Backup files and folders using Azure

In a previous post I detailed how to set up an Azure Recovery Service Vault using Azure Resource Manager and then installing the Azure files backup client. In this article I’m going to walk through how to actually setup and run a backup to Azure for your files and folders.

Run the Microsoft Azure Backup software on the machine to be backed up. If you haven’t configured this yet, read my previous article on setting all this up.

With the Microsoft Azure Backup software running as shown above, select Schedule Backup in the top right.

The above dialog will appear. Select Next to continue.

You are now taken to a dialog where you need to select the files and folders from the current machine.

Select the Add Items button to select the items you wish to backup.

This will then pop up a file explorer like that shown above. Select the locations you wish to backup and press the OK button.

You should now see the backup locations you selected displayed in the top window as shown above. You can also use the Exclusion Settings if you want to filter what is backed up from the locations selected.

When complete, select the Next button to continue.

You’ll then be prompted to schedule how often you wish to backup your locations. The most backups you can currently perform is three per day.

Once you have made you selection select Next to continue.

You are now prompted to enter the retention policy settings. This determines which backups are retained and for how long.

When you have made your selection press Next to continue.

Given that the initial backup of the locations can be quite large you are now presented with the option to perform the initial backup offline to local storage. If your Azure datacenter supports the option, you can then ship this local back to Microsoft so it seed any future backups.

Details on this process can be found here:

Offline backup workflow in Azure Backup

If you leave the option set to Automatically over the network, the backup data will be sent across the Internet to Azure.

Press the Next to continue.

You will now see a confirmation screen.

Select Finish to complete the configuration.

You will now see the backup schedule being created.

and you should receive confirmation that it has been successful.

Select Close to continue.

The backup will now run automatically in the background based on the settings you configured. However, if you wish to wish to manually run a backup at any time select the Back Up Now link in the top right.

This will launch a dialog as shown above asking you to confirm running a backup.

Select the Back Up button to continue.

The backup will now commence by taking a snap shot of the drive.

You should then see data being transferred by the program as shown above.

When the backup has completed you will receive the above message. Select the Close button to return to the backup software console

If you now look at the console you should see a successful backup job has completed.

If you select the View details link you will see a summary of the backup job as shown above.

The backups will continue to run on the configured automated schedule. You can of course re-run a manual backup at any point.

In an upcoming post I’ll detail how you restore data from this Azure backup.

Using Azure Resource Manager when backing up files

A while back I wrote an article about how to use Azure file backup. You’ll find that article here:

Azure desktop backup

That was using the older Azure Service Management (ASM) or ‘classic’ deployment. However, now the newer Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is available. That means that if you are looking to do anything in Azure you should now be using ARM. So here’s how you do Azure file backup with ARM via the portal.

Start by logging to Azure portal:

https://portal.azure.com

The first you’ll need to do is generally create a Resource Group in which the backup vault can live. An Azure Resource Group is simply a container for a range of Azure services. To create or view a Resource Group select the Resource groups item from the menu on the left.

In this case you’ll see there are no existing Resources Groups so select the Add button at the top of the page.

Give the new Resource Group a name, select the Azure subscription you wish it tied to and finally a region for the Resource Group.

Select Create when complete.

You’ll then typically see a notification that the Resource Group has been created as shown above.

If you return to the list of Resource groups and refresh the page you should see the item you just created.

Close all the open blades and return to the desktop canvas.

Select the Browse button at the bottom of the menu on the left. This will display a further menu listing all the available Azure services. From this list locate and select Recovery Service vault.

Most likely a vault will not already exist so select the Add button in the top left to create a new vault or container to put backup data into.

Give the vault a name, select the Azure subscription you wish to use as well as the Resource Group previously created. You can create a new Resource Group here as well if you wish but best practice is to create the Resource Group prior. You can also select the location for this vault.

When complete, select the Create button.

You’ll receive a notification that deployment of the new vault has commenced.

