Tag: Azure

Free Cloud Business Blueprint webinars back

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With everything that has been happening lately we’ve missed a few of our free Cloud Business Blueprint ‘Ask Us’ Webinars. But fear not, we have scheduled or final one for 2014:

http://www.cloudbusinessblueprint.com/ask-weekly-webinar

Date: Thursday December 11, 2014
Time : 12.30pm

On the webinar I’ll be providing an update of everything new and updated in Office 365 (and there has been plenty) as well a peek into more Azure ‘stuff’ if time permits. There should also be time to get into some demos and do some Q & A.

The session will be recorded for our Cloud Business Blueprint community and posted to the discussion forums for on-demand viewing. If you are not yet part of the community then you can join for a low per month subscription, with no lock in period. Just pay month to month and cancel anytime with no questions asked,

http://www.cloudbusinessblueprint.com/members-sign-up/

for access to previous recording, peer forums, on demand training, re-brandable content, worksheets, checklists and more.

Of course, if you want to see a particular topic covered during the session drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do to squeeze it into the schedule.

I hope to see you on the webinar.

Some feedback from my recent Azure/Office 365 workshop

Happy to report that my recent 2 day Azure and Office 365 training workshop in Brisbane went off well and was well attended. Thanks to everyone who attended and made the sessions possible. Here’s a sample of some of the feedback received:

“I just wanted to say thank you for such an informative session on Azure. I got so much from the day it is hard to quantify yet, suffice to say I think all attendees have an advantage over those that missed out”

“Definitely worth the time and effort involved in taking the 2 days off for the training. Well done again Robert, keep up the good work.”

“The training was excellent and focused on what we need as SMB as well as identifying the bigger enterprise picture.  From knowing really nothing about Azure, we have now done practical tasks and know how to move forward.”

“The content was excellent and the pace was good to keep you thinking all the way through the practical tutorials. I think the 2 days of content would be equivalent to 4 days elsewhere and the Friday and Saturday sessions worked well for me and most others. Got some great tools and tips to take away with me.”

“The Azure training was great and really complements o365 and was good to get a taste of what is, and what is to come.”

“For those that didn’t make it to the Brisbane training, it was good, very good!!! Robert delivered 2 days of focussed excellence. I am so much more aware of where O365 and Azure, fit into the big picture. And, whilst there were times where I dropped behind in the practical exercises, the takeaway was massive.”

Appreciate the feedback from people and glad to see that it hit the mark with what you where looking for.

All the content from these course will now be finding its way online via Cloud Business Blueprint, so if you aren’t a member yet may now is the time?

Azure Godzilla Virtual Machines

A while ago I wrote about how Azure was offering high performance  ‘D’ machines, now comes news of even better ‘G’ machines.

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As you can see from above table, it is no wonder they have been dubbed ‘Godzilla’ machines. 32 cores, 448 GB of RAM and 6,500GB of SSD storage! Staggering.

For a full update on these new options coming to an Azure tenant near you see the following blog post from Microsoft:

http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/20/azures-getting-bigger-faster-and-more-open/

Azure datacenter locations

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If you want to know where Azure datacenters are located in the world take a look at this page:

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/regions/

If you want to know which services are available in those centres take a look at:

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/regions/#services

If you do a lot of Office 365 demos like I do, it makes sense to build a clean virtual workstation in a datacenter that is near the Office 365 datacenters. For me that is in Singapore which equates to Southeast Asia when running up an Azure virtual machine. That way you get the best experience possible between Office 365 and workstation, which is why this configuration is great for demos (apart from the fact that you can run them anywhere and on any machine that has Internet connectivity).

I’m sure there’ll be more regions soon, so stay tuned to those pages for all the details.

Brisbane workshop special surprise

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As I have mentioned previously here I am conducting a 2 day workshop in Brisbane on Office 365 (Friday 7th of November 2014) and Azure (Saturday 8th of November 2014). Places are still available for the workshop and you can get all the information about the event here:

https://blog.ciaops.com/2014/10/brisbane-office-365-and-azure-training.html

I am however happy to announce that as an added bonus for attendees of this workshop VMVault will be taking us through their NextDC B1 Datacentre. The tour lasts about an hour and you’ll get to see all the facilities of a modern data centre with expert tour guides on hand to answer all your questions.

This is a fantastic opportunity not to be missed and I thank Radek from VMVault for making this available to attendees.

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net