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Gain visibility and control across your hybrid cloud with simplified operations management and securityWatch the videoCreate a free account
Gain immediate insights across workloads
Tap into operational intelligence when it matters to explore, analyze, and take action faster.Learn more about Insight & Analytics
Respond faster to security threats
Identify emerging threats to protect your critical data and workloads.Learn more about Security & Compliance
Enable consistent control and compliance
Deliver continuous IT services and remediate issues quickly at scale.Learn more about Automation & Control
Ensure availability of apps and data
Simple, automated data protection and disaster recovery in the cloud.Learn more about Protection & Recovery
All your IT operations tasks in one
Access to insights in minutes
Hybrid and open
Management anywhere, anytime
Extend System Center
All your IT operations tasks in one
Access to insights in minutes
Hybrid and open
Management anywhere, anytime
Extend System Center
Gartner names Microsoft a leader in the Disaster Recovery as-a-Service Magic Quadrant
See how Operations Management Suite can help your organization
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" > <channel> <title>Hybrid Cloud IT Management Blog</title> <atom:link href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter</link> <description>Management Anywhere: Any Cloud, Any Platform</description> <lastBuildDate>Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:35:45 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en-US</language> <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> <item> <title>Operations Management Suite expands to include security management, threat detection</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/08/03/operations-management-suite-expands-to-include-security-management-threat-detection/</link> <comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/08/03/operations-management-suite-expands-to-include-security-management-threat-detection/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:00:01 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Security]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Threat Detection]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8515</guid> <description><![CDATA[Today's IT operations and security teams are tasked with managing highly complex environments which are being targeted by a growing number of sophisticated cyber-attacks. These teams have an obligation to identify and remediate security vulnerabilities and threats before they impact the business. To solve these challenges, today we announced general availability of the updated Operations... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Today's IT operations and security teams are tasked with managing highly complex environments which are being targeted by a growing number of sophisticated cyber-attacks. These teams have an obligation to identify and remediate security vulnerabilities and threats before they impact the business.

To solve these challenges, today we announced general availability of the updated Operations Management Suite (OMS) Security solution. OMS Security is an easy-to-use cloud solution designed to monitor security for any IT environment. With this new solution, Microsoft has enabled IT operations and security teams to more quickly and easily understand their overall security posture, detect security threats, and respond quickly.

Since the preview of the new capabilities for OMS Security in February, we are seeing over 1,000 new customers per week using the service. Customers from a diverse set of businesses have benefited from the solution, with many of them ingesting several terabytes of security data per day. OMS Security continues to help businesses defend against cyber-attacks by providing visibility into the security of their entire IT environment, detecting active threats, and enabling rapid search for further remediation.

OMS Security features available now include:

Enhanced Security dashboard, which makes it easier to visualize and analyze security state, enables security monitoring for Linux servers, adds built-in notable issues to prioritize vulnerabilities and detections that require attention, and the ability to create custom notable issues:

Antimalware assessment to show the status of installed antimalware protection on servers, and any malware detected:

Threat Intelligence map and breakdown to detect servers communicating with malicious actors, along with insights into the source of the attack:

Security Configuration Baseline Assessment to identify vulnerable Operating System configurations that could be exploited by attackers:

Identity and Access dashboard to show failed logins and admin activities, providing insight into potential brute force or dictionary attacks:

Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) integration, that surfaces security threats discovered by Advanced Threat Analytics within Operations Management Suite.

Additionally, today we're announce two new capabilities that are available as public preview for Operations Management Suite:

Advanced detection engine: Analyze security data from across your IT environment using behavioral analysis and machine learning. OMS Security can detect a wide array of attacks, including suspicious processes running on virtual machines, lateral movement attempts and more. The advanced detection engine utilizes Microsoft security research to provide continual updates for recent attack knowledge.

Cisco ASA log ingestion: Bring Cisco ASA security information into OMS with new insights on malicious network traffic in and out of your network. For customers, adding this log data broadens the ability to track malicious IP addresses from any computer trying to get through the firewall.

