 Hi everybody, welcome to the latest episode from the rock to the cloud as always you've got me Tom Hall and your Hattler's host and who's fuddling his way through server technology. We like to cover obviously everything from the rock Are okay reset option kit servers to the cloud is your which also means blue Don't know why we called it that but there it is. It's a shade of blue Like, you know, these are just classic Microsoft way of thinking. Let's let's let's confuse everybody by calling it funny stuff So our goal is to demystify some of these things Not by me doing that, but me inviting a special guest We have got a special guest this time We're gonna talk to this special guest now and let him introduce himself last time we talked about his hat But today we're gonna talk about your t-shirts. So you're always wearing the Just a fashion. This is a it's a fashion The word fashion and and Rick Claus do not go together I mean, maybe maybe they should maybe they should I mean you you're definitely the most fashionable man in server technology Yeah, sorry, no offense Right and anyway, so but you know, there's a few other but you're synonymous with a certain look Hat is one of those things and then also this MVP top There's a tenuous link though to the UK isn't there? Why why why you like these tops? Let's let's find out more Yeah, so so I'm Rick Claus. I've been doing stuff with Microsoft for far too long And this particular Jersey as an example is something that came out of a relationship that the Canadian team Some from Canada had with the UK team back in the day Decades ago almost We're a good friend of mine was the marketing manager for This particular group of evangelists back then is what we used to call ourselves And he decided that the speaker shirts were rubbish. I guess you would use that term. Is that the right right turn? Yeah, rubbish yet rubbish. Yeah, so he decided let's have something. It's a bit sharper looking And so he managed to come up with a rugby jersey so this is a real Cougar rugby jersey that you could play rugby with not that I know how to play rugby and It's it stands the test of time And so he would have a different version slightly different version of this every year that he was doing this particular role And he made sure that he would give them to Different influential people and for some reason they thought that my influential influential But in the previous episode you couldn't see it. There was actually a Union Jack on the back This one does not have the Union Jack. So first of all, thank you for having me back Because that last episode was so fun But yeah, but when I when I do speaking engagements and they're asking me what I can wear for my wardrobe I'm like, I'm a simple man. I have one hat two shirts and one person. So that's what you get Yeah, yeah, well, I'm we're very very glad to have you and you know You were recently on the launch of servo 2022 with all those You know all those other experts but for me, you were the one that stole the show. You're my favorite. So Thank you Just saying just saying and so yeah, no, that's for so and today Rick. We're talking about obviously server 2022 launched Hybrid cloud is is is the buzz But actually you kind of need to manage it in a modern way. So we're gonna talk about System center and obviously also one of my favorite things is is whack From from the last episode Exactly Yeah, although last time I muted myself and I managed to disconnect the video call and you just covered for me So that was perfect. So yeah hardly set But maybe if I had a management console to control me and make me more more sensible It would be whack, right? So let's talk a little bit about whack. So What is whack? Yeah, so if you think about it managing servers Yeah, what is whack whack is winners and min-center, but when you're managing servers If you start off like I started off literally as the guy that jiggled the cable to get the printer to work way Way way back when I had a small environments I then gradually grew it to more and more people with PCs and desktops and servers and stuff like that The way you manage servers in the windows world was you obviously had to log into the GUI interface You had to go in and use MMC consoles to be able to go off and to configure different pieces make users Define an active directory like all sort of stuff if you're if you've been in this industry long enough You've obviously worked with Windows and min-center sort of with with MMC Microsoft management consoles Then we needed to do stuff at scale And so scale-wise is when we got into PowerShell to be able to script and do things remotely against boxes at scale But that's command line stuff and that's going back to my Linux and Unix days prior to Microsoft technologies and so Scale-wise PowerShell automation definitely progressive way to go to be able to manage things But sometimes you know command line is fast. It's automated. It's scriptable But you don't necessarily have the full rich view of being able to manage something and troubleshoot something So you have to dive in back to those older tools like MMC to go off and to manage the event logs and to take a look at certificates that are about to expire or Go off and create user accounts. It's different MMC for different things When you start to grow that environment even bigger That's when you start to look at like a data center style solution with lots and lots of servers And that's when system center comes