The joy of setting up course 20346B: Managing Office 365 Identities and Services

Here is a nice wee tale of the nuances of setting up for this course. I am writing this mainly for others who might already teach this course, so I presume that there's a little bit of inside knowledge along the way.

Ok, so in the latest little plot twist there is a new issue with the setup scripts. It is REALLY easy to fix, but a bit of a pain.

In the setup, you have to do get-azurepublishsettingsfile, then import-publishsettingsfile and after you've got that sorted, it's time to run the configure script.  And things fall undone. Quickly. Red text EVERYWHERE!

 
So what's the deal here? When you run the script, you're asked for numbers. First, you enter your CPLS ID which you then pad out with an extra 0 if you need it. We are 4232190 so I add a 0 to the end to be 42321900. You have to, as there is a check in the script to deal with it.  And then you add a 3 digit number for the student ID. We've all done it, you know there is nothing new there. What ends up happening is that to further 'uniquify' the lab IDs, the script appends today's date to give you a long string.  Mine today was 423219000071117.

Then, it adds the name lucstorage to the beginning of the name so eventually you end up with lucstorage423219000071117, a handy dandy unique 25 character string.

Seems harmless.

To many of us that have set this course up, we're used to seeing a bit of red in the Azure Powershell window from time to time. Sometimes it's cos we forgot the firewall, or didn't raise to admin level on the window.  In this new error, that isn't the cause.

Believe it or not, the storage that is built, has to have a name with between 3 and 24 characters, of course starting with lower case letters, but can include numbers!

To solve this for myself, I opened variables.ps1. Find the line that says @storagebase = "lucstorage" and change it to @storagebase = "lucstor"

After that, no more red text and perfect success for the setup.

I don't know if anyone else has had this issue yet? I gather I discovered it today as it's the first time that I have taught the course in a double number day, double number month! :-)  It was the beginning of Oct the last time I taught this, and prior to that, months with a single digit! Ha!

Hope this helps, if you do come across it.

Cheers,
Malc.




 

 

A quick update, before making this a pretty permanent part of my life

So it has been an age since I set this blog up, and either through work pressures, pastime pressures, or just sheer laziness, I have neglected ever since starting.
And there is a TON of fantastic stuff that I have been doing work wise.  A few highlights are below, but on the whole, just wow, it has been a whirlwind time.

It was a reasonably normal year for me, the range of things that I teach always keeps me busy, from the core Server 2012 MCSA course, to the SQL Querying stuff, to the exciting world of Office 365 (more on that in a later blog), with even some oddities like recently teaching a WSS 2.0 course to a client who has an air-gapped network that hasn't changed for years!  The thing that surprised me the most with that, is that WSS 2.0 was actually a lot more sophisticated that I recalled, and really was LEAPS ahead of its time. Nice.

I also delivered a session at TechEd, well, three. 2 Exam Crams, and one 'proper' session, my first ever, which was a basic intro to Office 365 Admin.  More on that later too.

AND on top of all that, this is my first time back at the Wellington for a while, having had about 5 of the last 6 weeks travelling. Wow.

Look out for some upcoming posts.

Cheers,

Malc.

An intro to the blog.

 












Howdy all,



So I am Malcolm, usually called Malc (or other less savoury things), I am a Microsoft Certified Trainer, employed for the past 9 or so years by Auldhouse Computer Training Ltd.

I have a number of certs under my belt, and will update those as I go. My qualifications and interests in IT are quite varied, but always rock on back to a bit of a data bent.

With regards to the training I deliver, I believe the best results come from having a bit of fun while you train, and never be afraid to try something for the first time in front of a class.  It goes to show that things can work (or can go horribly wrong) in a "sterile" training lab environment, just as well as they can in the real world.

The idea behind this blog is to share some ideas and thoughts on what I do, be somewhat reflective on the previous week, or weeks courses that I have delivered, and hopefully give people a good laugh along the way.

Where I pick things up from other blogs and sites I'll link those too.  Knowledge shared means lightened workloads to me, and allows for greater progress in all things.

A few highlights, good for a chuckle, from the past few months.

• Sept 2013 - TechEd Exam Cram sessions delivered.  70-410, 70-411, 70-412
• Nov 2013 - Office 365 course, during which I demonstrated the Exchange Online feature of remote wiping data on a phone. I used my phone, and not knowing what to expect I assumed that I would simply remove the Office 365 connection to my phone. Next thing you know, my entire phone factory reset! Lesson learned, and a good laugh for the course.
• Dec 2013 - Microsoft Office 365 Road Show with Paul Bowkett of Microsoft. It was a hoot, and such a great guy to co-present with! We had a blast, and if you attended any of our sessions in Wellington, Auckland or Christchurch, THANKS! Paul's blog is here.
• Jan 2014 - Reset all Auldhouse Wellington classrooms, re cabled etc. Mint
• Jan 2014 - Decided to do a live Fail Over Cluster hot shut down with our classroom servers to demonstrate to a class just how effective it is.  Did a 5sec power button shutdown on cluster node 1, then brought it up again.  It took a second reboot, but life was peachy.  The class thought I was nuts to do it in our live environment, but the truth is, if you can't test DR while servers are under load (which wasn't too bad since only 3 courses that first week) then when can you? Ha!  

This week started with a Crystal Reports 2 day course, and Microsoft Course 6293 for the last three days. 

Well, that's all for now.  As the year winds on, and new things are found out and discovered, I'll be here writing my take on it.

Cheers,
Malc.