XenDesktop 7 is a milestone in the Citrix end user computing experience. Citrix has merged XenDesktop (VDI) with XenApp, into a consolidated set of common consoles with common policies and HDX experiences. It also features full Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and SQL Server 2012 (with AlwaysOn clustering) support. Last...
TechEd 2013 had a bunch of great sessions on Windows Server 2012 R2, which has a boatload of new features. You can now download Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview version now. Pick up your copy here. Windows 8.1 release preview will come out tomorrow, but you can get a jump start on...
Back a few TechEd conferences ago I learned about a new tool called EMET (Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit) from Microsoft that was designed to add additional layers of protection to Windows operating systems. Given my strong focus on secure solutions, I was a big fan of EMET. Over the years some...
Continuing the bug fixes for the UCS 2.1 firmware baseline, a few days ago Cisco released their 2.1(1f) firmware for UCS servers. Unlike the last two releases that just fixed a single caveat, 2.1.(1f) sports a number of fixes. You can find the full Cisco UCS firmware release notes here....
This was Part 2 of a two part series on comparing VMware and Microsoft virtualization/Cloud offerings. Part 1 was focused on the hypervisor and how Hyper-V and ESXi compare. I had a schedule conflict with part 1, so I didn't attend it. This is part 2, focusing on the private cloud...
This was a highly technical session going into the depths of a few new Windows 8.1 security features. The session focused on passwords, and how bad they are, and establishing trusted identity with BYOD. Virtual smart cards were also on the agenda, which are really cool. The speaker was very...
This session covered the process of building a Windows 8 image. There are a variety of ways to build your image, which could range from custom built scripts to using MS provided tools. The big takeaway from this session was to use MDT 2012 Update 1 (or later) to create...
Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2 brings a lot of new networking features to the table. This was a deep dive session on what's new in R2, how MS's network virtualization works, and how it benefits customers. While Server 2012 brought huge gains to the network stack, R2 rounds out...
This session was presented by Mark Simos, Aaron Margosis from Microsoft. Pass the hash (PtH) is an extremely common method that companies become owned by the bad guys. This session covered what PtH is, how it works, and some mitigation techniques. Microsoft recently released an extensive whitepaper on mitigating PtH...
This session was by Mark Minasi, who is one of the must hear TechEd speakers. Highly entertaining and highly informative. If you ever come to TechEd, you must attend one of his sessions. This session was focused on Windows 8, and going beyond the arguably ugly skin and going under...
This session covered new security features in Windows 8, and at the end, some of the new features in Windows 8.1. It was an excellent session, with a very well organized presenter. It was a firehose of information, but clearly laid out and easy to take notes from. The bottom...
This session covers how to develop on-prem IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) using the Azure pack for Windows Server 2012 R2 and VMM 2012 R2. The session was more developer oriented than I thought from the description, so I ended up leaving a bit early since I'm not a developer....