 Hello everybody, and today what we're going to do is that Jeff Woolsey and myself are going to do a reaction video for the exam objectives associated with the new Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate Exam. That in a minute. I love it. I just loved hearing you say that because I've been dying to tell people about this. Let's go, Lauren. Let's go. Absolutely. OK, well, we'll bring up the slides. So the certification is going to be called Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate. It's a role-based certification and it's made up of two exams. The first exam is going to be AZ800, which is administering Windows Server Hybrid Core Infrastructure, and I'll explain why it's the core part, and then AZ801, configuring Windows Server Hybrid Advanced Services. Now, before we get into this, Jeff, what's the biggest question that you've got when you've been presenting Windows Server around the world for the last few years? Right here, right here. And it's not just, you know, it's been customer conversations, you know, obviously virtually, but as well as through social media. There's a lot of people that have been saying, hey, where is the latest Windows Server certifications? What do you guys thoughts on them? You know, how are you thinking about certifications going forward? And there's been a lot of actual, you know, really thoughtful, you know, consideration as to how we think about server administration going forward. And, you know, we want to transform with the time. I mean, if we look at Windows Server itself, the code itself transforms with the times. We're constantly adding new features based on where customers are going, what the requirements are. You know, I look at, you know, I can look at every click-stop release of Windows Server. You know, Windows Server 2000 introduces Active Directory. Windows Server 2008 introduces Hyper-V. You know, the file server, the scale-out file server, all of these capabilities. 2016 introduces containers. 2019 takes them another level further. 2022 is introducing a whole bunch of new things around containers and secured core and application modernization. So as we change the code, it really got us thinking, well, wait a minute, should the certification just be the same old, same old? Or should it not only, should it be transforming with the times, just like we think our customers are into this hybrid world? So I'm really excited. Let's go. Okay. So to answer the why now question, Windows Server 2022 is designed to work in hybrid cloud environments. And one of the things that you'll notice about a lot of certifications recently in the Microsoft space is that they've been very much associated with cloud. And it's only really now with Server 2022. 2019 had a starting of a hybrid cloud story. But if you think about things like Azure Arc and Security Center and Sentinel and Monitor, they've reached a level of maturity now where people out there in the real world are actually integrating those products into their hybrid environments. And one of the things that's very important to understand about where we want to be with certification. And I don't speak fully for worldwide learning, but this is just in general. Is that we want to test you on things that you actually use in your job role, not with just announced a new product that we're going to go and throw an exam on that product. And you've never actually used it in production before. So it's only now that we've really got a body of people that are ready for a hybrid certification. And that's why we're comfortable now in saying, yeah, it's now the right time to do a Windows Server hybrid server. Orin, you are spot on with that. I mean, look at this. We're talking about Azure Monitor, Azure Arc, Security Center. These are things that have been in market for some time now. These are mature. We have customers that are deploying, loving these, managing these. And they're seeing their estate now through Azure wherever they're located. Small companies, big companies, distributed companies, distributed architectures, whatever. But they love the fact that they can take advantage of these capabilities. And now they want their admins to be able to do this. They want their admins to say, oh yeah, we know Azure Monitor. Absolutely. We're using it. We're collecting logs. We're monitoring things. And we are comfortable with this. And so, yeah, the time is right. The time is now. Okay. So one of the things to understand, even though we've talked about that hybrid aspect of it, is this is a Windows Server and hybrid certification. So it's teaching or it's testing you on core Windows Server stuff. And you're going to see that as Jeff and I go through the objectives, as well as that extra bit of special source that is the hybrid component. And you'll see that as we go through, that we'll talk about Active Directory and then Active Directory Hybrid. We'll talk about storage and storage hybrid. So this isn't just a cloud only. This is perfectly suitable if you're just running Windows Server on-prem. But you will also learn the story of how much better Windows Server will be as you start to integrate it with our cloud services. So this first exam, AZ800, administering Windows Server hybrid core infrastructure. And I'll go at the high level and talk about functional groups on each of the two exams. And then we'll actually dig into those functional groups. So this one starts with deploy and manage Active Directory domain services. Then we're managing what you're using as your management tools. Then we're looking at virtual machines in