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ランサムウェア: 自身とビジネスを守る方法

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本記事は、Trustworthy Computing のブログRansomware: Ways to Protect Yourself & Your Business (2013 11 19 日公開) を翻訳した記事です。

Trustworthy Computing (信頼できるコンピューティング) 部門、ディレクター、Tim Rains (ティムレインズ)

世界の数か所で出現して数を増やしている、ある悪意のあるソフトウェアについてご説明します。"ランサムウェア" はマルウェアの一種で、攻撃者に支払いをするまで、コンピューターやそのファイルを使えなくします。ランサムウェアはよく、米国連邦捜査局 (FBI) やロンドン警視庁など、有名な警察組織からの 一見公的な警告を装います。

中小企業はこの種の脅威を認識して、ランサムウェアから身を守る予防策を講じることが重要です。もし攻撃者に会社のシステムをロックされてファイルを暗号化されてしまうと、ビジネスが甚大な影響を受けるからです。幸いなことに、この種の脅威から身を守ることは実に簡単です。

基本的なコンピューター検疫の中に、ランサムウェアから企業システムを保護するために役立つものがあります。

  • 信頼できるベンダーから最新のマルウェア対策のリアルタイム ソリューションを入手して、インストールします。マルウェア対策ソフトウェア オプションのいくつかは、マイクロソフトのセキュリティ パートナーの Web ページから入手できます。

  • システムにインストールするソフトウェアをすべて最新の状態に保ちます。これには、マイクロソフト、Adobe、Oracle、Java などのソフトウェアが含まれます。

  • 信頼できない提供元から送信されたリンクをクリックしたり添付ファイルを開いたりしないようにします。悪意のあるメール (スパムやフィッシング) は、ランサムウェアによく使われる手段の 1 つです。

  • 重要なファイルのバックアップを定期的に取ります。 これには、OneDriveなどのクラウド ストレージ サービスを利用できます。このサービスは現在、Windows 8 と Microsoft Office に完全に統合されています。

クラウドを使うという最後に挙げた推奨事項は、ランサムウェアのような脅威からデータを保護する効果的な方法です。クラウドにデータのバックアップがあれば、データを破壊しようとするランサムウェアの感染などの攻撃から回復する際の負担がかなり軽減されます。クラウド サービス プロバイダーがリスク管理を助けてくれます。

ランサムウェアについて詳しくは、マイクロソフト セキュリティ ブログ(英語情報) に 公開されている記事をご覧ください。また、http://www.microsoft.com/ja-jp/security/resources/ransomware-whatis.aspxのページもお勧めします。ランサムウェアの詳細と、コンピューター ユーザーがこれらの脅威を避ける方法を確認できます。


借助混合云实现成功:混合云最佳实践

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Best Practices

在这个混合云系列中,我的主要任务是深入讨论混合云的性质以及在各个场景和行业中使用混合云的优势。但是,在我们深入探讨本系列并开始讨论结果之前,我要先在接下来几篇文章中讨论如何从无模式发展到混合模式。

从本周开始,我有几篇“最佳实践”文章将介绍如何规划、构建、部署和操作混合云。

在每篇文章中,我将就混合云过程的每个阶段遇到的技术挑战和障碍提供信息和指导,并给出构建了这些产品和工具的工程师编写的技术概述的链接。

在接下来几篇文章中,我推荐您参考这里Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Design Considerations 文档中提供的分析。该指南详细探究了在开始组合混合云之前您需要关注的设计考虑事项。我还建议您在这里查阅Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT 一文。

如果您想回顾目前为止介绍的所有内容(以及后续要讲的内容),请查看本系列的目录

Microsoft Premier Workshop: “Deep Dive: REST mit ASP.NET Web API”

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Beschreibung

REST ist zum Synonym für Web-Services geworden, egal ob für interne Enterprise- oder externe Consumer-Szenarien. Doch allzu oft wird nur ein kleiner Teil der Möglichkeiten von REST/HTTP genutzt und somit viel Potential verschenkt. Darüber hinaus ist uns in Reviews von bestehenden Lösungen immer wieder aufgefallen, dass einige grundlegende Dinge nicht wirklich verstanden wurden und es somit zu unnötigen Herausforderungen im Lebenszyklus kommt. Ebenso wird eine ressourcen-orientierte Architektur in diesem Zusammenhang oft nicht umgesetzt, wobei sie doch zusammen mit der ASP.NET Web API das Rückgrat für zukunftsfähige RESTful Services bildet. Vermeiden Sie diese Reibungsverluste und lernen Sie in diesem 2-tägigen Workshop neben den Grundlagen des REST Architekturstils, ressourcen-orientierten Architekturen und dem HTTP Protokoll, die effiziente Nutzung der ASP.NET Web API. Praxisorientiert wird neben dem Basiswissen, die notwendigen Kenntnisse im Bereich Hosting, Security, Troubleshooting, Erweiterbarkeit und Testbarkeit erarbeitet. Und um das Wissen hier abzurunden, werden wir abschließend auf die Microsoft Technologie Landschaft für Web-Services schauen und strategisch vermitteln, in welchen Szenarien welche Frameworks verwendet werden sollten.

Agenda

REST im Überblick

  • Was ist REST?
  • REST Prinzipien
  • Warum REST? 

Ressourcen Orientierte Architekturen

  • Ressourcen
  • Applikations Status vs. Ressourcen Status
  • Resources vs. Procedure Calls

 Web API Grundlagen

  • Hintergründe
  • Features 

Web API Routing

  • Routing Logik
  • Erweiterte Route Möglichkeiten 

HTTP

  • HTTP Messages Grundlagen
  • HTTP Verbs
  • HTTP Status Codes / Exception Handling
  • Content Negotiation 

Hosting

  • Verschiedene Optionen
  • Open Web Interface for .NET & Project Katana 

Sicherheit

  • Authentifizierung und Autorisierung
  • HTTP Security
  • OAuth
  • ASP.NET Identity 

Konsumierung von Web APIs

  • HttpClient
  • jQuery 

OData

  • Was ist OData?
  • Web API OData Support
  • OData Client 

Tracing

  • Tracing Web APIs
  • Troubleshooting Web APIs 

Advanced Web APIs

  • Caching
  • CORS
  • Erweiterbarkeit 

WCF or ASP.NET Web API?

  • Web Service Landscape
  • SOAP vs. REST Recap
  • RESTful Web APIs
  • OData Web APIs
  • Full-Duplex over HTTP
  • Entscheidungshilfe

Zielgruppe  

Der Service/Workshop richtet sich an Softwareentwickler und Softwarearchitekten.

Level 300

(Levels: 100= Strategic / 200= technical Overview / 300= technical Expert Level)

Sprache

Der Workshop wird in Deutscher Sprache gehalten.

Anmeldung

Unter folgendem Link finden Sie weitere Informationen zur Veranstaltungsreihe und können eine verbindliche Anmeldung vornehmen.  

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_services_deutschland/p/events.aspx

 

Power Query Navigator not showing the correct number of items

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I ran into an interesting issue where the customer indicated that they were not seeing the correct number of items for a Database that had a large number of tables, however Power Pivot and the Excel Data Tab were showing the items.  To illustrate this, I scripted out a database that had 2500 tables and 2500 views.  Here was the result:

image

image

And, indeed, within Power Pivot we can see the full listing.  Something was obviously different here.  Fortunately, I know something about our underlying providers for connecting to SQL.  One difference I’m aware of is that Power Query uses the Managed (.NET) SQL Provider (SqlClient) to reach out to SQL, while Power Pivot uses our native providers.  And getting a table listing is just getting metadata about the Database itself.  We don’t actually touch the table objects when we do that.  To do this, we have to talk to the Database Server, so we can see what it is actually doing via a Profiler Trace.  So, lets have a look. 

Power Query

exec sp_executesql N'select TABLE_CATALOG, TABLE_SCHEMA, TABLE_NAME, TABLE_TYPE from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES where (TABLE_CATALOG = @Catalog or (@Catalog is null)) and (TABLE_SCHEMA = @Owner or (@Owner is null)) and (TABLE_NAME = @Name or (@Name is null)) and (TABLE_TYPE = @TableType or (@TableType is null))',N'@Catalog nvarchar(4000),@Owner nvarchar(4000),@Name nvarchar(4000),@TableType nvarchar(4000)',@Catalog=NULL,@Owner=NULL,@Name=NULL,@TableType=NULL <—5000 records

Power Pivot

exec [BunchOTables].[sys].sp_tables_rowset2 NULL,N'TABLE' <— 2500 Records
exec [BunchOTables].[sys].sp_tables_rowset2 NULL,N'VIEW' <— 2500 Records

So, in both cases, I’m getting 5000 records, which is what I expected, but Power Query is only showing 4000.  Of note, the customer had opened the case right before we released the March 2014 update to Power Query.  So, I asked him to update to the latest release which is 2.10.3598.81.  You can always get the latest version of Power Query from the following link.

