The first event on the 9th will be held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, this camp will focus on IT Professionals extending their data centre to Microsoft Azure.

This camp will cover all the components that make up Microsoft Azure, and will show you how you can meet your organizations needs to scale on-demand, rapidly respond to your customers, and maintain total control over your data at all times. Through the day you will learn how your existing skills are applicable to extending your business beyond the capabilities of your on premises infrastructure, with the consideration of you extending your datacenter and choosing a Hybrid Cloud model infrastructure

9th October @ CTICC

Extend your datacenter with Microsoft Azure

• A lap around Microsoft Azure for an IT Professional
• Getting started with Microsoft Azure IaaS
• Getting started with Microsoft Azure PaaS
• Getting started with Microsoft Azure Networking
• Getting started with Microsoft Azure Storage

You can find more info and register here to attend - https://bit.ly/1oJqIHr

The second event on the 10th will be held at our Microsoft offices in Cape Town, this camp will focus on IT Professionals modernizing their infrastructure using Windows Server 2012 R2.

In this camp, IT Pro's will learn about the benefits of modernizing one's infrastructure with Windows Server 2012 R2. You will explore how to deploy Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Azure in an efficient, cost-effective and safe manner. You will also deep dive into key enterprise scenarios like Identity management, storage and automation.

10th October @ Microsoft office

Infrastructure Modernization with Microsoft Cloud OS

• Modernizing your Infrastructure with Windows Server 2012 R2
• Identity Services with Active Directory
• Modernizing your storage infrastructure
• Updating your approach to automation
• Desired State Configuration

You can find more info and register here to attend - https://bit.ly/1oJqQqp

Morgan

The Premier Field Engineering team has become involved in the community evenings by providing relevant technical and Ops training sessions to IT Pro User Group.

These sessions are 90 minutes long and occur on every 2nd Tuesday of each month (except December and January due to summer holydays).

Attending these sessions is free of charge and anyone interested in learning can participate and contribute to what is expected to be valuable discussions.

We would like you not only attend but also to step up and present on your strongest topics when you feel ready.

Our next session will be on Tuesday, 9th September 2014 at 6PM
@ Microsoft SA Offices - 3012 William Nicol Drive, Bryanston, SANDTON, GP
(arrive 30mins earlier to get together. There is snacks and drinks available in order to help you socialize with yours and other communities.)

Disaster Recovery in ConfigMgr 2012.

In this session Matthys Schoeman and Shaun Herbert, Microsoft Premier Field Engineers, will explore the details around operational dependencies that supports a Microsoft Exchange Server service of a company.

So many support teams and their management do tend to forget the holistic view of their Microsoft Exchange Server environment and how this view could potentially have a negative business impact on their company’s core business focus.

The community night will take place on the 8th of July at the Microsoft Campus in Bryanston, Conference Room 4, it will be a 15:30 for 16:00 start, to finish at 17:30.

The agenda will be as follows:

• Overview of a Microsoft Exchange services and it dependencies
• Business Core focus
• How to translate technical to business
• Questions and Answers

We look forward to your attendance and more importantly your participation in the event, with the basic guideline for the agenda it is key for your interaction to make a success of the evening.

Afterwards we will also have a networking opportunity with complimentary drinks and snacks at ‘The Office’…

Regards
Morgan

In this session, Paulo Viralhadas, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, will explore the details around Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and its management tools, including Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM).

AGPM is a GPMC plug-in that can help you enforce change control on your Group Policy environment.

The community night will take place on the 10th of June at the Microsoft Campus in Bryanston, Conference Room 4, it will be a 15:30 for 16:00 start, to finish at 17:30.

The agenda will be as follows:

• Group Policy concepts
• GPMC
• AGPM
• Demo, demo, demo…

We look forward to your attendance and more importantly your participation in the event, with the basic guideline for the agenda it is key for your interaction to make a success of the evening.

Afterwards we will also have a networking opportunity with complimentary drinks and snacks at ‘The Office’…

Morgan
@morgan_msft

Replicating data to multiple servers increases data availability and gives users in remote sites fast, reliable access to files DFSR has been around since 2003 R2 for replication of folders.

Additionally as you move away from Windows 2003 domains you would also progressively move from FRS to DFSR for SYSVOL/GROUP POLICY replication between Domain Controllers.

