The content below is taken from the original (Amplify lets you play synchronized songs across every phone in the room), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Say you’re at a party, and someone wants to get a silent disco going. Everyone opens their phone, someone yells “play,” and hopefully everyone gets it started at the same time.

Well, that works, but it could be better. So at the TechCrunch Disrupt London 2016 Hackathon, a few developers in the United Kingdom built an app to make sure everyone’s at the same part in the song. It’s called Amplify, and it allows multiple people to start streaming a song that’s already being played on a computer.

“We’ve been to too many parties with this problem — everyone’s got a phone, and we keep running into a situation,” Jamie Hoyle said backstage. “We just never got around to starting it, so we said why not get it done at a hackathon.”

There was a bit of a hiccup on stage, but the group showed me the project in the back and it worked pretty much as you’d expect. The team only has 24 hours to prepare the project at the hackathon. “It’s so much work compared to regular work,” Alan Doherty, another team member, said. “Everyone’s pulling together, you have the goal to present something.”

You log into the service through a web browser, so in reality people can start playing the song on any device with a browser. So instead of spending a ton of money on a Sonos system or something like that, you could in theory start a song on everyone’s phones at a party and do that instead. Though, you’d be playing them on a phone instead of a nice speaker, but it could work in a pinch.

Jamie and his team, Doherty and Jonathan Madeley, currently work at a startup called Harefoot Logistics. Right now it’s just a side project, and Madeley said the team would probably open source a few parts of the tech. Doherty said it could be a workable product somewhere down the line, though they’re currently focused on working at their current company.

The content below is taken from the original (SUSE buys HPE’s OpenStack and Cloud Foundry assets), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (New supercomputer will unite x86, Power9 and ARM chips), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (Google turns on free public NTP servers that SMEAR TIME), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (Western Digital releases series of Raspberry Pi disk drives), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (Azure Backup Adds Support for VMware), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Microsoft recently added support for protecting VMware virtual machines (VMs) using Azure Backup Server, and storing your backups of these VM in Azure for long-term retention.

The Need to Support VMware

I am a self-confessed advocate of Hyper-V, but even I can admit that VMware has carved out a very large slice of the virtualization pie for themselves. Many of these VMware customers have looked for cloud services, and failing to find anything adequate from VMware, they’ve turned their attention to the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

The new Microsoft would like you to run your apps or your services on its platforms and devices, but it isn’t fussy about selling cloud services to Android users, Apple customers, and, as it turns out, VMware customers’ money is as good as that of a Hyper-V user. It’s been more than a year since Azure Site Recovery added support for replicating vSphere virtual machines to the cloud for disaster recovery purposes. Microsoft recently updates System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) to add support for backing up vSphere virtual machines, and now Microsoft has added support for Azure Backup Server to do the same.

vSphere Support in Azure Backup Server

Microsoft announced that Azure Backup Server (MABS) added support for ESXi 5.5 and 6.0 (with or without vCenter) with the recently released Update 1 for Azure Backup Server.

Azure Backup Server Update 1 supports ESXi 5.5 and 6.0 [Image Credit: Aidan Finn]

MABS provides disk-disk-cloud backup. You can protect your workloads (Hyper-V, SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange, and now vSphere) using local disk storage; this means that you can restore VMs from a recent backup at LAN speeds. If you need long-term retention, you can modify a protection group (think of it as a policy) to forward some/all of your VMs to Azure blob storage (in the form of a Recovery Services Vault) where it’s stored for just a few cents per GB per month. Note that:

• Azure Backup compresses data.
• No data leaves your site without being encrypted using a secret that Microsoft does not have access to (“trust no-one” security).
• After a full backup, you only every do incremental backups.
• You can seed your first backup using a secure disk transfer process that was improved in August.

As with DPM, MABS uses VMware’s VADP API to provide agentless protection of vSphere VMs; this means that you have less software on the hosts (none in the case of MABS or DPM) and you are using the backup mechanism that VMware recommends and supports.

MABS and DPM are designed to leverage vCenter’s folder structure to improve VM scalability and discoverability. VMs are discovered automatically, even if they are on external storage targets such as a SAN or NFS. If you have a large environment, you can browse the VM folder structure — this improves browsing performance. You can protect a folder, and any VM that is added to the folder is automatically discovered and protected.