Microsoft Power Query for Excel
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39379

After installing that build, the issue was corrected. 

image

There was an issue with the paging algorithm when retrieving the list of Tables/Views for the Database.  This was caught internally and fixed and released as part of the March Update.  This was only an issue if you had a large number of tables.  So, most people probably won’t notice the issue.  If you do notice that your Table count doesn’t look right from what you expect, make sure you are on at least Build 2.10.3598.81 of the Power Query Add-in for Excel.

 

Adam W. Saxton | Microsoft SQL Server Escalation Services
http://twitter.com/awsaxton

Používáme OneDrive - 2.díl

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Soubory

Nahrávání souborů

OneDrive je využíván především jako datové úložiště, proto si pochopitelně často nevystačíte pouze s prostým vytvářením složek, ale je vhodné do těchto složek i nějaké soubory umístit. To provedete tak, že si vybranou složku v seznamu složek otevřete klepnutím na její název a následně klepnete na příkaz Nahrát v horní části okna. Zobrazí se klasické dialogové okno pro výběr souborů z počítače.
Druhým způsobem nahrávání souborů je možnost rovnou přetáhnout vybrané soubory do zobrazené složky, a to bez nutnosti klepnutí na tlačítko Nahrát. Stačí tedy např. v Průzkumníkovi systému Windows soubory označit a prostým přetažením do právě otevřené složky ve službě OneDrive je začít do úložiště nahrávat.
Rychlost nahrávání je pochopitelně závislá jednak na velikosti vybraných souborů, jednak na odchozí rychlosti vašeho internetového připojení (tzv. uploadu). Po vybrání souborů, které chcete do svého úložiště odeslat, se okno zavře a zobrazí se v pravém horním rohu prohlížeče ukazatel stavu nahrávání a vy máte možnost se službou OneDrive nezávisle na právě probíhajícím uploadu dále pracovat. A na konec jedno upozornění, v rámci služby OneDrive je možné nahrávat pouze soubory, nikoliv složky.

Práce se soubory

Do úložiště OneDrive je možné nahrávat jakékoliv soubory. Pokud máte již ve službě OneDrive nějaký soubor umístěn, je možné s ním v závislosti na tom, o jaký soubor se jedná, dále pracovat. Jestliže se jedná o dokument vytvořený v sadě Microsoft Office v aplikacích Word, Excel, PowerPoint a OneNote, je možné s ním dále pracovat, dokonce jej i upravovat, viz další kapitola. Dále jsou podporovány PDF soubory a textové soubory ve formátu txt. Možné operace, které lze s daným souborem provést, se zobrazí opět po klepnutí pravého tlačítka myši na souboru nebo po zaškrtnutí pole před souborem a vybrání příkazu v nabídce v pravé části okna. Mezi příkazy, které se zobrazí u všech typů souborů, patří Stáhnout, Přesunout do, Kopírovat do, Přejmenovat, Odstranit a Vložit. Co který příkaz dělá, je pochopitelné již z jeho názvu a je analogický práci se složkami.

Z hlediska vkládání na web na první pohled není rozdíl mezi složkami a soubory, stačí klepnout pravým tlačítkem na vybranou položku, z nabídky vybrat příkaz Vložit a vygenerovaný HTML kód vložit na svou webovou stránku. Nicméně u souborů aplikací Excel a PowerPoint se namísto prostého odkazu na stránku vloží soubor jako takový a na této stránce je zobrazen obsah tohoto souboru. Výsledkem je, že návštěvník daného webu neuvidí pouze odkaz na soubor, ale i jeho obsah. To se hodí např. pro rychlé prohlédnutí vložené prezentace nebo tabulky. Školy tak mohou např. mít jídelní lístek ve formátu aplikace Excel, a pokud si jej tímto způsobem vloží na web, stačí pouze online editovat jídelní lístek ve službě OneDrive a změny budou ihned promítnuty na web.

Jakmile začnete OneDrive využívat více, asi brzy zjistíte, že i přes přehlednou adresářovou strukturu se může stát, že nebudete moci najít nějaký soubor. Proto se v levém horním okraji stránky OneDrive nachází dialogové okno pro prohledávání celého úložiště. Stačí tedy zadat název (nebo jeho část) soubor a ihned vidíte výsledek vyhledávání, ve kterém si můžete soubor rovnou otevřít, provést s ním libovolné úpravy, podívat se na stav sdílení, datum poslední změny, jeho skutečné umístění a velikost.

Koš

Zajímavou a potřebnou funkcí, která nebyla ve službě OneDrive od počátku, je funkce koše. Dřív totiž po odstranění souboru nebylo možné jej nijak obnovit. Odkaz na koš naleznete v levém dolním rohu okna. Můžete zde obnovit vybrané položky, všechny položky nebo podobně jako na klasickém počítači koš zcela vysypat. Podobně jako u běžných souborů i zde můžete výpis souborů řadit a to klepnutím na název příslušného sloupce. Není tak problém zjistit, jaký soubor v koši zabírá nejvíce místa, popř. jaký soubor byl odstraněn naposledy.

Fotografie

Velice důležitou součástí služby OneDrive je práce s fotografiemi. Jak již bylo zmíněno, pokud ve službě OneDrive vytvoříte složku a do ní umístíte fotografie, OneDrive to automaticky pozná a zobrazí vám ji jak v části Soubory, tak i v položce Všechny fotky, a to dokonce ve vzhledu webové fotogalerie. Nahrávání fotografií do složek je stejné jako nahrávání běžných souborů. Jestliže tedy klepnete v levé horní části na položku Všechny fotky, zobrazí se přehledně seznam všech fotoalb, které ve OneDrive máte umístěny. Řazení v tomto případě probíhá dle data od nejnovějšího po nejstarší.
Druhou možností, jak si zobrazit fotky, je přímo v položce Soubory otevřít složku s fotkami. V závislosti na tom, jak máte nastaveno zobrazení souborů, se buď složky zobrazí jako prostý seznam nebo jako přehled miniatur. U každé složky je vidět náhled některých fotek ze složky (který se dynamicky mění) a navíc je zde zobrazen počet souborů uvnitř složky.
Po klepnutí na náhled složky (v zobrazení Soubory) se zobrazí veškeré fotografie uvnitř dané složky, opět v jednotlivých náhledech. A podobně jako u souborů, i zde máte možnost klepnout pravým tlačítkem myši na některou z fotek a vybrat si, co s fotkou chcete provést. Můžete ji otevřít, stáhnout, sdílet, vygenerovat odkaz pro vložení, přejmenovat, odstranit, přesunout na jiné místo, kopírovat do jiné složky, zobrazit vlastnosti souboru nebo otočit. Nicméně pokud budete chtít někomu ukázat například fotografie z dovolené, těžko si je bude zobrazovat v takto malých náhledech. Proto je pochopitelné, že po klepnutí na vybranou miniaturu obrázku je možné si jej zvětšit.
Po klepnutí na fotku se také v pravé části okna zobrazí podrobné informace o fotce, převážně tzv. EXIF informace jako jsou rozlišení fotky, čas pořízení, nastavení fotoaparátu při focení a pokud EXIF informace obsahuje i místo pořízení, vidíte rovnou i mapu s vyznačením, kde byla fotka pořízena.
V režimu zobrazení jednotlivých fotek se pak ukazují další velice přínosné možnosti úložiště OneDrive. V dolní části okna máte k dispozici filmový pás s náhledy jednotlivých fotografií, takže víte hned směrem dopředu i zpět, jaké fotky se zde nacházejí. Po klepnutí na velký náhled fotky je možné ještě navíc tento filmový pás skrýt a zobrazit fotku téměř přes celou obrazovku. V režimu prohlížení je pak možné na další a předchozí fotky se přesouvat kurzorovými klávesami nebo pomocí šipek, které se zobrazí po najetí kurzoru za levý nebo pravý okraj fotky. Asi ale sami tušíte, že takové prohlížení není zrovna efektivní a že by bylo mnohem snazší, kdyby se fotky přepínaly automaticky. I to je ve službě OneDrive možné a lze tak učinit klepnutím na příkaz Přehrát prezentaci, který se nachází po otevření fotky v horním pásu příkazů.
V režimu prezentace se skryjí všechny okolní panely a nabídky a začnou se v intervalu tří sekund přehrávat všechny fotografie i videa a vy se můžete nerušeně kochat nádhernými snímky. Režim prezentace můžete ukončit stisknutím klávesy Esc, další stisk této klávesy vás přesune do režimu náhledu všech fotek v daném albu a třetí stisk do seznamu všech fotoalb ve vašem úložišti.

