europe 2019

Altaro: Supercharging with Hyper-V

There are some cool features in Hyper-V you should definitely know about! In this session, Thomas Maurer will talk about “hidden” Hyper-V features everyone should know about. This covers different features for Hyper-V on Windows Server as well as on Windows 10, like Containers, Windows Sandbox, WSL 2, VM Gallery and much more. Be prepared for a lot of demos!

Experts Live Europe 2019

Bring Azure services and management to any infrastructure with Azure Arc

For customers who want to simplify complex and distributed environments across on-premises, edge and multi-cloud, Azure Arc enables deployment of Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure. In this session, Thomas Maurer will demonstrate the new Azure Arc capabilities for your Hybrid environment.

If you want to know more about the event and register, check out the Experts Live Europe website. I hope to see you in Prague!


Jun282019June 28, 2019June 28, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Nigel Frank Migrating and extending with Microsoft Azure

Article about Azure Migration on Nigel Frank International

Posted in Blog, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Software, Virtualization, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2019, Work

This week my blog post on Azure Migration and Hybrid Cloud on the Nigel Frank International blog went live. The title of the article is, Migrating and extending your on-premises environment with Microsoft Azure. In that blog post, I what your advantages are by using the cloud and some of the different approaches to use Microsoft Azure. Before I then go deeper on different Azure scenarios and topics.

I cover a lot of different Azure options like:

Read Article

Nigel Frank International

The public cloud is becoming more and more important for companies that want to stay agile and flexible to meet their business demands. But if a company decides to move to the public cloud, what are the best ways to migrate to Microsoft Azure? In this blog post, we’ll take a quick look at what services Microsoft offers to make your cloud migration easier.

It was fun to work with the team at Nigel Frank International and I hope you like the article.



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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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