Posts Tagged ‘virtualization’

As early as the beginning of this year, Microsoft began positioning their “Cloud OS” concept, based on the pillars of Windows Server and Microsoft (formerly Windows) Azure.  This perspective on the spectrum of Microsoft’s offerings casts Cloud OS as a giant next generation operating system, with all the scope and scalability that cloud computing offers. […]

In a world of broadband internet connections, online collaboration tools and the ability to work from almost anywhere – office culture can be difficult to sustain.  This especially holds true for people who live in large cities (where the commute can be problematic) or in harsh climates (like the never ending winter in Chicago this […]

Beginning on June 2, 2014 Windows Azure will be retiring Windows Server 2008.  This means that you will no longer be able to deploy a new Cloud Service or manage your existing services on virtual machines running Windows Server 2008. Windows Azure currently supports four different GuestOS ‘versions’: GuestOS 1.x – Windows Server 2008 GuestOS […]

While poking around in Azure, looking to set up a BI Demo VM , I noticed that Microsoft had added a few SQL Server-oriented images to their catalog.   VMs labeled “SQL Server… for Data Warehousing”! There was one for SQL Server 2012 (SQL Server 2012 SP1 for Data Warehousing on WS 2012) and one for the current […]

Titanfall is a new blockbuster game for the Xbox One.  It is being published by Electronic Arts and is due to be released in March 2014.  Titanfall is a first person shooter that will have much of its AI hosting , physics calculations, online match making and multi-player dedicated servers hosted in Windows Azure.  This […]

With the release of Windows Server 2012 R2 comes many great new features, including a improved virtual machine named generation 2. Generation 2 virtual machines provide quite a few enhancements across the spectrum of Hyper-V VM technology. Perhaps most notable is the removal of legacy emulated hardware. Removal of the legacy network adapter, IDE controller, […]

What is Platform as a Service (PaaS)?  How does it differ from Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas)? Let’s start with IaaS.  When “The Cloud” first became popular IaaS was the target.  The point of IaaS is to migrate a company data center into Windows Azure.  This involves converting whatever physical servers you have to Hyper-V […]

Windows Azure has many different devices for publishing and consuming content.  Two of those which are often confused are web roles and web sites.  The two are very similar and share some common strengths, but given specific conditions one may fit your need better than the other.  For example, web roles and web sites will […]

I gave a presentation about Windows Azure the other day, and got some great questions that I would like to address with this blog post.  Here they are in no particular order, with some answers I hope are useful to you:  “We have multiple Operating Companies who may want to leverage the features of Windows […]

Edit: Part 3 using Mahout here In my previous post I described the basics of HDInsight on Windows Azure and an example of what a Hadoop cluster can do for you. Without further delay, lets build a cluster!  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account go here and sign up (it’s free!!) Setup […]

Microsoft earlier this week made multiple improvements to their site based on their Microsoft Cloud OS vision.  The main focus is based on UX to improve user experience and increase engagement. The site is very responsive and adaptive based on the devices you are using as well as when re-sizing or panning. There is even […]

In the last post in this series, we looked at why Azure Machines are the most likely candidate for workable SQL Server-based cloud BI implementations.   Today, we talk turkey about actual limitations and things you need to know as you look at a potential solution in this environment. The first thing to know is that Azure […]