Update 1 for Azure Backup

This is the first update for the free (pay-as-you-go for usage) MABS — note that the cloud integration provided by a single MARS agent on the MABS machine is updated regularly. The 856MB update is a simple update (requiring a reboot to complete) to your backup server and provides several improvements:

• Support for discovering and protecting vSphere virtual machines.
• New Azure Backup security features.
• Several bug fixes, including one to finally allow us to configure email alerts from the MABS console, and another that also allows ASR to replicate virtual machines at the same time.

The post Azure Backup Adds Support for VMware appeared first on Petri.

The content below is taken from the original (IBM’s software catalog now eligible to run on Google Cloud), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Posted by Chuck Coulson, Global Technology Partnerships

If your organization runs IBM software, we have news for you: Google Cloud Platform is now officially an IBM Eligible Public Cloud, meaning you can run a wide range of IBM software SKUs on Google Compute Engine with your existing licenses.

Under IBM’s Bring Your Own Software License policy (BYOSL), customers who have licensed, or wish to license, IBM software through either Passport Advantage or an authorized reseller, may now run that software on Compute Engine. This applies to the majority of IBM’s vast catalog of software — everything from middleware and DevOps products (Websphere, MQ Series, DataPower, Tivoli) to data and analytics offerings (DB2, Informix, Cloudant, Cognos, BigInsights).

What comes next depends on you. Help us identify the IBM software that needs to be packaged, tuned, and optimized for Compute Engine. You can let us know what IBM software you plan to run on Google Cloud by taking this short survey. And feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions.

The content below is taken from the original (Deploy Windows 10 Using MDT and WDS, Part 1: Create an MDT Deployment Share), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

In the first part of this three-part series, I’ll show you how to deploy the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) and import a Windows 10 image ready for distribution over the network using Windows Deployment Services (WDS).

If you need to deploy Windows 10 on more than a handful of devices, or redeploy the OS regularly, then Windows Server WDS may be the solution you’re looking for. WDS provides a subset of the deployment features found in System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), but doesn’t have the targeting, zero-touch installation and thin imaging options found in SCCM.

MDT and WDS are two separate tools that can be used together or individually. MDT is a free download from Microsoft, and allows system administrators to quickly customize Windows 10 images using a wizard-based approach to include line-of-business applications and device drivers. MDT also provides options for migrating user settings and backing up the currently installed OS at install time, courtesy of tools from the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK).

WDS is a feature of Windows Server, and when used alone, can be used to install full Windows 10 images across the network to PXE-boot capable devices. But in conjunction with MDT, WDS becomes a more powerful tool, allowing administrators to tailor installations and deployment options.

Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) enabled network cards can retrieve boot images from the network with the help of DHCP and TFTP. If you are using Hyper-V, only generation 2 virtual machines (VMs) support PXE. Physical machines need to have network cards that support PXE, and PXE boot should be enabled in the BIOS/UEFI.

Lab Prerequisites

In this lab, I use the following servers and devices, all running in Hyper-V VMs:

• Windows Server 2016 domain controller
• Windows Server 2012 R2 MDT
• Windows Server 2012 R2 WDS
• Hyper-V Generation 2 VM with PXE boot support (for Windows 10)

WDS doesn’t require Active Directory (AD), but to make life easier, I decided to use it for the purposes of this lab. I have one domain controller (DC) running Windows Server 2016. The DC also provides DNS and DHCP services. DHCP is required for WDS, and shouldn’t be running on the same server as the WDS server role.

MDT and WDS will be installed on separate servers, both running Windows Server 2012 R2, but could be installed on the same server. Finally, a bare metal Hyper-V generation 2 VM was used to install Windows 10 using WDS.

Before following the instructions below, you should have an AD domain already set up and configured, including the DHCP server role authorized in AD. For more information on installing AD on Windows Server, see Install Active Directory on Windows Server 2012 with Server Manager on the Petri IT Knowledgebase. The MDT and WDS servers should be joined to your domain. See Joining Windows Server 2012 to a Domain on the Petri IT Knowledgebase for more details.

