Microsoft

Lost track of the service channel naming of Windows and Office Servicing? Is it “Current Branch” or “Semi-Annual Channel” now?! Or Standard Release?! Windows 10: Ready: Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) Ready for Business: Semi-Annual Channel Office 365: Ready: Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) (Or [Targeted Release](http://Ready: Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) Ready for Business: Semi-Annual Channel)) Ready for Business: Semi-Annual Channel (Or [Standard Release](http://Ready: Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) Ready for Business: Semi-Annual Channel)) Last update: recently… :) Every day is a new day to change these again, so stay tuned!

Frequent visitors of my blog may have noticed that the domain name of the blog has changed from jvrtech.net to jvr.cloud. You can still reach my blog on jvrtech.net, but within a couple of years, that redirect may disappear. .Cloud TLD Most of my short nicknames or my full name aren’t available anymore on the TLDs like .com, .net or .org. When the .cloud TLD was introduced, I saw an opportunity to buy this very short domain name. Tech in a domain name tells people that it has something to do with technology which I like, but Cloud will hopefully do that too. Thank you for visiting my blog! Cheers, Jean-Paul

**With the new Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft finally added a built-in NAT Switch into Hyper-V! This gives Hyper-V Virtual Machines access to the computer’s network. **The new switch automatically assigns IP address to your Virtual Machines, so no need to run your own DHCP server anymore! In older versions of Windows 10, it was still required to create the Virtual Switch yourself, but this required static IP address assignment in the OS or the installation of a DHCP server. ...

Today I met Jeffrey Snover and had a lot of conversations with new IT Pro’s. That’s what I like about Ignite: connecting with Microsoft Experts and other IT Pro’s! Tonight is the Attendee Celebration at the Olympic Park. Tomorrow is the last day at Ignite and the conference will end at 14:00. Below are the sessions I can recommend and followed today: Understand Credential Security by Paula Januszkiewicz If you can attend a session of Paula, always do it because she has interesting sessions about security. She will demo how cached credentials work and will show you how to get the users credentials with Classic Data Protection API. Paula will demo how to decrypt KeePass if you use Windows User Authentication with the Data Protection API. Paula will show you how to extract credentials from a Windows service. You need access to the registry for this hack. She will show you how you get access to the password in a SID-protected PFX certificate file and how to access Windows with smart card authentication turned on, without a smart card. ProTip from the session: know and limit your domain admins! Domain admins can also do tricks as other users from the domain. Conduct a successful pilot deployment of Microsoft Intune You’ll learn how to start a successful pilot and get tips from the field. Follow me on Twitter for live news from Ignite!

Yes, a new day at the Microsoft Ignite conference! All the sessions are spread across 3 buildings (A, B, C) and I must say that this keeps you fit during the conference. On Monday, my iPhone showed me the following stats for the day: [ ](/images/2016/09/ignite-health-stats.png) 18.8 kilometers is around 11.6 miles! Today I really enjoyed the session with Jeffrey Snover and Don Jones about PowerShell. I don’t know if it was recorded and will be available later, but I can highly recommend it. ...

Day 2 of the Microsoft Ignite conference at Atlanta started early for us at 9:00. We had breakfast at 8:00 and where travelling by metro which costs us probably 30 minutes. Below are the sessions I followed today and recommend: Explore Microsoft Azure Stack “State of the Union” - Foundation 1 This was a presentation with a high overview of Azure Stack. Didn’t learn a lot about the technology, but some announcements where quite interesting: Azure Stack will be General Available in Mid-CY17. From the template deployment blade in Azure Stack, you can now easily select a QuickStart template from the GitHub QuickStart Template repo. Azure RM Template Validator and Azure RM Policy for Azure Stack can be downloaded from the Azure GitHub repo. You can manage Azure Pack from Azure Stack with an extension. You can download images directly from Azure to Azure Stack. For example, you want the SQL Server image in Azure Stack. Now you can go to the “Marketplace” blade in Azure Stack and download the bits. Key Vault, Queue Storage and the VPN Gateway features are added to Azure Stack. Discover what’s new in device management New lockdown capabilities for kiosk PC’s. Create read-only devices. Only allow specific approved USB devices. Block Edge swipe gestures. Learn about Windows 10 Secure Kernel The presenter (Sami Laiho) takes you into a deep-dive about the secure kernel of Windows 10. Very interesting but difficult session. Master Windows 10 Deployments - Expert Level Interesting session with lots of deployment tips and tricks. Windows Containers Containers are slowly introduced to the public with Windows Server 2016. This is definitely something that I’ll work on in my home lab shortly. Docker Images can be found at hub.docker.com. E.g. use the Microsoft/IIS docker image to create container with IIS. The presentation slides are shared with docs.com. Between all the sessions I took some time to work with my home lab in Azure and get some hands-on experience with all the new features. You can sit outside in the sun in comfortable seats if you want. I also took some time to visit all the stands in the expo. ...

I’m sitting in my hotel room in Buckhead, Atlanta thinking about all the Ignite sessions of today. It’s around 23:00 and we will visit Ignite early tomorrow, so I’ll keep it short. The day started at the C-building with a nice breakfast. The keynote was presented in the Philips Arena which is the arena of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. We went to the keynote quite early in the morning but still it was hard to find a good seat. ...

I’m so happy to tell you that I’m one of the 5 people from Avanade Netherlands that will attend Microsoft Ignite in Atlanta this year! We are all really excited as this is the first time that we attend a big conference like Ignite. Last year I followed a lot of online presentations from home, and the high quality of the presentations makes this the best Microsoft event of the world. ...

Recently I passed the 70-533 Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions exam. I was thinking about stopping with the Azure exams but I couldn’t resist it to pass this exam as well. Today I passed the 70-534 - Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions exam with 857 points. I think that the 70-534 exam is a lot easier than the 70-533 exam. Most of the questions where questions where you had to select the Azure features that you could use in a specific situation. ...

Yesterday (Saturday 20-03-2016) I passed the Azure 70-533 (Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions) exam. This was the second time that I did the exam and I passed with 747 points. So that’s a close call. Here are some tips for passing the exam: Practice every exam objective in your (Azure) lab. This is very important because you will get some questions in the exam where you need to tell step by step which step you took to install or configure a service. If you don’t have a subscription, you could sign up for the free one-month trial. Do the online proctored exam. I absolutely recommend this new way of doing exams. During workdays, It’s annoying to leave a project for a couple of hours to do an exam. Pro’s: - Study from home, in your trusted environment. No travel time needed and it took away some stress during the exam. ...