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Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 3/7/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 3/7/2016!

A type of malware that locks computer files and demands a fee for their release has successfully targeted Apple computers. A suspected Bush family hacker is being extradited to the US. Cisco announced its Cloud Native Platform is coming next month. The crowd at Levi Stadium for the Super Bowl set a single-day Wi-Fi record. Flash storage hype is becoming reality, cyber-crooks now prefer ransomware to botnets, and more top news from this week! 

Tech News Recap

[On-Demand Webinar] Microsoft Office 365: Expectations vs. Reality

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

Miscellaneous IT, Tech New Recap

Tech News Recap for the Week of 2/29/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 2/29/2016!

Interesting statistics were released in the 2016 State of IT report. UC Berkeley made its 3rd data breach disclosure in the past 15 months. The EU has approved the Dell buyout of EMC. Cisco has aquired cloud management startup CliQr for $260 million to bolster its software defined networking strategy. At the RSA conference, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger discussed executive changes at VMware, implications of the Dell-EMC merger, and his focus around security. Microsoft continues to support Apple against the FBI, The US Department of Defense is searching for hackers to find and fix security vulnerabilities in its system, and more top news from this week! 

Tech News Recap

[Whitepaper: 6 Tips to Ensure a Successful Wireless Project]

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

Azure, Azure Site Recovery, Disaster Recover, Microsoft, Storage and Information Management

Azure Site Recovery: 4 Things You Need to Know

Disaster recovery has traditionally been a complex and expensive proposition for many organizations. Many have chosen to rely on backups of data as the method of disaster recovery. This approach is cost effective, however, it can result in extended downtime during a disaster while new servers are provisioned (referred to as Recovery Time Objective or RTO) and potentially large data loss of information created from the time of the backup the time of the failure (referred to as Recovery Point Objective). In the worst case scenario, these backups are not viable at all and there is a total loss. For those who have looked into more advanced disaster recovery models, the complexity and costs of such a system quickly add up. Azure Site Recovery helps bring disaster recovery to all companies in four key ways.

 

Azure Site Recovery makes disaster recovery easy by delivering it as a cloud hosted service

The Azure Site Recovery lives within the Microsoft cloud and is controlled and configured through the Azure Management Portal. There is no requirement to patch or maintain servers; it’s disaster recovery orchestration as a service. Using Site Recovery does not require that you use Azure as the destination of replication. It can protect your workloads between 2 company-owned sites. For example, if you have a branch office and a home office that both run VMware or Hyper-V, you can use Azure Site Recovery to replicate, protect and fail over workloads between your existing sites. It also has the optional function of being able to replicate data directly to Azure which can be used to avoid the expense and complexity of building and maintaining a disaster recovery site. 

 

Azure Site Recovery is capable of handling almost any source workload and platform

Azure Site Recovery offers an impressive list of platforms and applications it can protect. Azure site recovery can protect any workload running on VMware Virtual Machines on vSphere or ESXi, Hyper-V VMs with or without System Center Virtual Machine Manager and, yes; even physical workloads can be replicated and failed over to Azure. Microsoft has worked internally with its application teams to make sure Azure Site Recovery works with many of the most popular Microsoft solutions including Active Directory, DNS, Web apps (IIS, SQL), SCOM, SharePoint, Exchange (non-DAG), Remote Desktop/VDI, Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM, and Windows File Server. They have also independently tested protecting SAP, Linux (OS and Apps) and Oracle workloads.

 

Azure Site Recovery has predictable and affordable pricing

Unlike traditional disaster recovery products that require building and maintaining a warm or hot DR site, Site Recovery allows you to replicate VMs to Azure. Azure Site Recovery offers a simple pricing model that makes it easy to estimate costs. For virtual machines protected between company-owned sites, it is a flat $16/month per protected virtual machines. If you are protecting your workloads to Azure then it is $54/month per protected server. In addition, the first 31 days of protection for any server is free. This allows you to try out and test Azure site recovery before you have to pay for it. It is also a way for you to use Azure Site Recovery to migrate your workloads to Azure for free.

 

Azure Site Recovery is secure and reliable

Azure Site Recovery continuously monitors the replication and health of the protected workloads from Azure. In the event of an inability to replicate data, you can configure alerts to email you a notification. Protecting the privacy of your data is a top priority in Site Recovery. All communication between your on premises environment and Azure is sent over SSL encrypted channels. All of your data is encrypted both when in transit and at rest in Azure. Performing failover testing with Azure Site Recovery allows you to do a test failover without impacting your production workloads.