into play and that was evolution throughout the years system center has grown and added more products to it And it's still completely viable and people still use it and it's very much active for managing data center size scale systems for You know trends of what's going on across your different things where Windows admin center fits into this is basically Let's make a lightweight remote management server capable platform that gives you Deep access into individual boxes for troubleshooting. So how I like to kind of phrase this stuff now It if I if I know that there's something going wrong with my system Because system center has alerted me to the fact that something's going on Or I just need to do my regular Checking on the systems to see how my event logs are doing I would use my Windows admin center platform install to be able to go off and look at Individual servers or run reports across a couple of different servers to troubleshoot it and then I could go and remotely manage that box It requires no software no agents. It's just simply needs to have Win RM enabled on the target systems So basically modern versions of Windows server 2012 2016 2019 that sort of stuff And then provided your security context of the user that you're signed on as or that you equip the server to Represent you as you're using it whenever it reaches out to do something in one of those boxes It's doing it as you so it's doing some remote execution or some remote PowerShell on that box through win our win RM to be able to populate the data, but it gives it to you in literally a browser So it's a browser interface modern gooey and graphical that can punch through a firewall if you need to because it's you know Protected with a certificate that allows you to simply lightweight browse to that box And then from that gateway box you then spider off into the different systems you want to go off and manage So architecturally it's a server install that is a management console that centrally gives you access to your other boxes But it's used and is optimized for going deep on Individual boxes to go off into troubleshoot and to manage with a modern interface all the other previous ways all still work But in an environment where you have Windows server core installs because you should be using core as your base install Doing stuff at the command line can be troublesome to load new drivers to copy files to to go and configure stuff And that's where Windows the min-center reaches out and touches that server core box It makes it really easy to go off and manage through a graphical interface Without you having to do stuff How's that for good explanations that work for you? Well, I couldn't get a word of an edge waste, but it was very very Price and and covered everything and I'm just gonna say Thanks guys. Thanks for coming. Well, so that's what it is. That's how you get it, which was gonna be my next question Yeah, I suppose the only thing I know you're not like you're not sales guy, but yeah, yeah, I saved that part for your next question Okay, well, how do you get it? It's literally a man a way of just going to your favorite search engine and type in Windows admin center download There's probably a short URL I could give you but I forget what it is. I think it's like download WAC so aka.ms slash download WAC for Windows admin center But basically you get it through the eval the eval center at Microsoft your register for it And I didn't mention this part. It's free. It doesn't cost you anything So long as you have my next question, which is cost So the window Windows admin center doesn't cost you anything except you have to have a Leisten's copy of Windows server 2019 or Windows server 2022 That you need to have to be able to run it. So there's no cals required for it It's just simply registered to download it once you downloaded it You have to install it in a variety of different configurations I can talk about those if you want but basically it installs a web system that then displays that web page You then add in the servers you want to manage and then Bob's your uncle You're off working with those systems and managing them as you see fit Okay, so It's free as long as you got the right license It's available download from the interwebs, which anybody can get because they've got an internet connection Is it Tries to get all your Microsoft technology all in one place makes that interface nice and easy to use But can you use it for your hyper V's as well? so So it's as you add it to as you add a system to the console Based on the version of the operating system You have the ability to manage different levels of stuff So the older the systems that you add there's very limited stuff You can do the more modern versions of stuff that you add you literally have a new version of performance monitor a new way of managing VMs a new way of installing creating VMs through a web interface And you can even manage clusters and create clusters like if you've ever If people are watching this and they've done hardware and they've sold hardware and they're working with stuff before Setting up clusters was a pain in the butt In the past and I used to love the fact that if you wanted to manage your cluster You would hit the windows key and type in fail press enter and then the failover cluster manager tool would pop up And that's how you would manage that particular cluster or create that cluster now the web interface with Windows Admin Center is Literally a