Tag: Windows Server

Nov122019November 12, 2019November 12, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Microsoft Ignite 2019 Thomas Maurer Speaking Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Ignite 2019 Hybrid Cloud Management Session

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019

Last week I had a fantastic time presenting and speaking at Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando, FL. As mentioned before, I was presenting in the “Modernizing Server Infrastructure” learning path a session called “Integrating cloud technologies”. As you might realize, we had a little surprise in that session. Since we announced Azure Arc on Monday in the keynote, I was able to finally add the topic to the session description. You can now watch my Microsoft Ignite 2019 session about Hybrid Cloud server management online on-demand.

My Microsoft Ignite Session about Hybrid Cloud Server Management

In this session, I am talking about how our demo company Tailwind Traders uses Azure Hybrid Cloud services like Azure Update Management and Azure Arc to make their hybrid server environment, which is Azure, on-prem, edge and multi-cloud, even better.

Watch now!

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.

I am speaking about technologies like Azure Arc, Windows Admin Center, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Update Management, Azure File Sync, and many more.

Here are some links to the technologies I am talking about:

  • Azure Arc for Servers – Microsoft Docs (link)
  • Azure Update Management – Microsoft Docs (link)
  • Azure File Sync – Microsoft Docs (link)
  • Azure Site Recovery – Microsoft Docs (link)
  • Azure Stack – Azure.com (link)

I hope you enjoyed watching my Microsoft Ignite 2019 session, please let me know what you think and if you want to see more of that content.


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!


Nov042019November 4, 2019November 4, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
New Windows Server Performance Monitor

New Performance Monitor for Windows Server

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

In this blog post, I am going to show you the new Windows Performance Monitor feature in Windows Admin Center. This feature was announced publicly at Microsoft Ignite 2019. But before we are going to have a look at the new Windows Admin Center Performance Monitor extension, it is time for some history. If you have worked with Windows or Windows Server in the past, you almost certainly have used a tool called perfmon.exe, or Windows Performance Monitor.

You can use Windows Performance Monitor to examine how programs affect your computer’s performance, both in real-time and by collecting log data for later analysis. It uses performance counters, event trace data, and configuration information, which can be combined into Data Collector Sets. Perfmon exists already for a long time. It is super powerful for troubleshooting Windows. However, it is definitely if you look at the classic MMC user-interface and the user-experience in general, probably not your favorite tool to use. That is why we needed something better.

Perfmon

Perfmon.exe

Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that provides tools for analyzing system performance. From a single console, you can monitor application and hardware performance in real time, customize what data you want to collect in logs, define thresholds for alerts and automatic actions, generate reports, and view past performance data in a variety of ways.

You can find more about the classic perfmon.exe here.

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by Windows Server Program Manager Cosmos Darwin, who works at great features in Windows Server like Storage Spaces Direct. He asked me if I remember my feedback item in user voice, which I created a couple of years ago.

Windows Server Windows Admin Center User Voice Feedback

Windows Server Windows Admin Center User Voice Feedback

Back then, I wasn’t working for Microsoft, but I was working in a couple of different projects where we were using Windows Server and needed to build a real-time performance monitoring system. Which allowed us to monitor remote servers and clusters.

And here it is, the shiny new Windows Admin Center Performance Monitor extension. This new UI is integrated into the web-based Windows Admin Center management tool.

Windows Admin Center Performance Monitor

Windows Admin Center Performance Monitor

Using the Performance Monitor extension in Windows Admin Center uses the same performance data as perfmon, like performance counters, which means that it will just work with your existing configuration. However, it adds a couple of benefits. No worries, the classic perfmon.exe is still there for you to use it.

  • Easy Remoting ✔ – You can easily use it on your remote machine. Windows Admin Center uses PowerShell remoting in the background to connect to the remote computer.
  • Share Workspaces ✔ – You can create workspaces that you can save and use for multiple systems within the same Windows Admin Center instance. But you can also export them and import them on other Windows Admin Center gateway installations.
    Upload and Download Workspaces

    Upload and Download Workspaces

  • Search and highlighting ✔ – You can easily search for objects and counters. Performance Monitor also highlights the useful objects for your system. So you don’t have to guess which counter to use.
    Performance Monitor Search Counter

    Performance Monitor Search Counter

  • Different Graph Types ✔ – You can use different types of graphs, which make it easier to find and compare the right information depending on your scenario.
    Min-Max View

    Min-Max View

    Windows Server Performance Monitor Heatmap

    Windows Server Performance Monitor Heatmap

     

I hope this gives you a quick overview of the new Performance Monitor extension in Windows Admin Center. You can get Windows Admin Center from here. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. There is also a short survey, about different tools like perfmon, this will directly influence the work on Windows Admin Center. You can check out the official announcement blog here.