 

For these reasons, companies should be considering adding Azure Site Recovery to their business continuity and disaster recovery toolbox.

 

[If you’re looking for more Microsoft resources, download our recent webinar around strategies for migrating to Office 365]

 

By Justin Gallagher, Enterprise Consultant

Miscellaneous IT, Tech News Recap

Tech News Recap for the Week of 2/22/2016

Were you busy last week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 2/22/2016!

The Dell-EMC merger gets FTC approval. Microsoft has opened the Azure Container Service floodgates. An investigation undertaken by a group of security firms found that those who participated in the 2014 Sony attack had been active since 2009. Over 4,000 branches and 13,000 ATMS were targeted though a large phishing campaign in India. Microsoft fixed 36 flaws in IE, Edge, Office, Windows and .Net framework. AT&T credits SDN in reviving unlimited data plans, Micro-segmentation is on the rise for cloud security, enterprises are moving towards hybrid cloud models and more top news from this week! Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter!

Tech News Recap

  • Dell-EMC Merger Gets FTC Approval, Remains On Track To Close
  • Microsoft Expands Azure Container Service Preview
  • Novetta finds Sony hackers active since 2009, North Korea involvement not endorsed
  • Malware targets India’s largest private bank
  • Cloud, Enterprise IT Spending Buoy U.S. in Face of Worldwide Slide
  • Micro-Segmentation on the Rise for Cloud Security
  • Unlimited Data’s resurgence due to SDN, says AT&T
  • DOD CIO weighs giving mil branches more leeway on enterprise services
  • Banks willing to move data storage to public cloud: Microsoft
  • Survey finds enterprises moving toward hybrid cloud model
  • Exchange Server 2016: Improved Features and Functionality
  • Microsoft gears up to roll out HoloLens beta kids, Actiongram mixed-reality videos
  • Hospital IT team badly needs a database doctor
  • Microsoft fixes 36 flaws in IE, Edge, Office, Windows, .NET Framework
  • Business leaders struggle with cloud, big data, and IoT security
  • Computer Science Is Now A High School Graduation Requirement In Chicago’s Public School District

 

[On-Demand Webinar] VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI: When to Use Each, When to Use Both

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

Miscellaneous IT, Tech New Recap

Tech News Recap for the Week of 2/15/2016

Were you busy last week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 2/8/2016!

Verizon notified its cloud customers that it will be shutting down its public cloud offering and is giving those customers two months to move their data or lose it forever. This week’s hacking news included a Los Angeles hospital being struck by ransomware leaving it unable to access patient records (good example of why organizations need to backup data), a hacker aligned with Anonymous releasing sensitive information from a Turkish national police database, and the emergence of a new strain of ransomware nicknamed “Locky.” Apple CEO Tim Cook has written an open letter to customers warning them of a dangerous request from the FBI to effectively create a backdoor into iPhones in an attempt to crack into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Most enterprises are planning to boost cloud use this year, the superman memory crystal could hold the future of data storage, containers are making their mark in the enterprise, and more top news from this week!

Tech News Recap

 

[On Demand Webinar] Microsoft Office 365: Expectations vs. Reality. Strategies for Migrating & Supporting Mobile Workforces.

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

Miscellaneous IT, Tech News, Tech News Recap

Tech News Recap for the Week of 2/8/2016

Were you busy last week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 2/8/2016!

Oracle posted a Java patch for a bug that could compromise Windows machines. VMware announced a bunch of licensing and product changes including end-of-life, pricing, and new feature information. The U.S. Government wants to increase IT spending 1.3% in its proposed budget. The Microsoft Azure IoT Hub connects and manages Internet of Things devices. Google made improvements to gmail’s security, a hacking group is targeting ATMs to dupe banks, and a man loaded malware in his ‘My Documents’ folder to turn the tables on scammers. To get real-time updates on all of the most important tech news, follow GreenPages on Twitter!

Tech News Recap

Microsoft Office 365: Expectations vs. Reality. Strategies for Migrating & Supporting Mobile Workforces [Download on-demand webinar]

 

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 2/1/2016

Were you busy last week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 2/1/2016!

Tech News Recap

Data was leaked as the United States’ largest police union servers were hacked. Microsoft thinks its Project Natick submarine datacenters could be the answer to cleaner cloud services in the future. Cisco spends $1.4 billion on Jasper’s Internet of Things platform. Barracuda has released its New Essentials for Microsoft Office 365 offering. The company SugarCreek is using both VMware NSX and Cisco ACI in its datacenter (we held a webinar on this topic a few months back).

