TechNine

Mar 05

Microsoft to launch new standalone OneDrive for Business subscription plan on April 1st

By Erik Moreau in Office 365

Microsoft is set to roll out a new standalone OneDrive for Business subscription plan, which comes with Office Online, as well as enhancements to SharePoint 2013 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) that enable on-premises SharePoint users to configure OneDrive for Business with just a few clicks. OneDrive for Business was formerly known as SkyDrive Pro.

Microsoft has made it even easier for customers to get up and running in the cloud. With OneDrive for Business, Microsoft’s personal online storage for a company’s employees, you can store, sync, and share work files across multiple devices. Thanks to OneDrive for Business, you can also collaborate with others in real time within Office and even edit documents anywhere in real time using Office Online. Plus, you have access to Windows Phone, Windows 8, iOS, and Android apps. Here are the key features of OneDrive for Business:

OneDrive for Business will be available for purchase as a standalone service. It’s also still available as part of many Office 365 for business plans, but the new standalone plan makes it easy to get started using cloud storage and sharing.
It’s now easier to access, find, and manage your work files because of new user experience enhancements to OneDrive for Business.
On-premises SharePoint customers can now configure OneDrive for Business more easily – with just a few clicks – with Service Pack 1 on-premises SharePoint customers to configure OneDrive for Business with just a few clicks with Service Pack 1.

Beginning April 1st, OneDrive for Business with Office Online will be available as a standalone service, which comes with 25GB of storage per employee with the option to purchase additional storage. You can already get OneDrive for Business as part of your Office 365 and SharePoint Online plans.

Starting April 1st, Microsoft will also feature a promotional pricing, which consists of a 50% discount: $2.50 per user per month in all licensing agreements/programs. Customers who have Office with SA or Office 365 ProPlus can pay $1.50 per user per month.

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Jan 28

Microsoft extends life of Malicious Software Removal Tool on XP

By Erik Moreau in Uncategorized

msrt

Microsoft confirmed today for ZDNet that they will continue to create and distribute the Malicious Software Removal Tool for Windows XP users until July 14, 2015.

A Microsoft spokesperson said “Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool is aligned with the company’s antimalware engines and signatures and as such, the removal tool will continue to be provided for Windows XP through July 14, 2015.”

The clarification of policy was first reported by Computerworld on Sunday, citing sources close to the company.

The MSRT is a tool produced monthly by Microsoft for Windows users on Patch Tuesday. It searches for and removes certain widespread malware infections on Windows systems. When Windows users run Windows Update it may be run automatically and silently. It is also available for download and execution from the Microsoft.

Microsoft reiterated that continued availability of the MSRT is not a good reason to stick with Windows XP, nor are malware detection and removal tools adequate protection for users.

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Jan 28

SkyDrive to be OneDrive

By Erik Moreau in Uncategorized

Skydrive will soon be renamed to OneDrive

The main Preview page: https://preview.onedrive.com/

The blog: http://blog.onedrive.com/

Video

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Jan 15

Microsoft extends Windows XP Security Essentials support to July 2015

By Erik Moreau in Windows XP

Microsoft will kill support for Windows XP this April, but for those of you who are using antimalware products, Microsoft will continue supplying those signatures until July of 2015. This means that Microsoft’s Security Essentials will still be updated after the April cutoff date, but the underlying OS will remain vulnerable.

This is an interesting move as Microsoft has been pushing hard to get everyone off the aging OS. Seeing that they will continue to support Security Essentials past the support deadline sends mixed signals to consumers, as they will likely read that OS updates are no longer being distributed but that Security Essential support is still valid. Because the average consumer isn’t very tech savvy, he or she could easily confuse this to mean that XP is still a supported and safe product to use if Security Essentials is installed.

The announcement came on Microsoft’s Threat Research & Response Blog, though it does little to explain why they will provide additional support on XP after the April 2014 cutoff. In fact, they admit that “their research shows that the effectiveness of antimalware solutions on out-of-support operating systems is limited.”