After a few moments the vault deployment will complete.

If you now return to the list of Recovery Services vaults and refresh the list you should see the item you just created as shown above.

Select the new Recovery Services vault to continue.

Select the Backup icon at the top of the page.

This will commence a wizard. In the Backup Goal blade select On-premises for the option Where is your workload running? Then place a check in Files and Folders for the option What do you want to backup?

A message box will then appear below your selections. Select this.

Exactly as before, you’ll need to download and install the Azure backup software onto the destination. Part of this installation will also require the connection to the Azure Recovery vault so you’ll also need to download the vault credentials to be used during this configuration.

Select the Download Agent for Windows Server or Windows Client on the machine you intent to backup.

Once the file has downloaded, run it.

Select the locations for the installation and then select Next.

Enter any proxy information and select Next to continue.

Select software update option and then Next to continue.

Select the Install button.

The installation process will proceed.

Select the Proceed to Registration button to continue.

Ensure you have downloaded the vault credentials and saved them to the same machine you are installing the backup client on.

Browse to location of the downloaded vault credentials and select them. They will be verified and if all is good you should see the vault details appear in the dialog as shown above.

Select Next to continue.

Enter a passphrase to protect the data being backed up in the vault. This is effectively the encryption key for the data. If you lose or forget this then you won’t be able to restore the data.

Best practice is to use the Generate Passphrase button to create a complex passphrase. You then need to save that file with the passphrase somewhere. Ensure you copy this file to ANOTHER location so it is not only found on the machine being backed up. Because if the backed up machine fails you want to have this passphrase retrievable so you can restore.

Select Finish when complete.

The process should complete without error. If there is an error simply press the Back button and repeat the registration process again.

Ensure that the Launch the Azure Recovery Services Agent option is checked and select the Close button.

You should now see the Microsoft Azure Backup console displayed as shown above.

You can now configure the backup of files and folders from this machine to the Azure Recovery vault as normal and outlined in the original article. I’ll cover this process again in more detail in an upcoming post.

The important thing here is that the Azure Recovery vault has now been configured with the Azure Resource Manager which is the preferred method you should use going forward with Azure.

Why IT today is like coffee

One of the common things I hear from many IT Professionals today is how ‘hard’ everything is when it comes to IT. “Why can’t it be easier?” they typically bemoan. “Why are they so many choices?”. Here’s my explanation starting with two analogies.

The first analogy is coffee. I’ll almost guarantee today that if you go to you local haunt and ask for just ‘coffee’ you won’t get anything. Why? Because simply asking for ‘coffee’ is not enough. You need to specific what size of coffee (small, regular or large). You’ll need to specify what type of coffee (long black, short back, cappuccino, latte, etc). You’ll also probably have to specify if you want milk and what type (full cream or reduced fat). There is also a good chance that you’ll also need to specify whether you want sugar and so on and so on. So even for something as ‘simple’ as buying a cup of coffee a fair amount of work needs to be done up front.

The benefit is that you, and every coffee customer, can now get EXACTLY the coffee they want. If there wasn’t that choice then everyone would be swilling Nescafe. It is also clear that the places that sell custom coffees far outweigh those places selling generic Nescafe right? Why? Because todays market is all about tailoring the product to the exact need of the customer not about giving them a generic product and hoping they’ll come back.

The second analogy is messaging. A few decades ago the only way that you could communicate with someone was either by talking with them face to face or by sending a letter (or perhaps a telegram). Then the telephone came along and you could call anyone (provided they were at home or in an office). Then mobile phones appeared and now you can call anyone anywhere. However, the mobile phone opened the door to the mobile Internet and social media. So today, just stop and think about how many ways you could communicate with someone? There’s email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, Snapchat, Google Plus, and so on and so on.