wizard to be able to set up and configure a cluster from scratch as long as you have the two nodes working correctly and Talking as part of the same domain you can install a cluster with this like that. It is so simple with Windows Admin Center And and as I mentioned architecturally it's simply a lightweight web instance that you install on a box That then allows you to go off and to start to manage and reach out to your different servers that happen to be out there Okay, so some we kind of half talked about earlier, but I think maybe we might have even talked about it before we were recording but obviously system center and Windows Admin Center that they kind of they're both there, but what is the what is the difference just right for the boys? right, so So the I alluded to it in the kind of progression of how things have been managed over the years And so system center is one of those tools. It's a suite of tools and a suite of products people use still today It's still viable It's great for doing configuration management of multiple desktops and servers on a large scale It does error reporting. It does operations management. It does ticketing It does data protection and backup all these different things that you have to license to be able to use That's the big keyword here. You license the different stuff you want to use inside of system center and You are required to go in and to obviously Buy those licenses and have all this extra functionality system center is your scale Like I need I've got a large number of servers that want to manage I want a holistic view of everything. That's what you're going to be using system center for Windows Admin Center fits in there by basically working in parallel to system center Choose your product that you're talking about And it gives you the ability to click down a level and look in at those individual boxes for additional configuration troubleshooting or or research and that sort of stuff the other thing that Windows Admin Center is really good at is It enables all this hybrid stuff that we've been talking about in the previous episode and in this episode where System center looks at your your your lay of the land for all your systems and all your data centers and all sort of stuff And it ties into Azure for extra functionality It really lights up the solutions with Windows Admin Center to be able to go in and bring in a backup solution Bring in a file server Expansion solution called Azure file sync it brings in disaster recovery with Azure site recovery It brings in Kubernetes if you wanted to bring in Kubernetes into your world That's gateway to get into it and the easy button to install it is using Windows Admin Center Once you've registered it and once you've configured it to talk to your Azure subscription So think of Windows Admin Center hybrid deep investigative tools and troubleshooting So everyone should go up and use it and then system center bigger picture view of all the entire horizon of all your different systems that happen to be out there perfect and I know you kind of you said already that you can just download Windows Admin Center But you don't have to have system center to use Admin Center, right? They're not They're mutually compatible, but not they don't have to they don't have to exist together So if you've got a smaller state you can just work off of a wax scenario for like if you've got like a regional office You've got like three three servers, and you've got like a bit of Azure in the cloud that that wax scenario could just be perfect for you So how about if I show you the I mean to show you the interface just so you can see what we're talking about here Sometimes I mean we talk conceptually about a lot of sort of stuff. So this is my server 2019 box It's ugly. It's a simplistic install That's running as a member of my domain and it actually is running as Windows server core So there's no user interface beyond this text box that I have I've actually gone ahead and installed edge on this box solely for the purpose of managing Windows Admin Center So this box doesn't do any other roles except the member server with this Windows Admin Center install on top of it and so I fire up my browser and It gives me the interface for what my different systems happen to look like on the system I add in new connections by simply hitting that add button and then the choices that it gives me are add in additional servers Add in a Windows PC if you want to manage Windows PC But then also add and create a new cluster if I wanted to and even as I mentioned bridge to that new world Added in creating VMs inside of Azure as well So I've already added in a couple of nodes that you can see here on the screen which include two different Azure Stack HCI boxes We talked about Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI in the previous episodes And if I just click into one of those nodes It authenticated against that node for what I'm allowed to do based on who I am running this browser interface So I have administrative access on that box What does it give me an overview page of the tomb what I call the tombstone information of important stuff CPU RAM Configuration hard drive space network traffic and these are real-time graphs. They're not terribly exciting because there's not a big workload on this box But they are real-time graphs that show you details about what's going on on that box You don't get this with that command line interface of just simply