Microsoft will also be supporting System Center Endpoint Protection, Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection and Windows Intune running on Windows XP as well with antimalware support into July 2015 ts well. Again, this appears to undercut their push for the corporate entities to move off of XP as they will have supported products running on an unsupported OS.

Image via Microsoft

Source: Neowin.net

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Jan 09

Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2

By Erik Moreau in Azure, Cloud, Windows Server 2012 R2

We’re happy to announce a new free ebook – Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 by Mitch Tulloch with Symon Perriman and the System Center Team.

DOWNLOAD LINKS

Download the PDF – here

Download the Mobi file for Kindle – here

Download the ePub file – here

Introduction

Microsoft System Center is one of the three pillars of Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision that will transform the traditional datacenter environment, help businesses unlock insights in data stored anywhere, enable the development of a wide range of modern business applications, and empower IT to support users who work anywhere while being able to manage any device in a secure and consistent way. The other two pillars of the Cloud OS are, of course, Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Azure, and Microsoft Press has recently released free Introducing books on these platforms as well.
Whether you are new to System Center or are already using it in your business, this book has something that should interest you. The capabilities of each component of System Center 2012 R2 are first described and then demonstrated chapter by chapter. Real-world and under-the-hood insights are also provided by insiders at Microsoft who live and breathe System Center, and those of you who are experienced with the platform will benefit from the wisdom and experience of these experts. We also included a list of additional resources at the end of each chapter where you can learn more about each System Center component.

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Dec 31

New Disk2vhd V2.0 with vhdx support

By Erik Moreau in Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk – Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

The Disk2vhd user interface lists the volumes present on the system:

It will create one VHD for each disk on which selected volumes reside. It preserves the partitioning information of the disk, but only copies the data contents for volumes on the disk that are selected. This enables you to capture just system volumes and exclude data volumes, for example.

Note: Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you create a VHD from a larger disk it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.

To use VHDs produced by Disk2vhd, create a VM with the desired characteristics and add the VHDs to the VM’s configuration as IDE disks. On first boot, a VM booting a captured copy of Windows will detect the VM’s hardware and automatically install drivers, if present in the image. If the required drivers are not present, install them via the Virtual PC or Hyper-V integration components. You can also attach to VHDs using the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Disk Management or Diskpart utilities.

Note: do not attach to VHDs on the same system on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so, Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with the signature of the VHD’s source disk. Windows references disks in the boot configuration database (BCD) by disk signature, so when that happens Windows booted in a VM will fail to locate the boot disk.

Disk2vhd runs Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and higher, including x64 systems.

Here’s a screenshot of a copy of a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V system running in a virtual machine on top of the system it was made from:

(click image to zoom)

Command Line Usage

Disk2vhd includes command-line options that enable you to script the creation of VHDs. Specify the volumes you want included in a snapshot by drive letter (e.g. c:) or use “*” to include all volumes.

Usage: disk2vhd <[drive: [drive:]…]|[*]> <vhdfile>
Example: disk2vhd * c:vhdsnapshot.vhd

Note: Physical-to-virtual hard drive migration of a Windows installation is a valid function for customers with Software Assurance and full retail copies of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Software Assurance provides users valuable benefits—please contact Microsoft Corporation for further information. Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 installed by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) using OEM versions of these products may not be transferred to a virtual hard drive in accordance with Microsoft licensing terms.

Download Disk2vhd
(879 KB)

Run Disk2vhd now from Live.Sysinternals.com.

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Dec 26

Windows Server 2012 R2 Test Lab Guide

By Erik Moreau in Windows Server 2012 R2

This Microsoft Test Lab Guide (TLG) provides you with step-by-step instructions to create the Windows Base Configuration test lab, using computers running Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2, With the resulting test lab environment, you can build test labs based on other Windows Server 2012 R2 TLGs from Microsoft, TLG extensions in the TechNet Wiki, or a test lab of your own design that can include Microsoft or non-Microsoft products. For a test lab based on physical computers, you can image the drives for future test labs. For a test lab based on virtual machines, you can create snapshots of the base configuration virtual machines. This enables you to easily return to the base configuration test lab, where most of the routine infrastructure and networking services have already been configured, so that you can focus on building a test lab for the product, technology, or solution of interest.

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