How to assign and remove user Office365 licenses using the AzureADPreview Powershell Module

12th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

A couple of months ago the AzureADPreview module was released. The first cmdlet that I experimented with was Set-AzureADUserLicense. And it didn’t work, there was no working examples and I gave up and used GraphAPI instead.
Since then the AzureADPreview has gone through a number of revisions and I’ve been messing around a little with each update. The Set-AzureADUserLicense cmdlet has been my litmus test. Now that I have both removing and assigning Office 365 licenses working I’ll save others the pain of working it out and give a couple of working examples.… [Keep reading] “How to assign and remove user Office365 licenses using the AzureADPreview Powershell Module”

Azure AD Connect: An error occurred executing configure AAD Sync task: user realm discovery failed

12th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

Yesterday (Tuesday October 11th, 2016) I started a routine install of Azure AD Connect. This project is for an upgrade from FIM 2010 R2 for a long time client; if you were wondering.
Unfortunately at the end of the process, when essentially the final part of the install was running, during the “Configure” process, I ran into some trouble.

Strike 1

I received the following error:

An error occurred executing Configure AAD Sync task: user_realm_discovery_failed: User realm discovery failed

This happened with the current, as of this blog post, version of Azure AD Connect: 1.1.281.0 (release: Sep 7th 2016).… [Keep reading] “Azure AD Connect: An error occurred executing configure AAD Sync task: user realm discovery failed”

Azure networking VNET architecture best practice update (post #MSIgnite 2016)

11th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

During Microsoft Ignite 2016 I attended a few Azure networking architecture sessions. Towards the end of the week, though, they did overlap some content which was not ideal. A key message was there though. An interesting bit of reference architecture information.
Of note and relevant to this blog post:

  • Migrate and disaster recover Azure workloads using Operations Management Suite by Mahesh Unnifrishan, Microsoft Program Manager
  • Review ExpressRoute for Office 365 configuration (routing, proxy and network security) by Paul Andrew, Senior Product Marketing Manager
  • Run highly available solutions on Microsoft Azure by Igal Figlin, Principal PM- Availability, Scalability and Performance on Azure
  • Gain insight into real-world usage of the Microsoft cloud using Azure ExpressRoute by Bala Natarajan Microsoft Program Manager
  • Achieve high-performance data centre expansion with Azure Networking by Narayan Annamalai, Principal PM Manager, Microsoft

Background

For the last few years there has been one piece of design around Azure Virtual Networks (VNETs) that caused angst.… [Keep reading] “Azure networking VNET architecture best practice update (post #MSIgnite 2016)”

Automated Call Distribution for Cloud PBX

7th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

Microsoft’s Cloud PBX is well on its way to provide Office 365 customers PSTN calling ability in Skype for Business, if you’ve missed out my colleague Joel Neff has written a great blog about the start of Cloud PBX and the features it will offer the end user with call functionality. To put it very simply, they will get the same experience as a traditional Skype for Business Enterprise Voice user. This will enable you to have PSTN numbers assigned to your end users and will be sufficient for 1-1 and conferencing calling scenarios, but what happens with my public number entry points?… [Keep reading] “Automated Call Distribution for Cloud PBX”

How to make a copy of a virtual machine running Windows in Azure

How to make a copy of a virtual machine running Windows in Azure

6th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

I was called upon recently to help a customer create copies of some of their Windows virtual machines. The idea was to quickly deploy copies of these hosts at any time as opposed to using a system image or point in time copy.
The following PowerShell will therefore allow you to make a copy or clone of a Windows virtual machine using a copy of it’s disks in Azure Resource Manager mode.

Create a new virtual machine from a copy of the disks of another

Having finalized the configuration of the source virtual machine the steps required are as follows.… [Keep reading] “How to make a copy of a virtual machine running Windows in Azure”

Is Service Strategy your Everest?

5th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

Essentially strategy is separating what to do versus what not to do.
It brings about alignment to your organisation’s vision.
In this blog, I will endeavour to cover why having a service management strategy is critical for your organisation and point you towards well-known principles that will help you scale it.
You could think of this like climbing a mountain.
It starts with your perspective.
Perspective – outlines your vision and direction.
What does Everest look like?… [Keep reading] “Is Service Strategy your Everest?”

Exchange Online Protection Organizational Approach

4th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

I have been working for an organisation who had recently migrated to Exchange Online protection (EOP), and we had found that some of his important emails, from a legitimate email source, were getting blocked.
Upon investigation it turns out that a week before the customer’s organisation was hit by a Zero-Day virus which resulted in spoofed emails coming through and landing in the end user mailboxes. This resulted into a bit of chaos and a decision was taken to modify the Bulk email threshold (BCL) to a tighter level.… [Keep reading] “Exchange Online Protection Organizational Approach”

SharePoint content migration using Sharegate and Powershell

4th of October, 2016 / / 3 Comments

Content Migration

When it comes to content migration we have the option to write code (script) or use a migration toolset or a combination of both, thus it is important to identify the appropriate toolset based on “ease of use” and what we need to achieve.
I have evaluated several migration toolsets however, in this blog I am going with Sharegate as I have extensively used this product recently.

Sharegate is a toolset used to  “Manage, Migrate and Secure SharePoint & Office 365”. 

… [Keep reading] “SharePoint content migration using Sharegate and Powershell”