Operations Management Suite continues to advance monitoring, automation, security, and protection and recovery capabilities to give you a holistic view of management for your systems. Learn more about how to get started with the new OMS Security capabilities. Your feedback is important to us. We encourage you to submit ideas and suggestions on the Log Analytics forum or in the comments below.
 ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/08/03/operations-management-suite-expands-to-include-security-management-threat-detection/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>New monitoring features for network performance, backup</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/27/new-monitoring-features-for-network-performance-backup/</link> <comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/27/new-monitoring-features-for-network-performance-backup/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jul 2016 15:00:51 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Hybrid Cloud]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Network]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS Backup]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8465</guid> <description><![CDATA[Monitoring the health of your systems and operations is an essential component of effective IT management. IT environments today are more distributed and hybrid than ever, and business applications often run across multiple points in the datacenter or even across multiple locations. With such a distributed environment, network connectivity is critical to keep the business... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Monitoring the health of your systems and operations is an essential component of effective IT management. IT environments today are more distributed and hybrid than ever, and business applications often run across multiple points in the datacenter or even across multiple locations. With such a distributed environment, network connectivity is critical to keep the business functioning smoothly. Additionally, efficient enterprise-quality backup solutions are necessary to avoid business interruptions in this hyper-connected world. Having the right level of visibility and control into your hybrid environment to monitor performance and latency becomes a must-have capability. Today, two new features in the Operations Management Suite will be available for public preview that will enhance functionality for monitoring network performance and backup deployments to help you meet business needs.

Insights for network performance and connectivity

Monitoring the quality of network connectivity between your datacenters, remote office sites, or even critical workloads running line of business applications is a challenge in most IT environments. Conventional network monitoring solutions provide very little information about performance of the network as these are generally designed to monitor health of individual network devices. The Network Performance Monitor technology, part of the Operations Management Suite, offers near real-time monitoring of network performance parameters such as loss and latency. It enables timely detection of network performance issues and localizes the source of the problem to a particular network segment or device. Using historical trend graphs, you can easily detect transient network performance issues. An interactive topology graph allows you to visualize the hop-by-hop network routes and determine the source of the problem. Now you can confidently tell if a network issue is affecting your application performance without having to rely on your network team.

>>> Try it now: Create a free Operations Management Suite account

Consolidated view of backup status

Many companies today are taking advantage of cloud backup solutions to securely protect enterprise data and applications without the hassle and complexity of on-premises solutions. Azure Backup, part of Operations Management Suite can further reduce time managing and maintaining backup deployments with this latest feature that centralizes monitoring and alerting into a single dashboard. Now, rather than having to go to each server to check the status of backups, you can see backup jobs and alerts across cloud and on-premises in one place. You can also configure alerts for backup failures and view the alerts or subscribe to email notifications, to keep you informed as issues arise.

Increased agility for your IT operations

These two new monitoring features support the goal of the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) to increase agility for IT operations. OMS leverages Microsoft's deep operations management experience to streamline IT management across any hybrid cloud. With capabilities spanning analytics, automation, configuration, security, backup and disaster recovery, OMS is a cloud-based management platform designed for speed and agility. As a SaaS solution, OMS can be set up within minutes, giving you immediate visibility across your environment. Now you can confidently tell if a network issue is affecting your service so you can immediately provide insight to your network team.

For more information on these new features, please visit the Operations Management Suite documentation webpage or sign up for a free trial. Follow us on Twitter @MSCloudMgmt.
 ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/27/new-monitoring-features-for-network-performance-backup/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Top 3 sessions on IT management & security at Microsoft Ignite</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/25/top-3-sessions-on-it-management-security-at-microsoft-ignite/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 25 Jul 2016 16:00:33 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[ignite]]></category> <category><![CDATA[System Center 2016]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8445</guid> <description><![CDATA[Microsoft Ignite, which is set to take place in Atlanta between 26th and 30th of September, gives you five days of hands-on learning, industry insights, and direct access to product experts. It promises to a fun and action-packed 5 days. If you have a focus on Hybrid Cloud IT management, here are 3 sessions that... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Microsoft Ignite, which is set to take place in Atlanta between 26th and 30th of September, gives you five days of hands-on learning, industry insights, and direct access to product experts. It promises to a fun and action-packed 5 days. If you have a focus on Hybrid Cloud IT management, here are 3 sessions that we recommend you don't miss:

Take your management and security strategy to the cloud
 In this session we will explore how you can tackle multiple challenges facing IT operations in the cloud-first world. Hear experts at Microsoft talk about how you can rethink your management and security strategy to handle these challenges across a hybrid cloud. Armed with vision and strategy, you will be able to bridge the hybrid divide by adopting a set of tools for management and security designed for the cloud-first era.

Take advantage of new capabilities in System Center 2016
 System Center makes it possible for you to run your IT operations at higher scale and drive more value for your business. System Center 2016, which brings a new set of capabilities that integrate with our cloud management tools to help you manage your IT operations in the cloud-first era, will be launched at Microsoft Ignite! Come learn about how you can take advantage of System Center 2016 and the new business value that it promises to unlock.

