When Software Attacks!

Building an Azure IaaS and on-premise hybrid environment Part 1: The plan and Azure Network Connection

I’ve been meaning to build a test lab to kick the tyres of Windows Azure Networks for a while. Two things combined together to make me get it done, however: First was the need to build exactly that for a customer as part of proof-of-concepts; the second was an invitation to present at Tech.Days Online on the subject. I’ve built and rebuilt said lab a few times now. I am about to build it again in order to have a demo environment for Tech.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, November 3, 2013

Connecting Azure Network Site-Site VPN to a SonicWall Appliance

I am with a customer this week, building a test Azure Network+IaaS/Azure AD/Office 365 environment. We struggled to get the site-site VPN connection up for a while and there wasn’t a great deal on the greater internet to help, save for a couple of posts in a discussion forum by the marvellous Marcus Robinson. We finally got it working when we found a tech note from SonicWall, published just a few days ago on the 7th October.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, October 28, 2013

Speaking at UK Tech.Days Online 2013

I’ve been supporting the great team of evangelists at Microsoft with their UK Tech.Days events for some time now. I am chuffed to bits that they have asked me to contribute to the fantastic UK Tech.Days Online event. If you haven’t heard about it, go look at the agenda right now! Three days of great content on the latest technologies covering client, server, cloud and dev. The whole thing will be streamed live thanks to the wonder of the internet and includes a live interview with Steve Ballmer.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Saturday, October 26, 2013

Generation 2 Virtual Machines on Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 plus other nice new features

DDD North 2013 was a fantastic community conference but sadly I didn’t get chance to deliver my grok talk on Generation 2 virtual machines. A few people came up to me beforehand to say they were interested in the topic, and a few more spoke to me afterwards to ask if I would blog. I had planned to write a post anyway, but when you know it’s something people want to read you get a bit more of a push.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Unexpectedly now doing a session at DDD North 2013

I had a surprise exchange of text messages last night with Andy Westgarth. Sadly, one of the people who was to speak in one of the first session slots has had to pull out. Andy did the thing all the best conference organisers do – he called his friends! As a result, Richard and myself will be presenting a session about our experience with Lab Manager on Saturday morning. Lab Manager is an interesting part of the development puzzle, allowing automated provisioning of environments that can then have software deployed to them and automated tests run against them.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, October 10, 2013

Grok talking at DDDNorth 2013

DDD North 2013 is almost upon us and I hope you’re all converging on Sunderland for what should be a great for devs. I’ll be helping out during the day, and I will also be doing a short Grok Talk on how Generation 2 Virtual Machines in Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 are new, different and cool. Come along and heckle, why don’t you?

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Miracast with Surface Pro, Windows 8.1 release and Netgear Push2TV

One of the most useful features of Windows 8.1 for me is the native support for Miracast (which is compatible with Intel Widi) for connecting to a wireless projector or display. Being able to wander around with my tablet whilst speaking is really handy. Sadly, whilst this worked for a little while during the preview, everything stopped with no reason. Searching the internet hive mind suggested that a Windows Defender update during the preview release had borked it, but nobody could confirm.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Take care installing firmware updates on your Surface Pro if it’s bitlocker encrypted

A quick tip, this one. I downloaded the latest firmware update to my Surface Pro this evening. It rebooted and promptly requested my bitlocker unlock code. I don’t keep those to hand – they’re stored in our Active Directory. Fortunately I had another laptop with DirectAccess so I could find the key. Be ready with your recovery key if you too have enabled bitlocker and perform firmware updates.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, October 6, 2013

Being allowed out in public: Forthcoming events

It’s autumn again, and that means event season is upon us once more. In the next few months I’m getting around a bit, so this post is a plug for the events I’m either attending or speaking at. October 1st is VMUG Leeds. I’m registered to attend, but chances are I’ll be spending much of the day helping the Microsoft guys run their hand-on lab. The agenda has some great-sounding sessions and I believe there are still spaces so why not register and come along.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, September 29, 2013

Building environments for Lab Manager: Why bare metal scripting fails

In the world of DevOps it’s all about the scripts: I’ve seen some great work done by some clever people to create complex environments with multiple VMs all from scratch using PowerShell. That’s great, but unfortunately in the world of Lab Manager it just doesn’t work well at all. We’ve begun the pretty mammoth task of generating a new suite of VMs for our Lab Manager deployment to allow the developers and testers to create multi-machine environments.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, September 29, 2013