Microsoft Ignite 2018 – Book of News

Ignite Book of News: Your Guide to All the News at Microsoft Ignite

This document contains information on all the announcements made at Microsoft Ignite 2018, including:

  • Microsoft 365;
  • Microsoft Azure IaaS;
  • Azure SQL;
  • SQL Server 2019;
  • Security;
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI);
  • SQL Server 2019;
  • Internet of Things (IoT);
  • Windows Server 2019;
  • Windows Virtual Desktops;
  • Windows Admin Center;
  • Hyper-V;
  • Storage Space Direct (S2D);
  • And many, many, many more……

Download the full document here (or click the big picture below).

Experts Live NL 2018 Intro Movie

Last Tuesday, it was a great day again! Experts Live 2018 NL. The biggest community event in the Netherlands. Great sessions, great speakers, very high level of content, great demos and off course as always a great intro movie!! 🙂 Many thanks to the organization of Experts Live! See you next year!!

http://www.expertslive.nl

Microsoft Ignite 2017 Orlando, Florida!!

Within a couple of days, I’ll be visiting Microsoft Ignite 2017 in Orlando, Florida. With a lot of great content, it will be a great event!! I’ve already schedule my sessions and figured out some partners and companies I want to visit.

The main focus for this week is, Microsoft Azure (IaaS and PaaS). Hope to see you guys in Florida!! If you want to meet somewhere, please contact me by e-mail or Twitter! @Mark_Swinkels.

Microsoft Azure Architecture Center overview

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The Microsoft Azure Architecture Center is the place when you want to start building Cloud Services in Azure or to start using Hybrid Cloud technologies.All the things you need to know are available within the Azure Architecture Center:

  • Architecture Guides:
  • Reference Architectures;
  • Design Patterns;
  • Best Practices;
  • Design Review Checklists;
  • Scenario Guides;
  • And many, many, many more…….

Start here your Microsoft Cloud Journey with Azure Architecture Center

How to: Implementing Storage Spaces insides Azure Virtual Machines

Within an Azure Virtual Machine, you should never store your (personal) data on the C: drive or the temporary disk. You can attach new storage disks to the virtual machine, how many disks depends on the VM size you’ve choosen.

View all VM sizes in Microsoft Azure:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/virtual-machines-windows-sizes

In my example I’ve choosen the ‘DS1v2’ VM size, so I can attach two extra (premium storage) disks. Because the maximum size of an disk in Microsoft Azure is 1023 GB, I’ve created multiple disks. Both disks are attached to the virtual machine and we’re going to implement Storage Spaces within the virtual machine. Storage Spaces is software defined storage (SDS) from Windows Server 2012 R2 and above.

Storage Spaces is a built-in Windows Server Role. When combining all the data disks, you can create one, or more, big data volumes in your Windows Virtual Machine. Extremely powerful for example file servers.

1.) First of all I’ve created a new virtual machine using the Azure Portal

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2.) Next I’ve created two new disks (premium storage – SSD) with tthe size of 1023 GB.

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3.) Next I’ve logged in into the new created virtual machine and configured Storage Spaces.

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4.) The next step is to create a new virtual disk

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5.) The final step is to create the new volume for storing your data on.

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As you can see, there’s a new volume of 2 TBwithin the virtual machine. If you’re changing the size of the virtual machine, it is also possible to add some more disks to the virtual machine and extend the Storage Spaces with more terabytes!!

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How big is the Microsoft Azure Cloud?

The Microsoft Azure Cloud is huge….very huge!! We could also say H-y-uuuuuuu-ge!!! This blogpost by Microsoft explains the current size and it’s still growing very fast!!

Here are some facts about Microsoft’s Cloud Infrastructure that powers Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Xbox Live, and many other services:

  • The Microsoft Cloud is made up of more than 100 datacenters worldwide.
  • The Microsoft Cloud serves over 140 countries.
  • The Microsoft Cloud is comprised of MILLIONS of servers, and growing!
  • The Microsoft Cloud is built with the latest hardware innovations to maximize efficiency.
  • The Microsoft Cloud is connected by enough fiber to stretch to the Moon and back 3 times!
  • Microsoft processes Millions of network requests per second backed by high availability infrastructure.
  • Everything is monitored 24x7x365
  • The Microsoft global infrastructure is 100% carbon neutral.
  • Microsoft has built one of the most connected networks in the world so you don’t have to.
  • Microsoft Azure is used by 85% of Fortune 500 companies.

Microsoft is also aiming to increase that figure to 50 by 2018!!

Cloud-Azure