Well, here we are. A new year, a new name, and a bunch of sessions for me to deliver!
It probably goes without saying that there has been a wee bit of pressure this time around preparing the sessions that I am delivering. It came to a total of 5 sessions which when I said yup, I guess I hadn't really thought about all the time involved to do a professional job. It's not just me I am representing. It's Auldhouse and Microsoft. 3 are exam crams, and present an interesting challenge in their own right, and 2 are the traditional "Break-Out" sessions.
Within the next couple of weeks I will publish the build guides for the demos that I used this week in both my solo AD-RMS session, conveniently linked here (so that you can access the PowerPoints) and also the joint session with the amazing Daniel Bowbyes (co-runner of the WWIAUG meet-up in Wellington).
In getting ready for each session, we presenters always go through the hoops and loops. Did I do enough? Did I do too much? Will that meet the session level? WHY IS THE CLOCK GOING SO FAST/SLOW! (depending on your state of mind, of course!) I think my weakness is wanting to know too much, and deliver it all as fast as I can.
Anyway, as a loose outline for now, here is how I built each of the Labs.
AD-RMS and Azure RMS
AD-RMS
In order for this to work, and for things to move smoothly, I went through the following steps (loosely)
Built 4 virtual machines. Two were Server 2012R2, two were Windows 10. The servers were configured as a DC and a member. I created a number of OUs, users, and security groups, as well as user accounts for the ADRMS service. Oh, and let's not forget the SuperUsers group.
On the DC I also created a preference to map drives to all users for the a file share to place IRM protected content.
After that, I joined all the computers to the domain. I made sure that for Client 1 I had logged in two users from the Design group, and on the other client, two users who were not in Design.
I then pre-staged the ADRMS install on the member server, created the shares for the users and the certificates.
At that point, I then create a checkpoint for each VM and spent a good week going back and forth, rolling forward and back through the demos that I have written for Ignite, making sure that I knew where all the sticking points may or may not be.
Azure-RMS
For the Azure RMS, I have had to sort out that "Here's one I prepared earlier" solution. There is a good reason for this. Activating Azure RMS, and getting it to a state where it can be demonstrated would take far longer than the 15mins that I have for that part of the session. SO... before I demoed this, I have already activated RMS in my Office 365 subscription, and imported and run the necessary PowerShell scripts to make RMS work for my region (AP).
From there, I simply made a couple of emails out to myself at work, and sent them. One was Do Not Forward, one was Confidential - internal only. Then it's onto my work email account to see the results (and I have a couple of those emails saved in my inbox, just in case)
Windows 10 + Azure AD + Intune
This was a doozy to prepare for, and while I think the steps will seem pretty minimal, believe you me, there was a lot of work in learning the technology before even starting this. AND there is a lot to learn, and like my baby, Office 365, this is an entirely greenfield developmental area and when the session was suggested, some of the technology hadn't yet been fully released.
So here's how it went.
I bought a domain. www.malcyjmct.nz
I then added that to my Office 365 subscription.
After that, I then imported the malcyjmct.nz domain as a custom domain to Azure AD
From there, I setup a trial of Azure AD Premium to get the ability to add InTune
After that, it was a matter of twisting a few nuts and bolts to finesse it all to work together. Once that was done, it was onto the setup with the laptop, kindly loaned to Daniel and I by HP. And it is an amazing piece of kit! I installed Windows 10 Pro, and then rolled in ALL the updates. Without that effort, that initial AAD join HAS taken over an hour to progress to "Welcome to Windows, we hope you enjoy your stay." That was perhaps one of the biggest lessons learnt.
A few (ready MANY) joins, disjoins, joins, disjoins, demos, fails, demos, fails, foibles and quirks later, a smooth process has been ironed out. Essentially, a complete reset of the PC (and I have learnt that Sysprep isn't the tool for the job) and deletion of the computer account from Azure, and we're away.
SSO comes as a part of the build and start, so that is a HUGE relief, and at that stage, the certificates and user accounts all show in the right place.
I have learnt to expect a latency of between 20 and 40 minutes for this demo, meaning that I have built a SECOND laptop, that will stay constantly joined to the Azure AD. I have also installed a couple of additional pieces of software there, including the Azure Remote agent, meaning that I can demo a remote restart, and a remote device scan etc.
OK, once that was all sorted, I then created three distinctly different types of InTune policy, in order to high level demonstrate the capabilities of Azure. They are as follows:
A standard config policy to tweak Internet Explorer
A WiFi policy, which needed to importing of an XML file generated by netsh
An OMA-URI (Open Mobile Alliance Uniform Resource Identifier) policy to lock down AutoPlay
From there on in, it was a matter of demonstrating, from starting the "out of the box" laptop, through to joining it to Azure AD, accepting the incoming phone call, and then creating the pin for our new laptop. Incidentally, that whole piece takes about 5-10 minutes, but is pretty bloody smooth to be fair.
Anyway, that is a brain dump for now. It's about 10:30pm the Monday night before Ignite launches, and I am ready for sleep now.
I will post something a little bit more detailed in the next week or so for those that need a bit more detail.
Thanks for reading, and please look forward to more posts in the very near future!
Cheers,
Malc.
Monday, 31 August 2015
Tuesday, 18 November 2014
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.
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,
Wednesday, 15 October 2014
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.
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.
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
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!
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.
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