Nedávné

Z fotogalerie se přesuňme opět na hlavní stránku úložiště OneDrive (to ostatně můžete udělat kdykoliv klepnutím na logo služby OneDrive v horním levém rohu). V nabídce v levé části okna se nachází pod položkou Soubory další, často využívaná položka, Nedávné. Jedná se o seznam dokumentů, se kterými jste v poslední době pracovali. Zde se ale dokumenty, jak již z názvu této složky vyplývá, řadí podle data posledního otevření. Je to obdobná nabídka, co se funkcionality týče, jako je nabídka Poslední dokumenty ve standardních aplikacích Word, Excel apod. Jedná se o skutečné soubory z nabídky Dokumenty, kde se tyto soubory nacházejí, a proto s nimi můžete i v položce Nedávné pracovat naprosto stejným způsobem jako v Dokumentech. Pokud si tedy např. přejmenujete nebo smažete soubor ve složce Nedávné, tato změna se projeví i ve skutečném umístění daného souboru v nabídce Dokumenty.

Sdílené dokumenty

Na začátku této příručky byla několikrát při popisu práce se soubory zmíněna možnost jejich sdílení. Abyste měli přehled o tom, jaké soubory jsou s vámi sdíleny, nachází se jako poslední v levé části stránky nabídka Sdílené. Po klepnutí na její název se zobrazí seznam dokumentů, které můžete prohlížet nebo upravovat. Pozor na fakt, že se (kromě první položky) nejedná o soubory uložené ve vašem úložišti OneDrive a že pokud některý z těchto souborů smažete (za předpokladu, že k tomu máte nastavena oprávnění), tento soubor se smaže i z úložiště daného uživatele, který vám soubor nasdílel. Na jednu stranu to možná někteří berou jako bezpečnostní riziko, na druhou stranu je nutné vzít v potaz, že proto existují v úložišti OneDrive různé možnosti oprávnění, a pokud tedy někomu soubor kompletně nasdílíte, máte k tomu důvod. Stejně tak ale existují desítky situací a využití, kde se naopak hodí to, že nepotřebný soubor mohou mazat všichni uživatelé s daným oprávnění.

 

Office Online

Jak již bylo napsáno, OneDrive není sice jedinou službou, která nabízí úložný prostor na internetu, nicméně z hlediska datového prostoru a dalších funkcí se jí těžko nějaká jiná vyrovná. Pokud pominu již několikrát zmiňovanou kapacitu úložného prostoru o velikosti 7 GB, tak druhou největší výhodou je online sada kancelářských aplikací Word, Excel, PowerPoint a OneNote, která má souhrnný název Office Online. S čím dál větším přechodem uživatelů a společností do cloudového prostředí se také musí zcela zásadně změnit způsob fungování a využívání aplikací a Office Online plně ukazují a dokazují, jak se to má dělat. V rámci běžného internetového prohlížeče můžete naprosto z jakéhokoliv počítače připojeného na internet nejenom prohlížet dokumenty vytvořené ve zmiňovaných aplikacích, ale hlavně je i vytvářet a na vytváření spolupracovat i s více uživateli. A není vůbec nutné, aby na daném počítači byla nainstalována jakákoliv verze klasického kancelářského balíku Microsoft Office. I tak ale celá sada Office Online, co se týče vzhledu, kopíruje co nejvěrnějším způsobem kancelářský balík Microsoft Office 2013, aby přechod do cloudového prostředí byl pro běžné uživatele příjemnější a rychlejší.







Vytvoření nového dokumentu

Soubory sady Office můžete do úložiště OneDrive nahrávat přes příkaz Nahrát. Nicméně je možné je i rovnou online vytvářet, a to za pomocí nabídky Vytvořit v horní části okna. Otevřete si tedy složku ve službě OneDrive, v níž chcete soubory vytvořit, a klepněte na tlačítko Vytvořit. Následně jen vyberte, jaký typ dokumentu chcete vytvořit.  Po vybrání typu dokumentu se rovnou spustí webová verze příslušné aplikace a vy můžete okamžitě začít práci na dokumentu.

Práce s existujícími dokumenty

V předchozí kapitole bylo zmíněno a na obrázkách i demonstrováno, že kontextová nabídka s příkazy se mění v závislosti na tom, s jakým typem souboru chcete pracovat, a že u již vytvořených dokumentů sady Office máte navíc tyto další možnosti:
Otevřít ve...– po výběru tohoto příkazu máte možnost ihned zobrazit daný dokument tak, jak byl vytvořen. V tomto režimu je možné celým dokumentem procházet, měnit velikost náhledu dokumentu, prohledávat dokument či jej sdílet. Taktéž je možné dokument v prohlížeči upravit nebo jej otevřít v příslušné aplikaci sady Office (za předpokladu, že je tato aplikace v počítači nainstalována.) V nabídce Soubor (která graficky kopíruje stejnojmennou nabídku v sadě Office 2013) jsou pak další příkazy pro práci se souborem, jako jsou Tisk, Uložitjako, Sdílet a další.
To, že je možné dokumenty v rámci internetového prohlížeče otevírat, zase tak překvapivé není (vzhledem k dnes dostupným technologiím na webu). 
Co ale ze služby OneDrivečiní skutečnou online kancelář se vším všudy, je právě možnost online úpravy dokumentů. Stačí, abyste klepli po otevření souboru na položku Upravit dokumentUpravit v aplikaci a otevře se vám dokument v režimu úprav včetně nástrojů na pásu karet tak, jak jej znáte ze sady Microsoft Office 2013. Na první pohled zde některé karty chybí, jedná se ale zejména o pokročilé funkce dané aplikace, kterých by prozatím většina uživatelů stejně využívala spíše v klasické aplikaci. Na druhou stranu je nutno podotknout, že společnost Microsoft neustále přidává jednotlivé karty a funkce, které jsou tak ihned dostupné milionům uživatelů po celém světě. Pokud se ale podíváte podrobněji na dostupné funkce, tak např. v aplikaci Word Online zjistíte, že pro vytvoření běžného dokumentu vám nic nechybí. Na kartách sou v době psaní této příručky dostupné zejména funkce pro práci se schránkou, formátování písma, formátování odstavce, styly, kontrola pravopisu, vkládání tabulek, obrázků a hypertextových odkazů apod.
Upravit ve– pokud po otevření dokumentu klepnete na položku Upravit dokument – Upravit ve + název aplikace, je možné otevřít online dokument v příslušné desktopové aplikaci a dodělat na něm některé další úpravy či pokročilé funkce, které v online aplikaci dostupné nejsou. A pokud dokument upravujete v sadě Microsoft Office 2013 (která je již na cloudové prostředí a online úložiště OneDrive plně připravena), máte možnost jej přes nabídku Soubor – Uložit rovnou zpět uložit na OneDrive.
Historie verzí– pomocí tohoto příkazu máte možnost se vrátit k některé z předchozích verzí daného dokumentu. OneDrive totiž průběžně ukládá verze dokumentů, se kterými pracujete, a vytváří jejich kopie tak, jak vypadaly před další změnou. Po klepnutí na tento příkaz máte tedy možnost si nechat zobrazit předchozí verze dokumentu a případně jej do tohoto stavu obnovit nebo si starší verzi stáhnout.

Pokud jste již práci s daným dokumentem ukončili a chcete se vrátit do úložiště OneDrive, máte několik možností. První z nich je klepnutí na odkaz OneDrive ve zcela horní části okna. Druhou možností je pak v nabídce Soubor vybrat poslední příkaz Zavřít.

EuroShop shows off Microsoft Dynamics and Windows Embedded retail displays

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clip_image002

An intelligent system for retailers has to have the right blend of devices, services and expertise to be an effective solution. Microsoft Dynamics and Windows Embedded recently partnered up at the world’s largest retail expo, EuroShop 2014, to showcase an end-to-end retail scenario for Jack Wolfskin — a European version of The North Face.

Attendees were able to peruse a small “brick and mortar” store, as well as an online shop. Windows Embedded-based devices gave visitors real-world scenarios.

Read more about Microsoft’s vision for intelligent systems in retail, and about EuroShop in particular, on the Windows Embedded blog.

You might also be interested in:

Athima Chansanchai
Microsoft News Center Staff

March 2014 Security Bulletin Webcast and Q&A

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Today we published the March 2014 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. We answered eight questions in total, with the majority focusing on the updates for Windows (MS14-016) and Internet Explorer (MS14-012). One question that was not answered on air has been included on the Q&A page.

Here is the video replay.

We invite you to join us for the next scheduled webcast on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, at 11 a.m. PDT (UTC -7), when we will go into detail about the April bulletin release and answer your bulletin deployment questions live on the air.

You can register to attend the webcast at the link below:

Date: Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT (UTC -7)
Register:
Attendee Registration

I look forward to seeing you next month.

Thanks,
Dustin Childs
Group Manager, Response Communications
Microsoft Trustworthy Computing

SQL MP 6.4.1.0 – SQL 2012 DB Engine group does not contain all SQL servers

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Ian wrote about this issue back in September:  http://ianblythmanagement.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/sql-server-2012-db-engine-group-problem/

Essentially – SCOM discovers the SQL Version from a registry key that SQL places.  The problem arises that the SQL version in that key uses a different SQL version that what is considered typical. 