As we all know with messaging, different channel work better for different people. Millennials typical never use email, they use Snapchat. Some prefer email, while others Facebook. Most people have many channel on which you can connect to them. Channels like Facebook allow you to share more than just words. You can share videos and images which makes them even more engaging. So now, even the ‘simple’ idea of communicating with someone requires a fair amount of work. if you want to chat with a heavy Facebook user, you are typically going to have to get on to Facebook.

Again, the benefit is that more choice allows people to select the options that suits them best. People who use social media typically rely more heavily on their phone, Heavy desktop PC users typically favour email. The reason why many now favour things like social media is that their inbox is overloaded because it has become the ‘generic’ way to communicate these days and doesn’t work for them. Again, todays market is all about allowing customers to select what works best for themselves.

If we now turn our attention to IT we see the same thing. In the ‘good old days’ you bought a bundled product like Small Business Server that contained your email, files and folders and intranet. However, because it was a bundle you had to have the intranet portion, even if you didn’t need it. That means additional unwanted components were chewing up resources that really weren’t necessary. It also meant maintaining something that again, you may not have been using.

Fast forward to today and IT is like the world or coffee and communications, consumers now have the ability to select exactly what they need and how much they need. We live in a customised on-demand world. The benefit of all this choice is an optimised and efficient solution, however the trade off is that determining and delivering that requires more work.

If you were selling coffee back in the day, you brewed one pot and dished that out to every customer. Today each coffee is a custom configuration, taking longer to deliver and requiring more skill to create. Same with IT. Solutions like Azure providing almost infinite depth in the options they offer and require more time and skill to craft but the end result is something that fits the customer like a glove glove rather than an oven mitt.

For those IT Professionals that bemoan the new world of ‘non-bundling’ can I say that you look around and smell the coffee so to speak. Are there less places offering ‘custom’ coffee these days? Nope, there is a coffee shop delivering every sort of imaginable coffee on every corner it seems. The market is growing in leaps and bounds. Why? Because this is what customers are demanding. Look further afield. Custom travel packages, dinning, kitchens and more is exploding. IT is no different. Customisation is king and those who can supply this win.

So what do IT Professionals need to do? Like coffee baristas, they need to understand all the options available to them and be able to craft a tailored solution to meet the customers needs. The only way that happens is to skill up on the technologies available as I have said before:

Skill up or fade away, it is that simple

There is no wizard that you can run that will do this for you. If you are an IT Pro you need to put in the hard yards to learn this stuff. The good news is that if you are prepared to do the hard yards you’ll stand out from the crowd, you’ll be able to charge more and you’ll have more business coming you way as customer continue to demand skilled operators.

We live in a world that is very different even from a few years ago. IT, like everything else, is customer driven and customers are demanding solutions tailored to their needs not generic bundles that include things they’ll never use. Luckily products like Azure and Office 365 allow such granularity of choice but like getting a good coffee it takes a skilled barista or IT professional to create and deliver this. Skill only comes from hard work, which luckily not everyone is prepared to do.

Pass the grande, mocha, frappaccino, with stevia and let’s get on with our day

Add Azure to Office 365 for more flexibility

A while back I wrote a post about where to put data in Office 365. The aim was to help users especially, understand all the different options you have when it comes to using Office 365. It is also important to point out that you don’t have to necessarily use all those locations. The best idea is map the information to the location that makes the most sense, i.e. don’t use OneDrive for Business as a repository for shared file data, that is what Team Sites are for.

Something that I find many people, especially IT Pros, don;t appreciate is that is that Office 365 is built on Azure and when you sign up to Office 365 you also get Azure. You get a very small subset of Azure features (typically just Azure AD) but you do get Azure. You can enable access to the Azure management console using the following steps:

Enabling your Office 365 Azure AD

You can also see what each version of Azure AD contains here:

Azure AD Edition comparison

Again, what many don’t seems to appreciate is that basic Azure installation that is provided with Office 365 can be extended by simply adding a paid Azure subscription to light up all the additional Azure workloads.

Thus, the above picture illustrates the additional options that are available to you when you do this.

