I like to thank you Community for Supporting, Sharing and Reading New Microsoft technologies on my Blog, Twitter, Facebook and
LinkedIn Community Groups 💗 I wish you all happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and a Healthy New Year 2023 may the Best Wishes comes true ! 🎄🥂
I’m very proud and Honored on the Microsoft Global MVP Awards 2022-2023 !
MVP Award for Cloud and Datacenter Management
MVP Award for Windows Insiders
MVP Award for Azure Hybrid
Thank you Microsoft Product Groups, MVP Award Program, Windows Insider Team, Azure Hybrid Team, Windows Server and Azure Stack HCI Team for all your support, NDA PGI sessions, and for the Awesome software, Features, solutions you are building 🙂
Wish you all Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and a Healthy New Year 2023 may the Best Wishes comes true ! 🎄🥂
Here are some Great links for Reading and Sharing :
JOIN these LinkedIn Community Groups for free and Share New Microsoft Technologies Together:
It’s a year full of misery with the Covid-19 virus around the world. People who lose their loved one, It’s a very sad time for all of us! Microsoft technologies are still going on strong with new features in Azure Cloud Services but also supporting the people who are working in the healthcare, data analytics, Microsoft Teams for Collaboration and much more. But what I want to say to all HealthCare people over the world : THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE WORK YOU DO 👍
I have deep respect for you all !
Community, Microsoft Product Teams, MVP Lead, WIndows Insiders, I wish you and your family happy holidays and a Healthy 2021 with lot of Success! 🎄😍
The world of data is moving and changing a lot with new IT technologies coming up like leaves on a tree.
Data is everywhere, on Servers, workstations, BYOD Devices in the Cloud but how do you keep your data save and protected for your business today and in the future? There are a lot of reasons why you should Backup your data :
One of your employees accidentally deleted important files for example.
Your data got compromised by a virus.
Your Server crashed
You have to save your data for a period of time by Law
And there will be more reasons why you should do backup…………….
A lot of Enterprise organizations are moving to the Cloud with workloads for the Business, but how is your Backup and Disaster Recovery managed today? A lot of data transitions are made but what if your Backup and Disaster Recovery solution is out dated or reaching end of Life? You can have a lot of Questions like :
What data should I backup?
Should I just upgrade the Backup Solution?
How can I make my Data Management Backup -DR Solution Cheaper and ready for the future?
How can I make my new Backup-DR Solution independent? ( Vendor Lockin)
And there will be more questions when you are in this scenario where you have to renew your Backup – DR Solution.
Here we have the following Great Backup Solution from 2014 :
Offsite Microsoft DPM Backup Solution since 2014
Here we have 3 System Center Data Protection Manager Backup Pods with a Tape library and One DPM pod connected with a Microsoft Azure Backup Vault in the Cloud. You do the Security updates and the Rollups for Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 to keep the Solution save and running.
Long Time Protection to Tape
DPM 2012 Server with direct attached Storage for Short time protection
The four DPM Backup Pods have the same Storage configuration for short time protection with a retention time of 15 days. After that Longtime protection is needed with Backup to tape and Backup to Microsoft Azure Backup Vault.
Since 2014 the Backup data is depending on these solution configurations.
Tape Management cost a lot of time and money
The fourth DPM Backup pod got a Azure Backup Vault in the Cloud to save Tape Management time.
DPM Backup to Microsoft Azure Cloud Backup Vault.
So this is the Start of the Journey to a New Data Management Backup – DR Solution transformation. The next Couple of weeks I will search for the different scenarios and solutions on the Internet and talk with the Community looking for Best Practices. I will do Polls on Social Media and a Serie of blogposts for the Data Management Backup – DR Solution to keep the business continuity.
Will it be a Cloud Backup – DR Solution?
Will it be a Hybrid Cloud Backup – DR Solution?
Everything in One Management Console?
Or More then One Backup -DR Solution for the right Job?
We will see what the journey will bring us based on Best Practices 😉
System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch provides a total systems management solution for a people-centric world. It can deploy applications to individuals using virtually any device or platform, centralizing and automating management across on-premise, service provider, and Microsoft Azure environments. In System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch Unleashed, a team of world-renowned System Center experts shows you how to make the most of this powerful toolset.