Install the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

First, we need to download and install Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Update 2. Execute the downloaded Windows Installer (.msi) file and follow the instructions. The Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) for Windows 10, version 1607 should also be installed on the MDT server. Run adksetup.exe and install it. On the Select the features you want to install screen, check Deployment Tools, Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), and User State Migration Tool (USMT).

Install Windows ADK on the MDT server (Image Credit: Russell Smith)

Download the Windows 10 Enterprise ISO evaluation from Microsoft’s website here. Or you can use any Professional or Enterprise SKU ISO, providing it wasn’t downloaded using the media creation tool. Once the ISO has downloaded on the MDT server, you’ll need to mount it. Right-click the ISO file in Explorer and select Mount from the menu. The ISO will be mounted to a virtual DVD drive in Windows.

Create a Deployment Share in MDT

Now let’s start the real work with MDT. WDS uses a boot image that points clients to an MDT deployment share containing our customized Windows 10 installation files. We will use the MDT Deployment Workbench management console (MMC) to create a deployment share on the server.

• Log in to Windows Server with a domain account that also has local administrator permissions.
• Click the Start button on the desktop, type workbench, and click Deployment Workbench in the search results on the right.
• In the Deployment Workbench MMC, right-click Deployment Shares and select New Deployment Share from the menu.
• In the New Deployment Share Wizard, click Next on the Path screen to accept the default share location (C:\DeploymentShare).
• Likewise, on the Share screen, click Next to accept the default share name (DeploymentShare$).
• Click Next on the Descriptive Name screen to accept the default description (MDT Deployment Share).
• On the Options screen, click Next to accept the default options, or optionally you can choose to prompt for a product key and set a local administrator password during Windows 10 deployment.

Default options for an MDT deployment share (Image Credit: Russell Smith)

• Click Next on the Summary screen.
• Click Finish on the Confirmation screen.
• Press WIN + E to open Windows Explorer.
• Make sure that This PC is selected on the left, and then double-click Local Disk (C:).
• Right-click the DeploymentShare folder and select Properties from the menu.
• In the Properties dialog box, switch to the Sharing tab.
• On the Sharing tab, click Advanced Sharing.
• In the Advanced Sharing dialog box, click Permissions.
• In the Permissions dialog box, click Add…
• In the Select Users, Computers, Service Accounts, or Groups dialog, type Everyone under Enter the object names to select, and then click OK.
• In the Permissions dialog box, make sure that Everyone is selected and that Read is checked in the Allow column. Click OK to finish. Click OK in the Advanced Sharing dialog box and Close in the Properties dialog box.

Modify the share permissions on the MDT deployment share (Image Credit: Russell Smith)

Import an Operating System ISO

The next step is to import the Windows 10 ISO into MDT.

• In the Deployment Workbench MMC, expand the new deployment share in the left pane, right-click Operating Systems and select Import Operating System from the menu.
• On the Import Operating System Wizard screen, select Full set of source files and click Next.

Import an OS image into the MDT Deployment Workbench (Image Credit: Russell Smith)

• On the Source screen, click Browse.
• In the Browse For Folder dialog box, expand This PC, select the DVD drive with the mounted Windows 10 ISO image, and click OK.
• Click Next on the Source screen.
• On the Destination screen, accept the default directory name (Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation x64) by clicking Next.
• Click Next on the Summary screen.
• Wait for the OS files to be imported and then click Finish.

In this article, I showed you how to create an MDT deployment share and import a Windows 10 image into Deployment Workbench. In the second part of this series, I’ll show you how to customize the Windows 10 image in MDT using a task sequence, and how to configure WDS.

The post Deploy Windows 10 Using MDT and WDS, Part 1: Create an MDT Deployment Share appeared first on Petri.

The content below is taken from the original (RIP HPE’s The Machine product, 2014-2016: We hardly knew ye), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

HPE lab boffins have finally, after years of work, built a proof-of-concept prototype of their fairytale memory-focused computer, The Machine. The achievement is bittersweet.

