Blog Archives
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Syndication
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January 5, 2012
New Signature Awarded Microsoft Gold Communications Competency
By New SignatureWe are proud to announce that New Signature has been awarded the Gold Communications Competency from Microsoft. The Microsoft Gold Communications competency highlights New Signature’s investment and capabilities around instant messaging (IM) and presence, conferencing workloads, and enterprise voice and video using the Microsoft Lync solution.
Microsoft Lync connects users in new ways, regardless of their physical location. The latest release of the Unified Communications platform delivers a fresh, intuitive user experience that is directly accessible from Microsoft Office applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft SharePoint. Lync brings together the different ways people communicate in a single interface, is deployed as a unified platform, and is administered through a single management infrastructure. The unified nature of the system helps reduce costs and facilitates rapid user adoption. And because Lync is broadly interoperable, it fits into current IT infrastructures for easier deployment and migration.
New Signature holds six gold and eleven silver Microsoft competencies, including: Gold Systems Management, Gold Virtualization, Gold Server Platform, Gold Hosting, Gold Desktop, Gold Communications, Silver Messaging, Silver Identity and Security, Silver Portals and Collaboration, Silver Content Management, Silver Data Platform, Silver Learning, Silver Midmarket Solution Provider, Silver Mobility, Silver Search, Silver Software Asset Management, and Silver Volume Licensing.
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January 4, 2012
Microsoft Adding Persistent Virtual Machines to Windows Azure Enabling Customers to Host Linux, SharePoint and SQL Server
By Jim BanachI was excited to read Mary Jo Foley post about how, “Microsoft is preparing to launch a new persistent virtual machine feature on its Azure cloud platform, enabling customers to host Linux, SharePoint and SQL Server there,” on her All About Microsoft blog on ZDNet. Why is this a bid deal? Mary explains elegantly when she writes, “The new persistent VM support also will allow customers to run SQL Server or SharePoint Server in VMs, as well. And it will enable customers to more easily move existing apps to the Azure platform.”
We are excited to see this new functionality come to Azure and help our customers leverage the platform to provide them with a secure, well-managed, and dynamic IT infrastructure that helps reduce overall IT costs, better use IT resources, and make IT a strategic asset for the business.
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PowerShell 3.0 + WWF + WebRequests #mswin #mspartner #Powershell
By Reed WiedowerHere at New Signature we’re huge fans of System Center Orchestrator (nee Opalis). Creating simple runbooks to fully automate even the most complex of heterogenous environments is easy with Orchestrator.
With PowerShell 3.0, some of the workflow automation previously only available with Orchestrator has now been made possible at a lower entry point. Best of all, the workflow included in PowerShell 3.0 is Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF), the same technology found in many existing products we love such as Forefront Identity Manager and SharePoint 2010. This means that not only can you re-use existing XAML-based workflows, but that you can edit them in Visual Studio, further blurring the developer/administrator divide.
To explore the new workflow capabilities in detail, I fired up the PowerShell 3.0 ISE and used one of the other new classes, invoke-webrequest. For anyone that’s used cURL to download web pages before, invoke-webrequest is even more powerful and allows you to download pages to rich objects to take actions on them.
The hypothetical scenario I was testing was the following: if a new bit of code is going to be uploaded to a web-farm, how can you check to ensure that it’s been properly uploaded to all the servers in the farm? This simple script runs multiple parallel tasks to check the last modification date of the websites in question and if they complete, the job finishes. In a more traditional workflow, I’d be actually connecting to each server in parallel remotely, rather than issuing a series of parallel tasks, but the architecture is the same.
