Author: directorcia

CIAOPS Need to Know Azure Webinar–October 2017

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Lots of news and updates to share care of the recent Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando. We’ll also do a deep dive into Azure SMB files and hopefully a look at the new Azure sync offering. There will be open Q and A so you can answer all those burning Azure questions.

You can register for free at:

October Azure Webinar Registrations

The details are:

CIAOPS Need to Know Azure Webinar – October 2017
Friday 13th of October 2017
2pm – 3pm Sydney Time

All sessions are recorded and posted to the CIAOPS Academy.

There of course will also be open Q and A so make sure you bring your questions for me and I’ll do my best to answer them.

The CIAOPS Need to Know Webinars are free to attend but if you want to receive the recording of the session you need to sign up as a CIAOPS patron which you can do here:

http://www.ciaopspatron.com

or purchase them individually at:

http://www.ciaopsacademy.com/

Also feel free at any stage to email me directly via director@ciaops.com with your webinar topic suggestions.

I’d also appreciate you sharing information about this webinar with anyone you feel may benefit from the session.

CIAOPS Need to Know Office 365 Webinar–October 2017

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October is going to be very busy and hopefully not unlucky as I am scheduling this month’s free Office 365 webinar on Friday the 13th of October from 11am – 12pm. There is heaps of news to cover from the recent Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando but we’ll also be taking a closer look at OneDrive during our deep dive section.

You can register for free at:

October Webinar Registrations

The details are:

CIAOPS Need to Know Webinar – October 2017
Friday 13th of October 2017
11am – 12am Sydney Time

All sessions are recorded and posted to the CIAOPS Academy.

There of course will also be open Q and A so make sure you bring your questions for me and I’ll do my best to answer them.

The CIAOPS Need to Know Webinars are free to attend but if you want to receive the recording of the session you need to sign up as a CIAOPS patron which you can do here:

http://www.ciaopspatron.com

or purchase them individually at:

http://www.ciaopsacademy.com/

Also feel free at any stage to email me directly via director@ciaops.com with your webinar topic suggestions.

I’d also appreciate you sharing information about this webinar with anyone you feel may benefit from the session.

Connecting Windows 10 Pro to Office 365

When you connect a Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise desktop system directly to Office 365 (thanks to Azure AD) you get seamless login to Office 365 without multiple password prompts.

It also allows you to directly login to the Windows 10 Pro machine with your Office 365 credentials. After that when you navigate to Office 365 in Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer you’ll automatically be logged into the service. If you also add the following extension to Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/windows-10-accounts/ppnbnpeolgkicgegkbkbjmhlideopiji?hl=en

You’ll get the same functionality.

This ability and integration is one of the real benefits of connecting Windows 10 to Office 365 (via Azure AD). This video will show you how to take a stand alone desktop and connect it directly to Office 365 and get single sign on to Office 365.

Look Ma, SBS running on Azure

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One of the challenges I set myself when I first started using Azure was to get Windows Small Business Server (SBS) working in Azure IaaS. Happily, I can announce that today I have achieved that goal as the above image shows hopefully demonstrates.

Why did I do this? Apart from the technical challenge I wanted to have a typical on premises SMB ‘legacy’ environment in Azure for testing, labs, training and migration scenarios. I am not planning to use it in production and STRONGLY recommend that SBS should no longer be run in production for many reasons anywhere, including on premises. I appreciate this is bordering on heresy for some, but I stand by the fact that you need to be off SBS. 

That said, I do appreciate that there are people out there running it and some may even be considering moving SBS onto the cloud. Although I would never recommend you do that in production I can tell you that it is 100% possible with Azure. This, to me, demonstrates the flexibility and power Azure provides as well as it’s ability to solve just about any IT challenge you throw at it.

So, if you wanna know how I did, just ask me.

Azure Cloud Shell

One of the best tools you can use when working with Azure is PowerShell. I have published an earlier article on how you can connect to Azure Resource Manager (ARM) via PowerShell on your desktop.

Some people still struggle with this as it requires additional software to be installed and configured as well as authentication to the Azure tenant.

Microsoft has provided an easy way to use PowerShell with Azure and it is known as the Cloud Shell.

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When you login to the Azure portal you should see a Script icon in the top right, just to the left of the Cog icon.

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When you select this icon a window should appear at the bottom of your screen, showing a command line.

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In most cases, the environment will default to BASH but you can select PowerShell in the top left of this window.

When you do a new command line environment will open up. It will run PowerShell AND (this is the really cool part) it will AUTOMATICALLY authenticate you to the Azure tenant tenant using the same credentials as you used in the browser to gain access to the Azure portal.

Now you can run your standard PowerShell commands directly in the browser as shown above.

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Now the super cool feature of this is that Azure is also available as a mobile app (here in iOS). When you run that app you will again find the option for the Cloud Shell (here in the lower right).

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When you select this icon, you’ll again be a command line environment that you can configure to be PowerShell as you see above.

Now you can run your PowerShell commands directly from any mobile device! How super cool is that?

Having the ability to run PowerShell from just about anywhere to work with Azure is a really, really powerful feature of Azure and makes the life of managing these resources much easier.

So, go and give it a try for yourself.

An introduction to Microsoft 365

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At the Microsoft Inspire conference back in July 2017 Microsoft 365 was announced. In essence, it is a combination of 3 core products – Office 365, Windows 10 and part of the Enterprise Mobility Suite.

Microsoft 365 will come in two flavours – Business and Enterprise with different capabilities an inclusions as you can see from the following table.

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The Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans are further broken up to an Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 and Enterprise E5 offering. The prices shown in this table are US$.

