Modernize with PaaS or upgrade to a newer version in Azure

Modernization provides organizations with a more future-proof solution by using a cloud-first approach or updating to a newer version. One modernization option is moving to platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions such as Azure SQL Managed Instance or Azure App Service. By modernizing workloads to a PaaS solution, customers can fully offload management and patching tasks in the cloud. This helps teams stay up-to-date, avoid future end-of-support dates, and focus on delivering innovative apps and experiences for their businesses.

Alternatively, customers can migrate and upgrade their Windows Server 2012/R2 with Azure Migrate, our free tool for discovery, assessment, and migration of workloads to Azure. With this feature, organizations can now elect to move their legacy applications and databases to a fully supported, compatible, and compliant operating system. This includes our latest release in Windows Server 2022, which provides organizations with advanced multi-layer security, hybrid capabilities with Azure, and a flexible platform to modernize applications. Learn more about this feature of Azure Migrate.

Migrate to Azure for free Extended Security Updates

If organizations are not able to modernize Windows Server 2012/R2 in time, they can use Extended Security Updates (ESUs), which provide security patches for up to three years past the end of support date.

When organizations migrate end-of-support workloads to Azure, they get free Extended Security Updates. This includes options such as Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Dedicated Host, Azure VMware Solution, and Azure Stack HCI. Combining this with Azure Hybrid Benefit and consumption models such as reserved instances or savings plan for compute allows even more savings in Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server.  

Organizations can get in-depth resources to help them start their cloud journey on Azure with Azure Migrate and Modernize & Azure Innovate—our new offerings that provide end-to-end support from migration and modernization to infusing the latest innovation in analytics and AI. 

Stay protected in hybrid and multicloud environments with ESUs enabled by Azure Arc

For organizations who aren’t able to modernize or migrate prior to the Windows Server 2012/R2 end of support date this October, they can protect their hybrid and multicloud workloads with ESUs enabled by Azure Arc. Here are the key benefits:

• Monthly pay-as-you-go: Activate and enroll from Azure to pay for security updates on a monthly basis, giving organizations more flexibility to migrate and modernize to Azure on their terms.  
• Seamless delivery: The enrollment of Extended Security Updates on Azure Arc-enabled machines does not require the acquisition or activation of keys. Moreover, customers have the flexibility to use Azure Update Manager or another patching solution of their choice to receive the actual patches.
• Organize and inventory your assets: Gain visibility and reporting across servers spanning your hybrid, multicloud, and edge infrastructure. 
• Security and compliance: Extend Azure security and governance services such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Sentinel to further secure their infrastructure from cloud to edge and stay compliant with supported software. ESUs enabled by Azure Arc also gives free access to Azure Update Manager, Machine Configuration, and Change Tracking and Inventory for further automation and easier delivery of patches.

Connect to Azure Arc today to get started with ESUs enabled by Azure Arc or learn more here.

Prepare for other end of support dates

As organizations continually modernize their estate, there are several other end of support dates to keep in mind for Windows Server and SQL Server customers:

• Upgrade Windows Server 2008 virtual machines (VMs) in Azure. If you are running Windows Server 2008 virtual machines in Azure, the fourth and final year of ESUs end on Jan 9^th, 2024. After this date, no more security patches will be provided to virtual machines running this version. Organizations should plan to upgrade to the latest version to run these workloads securely and compliantly. Learn more about how to perform in-place upgrades for Windows Server.

• Prepare for SQL Server 2014 end of support. Many Windows Server customers often run SQL Server for their databases, which also has some end of support dates to be aware of. SQL Server 2012 reached end of support on July 12^th, 2022, and the upcoming end of support deadline is for SQL Server 2014, which reaches end of support on July 9^th, 2024. Organizations have the same three options outlined above to protect SQL Server 2014 workloads.

See the lifecycle of products supported with Extended Security Updates here.