characters and terminal window This is required viewing to properly manage that box at depth with Windows Admin Center And then if you take a look at the most common things that you would be doing well as an example Over here on the left choosing the event viewer The event viewer is not your traditional MMC snap-in anymore It's a database of all it queries your local event logs to be able to show you what that happens to Look like in this case as an example. I can go in here and say Show me the last 24 hours any event logs that have happened on my system So I can now view a critical error or warning states inside my system log with regards to blue a whole bunch of informationals Some reds. I should probably take a look at 54 reds and then even a couple of yellows Which are some warnings for the last two days for this particular box that I'm drilling into as one way of being able to go off and view visually what my event logs happen to look like if I want to go off and do a Connection over and take a look at my storage configuration for this box again very difficult with a server core install I can see that I actually have a This number four, which is a raid volume configured on this particular box I can get the proper handle to pull this up so you can see it and you can see that I've got my OS drive running on my C drive. I've got my different partitions that represent that particular box And if I take a look at volumes on this box on this guy I can see that I've got my traditional C drive and recovery volumes happen to be there And this is a cluster node And so I don't see the additional attached storage on this box because it's part of a cluster shared volume I'd have to go through the cluster interface to go and view that information on Windows admin center That's why I only had the C drive on this particular box Managing updates again rather difficult on a server core install This is actually a good view of updates that are required for this particular box Again, not a different tool. I have to worry about oh look at that They're still trying to get me to update server light on the server box because it's always there You always have to update it, right? So I can now see these different settings and I can even take a look at the history of different updates that have happened on this thing So deep deeply quickly jumping into the interface of what it looks like to manage a particular box But the magic that I like the best over here is this tie-in to individual system So here is Azure backup as an example We're using this interface. I can configure Azure backup on this particular node once I've authenticated. Let's see if I authenticated correctly. Yes, I did look at that And Azure backup is already set up for me inside of my subscription And I just now want to enable it on this one server But I don't want to go through the Azure portal to go off and do that I literally just want to go ahead and say yep. I want to back up the system state I want to use the schedule that I've already defined which in this case is back it up on Mondays and then put in a Encryption so that particular backup is gonna stay encrypted this I have to put in a very strong password here This is a lot of dots. I know I'm trying to see if I can save it. So hopefully that worked boom It configures the local box It does a secure encryption certificate for this particular box makes the connection with the agent using Azure Arc Back up to the backup agent and then allows me to go in and configure backup on this particular box I did not have to go physically to the box remote desktop into it or log in to be able to configure this agent It just went off and worked and that's part of the beauty of this hybrid piece of what Windows Admin Center brings to you To dive in and look at a specific box I'm gonna stop and pause for some questions and maybe Talk about something else if you need me to Well it every time that You know, I see this is actually so it's so simple and like you don't have to be a Fade necessarily even with how the Azure interface works You just need to know what things you need to do with your servers And I think that you know a lot of people out there are like the clouds gonna take away my job And it's not what it's gonna do is enhance what you do and actually make things easier now Obviously within this as well we can manage third-party products and things as well I'm assuming it's not just as simple as just you know Like we've grown up a bit from those dark days where we were like, you know It's only our stuff in any words without we're not Apple basically, right? So like we We're we're willing to work with other people make our technology work with their technology to give people the best experience So can we talk about that like like like how have we grown up around improving that within Windows Server 2022? And I've been said so So You know, yeah, so on the Windows admin side of thing when is the min-centre side of things I can actually show you How we integrate in this the model that we use is called extensions and third-party extensions can be added into this And so this is again, it's a different view looking at my server selector But if I go over here and choose my settings I can actually go down and take a look at my extensions for this particular box and extension wise we have a whole bunch of different extensions and here's one actually My friend over at bit ops has created one bit ops if you don't know is an