containers or compute. Implementing and managing on-premises and hybrid networking infrastructure and manage storage and file services. So that's the first exam. And I'll get your comment in a minute about the structure of the two exams. So the way it is that you have to do both exams to get the cert. In the second exam, we go in and we do security. So how do you secure Windows Server and hybrid? How do you do high availability for Windows Server and hybrid? How do you do disaster recovery? How do you migrate servers and workloads? And then how do you monitor and troubleshoot your Windows Server and your hybrid environments? So the first exam covers your core stuff. Yes. And then once you've built on that, the second exam covers the more advanced or the stuff that you'd say, okay, you've got to know all of it, but you probably need to know this first. Yeah, this is great. And you know, one thing, you and I have been in this IT space for quite a while. And we talked to a lot of folks that have been in this space for quite a while, but it's also a good time. Remember, there are a ton of people joining this space right now. There are a lot of people leaving, you know, they're graduating college, they're going into the field, and they are new to, hey, how do I do AD at scale? How do I do AD management? Help me understand how GPO fits. Help me understand identity management. Help me understand, you know, storage best practices. Help me understand hybrid identity and domains and forests and multi-side and all of these things. And this core infrastructure, it truly is. This is your core. It's the things you really need to understand, because what it does is it unlocks all of the features and capabilities on top of this, because so much of this is like, oh, yeah, well, you know, we make the assumption yet, yeah, you're in an AD environment. And guess what? It makes identity authentication just makes it so much easier, because that firm foundation is there. So I love the fact that this is like, yep, this is your hybrid core. You got to get this through first. And then 801 makes so much sense, because it's building right on top of this. So what we're going to do now is go through each of these functional groups. So this first functional group, as you can see here, is the identity one. And the way that this works is as I go through here, you can see that I'm going to explode all of the particular awesome. So you can see here, and you know, which one of the you're interested in talking about, we can jump down into now. Obviously, you can go and view the exam objectives in the full separate from the talk. So this is just Jeff and I sort of riffing on these. So you can see here that we've got within this functional group, deploying and managing ADDS domain controllers. And you can see what that's made up where we're talking about on prem, what you need to think about when you're throwing image or Azure, what you need to think about with RODCs, and troubleshooting your fismo roles. Forests, multi-domain, multi-forest environments. What you need to think about in that particular area. Security principles, okay, just basic creating users and managing groups. Managing users in multi-forest environments. So what kind of security group do you need to create if you want to use that security group in a trusted forest? Yes. Group managed service accounts. Oh, GMSA, big underline there. Big underline there. Those are super critical. Just super critical. And then joining Windows Server, not just to Active Directory domain services, but as your Active Directory domain services, or a stroke as your AD. All of the situations where, okay, what do you need to do? What are the prerequisites for doing that? Now, I'm not saying that that's the questions, but this is the sort of stuff that you need to know to meet these particular objectives. Hybrid identities. Okay, so that's where we've gone. We've started off with your core stuff, and now we're going into, okay, so what do you need to think about getting your identities from on prem into Azure? Because that's where most people are going to be working. They're going to be having some stuff down here and some stuff up here for a long time. And that's where we're trying to touch with the cert. So a lot of this is about Azure AD Connect. And as these technologies evolve, the thing about the new modern certification is as newer technologies get more and more adopted, because we've made some announcements in this sort of synchronization space very recently. The exam will eventually rev. And the way that this works in terms of your certification is that you take the certification and then after a period of time, you'll get sent a link to do an online test where you can just recertify. You don't have to go back to a testing center. You can keep your certification up to date. And that's where you'll learn about new stuff that might have been added. So once you get this cert, it's really easy to keep maintaining this cert. And then we come back. And of course, you can't talk about Active Directory without hitting group policies. So how do you manage group policies for Windows Server? The next one, managing Windows Server workloads. So the idea of this functional group is what tools do you go out and use to manage this? And what's your favorite new tool, Jeff, for managing Windows Server? Windows Admin Center, of course. Sorry. Hey, let me ask you a quick question. Because I know you are really intimately familiar with all of the certification work here. You have been just a champion here. And I'm just wondering, how much