A decision has been made within Hewlett Packard Enterprise management to step back from manufacturing and selling the much-hyped fabled device as a complete system. Announced in mid-2014 as an alleged revolution in modern computing, The Machine will not emerge from the labs as an official product any time soon. Instead, it will be cannibalized and its technologies sprinkled into HPE products over the remainder of the decade and possibly beyond.

The prototype Machine nodes are, as we described earlier, powered by Linux-running system-on-chips that have their own private DRAM and interact with 2 to 4TB of on-board persistent memory via a silicon photonics switch and fabric. The processors can also access persistent memory on other nodes across the photonics fabric, thus forming a giant pool of byte-addressable storage. The CPU architecture was not disclosed, but it could be 64-bit ARMv8-A or Intel x86.

The Machine nodes are deeper than a standard rack-mounted box by about 12-inches: they extend six inches beyond the rear of the rack cabinet and project six inches in front of it. They are mounted vertically, being about 4U high, and sit on a suitably-sized shelf.

However, don’t get excited. This may be the last time we see them.

We do know that the exotic hardware’s persistent memory subsystem will survive in some form. Here are HPE’s plans for this technology:

• Right now: ProLiant boxes with persistent memory for applications to use, using a mix of DRAM and flash.
• 2016 – 2017: Improved DRAM-based persistent memory.
• 2018 – 2019: True non-volatile memory (NVM) for software to use as slow-but-copious RAM.
• 2020 and onwards: NVM technology used across multiple product categories.

Roadmap … We snapped this slide at a HPE presentation on Monday about the fate of The Machine

The fourth point reflects the fact that The Machine project is no longer interested in delivering a product called The Machine for a long, long while, if ever. Instead Machine concepts will seep into existing and new systems, we’re told.

You can’t touch this (ever) … The Machine’s long and thin prototype node design

According to a slide we glimpsed at an HPE Discover briefing in London on Monday:

The Machine is a dramatic architecture change that will continue into the next decade.

[The] goal is to demonstrate progress, not develop products. At each stage, for a compelling use case, we will be able to demonstrate that the combination of SoC, memory semantic photonic fabrics and massive memristor-based NVM pools with corresponding changes to operating systems will put us on a new S-Curve.

HP Labs and Business Units will collaborate to deliver differentiating Machine value into existing architectures as well as disruptive architectures.

HPE believes today’s computers are buckling, or going to buckle, under the massive amounts of data we’re all generating and consuming, and are struggling with memory limitations. A new architecture is needed, we’re told, a memory-driven architecture to reignite growth in computing power.

Hence HPE’s obsession with a new computer architecture that has large amounts of reasonably fast persistent memory as the centerpiece, providing tracts of storage for applications to access directly at high speed to manipulate data. We’re assured this technology is going to trickle into shipping boxes as the IT giant’s product teams embrace Machine concepts, such as silicon-photonics-accessed persistent memory fabrics.

We note that HPE’s Synergy composable compute and storage product has been engineered to take a silicon photonics backplane.

HPE is still enthused about the performance benefits of memory-driven computing, showing us this slide:

Machine technologies performance gains … The 8,000X performance gain for financial apps at the far right of this slide is obviously theoretical

We were told that HPE and Western Digital have a strong continuing relationship, with WD-owned SanDisk developing Resistive RAM (ReRAM) for use in HPE’s memory-driven computing. We believe this particular technology will arrive as ReRAM non-volatile DIMMs in HPE kit some time in 2018 to 2019.

DIMM view … A Machine node prototype’s fabric-attached memory

HPE said its partnership with SK Hynix to develop memristor storage ran into funding and directional problems. SK Hynix’s prime business is making traditional RAM and flash chips and that took the main share of its investment budget, leaving insufficient cash to develop memristor technology aggressively – technology that would, in our view, affect its DRAM revenues.

Western Digital’s spokespeople would not reveal any details on WD’s ReRAM developments, beyond saying they were happy with its progress and that it had good process scalability potential which, they delicately hinted, may not be true for alternative persistent memory technologies, such as XPoint. We were assured that WD’s engineers have good 3D NAND skills and the organisation has a lot of foundry capacity – both necessary to build and develop a viable persistent memory technology product.