A Great Book and a Must have for every System Center Administrator, the book has more then 1100 pages with the following Chapters :
Configuration management basics
Configuration manager overview
Looking inside configuration manager
Architecture design planning
Network design
Installing and updating system center configuration manager
Upgrading and migrating to configmgr current branch
Using the configuration manager console
Client management
Managing compliance
Creating and managing applications
Creating and using deployment types
Creating and managing applications and packages
Distributing and deploying applications and packages
Managing software updates
Integrating intune hybrid into your configuration manager environment
Managing mobile devices
Conditional access in configuration manager
Endpoint protection
Configuration manager queries
Configuration manager reporting
Operating system deployment
Security and delegation in configuration manager
Backup, recovery, and maintenance
Configuration manager log files
Extending hardware inventory
Co-managing windows intune and configmgr
Reference urls
The System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch Unleashed is written by the following world wide Experts :
Kenneth van Surksum
Kerrie Meyler
Gerry Hampson
Saud Al-Mishari
Greg Ramsey
Michael Wiles
Byron Holt
Garth Jones
Microsoft System Center Management Pack (Community Technology Preview) for SQL Server vNext Replication enables the monitoring of Replication as a set of technologies for copying and distributing data and database objects from one database to another and then synchronizing between the databases to maintain consistency.
Service Map in #MSOMS automatically builds a common reference map of dependencies across your servers, processes, and third-party services. It discovers and maps all TCP dependencies, identifying surprise connections, remote third-party systems you depend on, and dependencies to traditional dark areas of your network such as Active Directory. Service Map discovers failed network connections that your managed systems are attempting to make, helping you identify potential server misconfiguration, service outages, and network issues.
Configuring Service Map solution in Operations Management Suite (OMS)
Service Map gets its data from the Microsoft Dependency Agent. The Dependency Agent is dependent on the OMS Agent for its connections to OMS. This means that a server must have the OMS Agent installed and configured first, and then the Dependency Agent can be installed. The following table describes the connected sources that are supported by the Service Map solution.
I like Microsoft OMS Service Map a lot because you can see the relations between Servers, Services, Applications in a Hybrid IT environment and
get proactive alerts to take action to keep your Hybrid Datacenters Healthy 🙂
The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) is an agentless, automated, multi-product planning and assessment tool for quicker and easier desktop, server and cloud migrations. MAP provides detailed readiness assessment reports and executive proposals with extensive hardware and software information, and actionable recommendations to help organizations accelerate their IT infrastructure planning process, and gather more detail on assets that reside within their current environment. MAP also provides server utilization data for Hyper-V server virtualization planning; identifying server placements, and performing virtualization candidate assessments. More information about MAP Toolkit can you find here
Software Requirements:
Operating system. Any of the following:
Windows 10 (Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions only)
Windows 8.1 (Professional and Enterprise editions only)
Windows 8 (Professional and Enterprise editions only)
Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions only)
Installation of all updates for the operating system. Note: In some cases updates may not install automatically. To download updates for your computer manually, go to http://update.microsoft.com/.
By default, the MAP Toolkit will install SQL Server 2012 Express LocalDB during setup. You may also use an existing installation of SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, or SQL Server 2012 if you create an instance named “MAPS” before running the MAP Toolkit installer. The MAP Toolkit requires the collation order of the database engine to be set to “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS”.
Notes:
Some of these prerequisites require restarting your computer. You may have to restart multiple times if all the prerequisites are not met prior to running Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit setup.
Scenario-dependent requirements:
For machines that will be used to run the Forefront Endpoint Protection Usage Tracking, Lync Usage Tracking, Exchange Server Usage Tracking, or Volume Licensing scenarios, please note: PowerShell 2.0 or higher must be installed.
For machines that will be used to collect Oracle schema information, please note: The 64 bit Oracle client must be installed on the MAP machine to collect the schema information. If the 64 bit client is not installed, MAP will only be able to collect instance information. MAP will not collect schema information if the 32 bit Oracle client is installed.
Export results in Excel for Windows Server 2016 Assessment Example
Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Sizing Example in Excel
Learn how to use Log Analytics in the Operations Management Suite to collect and analyze data generated by resources in your cloud and on-premises environments. Tutorials and other documentation show you how to get real-time insights across your workloads and servers regardless of physical location
Cloud and Datacenter Management Blog 