SQL build versions are visible here:  http://sqlserverbuilds.blogspot.com/

When you apply SQL 2012 SP1 to SQL 2012, this updates the registry from 11.0.xxxx.x to 11.1.xxx.x as seen below in SCOM Discovered inventory:

image

 

The issue is that the group “SQL Server 2012 DB Engine Group” is hard coded to 11.0.* as seen below:

image

 

I wrote a quick MP that contains a new group population discovery set to “11.*” along with an override to disable the built in group.  The XML is visible below:

 

<ManagementPack ContentReadable="true" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"><Manifest><Identity><ID>Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.Discovery.Addendum</ID><Version>6.4.1.0</Version></Identity><Name>Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.Discovery.Addendum</Name><References><Reference Alias="SQL2012Disc"><ID>Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.Discovery</ID><Version>6.4.1.0</Version><PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken></Reference><Reference Alias="SQL"><ID>Microsoft.SQLServer.Library</ID><Version>6.4.1.0</Version><PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken></Reference><Reference Alias="SC"><ID>Microsoft.SystemCenter.Library</ID><Version>6.1.7221.0</Version><PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken></Reference><Reference Alias="Windows"><ID>Microsoft.Windows.Library</ID><Version>6.1.7221.0</Version><PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken></Reference><Reference Alias="Health"><ID>System.Health.Library</ID><Version>6.1.7221.0</Version><PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken></Reference><Reference Alias="System"><ID>System.Library</ID><Version>6.1.7221.0</Version><PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken></Reference></References></Manifest><Monitoring><Discoveries><Discovery ID="Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.Discovery.Addendum.PopulateSQL2012EngineGroup" Enabled="true" Target="SQL2012Disc!Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.InstanceGroup" ConfirmDelivery="true" Remotable="true" Priority="Normal"><Category>Discovery</Category><DiscoveryTypes><DiscoveryClass TypeID="SQL2012Disc!Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.InstanceGroup"/></DiscoveryTypes><DataSource ID="DS" TypeID="SC!Microsoft.SystemCenter.GroupPopulator"><RuleId>$MPElement$</RuleId><GroupInstanceId>$Target/Id$</GroupInstanceId><MembershipRules><MembershipRule><MonitoringClass>$MPElement[Name="SQL2012Disc!Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.DBEngine"]$</MonitoringClass><RelationshipClass>$MPElement[Name="SQL2012Disc!Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.InstanceGroupContainsDBEngine"]$</RelationshipClass><Expression><RegExExpression><ValueExpression><Property>$MPElement[Name="SQL!Microsoft.SQLServer.DBEngine"]/Version$</Property></ValueExpression><Operator>MatchesWildcard</Operator><Pattern>11.*</Pattern></RegExExpression></Expression></MembershipRule></MembershipRules></DataSource></Discovery></Discoveries><Overrides><DiscoveryPropertyOverride ID="Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.Discovery.Addendum.DisableSQL2012GP" Context="SQL2012Disc!Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.InstanceGroup" Enforced="false" Discovery="SQL2012Disc!Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.PopulateSQLServersInstanceGroup" Property="Enabled"><Value>false</Value></DiscoveryPropertyOverride></Overrides></Monitoring><LanguagePacks><LanguagePack ID="ENU" IsDefault="true"><DisplayStrings><DisplayString ElementID="Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.Discovery.Addendum"><Name>SQL Server 2012 (Discovery) Addendum</Name><Description>This management pack addresses a specific issue in the SQL MP 6.4.1.0where the SQL 2012 DB engine instance group does not populate correctly due to a version mismatch. This MP ONLY applies to that specific version.</Description></DisplayString><DisplayString ElementID="Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.Discovery.Addendum.DisableSQL2012GP"><Name>Disable default SQL 2012 Group Population </Name><Description /></DisplayString><DisplayString ElementID="Microsoft.SQLServer.2012.Discovery.Addendum.PopulateSQL2012EngineGroup"><Name>Populate Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Instance Group (fixed)</Name><Description>This discovery fixes an issue in the group discover in SQL MP version 6.4.1.0</Description></DisplayString></DisplayStrings></LanguagePack></LanguagePacks></ManagementPack>

I will also attach the MP as a zip file to this post below.

Now my groups populate as expected:

 

image


Contoso Labs-Storage Purchasing (File Servers)

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Contoso Labs Series - Table of Contents

Now that we have our JBOD's identified, we needed to decide what we were connecting them to. We seriously considered using some of our compute nodes as file server heads, but quickly ran into insurmountable problems.

Precious I/O

We designed our Scale-Out File Server clusters to serve 72 compute nodes. While we believe those compute nodes can get away with just 4Gbit of connectivity each, the file servers obviously need to serve up far more than that to keep 72 concurrent nodes happy. That meant that multiple 10GbE ports were required, as well as enough SAS ports to keep data moving to-and-from all of the JBODs.

Old Servers Can't Keep Up

The compute nodes presented a few problems, none which we could easily address.

  • Their onboard LAN consists of two 1GbE ports.
  • They only have two PCIe slots.
  • One slot is semi-permanently occupied by a RAID controller used by onboard storage

Put all that together, and we had 1 slot in which to get 10GbE and external SAS connectivity. That meant we had to bite the bullet and get new storage head nodes.

Modern Servers to the Rescue

The solution to this problem was to simply buy some reasonably priced modern servers to act as the file server heads. We ended up going with the updated version of our compute nodes: HP DL360p Gen8's. Going with the 'p' (Performance) series let us spec systems that came with two 10GbE ports onboard, and left both PCIe slots free. That meant we could choose to deploy either additional 10GbE ports, or dual SAS controllers. These newer systems also gave us newer 8-core processors, and a relatively cheap 128GB of RAM. That's useful for features like CSV cache, and data dedup, something we want to be able to take advantage of on a file server in some scenarios.

In the next post, we'll cover the last part of piecing together our storage solution: the SAS configuration.

Get free Microsoft Office 365 resources, training, videos and more

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Whether you’re new to Microsoft Office 365 or consider yourself a pro at it, there are many, many free resources Microsoft offers to help you get the most from your Office 365 subscription.

The “What’s New” series for each of the applications you get with Microsoft Office 365 -- Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access and Publisher – offers an overview of new features in each app, writes Eric Ligman, Microsoft senior sales excellence manager. Meanwhile, “Quick Start Guides” give you a cheat sheet for Microsoft Office apps, so you can get up and running quickly if you’re new to the software.

Microsoft Virtual Academy offers free online courses that you can take from your home or office. There are several courses about Office 365, from “Introduction to Office 365” to “Business Intelligence in Office 365.”

There are also free video sessions online; all of them have been posted on the Office 365 YouTube Channel.

To learn more about these free resources and training programs, head over to the Microsoft Sales Excellence Manager’s blog.

You might also be interested in:

· OneNote now available for Mac and Windows for first time – and it’s free
· EuroShop shows off Microsoft Dynamics and Windows Embedded retail displays
· Broadband-ready 64GB Surface 2 (AT&T 4G LTE) goes on sale Tuesday

Suzanne Choney
Microsoft News Center Staff

Microsoft Hosts Mathletes for MATHCOUNTS Washington State Finals

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By Jane Broom, director, Citizenship and Public Affairs It’s that time of year again…March Madness! A time to celebrate and cheer on student mathletes, the teams and their dedicated coaches for the months of preparation, teamwork and winning game plans. While you might think I’m talking about the one team from our state, the Gonzaga Bulldogs, headed to the NCAA Tournament - or are concerned that I don’t know how to spell athletes, neither is the case today. Because today’s...(read more)

Tip of the Day: Understanding ReFS’s COW

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Today’s Tip…

When a file’s metadata is modified in NTFS, it is written over the older metadata. However, this is not how ReFS works. ReFS uses a new ‘Copy On Write’ (COW) feature. Instead of overwriting old metadata, new metadata is written to a different location on disk. Once ReFS confirms that the new metadata is complete, pointers to the old metadata are modified to reference the new location.

Additionally, this feature can be activated for data streams as well. This is turned on by default when ReFS is on a Store Space that is configured as a mirror.

TechNet Guru Awards - February 2013

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All the votes are in! Bit late this months, as some judges were very busy with very important Microsoftness...

 

Below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, February 2014 !!!!

 

The TechNet Guru Awards celebrate the technical articles on TechNet, contributed from valued wiki authors like YOU!

Each month, the contributions are scored by a panel of judges (5 per category, 2-3 in each are MS experts), and the winners of each category are showered with love and attention from all corners of TechNet.

See the links at the bottom, to find out more about the competition and how to enter.

 

We have picked the top three highest scored contributions for each category to bestow our awards upon.

The awards are in gold, silver and bronze, the gold obviously being the top winner of the category.

The last column is just a few of the comments judges made during the judging process.

In some cases, we have not obtained permission to use the judges names, so they have been reduced to initials.

 

My fellow wiki ninjas will be digging deeper into some of these articles in this blog series, so watch out for those.

Any of our judges can exercise their right to veto an article, if they do not feel it meets minimum requirements for a medal.  

When this is the case, we will at least give an indication of the reason, so you understand why.

 

A big thank you also, to the other authors who did not make the top three of each category.