Here’s the sample code:
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18workflow Invoke-ParallelWebCheck {
$websites = "http://newsignature.com","http://www.newsignature.com/","http://newsignature.com/intune/"
$StartTime = ([Datetime]::Now)
$UpdateTime = ([Datetime]::Now).AddMinutes(-3)
"StartTime: $StartTime UpdateTime: $UpdateTime"
$Starttime -gt $UpdateTime
foreach -parallel($site in $websites) {
inlineScript {
while ($StartTime -gt $updatetime) {
"StartTime $StartTime UpdateTime: $UpdateTime"
$headers = Invoke-WebRequest -uri $site;
$updatetime = [DateTime]$headers.headers.get_Item("Last-Modified")
start-Sleep -seconds 3
}
}
}
}To execute the workflow, you’ll merely need to type “invoke-parallelwebcheck -asjob” to begin the job execution process. Want to check on the job as it runs? Simply run get-job to get details. If the job itself spawns other jobs, you can see the details from within the get-job cmdlet as well.
Workflows aren’t as full featured as the regular PowerShell syntax, so be sure to read the Windows Management Framework 3.0 – Community Technology Preview #2 for all the caveats. In no time, you’ll be able to kick off jobs on server farms and see the benefits of automation in action.
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January 3, 2012
Microsoft Releases Security Bulletin (Out-of-Band) to Address Vulnerabilities in .NET Framework
By New SignatureOn Thursday, December 29, 2011, Microsoft released MS11-100 to protect customers against the industry-wide issue described in Security Advisory 2659883. The security update resolves a publicly disclosed, remote unauthenticated Denial of Service issue in ASP.NET versions 1.1 and above, on all supported versions of the .NET Framework. Please note that systems are not vulnerable unless they are running a Web server. Microsoft is currently unaware of any attacks targeting ASP.NET, but New Signature encourages affected customers to test and deploy the update as soon as possible.
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December 29, 2011
Microsoft Case Study: Nonprofit IT Team Relies on Cloud Services to Reduce Costs With Help From New Signature
By New SignatureThe Center for American Progress (CAP) has a workforce of policy makers who travel the world promoting the principles of progressive thinking through advocacy and field projects. They rely on their portable computers whether they are monitoring elections in Sudan or gathering information about workplace demographics in California.
Working with partner New Signature, CAP subscribed to the Windows Intune cloud-based solution for PC management and security. With built-in PC management and endpoint protection services available through a simple, web-based console, IT staff can more easily manage updates and distribute software, as well as provide remote assistance and proactive support so that CAP staff can work productively.
“Using Windows Intune, even our junior help-desk staffers look like seasoned IT pros. As far as IT support, we have turned things around 180 degrees,” George Estrada, Vice President of Technology, Center for American Progress
By using Windows Intune, CAP can keep IT costs down to allocate as much funding as possible toward its core mission. You can read the full 4-page Microsoft Case Study here.
Windows Intune simplifies how businesses manage and secure PCs using Microsoft cloud services and Windows 7, so your computers and users can operate at peak performance from almost anywhere. You can provide a better experience for your workforce that’s easier to manage by standardizing your PCs on Windows 7 Enterprise or on an earlier version of Windows—it’s your choice. Windows Intune fits your business by providing a comprehensive desktop solution that gives you big tech results with a small tech investment.
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December 28, 2011
Interesting Post on “Nesting Hyper-V with VMware Workstation 8 and ESXi 5″ from the Veeam Blog
By David TrejoRicky El-Qasem posted a very interesting post on the Veeam Blog that functions as a how-to guide and provides a step-by-step process to run Hyper-V virtual machines on either VMware Workstation 8 or ESXi 5. Great for someone, like Ricky, who is looking to introduce Microsoft Hyper-V in his lab environment and gain experience with it. I thought the idea of nesting Hyper-V with VMware Workstation 8 and ESXi 5 was a nifty one and wanted to share his post.
Veeam is one of many companies that moved quickly to fully support Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization platform starting back in 2009. Veeam recognizes Hyper-V as a leading platform for virtual datacenter environments that provides a robust and competitive set of capabilities and enterprise-grade stability. This analysis has led them to now focus on the top two virtualization platforms–Hyper-V and VMware. For example, with their Veeam Backup & Replication solution, which provides support for Microsoft Hyper-V.