Is memristor development dead? The memristor technology was mentioned on a slide or two in HPE’s Machine briefing but the SK Hynix partnership has faded and WD is focussed on ReRAM, not memristor. If we’re being very charitable, we’d say memristors are on the back burner.

A Machine node prototype’s system-on-chip

HPE is relying on open-source developers to create applications optimized for memory-driven computing – stuff like the SAP HANA in-memory database, Hadoop-style software, and real-time big data analytics.

For these users of massive amounts of unstructured data, the idea of having it all in DRAM at once is untenable, but having it all in cheaper, photonics-fabric-accessed persistent memory is the dream HPE is clinging onto.

The Machine product is all but dead but The Machine component technology developments are, HPE tells us, vibrant, ongoing, being energetically pursued, and will be inserted into shipping gear. Eventually. Soon. Fingers crossed. ®

Sponsored:
10 Reasons LinuxONE is the best choice for Linux workloads

The content below is taken from the original (Microsoft Shares New Azure Server Specs), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

In this post I’ll discuss Microsoft’s newest contribution to the Open Compute Project (OCP), which gives us a peek behind the curtain, and suggests what the next generation of Azure hosts will look like.

The Open Compute Foundation

Back in 2009, Facebook was challenged by the incredible growth of the business; the infrastructure needed to keep up, and the company realized that traditional large data center infrastructure is not suitable for cloud-scale computing. Facebook needed to rethink IT and innovate. In 2011, Facebook, Intel, Rackspace, and others created the OCP to share what they had learned and created. The goal is that by sharing ideas and shedding traditional intellectual property concepts, each of the member can benefit by maximizing innovation, reducing complexity, increasing scale, and decreasing costs. Since the launch, a who’s who of cloud innovators has joined and contributed to the OCP, including:

• Google
• Apple
• Dell
• Cisco
• Lenovo
• Microsoft

Note that Bill Laing, Corporate Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise at Microsoft until September 2016, is listed as a member of the board of directors at the OCP. While at Microsoft, Laing worked on building Microsoft’s data center hardware.

Microsoft and the OCP

The first time I heard of the OCP was when Microsoft contributed some hardware designs in January 2014. Since then, Microsoft has been an active contributor. Those initial contributions were based on the server and data center designs that powers Azure, and more recent submissions were based on the software-defined networking of Azure.

Although there’s little of actual use in these designs for me, I still find it interesting to see how different cloud-scale computing is from the norms that I deal with on a day-to-day basis. There is some nerd-gasm going on, but there is some useful information in there; it’s good to know how an Azure host is designed, because this helps me understand how an Azure virtual machine is engineered, and that impacts how I teach and make recommendations. And this material might even give us a peek into the future of Windows Server, which Microsoft boasts about being inspired by Azure.

Chassis and server design based on Microsoft’s cloud server specification [Image Credit: Microsoft]

We keep saying it, and it’s true — this is a very different Microsoft than the one when open source was considered a cancer. Microsoft believes in the OCP open-source hardware concept and wants to do more than just contribute. More than 90 percent of the servers purchased for Azure are based on OCP designs.

Project Olympus

Microsoft’s first contributions were based on finalized hardware. In a recent post, Kushagra Vaid, GM, Azure Hardware Infrastructure at Microsoft, said that this sort of contribution offers little to the open-source hardware community; the design is final and leaves little room for feedback or contributions, meaning that Microsoft gets little out of sharing its IP beyond a few positive headlines.

A new effort within the OCP, Project Olympus, seeks to make open-source hardware as agile as open-source software. Instead of sharing a finalized design, Microsoft is sharing a design that is 50 percent complete. This means that members of the OCP can review the designs, fork from them, make contributions, Microsoft can learn from its partners, and merge these changes into its design before locking it.

To start this project, Microsoft has shared a 1U and 2U server design, high density storage expansion, a rack power distribution unit (PDU), and a rack management card. These standards-compliance components can be used individually or together as part of a modular cloud system.

The Project Olympus storage, servers, networking, and PDU [Image Credit: Microsoft]

I find the server to be interesting. This, combined with the rack, gives us a hint of what the next generation of Azure storage might look like. Note that there’s a single networking switch and a single NIC: this is why understanding the concepts of fault domains and availability sets is important for Azure virtual machines; when you deploy at cloud scales, you overcome points of failure at rack levels not at component (NIC) levels.