Some articles only just missed out, so we may be returning to discuss those too, in future blogs.

We have tried to provide feedback on every article, good and bad comments.

Guru Award BizTalk Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Mohit GuptaUsing Windows Azure BizTalk Services to Insert XML Messages into an Azure SQL ServerEd Price: "I love the Business Scenario example, and the Step By Step section is very clear with great formatting!"
TGN: "very nice article, explains everything easy, good going Mohit!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Sandro PereiraMigrating BizTalk Server maps to Windows Azure BizTalk Services (WABS) mapsTGN: "AaaaaMAZING article Sandro! My favorite this month!"
Ed Price: "This is a great topic! The images help a lot as you explain the steps!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Steef-Jan WiggersWindows Azure BizTalk Services Operations: Backup and RestoreEd Price: "Another great masterpiece! Fantastic explanations through the whole process!"
TGN: "This is valuable for people to know, it's so easy! Thanks Steef-Jan!"


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award Forefront Identity Manager Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Eihab IsaacFIM 2010 R2 & BHold: How to create and use Supervisor RolePG: "Nice article, interesting content, good topic, BHOLD articles are rare, so keep going!"
Ed Price: "The section divisions with clear explanations, steps, and images really help break this out and make it a great article! Important topic!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Majd AndoniHandling a composite type request for multivalued attributesPG: "Nice article, interesting content, good balance between text and images."
Ed Price: "Another valuable article with well-formatted code and a wonderful diagram at the bottom! Could benefit from a TOC."

Bronze Award Winner

 

James ResueDemystify Kerberos setup with FIM 2010 R2 with SSPRPG: "Nice article, well done. "
Ed Price: "The Case and Scenario sections are very helpful!"

 

Guru Award SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Nitin GuptaCustom BCS connector for Search with Security Trimming, Batching and Incremental CrawlingTVG: "BCS is one of my most favorite Service Applications and not easy to learn due to complexity, well done!"
Ed Price: "Not only is it incredibly thorough, but the comments really explain its value... Matthew Yarlett: "Fantastic article! Detailed, very interesting, and a great topic to have a thorough walk-through on!" Dan: "An excellent article, Nitin!! I love how you have written such a detailed article which motivates other SharePoint admins to adopt Visual Studio." Prateek: "Thanks alot Nitin and Vaibhav. I was stuck for about a week; this article helped me rectify my issues. Thanks a ton. :)""
GO: "Great article! Detailed and interesting."

Silver Award Winner

 

Steven AndrewsHow to update parent folders when child contents are modifiedEd Price: "Thorough descriptions and steps! I left a comment about one way to get the images to not show up as numbered steps. Great article!"
GO: "This is a "nice to know" article! The idea that each Document Set shares the DocSetName column value with any document contained within it could be very useful. "

Bronze Award Winner

 

Dan ChristianSearch Service Application Issue with AAMEd Price: "Another fantastic article from Dan with thorough explanations and clarifying screenshots!"


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award Small Basic Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Nonki TakahashiHow to Install Small Basic onto Windows 8.1Ed Price: "Wow, this is incredibly valuable. Thank you for getting us all these steps! The images also help a lot!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Nonki TakahashiSmall Basic: ColorEd Price: "This is a fine addition to the Small Basic library! A great deep dive on colors! "

Bronze Award Winner

 

Joe Dwyer (DwyerTech)Olympics - Small Basic Style!Ed Price: "This is a great sample and fun game! Thanks, Joe!"


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award SQL BI and Power BI Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

HimanshuSharmaGeocodingEd Price: "Great message from Paul in the comments: "This is a great post, Himanshu, and will be quite valuable for someone needing to geocode locations. It would also be great to see an example with the Bing Maps API. Thanks for the contribution.""
NN: "Interesting article, but unfortunately at present has a problem with all codes that make it hard to read"

Silver Award Winner

 

Tim PaclThe Devil is in the DetailsNN: "Nice article"
Ed Price: "I didn't see much of a devil, but there are a lot of details about the Details group! Great article! From Saeid in the comments: "Another great article by Tim!""


 

Guru Award SQL Server General and Database Engine Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Durval RamosGhost "Rows" Buster in SQL ServerDRC: "The article is very good and it clearly explained about how the ghost clean up works and also clears with a good example on how to manually track the ghost records in SQL database. Finally it talks about how to over the problem which uses the command DBCC FORCEGHOSTCLEANUP() which is undocumented and should not be tested on the production servers as it causes logical inconsistency in the database. "
Ed Price: "Very thorough. Good point from DRC about the undocumented/unsupported command. The comments really show how great this article is... Saeid: "Attractive title! Very informative! I shared it in our FB SQL Group." Plus compliments from Pituach and Shanky! A fantastic article! "
NN: "Very interesting article but needs some English grammar editing"

Silver Award Winner

 

Praveen Rayan D'saSQL Server: Instant File Initialization ExceptionsNN: "Good article"
DRC: "The article is good. MSDN blogs cover 2 scenarios and this blog covered 2 additional scenarios(checkDB, Database snapshot). Caution alignment has to be fixed. sp_readerrorlog command is undocumented and include this in caution section. "
Ed Price: "Great article with clear explanations and code formatting! I love the References section!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Jayakumaur (JK)Effective use of Keyboard Shortcuts with SQL Server Management StudioDRC: "This is a good article. This links to the MSDN articles which discusses about the other shortcuts which are not discussed here. This also article also shows how to customize the shortcuts as the requirement. "
Ed Price: "Incredibly thorough! I love the "Other Keyboard Shortcuts" section!"
NN: "Very helpful tricks to improve working with SSMS"


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • Automate Database Migration between SQL Server Instances by Ahmad Osama
    DRC: "While testing the powershell script, I am getting this error. I am able to load other modules which are already present (Import-Module vpnclient) so looks like there are some issues with this module which needs to rectified. PS C:\windows\system32> Import-Module DB-Migrate Import-Module : The specified module 'DB-Migrate' was not loaded because no valid module file was found in any module directory. At line:1 char:1 + Import-Module DB-Migrate + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : ResourceUnavailable: (DB-Migrate:String) [Import-Module], FileNotFoundException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Modules_ModuleNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.ImportModuleCommand. If we don’t have access to the defined location, then we should have some steps to load the modules from different locations. PowerShell is a powerful tool to make things easier. Great attempt in accomplishing the day to day tasks through PowerShell. "
    Ed Price: "Good interactions in the comments. Check out DRC's found issues. Good job on the text formatting!"
    NN: "Good article - I think all 4 articles are of good quality and I can not chose between them"

Guru Award System Center Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Mr XHow to manage Pending Reboots of your AD-Integrated servers using OrchestratorEd Price: "A fantastic use of Orchestrator!"

Silver Award Winner

 

ChristophMareschSCOM 2012 VSAE – Extend Microsoft.Windows.Computer Class with Powershell and Active DirectoryEd Price: "Great PowerShell script!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Mr XHow to suppress the system restart on devices in a Software Updates Automatic Deployment RuleEd Price: "Short but sweet! A very good explanation from Mr X!"

 

Guru Award Transact-SQL Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Jayakumaur (JK)T-SQL : Performing row wise string operations in SQL ServerSamuel Lester: "Great write-up on a common forum topic, nicely presented code, well formatted, and very helpful!"
Richard Mueller: "Good explanation of the code. Perhaps we need line numbers in this case, or the explanations should be comments in the code. Should references to "holiday" be "vacation"?"
Ed Price: "Although first created in January, this article wasn't written until February. Fantastic formatting, descriptions, images, and even helpful in-code comments are what makes this article shine!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Himanshu SharmaT-SQL - Understanding TriggersRichard Mueller: "Great introduction and explanations. The See Also section should link to Wiki Articles."
Ed Price: "Great article content, but the text is in boxes and includes various formatting issues. Good topic!"
Samuel Lester: "Thanks for the contribution!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

M. Mahfoud EL HOUDAIGUIT-SQL : create and test an alertSamuel Lester: "The code for all three of the alert entries is handy, but is sorely lacking explanation, descriptions, etc. The articles have great potential to be extremely helpful with some supporting text."
Richard Mueller: "This article needs explanations and discussion. This article could have links to the others on the same subject."
Ed Price: "Good topic, but it needs text to explain each part."


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award Visual C# Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Jaliya UdagedaraLock Statement in C#Ed Price: "Good explanations and great code formatting. It could benefit from a TOC."
NN: "Ok article"

Silver Award Winner

 

Shweta LodhaOverload Resolution RevisitedNN: "Interesting article - too much copied materia"
Ed Price: "Good code solution and comment interactions!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

João SousaASP.NET MVC 5 - RoutingEd Price: "I believe this is C# code, so it fits in this category. Great job putting this all together!" 


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

Guru Award Wiki and Portals Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Carsten SiemensWindows Azure PortalBL: "A very substancial collection of resources, well organized. Also a very pleasing graphic design that could inspire other portals.. "
PG: "Nice article, with a massive load of information, good start as portal!"
NN: "Very good consolidation of Windows Azure articles. Needs some formatting and grammar corrections"
Richard Mueller: "A good collection of links. Because this includes external links, this should be called a Survival Guide."