Start modernizing for end of support

Here are a few key resources to learn more so you can be prepared for current and future end of support scenarios: 

• Learn more about your options for Windows Server and SQL Server end of support. 
• Learn more about Extended Security Updates on our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page and the documentation.
• Learn more about running Windows Server on Azure.
• Watch our latest webinar to learn more about how you can secure your IT foundation to be AI-ready.
• Protect beyond Extended Security Updates by enhancing security with Microsoft Defender for Cloud—a comprehensive and unified cloud-native security solution to protect hybrid and multicloud environments from code to cloud.   

The post Secure Windows Server 2012/R2 workloads with options from Azure appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

As we introduce many innovations for Windows Server, support for older versions along with security updates released while the version is supported will come to an end. Windows Server 2012, and 2012 R2 End of Extended support is approaching per the Lifecycle Policy: Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 Extended Support will end on October 10, 2023.

Customers are upgrading to the latest release of Windows Server and applying the latest innovation to modernize their IT environment. However, we understand that Windows Server run many business-critical applications and it may take more time for customers to modernize. We are glad to share that we have great options and benefits for our customers to protect their workloads while they transform with Azure and the latest release of Windows Server.

Today, we are announcing Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 Extended Security Updates.

Customers can migrate their workloads to Azure and get free Extended Security Updates for three more years, only in Azure. Customers running these releases of Windows Server on-premises will have the option to purchase Extended Security Updates.

Furthermore, we are also announcing, one additional year of extended security update for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 only on Azure.

To get started with planning Windows Server 2012 and 2012 end of support, please read our end-of-support blog for additional guidance, refer to Extended Security Updates Frequently Asked Questions, and learn about the latest in Azure Migration and Modernization Program.

The post Plan your Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 End of Support appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

To address this challenge, six years ago Paul Smith began defining a new approach to building its infrastructure and providing IT services to the business, while reducing server and data center cost. It wanted to provide global services from a central location, simplify data center administration, and automate manual tasks, in particular the provision of test and development environments. Paul Smith also needed to find less expensive and time-consuming ways to accommodate fluctuating demands in compute and storage requirements than simply adding more servers. To reduce unnecessary ‘midstream’ expenditures, the company wanted a better understanding of usage and improved capacity planning.

To achieve these goals, Paul Smith aligned itself with Microsoft. Beginning in 2008 with the Windows Server 2008 operating system, Paul Smith has worked with Microsoft to take advantage of the latest virtualization, cloud computing, and data center management solutions.  Over time Paul Smith upgraded to Windows Server 2012 to build private clouds and deployed Microsoft System Center 2012 data center management tools to manage them. The company used these technologies to build dynamic data center and cloud infrastructures with more flexible workloads and automated processes.  And with Windows Server 2012, Paul Smith worked with Microsoft partner, risual to introduce global DR capabilities. The teams upgraded the hypervisors at Tier 2 sites to Windows Server 2012 and used Hyper-V Replica to replicate business-critical virtual machines back to its Tier 1 data centers.

Now, with the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system and System Center 2012 R2, Paul Smith is introducing Hybrid cloud computing.  With a hybrid cloud solution from Microsoft, IT staffers can easily move existing applications between its on-premises environment and Windows Azure without having to change networking, security policies, or operational processes.

Also, Paul Smith is using StorSimple, a cloud-integrated storage solution from Microsoft that works with Windows environments, to create a hybrid cloud storage solution that uses the Windows Azure environment. Paul Smith generates a lot of design data in its London office, and it is using StorSimple to protect and copy that data to Windows Azure storage. The company is also using StorSimple to manage the amount of data that resides in its data centers.

Thanks to virtualization and increased server density, Paul Smith reduced hardware acquisition and maintenance costs by £840,000 (US$1.4 million), according to figures compiled for the first year it deployed Windows Server 2012.   And by embracing the hybrid cloud computing model, the company expects ongoing infrastructure savings. Purchasing compute, storage, and networking resources in the cloud is less expensive than building them on-premises, especially when the resources are required on an intermittent basis.

You can read the full case study here.

