Bye bye tower

For over 8 years I’ve used the above tower machine in a range of roles. I bought it for around $800 initially and used it to run my Hyper-V servers, both production and testing. I eliminated the production requirements of the Hyper V machine by moving them to the cloud (e.g, this blog used to run on a SharePoint site I had running on that machine). The test machines I migrated on Virtual Box running on a big HP Envy 17” laptop so they would be at least portable.

Once its life as a Hyper V host was over I reprovisioned the box to run Windows desktop operating system for a while.

Recently, I was considering getting a replacement for this machine to run everything plus some more virtual testing machines. However, as I outlined in this blog post:

I finally get Azure

When I stopped and thought about what I actually wanted to do I realized I could do everything I needed to in the cloud using something like Azure for the high end grunt for my virtual testing environment.

That meant I no longer needed to spend the $2,500 or so buying a new desktop, Azure would be far more cost effective since I simply turn off the the Azure virtual machines when I don’t need them so it costs me next to nothing.

After that epiphany, and without the need to replace this tower, my thoughts turned to whether I actually needed that machine at all. To make sure, I switched it off and started to use my Surface Pro as my main machine.

After two weeks, and having not turned the old tower box on, I knew I no longer required its services. It has now been wiped and is appearing on eBay looking for a new owner.

This $800 piece of hardware as served me well over the years. In that time it only blew its power supply twice for a grand total of about $150 for parts to repair. When I bought the box initially I toyed with the idea of buying a name brand server and building my ‘date centre’ on that but then I decided to take the opposite path and get the cheapest thing possible and see how long it lasted.

Well 8 years later it is running without an issue and would make anyone a fine workstation. But you know what? This machine has once again confirmed to me why the cloud is fast becoming the solution for more and more IT ‘stuff’. So much so that I no longer need this tower machine, I can use my Surface, Azure and Office 365.

Since I have simplified my own IT and moved more stuff to the cloud I have have cut my power bill by more than 50%. I expect that to fall even further without this tower machine being on most of the day. I have more space under my desk, my office is less noisy and I don’t keep kicking it accidentally either!

This however is not the end of my minimization quest. Next on the list is my long serving HP Envy 17”, which currently needs an external fan blowing on it to keep it cool enough to rest your hand on. With all my testing machine now in Azure and accessible on any device just about I no longer have need for it either. So when I can get a Surface 3 Pro that HP machine will also be looking for a new home.

When I take look back to the time when I had over 6 independent servers running on unique hardware doing different things, a desktop, a laptop, etc to what minimal equipment I have now but with more power, functionality and flexibility thanks to the cloud, I can only imagine what the future holds.

However, like I said, my process is not complete yet. The HP Envy 17” is now on borrowed time and I look forward to further falls in my next electricity bill.

SharePoint Online migration–Start up is key

This post is part of an on going series covering migration to SharePoint Online. If you haven’t already I suggest you read the previous posts:
The classic SharePoint migration mistake
SharePoint Online migration – Pilers and Filers
In this post I’m going to focus on the area that is most important post-information upload to SharePoint Online.