When user complains that the contents of a file, he was working on the day before, is not the same. Do you know exactly why that happened? How well do you know DFSR?

In this session Paulo Viralhadas, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, will explore the detail around the advantages of using DFSR over FRS, understand the DFSR components and its Replication mechanisms.

The community night will take place on the 13th of May at the Microsoft Campus in Bryanston, Conference Room 3, it will be a 15:30 for 16:00 start, to finish at 17:30.

The agenda will be as follows:

• FRS vs DFSR
• DFSR components
• DFS Replication mechanism
• Demo, demo, demo…

We look forward to your attendance and more importantly your participation in the event, with the basic guideline for the agenda it is key for your interaction to make a success of the evening.

Afterwards we will also have a networking opportunity with complimentary drinks and snacks at ‘The Office’…

Morgan
@morgan_msft

Many believe that this is a relatively simple process, others have sleepless nights trying to formulate the right process and identify potential risks. Either way, a fair amount of planning and consultation will need to be carried out in order to ensure a smooth and seamless upgrade.

How complex is the upgrade? How do we prepare our organization for this upgrade? Are there any application compatibility issues that we need to resolve? What do I need to do before and after the upgrade? 

This session with Nelesh Naidoo, from Microsoft Premier Field Engineering, will explore the detail around the planning, implementation and post implementation tasks related to upgrading domain controllers. We will delve into the intricacies of determining application dependencies and what the default behaviour of Windows Server 2012 / R2 is, as well as how it will affect your current environment.

The community night will take place on the 8th of April at the Microsoft Campus in Bryanston, Conference Room 3, it will be a 15:30 for 16:00 start, to finish at 17:30.

The agenda will be as follows:

• Minimizing the Risk
• Windows Server 2012 Setup Requirements
• Compatibility Issues
• Forest / Domain Preparation
• DC Promotion
• Post Upgrade

We look forward to your attendance and more importantly your participation in the event, with a basic guideline for the agenda, it is key for your interaction to make a success of the evening.

Afterwards we will also have a networking opportunity with complimentary drinks and snacks at ‘The Office’.

Morgan
@morgan_msft

The attached script is one I accumulated through details from various online sources so this blog is designed to be an instructional overview from those posts.

I can obviously not take responsibility for any errors or issues with the script - please read the instructions carefully.

This script has a DAYS ($days variable) setting so you can configure it for how many days back-up you would like to keep and it will delete the old back-ups off disk and also remove them from SharePoint Back-up history as well.....AWESOME.

Steps to get this script running:

1. Download and save the zip file, extract it to a location on disk (c:\powershell\),
2. Open the file with PowerShell ISE or Notepad and edit the file location and days variables and save the file,
3. Create the UNC fileshare and share to the Farm Admin and SQL Service Account with full Write access,
4. Make sure you have sufficient disk space,
5. Open Windows Task Scheduler and create a new task,
6. Make sure that you run the task as a Farm Admin or Back-Up admin account and tick the box "Run whether user is not logged on or not",
7. Name the Task appropriately and click Actions and Add a New Action,
8. Leave the Action on "Start a Program" and click browse and select the PowerShell.exe file (C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0),
9. In the Add Arguments "c:\powershell\backupspfarm_Cleanup.ps1" (This should be where you extracted the zip file to),
10. Click ok and then click Triggers and set how frequently you want this to run (AFTER HOURS as it has impact on the Farm Performance),
11. Test the script and schedule by clicking "Run" - (AFTER HOURS please),
12. Check the back-ups daily,
13. Use a back-up tool to send the required back-ups to tape for archiving purposes.

NB: A back-up is only as good as it's first restore so test the back-up. (On a TEST server)

 A few key points to remember about a Full  SharePoint Farm Backup:

1. It must be scheduled using windows task scheduler,
2. It must be run as a Farm Administrator or Back-up Administrator account,
3. A UNC file share location must be setup and shared,
4. The SQL service account that is running the SQL Service where the SharePoint databases are, must have write access to the storage location,
5. It must be checked for errors each day as part of your daily task list,
6. A full farm backup is a last recovery resort i.e. it is used when no other options are available and is considered a critical recovery component
   Some constraints of a Full Farm Backup below: (All of the details below are not part of SharePoint which is why they are excluded)