Silver Award Winner

 

Matthew YarlettWiki: Format XML Markup using Notepad++Richard Mueller: "Definitely helpful information to fix a stuborn problem."
BL: "Very structured, detailed and well illustrated answer to a real challenge. This reads like the script for a great how-to video and would be great to see that one day."
PG: "Nice article, well done!"
NN: "Good article"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Durval RamosArticle SpotlightRichard Mueller: "A fantastic idea to highlight these articles."
BL: "Major credit for an article that shows long term commitment to tracking to an area that really matters to the authors of the represented article. Looking forward to see the impact over time."
PG: "Nice collection of articles!"
NN: "Not clear why the Credits section gives credit to the author of the article and also relevance of articles in the See Also section to that particular article"


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • Yammer Portal by Benoit Jester - MTFC
    NN: "Nice initiative, but most articles are just stubs. Need more information about technology"
    Richard Mueller: "A good start."
    BL: "This is a great idea that I can see really taking off as it gets more fleshed out."
    PG: "Needs bit more work and update"
  • The CodePlex Corner by Steven Andrews
    BL: "I can see this article becoming a great resource to bring the TN Wiki and Codeplex closer together, by allowing the community to discover and leverage the great work that has already been done. Something we want to watch grow over time."
    PG: "Nice start, needs a bit more work. Are you focussing on Sharepoint only, or are you collecting other technologies too? "
     

 

Guru Award Windows Phone and Windows Store Apps Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

McosminA Collection of Useful MVVM TricksEd Price: "Great descriptions with code snippets broken out, formatted, and explained well. Great job!"
Peter Laker: "A nice collection of tips here, thanks mcosmin!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Isham MohamedC# helper class for parse Foursquare venue API in Windows PhoneEd Price: "This a good topic with some good code comments, but it could benefit from formatted text and code, a TOC, and having the code broken up more with more thorough explanations."
Peter Laker: "Excellent code dump, useful topic!"

 

Guru Award Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Magnus (MM8)Using the Event Aggregator Pattern to Communicate Between View ModelsEd Price: "Great explanations, images, and formatted code will take you through this fun journey! "
Peter Laker: "Sensational contribution as always from Magnus!"

Silver Award Winner

 

dev hedgehogTrick To Use A ResourceDictionary Only When In Design ModeEd Price: "Fantastic trick with some well-formatted code snippets. Great article!"
Peter Laker: "Very nice tip dev hedgehog, thank you!!"


 

Guru Award Windows Server Technical Guru - February 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

NeoHypocriteConfiguring a two node Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Cluster on Hyper V using iSCSIEd Price: "Very thorough with images for each step!"
GL: "Good screenshots. I would like to see more of explanations of the parameters that are chosen."
JM: "An excellent article that many Admins will find very helpful, great work!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Mr XHow to manage your AD-integrated servers Life Cycle in virtualized environments by using PowershellEd Price: "A great diagram, images, and code formatting really bring this article to life"
GL: "Good information. I would like to know what determines that a VM is reaching end of life cycle. In addition, how do you replace the role that the VM is serving?"
JM: "Another excellent article, nice work."

Bronze Award Winner

 

Mr XHow to use Powershell to notify Active Directory users about password expiryJM: "This is an excellent article, thanks for all of your contributions."
Ed Price: "Great descriptions at the top!"
GL: "The script could have more comments. The "How is the script working" section could be added directly to the script."


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

OneNote now on Mac, free everywhere, and service powered!

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OneNote is the ultimate extension for your brain, but it’s not complete if it’s not instantly available everywhere. We’ve already made a lot of progress in that direction with our mobile, tablet and online web experiences. But there was still a gap. People frequently asked for OneNote on Mac, and for more ways to capture content.

Today we’re very excited to complete the OneNote story with three major developments:

  1. OneNote for Mac is available for the first time and for free. With this, OneNote is now available on all the platforms you care about: PC, Mac, Windows tablets, Windows Phone, iPad, iPhone, Android and the Web. And they’re always in sync.
  2. OneNote is now freeeverywhere including the Windows PC desktop and Mac version because we want everyone to be able to use it. Premium features are available to paid customers.
  3. The OneNote service now provides a cloud API enabling any application to connect to it. This makes it easier than ever to capture ideas, information and inspirations from more applications and more places straight into OneNote, including:
  • OneNote Clipper for saving web pages to OneNote
  • me@onenote.com for emailing notes to OneNote
  • Office Lens for capturing documents and whiteboards with your Windows Phone
  • Sending blog and news articles to OneNote from Feedly, News360 and Weave
  • Easy document scanning to OneNote with Brother, Doxie Go, Epson, and Neat
  • Writing notes with pen and paper and sending them to OneNote with Livescribe
  • Mobile document scanning to OneNote with Genius Scan and JotNot
  • Having your physical notebooks scanned into OneNote with Mod Notebooks
  • Connecting your world to OneNote with IFTTT

Go to www.onenote.com to get OneNote for free for your Mac, PC or other devices, and try out the new OneNote service connected experiences.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

You can learn more about these fantastic developments, right here!

US Partner News Online for Monday, March 17, 2014

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imageWelcome to this week’s issue of the US Partner News Online! Each week, we’ll bring you the latest news and information for Microsoft partners. You can read previous weeks’ issues at http://aka.ms/uspnewsletter. If you’d like to see the next post in your email inbox, go to http://aka.ms/uspblog and enter your email address under “Subscribe and follow” on the right hand side.

To stay in touch with me and connect with other partners and Microsoft sales, marketing, and product experts, join our US Partner Community on Yammer and choose how you want to stay informed.

Top stories

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Ready-to-Go Marketing: Help Customers Say Goodbye to Windows XP and Upgrade by April 8
The Get Modern with Windows 8.1 and Office campaign, from Ready-to-Go Marketing, provides you with resources that will help you prepare for conversations with your customers and explain the benefits of modernizing their businesses by moving to current versions of Windows, Office, and Exchange. You'll help customers increase productivity, access information anywhere, and stay secure while positioning yourself as their trusted advisor.

A Guide to Renewing Your MPN Competency
Keep your valuable competency benefits like access to Microsoft Services offerings, internal-use software, a customized competency logo, and marketplace exposure through Microsoft Pinpoint. Plan your next competency renewal with our step-by-step guidance.

What’s New in the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription
The new Action Pack is designed for partners that serve SMB customers and that are building a business practice with Microsoft technology. Knowing that many of our commercial partners go to market in multiple ways, we’ve simplified our approach to subscriptions to support this. The Action Pack is a universal subscription and now allows you to explore and utilize resources across six partner business models. 

Peter Han’s Blog: Windows 8.1 Devices – Critical Care for the Healthcare Industry
Healthcare—with its demanding, complex requirements for high system security, compliance with government regulations, clean environments, portability, and usability—is an industry especially poised to tackle daily challenges through technology innovation. Find out how OEMs and their Windows 8.1 devices are revolutionizing how healthcare providers do business.

imageMarch 27: Windows Azure ISV Partner YamJam, Featuring Alert Logic
In our monthly YamJams, we are inviting Windows Azure ISVs to share information about their Azure-powered apps as a way to help you discover new solutions for your customers and identify new partnership opportunities. Join us on Yammer to meet Jonathan Norman from our ISV partner, Alert Logic. Jonathan will “Yam” about Alert Logic Log Manager, security and compliance log management for Windows Azure or on-premises environments to search, correlate, alert, and report.

Cloud 1-2-3 Academy for SMB Partners: Build a Profitable Cloud Business
Whether you are new to the cloud or have closed a few cloud deals already, Cloud 1-2-3 Academy will help you make decisions about your business model to help you maximize revenues in the long term. Register to attend an in-person event, register for the online, 6-week series—or, register for and attend both.

Microsoft Security Bulletin Update for March 2014
The March 2014 security updates cover Internet Explorer, Microsoft Silverlight, and Microsoft Windows. You can watch the March 12 webcast on demand, and register for the next webcast, on April 9. The next security bulletin release is on Tuesday, April 8.

Give Your Feedback About Microsoft Licensing Content
The Microsoft Worldwide Licensing and Pricing Team is reviewing and evaluating the partner-ready content they provide to streamline and simplify it. You are invited to take their short survey and give your perspective about current content and what you would like to see when content is updated.

Meet Search Marketing Experts at Bing Ads Connect
Come to one of these four in-person events to engage with search marketing experts and learn about your opportunities with Bing Ads. If you have an Action Pack subscription, your benefits include Bing Ads credits that you and your customers can use to market products, services and solutions. Come learn how to put them to work.

Microsoft Dynamics Partners: Expand Your Marketing Budget with Marketing Services Bureau
The Marketing Services Bureau can provide you with access to marketing expertise you may not otherwise have the time or budget to hire. Whether you're in need of a list, consulting services, or a social media solution, MSB can help fill your marketing gaps and accelerate your path to new leads. New Special Offers are published regularly to our PartnerSource page.

