Windows 2016 fileserver cluster on Microsoft StorSimple – Part 4

5th of December, 2018 / / No Comments

Failover to cloud appliance in case of DR event

In a disaster recovery (DR) scenario, the primary device stops functioning. StorSimple uses the primary device as source and moves the associated cloud data to another target device. This process is referred to as the failover. The following graphic illustrates the process of failover.

The target device for a failover could be a physical device or even a cloud appliance. The target device may be located in the same or a different geographical location than the source device.… [Keep reading] “Windows 2016 fileserver cluster on Microsoft StorSimple – Part 4”

Windows 2016 fileserver cluster on Microsoft StorSimple – Part 3

5th of December, 2018 / / No Comments

Setting up a 2*node windows 2016 on-prem fileserver cluster and 1*Windows 2016 fileserver on Azure

In previous posts (part1 and part2) of this series I discussed about the overall solution and how to configure on-prem and cloud StorSimple storage systems. I also explained the steps to provision the storage to servers from StorSimple storage.

The focus of this post is to discuss about the requirements and steps to create an on-prem Scale-Out-Fileserver cluster and a standalone fileserver on Azure for DR capability.… [Keep reading] “Windows 2016 fileserver cluster on Microsoft StorSimple – Part 3”

Integration Testing Timer-Triggered Precompiled v2 Azure Functions

3rd of December, 2018 / / No Comments

In a recent post, I described a way to run integration tests against precompiled C# Azure Functions using the v2 runtime. In that post, we looked at an example of invoking an HTTP-triggered function from within an integration test.

Of course, there are plenty of other triggers available for Azure Functions too. Recently I needed to write an integration test against a timer-triggered function and decided to investigate the best way to do this.

The Azure Functions runtime provides a convenient API for invoking a timer-trigger function.… [Keep reading] “Integration Testing Timer-Triggered Precompiled v2 Azure Functions”

Windows 2016 fileserver cluster on Microsoft StorSimple – Part 2

3rd of December, 2018 / / No Comments

Setting up the on-prem StorSimple 8600 device and StorSimple 8020 cloud appliance

In the part1 of this series, I discussed about the solution, an overview of different products involved and how those products hang together to provide a fileserver solution with DR capability in Azure.

Now, lets discuss the step-by-step implementation procedure to get the solution into a working state. In this part I am going to show you the steps to configure on-prem StorSimple storage and StorSimple cloud appliance.… [Keep reading] “Windows 2016 fileserver cluster on Microsoft StorSimple – Part 2”

Active Directory User Migration in Hybrid Exchange Environment Using ADMT – Part1

29th of November, 2018 / / 2 Comments

An Introduction and high-level migration approach

Over the past few months I have been working on developing a strategy for migrating users from one domain in a forest to another domain in a separate forest. Sounds quite simple at the first read of it, right? Just use ADMT and migrate the groups, user accounts and profiles, job done? Well that’s what I had thought when I started working on it.

As I started digging more and more into the details, the complexities involved started unfolding.… [Keep reading] “Active Directory User Migration in Hybrid Exchange Environment Using ADMT – Part1”

Windows 2016 fileserver cluster on Microsoft StorSimple – Part1

29th of November, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction to Series

After recently setting up a storage and DR solution for one of my customers to host their fileserver workload, I thought I’d write a series to document its use and to share any useful tips I found along the way. This first post will explain the technologies that were involved in the solution and how the different components hang together.

What will be covered in the series?

Part 1: Introduction to solution, Microsoft StorSimple device and Windows 2016 file server cluster.… [Keep reading] “Windows 2016 fileserver cluster on Microsoft StorSimple – Part1”

Automating Azure Instrumentation and Monitoring – Part 2: Application Insights

29th of November, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Application Insights is a component of Azure Monitor for application-level instrumentation. It collects telemetry from your application infrastructure like web servers, App Services, and Azure Functions apps, and from your application code. In this post we’ll discuss how Application Insights can be automated in several key ways: first, by setting up an Application Insights instance in an ARM template; second, by connecting it to various types of Azure application components through automation scripts including Azure Functions, App Services, and API Management; and third, by configuring its smart detection features to emit automatic alerts in a configurable way.… [Keep reading] “Automating Azure Instrumentation and Monitoring – Part 2: Application Insights”

Overcoming Issues Installing Azure Active Directory Connect

27th of November, 2018 / / No Comments

AzureADConnect

Having recently gone through the process of implementing a custom AADConnect staging installation for a large enterprise customer with more than 30,000 users, with a view to it serving as a fall back to an existing production AADConnect installation.

The requirement being to setup an Azure virtual machine running Windows 2016 Datacentre, AADConnect and SQL Server Standard 2017 (locally installed). Rather than SQL Express which comes by default but suffers limitations which preclude its use in large environments.… [Keep reading] “Overcoming Issues Installing Azure Active Directory Connect”

Nested Virtual PowerShell Desktop Environments on Windows 10 & Windows Server 2019 in Azure – Part 2

22nd of November, 2018 / / 1 Comment 
27 Nov 18 Part 3 is available here that details customizing 
an image and accessing it via other SSH clients with elevated
access.

In Part-1 of this series posted yesterday I showed that with Windows 10/Windows Server 2019 we can now have isolated virtual environments for PowerShell Desktop in Azure through containerization.

In this post I’ll show how I plan to leverage this capability from a mobility perspective. What we need to do first is enable elevated (privileged) access to our VM.… [Keep reading] “Nested Virtual PowerShell Desktop Environments on Windows 10 & Windows Server 2019 in Azure – Part 2”

Nested Virtual PowerShell Desktop Environments on Windows 10 & Windows Server 2019 in Azure – Part 1

21st of November, 2018 / / 2 Comments 
22 Nov 18 Part 2 is available here that details accessing
the Docker Image via Azure Cloud Shell / SSH
27 Nov 18 Part 3 is available here that details customizing
an image and accessing it via other SSH clients with 
elevated access.

PowerShell Desktop Virtual Environments

If you’ve been working with PowerShell for any length of time you know that through its flexibility there can come challenges when using disparate PowerShell Modules and often their version dependencies.… [Keep reading] “Nested Virtual PowerShell Desktop Environments on Windows 10 & Windows Server 2019 in Azure – Part 1”