The post Paul Smith sets the trend in business agility with a new hybrid cloud solution appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

The post Updated Volume License Media Available Today for Windows Server 2012 R2 Update appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

• Online data deduplication on actively running VMs reduces storage capacity requirements by up to 90% on persistent desktops.
• Tiered storage spaces manage your tiers of storage (fast SSDs vs. slower HDDs) intelligently so that the most frequently accessed data blocks are automatically moved onto faster-tier drives. Likewise, older or seldom-accessed files are moved onto the cheaper and slower SAS drives.
• The Microsoft Remote Desktop App provides easy access to a variety devices and platforms including Windows, Windows RT, iOS, Mac OS X and Android. This is good news for your end users and your mobility/BYOD strategy!
• Your user experience is also enhanced due to improvements on several fronts including RemoteFX, DirectX 11.1 support, RemoteApp, quick reconnect, session shadowing, dynamic monitor and resolution changes.

If your VDI solutions run on Dell servers or if you are looking at deploying new VDI infrastructure, we are excited to let you know about the work we have been doing in partnership with Dell around VDI. Dell recently updated their Desktop Virtualization Solution (DVS) for Windows Server to support Windows Server 2012 R2, and DVS now delivers all of the benefits mentioned above. Dell is also delivering additional enhancements into Dell DVS for Windows Server so it will also support:

• Windows 8.1 with touch screen devices and new Intel Haswell processors
• Unified Communication with Lync 2013, via an endpoint plug-in that enables P2P audio and video. (Dell Wyse has certified selected Windows thin clients to this effect, such as the D90 and Z90.)
• Virtualized shared graphics on NVidia GRID K1/K2 and AMD FirePro cards using Microsoft RemoteFX technology
• Affordable persistent desktops
• Highly-secure and dual/quad core Dell Wyse thin clients, for a true end-to-end capability, even when using high-end server graphics cards or running UC on Lync 2013
• Optional Dell vWorkspace software, also supporting Windows Server 2012 R2, that brings scalability to tens of thousands of seats, advanced VM provisioning, IOPS efficiency to reduce storage requirement and improve performance, diagnostics and monitoring, flexible resource assignments, support for multi-tenancy and more.
• Availability in more than 30 countries

Depending on where you stand in the VDI deployment cycle in your organization, Dell DVS for Windows Server is already supported today on multiple Dell PowerEdge server platforms:

• The T110 for a pilot/POC up to 10 seats
• The VRTX for implementation in a remote or branch office of up to about 500 users
• The R720 for a traditional enterprise-like, flexible and scalable implementation to several thousand seats. It supports flexible deployments such as application virtualization, RDSH, pooled and persistent VMs.

This week, Microsoft and Dell will present a technology showcase at Dell World in Austin (TX), USA. If you happen to be at the show, you will be able to see for yourself how well Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 integrate into Dell DVS. We will show:

• The single management console of Windows Server 2012 installed on a Dell PowerEdge VRTX, demonstrating how easy it can be for an IT administrator to manage VDI workloads based on Hyper-V in a remote or branch office environment
• How users can chat, talk, share, meet, transfer files and conduct video conferencing within virtualized desktops set up for unified communication
• That you can watch HD multimedia and 3D graphics files on multiple virtual desktops sharing a graphic card installed remotely in a server
• How affordable it is to run persistent desktops with DVS and Windows Server 2012 R2

We are excited about the work that we are doing with Dell around VDI and hope you have a chance to come visit our joint VDI showcase in Austin. We will be located in the middle of the Dell booth in show expo hall. Also, we will show a VDI demo as part of the Microsoft Cloud OS breakout session at noon on Thursday (December 12^th ) in room 9AB. Finally, we will show a longer VDI demo in the show expo theater (next to the Microsoft booth) at 10am on Friday (December 13^th ) morning. We are looking forward to seeing you there.

The post Microsoft and Dell’s Continued Collaboration on VDI Solutions on Display at Dell World appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

The Cloud OS vision combines Microsoft knowledge and experiences with today’s trends and technology innovations to deliver a modern platform of products and services that helps organizations transform their current server environment into a highly elastic, scalable, and reliable cloud infrastructure. Utilizing the software that powers the Cloud OS vision, organizations can quickly and flexibly build and manage modern applications across platforms, locations, and devices, unlock insights from volumes of existing and new data, and support end-user productivity wherever and on whatever device they choose.