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December 23, 2011
Microsoft Lync Just Keeps on Getting Better – Technical Reading for the Holiday Weekend
By David TrejoMicrosoft Lync 2010 – the next generation of Communications Server from Microsoft unites voice communications, IM, and audio, video and Web conferencing in software. It is a transformational product that has substantial capabilities, which Microsoft continues to expand at a rapid pace (e.g., release of Lync clients for mobile devices). Here are a few articles that I recommend adding to your holiday weekend reading list if you are technically minded and interested in exploring some great Lync capabilities in-depth:
- An In-Depth Guide to Conferencing Policy Settings
- Conferencing Policy Settings: EnableP2PVideo
- Lync – Can I disable video for P2P but enable it for conferencing?
- New Lync PowerShell Cmdlets in CU4 for managing mobility
Hope you enjoy and happy holidays from everyone at New Signature!
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December 21, 2011
Using Lync Mobile with Office 365 and Lync Online
By Christopher HertzStåle Hansen at msunified.net has a good post titled “Using Lync Mobile with Office 365 and Lync Online” on how to enable your Office 365 Lync Online domain to support the new Lync clients for Windows Phone, Android and iOS devices. Not to be outdone, Nick Beaugeard over at HubOne (a great Microsoft partner located in Australia) has posted the “The Definitive Answer on getting the Lync Mobile Client to Work with Office 365” on the HubOne blog. Recommended reading if you are looking to get started with Lync on your mobile device. I have personally been running the Lync app on my Windows 7 phone and it is great to be able to have instant access anywhere I have a signal to IM and presence of my colleagues and federated partners.
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Designing for the Metro Interface (Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8)
By Christopher HertzSmashing Magazine’s “Introduction To Designing For Windows Phone 7 And Metro” post is a great read if you are interested in learning about the fresh approach to content organization and a different UX, based on the Metro design language and principles that will be incorporated into Windows 8.
As Smashing Magazine explains, Microsoft’s new mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7 (WP7), introduces a fresh approach to content organization and a different UX, based on the Metro design language and principles that are also incorporated into Windows 8. It also targets a different market than its predecessor: instead of being designed mainly for business and technology workers, WP7 is targeted at active people with a busy life, both offline and online, and who use social networks every day, whatever their background.
In addition to this great resources, I also recommend watching the “Designing Metro style: principles and personality” video embedded below the fold and recorded on September 14, 2011 at the BUILD conference. (more…)
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Office 365 Migration Tip: How to Find Email Messages Larger than 25MB Across All Mailboxes
By Jim BanachOffice 365 is a fantastic product and allows organizations of almost any size take full advantage of the cloud and the redundancy, scalability, and lower administration costs. The most recognizable feature of Office 365 is Exchange Online as it is the cloud version of Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2010.
Unfortunately, as with most solutions that need to be designed for the masses, you have to make some architectural decisions that will ensure that the system stays up and running. One of those limits is that the max message size allowed in Office 365 is 25MB. This is a hard limit and cannot be overridden.
For the most part, this really isn’t a problem as you see most commercial email vendors or spam services limit their max message size to <25MB. However, internally between your own users you probably did not have a limits set and potentially have multiple 300MB videos of the company holiday party in everyone’s inbox.
So now that we want to move to Office 365 how do we identify ahead of time those users who have very large messages in their mailboxes and then after we do that help them actually identify and remove the messages?
Enter EX Folders.
ExFolders is a tool built by the exchange team that was originally designed to help perform mass permissions changes or other edits on public folders and was originally known as PFDAVAdmin. However as time progressed, the program became able to work on more than just public folders and with the removal of WebDAV in Exchange 2010, the name just didn’t fit anymore. It has a good number of features, but the one we are going to focus on is getting item and size counts of the various folders and items in a mailbox database. In today’s blog post, we’ll go over how to do that. I’m going to focus on the process for Exchange 2010, however the process is almost identical for 2003 and 2007 servers as well. (more…)