Assess security posture of your datacenter in under one hour
 Join this session with an exciting live demo where we show you how to get from zero to a security hero in just under one hour. Using familiar and new tools, included in Microsoft Operations Management Suite Security, learn how you can detect threats, perform security investigation and protect workloads, servers and users without any prior security knowledge.

We hope to see you at all of these sessions and more at Microsoft Ignite. If you haven't already done so, please register yourself to attend. Don't forget to join us at the IT management pre-day training! Pre-day trainings are available as an add-on to ignite conference pass.
 ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title>System Center 2016 to launch in September</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/12/system-center-2016-to-launch-in-september/</link> <comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/12/system-center-2016-to-launch-in-september/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 12 Jul 2016 17:00:54 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8435</guid> <description><![CDATA[We are pleased to announce that Microsoft System Center 2016 will be launched at the Microsoft Ignite conference in late September. System Center makes it possible for you to run your IT operations at higher scale and drive more value for your business. System Center 2016 brings a new set of capabilities that integrate with... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
We are pleased to announce that Microsoft System Center 2016 will be launched at the Microsoft Ignite conference in late September. System Center makes it possible for you to run your IT operations at higher scale and drive more value for your business. System Center 2016 brings a new set of capabilities that integrate with our cloud management tools to help you manage the challenges of moving to the cloud. This release also unlocks new technologies available in Windows Server 2016 that will enhance the software-defined datacenter and provide new layers of security for your operating system.

With the launch of System Center 2016 and Windows Server 2016 in September, you will have a cloud-ready platform and the operations management tools you need to run a secure, efficient, and responsive datacenter. At Ignite, you'll find an array of sessions to give you the latest updates on System Center and how to take advantage of these new capabilities.

Highlights of System Center 2016 include:

Support for new Windows Server 2016 technologies, including lifecycle management for Nano server-based hosts and virtual machines, Storage Spaces Direct, and shielded virtual machines

Performance and usability improvements, including all the update rollups since System Center 2012 R2, improved UNIX and Linux monitoring, and ability to tune management packs and alerts

Native integrations with Microsoft Operations Management Suite to give you expanded analytics, data correlation, orchestration, archival, and hybrid management capabilities

You can download System Center 2016 Technical Preview 5 now to get started. See more of What's New in System Center 2016 and Windows Server 2016.

System Center is a key part of the Microsoft hybrid cloud management strategy. To make it easier to access the value of System Center and the Operations Management Suite, you can now take advantage of a new subscription option. As customers consider their management tools, we believe that the cloud-based capabilities of Operations Management Suite, and the new subscription model which includes System Center, offer a great combination that will make it easier to transition to the cloud.

We look forward to seeing many of you in Atlanta!

Follow us on Twitter @MSCloudMgmt.
 ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/12/system-center-2016-to-launch-in-september/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Gartner names Microsoft as a leader in DRaaS</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/05/gartner-names-microsoft-as-a-leader-in-draas/</link> <comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/05/gartner-names-microsoft-as-a-leader-in-draas/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 05 Jul 2016 17:00:18 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Azure Site Recovery]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Disaster Recovery]]></category> <category><![CDATA[DRaaS]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8415</guid> <description><![CDATA[Resiliency and disaster recovery are top of mind for enterprises in an increasingly connected world where even a minor outage is a competitive disadvantage. However, full-scale disaster recovery can be complex and costly. Even today, many organizations have disaster recovery plans covering only their critical IT systems because of these concerns. Microsoft's vision is to... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Resiliency and disaster recovery are top of mind for enterprises in an increasingly connected world where even a minor outage is a competitive disadvantage. However, full-scale disaster recovery can be complex and costly. Even today, many organizations have disaster recovery plans covering only their critical IT systems because of these concerns. Microsoft's vision is to enable organizations to build comprehensive, yet cost-effective business continuity plans easily. With Operations Management Suite and Azure Site Recovery, organizations can achieve low recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) targets for every major IT system, without the hassle or the cost of a secondary data center. With this disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offering designed for the needs of enterprises, customers can tap into effectively unlimited capacity at a moment's notice.

In light of the importance of disaster recovery to any business's IT strategy, we're excited that Gartner has now recognized Microsoft as a leader in their Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service based on completeness of our vision and ability to execute. (See Figure 1 below).

Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service

Microsoft is committed to providing the flexibility our customers need in protecting data throughout the entire lifecycle. We have designed Operations Management Suite with centralized management, integrated data protection and application availability to support business continuity and compliance goals throughout the lifecycle of your apps.