[On-demand Webinar] VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI: When to Use Each, When to Use Both.

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

 

Citrix, End-User Computing

Citrix Summit 2016 Pt 3: HDX RealTime Optimization Pack 2.0

The final part of my series on the Citrix 2016 Partner Summit summarizes the notes Citrix provided around HDX RealTime Optimization Pack 2.0. Part 1 recapped news around XenApp and XenDesktop and part 2 covered XenMobile and PVS 7.7. As always, please reach out if you’re looking for any more information.

 

HDX RealTime Optimization Pack 2.0

  • Native Skype for Business 2015 UI – Provides the full Skype for Business UI experience and eliminates the limitations of a hybrid UI. Examples of features that were not supported in HDX
  • RealTime Optimization Pack 1.8 but are now available through the native Skype for Business UI include:
  • Call Delegation – Enables setting up a Skype for Business meeting on behalf of someone else. For example, an administrative assistant setting up meetings for a manager.
  • Voicemail access, playback, and delete – Ability to access your voicemail, play it, and delete from Skype for Business.
  • Response groups – Enables the response group feature, which routes incoming calls to groups of people called response group agents.
  • Team call groups – Set up a team of people who can answer your calls. You add and remove members and specify when they can answer calls for you. Members phones ring and once someone answers the call, the other phones stop ringing.
  • Authentication and SIP signaling  handled exclusively by the Skype for Business client – This release introduces architectural simplifications that improve robustness and user experience (for example, initialization time).

Fallback mode controlled by the following registry setting:

  • Warning: Editing the registry incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Citrix cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk. Be sure to back up the registry before you edit it.
  • Key: HKLMSoftwareCitrixHDXRTConnector or HKCUSoftwareCitrixHDXRTConnector
  • Value: DWORD DisableFallback
  • If the value is present and has a nonzero value under either registgry key, disable fallback mode; otherwise, enable fallback mode.
  • Web proxy support – Enables external access using a web proxy with limitations. For more information, see Limitations in 2.0.
  • Click-to-Run – Devices where Microsoft Office applications have been installed using Click-to-Run support HDX RealTime Optimization Pack.
  • Pairing Status Indicator – Icon that displays these status states:
    • Connecting – MediaEngine.Net is trying to establish a RealTime Connector connection.
    • Connected – There is a RealTime Connector connection over a virtual channel and the version of remote RealTime Media Engine matches the version of mediaEngine.Net exactly.
    • Fallback – There is a RealTime Connector connection to a local RealTime Media Engine process.
    • Disconnected – A registry setting (policy) prevented MediaEngine.Net from running RealTime Media Engine locally.
    • Version mismatch – Same as Connected but the version match is not exact (different patch or build numbers)
  • Improved audio-video quality – Improvements to the RealTime Media Engine:
    • Improved resilience to packet loss
    • Improved echo cancelation
  • Skype server settings – HDX RealTime Optimization Pack obeys the Skype for Business Server settings that control whether or not the endpoint can do audio and/or video calling.
  • Active speaker identification – Displays a photo of the current speaker.
  • Call and video call buttons added to the contact card – Enables calls and video calls to be started with a click of a button in the contact card.
  • Automatically join meeting audio controls – You can use Settings to specify how you want to join a meeting:
    • Use Skype for Business (full audio and video experience)
    • Use a phone number
    • Don’t join audio

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.

 

By Peter Crepeau, Solutions Architect

Miscellaneous IT, Tech New Recap

Tech News Recap for the Week of 1/25/2016

Were you busy last week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 1/25/2016!

Walmart says its newly released OneOps tool will trump cloud lock-in. Microsoft plans to make Cortana smarter with the ability to scan emails and set alerts for commitments you may forget. EMC’s Joe Tucci says the $67B Dell deal will get done. Apple’s Safari browser was unavailable for some users around the world on Wednesday. Get a recap of the top announcements that came out of the Citrix 2016 Partner Summit that was held earlier this month in Las Vegas. These include updates around XenApp, XenDesktop 7.7, XenMobile 10.3, and PVS 7.7. Facebook will be setting up a second data center in Europe, Disney IT workers are filing lawsuits, and more top tech news from this week! 