A paid subscription of Azure will provide you the ability to back up files and folders as well as services like SharePoint and Exchange. You can also implement site recovery to provide even more recovery options if you want.

Azure will also allow you to create and use SMB file shares, Virtual machines and Azure SQL as locations to store network information in the cloud on top of locations like SharePoint and Groups.

The original diagram now also includes the fact that you can get Office from Office 365 but it also highlights the fact that Azure offers the ability to effectively get Remote Desktop Services via ‘software as a service’ thanks to Remote App.

The colour coding for the diagram is:

Blue – individual user storage locations

Green – shared storage locations

Orange – admin/system storage locations

Yellow – applications

The most important thing here is that tying both Office 365 and Azure together is Azure AD. Even better, you can also sync Azure AD to your on premises environment. This means users in you local AD are the same in your Office 365 and your Azure. This means one identity across all services. This means the same identity uses on premises can also be used with things like Remote App in Azure.

I feel this key message is not something Microsoft has really made clear. Best practice, especially for SMB networks, is to integrate Azure and Office 365 together by enabling the free Azure that comes with Office 365 and then adding a subscription to that rather than creating a separate Azure tenant. Extending the free Office 365 Azure ensures that users from Office 365 are also available to Azure services.

Skype Meeting Broadcast

One of the great new features of Skype for Business is the Meeting Broadcast ability. This allows you to not only broadcast a live event to thousands of users simultaneously but also to potentially save the broadcast so it can be replayed on demand.

This post will take you through the basics of setting up a Skype for Business Broadcast Meeting, while follow up posts will walk you through the administration and user experiences while the meeting is running.

To set up a Skype for Business Meeting Broadcast you’ll need to navigate to the web site:

https://broadcast.skype.com

and you should see the above screen. You’ll need to login with your Office 365 credentials.

You should then be greeted with the above screen that would show any existing Broadcast Meetings that you have configured.

Select the New Meeting option at the top of the page as shown above.

At the top of the page that appears complete the basic meeting details such as name, time and date. You can also add existing Office 365 users as members of the event. These people will be able to login as administrators and control the meeting.

Further down the page you can select which attendees the meeting will be broadcast to. The available options include:

Anonymous: Anyone with the join link can attend, even if they are external to your company.

Secure: Only those users who have been invited by the broadcast service can attend. When you select this option, you’ll get an Attendees field where you can enter the email addresses of the people you want to invite. To invite a group, enter the group alias, such as marketers@contoso.com.
Attendee section of meeting invitation with names in the Attendee field

All Company: Anyone from your company can attend by clicking the join link. They’ll use their company user name and password to attend.

In this case the Anonymous option will be selected.

At the bottom of the page you will also see that you have the option to record the meeting. You need to select this option if you wish to have an on demand recording of the meeting created and available.

You should now be able to select the Create button in the top right of window to save and schedule this meeting. If you have any issues saving the meeting see the following article:

Enable your organisation for Skype Meeting Broadcast

You should now be returned to the main screen where you should see the meeting you just scheduled as shown above.

Select the meeting to perform further configuration.

You should now see all the meeting details as shown above.

Select the Customize option in the top right of the window.

In the middle of this page you will see the option to add two audience participation apps. The apps currently available are Yammer and Bing Pulse.

Simply select the link to configure the participation app and the following dialog will appear allowing you to configure the app.

A future post will cover in more detail how to set these up.

When you have finished making configuration changes here, select the Done option in the top right of the window.

You are now returned to the meeting page where you can select to Show the join link as shown above.

If you cut and paste this link into a browser you will see the above options allowing you to Join the event anonymously or as a team member.

If you select the Join the event, you will be greeted with the above window telling you the meeting has not yet started. If the meeting had commenced you would see the live stream. If the meeting has completed you would see an on demand replay of the meeting.

More details about the actual meeting process and experience will be covered in upcoming posts.