Build a Marketing Program to Nurture Customers with the Microsoft Dynamics Partner Outsource Model
The Microsoft Dynamics Partner Outsource Model is a comprehensive suite of bundled services that can help you build and execute 6 to 12 months of marketing at a fraction of the cost of doing it yourself. This marketing system is uniquely designed for the new economics of selling your Microsoft Dynamics products and service offerings to customers. This content is on PartnerSource.

Resources

Awards_WPC2014Submissions for WPC 2014 Partner of the Year Awards Close April 11
It’s less than a month until the submissions close for this year’s Partner of the Year Awards. The Partner of the Year Awards celebrate successes and innovations related to MPN competencies, cloud technology, entrepreneurial spirit, and sales excellence, and highlight work done by partners in the public sector and citizenship arenas. There is also an award for the United States Country Partner of the Year. Prepare and submit your self-nomination today.

Build Your Partner to Partner Connections as a WPC 2014 Sponsor and Exhibitor
Showcase your solutions in front of more than 14,000 of the best and most committed partners in the Microsoft ecosystem. Exhibiting at WPC 2014 is a great way promote your business and build strategic alliances with the right Microsoft partners.

imageCorporate Buyback Program for Your Customers
When you help customers upgrade to a new Windows phone or tablet, they may be eligible to get money back for their old devices.

New Customer Campaign Explains the Value of Working with Microsoft Partners
A new campaign from the Microsoft Partner Network reaches out to customers to tell them the benefits of working with a partner that has proven expertise with Microsoft technologies by attaining silver or gold competency status. A new MPN page shows customers how to search on Microsoft Pinpoint to find a qualified partner based on business need, competency, or industry vertical.

Register for the VAR Incentive Program to Earn Up to 22 Percent in Incentives
The VAR Incentive provides maximum payout when you help your customers recognize the benefits of emerging Microsoft products and technologies, including virtualization, security, and unified communications. Register before March 31 to earn this incentive retroactive to your eligible sales starting in January. You must register for the current incentive even if you have participated in previous versions of the VAR rebate. Terms and conditions.

Earn $500 for Your First Sale of Microsoft Office 365 to an SMB Customer
Register for the VAR Incentive, then make your first Microsoft Office 365 sale through Open or Advisor between March 1 and May 31, and you may be eligible for an extra $500 payment. Terms and conditions.

SMB Advantage: Earn Partner Subsidy Funds for Cloud Sales
Earn partner subsidy funds on eligible sales of Microsoft Office 365 or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online through Open or Advisor. Redeem the purchase within 15 days, and your customer will receive a check to be used within 90 days for additional purchases or services provided by you. Offer ends May 31. Terms and conditions.

ROI_Office365toolShow Customers How Much They Can Save with Office 365
With support ending soon for Office 2003, Exchange Server 2003, and Windows XP, now is a good time for customers to move up to Office 365. Help your customers understand the benefits of moving to Exchange and Office in the cloud by using CloudReady Insight. This third-party tool calculates the return on investment of moving to Office 365 based on a customer's present on-premises usage.

Inspire by Example: New Windows E-book for Public Sector
This new e-book, part of the Windows in Public Sector Ready-to-Go campaign, looks back a decade, then guides public sector decision makers through a forward-thinking journey of possibilities.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 on Azure White Papers
Two new white papers are now available for download from PartnerSource: Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 Sizing Guidelines for Multitenant Deployments and Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 on Windows Azure.

Training and certification

TrainingStay informed about training opportunities that align to your business, role, and Microsoft Partner Network membership.

March Hot Sheet: Find and Register for Upcoming Training and Partner Calls
The Hot Sheet is a frequently updated schedule of live virtual and in-person training and informational calls that are coming in the next few weeks. Subscribe to the US Partner Learning blog to receive the Hot Sheet as soon as it's published each month. The April issue will be available the week of March 17.

Microsoft Dynamics Training Schedule
Register for Microsoft Dynamics training for both CRM and ERP using our schedule that goes through July. We also list Dynamics training on the monthly Hot Sheet.

Leaderboard_FB_AccelerateLearning_851x315_FlexibleWSIncrease Your Customer Wins and Retention, Plus Earn a Chance to Win
Microsoft Practice Accelerator equips partners with a detailed, reusable framework for the solutions you deploy. Each person from your company who attends a Practice Accelerator in March will be entered into the Accelerate Your Learning Sweepstakes for a chance to win a $1,000 American Express gift card.

Open only to authorized reps of companies actively enrolled in the Microsoft Partner Network. Game ends March 31. For details, including free alternate method of entry, see Official Rules.

Microsoft Tech Showcase: Lead the Technology Wave
Microsoft Tech Showcase events offer a one-day in-depth review of new product releases, such as Microsoft SharePoint 2013, Windows Azure, and Windows 8.1. Search for an expert-led event that is coming to a city near you or presented online.

Cloud OS OpportunityCloud OS Training Sweepstakes Ends March 31
Our Data Insights and Data Center Immersion trainings will give you a technical understanding of how Windows Server, Microsoft System Center, Microsoft SharePoint, and Windows Azure work together. And when you complete the self-assessments at the end of the training modules by March 31, you will be entered to win great prizes like Dr. Dre Beats Pill Speakers or Surface Pro 2 tablets.

Open only to authorized representatives of companies enrolled in the Microsoft Partner Network with a valid MPN ID who are legal residents of the US, age 18 and older. Limit 20 entries per person. Official rules.

8 Weeks of Windows 8 – Enter to Win a Cool Device
Pass a Windows assessment and be entered to win a Dell Venue 8 Pro, a Toshiba Encore, or a Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon Multimode Table PC. Weekly and grand prize drawings. Contest ends April 13. Open to US resident employees of OEM Reseller partners who are 18 or older. Weekly entry periods are Monday through Sunday. Download the official rules.

imageSMB Live: Get in the Cloud Events
Register for an SMB Live: Get in the Cloud event, in a city near you. Gain the advantage over your competition at our SMB Live events and get access to cutting edge technical, sales, and marketing information and resources to help you build a thriving Microsoft practice. Space is limited—check out the schedule and secure your spot today.

imageSMB Live: Expand Your Portfolio Events
Register for an SMB Live: Expand Your Portfolio event, in a city near you. Learn how to build your business by adding new Microsoft cloud and on-premises solutions to your practice. Space is limited—check out the schedule and secure your spot today.

 

Featured video

Watch this video, Choosing the best data platform for your business, for insights and talking points you can use when talking to customers about how Microsoft offers a complete, flexible data platform that helps businesses like theirs gain insight from all of today's data sources, no matter where they reside.

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Calendar through March 28

imageThis list is a sampling of upcoming partner calls, training, and events. Refer to the March Hot Sheet for a comprehensive list for the next several weeks that's frequently updated. Look for the April Hot Sheet this week.


Interview with Andre R Novello of Brazil

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Hello Wiki community.

Today is Monday, the day for our Interview with a Wiki Ninja.
Our interviewee is: Andre R Novello



He is a member of the Microsoft Technet community since the year 2012.
Author of the blog: http://andrenovello.wordpress.com/
Wrote 21 articles on Technet Wiki Brazil.
His classification in the community includes 2 silver and 13 bronze medals!
Total 4,190 points.

Let's meet him

Who are you?
I'm Andre Ricardo Novello, have 26 year and living in Piracicaba-SP. Work at a small accounting firm, where I am responsible for the whole it area (telephony, system, infrastructure, Servers, and clients). I am post graduate in computer networks and how desktop preference am certified in virtualization, Server and Desktop Virtualization MCTS. I also have a company that is starting, which will offer services of electronic invoices (NFE PROTECT).


What technologies do you specialize in?
My specialty is to keep the accounting system always available and also virtualization. I have a Hyper-V with some virtual machines for the use of SPED Fiscal and accounting, a content filter to PFSENSE and possess also a Windows Server 2012 R2 and WSUS for testing.


Where else in the community do you contribute?
I contribute always in the area of virtualization Technet Forum and also by Linkedin when there is some doubt of acquaintances who are posted there.


What do you like to read on Technet Wiki?
Step-by-step articles for installation, and deployment tips requirements.


Currently, what projects are you working on?
This year, in 2014, my plans is the development of my company that will run the cloud service.
Among others is to continue posting on my blog and on technet to help others and also to continue learning. I
intend to take other certifications and become a MCT and MVP if possible. Among other plans would migrate my Windows Server 2008 R2 by 2012 R2 and do a Nic Team with my 3 gigabit network cards, and also deploy RDS to the accounting system.


Who impressed you in the Technet Wiki community?
I always followed blogs from other professionals who are more apparent, such as Marcelo Sincic, Rafael Bernardes, Fabio Hara, Vinícius Apollinario among others that I could cite, but the works of all of them are what motivates me to help and also to maintain the blog and create a community of friends who can help us in the day-to-day, through the experiences and problems.