of this is familiar do you think to existing server admins? Well, I mean, what do you think is the learning curve for this? Do you feel like it's going to be a sharp learning curve? Do you feel like we're kind of gradually bringing everybody up to speed? How do you think about that? Look, it's always very interesting. Because when I go out and speak in front of audiences like you do, especially things like Ignite the Tour, you'll go and do a PowerShell session. And you'll get a lot of people who go, yeah, we know what PowerShell is, but we only use it a little bit. Or we know what Windows Admin Center is, but we only use it a little bit. People tend to pick up the tools that they're used to. And unless they've got a reason to pick up a new tool, they go, well, I've got my hammer. My hammer works. It does nails. I don't need to do anything other than nails. I'm going to stay with my hammer. Or in this case, the Microsoft Management Console. So I think that you have a very broad spectrum of people when it actually comes to Windows Server on the ground in terms of what tools they actually use. And one of the prompts that certification provides is that even though this is a tool that you might use, or some people are using on a day-to-day environment, I know that in my own certification journey, I would pick up technologies that I might not use in my day-to-day job because they were on the exam. So one of the things that the exam is, is it can be a bit of a forcing function to say, oh, look, maybe you should be familiar with how to configure PowerShell Remotin. Maybe you should actually know how to use just enough administration. So it really depends on the administrator. You do not have a consistent Windows Server administrator in the world. You've got some people who are absolutely cutting edge. They've already deployed their Windows Server 2022 domain controller even though it's only been out a few days is generally available. And then you've got others that are still sitting there on Windows that haven't made. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if this certification helps get them to 2022 faster so they can take advantage of the new security, the new features, the new hybrid capabilities, the new application innovation, I think that's awesome. So glad to hear that that's flexible there. Well, it's also about the certification can give you a reason to go and learn something new because it gives you a structured format in which to learn about those tasks. And the way that a certification is built, and a lot of people might not be aware of this, is that we decide that the certification should exist in a certain area. And then a group of SMEs are brought in to talk about the tasks that are relevant to that particular area. And that's eventually codified down into a set of exam objectives. But it's all about what is something that you would do in this role. And what you'll notice about these exam objectives is that they don't include the word planning. This is all configuration and administration. It's all very things on stuff because it's all about what tasks should or is someone in this role doing. So we got a whole lot of people that do the job. And we discussed, okay, is this a reasonable thing for people to already know should we even test this? Should we test something really basic or should we just say, no, that's assumed knowledge. Let's move on. So here we're talking about managing Windows servers using Azure services. So that's where you're connecting things such as Azure Arc to manage Windows server where you're managing updates, where you're perhaps using desired state configuration. The next functional group, virtual machines and containers, compute, managing Hyper-V and guest virtual machines. So the idea on this one is if you're managing on Hyper-V, what do you need to know to manage your Hyper-V virtual machines? What are the skills that are reasonable to test you on about managing Hyper-V? Managing containers. Now we haven't gone to container orchestration because we're hoping it's at one stage or at some stage in the next eventually. But maybe there might be another certification coming along dealing with another. And then we've got Hyper-V as your on-prem and then what do you need to know about managing your virtual machines in Azure that run Windows server? So really drilling down into some of the previous Microsoft certifications have been very general about virtual machines in Azure and it might be running Linux or you might be running Windows. Here we're saying, okay, what if you're thinking about a hybrid environment? You've got your Windows servers on-prem and your Windows servers in Azure. What do you need to know about that management paradigm? Next, how do you connect? What's your glue networking? So what do you need to know? So we start off on-prem, DNS because it's always gonna be DNS. I'm gonna tell you right now, this is gonna be a section that's gonna get a lot of attention because where a lot of folks out there I know may feel like, hey, I'm comfortable with Hyper-V or I'm comfortable with Active Directory or I've used GP for a while. If there's something that keeps coming up over and over is, hey, how do I get the hybrid networking right? How do I figure out DNS? How do I manage IP? How do I deal with things like forwarding and conditional forwarding, things like that? This is awesome, really awesome. And we have just, Microsoft has just introduced a networking exam that's very much pure cloud networking stuff. And again, the frame of this one is hybrid. So this is, I need this