extra layer of management that you can put on top of Viewing multiple systems, but it's not as massive and as encompassing as system center But it goes in and does it for you know a dozen or two dozen servers at a scalable level And it's tied into Windows admin center as an interface even though it's a separate third-party product that someone else developed I'll call out Dell EMC connectivity as well for deeper rich Resources and access to the information from their driver level and from their configuration level for their EMC hardware stuff I already have this one installed which is my extension for data on data on is the provider of the Hardwares that I'm using for my Azure Stack HCI box We've got deeper level of integration for drivers and configuration from data on directly from here all these extensions are Available simply from the registry catalog you just go in and you say yeah I want to install that extension and then potentially if it's a third-party You might have to buy a license from them or register or something like that But we open up that gateway for people to go off and to use and to work with the min-center interface to be able to Go up and work with it admin centers the best part because here's how you keep it up to date you literally turn on updates down here at the bottom and By default I've turned this on to auto update whenever there is a new monthly update that comes for cumulative updates for Windows server if the box happens to have Windows admin center installed on it It will get the latest bits and versions as we release new ones And then likewise the same thing applies to the extensions as new extensions come out There's an update button you can press it also updates as well, too So the functionality is always going to be increasing Windows system center is a much again larger bigger broader product And that is going to require new incremental updates during Windows server summit a couple of weeks ago We actually announced that the next version of Windows server Sorry of system center is going to be coming out in the first quarter of 2022 So basically in the spring-fall time here in northern hemisphere North America It's gonna sorry spring summertime is when the next version of server 2020 of system center 2022 is going to be coming out That's a bigger release cycle It's a big major thing that requires the next update unlike Windows admin center Which is very light and agile to bring new stuff literally weekly if you needed to people have extra functionality cool That's I think that's three demos in one session. So I think you're on a record rate So that we haven't got a huge amount of time left and I think thank you for bringing us into The system center mode of whack and letting us cease let us see stuff and I think you know, we'll summarize in a little bit, but and just again from the launch of 2022 that happened a couple of weeks ago There's one of the things that I think Bernardo Caldas. He mentioned was about not just the accreditation But there's learning parts. So Can you you maybe just tell the audience about the learning parts around server because I think that's interesting Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean you're you're hitting right all the right buttons for stuff that I've interested in here for sure So first of all one of my friends, I don't know if you had him on the show yet You should probably try to line him up I'll hook you up if you're not connected to him is Oren Thomas Oren Thomas is a good good mate down in Australia He also has a hat, but it's not as nice as mine he He has been working diligently to create content for operations and for IT pros and Investing in their skills to bring them up to a hybrid world or a more modern world as their on-premises world evolved To make them ready to be able to go off and connect up to Azure when it makes sense for different things Azure Stack HCI is one of those technologies that we both identified and the team identified as being something we need to invest in for Being able to go off and enable this hybrid capability so there's actually a whole learning path on Microsoft learn that allows you to go through and experience and learn about how Azure Stack HCI works And how you can integrate inside your environment how you can use it and monitor it You might see a couple of people you might know with some short videos inside of there. I think Thomas has Thomas Maurer's got a cameo appearance. I think I'm in there, too Sonya cuff. I think is in there maybe even Pierre. So you've had some of those folks on your show That we we pop up and appear for a little different video vignettes to explain different pieces about learning how to use Azure Stack HCI Learning how to use Windows and min-center and also there's a big investment in a whole bunch of different content for Windows Server 2022 so I can possibly give you some short links You can put them in the details page of this particular video later on in the post event side of things But definitely like your soft learns got you covered for Azure Stack HCI and Windows Server 2022 With current up-to-date content and more stuff coming out too as we go because we realize this is an important upgrade This is the moment in time when you can start to use some Azure technologies to solve Tangible problems you have in your on-premises world in a hybrid fashion It's not about taking everything and migrate to the cloud and lose your job. It's not about that