29Oct2018
09Nov2017
Migrate from Windows Server Essentials with Azure AD integration to Windows Server Standard and Azure AD Connect
I have a love-hate relationship with Windows Server Essentials. It's a great product with a lot of goodness baked in, but there are some real limits to it as well. On the one hand, Remote Web Access, Client PC backup, the Azure Recovery plugins, and so on, add a TON...
26Oct2017
Tutorial: How to Setup Azure Virtual Network with Windows Server Essentials and a Hardware VPN Appliance
Most tutorials on Azure Virtual Network and site-to-site VPN rely on Windows Server's RRAS role to create a quick and dirty VPN connection for demonstration purposes. But in a real world production environment, this is hardly ever the case; the better option by far for reliability and simplified routing is...
28Sep2017
How to perform an Unplanned Failover from Azure Site Recovery
In a previous series, I wrote about Azure Site Recovery, and the new integration tools available in Windows Server 2016, through the Essentials role (enabling some pretty cool new offerings, potentially, for service providers and consultants). ASR for Windows Server Essentials makes setting up Disaster Recovery into the Microsoft Azure...
08Sep2017
Tutorial: How-to Setup Azure Site Recovery using Windows Server Essentials, Part 3: Failover
In part 1 of this series, we covered the pre-requisites for Azure Site Recovery using the Windows Server Essentials integration features. In part 2, we configured the Azure Virtual Network using the Essentials Dashboard plugin, and replicated our VM's. Now in this final part of the series, we are going...
07Sep2017
Tutorial: How-to Setup Azure Site Recovery using Windows Server Essentials, Part 2: Configuration
Windows Server Essentials (or the Essentials Experience role) can be leveraged to quickly provision a full Disaster Recovery site in the cloud, and replicate Virtual Machines from your on-premises Hyper-V server(s) to Azure. The built-in integrations that make this possible are Azure Virtual Network and Azure Site Recovery. Image credit: Alex...
05Sep2017
Tutorial: How-to Setup Azure Site Recovery using Windows Server Essentials, Part 1: Pre-requisites
Windows Server Essentials (or the Essentials Experience role) can be leveraged to quickly provision and enable a full Disaster Recovery site in the cloud using built-in Azure integration features. The solution is composed of two Azure products: Azure Virtual Network and Azure Site Recovery. I have previously written about our struggles...
31Aug2017
The next evolution of SBS
In a previous article, I compared two alternative deployments for a new kind of "Small Business Server" (being defined in this case as a network of 25 users or less). Microsoft used to have a widely adopted product for this market called Small Business Server, but since it has been discontinued...
03Aug2017
A tale of two solutions: Azure VMs vs. On-prem Server
I've been studying two different solutions to the same small business problem for a while now, and I think it is high time I finally published an article on it. I run into a fair number of clients who are interested in moving 100% of their services "to the cloud."...
06Jul2017