1. Changes to web.config and site customizations that are not deployed as part of a trusted or sandboxed solution.
2. Settings in the SharePoint servers that are not included in a farm backup
3. Certificates
4. IIS metabase backup is not recommended
5. Application pool account passwords
6. HTTP compression settings
7. Time-out settings
8. Custom Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI) filters
9. Computer domain membership
10. Internet Protocol security (IPsec) settings
11. Network load balancing (NLB) settings
12. Secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates
13. Dedicated IP address settings

A full Farm restore does not put all of the Service Applications and proxies back and does not link them to their proxy group so there are manual steps that need to be taken (Hopefully I will get a chance to cover that in another blog).

To compliment your back-up and effectively back-up your server use BareMetal.

backupspfarm_Cleanup.zip

Businesses typically only secure their corporate assets with a username and password which is pretty much the same as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other cloud-based consumer services. Online banking, which should require the most security, mostly use a username, a password and an SMS One Time Code.

How secure are these forms of authentication in the real world today?

The session with Winfrasoft will explore what’s right and what’s wrong with the authentication world we live in and delve into the issues and risks that YOU face right now. This is followed by a product demo of how you can think about Authentication 2.0 by replacing passwords with patterns and the most common use cases for where you should be doing so.

The session will also cover real world demonstrations and use cases around daily tasks and automation examples.

The community night will take place on the 11th of March at the Microsoft Campus in Bryanston, it will be a 15:30 for 16:00 start, to finish at 17:30.

The agenda will be as follows:

Agenda:

• Identity and authentication – that they mean in reality
• 1 FA and 2 FA today – giving away your secret
• Risks and vulnerabilities
• Important aspects of the ideal security solution
• Risk appropriate authentication – introducing 1.5 FA
• How we replace passwords with patterns with PINgrid
• How and where you could be use PINgrid right now

We look forward to your attendance and more importantly you participation in the event, with the basic guideline for the agenda it is key for your interaction to make a success of the evening.

Afterwards we will also have a networking opportunity with complimentary drinks and snacks at ‘The Office’.

Morgan
@morgan_msft

Outside of product integration, IT professionals, admins, and help desk persons can use PowerShell to improve management capabilities, automate redundant tasks, and manage an environment in scale. This session will teach you how PowerShell works and how to make PowerShell work for you.

The session will also cover real world demonstrations and use cases around daily tasks and automation examples. The community night will take place on the 12th of November at the Microsoft Campus in Bryanston, it will be a 15:30 for 16:00 start, to finish at 17:30.

The agenda will be as follows:

Agenda:

• Intro to PowerShell
• The Help system
• Getting connected and extending the shell
• Objects for the Admin
• Getting prepared for Automation
• Further training options…

Same as every month, we will be hosting this event via Lync for those that are not able to attend in person. You will find the recurring meeting invite attached to the previous blog post here, this will save the date of the evening in your calendar until December 2013.

We look forward to your attendance and more importantly you participation in the event, with the basic guideline for the agenda it is key for your interaction to make a success of the evening.

Afterwards we will also have a networking opportunity with complimentary drinks and snacks at ‘The Office’.

Morgan
@morganwza

Following previous legal and regulatory discussions we will again have the Microsoft Attorney, Theo Watson, present an update on PoPI and generally on local regulatory environment, thereafter the audience will be invited to have an interactive Q&A session with Theo.

The community night will take place on the 8th of October at the Microsoft Campus in Bryanston, it will be a 15:30 for 16:00 start, to finish at 17:30.

The agenda is short, however it is an opportunity to discuss your particular industry that you operate in and get a clear understanding on the impact you could face.

Agenda:

1. Update on PoPI (summary of the current position and highlighting the basics under PoPI – what constitutes lawful processing, and cross-border data transfers)
2. Analysing the Cloud Contract – understanding the business/risk model for negotiating purposes

Same as every month, we will be hosting this event via Lync for those that are not able to attend in person. You will find the recurring meeting invite attached to the previous blog post here, this will save the date of the evening in your calendar until December 2013.

We look forward to your attendance and more importantly you participation in the event, with the informal agenda it is key for your interaction to make a success of the evening.

Afterwards we will also have a networking opportunity with complimentary drinks and snacks at ‘The Office’.

Morgan
@morganwza