My long running PowerShell scripts now have background musak thanks to: http://www.adminarsenal.com/admin-arsenal-blog/powershell-music-remotely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsoIfkNQYEg http://youtube-mp3.org/ $scriptDir = Split-Path -Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition -Parent $musakFilePath="$scriptDir\musak.mp3" $wmplayer = New-Object System.Windows.Media.MediaPlayer $wmplayer.Open($musakFilePath) Start-Sleep 2 # This allows the $wmplayer time to load the audio file $duration = $wmplayer.NaturalDuration.TimeSpan.TotalSeconds $wmplayer.Play() $stopwatch=[system.diagnostics.stopwatch]::StartNew() while ($stopwatch.Elapsed.Seconds -lt $duration) { Write-Progress -Activity "Doing stuff, please hold…" -status "$($stopwatch.Elapsed.Seconds) seconds" -percentComplete ($stopwatch.Elapsed.Seconds / $duration*100) # do something # break when done start-Sleep -s 1 } $wmplayer.

Another super niche blog post. No one is ever going to find this…. So I had to dig into System Centre Configuration Manager today, probably Microsoft’s most complex product. I’ve been using this massively scalable and capable scheduling system since SMS1.2. But it still a bit scary to support… Machines cloned by VDI service VMware View were coming up with the same unique ID. The SMS client had been captured in the reference image that was cloned to create desktop pools.

I’ve done a couple of other posts on using AD credentials with AWS API. You setup AWS IAM to trust AD Federation Services (ADFS) for authentication. You get temporary access keys to use with the AWS API. This is safer than making lots of IAM accounts with long term passwords (Secret Access Keys) that end up embedded in code and stored who knows where. See previous posts for an overview of AD authentication to AWS.

We know Visual Studio Pro with MSDN gets you unlimited Windows Server (including Hyper-V for virtualisation) and unlimited SQL. This is a way of licensing Microsoft software in your on premises test and development environments. You can now bring your own MSDN licences with you to Azure. This way the Microsoft software in your Windows and SQL VMs on Azure is already paid for and you pay the equivalent of Linux rates for Windows and SQL VMs on Azure.

Getting a Direct Connect link to AWS from our colo datacentre was straight forward. Encrypting traffic between colo and AWS via Direct Connect is proving to be more difficult. Although the traffic is logically isolated, we wanted it encrypted as it traverses 3rd party WAN providers. This is the best resource I’ve come across so far explaining how to setup a VPN over AWS direct connect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMvom9QjkPk

@SadServer at PuppetConf2015 provides a rather depressing view of the state of IT as a combination of crappy software with more crappy software to manage and monitor the crappy software. But there’s a ray of hope! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBwW2vTKVy4

I got a message today from our Red Hat account manager to let me know that Microsoft has signed Red Hat’s Certified Cloud Service Provider agreement, meaning that over time they will make available, and be available to host, Red Hat products in Azure. RHEL will become the premium Enterprise Linux offering in Azure. This is fantastic news for Red Hat Customers. Previously Azure was not a Red Hat Certified Platform.

WinOps conference videos have been released: Videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP1OgsLk-HkEdQyhjJX_5JQ Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/WinOpsConf Future Meetups: http://www.meetup.com/WinOps/ Watch the keynote for a “state of the industry” regarding DevOps on Windows. Keynote part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlJo4BLtXyI Keynote part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQZYS5gu6CQ

Attended “Achieving agility with control in Financial Services on AWS” talk today at AWS Loft London 2015. The usual AWS slide of company logos was there for “look how many companies use AWS, so it must be safe!”. This list wasn’t tailored to Financial Services (Tinder, really?). There was a bit about Agility focusing on Continuous Integration (CI also known as automated testing) and Continuous Deployment (CD also known as automated deployment).

Update: THIS WAS 2015 AND PRE COVID… I’ve been reading about how distributed companies are operating. Companies with their servers running in the cloud don’t need a server room, or Office premises at all it seems. And there’s lots of them. Wired article about Automatic, the company behind WordPress Lots of information at this clever URL WorkingRemote.ly Article about how Buffer do distributed working The Pros and Cons of Remote Work in Ops As a worker wouldn’t you like to skip the commuting?