At the heart of Cloud OS is Windows Server 2012 R2. Delivering on the promise of a modern datacenter, modern applications, and people-centric IT, Windows Server 2012 R2 provides a best-in-class server experience that cost-effectively cloud-optimizes your business. When you optimize your business for the cloud with Windows Server 2012 R2, you take advantage of your existing skillsets and technology investments. You also gain all the Microsoft experience behind building and operating private and public clouds – right in the box. Delivered as an enterprise-class, the simple and cost-effective server and cloud platform Windows Server 2012 R2 delivers significant value around seven key capabilities:

Server virtualization. Windows Server Hyper-V offers a scalable and feature-rich virtualization platform that helps organizations of all sizes realize considerable cost savings and operational efficiencies. With Windows Server 2012 R2, server virtualization with Hyper-V pulls ahead of the competition by offering industry-leading size and scale that makes it the platform of choice for running your mission critical workloads. Using Windows Server 2012 R2, you can take advantage of new hardware technology, while still utilizing the servers you already have. This functionality enables you to virtualize today and be ready for the future tomorrow.

Whether you are looking to expand virtual machine mobility, increase virtual machine availability, handle multi-tenant environments, gain bigger scale, or gain more flexibility, Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V gives you the platform and tools you need to increase business agility with confidence. Plus, you can also benefit from workload portability as you extend your on-premises datacenter into a service provider cloud or Windows Azure.

Storage. With the increase in new applications, the explosion of data, and growing end-user expectations for continuous services, there has come a significant increase in storage demands. Windows Server 2012 R2 offers a wide variety of storage features and capabilities to address the storage challenges faced by organizations. Whether you intend to use cost-effective, industry-standard hardware for the bulk of your workloads or Storage Area Networks for the most demanding ones, Windows Server 2012 R2 provides you with a rich set of features that can help you maximize the returns from all of your storage investments.

Microsoft designed Windows Server 2012 R2 with a strong focus on storage capabilities, including improvements in the provisioning, accessing, and managing of storage and the transfer of data across the network that resides on that storage. The end result is a storage solution that delivers the efficiency, performance, resiliency, availability, and versatility you need at every level.

Networking. New technologies, such as private- and public-cloud computing, mobile workforces, and widely dispersed assets have transformed the business landscape and altered how we manage networking and network assets. Still, the main goal remains the same: keep all networking components connected to ensure smooth data transmission and reliable access by users and customers to the services they need when they need them.

Windows Server 2012 R2 makes it as straightforward to manage an entire network as a single server, giving you the reliability and scalability of multiple servers at a lower cost. Automatic rerouting around storage, server, and network failures enables file services to remain online with minimal noticeable downtime. In addition, Windows Server 2012 R2 provides the foundation for software-defined networking, out-of-the box, enabling seamless connectivity across public, private, and hybrid cloud implementations.

Whatever your organization’s needs, from administering network assets to managing an extensive private and public cloud network infrastructure, Windows Server 2012 R2 offers you solutions to today’s changing business landscape. These capabilities help reduce networking complexity while lowering costs, simplifying management tasks, and delivering services reliably and efficiently. With Windows Server 2012 R2 you can automate and consolidate networking processes and resources, more easily connect private clouds with public cloud services, and more easily connect users to IT resources and services across physical boundaries.

Server management and automation. Datacenter infrastructure has become more and more complex. Multiple industry standards are confusing hardware vendors. Customers are looking for guidance on how to best automate their datacenter while adopting a standards-based management approach supporting their multi-vendor investments. Windows Server 2012 R2 enables IT professionals to offer an integrated platform to automate and manage the increasing datacenter ecosystem. Features within Windows Server 2012 R2 enable you to manage many servers and the devices connecting them, whether they are physical or virtual, on-premises or in the cloud.

Web and application platform. Chances are your organization already uses or is planning to use a combination of on-premises and off-premises IT resources and tools for building a hybrid environment. To protect your existing investment in on-premises applications as you begin to migrate to the cloud, you need a scalable application and web platform that enables you to manage your applications and websites in a unified way.

