Tag Archives: Microsoft

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Booz Allen Hamilton Uses Office 365, SharePoint – YouTube

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Office 365 And SharePoint Online Selected For Booz Allen Hamilton Company Intranet

I was really surprised when watching this video.  Booz never came across to me as a people focused kind of company.  However, you’ll see how Office 365 and SharePoint Online have helped them to increase productivity within the company’s work style.  Many employees are remote and need to be able to access company resources quickly and seamlessly.  Using the Office 365 and SharePoint platform has enable them to do just that.  The document co-authoring features have been one of the biggest benefits of moving to Office 365.  With so many of their workforce being at client sites or working from home, being able to collaborate on documents was absolutely crucial.  Check out the Microsoft case study link at the bottom of the page after you watch the video.  Let us know what you think about how Booz Allen Hamilton implemented Office 365.

 

Booz Allen Hamilton Office 365 Case Study  Microsoft Word 2013 Logo

Office Videos YouTube Channel  YouTube Icon

See What’s New In Microsoft Office 365 – YouTube

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Are You Using The Latest Microsoft Office 365?

With Office 365, you choose your own path to becoming a modern business.  Microsoft offers flexible, complete, and trusted solutions.  Your business will have a range of opportunities to reduce costs.  By embracing the cloud, you open doors to use powerful business-ready tools across all your devices.  Office 365 is everything you need to get your job done is in front of you and accessible from anywhere.  And because it’s Microsoft, you gain peace of mind knowing that everything works together seamlessly.  Additionally, you’ll get the security you need to protect your business.  For more information on what’s happening with Microsoft Office 365 give us a shout.  You can also check out their informative YouTube Channel.

 

Why You Should Invest In The Azure Cloud Platform – Google+

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Azure Cloud Platform vs Amazon Web Services: How Do They Differ?

Looking to get a better handle on cloud platforms?  Check out this Slideshare post to get a run down on differences between Azure and AWS.  You’ll learn some specifics about the products and services each has to offer.  The presentation explains the four main offerings:  Compute, Database, Storage & Content Delivery, and Networking.  It is a very informative piece of content on Azure Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services.  There are 18 slides in this presentation.  You’ll learn about the similarities and differences of each product at a high level.  Additionally, be exposed to the difficulty associated with deploying each.  There are also links to other Slideshare presentations that could offer more information.  Check it out and leave a comment.

Microsoft Azure – New Development with Red Hat

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Microsoft, Red Hat and Azure

Microsoft and Red Hat have entered into an agreement in the cloud space.  Red Hat will now be an option for Linux customers in the Azure platform.  It looks like the war is on hold for now.

 

 

 

 

Microsoft just buried the hatchet with another huge and bitter rival, Red Hat

Microsoft and Red Hat struck up a major new partnership on Wednesday. They’re giving Red Hat’s Linux operating system a starring role on Microsoft’s cloud computing service, Azure. Linux is a free and open source competitor to Windows offered by a number of players, with Red Hat being the biggest.

Windows Server 2012 R2 Failover Clustering

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Considering Failover Clustering For Your Environment

I recently had the opportunity to assist with the deployment of SQL Server 2012 in a failover cluster on vSphere 5.5.  I have to admit, the vSphere tasks had not changed since I deployed a file service cluster on Server 2008 R2 last year.  You’ll be happy to know that the VMware setup document was straight forward and easy to follow.  This experience reminded me of the article I wrote back in Sept of last year (Clusters for Service Consolidation).  In the article, I proposed the use of Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) as method of consolidating services in the datacenter.  A cluster could have multiple roles configured.  This could open the door to a more available datacenter at an infrastructure level.  However, the one thing I did want to expose here, is that there is a definite improvement in the failover cluster service in Server 2012 R2.  The storage/quorum issues experienced with 2008 R2 failover clustering are not an issue with 2012 R2.  This is significant, since the 2008 R2 cluster experienced loss of quorum due to storage problems, while the 2012 R2 cluster on the same storage didn’t skip a beat.  I was very impressed with the new performance and would recommend seriously considering MSCS as a major player in your datacenter.  Before you start your project though, I recommend taking the time to read the documentation before you make the first click.  I know how hard that can be sometimes, but you’ll be glad you did.  Below are a few more resources to learn more about the new features and prepare for your deployment.

 What’s New in Failover Clustering in Windows Server

Microsoft Clustering with VMware vSphere Design Guide

Migration Paths for Migrating to a Failover Cluster Running Windows Server 2012 R2

Deploy highly scalable tenant network infrastructure for hosting providers

Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Compute Foundations

Clusters for Service Consolidation

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Using Microsoft Cluster Services to Consolidate Your Infrastructure

As I mentioned in a previous post, Failover Clustering Overview | Windows Server 2008 R2, the idea of using Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) to host multiple services seemed quite viable as HA solution.  For many companies that use Microsoft server products as the foundation of their infrastructure, there could be great benefit in consolidating their services into clusters.  The benefits could include ease of upgrade and patching using the rolling upgrade method, as well as ability to scale the solution as the business grows.  Services such as DHCP, Exchange, SQL Server, and File Services could be consolidated into one or multiple clusters.  Architected with disaster recovery in mind, services could be failed over to a cluster in another site.  That could help to knock out two problems with one solution.  To give you an idea of what I am talking about, please review this TechNet article – How A Cluster Server Works.  The article is a little dated but the information is so good that I had to add it to the mix.  Please let me know what you think, and if you have any questions.  I would be happy to share my thoughts.

How A Cluster Server Works

Failover Clustering Overview | Windows Server 2008 R2

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Late last year, I began working on a migration project to move a single Windows Sever file service to a two node failover cluster using Windows Server 2008 R2. The configuration was implemented in a VMware vShpere 4.1 tenant datacenter.  I was not able to use Windows Server 2012 because vSphere 4.1 doesn’t support it.  It has been a few months since the completion of the project, and I have had some time to reflect on the outcome.

The project was very successful. VMware provides a cluster setup document that was not overly complicated to follow. I was even able to integrate our existing Tivoli Storage Manager backup client into the solution with great ease. Now that the project is complete, I am envisioning how clusters might be scaled to simplify the management of an entire environment. Consider using Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) to power all of your higher level services, such as DHCP, File and Print, SQL Server, Exchange Server, DFS and other cluster aware applications. Could it be possible to setup say a ten node cluster to support all of your important business and LAN services?  Of course, if you needed more servers, adding additional ones would not be impossible.

In the coming weeks I would like to investigate this possibility.   First to determine if it’s feasible, and second, is it practical. It’s an exciting opportunity from my perspective, and I hope some of you might think so as well.

Failover Clustering Overview

What’s New in Failover Clusters in Windows Server 2008 R2

Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) support on ESXi/ESX (1004617)

 

Virtualized Infrastructure with Microsoft Hyper-V

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Virtualization With Hyper-V

For those of you interested in learning more about virtualization, a place to start is the Microsoft Hyper-V information page at TechNet.  There is a wealth of information available to review and educate yourself with.  We recommend taking some time to get better acquainted the technology by using this resource.

Microsoft Hyper-V information at TechNet.