What are your 5 favorite articles on Technet Wiki?

  1. Hyper-V Placa de Rede (Switch Virtual) – Artigo básico mas para iniciantes é o primeiro passo sempre.
  2. Deduplicação de Dados – Básico agora no Server 2012 – Ótima ferramenta
  3. Instalação do Orchestrator 2012 R2
  4. Storage Migration 2012 R2: http://andrenovello.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/storage-migration-hyper-v-2012-r2/
  5. Instalando Console de gerenciamento do VMM em Windows 8 – Bem interessante para administradores do VMM com restrição: http://andrenovello.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/instalando-console-de-gerenciamento-do-vmm-em-windows-8/

What are your recommendations for those who have not yet contributed to the Technet Wiki Community?
As an article can go from basic to advanced the important thing is to be objective in the explanation and imagine that article writing can help people who search by doubt. So to write an article needs to devote a few hours writing, editing and cropping some images for the post. In my case I felt a lot of the lack of articles with complete explanation about issues such as installation, which in time to point to SQL always occurred problems, among others from the System Center family.


What can the Microsoft community contribute with on Technet Wiki?
All with good experience in Microsoft platforms can concentrate on something that has more easily/specialty and turn this into an article that will help everyone. The longer deployment materials better. And the Technet Forum for more specific questions also makes it much easier.

The Microsoft community that you can only help so much thank you and tell you. Thank you!

Your willingness to help and your dedication and commitment is of fundamental importance for all.
We are sure, that your example, motivates other employees to be part of this great team that is the Technet community.
Continue with the great collaboration!


Wiki Ninja Hezequias Vasconcelos

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Technical Ignite Boot Camps

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SQL Server 2014 enables partners to build flexible and cost-effective applications and Big Data solutions. In this four-day technical training you will learn about the in-memory and cloud capabilities of SQL Server 2014. You will walk away with an understanding of how to simplify cloud adoption for your SQL databases, as well as unlock new hybrid scenarios.

Dates and locations

April 8 – 11Sunnyvale, CaliforniaRegister
April 21 – 24Chicago, IllinoisRegister
April 29 – May 2Reston, VirginiaRegister

Agenda

Days 1 and 2

Understand the latest SQL Server 2014 features for In-Memory OLTP and In-Memory Columnstore for getting the best mission critical performance for your database solutions. You will also learn how to take advantage of the latest AlwaysOn improvements and how to use Windows Azure to extend your workloads and high availability and disaster recovery needs to the cloud.

Day 3

Learn how to deliver powerful BI solutions to your customers that enable them to find and combine multiple sources of data, gain insights from that data through interactive dashboards and reports.

Day 4

Learn how Big Data technologies like Hadoop fit within a modern data warehouse architecture so that you can gain insights from your data in the shortest amount of time.

3/18 本日OneNote のクラウド連携機能を強化し、あらゆるデバイスで利用が可能になりました。

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OneNote は、タブレットやスマートフォンなど、あらゆるデバイスと同期し、どこでもすぐに使うことができるよう、大きく進化してきましたが、この度クラウド連携機能を強化し、ユーザーの皆様がさらに便利に OneNote をご利用いただけるようになりました。

また、OneNote for Mac を新たにリリースすることにより、Windows PC、Mac、Windows タブレット、Windows Phone、iPad、iPhone、Android、Web のすべてのプラットフォームでOneNoteが利用可能になりました。

OneNote サービス

本日よりクラウド API を利用できる「OneNote サービス」の提供を開始いたします。クラウドAPIを利用することにより、マイクロソフトのアプリケーションだけでなく、パートナーのアプリケーションからも、直接 OneNote へ接続することができるようになりました。

これにより、OneNote のコンテンツをあらゆるデバイスと同期するだけでなく、ユーザーのデジタル記録のハブとなり、他のアプリケーションやエクスペリエンスと接続して、任意のアプリケーションから OneNote に簡単にコンテンツを送信することができるようになりました。

そして、マイクロソフトではこれを目的とした新しいエクスペリエンスを開発し、パートナーと連携して、それぞれのエクスペリエンスとの統合を実現しました。

OneNote Clipper: 新機能の OneNote Clipper では、任意の Web ページをワン クリックでキャプチャし、自動的に OneNote のクイック ノートに取り込むことができます。この機能は、Internet Explorer、Chrome、Firefoxで使用できます。

OneNote への電子メール送信: me@onenote.comというアドレスにメールを送信すると、その内容が OneNote のクイック ノートに保存されます。受信箱から領収書を転送したり、Web のリンクをスマートフォンから me@onenote.comに送信すると便利です。

Office Lens: Office Lens は Windows Phone のアプリです。これは、ポケットに入れて持ち運べるスキャナーの役割を果たします。ホワイトボードやドキュメント、名刺などを撮影し、その画像を自動調整して OneNote のクイック ノートに取り込めます。この機能ではテキストが認識されるため、スキャンした画像を検索することが可能です。

パートナーのアプリとデバイス: マイクロソフトのアプリ以外からも、どこからでも気軽にメモを取れるようにするために、パートナーと共同で取り組みました。素晴らしいデバイスがそろっていますので、ぜひ OneNote でお試しください。

  • エプソン販売株式会社: 本日より、ドキュメントスキャナー用ユーティリティソフト「Document Capture Pro」から、OneNote へスキャンデータを簡単に転送するコネクタープラグインの提供を開始します。「Document Capture Pro」は、対応するスキャナー製品で読み取ったデータを仕分け、編集、転送までの作業をコントロールするユーティリティソフトですが、今回提供するコネクタープラグインにより、スキャンしたデータをワンクリックで OneNote へ転送することができるようになります。
  • ブラザー工業株式会社: 本日より、多くのスキャナーに搭載しているクラウド接続機能(*1)を強化し、OneNoteにもスキャンしたデータを直接保存することができるようになりました。取り込んだデータをOneNoteで簡単に管理することができるだけでなく、書類をクラウド上で同僚とシェアしたり、友達と写真を共有したりすることができます。また、スペシャルサイト「プリビオ オープンテラス」にも直接アクセスできるので、サイト上の様々なコンテンツをパソコンなしでプリントできます。(*2)    

                     (*1)インターネットへの接続が必要です。(*2)サービスによってはプリント機能が無い場合があります。

 今回の発表は、OneNote にとって大きな一歩です。どのプラットフォームからも簡単に OneNote を利用できるようになり、あらゆるものをデジタル記録として OneNote に簡単に送れるようになりました。しかし、ここは終着点ではなく、引き続きアプリケーションやサービスの垣根を越えて OneNote の機能を強化し、パートナーと共同で、あらゆるものをメモしたりデジタル記録として保管したりする機能の開発に取り組んでまいります。

ぜひ www.onenote.comで OneNote をダウンロードし、お使いのすべてのデバイスでご利用ください。また、皆様のご意見をお待ちしております。

Celebrating innovation in education

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Our annual Microsoft in Education Global Forum is one of my favorite weeks of the year. Why? Because I get to meet some of the most amazing educators in the world, hear about the innovative ways that they’re transforming their classrooms, and discuss how we can all work together to solve the challenges that they face in preparing students for the world of work. As we closed the forum for 2014, we were fortunate to be joined by Felipe, Prince of Asturias and Girona. He shared our conviction...(read more)

Announcements Regarding SharePoint Online Storage Limit Increases

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Last week at the SharePoint Conference 2014 in Las Vegas, Microsoft made some exciting announcements regarding SharePoint Online storage limit increases.  Since April 2013, we have seen a 485% growth in user access of SharePoint Online.  This secure environment provides a great location for your business related documents.  SharePoint Online has been a great solutions for team collaboration and with the announced increase in available storage, it just got better.  We are confident more SMBs will utilize OneDrive for Business as part of their storage management policy.  The following enhancements will be available to Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, and E4 as well as Office 365 Education A2, A3, and A4.

User and Site Collections Storage

OneDrive for Business (formally known as SkyDrive Pro) user and site collections can now utilize up to 1TB of storage providing an opportunity to host large team document centers in 0365 for access by workers from any location accessible via the internet.  By default individual users start with 25GB of OneDrive for Business storage and Site Collections start with 5GB but can now increase as needed up to 1TB.  From the 0365 SharePoint Admin Portal the storage allocation can be increased by 50, 100, 250, 500 and 1024 GB increments up to 1TB. 

Tenant Storage

In addition to the above, Office 365 and SharePoint Online provides the ability to scale the overall tenant storage to meet both current and future requirements.  The applicable Office 365 tenant subscription starts at 10GB + 500MB  times the number of users.  As an example for a tenant consisting of 10 users the tenant subscription would be allocated 15GB (10GB + 500MB * 10 users). When needed, the tenant can now purchase unlimited additional storage right from within their SharePoint Online Admin Center at a cost per gigabyte (GB) per month.  Just click the “Buy Storage” button to purchase.

For details see SharePoint Online Storage Announcements

 

Kathleen Molosky 2013 

Kathleen Molosky, PTS

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