IT Camps taking place in the West Region (everything West of the Rockies!)….

728x90

I always get asked when is the next IT Pro in-person event taking place. I want to give everyone a heads up that we are very close to having all the registration links for the West Region IT Camps available for the rest of this calendar year. With that said, there are a few that are already available and I want to make sure to get the information out to you now since the first few are taking place at the end of September.

Cloud OS Signature Series

This series of events takes place in 4 major cities in West Region – Irvine, CA, Seattle, WA, Denver, CO and San Francisco, CA. These events start with a keynote and then breaks out into three different tracks. The IT Professional Track is where our IT Camp content is being delivered. If you want to see the entire schedule for the day, please go the the Series Landing Page. I am including the dates and direct IT Professional track links for the four cities in this series below:

September 20, 2012: Irvine, CA
September 27, 2012: Seattle, WA
October 10, 2012: Denver, CO
October 11, 2012: San Francisco, CA

We will be delivering the same IT Pro content at our IT Camps as well. In fact, in our regular IT Camps, we will have more time for Hands On Labs since we won’t have the main keynote and the DevOps session like there is in the Cloud OS Signature Series events. Below is the list of cities and their registration links. Currently, I only have the registration links for Los Angeles and San Diego, but I will update this blog post later today or first thing on Monday when I get the final list. I just want to get the word out about the Los Angeles and San Diego events since those are taking place on September 24th and 26th, respectively.

September 24, 2012: Los Angeles, CA
September 26, 2012: San Diego, CA
October 2, 2012: Mountain View, CA
October 4, 2012: Tempe, AZ
October 9, 2012: Redmond, WA
October 15, 2012: Las Vegas, NV
October 19, 2012: Portland, OR [NOTE - Date Change!!!!]
October 22 , 2012: Tucson, AZ

New Locations!

November 26, 2012: Mountain View, CA
December 6, 2012: Bellevue, WA

 

Agenda

8:30 AM – 9:00 AM – Check In

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM – Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

10:15 AM – 10:30 AM – Break

10:30 AM – 11:15 AM – Windows Server 2012 Storage

11:15 AM – 11:30 AM – Break

11:30 AM – 12:00 PM – Overview of Windows Azure IaaS

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM – Lunch

1:00 PM – 4:00 PM –Hands On Lab

Event Description

Windows Server 2012 has been Released to Manufacturing (RTM’d) with general availability on September 4th. This latest release of the Windows Server operating system, which has been heralded by industry analysts as the most impressive update to Windows Server since Windows Server 2000, includes sweeping enhancements across key areas: Virtualization, Storage, Networking and Management. In addition, we’ve also recently released a Preview of the new Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) capabilities in our Windows Azure cloud offering.

Please join us at an IT Camp near you for a hands-on technical discussion about implementing these new capabilities: Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, Shared-Nothing Live Migration, Storage Pools and Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Bring your own laptop (requirements below) to participate in Hands-on Lab activities. Stay tuned for additional IT Camps this year where we’ll also target the new Networking and Management features.

To participate in the afternoon hands-on lab session, you will need to bring your own computer (laptop preferred) with the following minimum configuration:

  • 4GB RAM (8 GB preferred)
  • At least 40 GB of free disk space (75 GB preferred)
  • x64 compatible processor with hardware assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V technology)
  • Installed OS of Windows Server 2012 (Preferred), Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 8
  • NO Drive encryption technology (Bitlocker or 3rd party)
  • Download Windows Server 2012 ISO: https://aka.ms/hwws2012
  • Download additional files from: https://aka.ms/cloudositcamp

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

With the introduction of Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V has definitely matured and will become a major force in the Hypervisor space. As virtualization becomes the norm in our customer’s datacenters, IT Professionals are becoming more concerned with Fault Tolerance, flexibility and scalability of the virtualization infrastructure. Needless to say, Microsoft has focused on these areas in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and in this session, we will get into the details of the following key enhancements:

  • Scalability
  • Fault Tolerance with Hyper-V Replica
  • Flexibility with Shared Nothing Live Migrations (VMs and Storage)
  • Flexibility with Hyper-V over SMB

Windows Server 2012 Storage

One of the most common uses of Windows Servers is for File and Print Services. Windows Server 2012 has huge improvements in the Storage capabilities as well. Storage Spaces happens to be one of these new capabilities that allows an organization to group different storage devices into a pool from which to create thinly provisioned volumes. Another new capability is data de-duplication that allows for storage savings by reclaiming physical space use on the hard drive by multiple copies of the same file. This session will focus on these two enhancements as well as continuously available file shares.

Overview of Windows Azure IaaS

When Windows Azure first released a few years ago, it was our Platform as a Service offering in the public cloud space. This too, has matured and we recently released a preview of Infrastructure as a Service offering in Windows Azure. This new offering allows an organization to host a Virtual Machine with various Operating Systems (including Linux) and different applications such as Active Directory Domain Controllers or SharePoint Server as an example. These VMs in Azure can also be connected with PaaS instances in Azure or on-premises infrastructure. This session will provide an overview of this new capability and how to get started.

Hands On Labs

The Hands On Labs will focus on providing hands on experience configuring the different aspects of Windows Server 2012 that was discussed in the morning sessions as well as configuring IaaS capabilities in Windows Azure.

 

Cheers!