Windows Server 2012 R2 builds on the tradition of the Windows Server family as a proven application platform, with thousands of applications already built and deployed and a community of millions of knowledgeable and skilled developers already in place. The capabilities included in Windows Server 2012 R2 offer your organization even greater application flexibility, helping you build and deploy applications either on-premises, in the cloud, or both at once, with hybrid solutions that can work in both environments.

As your organization plans for and moves to a hybrid or cloud-based environment, Windows Server 2012 R2 provides the tools you need to build, provision, and manage multi-tenant environments while still supporting your large enterprise or the many customers hosted within your service provider infrastructure.

Access and information protection. Information exists almost everywhere in your organization: on servers, laptops, desktops, removable devices, and in emails. Users need to be able to access this information from anywhere, share it where appropriate, and achieve maximum productivity with the assets they have. To further complicate matters, the move to cloud computing necessitates being able to secure enterprise applications that no longer live in your datacenter.

Microsoft assists you in supporting consumerization of IT and in retaining effective management, security, and compliance capabilities. The enterprise tools and technologies that Microsoft provides can help with key enterprise tasks such as identifying non-corporate devices, delivering applications and data to those devices with the best possible user experience, and establishing and enforcing policies on devices based on the end user’s role within the organization. Microsoft enterprise tools and technologies can help IT staff to maintain a high level of security across all device types, whether the devices are corporate or personal assets, and establish security measures that protect their organization’s systems, data, and network.

To address these information needs and challenges, organizations have to make fundamental shifts in how they approach identity and security. Windows Server 2012 R2 helps you accommodate these changes through exciting new remote access options, significant improvements to Active Directory and Active Directory Federation Services, and the introduction of policy-based information access and audits with Dynamic Access Control, and new scenarios to help customers provide access to corporate resources for users from their own devices. With these new capabilities, you can better manage and protect data access, simplify deployment and management of your identity infrastructure, and provide more secure access to data from virtually anywhere across both on-premises well managed devices and new consumer orientated form factors.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Most IT departments currently face the challenge of enabling worker productivity on a growing number of mobile devices in the workplace. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) helps you accommodate these new devices by enabling them to access a centralized instance of the Windows desktop in the datacenter. By virtualizing these desktop resources, you can alleviate device compatibility and security issues while still delivering a consistent, familiar experience that enhances end-user productivity. With Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft makes it easier and more cost-effective to deploy and deliver virtual desktop resources across workers’ devices.

VDI technologies in Windows Server 2012 R2 offer easy access to a rich, full-fidelity Windows environment running in the datacenter, from virtually any device. Through Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Microsoft offers three flexible VDI deployment options in a single solution: Pooled Desktops, Personal Desktops, and Remote Desktop Sessions (formerly Terminal Services). With Windows Server 2012 R2, you get a complete VDI toolset for delivering flexible access to data and applications from virtually anywhere on popular devices, while also helping to maintain security and compliance.

To compete in the global economy and keep up with the pace of innovation, IT organizations must improve their agility, their efficiency, and their ability to better manage costs while enabling their business and end users to stay continuously productive.

Microsoft has gained expertise from years of building and operating some of the largest cloud applications in the world. We’ve combined this expertise with our experiences in delivering market-leading enterprise operating systems, platforms, and applications to develop a platform for infrastructure, applications, and data: the Cloud OS.

The Microsoft Cloud OS delivers a modern platform of products and services that helps enterprise IT teams transform their current environment to a highly elastic, scalable, and reliable infrastructure. With Cloud OS, organizations can quickly and flexibly build and manage modern applications across platforms, locations, and devices, unlock insights from volumes of existing and new data, and support user productivity wherever and on whatever device they choose. Microsoft uniquely delivers the Cloud OS as a consistent and comprehensive set of capabilities that span on-premises, service provider, and Windows Azure datacenters, enabling enterprises to improve scale, elasticity, and availability of IT services.

