Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V

Nuno Árias Silva

Body: ​ With only a 1-year gap—which equates, realistically, to about 9 months of engineering time—between Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft had to make a decision. Should it make small changes across the entire spectrum of Windows Server features? Or should it focus on key scenarios and make meaningful changes to the technologies that are associated with those scenarios? Thankfully, Microsoft went in the second direction.…

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Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V

Nuno Árias Silva

Body: ​ With only a 1-year gap—which equates, realistically, to about 9 months of engineering time—between Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft had to make a decision. Should it make small changes across the entire spectrum of Windows Server features? Or should it focus on key scenarios and make meaningful changes to the technologies that are associated with those scenarios? Thankfully, Microsoft went in the second direction.…

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Tools for validating a hybrid deployment

Nuno Árias Silva

Body: ​ As described in the Office 365 CON 2014 Virtual Conference sessions, “Stairway to heaven – Best practices for Hybrid Deployments”, it is very important that you validate your on-premises environment before getting started with the hybrid bits. The reason why this is so important has to do with the many interactions between Office 365 [the cloud] and your on-premises environment. Let’s take a look at what components are…

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Microsoft to integrate new social, machine learning technologies into Office 365

Nuno Árias Silva

Body: ​ Microsoft is about to make some big changes as to how Office 365 looks and works. At the company’s SharePoint 2014 conference, which kicks off on March 3, executives will preview some of these coming changes — specifically ones involving social and machine-learning technologies that Microsoft is baking into its cloud suite of Office apps. Once these technologies begin rolling out later this year, the lines between Exchange,…

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How to use a free SSL certificate for Exchange testing

Nuno Árias Silva

Body: ​   Occasionally you’ll need to test a specific Exchange functionality in the real world, and that demands a publicly registered domain, MX records, a public IP address and so on. You may already have a publicly registered domain, or you are probably using a service such as DynDNS or FreeDNS that gives you automatic and *free* DNS registration and a public (sub)domain name that is valid on the…

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Microsoft announces cheaper Office 365 Personal for individuals

Nuno Árias Silva

Body: ​   At last week’s SharePoint Conference Microsoft on Thursday announced a new Office 365 subscription meant for individuals, dubbed Office 365 Personal. The company says it recognizes there are “households of all shapes and sizes”, whether one person or an entire family.   Office 365 Personal will be available to individuals at a lesser price than Office 365 Home Premium, which now as the company identifies, is meant for households.…

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Office 365 Message Encryption — now rolling out!

Nuno Árias Silva

Body: In November 2013, Microsoft has announced Office 365 Message Encryption, a new easy-to-set-up-and-use email service that allows you to send encrypted mail to anyone. Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Office 365  Message Encryption. To start using the message encryption service today, you can purchase a subscription for Windows Azure Rights Management, which  also includes Information Rights Management capabilities, giving you a comprehensive solution to help protect your…

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Converting ADFS domains to DirSync with Password sync, step by step

Nuno Árias Silva

Body: ​  In this post I’m not going to cover the advantages of dirsync with password sync. You can find a lot of articles on this blog to help you with that. But what do you do when you are convinced that you want to transition from ADFS to DirSync with password sync. First you have to realize is that it’s a completely different user experience. So make sure your…

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Converting ADFS domains to DirSync with Password sync, step by step

Nuno Árias Silva

Body: ​  In this post I’m not going to cover the advantages of dirsync with password sync. You can find a lot of articles on this blog to help you with that. But what do you do when you are convinced that you want to transition from ADFS to DirSync with password sync. First you have to realize is that it’s a completely different user experience. So make sure your…

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