Tommy Patterson

Migrating traditional client/server applications to Windows Azure Virtual Machines is what Don Noonan does every day. The majority of these workloads use Active Directory Domain Services as their authentication provider, or in other words, classic Windows authentication. In this post Don walks us through the best practices high level architecture and the basic building blocks of creating a private forest within Windows Azure. If Active directory is not available, you better be As we all know, if AD is down so is your app. Imagine setting up a single domain controller responsible for both name resolution (DNS) and authentication. You just created another synonym for single-point-of-failure. At a minimum you should deploy two (2) domain controllers, and they should be created as part of an Availability Set. This will ensure that at least one (1) domain controller is al... (more)

Replication with Hyper-V Replica - Part I

Overview: Disaster recovery scenarios, simple site-to-site replication, or the Prod-to-Dev refresh scenario are generally what drive IT administrators to look into virtual machine replication.  We want to build our environments so that in the event something happens in our primary data center, our critical machines and data will be up and running somewhere else.  Our developers may reside in a different location but want to work with the most recent datasets available.  There are a slew of questions asked about delivering on results for these different types of requirements.  R... (more)

VMware or Microsoft - A Look at VDI Supportability and More

A little bit of history first. Virtual Desktop computing has been slowly etching its way into more IT plans year over year. The advantages can be enormous when isolating the end user into a virtual desktop that looks and acts like their regular everyday PC. Of course the ROI has been quite difficult to manage especially when looking at large deployments, and when performance must be guaranteed to match or exceed the current computing requirements. VMware jumped in the VDI ring many years ago mainly through some acquisitions, and for the first few years struggled to gain momentum... (more)

Installing Windows Server 2012 in Core Mode – Step by Step | Part I

If you are like me, I have put off installing Windows Server in Core mode because frankly seeing the OS in a graphical interface helps me think.  However, we are now living in an age where the remote configuration tools are so rich and simplified that it’s high time I got around to diving in to the GUI-less server mode.  So let’s get started!  You’ve already booted the server to the new Windows Server 2012 RTM DVD or ISO depending on where you are installing the server.  You will first be presented with this screen, choose the language and such then click “Next”:     Now we n... (more)

Be the Victor in the Hunger Games of Your Virtualization Environment

Thoughts From the Mind of a Previous VMware Admin (aka Game Master) Do you ever feel like your Windows server is not performing well in the VMware environment, as if it were a sponsor-less contestant in the arena of the annual hunger games?  As a VMware admin and consultant I witnessed first hand the fine art of deception for presenting restricted resources to virtual machines.  An application owner or Windows admin would come to my cube or put in a help desk ticket asking for a new virtual machine.  They would often ask me for an insane amount of resources for this VM because the... (more)