Level Up Azure for IT Pros ... And SharePoint Too!
One of the things I forgot to blog about earlier is one of the best events online for IT Pros. The Azure IaaS for IT Pros Online Event that has been hosted by Rick Claus is giving IT Professionals some great information about Azure and specifically the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings. Azure keeps adding incredible services for Azure users including some recent additions:
- D-Series VMs with more memory and dedicated Intel CPU Cores
- G-Series (aka Godzilla-Series) with even more memory and dedicated Intel CPU Cores
- Premium Storage on SSD for Standard D-Series and G-Series servers that will offer 4,000 IOPs per VHD (Standard storage offers 500 IOPs per VHD).
Getting an opportunity to play with these services has excited me to what Azure can offer IT Professionals. One of the best uses of Azure for IT Pros is making "proof of concept" environments. You can prove how technologies work while not taking any of your current on-prem hardware. Another easy use is running development or QA testing environments. In both of these cases, you can turn on and off the environment while you need it and only be billed for the environment while it is on.
But I have buried the lead here folks. On Thursday, at 12:00 Pacific time, I will be talking about SharePoint on Azure. Yup, that's right … I will be talking about how to run SharePoint on Azure. There are some tweaks and best practices I will be talking about with SharePoint on Azure IaaS. I will also go over the new Cloud App Model (CAM) and how you can use Azure with it. Lastly, there's a few other things Azure can help with around SharePoint. I am including my introduction video here:
I recommend you heading over to http://aka.ms/levelupazure to watch the recorded sessions and to see me live tomorrow. If you can't see me live, you can always catch up on the recordings.
SharePoint Saturday Redmond Presentation
I got a lucky offer from Karuana Gatimu to help Carrie Doring present her presentation at SharePoint Saturday in Redmond. She was supposed to speak on "The Future of the Social Collaboration Experience - A platform and community overview for beginners". I have been working on finding ways to speak and present more and had some recent opportunities with the MS IT Institute and MS IT Showcase teams. This was a different opportunity for me.
Luckily, much of what Carrie and I were going to talk about was what we were actually using to manage our preparation for the presentation. Karuana sent us a copy of the deck. I stored that copy on my OneDrive for Business and shared it out to Carrie. She and I had a couple of chats on Lync to sync up on preparation. We met together to work on it in the web version of PowerPoint so we both could make updates at the same time. It was great to use this as an example as we walked through our presentation.
The audience was awesome and had some great questions. They were quite open to the information including the community involvement information I gave them. I was able to squeeze in a plug for #TheKrewe of TechEd when I was talking about community. After the presentation was over, I even got to spend some time personally with a couple of the audience members to talk specifics to their situation.
I had a blast and had to be ushered out by the following presenter a bit. I think that I will be doing more of this. To quote the old Life commercials ... "I think he likes it!"
By the way, here is a link to the deck as a PDF file that can be downloaded by anyone.
How to Virtually Attend MS TechEd North America
Well everyone, I made it here to Houston for Microsoft's TechEd North America that starts on Monday. The whole week kicks off with a some great information from Brad Anderson in the Keynote. Everyone loves to push in to the Keynote and get to see the information. Now, I know many are saying "But Jared, I didn't get to attend TechEd this year." First, I hate to hear that as conference events like this are great learning experiences but also incredible networking opportunities. Attendees get to spend time at events like this with vendors and experts in the technology that is out there. So what are the people that couldn't come to Houston to do?
Well, let me tell you what you can do … attend Microsoft TechEd virtually! Here are the best ways to attend TechEd virtually:
Follow the #MSTechEd hashtag on Twitter.
Almost all of the attendees will be sending out information with #MSTechEd. Following it will get you access to that information. Twitter is a great way to follow all the fun information from TechEd. Presenters will also send out their information via Twitter like their decks and other details.
Sign up for the TechEd Live Feed.
Yes! You can follow along with some of the content, including Brad Anderson's keynote, on the TechEd Live Feed. They also plan to show other sessions live on the feed like:
- Deep Dive: The Future of .NET on the Server
- Enabling Enterprise Mobility with Windows Intune, Microsoft Azure, and Windows Server
- Mark Russinovich and Mark Minasi on Cloud Computing
- Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager: MVP Experts Panel
- Real-World Windows 8.1 Deployment: Notes from the Field
- What’s New in Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V
- Windows PowerShell Unplugged with Jeffrey Snover
On top of that wonderful content, you get to watch Joey Snow and Rick Claus in between the sessions doing interviews and talking tech. What more would you want? Head on over to register for the TechEd North America Live Stream Here.