By the way, Windows Admin Center also offers a great set of Azure Hybrid services integration. Check out my blog post and videos about the Azure Hybrid services in Windows Admin Center.


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.


Oct222019October 22, 2019October 22, 20191Commentby Thomas Maurer
Connect Azure VMs with Windows Admin Center

How to manage Azure VMs with Windows Admin Center

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Windows, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

Windows Admin Center is a browser-based management tool to manage your servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, and Windows 10 PCs. You can deploy it anywhere you want. If you run on-prem, you can install it on a Windows Server running in your infrastructure, or you can also install Windows Admin Center on an Azure virtual machine (VM). In this post, we want to address scenarios where you have deployed Windows Admin Center on-premises, and you want to manage some Azure VMs. In this post, I am going to show you how you can manage Azure VMs with Windows Admin Center (WAC).

If you want to know more about Windows Admin Center in general, check out my blog post.

How to manage Azure IaaS VMs with your on-premises Windows Admin Center gateway

As mentioned before, you can also install a Windows Admin Center server running on Azure IaaS virtual machine, but more on that in another post. In this post, I will cover how you can connect to an Azure VM from your on-prem Windows Admin Center (WAC) installation. There are two ways you can connect from WAC to Azure VMs.

The first one would be using the public IP address of a virtual machine running in Azure. This would mean that you need to open the PowerShell remoting port in the network security group (NSG), to be able to connect. I wouldn’t recommend this scenario since this exposes your virtual machines to the public internet. However, if you want to know more about that solution, check out the Microsoft Docs.

What I wound recommend is that you use a VPN connection to connect to your Azure virtual network where your VM is running. However, I know that in a lot of cases, you might not have a Site-2-Site VPN connection to your Azure virtual network. To still be able to connect form Windows Admin Center to an Azure VM, you can use the Azure Network Adapter feature. The Azure Network Adapter will create a Point-2-Site VPN connection from your Windows Server to Azure. And we are going to use this feature on our WAC gateway, so the WAC gateway is able to reach the virtual machine in Azure.

Add Azure Network Adapter

Add Azure Network Adapter

First, you will need to add a new Azure Network Adapter. This can be done in the Network extension in Windows Admin Center. This will open up a wizard that will guide you through the setup and if needed also helps you to register WAC in Microsoft Azure.

Create Azure Network Adapter

Create Azure Network Adapter

The setup can take a while, depending on if you already have a VPN gateway in Azure or not. WAC will create all the necessary resources in Azure, and create the Point-to-Site VPN connection for you. Also, keep in mind that the VPN gateway is an additional resource and will have an additional cost.

Connect to an Azure Virtual network

Connect to an Azure Virtual network

Now you can add and connect to your virtual machine running in Azure, using the private IP address of the machine.

Connect Azure VMs with Windows Admin Center

Connect Azure VMs with Windows Admin Center

You add a server by directly entering the IP address or you can use the Add Azure Virtual Machine wizard, to discover the VM in your Azure subscription.

Add Azure VM in Windows Admin Center

Add Azure VM in Windows Admin Center

I hope this helps you to connect your Azure virtual machines security without exposing ports to the public internet. If you have a site-to-site VPN connection to your Azure virtual network, you can use this as well without the need of setting up Azure Network Adapter.

If you are interested in other Azure Hybrid services in Windows Admin Center, check out the following blog post including the video series: Configure Azure Hybrid Services in Windows Admin Center

Besides, you can also have a look at my other blog post about how to set up Azure hybrid cloud services.

If you want to download Windows Admin Center, check out the download page. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.


Oct172019October 17, 2019October 17, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Microsoft Ignite 2019 Orlando

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite 2019

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

After speaking at Microsoft Ignite 2017, and at Microsoft Ignite the Tour 2019, I am happy to let you know that I will be speaking at Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando, FL. As part of our Cloud Advocates team, I will be speaking in the “Migrating server infrastructure” learning path.

This learning path is designed for Microsoft Ignite and gives attendees an overview of how to update your on-premises server infrastructure so that your organization is ready to start its cloud journey through the adoption of hybrid technologies and migration of appropriate workloads. Learn through the story of Tailwind Traders, which has a substantive physical and virtual deployment of Windows Server 2008 R2 hosting domain and network infrastructure services, file servers, and workloads, including SQL Server.

Microsoft Ignite 2019

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 to manage its fleet of Windows Server computers and integrated hybrid technologies, such as Azure File Sync, Azure Update Management, and Azure Site Recovery, to improve deployment performance and manageability.