That covers the basic steps of setting up a Skype Meeting Broadcast. Look out for further posts on how to run and attend these meetings.

Reference

Schedule a Skype Meeting Broadcast

Windows 10 Upgrade finished on July 29 2016

Microsoft has confirmed that its free upgrade offer to Windows 10 will definitely end on July 29th 2016. After that you’ll need to pay to get the latest version of Windows or buy a new machine with Windows 10 installed.

My own experience with Windows 10 upgrades have been very, very positive. All my own personal machines upgraded without issue as well as all my family’s. Personally, I’ve really liked the upgrade to Windows 10, the new features, look and feel, etc but what really surprised me was how will the rest of my family also liked it. Many of these aren’t into computers but they remarked how much they liked it unsolicited. Wow, I never heard that about previous Windows upgrades I have done for them.

Even though I don’t sell hardware or PC upgrade services any more I have also found that the response to Windows 10 with business customers has also been very, very positive. People really want to upgrade to it and it has a real improvement to their productivity. I think they’ll see even more benefit when they get hardware that allows the Windows Hello feature to automatically log them into their devices once it recognises them.

Another big leap that Windows 10 has taken is the ability to join Azure AD. Although not quite as powerful as local AD at this point in time, I can see a day in the very near future where it will be but thanks to Azure AD you’ll no longer have to be tethered to your local network to be secure and access all your programs and data. When you then add on features in Azure AD Premium you begin to see what a mobile first, cloud first world is all about.

So, if you haven’t yet upgraded to Windows 10 then I suggest you hurry up and do so before July 29 because you’ll get it for free.

What’s been you experience? I’d love to hear.

The various OneDrive Sync clients

One the confusing things at this point in time that we have a number of different OneDrive sync clients on Windows. Hopefully, I can shed some light on the role that each of these play here.

Two independent services

The first thing to appreciate is that there are two cloud based OneDrive services into which you can store files.

The first of these is the free consumer offering found at:

www.onedrive.com

You access this service using a free Microsoft account. This account is also typically now the same as the account used to login to stand alone Windows 10 machines.

The second service is a commercial product that is part of Office 365 for Business:

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/business/

As you can see both services now look very, very similar:

OneDrive consumer (above)

OneDrive for Business (above)

I’m not going to dive into the differences between the consumer and business OneDrive here, however you need to appreciate that there are two separate OneDrive services currently and both allow you to synchronise files from the cloud to your desktop.

OneDrive Consumer sync

The first sync client to consider is the one provided for OneDrive consumer. You’ll need a OneDrive consumer account to access the services. For many people that is now the same as their Windows 10 login.

Also, modern operating systems like Windows 10 automatically include the OneDrive consumer sync tool. If you don’t have the OneDrive consumer sync tool installed you’ll find it here:

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/download/

If the OneDrive consumer sync tool is running on your desktop you can open the system tray, as shown above, and you should find a white icon with clouds as highlighted above.

If you now right mouse click on this white cloud icon you will see the above menu. You will notice that the first option says Open your OneDrive – Personal folder. This is an indication that this tool is synchronising files from OneDrive consumer service to your desktop.

If you select the Settings menu item you will see the above. Note at the top that this tool is connecting using my Microsoft consumer account (director_cia@hotmail.com). Note that I can also select which folders I wish to sync from the cloud to my desktop using the Choose folders button.

You may notice at the bottom of this dialog the Add a business account button. I’ll come back to this later. However, the important thing is that this sync client (i.e. white clouds) is designed to sync files from OneDrive consumer service to the desktop.

If you look at your file system, the files from OneDrive consumer are synced with this tool to a OneDrive – Personal location as shown above.

OneDrive for Business sync (classic)

The second sync icon to examine here is the one of the two that has dark blue clouds. This one also does has as pronounced outline and is highlight above.