So, now that you are getting connected and following along, you get a good flavor of TechEd here in Houston. What can you do next? Look at other opportunities like Stephen Rose's Windows Unplugged tour stopping in US cities, TechEd Europe in Barcelona later this year, and also local events and user groups. The key thing that conferences give us is networking opportunities along with the training. The great thing is many of these opportunities can be found out there and even in your own part of the world. Just look for them and get involved!
Oh, and if you follow me on Twitter and don't want to get overloaded with TechEd content, just filters out #MSTechEd or #TheKrewe if you really want to block it. I would say don't and follow along, but I can understand.
How I Select My TechEd Sessions
I got a great opportunity from Denise Begley from the Microsoft TechEd planning team to talk about my session selection process. She wanted to hear from several returning alumni (including Harjit Dhaliwal, and Michael Bender) about their process to help brand new attendees or others reading the official Microsoft TechEd Blog. I felt it was an honor and wanted to give back to the TechEd Community that has taken me in to offer my view on schedule building. Head on over to the Microsoft TechEd Blog to read the other posts with Harjit's and Michael's process. Here is my full process:
Going into TechEd 2014 in Houston, my selection process has changed for this coming TechEd due to many factors. In the past, I spent a lot of time looking through the schedule and trying to select which sessions I want to go to. To give a little bit of reference here, I have attended the last 3 TechEd North American conferences: Atlanta, Orlando, and New Orleans.
In the first year at Atlanta, I tried to get to every session at every offering. I had listed in my schedule one session per time period and spent my time running as my sessions were so spread out. If you stayed in one vertical of sessions, you didn't have to go too far. I was choosing sessions from all over. By the time I made it to many sessions, the rooms were full with no real empty seats to be found. I spent a good amount of time sitting on the floors with my back to the wall. I was shooting pictures of the slides and trying to scribble a ton of notes.
I learned many lessons from Atlanta and had a different plan of attack for Orlando. I also had the notion of taking more tests for my certifications. The sessions I went to were more focused on technologies I was investing in and I spent a lot of time in exam preps and taking exams. On top of that, I was doing more meetings in the hallways, Alumni area, and the Expo floor. I knew I was going to be able to get videos and slide decks from all the sessions when I got home. The focused sessions got me great content and I was very happy with the results of the sessions, just not of my test taking.
- Having learned my lessons, I head into New Orleans with two thoughts in mind:
- I wanted to focus on content of areas that really caught my interest like SharePoint, Private Cloud with System Center, and Windows 2012 R2.
- My time in sessions was important but I didn't feel like I had to attend sessions in every block so I had time to spend chatting in the Alumni Lounge and the Expo floor.
I went through the schedule planner and blocked out the specific sessions I did not want to miss. Then, I went through finding the presenters I really like to listen to. Lastly, I filled in my schedule with other sessions that caught my interest. In my OneNote, I noted which items were "had to attend", "nice to attend", and "just filler". I used this to block out my time to meet and stroll the Expo floor. I also planned multiple sessions per time block if I couldn't get to the room due to logistics or the room being full. All in all, I was impressed with the strategy.
So, you have heard my thoughts about prior years. Now, I will let you know about this year's TechEd. I am looking at some changes again for a couple of reasons:
- I attended SharePoint Conference earlier this year so I have learned a lot of SharePoint.
- I am in a new role that is SharePoint focused but I need to also get more of the Microsoft Stack under my belt, like System Center, Azure IaaS, and SharePoint integration into Exchange.
- I am using the new schedule manager to indicate which sessions I want to attend and which are my backups.
So, starting my journey to Houston, I started my session planning by finding all the presenters I want to hear. Yup, that's right, I am starting with the Speakers. I looked for sessions from Rick Claus, Joey Snow, Pierre Roman, Mark Minasi, Mark Russinovich, Jessica DeVita, and Ed Horley. Some of these are friends I want to support and have great material to present; others are presenters I want to see in person. Next, I went through by Topic/Product and pulled up items like SharePoint, IaaS, System Center, Windows Azure, and more. Once that filled up my schedule, I looked at timeframes with zero or one session. In those blocks, I looked at the specific offerings at that time. Last thing in my schedule build is the Hand On Labs. In years past, I either did not take advantage on-site or took very little advantage. This year, I might look for more HOL work to try and learn some things that way. I will be keeping my schedule flexible as well but the items marked as primary are going to get me there.