at all It's about making your life easier and solving the pain points you got this is literally music to my ears because I've been saying this to people for ages and You know like the cloud penetration in the UK is reaching almost like a saturation point So like what what's left like after after everybody that wants to go pure cloud has gone pure cloud Well, then the world's gonna get more complicated and that becomes hybrid So it's it's not as simple as one thing is the answer to to this is not gonna solve you Like, you know, there's no Nirvana thing. It's actually what do you need to do? And how do you need to get there and what technology if you've got what's available? That's really what Windows Server 2022 is all about so about the given people that choice So I love that and I love the fact that we're also teaching people how to use it with with our learning paths So that's amazing. So thank you for doing that Rick. We really appreciate it We're just gonna do the memes really quick So I'm gonna move to the other show so get get get ready I will try not to like mute myself like last time or in fact close the whole window and let you just speak through the whole Means so right producers. I love having producers because it makes you feel like a flash TV person Producers job easy show us meme one cloud computing So when it's raising so when it's raining I'm losing data What what is the same? To tell me I believe we call this data center egress Rain is data center egress from the cloud what's there? So That's where I would come in with this particular one for cloud computing. It's like you said cloud cloud has just become so Ubiquitous and used by so many different people in so many different ways over the last decade or more It's it's more than just someone else's data center. Absolutely more It's got specialized solutions that solve your problems that may or may not fit with your particular scenario My biggest thing is the skills you have right now and the stuff you're working with now is absolutely Relevant and working inside of the cloud environment in the hybrid environment or in your on-premises environment. So invest in those skills and simply yeah, don't worry about when it rains We'll keep your data safe inside of those different geographical areas for you, which is fair enough But I must admit I feel like the dinosaur. So this is great. You're you're you'll move me on it So okay, like I said, we've talked a lot in this episode. So we're we're fast media is a fast means So mean to we're gonna jump to because we're we're short on time and Right, okay, so when the computer says press any button to continue so you press the off button But back in the old days when I used to have to work help desk and support a whole bunch of users that We're just getting used to PCs and how they worked and client-server technologies. I actually created a Because I saw it online I created a button that was called the any key and it was literally just a sticker that I would put on the space So that I literally had Joe from accounting that would you know, what what do I press and said press the any key I don't know what to do. And so I'm like, yeah, there it is right there It's it's it's so true though. It's so true. I think that's that if I yeah, if I was talking about if I was talking to mom and dad Which often I am their tech support Do you say to I have that conversation? Yeah, I've had that any key conversation with my mom. So yeah, actually to be fair. That's we need those stickers I think that should be something that they put on all computers from now on. I think that'd be really helpful All right, okay, so look we've We've we've talked at length about a lot of different stuff. I'm gonna summarize really quickly It's and again, it's always good. This is like a spot check to make sure that I was listening. Um, okay So system center for large-scale and viewing that like high-level management plane of what you've got in your estate Whack with those admin center for that more targeted view Which is going to give you the in-depth diagnostic management of whether it's on-prem or cloud for your own little environment And you know, that's where you can actually punch up extra services as and when you do things like Azure backup All of that stuff you can do straight from admin center. It's totally flexible It's in fact free as long as you've got already purchased the correct licensing And and we would love you to go and demo it and there's a place where you can learn about it as well Because there's learning resources also That is what we learned today Nice I'm glad to have been part of your learning experience and helping you out with this I'm also glad you figured out your mute button too. It makes it a bit more entertaining to Everybody look we're very very grateful to have Rick round the floor to Rick Sending me here. Thank you. So it's round good But we're very very grateful for you tuning into this episode of the rock to the cloud Again, if you've got any questions or comments drop them in the in the comments box or in fact get in touch Make sure we'll find an expert as Rick said There's a whole army of people here in Microsoft who want to talk to you and talk to me as well Which is quite they don't actually want to talk to me, but we force them to and so yeah joining joining me next time For the next episode from the rocks of cloud. See you later. Rick. Thanks very much for joining us today Have a good one. Cheers