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite 2017 Theater

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite 2017 Theater

I will also be giving two lightning talks at the Developer and Architecture. These will not show up in the session scheduler, but they will be on Thursday 1:30 pm and 2:30 pm.

Microsoft Ignite 2019

Connect your Windows Server to Azure Hybrid services

Learn how you can connect your Windows Server environment to Azure and enhance it with Hybrid services like Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Monitor and many more!

Microsoft Ignite 2019

Keep your servers up to date across Azure and on-premises using Azure Update Management

Learn how you can manage updates of your servers across Azure, on-premises and even other cloud providers using Azure Update Management

I am also happy to talk with you in the expo hall about the latest and greatest features in Azure, Azure Stack, and Windows Server, as well as learning from your experience. So join the Cloud Advocates team and me at Microsoft Ignite the Tour. Let me know if you are there and want to meet.

If you want to join, check out the Microsoft Ignite 2019 website. Orlando is already sold out. However, you can join the waitlist, and there are a lot of great community conferences like Experts Live Europe and others.


Oct152019October 15, 2019October 14, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
Deploy and Configure Windows Admin Center in Azure VM

Deploy and Install Windows Admin Center in an Azure VM

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

The great thing about Windows Admin Center (WAC) you manage every Windows Server doesn’t matter where it is running. You can manage Windows Servers on-prem, in Azure or running at other cloud providers. Now if you want to use Windows Admin Center to manage your virtual machines running in Azure, you can use either an on-prem WAC installation and connecting it using a public IP address or a VPN connection, or you can deploy and install Windows Admin Center in Azure. This blog post will show you how you can deploy and install Windows Admin Center in an Azure virtual machine (VM).

How to deploy and install Windows Admin Center in an Azure virtual machine (VM)

With this guide, you can directly deploy and install a new Windows Admin Center gateway in an Azure VM. If you have already a VM deployed, you can also follow this guide to install Windows Admin Center manually. For the installation, we will use Azure Cloud Shell do run a PowerShell installation script.

Preparation

As mentioned we will run the installation script from Azure Cloud Shell. Optionally you can also install Azure PowerShell on your location machine and run the same steps for the installation on your local machine.

  1. Set up Azure Cloud Shell if you haven’t done it yet.
  2. Start the PowerShell experience in Cloud Shell.
  3. Optional: If you want to use your own existing certificate, upload the certificate to Azure Key Vault.

Installation

Now you can start with the installation process. First, you will need to download the installation script from the following URL. Navigate to your home directory and download the file using PowerShell.

Download Windows Admin Center with PowerShell in Cloud Shell

Download Windows Admin Center with PowerShell in Cloud Shell

# Navigate to your home directory
cd ~
 
# Download file
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://aka.ms/deploy-wacazvm -OutFile Deploy-WACAzVM.zip
 
# Expand Zip file
Expand-Archive ./Deploy-WACAzVM.zip
 
# Change Directory
cd Deploy-WACAzVM

After successfully downloading and unpacking the Windows Admin Center deployment script, you will need to modify a couple of parameters. I will use the default parameters to deploy a new Windows Server 2019 and generate a self-signed certificate. However, if you want to use other options, check out the script parameter list.

Configure Parameter

Configure Parameter

$ResourceGroupName = "demo-wac-rg"
$VirtualNetworkName = "wac-vnet"
$SecurityGroupName = "wac-nsg"
$SubnetName = "wac-subnet"
$VaultName = "wac-key-vault"
$CertName = "wac-cert"
$Location = "westeurope"
$PublicIpAddressName = "wac-public-ip"
$Size = "Standard_D4s_v3"
$Image = "Win2019Datacenter"
$Credential = Get-Credential
 
$scriptParams = @{
ResourceGroupName = $ResourceGroupName
Name = "wac-vm1"
Credential = $Credential
VirtualNetworkName = $VirtualNetworkName
SubnetName = $SubnetName
Location = $Location
Size = $Size
Image = $Image
GenerateSslCert = $true
}
./Deploy-WACAzVM.ps1 @scriptParams

This will deploy a new Azure virtual machine with Windows Admin Center installed and open the specific port 443 on the public IP address. You can find more install options and parameters to install WAC on an existing virtual machine or with an existing certificate on Microsoft Docs.

Deploy and Configure Windows Admin Center in Azure VM

Deploy and Configure Windows Admin Center in Azure VM

After the deployment has finished, simply click on the URL or IP address and it will open the Windows Admin Center portal.

Windows Admin Center Running in Microsoft Azure

Windows Admin Center Running in Microsoft Azure

I hope this gives you an overview about how you can deploy Windows Admin Center in an Azure VM. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.



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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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