Kurt Shintaku's Blog

You probably didn’t know this but we have an on going schedule of LIVE training events delivered by the Microsoft Virtual Academy – all FREE.  And the content is recorded for on-demand access after the event is over.

For example, here’s a few of the upcoming LIVE events:

• Using Git with Visual Studio 2013 Jump Start
  March 12, 2014 9:00am-5:00pm PDT
  In this demo-focused session, find out more about the excitement around Git—the wildly popular source control system. Experts Steven Borg and James Tupper give you a fundamental understanding of Git, show how it differs from other systems, and explore the benefits of using Git with Visual Studio Online and Windows Azure. If you want to learn more about Git and the benefits of using it within the Microsoft ALM stack, don’t miss this course!

• Windows 8.1 Deployment Jump Start
  March 12, 2014 9:00am-1:00pm PDT
  Do you want to deploy Windows 8.1 the "right way"? Find out how to avoid deployment pitfalls and how to streamline the process with Microsoft experts. Benefit from their real-life experience, as they teach you how to plan, configure, and manage client deployment to Windows-based computers using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). Save time and money by automating the process. Why learn the hard way?

• Software-Defined Networking with Windows Server and System Center Jump Start
  March 19, 2014 8:00am-1:00pm PDT
  Is your infrastructure outgrowing your current networking strategy? Want to simplify the process for managing your datacenter? Software-defined networking (SDN) can streamline implementation with self-service provisioning, take the complexity out of datacenter management, and help increase security with fully isolated environments. Join this Jump Start to get deep technical guidance, best practices, and lots of demos based on real-world datacenters with Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2. Get your questions answered by the team who built this popular solution!

• DevOps – Visual Studio Release Management Jump Start
  April 9, 2014 9:00am-5:00pm PDT
  Developers and Project Managers, do you wonder how to implement DevOps principles to resolve delivery challenges? The popular "ALM Wednesdays" series continues with this fifth event, as Microsoft experts equip users of Visual Studio ALM with the necessary skills to build an effective release pipeline with the Release Management functionality provided by Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server.

Check out what’s coming up here:

• Microsoft JumpStart Series – Live Event Trainings
  http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/Live-Training-Events
• RSS: Live Events – Trainings Coming Up
  http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/RSS.aspx?type=liveevents&culture=en-US
• RSS: Recorded Events – Available On-Demand
  http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/RSS.aspx?type=recordedevents&culture=en-US

Missed this one too.  If you’re running System Center Configuration Manager 2012/2012 R2, this is a must get.

Microsoft System Center: Troubleshooting Configuration Manager
Rushi Faldu, Manoj Kumar Pal, Andre Della Monica, Kaushal Pandey, and series editor Mitch Tulloch
November 2013
108 pages

Part of a series of specialized guides on System Center—this book addresses the most common pain points for Configuration Manager administrators, providing insider and from-the-field insights to help you succeed. Written by experts on the Microsoft System Center team and with Microsoft MVP Mitch Tulloch as series editor, this title delivers concise technical guidance as you step through key concepts and tasks.

• Download the PDF (6.4 MB)
• Download the EPUB file (24.3 MB)
• Download the Mobi for Kindle file (44.2 MB)

Somehow I missed this.  We released an eBook recently about optimizing System Center Service Manager, Microsoft’s help desk & ticketing solution that natively integrates with Configuration Manager (for PC information) & Operations Manager (for alerts & ticket creation).

Microsoft System Center: Optimizing Service Manager
Thomas Ellermann, Kathleen Wilson, Karsten Nielsen, John Clark, and series editor Mitch Tulloch
December 2013
96 pages

Part of a series of specialized guides on System Center—this book provides a framework for planning and delivering a successful Service Manager project. Written by experts on the Microsoft System Center team and with Microsoft MVP Mitch Tulloch as series editor, this title delivers concise guidance, from-the-field insights, and best practices for optimizing and maintaining your Service Manager environment.

• Download the PDF (3.2 MB)
• Download the EPUB file (19.7 MB)
• Download the Mobi for Kindle file (44.2 MB)
• Download the book’s companion files (689 Bytes)

Microsoft Press just released the following 136 page eBook for free:

Microsoft System Center: Building a Virtualized Network Solution
Mitch Tulloch with Nigel Cain, Alvin Morales, Michel Luescher, Damian Flynn
February 2014
136 pages

This book is geared to private and hybrid cloud architects preparing to design and build a virtualized network solution based on Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1, or later. Written by experts on the Microsoft System Center team and with Microsoft MVP Mitch Tulloch as series editor, this title focuses on architecture and design.

• Download the PDF (6.68 MB)
• Download the EPUB file (25.4 MB)
• Download the Mobi for Kindle file (45.4 MB)

The webcast on the NBC Olympics Live stream from Microsoft and iStreamPlanet is now available on-demand at the link below. 