Here are some of the sessions I have selected:
OFC-B220 - Stop, Collaborate, and Listen - Jessica DeVita
Jessica is talking about how to think about collaboration even before acquiring tools to do that collaboration. As she says in the description, "Before you start down the path of selecting a tool, you have to determine your organizational readiness and understand the what, why, and how of collaboration systems." With my current job in SharePoint, this is food for thought.
DCIM-B325/326 - The Real-World Guide to Upgrading Your IT Skills AND Your Infrastructure (parts 1 & 2) - Rick Claus, Joey Snow
Are you an IT Pro scared about what "The Cloud" really means for you? As they say in their description, "Two self-proclaimed “Server Huggers” will take you along their journey of how they overcame their apprehension of Cloud technologies to level up their IT Skills. In other words bringing clarity to the role of the IT Professional in a cloud world." I am starting to see where "The Cloud" integrates into my future as an IT Pro but think more folks can get a lot out of this session.
DCIM-B359 - TWC: Pass-the-Hash: How Attackers Spread and How to Stop Them - Mark Russinovich, Nathan Ide
I have heard about this presentation as it was given at the RSA Conference earlier and want to see it myself. Security is a theme for IT Pros in the future, regardless of The Cloud or on-prem. Mark's talks at TechEd always give you the best insights to Security.
WIN-B354 - Case of the Unexplained: Troubleshooting with Mark Russinovich
This session is always full! This session is always fun! I got to attend my first year in Atlanta and Mark returns every year with new cases of the unexplained. He goes through, showing how SysInternals tools were used to find either bugs in products or malware hidden away on user systems. While it is a full house every year, try and get into this one or watch it later.
OFC-B333 - Microsoft SharePoint on Microsoft Azure VM and Virtual Networks: How the Cloud (IaaS) Changed the Way I Work and Improved Customer Productivity - Patrick Heyde
At the same time Mark has his Case of the Unexplained, Patrick is giving his session on SharePoint on Azure IaaS. Knowing that Mark's session will be full, I am giving major consideration on passing it this year for listening to Patrick talk about this topic. As a SharePoint Engineer, I need to understand this as an option for hosting SharePoint to a group/company in an isolated space while the servers are in the cloud.
DCIM-B373 - How IPv6 Impacts Private Cloud - Ed Horley
Sign up for this session now! Go on … go put it in your schedule. IPv6 is coming for all of us and Ed is here to help all Windows Systems Admins understand its impact on us. Ed has written the book on IPv6 for Windows Systems Admins. This is going to be coming sooner than you might imagine so pop in and learn all you can.
Those are a few of my selected sessions. How are you planning your schedule for TechEd in Houston this year? Looking forward to seeing everyone there? I sure am. See you in Houston!
New Year Means New Changes
Everybody does it. The New Year drives changes they want to make. New Year's Resolutions. Gyms get a large push of visitors. Home stores have higher sales. The New Year causes people to want to effect change in their lives. Some industries have sprung up around these changes. Many of you might be wondering where I am going with this. Well, I am about to go through my own New Year change.
As of January 24th, I will no longer be the Director of IT Services for Radia Inc., PS. I have spent almost 4 years with Radia since leaving Microsoft in January of 2010. Over those 4 years, I have worked with good people who have a single driven goal to patient care. I was able to bring some new ideas to the IT Operations and help Radia get into a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement to help manage our software needs. Many folks have told me how I have changed how IT engaged with them to get their needs met. The best thing I was told was how I had a great laugh. At the same time, I was able to grow, learn, and mature. While I have enjoyed the people and where we were going as a team and company, I was approached with a great offer.
Starting on January 27th, I will be returning back to Microsoft. Not only will I be returning to Microsoft, I will be returning as a "Blue Badge", or full-time employee. Instead of going back in as a manager, I will be returning back as a Senior Service Engineer. My return will be back into Microsoft IT but I am coming back to the SharePoint team. While I am joining a new team, my manager and director are people I know and have worked with/for before. I hope to go more into my return to Microsoft on this blog as well as what I can about my projects. Some of you may wonder if I am going to be attending conferences like MS TechEd. I have been fortunate enough to have permission to attend conferences. So, expect to see me out and about this year.
Wrapping this us, I want thank my manager and the folks at Radia for the trust and collaboration I had with them while I was there. I also thank my new manager and director for the new opportunity ahead of me. I also thank all my friends that have believed in me and pushed me forward.
Onward and upward.