Many IT Pro skills are fundamental, no matter how the technology changes. Even in 2022 you still need to patch the Windows operating system and transfer files to and from virtual machines. We’re thrilled to have exciting announcements about both capabilities!

Windows Bastion supports native RDP clients (Preview)

Windows Bastion provides you with a way to connect to a Virtual Machine in Azure without the VM needing a public IP address or RDP port 3389 open to the Internet. But the browser-based remote session didn’t support access to your local clipboard, to copy and paste files between your machine and your VM. Now in preview, Azure Bastion can be used by the native RDP client to “tunnel through” to Azure, so you can use the RDP client’s file transfer ability.

Check out the prerequisites and the connection steps.

Hotpatch for Windows Server 2022

What if Microsoft bundled together Windows Server updates that didn’t need a reboot, so you could install them with no downtime? The new Hotpatch feature of Azure Automanage does just that and is now generally available for new Windows Server 2022 Azure Edition virtual machines. The best thing about this announcement is that Hotpatch is destined for all versions of Windows, including clients. Azure Edition is just the start, as the simplest use case for us to deploy to. Just don’t ask us for timeframes !

Learn more about Hotpatch.

Make sure you’re following the ITOps Talk blog, as we cover both the new announcements important to IT Pros, and those complex systems administration tasks with products you’re already using. Drop me a note if there’s something you’d like us to cover!

Learn more

• This article was written for the Monthly TechNet UK IT Pro Newsletter – sign up today!
• New Azure features and functionality for February 2022
• How to get started with Microsoft certifications

The post Exciting updates to Windows Bastion and Windows Server appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

I never wanted a career in IT – I was going to be a flight attendant, and my plan was to work for a year before enrolling in a travel and tourism course. But during that first year of work, my employer recognised a spark of natural talent, as I become the “go to” person to deal with the Helpdesk. This led to an offer from IT to join them for a project rollout, and I walked into a tech department as their second female employee when I was just about to turn 19 years old.

My 15-year-old daughter is the only girl in her coding-heavy technology class in school, but she’s seen me follow a career that doesn’t involve software development at all. While she’s writing Python for an assignment, my job training included a session around the whiteboard on how TCP/IP addressing worked. I often wonder if we need an alternative to Girls Who Code, to celebrate the amazing variety and challenges of IT Pro roles and attract an audience that doesn’t want to bug bash.

That project I mentioned earlier was to roll out Windows NT4 Server. As I look at the announcements for Windows Server 2022, now in preview, I must smile that Server Administration is still a valid career path, whether it’s on-premises or in the Cloud (or both)! To celebrate this foundational piece of technology, we’ve recently published over 26 hours of free learning content on Microsoft Learn relevant to Windows Server 2019. It covers deployment, Hyper-V and virtualisation, high availability, files servers and storage, networking, and Active Directory.

Here’s to inspiring the next generation of IT Pros and long live Windows Server!

The post From NT4 to 2022: Windows Server, and the journey from flight attendant to IT Pro appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.