At the heart of Cloud OS is Windows Server 2012 R2, which delivers upon the promises of a modern datacenter, modern applications, and people-centric IT. Whether you are an enterprise building out your own private cloud environment or a service provider offering large-scale cloud services, Windows Server 2012 R2 offers an enterprise-class, simple and cost-effective solution that’s application-focused and user centric. With Windows Server 2012 R2, you can utilize the capacity of your datacenter, deliver best-in-class performance for your Microsoft workloads, and receive affordable, multi-node business continuity scenarios with high service uptime and at-scale disaster recovery.

We hope that you are as excited as we are to get started today!

• Download an evaluation of System Center 2012 R2
• Download an evaluation of Windows Server 2012 R2
• Sign up for a free trial of Windows Intune

The post Announcing the General Availability of Windows Server 2012 R2: The Heart of Cloud OS appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

For those of you who are developers, be sure to also grab a copy of Visual Studio 2013.  The release candidate is still currently available. Keep in mind general availability is still October 18, 2013 for the wave we announced last month.

And for those of you interested in downloading some of the other products and trying them, here are some resources to help you:

• System Center 2021 R2 Preview download

• SQL Server 2014 Community Technology Preview 1 (CTP1) download

As always, follow us on Twitter via @MSCloud!  And if you would like to follow Brad Anderson, do that via @InTheCloudMSFT !

The post Windows Server 2012 RTM Now Available for MSDN and TechNet Subscribers appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Join the celebration and tell us what you think! Like us on Facebook and add your birthday wishes to our page. 

And for those of you interested in downloading some of the other products and trying them, here are some resources to help you:

• Try Windows Server 2012 R2 on Windows Azure today!
• Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview download
• System Center 2012 R2 Preview download
• SQL Server 2014 Community Technology Preview 1 (CTP1) download
• Windows 8.1 Enterprise Preview download

The post Happy Birthday Windows Server 2012 – What Superhero Is it? appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Over the last few months, we have also spoken in detail about this with thousands of customers at MMS, Interop, TechEd North America and TechEd Europe . Over the course of these conversations, we realized a few common themes emerging:

• Confusion around means of realizing SDN that overshadow the benefits offered
• Questions around opportunities for server and networking admins to enhance their careers
• Non-traditional players like Microsoft will have significant roles to play

We felt this blog would be a good platform to discuss these in more detail since we are sure a lot of you have the same questions. Let’s double-click in.

Means of realizing Software Defined Networking:

SDN does not mean that you rip and replace your existing network devices and replace them with new “SDN aware devices”. In most cases, the cheapest and most flexible network infrastructure is the one you already own. If your network scales-up to meet your needs with a manageable OPEX, networking as you know it will continue to exist and you shouldn’t worry about jumping on the bandwagon just because everyone is talking about SDN.

With that said, networking is widely acknowledged to be the final piece of the puzzle requiring simplification in order to meet the agility and flexibility demands of modern datacenters. Centralized provisioning, management and monitoring of compute and storage is very common today.  Sadly, networking often remains stuck in the past – inflexible, ‘hard wired’ and complex.  This is the source of many of today’s most troublesome and difficult problems responsible for service downtimes and application slowdowns.  These are problems experienced by many large customers not just those operating at cloud scale running tens of thousands of hosts.  The complexity of the problems arising is beyond what can be manually fixed and/or monitored.

These real-world problems drove the need for a software defined solution to manage networking. The two approaches taken in large datacenters to do this are:

• Isolated virtual networks/network overlays.  These sit on top of the physical network and are abstracted from the underlying networking hardware. Since the virtual networks are software defined, it allows admins to create and manage them from a centralized location depending on the needs of the application, templatize it and replicate it across their datacenters. As a result, management overhead is greatly reduced and a lot of mundane, error prone tasks are automated as a part of virtual network definition. A couple of important points to note here are that customers leverage existing hardware investments and this approach does not require any change to the way applications are written. Microsoft’s Hyper-V Network Virtualization and VMware’s Nicira are solutions that fall within this category.
• Centralized controllers.  These control the physical network infrastructure directly from a centralized location.  This is often paired with an API for programming the network and gives the ability for software to program the network on the fly. This lets software, potentially even applications, dynamically configure the networks depending on current needs. This requires switches and routers to expose these functionalities (Southbound APIs) and a standardized interface for applications to consume them (Northbound APIs).  OpenFlow and Cisco One Platform kit are examples of this approach.   Since software directly configures the network, it needs to be rewritten to make use of this functionality. Custom applications that run within large datacenters, network diagnostic tools, apps that requires high fidelity connections, etc. are some examples where having such fine grained control will be helpful.