Currently, the Microsoft 365 Enterprise offerings are available for purchase while it is expected the Microsoft 365 Business plans will be available before calendar (2017) year’s end. You can however, apply to obtain a trial of Microsoft 365 Business and you should do so through your distributor.

The power of Microsoft 365 is that it extends the functionality of Office 365 to environments that are moving more and more to the cloud. Doing so means many of the devices that access information are no longer inside or connected to a traditional network. This means a different set of tools and capabilities needs to be adopted to manage and secure this environment.

Likewise, customers expectations are to be up and running quickly with the latest software, no matter where they are and no matter what device they are all on. IT also expects to be able to manage and secure these devices and information from a single location. These are the benefits Microsoft 365 brings users and IT.

Technology is no longer about single monolithic solutions loosely coupled together. It is about making life easier and more productive for users and IT. It means being able to do all this via a single login and from a single console. That is what Microsoft 365 provides.

You’ll still get all the flexibility of Office 365, like the ability to mix and matches licenses with Microsoft 365. You’ll also get access to the latest updates and features of the products now and into the future and if you are a reseller you’ll also get the opportunity to help your customers solver more business challenges from within the Microsoft stack. This means more opportunity for your business.

I really like that Microsoft 365 brings together the best of Office 365 and Azure for customers. It does all this via a single identity and a feature set that continues to improve. If you haven’t as yet, take a look at Microsoft 365.

The history of BItcoin

I recently posted that CIAOPS was now accepting Bitcoin. The reasons behind this are to help better understand the blockchain technology on which Bitcoin is built. The best way to learn about something is to get involved, and that’s what I’ve done.

In that post I asked people to make a small bitcoin transfer to me to get things rolling. I am happy to say that I did receive one small payment, which is an indication that the underlying technology does work as expected. I’ll detail how all the transfer technology works and how to actually do it soon. If what I write here does provide you some value I’d appreciate a small donation via bitcoin. My bitcoin information appears on the right.

I am not expecting to be flooded with bitcoin transfers (although that would be nice) and the main reason for that is a lack of knowledge about what bitcoin is and how it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlvFg4NQYEQ

One of the places that you can start to learn more about bitcoin is to study it’s history. A great place to start this is the video Banking on Bitcoin (above). It doesn’t take you into the actual blockchain technology behind bitcoin, it looks at where the bitcoin currency came from, the main players and their involvement and how we got to where we are today.

I think that it is important here to understand that at it’s most basic bitcoin is a system of value transfer (i.e. currency) that is implemented using blockchain technology. I’ll get more into the actual blockchain technology down the track, as it is really the more interesting aspect of the story but think of blockchain as a open and distributed way to verify transactions. At the moment, most people use a credit card to transfer value. One of major differences between say a credit card and bitcoin is that all credit card transactions go through multiple agencies but are typically overseen by banks. The blockchain is effectively peer to peer with no one in the middle and done in such a way that all transactions are verified using cryptography. So extremely strong and secure cryptography takes the place of banks and intermediates when it comes to transferring value.

So bitcoin is a currency that is build on top of blockchain technology. It was one of the first to do this (now there are many) and this is why is probably has grabbed the majority of the mindset out there. Bitcoin has also been something that proves that the concept of blockchain technology does actually work. It shows that people can transfer real money between each other seamlessly.

However, as with any innovative technology, there is still a long for way to come, and many hurdles for it jump before it becomes mainstream. The documentary helps you understand this and shows you how bitcoin became linked to major crimes thanks to its involvement as a preferred payment method for the Silk Road (an illicit and obscure market place for contraband).

The financing of illegal activities has been part of humanity before bitcoin and will continue long after as well. Bitcoin was simply a method, a good method without doubt, for keeping payments secretive but this shouldn’t mean that it should be banned or even demonised. Unfortunately, today’s mainstream media did exactly this and tainted a lot of people’s concept of what bitcoin is all about. This may ultimately limit its growth but the more you understand about bitcoin the more you appreciate that much of the negative press it is receiving in the media is largely unjustified and misdirected.

Another negative challenge bitcoin has encountered over its history is the collapse of the Mt Gox exchange. You need someone to transfer bitcoin to and from dollar currency and this is the tasks of bitcoin exchanges. The Mt Gox collapse was a situation where the exchange itself either was hacked or failed due to poor business decision. It was not, as has been sensationalised a failure or vulnerability in the bitcoin and blockchain technology. However, because of its close association with bitcoin, the Mt Gox failure once again provided mainstream media an opportunity to sensationalise and misdirect people from what actually transpired.

So bitcoin has had a tumultuous history which is really worth understanding if you are at all interested in its potential. It also leaves some interesting questions unanswered. The major one is who was Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin? No one really knows for sure but the consensus is that was a group of people working together to give birth to the blockchain technology.

Another interesting fact is that bitcoin was released within a few weeks of the Lehman Brothers collapse, an event that accelerated the GFC. At a point at which the world had almost completely lost faith in the global banking and monetary system a potentially new a revolutionary system arose. One that was very akin to the distributed technology we see with the Internet. One that moved the control away from centralised institutions and into the control of individuals. Co-incidence?

From these early days, bitcoin has been adopted by the technology savvy who sees its potential to the point now where it is beginning to break into the mainstream consciousness and also coming onto the radar of governments and regulators.

I could go on for much longer but recommend you take a look at the documentary and form your own opinions. Let me know what you think in the comments as I’ll be posting up more information and opinions on bitcoin and blockchain as time goes along. I don’t claim to be an expert in these technologies at all, I am in the process of learning and understand the ramifications to economic and technology, so please share your thoughts and any resources you have found worthwhile as I am also doing.

Look out for more information on bitcoin and blockchain coming soon and of course, don’t forget to throw some bitcoin my way if you like what you read.