The server features a 50 Gbps NIC — we know from some of the “R” virtual machines (and I know from private discussions) that Microsoft uses Mellanox hardware. It looks like Microsoft is using either the 100 GbE or the 200 GbE chipsets from Mellanox; I suspect the latter because a splitter cable could allow each switch port to be carved up into 4 x 50 Gbps connections.

The PSUs have a built-in battery; this distributed battery concept negates the need for a centralized UPS. According to a story by The Next Platform, this concept cut the cost of a data center by one quarter!

The 1U Project Olympus server [Image Credit: Microsoft]

Note how the server uses NVMe SSDs. This isn’t a case of hyper-convergence; the previous rack diagram includes a JBOD, which implies to me that the current model of converged (not hyper-converged) storage continues for the storage system in Azure. I would guess that the in-server NVMe drives are instead of classic SSDs and are used to store the temp drives of virtual machines. Most of the new virtual machines use “SSD” storage for the temp drive (faster paging and disk-based caching), and using NVMe would give a lower cost per gigabyte and reduce the space consumed by storage. I wonder if these NVMe drives might be switched out for NVDIMM devices instead.

It’s rare that we get to see what lies behind the doors of an Azure data center (without signing a bunch of NDAs!), so I find this public glimpse of the future to be quite interesting.

The post Microsoft Shares New Azure Server Specs appeared first on Petri.

The content below is taken from the original (Activate, Follow Conversations and Manage Notifications in Microsoft Teams), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (Sponsored: Automate Office 365 User Licensing), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Editor’s Note: This blog post is the fourth in a four-part blog series from Adaxes.

Azure Active Directory (AAD) is the identity management solution that powers Office 365, and just like on-premises Active Directory (AD), requires careful management to avoid security problems. But management and security are not the only concerns, and a common problem that organizations face is how to automate the assignment and revocation of Office 365 licenses.

Microsoft doesn’t provide a turnkey solution for managing Office 365 licenses through the full lifecycle, but there are ways to automate the assignment of licenses using PowerShell. If you need to ensure that users have the correct licenses assigned, and that they’re automatically revoked as users are deprovisioned, then look to a third-party solution, such as Softerra Adaxes.

PowerShell AAD Module

PowerShell can be used to create new users in the directory associated with your Office 365 tenant, and at the same time you can assign Office 365 licenses, or assign and remove licenses after the fact. Before you can use the cmdlets below, you’ll need to install the AAD PowerShell Module, which can be found here.

Use Connect-MsolService to log in to Office 365, and then run the Get-MsolAccountSku cmdlet to get a list of available licensing plans (AccountSkuId) and licenses accessible from your Office 365 subscription.

The New-MsolUser cmdlet can be used with the -LicenseAssignment parameter to assign licenses when a user is provisioned:

New-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName [email protected] -DisplayName ‘User 2’ -FirstName User -LastName 2 –Password ********* -ForceChangePassword $true –LicenseAssignment rsitc2:LITEPACK

Or Set-MsolUserLicense to assign Office 365 licenses to existing users:

Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName [email protected] -AddLicenses rsitc2:LITEPACK

For more information on using PowerShell to manage Office 365, see Use PowerShell to Create and Assign Licenses to Office 365 Users on the Petri IT Knowledgebase.

Office 365 Gallery Script

The Office 365 gallery contains an unsupported PowerShell script that uses AD attributes to determine whether users should be assigned Office 365 licenses. The script reads attributes stored in AAD by default, or using the -MasterOnPremise switch, can read attribute values in on-premises AD instead.

In the example below, -AdminUser specifies a user account for connecting to AAD, and the AD attribute that should be set before an E3 plan license is assigned to each user that matches the criteria.

ActivateMSOLUser.ps1 -AdminUser [email protected] -Licenses E3 -LicenseAttribute msDS-cloudExtensionAttribute1 -MasterOnPremise

For more information and to download the script, see Assign Office 365 Licenses automatically based on AD Attribute in the Office 365 gallery.