Tech News Recap

 

Learn how to optimize your infrastructure with reports that show your vSphere configuration health & capacity optimization opportunities. Start your free vSphere Optimization Assessment today.

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

Citrix, End-User Computing, XenMobile

Citrix Summit 2016 Part 2: XenMobile 10.3 and PVS 7.7

Here’s part 2 in my series of recap posts of the most important updates that came out of the Citrix 2016 partner summit. In this post, I’ve gathered notes from Citrix around XenMobile 10.3 and PVS 7.7. Yesterday, I posted about what’s new with XenApp and XenDesktop in case you missed it. If you’d like to talk about any of these updates in more detail, feel free to reach out.

Citrix XenMobile 10.3

The following features are new in XenMobile 10.3 and rely on an upcoming release of the Worx Mobile Apps and MDX Toolkit to be fully functional:

  • Shared devices in XenMobile enterprise mode. Shared devices is available in MDM mode.
  • Android for Work device owner mode and support for devices earlier than Android L.
  • Retrieval of voice or SMS messages on Android devices.
  • Support for Google Cloud Messaging on Android devices.
  • Fast encryption device policy, VPN policies, and new Restriction policy options for Samsung KNOX.
  • New language support for Korean, German and Portuguese and right-to-left text support in Worx Apps. These languages are available in the XenMobile console with XenMobile 10.3.

New Console Appearance: XenMobile 10.3

XenMobile 10.3 has a new look. The console is updated with new colors, fonts, tabs, and improved functionality.

  • The Dashboard tab in previous versions of the console has been moved under the new Analyze tab, which also includes the new Reporting tab. For details, see Reports.
  • The Manage tab now includes the new Users tab where you manage local users and groups.
  • The Configure tab now includes the new ShareFile tab where you configure settings to connect to the ShareFile account.
  • You access Settings, formerly under the Configure tab, by clicking the gear icon on the upper-right of the console.
  • The Support tab now opens in the same tab as the console instead of in a new tab.

New Platform Support: XenMobile 10.3

XenMobile 10.3 now offers support for the following platforms:

  • Mac OS X
  • Android HTC
  • Android Sony
  • Samsung SEAMS
  • Windows Mobile/CE
  • Windows 10 Phone: Device management in XenMobile MDM and Enterprise modes.
  • Windows 10 Desktop/Tablet: Device management in XenMobile MDM and Enterprise modes.

Citrix PVS 7.7

The following new features are available with Provisioning Services 7.7:

  • Support for Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise and Professional editions.
  • In-place upgrade of target device software. Rather than reverse-imaging, you can install a new version of the target device software without having to manually uninstall the previous version. To do an in-place upgrade from version 7.6 to version 7.7 you must first install version 7.6.1.
  • Support for UEFI pre-boot environments. This enables you to stream at startup time using gigabit network speeds, so users experience faster startups, and to use disks over 2 TB.
  • The licensing grace period for Provisioning Services has changed from 96 hours to 30 days, for consistency with XenApp and XenDesktop.
  • The Provisioning Services API has been enhanced to provide a standard object-oriented PowerShell interface that enables you to integrate your products and tools easily with Provisioning Services.
  • vGPU-enabled XenDesktop machines can be provisioned using the Provisioning Services XenDesktop Setup Wizard, rather than manually or by  using the Provisioning Services Streamed Virtual Machine Setup Wizard. You can provision machines on VMware vSphere 6.0 as well as on XenServer 6.2.
  • System Center Virtual Machine Manager Generation 2 VMs can be provisioned through Provisioning Services. Generation 2 VMs are optimized for modern workloads: the operating system does not carry the overhead of legacy drivers, devices and x86 architectures.
    • Note: This feature has received limited testing, may not be present in future product releases and must not be enabled on production systems. Citrix may not respond to support requests regarding this feature.
  • FIPS support. Provisioning Services uses a new algorithm that is compliant with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS).
  • XenApp Session Recording is automatically available by default on all machines: you do not need to use a manual workaround.
  • Streaming VHDX formatted disks. This feature adds flexibility and efficiency to image and merging operations by letting you stream VHDX files as well as VHD files. Provisioning Services recognizes and uses the file format .vhdx as the extension for base disks and .avhdx for differencing disks (also known as versions). No configuration of this feature is necessary. You perform all image manipulation functions, such as deleting or merging vDisks, or creating new versions, in the Provisioning Services console the same way for both formats.

 

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

 

By Peter Crepeau, Solutions Architect