to talk to this rather than getting into the minutiae of all the stuff that goes on in the cloud. So very much about how do we get DNS talking to one another? What do we do about IP addressing? And one of the things that you and I have talked about in the past is how do you keep track of your IP address ranges on-prem and in the cloud? Because one of the things that organisations find when they go hybrid is that someone might have spun up a bunch of address ranges in the cloud that can flip through there on-premises. And then they'll spend a whole lot of time un-mucking that. And it's better, at least, again, if you're sort of sitting there from the beginning thinking, okay, I probably need to keep track of this. So what do you do about DHCP? Obviously, you're not managing DHCP in the cloud, but we do have to think about high availability because, again, if your DHCP servers go down, that causes a lot of pain if you're on-prem and if you're not thinking about all of those bits and pieces. Because, again, people can get very lost in such a complicated bit of infrastructure such as networking. And then managing hybrid network connectivity. What do you need to know about managing remote access? About, you know, this feature in Windows Server called the Azure Network Adapter. Where is that appropriate to implement as a solution versus a site-to-site VPN? What about as your extended network? What about as your virtual WAN, where you can make Azure the backbone for routing between all of your on-premises sites? So, again, understanding from that core element, compute, networking, identity and storage, and then management, all of that sitting in this exact... And I could easily see scenarios where an admin would need to deploy different ones. You know, branch location may have different than a core data center and you'll have lots of interesting scenarios there. So, I'm glad you're walking through each one of those. Yes. And, you know, eventually, I'm hoping, maybe eventually, that we might get an architect sort of summit content in that particular area. But this is very much a... Someone's made the decision, how do you implement it, sort of a thing? Yeah, it's almost like we're thinking there's a many... There's a couple of steps in this certification path, you know, just thinking out loud. Yes, exactly, because it's a big, complicated topic that's very relevant to all of our customers. So... Love it. Love it, Orrin. That's why we also needed two exams to fit this in, because there was no way that we could give a reasonable on-prem and hybrid surf covering all of the core topics. And there's a lot of stuff we left out, because if you think about, like, the 2016 certification or the 2012, they were three exams. And if you go back to when we got started, because I assume, like me, you're probably at least an NT4, baby, you're looking at six exams for your certification path then. So fitting that all in. Anyway, so storage, as your file sync, had to have that in there, because as your file sync is absolutely your gateway drug into hybrid. And what I mean by that is it just improves file service so much. So everything from how do you set it up to how do you migrate an existing DFS implementation across to, as your file sync? I just have to say, as your file sync, I've had so many customer conversations where I explain what as your file sync says. And basically, in a nutshell, it makes your file server virtually bottomless, syncing everything to the cloud. And everything that's hot resides locally, so your file server becomes a hot file cache. Every time I have that conversation with a customer, it stops right there. I don't know how many times I've had a customer go, didn't we just spend a jillion dollars on some storage thing to do exactly this? And you're telling me this is built right into the file server? Yeah, this is all built right in and you're only paying for the storage that you're using. Oh, and by the way, it's doing all of the intelligent tearing for you. So I'm so thrilled to see this here. I think this is a fantastic part of the certification. No, I mean, it's always been when I've been presenting on hybrid. It's always been the thing that makes people light up because every working day administrator has had the problem where they've got to go and what I call it mucking out, like mucking out the pig pen, mucking out the file server. Have you ever figured out what you can retire and always make the wrong decision because you go and remove some file that no one's touched for three years and you remove it and you go and put it on a tape and you ship it off to storage and then Ken from accounting goes, oh, can you go and get, I can't find that file. Yes, exactly. It's intelligent. It's awesome. All right, keep going, keep going. Okay, so configure and manage Windows file shares. What do you actually need to know about file shares? File screens. File screens have been there since 2003 and you would be amazed at how many people don't remember them. And then using file server resource manager, branch cache, and we still do cover distributed file system because our customers still use it. However, you will notice I was very good and we didn't put wins into the networking thing, even though it's a core part of the operating system. And then Windows server storage, disks and volumes, storage spaces, storage replica, data de-duplication, SMB direct, storage quiz, and just configuring your file systems, ReFS, NTFS, and that is the first exam. In part two, we're going to talk about the second exam. Wow, that was just part one. Awesome.