Tag: Microsoft Ignite

Jan212020January 21, 2020January 21, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Microsoft Ignite The Tour Milan 2020

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2020 Milan

Posted in Certification, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Events, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Windows 10, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server

After our leading Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference in Orlando in November 2019, and my first two stops in Shenzhen, China, and London, I am happy and honored that my third stop of Microsoft Ignite The Tour will be in Milan, Italy. By the way, if you are interested in taking a Microsoft certification exam for free, check out the following blog post: Free Microsoft Certification exam voucher at Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2020.

  • Date: January 27–28, 2020
  • Location: Milano Convention Centre
Milan

Microsoft Ignite The Tour Milan

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 cool stuff about PowerShell, Windows Server 2019, Windows Admin Center, Azure Arc, and much more! I will be presenting the following sessions:

THR30033

THR30033 - Top five new features of Windows Server 2019

Windows Server 2019 is Microsoft’s most rapidly adopted server operating system. With Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 end of support upon us, learn about some of the amazing new features included in the latest version of the Windows Server operating system. In this session, learn about the top new features in Windows Server 2019, including Windows Admin Center, Storage Migration Service, hyperconverged storage improvements, System Insights, Cluster Sets, Azure integration, Linux Containers, and Kubernetes integration.

MSI20

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.

MSI30

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.

MCO20

MCO20 - Azure governance and management

Tailwind Traders’ deployments are occurring in an ad hoc manner, primarily driven by lack of protocol and unapproved decisions by various operators or employees. Some deployments even violate the organization’s compliance obligations, such as being deployed in an unencrypted manner without DR protection. After bringing their existing IaaS VM fleet under control, Tailwind Traders wants to ensure future deployments comply with policy and organizational requirements. In this session, walk through the processes and technologies that will keep Tailwind Traders’ deployments in good standing with the help of Azure Blueprints, Azure Policy, role-based access control (RBAC), and more.

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


Jan092020January 9, 2020January 8, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Microsoft Ignite The Tour Milan 2020

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2020 London

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server

As mentioned before, 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. While I am traveling to Microsoft Ignite The Tour in Shenzhen, I am happy that my second stop of Microsoft Ignite The Tour will be in London. Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2019 London was already the first Tour stop for me, and the first conference after joining Microsoft, and I am thrilled to be back.

  • Date: January 16–17, 2020
  • Location: ExCeL London
London

Microsoft Ignite The Tour London

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 pleased to show you some cool stuff about PowerShell, Windows Server 2019, Windows Admin Center, Azure Arc, and much more! I will be presenting the following sessions:

MSI20

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.

MCO20

MCO20 - Azure governance and management

Tailwind Traders’ deployments are occurring in an ad hoc manner, primarily driven by lack of protocol and unapproved decisions by various operators or employees. Some deployments even violate the organization’s compliance obligations, such as being deployed in an unencrypted manner without DR protection. After bringing their existing IaaS VM fleet under control, Tailwind Traders wants to ensure future deployments comply with policy and organizational requirements. In this session, walk through the processes and technologies that will keep Tailwind Traders’ deployments in good standing with the help of Azure Blueprints, Azure Policy, role-based access control (RBAC), and more.

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


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.


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.


Nov282019November 28, 2019November 28, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Video Microsoft Ignite Live 2019 - Azure Stack Edge

Video Microsoft Ignite Live 2019 – Azure Stack Edge

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Virtualization, 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 Stephanie Krieger and Chris Dickens from the Azure Stack Edge team about the new AI on the edge with Azure Stack Edge, which was formerly known as Azure Data Box Edge.

Microsoft Ignite Live

Video: Azure Stack Edge

Azure Stack Edge is a cloud-managed edge computing appliance that you subscribe to as an Azure service and deploy locally. Join us to learn how you can use intelligent applications at the edge for quick insights from your data and then aggregate that data in the cloud for deeper analytics.

I hope this gives you a short overview of Azure Stack Edge. 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.


Nov212019November 21, 2019June 7, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Video Microsoft Ignite Live 2019 - Azure Arc for Server

Video Microsoft Ignite Live 2019 – Azure Arc for Server

Posted in Azure Arc, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Hybrid Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, 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 Jian Yan from the Azure Management team about the new Azure Arc for Servers service.

Microsoft Ignite Live

Video: Azure Arc for Server

Azure is built from the ground up to manage at-scale, cross-geography environments with multiple operational models and DevOps patterns. The vision is to keep Azure at the center of the enterprise as the control plane for governance, management, and modern development and bring the Azure management capabilities and services to any customer environment. In this session, we demo one of the extension service to enable you to bring servers from anywhere to Azure and use Azure to get a compliance view for all your server assets.

I hope this gives you a short overview of Azure Arc for Server. 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.


Nov142019November 14, 2019June 7, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Azure Hybrid Cloud Bus

An Overview at the New Azure Stack Portfolio

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Hybrid 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.



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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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