When you right mouse click on this icon you’ll see the above menu options. You will notice that the first option says Open your OneDrive for Business folder. This is an indication that this tool is synchronising files from OneDrive for Business service to your desktop.

This client is the original sync tool for Office 365 for Business in that it could synchronise both the OneDrive for Business files in Office 365 as well as those found in SharePoint Online Team Sites. Thus, it could sync from two separate locations in Office 365 for business.

If you elected to synchronise your personal OneDrive for Business files they would be saved into a location denoted by OneDrive – Tenant Name as shown above.

If you elected to synchronise information from SharePoint Online Team Sites in Office 365 for business they would saved into a location called SharePoint as shown above.

Unfortunately, as the amount of business data grew and people wanted to sync this volume of data to desktops like other products, the OneDrive for Business classic sync client started to have issues. This resulted in common errors during the sync process.

If you are experiencing these sync issues with OneDrive for Business classic sync tool, I wrote a blog post a while back that may help:

Troubleshooting OneDrive for Business

Due to these sync issues and the growing volume desired to be synced Microsoft decided to go back to the drawing board with their OneDrive for Business sync and re-write it from scratch. That new tool is known as the OneDrive for Business NextGen sync client.

OneDrive for Business NextGen sync client

The NextGen sync icon looks a lot like the classic OneDrive for Business sync. If you look closely, it has a more pronounced outline.

If you right mouse click on the NextGen sync client you’ll see the above menu which is very different from the OneDrive for Business classic sync tool. You will notice that the first option displays as Open you OneDrive – Tenant name folder. This is an indication that this tool is synchronising files from OneDrive for Business service to your desktop.

If you select Settings you’ll see that options are almost identical to those of the OneDrive consumer sync tool. This is because this OneDrive for Business NextGen sync tool is based on that. You will however, notice that I am connected to this using my Office 365 for Business account.

At the moment the NextGen sync client can only synchronise OneDrive for Business files, it cannot do files from SharePoint Online Team Sites. This means that if you need to sync Team Site files you’ll need to use the OneDrive for Business classic sync. Microsoft have publically committed to update the NextGen sync client to also do Team Sites before the end of this year.

The NextGen sync client overcomes all of the sync issues that were evident with the OneDrive for Business classic sync client. It also provides additional feature like selective file sync.

If you want to learn more about the OneDrive for Business NextGen sync client start here:

Getting Started with NextGen Sync Client

It is therefore possible for you to have three OneDrive sync clients on your Windows desktop all syncing to different locations as shown above.

If you have the OneDrive for Business NextGen sync client installed it will automatically take over the job of syncing your OneDrive for Business files from the OneDrive for Business classic client, leaving the classic client only syncing SharePoint Online Team Sites.

As noted previously, you have the option with both the OneDrive consumer and OneDrive for Business NextGen client to add a personal and business account to the one tool and allow it to perform both functions for you. This is certainly the preferred option if you need to reduce complexity and you don’t have the need to sync SharePoint Online Team Sites.

The future

Microsoft have committed to consolidate all these different sync clients into one before the end of this year. They are already bring a range of new features to the NextGen sync client and have committed to a whole lot more. You can read about the latest updates here:

OneDrive for Business Spring Updates

OneDrive sync clients have had a chequered history. It has also brought a lot of challenges with its ‘appropriate’ using with Office 365 for Business. However, I am now very positive with the development and direction I see. Things are still a little confusing for end users, as the above demonstrates, but you need to remember we are still in transition here. Sure, I’d like changes to come quicker but I am very pleased to see that change is now happening on a regular cadence. That’s what gives me the confidence to say that I reckon the OneDrive for Business sync tool will soon be the premier cloud file syncing experience available on the market. There is still a ways to go, I admit, but I really feel things are on the right track for the way people want to work with file sync.

Of course, you can’t overlook all the improvements in the mobile versions of OneDrive but I’ll leave that to an upcoming blog post but I hope this post has made things a bit easier for people to understand the current environment with OneDrive sync options.