As way of an analogy take a look at this clip from UK Top Gear. Ensure you watch the section from 2:06 to 3:45 and take note.
What it illustrates is that a high performance track day car like the KTM X-bow and many other such high performance cars don’t have a very ‘standard’ starting procedure. It is all very simple when you know but left to your own devices (like James May in the video) you’ll get nowhere but utterly frustrated.
The same applies to a SharePoint Online migration. Why? Because moving to SharePoint Online is a very different environment from traditional files and folders. Things are different (and better) for a number of reasons but if you don’t know how to at least start using SharePoint Online you are going to get pretty frustrated pretty quickly just like if you’d bought a KTM X-bow and no one had shown you how to start it!
In my initial post in this series I noted how that if you want things to stay the way they are with your files and folders in the cloud then SharePoint Online may not be for you. What I also noted was that I believe this to be a very small minority of businesses since most want to receive the productivity benefits of true collaboration and are willing to invest the time to get the most from SharePoint Online.
However, there is nothing more frustrating that buying something new and then not even being able to use it. Imagine you where lucky enough to afford something like a Ferrari 458 Speciale and then you couldn’t even start it. Even though there is whole lot more to ownership than just starting the car, initially after purchase getting some usage out of what you bought is a huge aspect of the experience you will have with it going forward. Having a good experience (i.e. being able to fire the beast up and drive it immediately) makes things more positive, even if you have a few set backs (say curbing the rims) down the track. However, if you have bad experience immediately at the start (i.e. you can’t work out how to make it go) you’ll remember that far more and have a much greater challenging overcoming that initial negative impression. It is simple human nature really but understanding this is also the key to a successful SharePoint Online migration.
In essence what I am saying is that even after all the data has been copied across and categorized the most important part for the success of the project comes immediately after this – getting the users over the initial usage hurdle as quickly as possible (i.e. a few quick wins go a long way). Most users will be apprehensive about things changing. Most don’t trust technology and believe all machines ‘conspire’ against them constantly. This is the challenge the migrator needs to overcome. In short this means training.
Once the data is over and users are about to be unleashed on SharePoint Online you need to make that transition as smooth and easy as possible. If you don’t, chances are the customer will always have a negative opinion about SharePoint Online and you will be starting from behind. You want to ensure the best possible experience. You want to ensure users get up and running quickly. You MUST ensure they can do their jobs better, quicker and easier than before. As with any new technology, that first hill is the largest but once you are over that it is generally all downhill from there.
Like I have said in previous posts, this means the process of migration is NOT complete after merely copying the data across. The migration process is only complete once everyone is HAPPILY using SharePoint.
This means you need to need to develop processes and material around the critical element of user adoption as much as the technical process of actually copying data. In so many instances I have seen, data gets copied but users then get abandoned to work it out for themselves. The chances of that ending with a good experience are almost zero. However, with a bit of planning and TLC the chances of a positive result are very high. Unfortunately, I just don’t see it a lot.
As you will hear me say over and over again, SharePoint is more than cloud storage and should be treated as so. Like any other Office tool you need to learn how to work it, even the basics, so you can help those you are selling it to. Thus, if you are selling SharePoint migration services then you need to incorporating into that site design and adoption training. For most people selling SharePoint this means extending their skill set.
Don’t just drag and drop and run away. Don’t be afraid of it. Invest a little bit of time to reap the rewards. With so much implementation of SharePoint Online being done currently it leaves a HUGE opportunity for those who do it right. Getting the user started is the key and never overlook the fact that making that as painless and simple as possible sets the stage for adoption of the more advanced features of SharePoint as well the deeper integration into the business and that spells business opportunity for those to take it up. As the Top Gear clip illustrates, having a key doesn’t always mean you can start the car!
p.s. I believe in this adoption process so heavily that I created many publications around exactly that. They are not deep dive, they are not aimed at IT Professionals. They are aimed at end users who want to get on the gas with products as soon as they can. I created these because I saw no others in the market.
You can find these at:
http://www.ciaops.com/publications
and any purchase supports the work I do and allow me to create more such guides.

Need to Know podcast–Episode 58

In this episode I speak with the creator of Brightgauge Eric Dosal. Eric gives us his insights into running and MSP business, how important metrics and peer networking are as well as an insight into software development and the opportunities that abound for technical people.

Check out more of Eric’s information at:

Brightgauge

Dosal Brothers

If you own or are part of a managed service provider IT business then this is an episode you can’t miss.

You can find the episode at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/2014/04/23/episode-58-eric-dosal/

or subscribe via your favourite app like iTunes:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

Remember, if you have a suggestion or want to appear on an episode simply get in contact with me.

