Microsoft Product Use Rights (PUR) document update; great news for Windows Azure and hosters

What is Product use Rights (PUR)? from microsoft.com: “When you purchase a software license through a Microsoft Volume Licensing program, the terms and conditions for how you can use the software are defined in the Volume Licensing Product Use Rights (PUR) document, Product List document, and program agreement. The PUR is updated quarterly.” The change …

Quickly stop and start your Windows Azure lab

Introduction I needed  way to easily stop and start my different lab setups in Windows Azure. I don’t want to keep running, and pay for, a set of VMs I use maybe once a month. So here is a PowerShell script to stop and start a set of Azure VMs. One important dimension here is …

NIC 2014 Slide deck

Here is my slide deck from the Nordic Infrastructure Conference (NIC) 2014. My talk was called Modern authentication for the Cloud Era and covered claims based authentication and some common scenarios, OAuth and OpenID Connect. Thanks to everyone who attended my session. Hope to see you there next year! http://www.slideshare.net/MorganSimonsen/nic-2014-modern-authentication-for-the-cloud-era

Delegating computer object management tasks

Introduction The subject of delegating permissions in Active Directory for management of computer objects has been covered many times in many forums. I wanted to try to collect all that information as well as add some refinements of my own. Rights vs. permissions In the olden days, back when I was just a wee lad …

SQL Tips for novices

Before you ask, I definitely count myself as a novice when it comes to SQL. Nevertheless, here are a few SQL tips I have picked up along the way… Enable SQL to communicate through the Windows Firewall SQL Database netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=SQLPort dir=in protocol=tcp action=allow localport=1433 remoteip=localsubnet profile=DOMAIN SQL Browser netsh advfirewall …

Recommendations for LDAP lookup accounts and connections in Active Directory

Introduction From time to time someone may want to access your Active Directory Directory Service with LDAP. Usually from a system or location that you view as unsecure or untrustworthy. Examples are printers that do directory lookups to send scanned documents by e-mail and external systems where a provider needs information about your users to …

Bug in Windows Azure PowerShell module v 0.7.0

The latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell module v 0.7.0 (released 21-10-2013), which features such great improvements as Windows Azure Active Directory logon support, unfortunately has a bug relating to endpoint ACLs. Any Set-AzureEndpoint or Add-AzureEndpoint command which includes the ACL parameter will seem to succeed, but no ACL changes will be applied to …

Troubleshooting ISO file sharing in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1

So I was trying to use sharing of ISO files instead of copying when mounting on virtual machines. The really helpful dialog box in System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 SP1 politely informs you that OK, so what configuration? I found these steps for VMM 2008: How to Enable Shared ISO Images for Hyper-V …

Listing Windows Azure availability sets

Windows Azure guarantees a 99.95 % uptime SLA, but this is only for multiple instance roles. So, for example, one web server by itself will not be guaranteed 99.95 % uptime, but will rather have “best effort”. Whereas two, or more, in a multi instance role will. So how do you make something multi-instance? You …