• Streaming the Olympics: A case study in moving media processing to the cloud
  http://www.streamingmedia.com/Webevents/594-Streaming-the-Olympics-A-case-study-in-moving-media-processing-to-the-cloud.htm

• Video: How did iStreamPlanet Live Stream the Olympics?
  http://www.istreamplanet.com/istreamplanet-video/did-istreamplanet-stream-the-olympics/

Some of you may have seen this posted Monday on the Windows blog along with our new data transfer tool:

On March 8th, 2014, Windows XP customers using the Home or Professional editions who have elected to receive updates via Windows Update will receive an official notification on their desktop screen via Windows Update informing them that support for Windows XP will end on April 8th, 2014.

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/windowsexperience/archive/2014/03/03/new-windows-xp-data-transfer-tool-and-end-of-support-notifications.aspx

Please note that this pop-up only goes to consumer (unmanaged) Windows XP PCs. For those PCs affected, there is no “XP Blocker Toolkit” nor is there a registry key that can be set to block the update, however a single click on the checkbox will disable it forever. If the computer is managed by WSUS, it will not by default receive the pop-up.

Additional details on this message:

• The pop-up will recur monthly (on the 8th of every month at 3:00 p.m. local time, and the code will continue to show the message on this schedule indefinitely or until the user disables the notification)
• If the user is not logged in during the scheduled time, the message will be shown the next time s/he logs in.
• If there are multiple user accounts on the machine, the scheduled task is tied to the user who is logged in when the update is installed and only he/she will see the notification.
• The notification will direct customers to this end of support web page:
  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/end-support-help 

If you’ve made investments in Windows Server, you may want further understand how to take advantage of Windows Azure for sending workloads to the cloud for more elastic, more cost-effective operations.

Microsoft’s growth is predominantly a result of the growth of Windows Azure: Azure now accounts for close to 90% of all web-facing computers at Microsoft. Windows Azure has grown by almost 50% since May 2013, during the February 2014 Web Server survey Netcraft found 27,000 web-facing computers (both Windows and Linux) using the cloud computing platform.  Many of Microsoft’s own services are powered by Windows Azure including Office 365, Xbox Live, Skype, and OneDrive.

Windows Azure Web Sites service — available to the general public since June 2013 — may be the driving force behind Azure’s growth. This Platform as a Service allows existing applications written in ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, or Python to be deployed on an automatically scaling platform without managing individual computers. Microsoft also provides pre-configured software packages, such as WordPress, which can be used immediately with the Web Site service.

Read more here:
http://microsoft-news.com/report-microsoft-edges-ahead-of-amazon-to-become-the-largest-windows-hosting-company/

First, we introduced Office 365 Message Encryption – i.e. the ability send public secured emails to recipients without requiring any add-ins or additional technologies on either the sender or recipient’s computers.  This service is available at no additional cost to Office 365 E3/E4 subscribers.

Now, we’re introducing S/MIME as well for Office 365, enabling public key encryption & digital signing of messaging data, and again, at no additional cost to Office 365 E3/E4 subscribers.

Recently, we published a blog post that outlines how strongly committed we are to protecting our customers’ information. A key aspect of our strategy is to expand encryption across all our services. Earlier this month, we announced Office 365 Message Encryption, a new service that allows you to send encrypted mail to anyone. As part of our ongoing focus on encryption, we announced yesterday that we’re bringing S/MIME capability to Office 365 and Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1. With this release, customers will have S/MIME support across Outlook, Outlook Web App (OWA), and Exchange ActiveSync clients. S/MIME for Outlook and EAS is already available on Exchange Online and S/MIME on OWA is being rolled out and is expected to be completed by early April.

S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard for public key encryption and digital signing of MIME data, and it is defined in a number of Requests for Comments (RFCs): 3369, 3370, 3850, and 3851. S/MIME allows a user to: (1) encrypt an email and (2) digitally sign an email, and thus provides cryptographic security services such as authentication, message integrity, and non-repudiation of origin (using digital signatures). It also helps enhance privacy and data security (using encryption) for electronic messaging. You can learn more about S/MIME in this technet article.

…

Read more here:

• S/MIME encryption now in Office 365
  http://blogs.office.com/2014/02/26/smime-encryption-now-in-office-365/

Containing twenty-four design patterns and ten related guidance topics, this guide articulates the benefit of applying patterns by showing how each piece can fit into the big picture of cloud application architectures.

It also discusses the benefits and considerations for each pattern. Most of the patterns have code samples or snippets that show how to implement the patterns using the features of Windows Azure. However the majority of topics described in this guide are equally relevant to all kinds of distributed systems, whether hosted on Windows Azure or on other cloud platforms.

• DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Best Practices eBook, “Cloud Design Patterns” (236pgs, .PDF 5.8MB, ePUB 3.4MB)
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42026

In case you missed it, this was our 2014 Super Bowl commercial entitled, “Empowering”.

This one minute production is a collage of many of the ways that people are empowered & inspired through technology.  For more on any of these stories, click on one of the story videos below:

• Steve Gleason: No White Flags (2:24)
• Sarah Churman: Hearing for the first time (1:52)
• Braylon O’Neill: Making Strides (2:07)
• Hal Lasko: Painting With Technology (2:01)
• Surgeons: Operate With Kinect (1:15)
• Mystery Skype: Connecting Classrooms Around The World (1:58)
• Celebrating the Heroic Women of 2013 (1:00)