C# Automation Service

Microsoft provides details about how it manages Office 365 licensing in Automating licensing for Office 365 in a hybrid environment. It developed a C# automation service application that runs on Windows Server, and assigns licenses as new users are created in on-premises AD and synchronized to AAD.

Microsoft’s script uses the Graph API to return a list of users based on information provided in an XML config file. PowerShell is then used to create a list of users that have certain attributes, such as an email address in a specific format, and adds users to a group. The automation service then assigns licenses to users according to their group membership.

Softerra Adaxes

PowerShell and Microsoft’s automation service both require knowledge of scripting and C#, plus significant effort required to tailor these solutions for your organization’s needs. Implementing a service to manage Office 365 licenses will also require compute resources, and none of the solutions provide a means for revoking licenses.

Adaxes allows system administrators to assign Office 365 licenses automatically based on a set of conditions, such as AD attribute, and automatically removes licenses as users are deprovisioned. And because Adaxes is an integrated solution, modifications made to AD user accounts invoking condition-based automation rules to grant or revoke Office 365 licenses cause changes to Office 365 licenses to be made in real-time without having to wait for scripts to run. To complete the user provisioning process, Adaxes can also create Exchange Online mailboxes for users, and event-driven rules can be set up to configure mailbox features, such as enabling Unified Messaging, archiving, and setting storage limits.

Unlike the disparate management tools provided by Microsoft, Adaxes provides one management pane for managing AD and the additional features provided by Office 365, making management easier for Help Desk and IT staff. And web management consoles let employees keep their personal information up-to-date, and let IT staff work with a streamlined interface that can be customized with company branding, and features added or removed as required.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) can be used to grant users access to Office 365 management features based on the principle of least privilege. For example, managers can be given permission to approve license assignment requests without granting access to the entire tenant. It’s also worth mentioning that Adaxes supports management of multiple Office 365 tenants in one administrative environment. An Office 365 tenant can be associated with users in chosen OUs, groups, or one or more AD domains.

For more information about how to use Adaxes to automate Office 365 licensing, see Softerra’s website.

The post Sponsored: Automate Office 365 User Licensing appeared first on Petri.

The content below is taken from the original (One PowerShell cmdlet to manage both Windows and Linux resources — no kidding!), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Posted by Quoc Truong, Software Engineer

If you’re managing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) resources from the command line on Windows, chances are you’re using our Cloud Tools for PowerShell. Thanks to PowerShell’s powerful scripting environment, including its ability to pipeline objects, you can efficiently author complex scripts to automate and manipulate your GCP resources.

However, PowerShell has historically only been available on Windows. So even though you had an uber-sophisticated PowerShell script to set up and monitor multiple Google Compute Engines and Google Cloud SQL instances, if you wanted to run it on Linux, you would have had to rewrite it in bash!

Fortunately, Microsoft recently released an alpha version of PowerShell that works on both OS X and Ubuntu, and we built a .NET Core version of our Tools on top of it. Thanks to that, you don’t have to rewrite your Google Cloud PowerShell scripts anymore just to make them work on Mac or Linux machines.

To preview the bits, you’ll have to:

1. Install Google Cloud SDK and initialize it.
2. Install PowerShell.
3. Download and unzip Cross-Platform Cloud Tools for PowerShell bits.

Now, from your Linux or OS X terminal, check out the following commands:

# Fire up PowerShell.
powershell


# Import the Cloud Tools for PowerShell module on OS X.
PS > Import-Module ~/Downloads/osx.10.11-x64/Google.PowerShell.dll


# List all of the images in a GCS bucket.
Get-GcsObject -Bucket "quoct-photos" | Select Name, Size | Format-Table

If running GCP PowerShell cmdlets on Linux interests you, be sure to check out the post on how to run an ASP.NET Core app on Linux using Docker and Kubernetes. Because one thing is for certain — Google Cloud Platform is rapidly becoming a great place to run — and manage — Linux as well as Windows apps.

Happy scripting!

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Ultimate Settings Panel is an all in one settings solution for a multitude of configuration options in Windows 7, 8.1 and 10, Microsoft Office, Windows Server and System Center Configuration Manager.