Blog

Microsoft announced a bunch of information about Windows Server 2016 (WS2016) at the Worldwide Partner Conference on July 12th in Toronto including how Microsoft will service, or release new features, to Windows Server 2016 after general availability.

Aidan Finn outlines what to expect at Microsoft TechEd Europe 2014, including what to bring and how to schedule your time at the event.

Here we are, counting down the days and hours to 2016, and it is time once again for Aidan Finn to break out the crystal ball and make some Hyper-V predictions for the New Year.

Month 3 of 2018 brought us some interesting news in Azure IaaS. Some things that have been in the oven for a while are starting to rise and there’s lots more evidence of the new and open Microsoft.

A recent Microsoft post contained the news that Exchange Online uses Windows Server Core. That might be news to some, but not to anyone who’s been following the advice of the Exchange product group. Exchange Online doesn’t use virtual servers, follows a preferred architecture, wants to reduce the potential attack surface, and extract as much CPU as possible out of its servers. All good reasons why Windows Server Core helps.

Aidan Finn discusses how you can achieve better networking performance with Azure virtual machines by using a feature called Accelerated Networking.

Aidan Finn discusses Microsoft’s development of a deeply re-factored version of the Windows Server Remote Desktop Services infrastructure, which leverages the power of Windows Server, Azure PaaS, and Azure AD.

The September update of the Office ProPlus monthly channel delivers support for Office 365 sensitivity labels without the need to install the Azure Information Protection client. This is a step forward to make it easier for Office 365 users to be able to protect their most confidential information with encryption. More work remains to be done to upgrade the Office Online apps (including OWA), Outlook Mobile, and SharePoint and OneDrive. Will all this happen before Ignite?

Back at Microsoft Ignite 2017 in Orlando, FL, I attended the session where ‘Project Honolulu’ was announced and demonstrated. This was a fresh, built-from-scratch new server management tool for Windows Servers, Windows 10, and Azure resources. I do recall there being a large number of applause sessions from all the IT Pros in the audience!…

Microsoft has boosted the per-user storage allocation for SharePoint Online by 20x to make it easier for people to move data to Office 365. It’s a good move, and one that’s probably overdue. Teams and Office 365 Groups have accelerated the use of SharePoint over the last year or so. However, Exchange also increased its storage allocation and that hasn’t got everyone to the cloud. Yet.