I finally get Microsoft Azure

Ever since Microsoft Azure (recently renamed from Windows Azure) has been available I have struggled with a reason to use it. This also flows over into reasons of why other SMB reseller or customers would have cause to use it. Does that mean that it was merely a tool for the enterprise? The answer is definitely ‘NO’ now that I have come to better understand its application for me and potentially others in the SMB space.
So here’s the challenge that brought me to my Azure epiphany.
I have always been a big users of virtual machines. I have used products like Microsoft Virtual PC and Hyper V to allow me to have access to a number of different operating systems for support. Over time I migrated my six independent servers into a single Hyper V machine that used to host things like web sites and my old SharePoint blog. In an effort to save money, stay simple and utilize the cloud more I decommissioned this production Hyper V server a few years ago.
The problem was that besides running production environments that Hyper V box also had a number of test machines that I used to power up and down as required. My need for these virtual test machines continued even after decommissioning the Hyper V server.
I was able to use a product like Virtual Box on a more powerful laptop to achieve the testing environment I required. With 8GB of RAM and some big disks the laptop faired well for demos and training purposes. It certainly was a lot to lug around but with Virtual Box on there it did the job.
One of the other reasons I need a number of virtual servers is for when I do a SharePoint migration. Typically this involves swinging the database into a new version of SharePoint and allowing it to convert. Unfortunately, you can’t for example template a calendar element in SharePoint 2010 and import it directly into SharePoint 2013, you can only go from 2013 to 2013 version. Thus, this meant converting the data to the same version and then migrating.
Where this started to become an issue was the release of SharePoint Foundation 2013. No longer could I deploy a stand alone SharePoint Foundation server, I now needed to have a Domain Controller as well since SharePoint Foundation required a domain login to install. It was certainly possible to install SharePoint Foundation 2013 on a domain controller but that really wasn’t supported and it also provided a different experience. So now even to do the most simple thing with SharePoint Foundation 2013 I needed two virtual machines running.
The requirement of two virtual machines started to make it hard to work with the old laptop I was using. All I needed was more RAM but that wasn’t an option with this laptop. So my thoughts then turned to potentially replacing my aging desktop with a more ‘beefy’ box with plenty of RAM so I could run all the virtual machine I needed. This however wasn’t going to be cheap and would take up space and chew more power. It also wasn’t going in the direction I wanted to head, which was simplicity, small devices and cloud based systems. It also meant that I wouldn’t have a portable solution as I do now with the laptop. So where to now?
I considered perhaps getting my own equipment in a datacentre or ‘renting’ a server but then I wondered with Microsoft Azure could do the trick.
Spinning up a server is easy enough and after a few false starts when it came to networking everything together I finally got two servers connected together using Azure. I made one a domain controller and the other a SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 box. With that accomplished I then set up a SharePoint Foundation 2013 box with ease.

So here’s one of the first benefits of Azure. As I have documented in this blog previously, SharePoint Foundation 2013 requires a lot more resources than SharePoint 2010. In Azure that’s no problem. I can start with the lowest spec machine and easily scale up as required. So for this initial machine I have bumped it up to 2 cores and 3.5GB of RAM (which still isn’t really enough) and I can continue to bump it up if required.
After also building a stand alone Windows SharePoint Services v3.0 server also in Azure I now have all the machines I need to do a migration. Best of all, say the migration has a lot of data that will take a while to process I can simply ramp up the power of each Azure virtual machine to allow it to complete the task quicker. When I have finished, I simply scale it back to what it was before.

Previously, people would physically mail me their SharePoint data to convert, now I can simply give them access to the Azure virtual machine and they can directly upload it there. Once I convert the data I can also give them access to the same machine so they can check it before proceeding. Easy.
So now I no longer to carry around my laptop with my SharePoint migration machines, I can do it all on Azure from any machine on which I can access the Internet with, including my Mac! That means that I don;t have to ‘waste’ my money on getting another super powered desktop. I can throw it out and use my Surface PC instead.
Now enamoured with Azure I began to consider what else I could use it for and found yet another example.
Another virtual machine that I maintain is one that is set up to use for PowerShell access to Office 365. That way it is isolated and can be used independently of what maybe installed on my desktop. I have now set up a similar machine in Azure so now I can use PowerShell with Office 365 no matter where I am. This makes it far more convenient than having to fire the laptop up to do something simple. Again, I can do this wherever I have a browser.
Now you might be asking about the cost of all this. Because most of the time these machines are powered off the cost of usage is extremely low. With all the running up of a domain controller, three SharePoint servers and a PowerShell machine my total cost (including all the data transfers for install files) is less than $5! A new powerful desktop would have cost be probably in the range of $2,400 dollars. That is an allowance of about $200 per month for 12 months of Azure which I can’t see myself getting anywhere near. Thus, it may only cost me $10 – $50 per month which over the year is a huge saving from shelling out for a desktop (not to mention the run up time which I didn’t include).
Thus, Azure now makes sense to me in terms of agility for my business. It now makes sense to me in terms of cost saving. It also makes sense to me in the opportunity to do so much more with the product. All I have done is play with virtual machines, which is only a very small component of what is possible with the product.
I have a long, long way to go to truly understand and utilize the product to its full extent but now I GET IT. I am beginning to see the benefits it can provide me and thus it is opening my eyes as to what is possible for customers.
So if you are an IT Professional I urge you to get into Azure and understand what it can do. Like me, I’m pretty sure that once you do you’ll see the light like I have.
I’ll be posting more about Azure from now on as I discover more about how it works and how to configure it so stay tuned.