There are other variations of SDN solutions that exist today. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on just these two.

As you see in both above mentioned cases, the end goal is the same – simplifying networking using the power of software. In one solution the application is aware of the underlying network and controls it using different protocols. In the other solution, the network is abstracted depending on application needs and the complexity is hidden.  Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1 support and work with both these approaches. As highlighted in previous blog posts, Network Virtualization is built into Windows Server 2012 and customers can use System Center 2012 SP1 to create and manage virtual networks. With the Hyper-V Virtual Switch extensibility, partners like NEC have added functionality to the virtual switch to make it behave like an OpenFlow controller. Additionally applications like Lync are looking at ways to configure the network on the fly to ensure consistent call and video quality.  

Opportunities for Server and Networking admins

A common discussion that comes up in this new world of Software Define Networking is the opportunity it creates for Server and Network Admins to enhance their careers.  Traditionally both these groups have had well defined boundaries that have worked well for the most part – after all, network admins are the backbones of the modern internet that we all take for granted today.

Having said that, there is definitely room for improvement. When applications encounter performance issues, the blame is usually passed around before the actual issue is identified.  Identifying and fixing issues are often considered an ‘art’ with hundreds of manual steps.

We don’t have a crystal ball to show us if these pain points will go away with SDN. But all signs are positive and bear good news for the careers of datacenter infrastructure folks and IT organizations in general:

• Network Admins grow into network architects – SDN helps remove the ‘work’ from the job of network admins. They spend more time designing/architecting the network to meet the needs of the application as opposed to working on fixing low-value issues. This could include helping their organizations decide the right approach to SDN from the choices that we covered earlier. Additionally, since automation is core to SDN, this helps network admins build a new muscle which spans beyond areas that they have traditionally worked on. In the new SDN world, network admins can expect to frequently use tools such as Windows PowerShell, System Center Orchestrator, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, etc. which were once considered exclusive to Server Admins.
• Server Admins will have a better understanding of how the underlying networking fabric is designed. Newer tools will be available that will not only help better diagnose and isolate network issues, but also be able to automatically fix them in many cases. Finally, they will have the flexibility to define abstractions that meets their business needs irrespective of how the underlying physical infrastructure is designed.

Why is Microsoft talking about SDN?

The last topic we wanted to talk about here is the role of companies like Microsoft in the transformation the networking industry is going through. In fact, in the keynote panel at Interop a back in May we had an unlikely combination of executives from Microsoft, VMware (both software companies) and Broadcom (chipset manufacturer) talk about SDN. These aren’t traditional networking players, so why are they talking about SDN?

In addition to the obvious term “software” in SDN, and Microsoft being a software company, there is another important trend that should be noticed. As more workloads are virtualized, the virtual switch is becoming the policy edge in networking as opposed to the physical switch. Networking teams work as much with the virtual switch in a heavily virtualized datacenter as they would do with the physical switch. With customers and partners building rich extensions and adding more functionality to the virtual switch, this trend is only going to improve. These non-traditional players will continue playing a significant role in years to come.

Additionally, Microsoft operates some of the largest datacenters in the world where we have faced a considerable number of challenges that many of you see in your datacenters. We onboard over 1000 new customers in Azure datacenters and make tens of thousands of networking changes every single day. Given the paranoia that exists around having every process automated, we have a unique opportunity to bring some of our learnings back into the product that runs both in our datacenters and our customer’s datacenters.

