Free eBook: Enterprise Cloud Strategy

Together Microsoft Press and Microsoft Virtual Academy have a number of Free eBooks available for download. The latest released eBook is “Enterprise Cloud Strategy” written by Barry Briggs and Eduardo Kassner.

Enterprise Cloud Strategy outlines the benefits Enterprises can realize from adoption Microsoft Azure and the Cloud. Based on the authors real world experience they describe the details necessary to answer the most common questions Enterprises have on moving to the cloud.

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The different download formats for the book are available on the Free eBooks from Microsoft Press page, along with the full catalog of other Free eBooks that have been published. For convenience, I’ve included the file download links below:

PDF for desktop & tablet (8.75 MB)

PDF for mobile (4.70 MB)

EPUB (6.41 MB)

Mobi for Kindle (15.7 MB)

This eBook is also available Free for Amazon Kindle as well!

Demo movie: Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016

The following movie shows the power of Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016. From the local disks, to storage pools and cluster, all the layers are explained!! Very useful when you want to know exactly how Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) works.

Software Defined will be the feature! So prepare yourself….. 🙂

Free ebook: Introducing Windows Server 2016

This book assumes that you are familiar with key concepts surrounding Windows Server (i.e., Microsoft Hyper-V, Networking, and Storage) as well as cloud technologies such as Microsoft Azure. In this book, we cover a variety of concepts related to the technology and present scenarios with a customer focus, but it is not intended as a how-to or design manual. You can use other sources, including the online Microsoft resources, to stay up to date with the latest developments on the roles and features of Windows Server 2016. The online resources will also contain the latest how-to procedures and information about designing a Windows Server 2016 infrastructure for your business.

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Download this free ebook here.

Free eBook: A Hyper-V First Aid Kit Troubleshooting 5 common issues

Altaro released a free eBook “A Hyper-V First Aid Kit – Troubleshooting 5 Common Issues”. This eBook is very useful for troubleshooting your Hyper-V environment. This eBook covers the 5 common issues in an Hyper-V environment and some examples. Also some very useful scripts and command.

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Download the free eBook now!

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Free Whitepaper: Understand Microsoft Hyper Converged Solution

This whitepaper is written by Romain Serre and Charbel Nemnom which describes Microsoft Hyper-Converged solution in Windows Server 2016 using Storage Spaces Direct, Hyper-V and network technologies. The second part of this document shows an example of this implementation.

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This document is written with my friend Charbel Nemnom which covers Hyper-Converged architecture in Windows Server 2016. This document describes technologies related to Microsoft Hyper-Converged model based on Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), Storage Quality of Service, ReFS, Hyper-V, Nano Server and some networking features such as RDMA, Switch Embedded Teaming (SET) and SMB.

In the second part of this document, we walk you through a step by step process on how to implement this solution on top of four virtual Nano Servers fully automated.

This document is with regards to the last Microsoft public information and the latest build of Windows Server 2016, we want to emphasize that this whitepaper will also be updated as we move forward to keep up with all the great things that is happening in the Microsoft CloudOS Platform.

We hope you find this document useful and helpful. If you have any questions, comments or errata you find in this whitepaper are welcome and encouraged.

Table of Contents:
Credit Page
Introduction
Software-Defined Networking
Software-Defined Compute
Software-Defined Storage
Nano Server
Windows Server 2016 Licensing
Implementation Guideline
Nano Server Deployments
Storage Spaces Direct Deployments
Host a VM on the solution
Storage Quality of Service
Conclusion
References

Free WhitePaper: Storage Efficiencies with Hyper-V at the Virtual and Physical Layer

Thin provisioning, UNMAP and checkpoints/snapshots are powerful technologies when used wisely. And to truly benefit, we must master them. This will allow us to better deliver storage and offer data protection.

While these technologies can be used at the physical layer (storage array), at the virtual layer (Hyper-V) or a combination of both, what we choose depends on the environment, budget and workloads. They offer:

  • cost reduction
  • operational benefits in ease of use
  • operational benefits in speed of recovering to points in time
  • operational benefits in offering data to Development Operations (DevOps) teams

This white paper will help you understand these concepts better in order to make better decisions for your needs.

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New eBook: Supercharging Hyper-V Performance

Keeping a healthy infrastructure and avoiding unnecessary problems doesn’t have to be super complex. You can get better performance out of your system without spending a lot of time and money on upgrades, but rather focus getting the most out of what you have.

If you’re a system administrator who’s looking to get better performance on your Hyper-V environment that won’t cut into your weekends and family time, we’ve got a great new eBook for you:

Supercharging Hyper-V Performance for the Time-strapped Admin by Paul Schnackenburg

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Grab your copy here:
Download eBook

Here’s what you can expect from this eBook:

  1. A practical guide to finding and fixing issues in storage, CPU, memory, and network components
  2. Instructions on how to use Windows Performance Monitor and PAL to monitor your virtualized environment
  3. Advice on how to plan hosts, VMs, storage, networking and management for maximum performance.

We’ve set up a table of contents page to help you navigate sections if you are an experienced system administrator. Alternatively if you are a relatively new to Hyper-V infrastructures you can work your way through the whole guide for a complete overview. It’s up to you!

We hope this guide gets you closer to a healthier Hyper-V environment!

WEBINAR: Troubleshooting Microsoft Hyper-V

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If you’ve been in IT for any length of time, you’ve likely gotten that phone call that you never want to get: Everything is broken! It’s the end of the world! The sky is falling! Your Hyper-V Host or Cluster is broken and you are the person to fix it!

Where do you start?

What are the most common things to look for?

These are exactly some of the questions we’ll be covering in our next webinar, on February 25th, 2016 at 4pm CET / 10am EST!

Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter Management MVPs Didier Van Hoye and Andy Syrewicze will be answering these questions, and will also be sharing some tales from the trenches.

In this webinar you’ll learn Hyper-V troubleshooting basics and solutions to common problems. You’ll also see some Hyper-V oddities that were encountered by Didier and Andy and how these issues were ultimately resolved and with what tools.

It’s one thing to setup and run a virtualization solution. It’s another thing to fix it when it’s broken.

Sign up now to join us on February 25th, 2016 at 4pm CET / 10am EST (30-45mins + live Q&A!) for some tales from the trenches!

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