SDN is a paradigm that is evolving. This is not a change that will happen overnight. This is also not an ‘all-in’ choice that IT organizations has to take today that locks them in with a specific vendor or a protocol. In fact if we were to write a post about what SDN is not, this will be among the first few points that we will list.  There are incumbent players like Cisco and Juniper who are investing heavily in SDN. There are non-traditional players like Microsoft who are taking a fresh look at networking, along with a lot of startups innovating in this space as well.  Finally, there are industry consortiums like Open Daylight where some of the players we mentioned above are actively working on defining the direction of SDN.

Just as we discussed in the previous post, with Windows Server 2012, System Center 2012 SP1 and with the additional work we have delivered, side by side with our partners, you have the opportunity to explore the key benefits of SDN for yourselves. Try it out and let us know what you think:

• Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview download
• System Center 2012 R2 Preview download

The post Software Defined Networking (SDN): Double-Clicking into our Point of View appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

My name is Adam Hall and I look after one of the solution areas within People-centric IT that we call “Access & Information Protection”. In this post I will provide more information about what this actually is and the focus areas we have around Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and the Consumerization of IT.

People-centric IT is about helping organizations empower their users to work on the devices they choose without compromising their information integrity or compliance. The challenge this presents to customers is that as soon as their user works on a device that they do not manage or even have any knowledge of, it becomes very difficult to retain control of sensitive corporate information, and to be able to respond to situations such as the device being sold, lost or stolen.

With our Access & Information Protection solutions, we deliver capabilities that help our customers solve this very challenging problem in the following ways:

Simple registration and enrollment for users adopting Bring Your Own Device programs (BYOD).

Users can register their device using Workplace Join which creates a new device object in Active Directory and installs a certificate on the device, allowing IT to take into account the users device authentication as part of conditional access policies. Users can also opt-in to the Windows Intune management service for consistent access to applications (including internal LOB apps and links to public app stores), management of their own devices and to gain access to their data.

Users can work from the device of their choice to access corporate resources regardless of location.

New in Windows Server 2012 R2 are the Web Application Proxy and Work Folders. The Web Application Proxy provides the ability to publish access to internal resources and perform Multi-Factor Authentication at the edge. Work Folders is a new file sync solution that allows users to sync their files from a corporate file server to all their devices both internally and externally.

IT can better protect corporate information and mitigate risk by being able to manage a single identity for each user across both on-premises and cloud-based applications.

As users blend their work and personal lives, and organizations adopt a mixture of traditional on-premises and cloud based solutions, IT needs a way to consistently manage the user’s identity and provide users with a single sign-on to all their resources.  Microsoft helps our customers by providing users with a common identity across on-premises or cloud-based services leveraging existing Windows Server Active Directory investments and then connecting to Windows Azure Active Directory.  In Windows Server 2012 R2, we have significantly enhanced Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to be easier to deploy and configure, tightly integrated with the Web Application Proxy for simple publishing and federating between Active Directory and Azure AD.

IT can access managed mobile devices to remove corporate data and applications in the event that the device is lost, stolen, or retired from use.

Whether a device is lost, stolen or simply being repurposed, there will be times when IT needs to ensure that the corporate information stored on the device is no longer accessible. With Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center configuration Manager 2012 R2 and Windows Intune, companies have the ability to selectively wipe corporate information while leaving personal data intact.

IT can set policy-based access control for compliance and data protection.

With users working on their own devices, the accessing of corporate resources and storage of information on these devices presents some challenges for ensuring compliance needs are met and information remaining secure.  Windows Server 2012 R2, through the Web Application Proxy, ADFS and Work Folders provides compelling and powerful solutions to make it easy for our customers to make resources available but also remain in control of information.  As we showed in the TechEd Europe keynote in Madrid this week, Work Folders is integrated with Dynamic Access Control, providing the ability to automatically classify information based on content, and perform tasks such as protecting with Rights Management Services, even for data that is created and stored on clients!

To see People-centric IT, including System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager, Windows Intune, and Windows Server 2012 R2 in action, you can watch a complete presentation and end-to-end demonstration from the TechEd North America Foundational Session. You can also learn more about People-centric IT by downloading the People-centric IT Preview Guide.

Be sure to download System Center 2012 R2 Preview Configuration Manager and Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview today!

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