Our customers' stories

The true power of Operations Management Suite is enabling our customers and partners to realize their business goals – whether it's reducing costs, simplifying management, speeding time to market, or all of the above. Here are some inspiring stories from some of our customers who are using Operations Management Suite to build great business continuity plans:

Paul Smith built a strong business continuity plan to support applications that directly influence the company's ability to generate revenue. Solutions powered by Operations Management Suite enabled the customer to protect the integrity of their brand through consistent, always-available, quality service in stores and online.

EVRY created new enterprise-grade, heterogeneous DR offerings to serve its customers with flexible, low-cost DR services and to offer a resilient, cloud-based DR solution that is easy to test and operate even if a datacenter is unavailable.

We look forward to delivering more innovation in business continuity, helping our customers protect their organization. You can download the full report here: Gartner: Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service.

** This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft Corporation. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.**
 ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/07/05/gartner-names-microsoft-as-a-leader-in-draas/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Deep dive on backup protection for IaaS VMs</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/05/26/deep-dive-on-backup-protection-for-iaas-vms/</link> <comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/05/26/deep-dive-on-backup-protection-for-iaas-vms/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 26 May 2016 19:00:20 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Azure Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Best Practices]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Microsoft Operations Management Suite]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Operations Management]]></category> <category><![CDATA[IaaS]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Operations Management Suite]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Virtual Machine]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8396</guid> <description><![CDATA[As we continue with our discussion of backup, the next topic is backup specifically for IaaS virtual machines (VMs). An increasing number of organizations are moving their applications to the cloud with IaaS as the fabric running the apps. Although there are a number of compelling value propositions for adopting cloud IaaS, moving to the... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
As we continue with our discussion of backup, the next topic is backup specifically for IaaS virtual machines (VMs). An increasing number of organizations are moving their applications to the cloud with IaaS as the fabric running the apps. Although there are a number of compelling value propositions for adopting cloud IaaS, moving to the cloud does not change the need for backup. The redundancy provided by a cloud solution does not address the issues of data loss or corruption. These corruptions could either be malicious or caused by human errors. Therefore, even for cloud-native applications, backup is still an imperative irrespective of resiliency of storage and compute layers.

Due to the nature of the cloud, however, leveraging existing backup solutions with cloud apps offers neither adequate protection nor desirable cost structures. As an analogy, in the early days of virtualization, backup vendors who specialized in backups of physical servers continued to follow the same approach with virtual machines. Key vendors then transformed the industry by actually taking advantage of the hypervisor layer in backing up virtualized workloads.

In the same vein, a cloud-first approach is required for backing up applications born in the cloud. OMS Backup is designed from the ground up to provide a cloud-first backup solution specifically for this type of application. It uses controls and mechanisms modern IT is already familiar with, like a GFS retention scheme that allows up to 99-year retention schedules and enterprise grade SLAs. Yet it is also purpose built cloud-fabric level protection for apps running on Azure, delivering protection with near-zero impact on production workloads.

OMS Backup is designed to be efficient with resources. For example, it reduces network and storage utilization by transferring only incremental changes. Using technologies such as VSS, OMS backup delivers application consistent backups of your Windows virtual machines. It delivers file-system consistent backups for Linux VMs. Since all of the storage and backup is managed by the recovery services vault, it removes storage management overhead. All of this translates to minimal overhead for maintaining backups, allowing IT organizations to focus on adding value to the business.

OMS Backup supports most configurations of VMs as deployed by enterprises to support their applications, including support for Azure Resource Manager VMs, VMs with disks on premium storage etc. OMS Backup is also designed to work well with other OMS technologies such as OMS Automation to automate repetitive tasks with PowerShell. Let's look at how it works.

Enabling backup of VMs

Setting up backup for virtual machines requires an Azure subscription and a recovery services vault. Once a recovery services vault is created, setting up backup for virtual machines is a simple three-step wizard:

Specify backup goal: Specify the intent to protect Azure Virtual machines.

Select a backup policy: Specify the backup schedule and retention of backup copies. Azure Backup supports up to 99 years of retention using industry standard GFS schema.

Select items to protect: Specify which virtual machine you want to backup using the policy provided in previous step.

To automate configuring of backups on multiple virtual machines, use the following PowerShell cmdlets:

PS C:\> $policy=Get-AzureRmRecoveryServicesBackupProtectionPolicy -Name "DefaultPolicy"

PS C:\> Enable-AzureRmRecoveryServicesBackupProtection -Policy $policy -Name "V2VM" -ResourceGroupName "RGName1"

Restore a VM from backup

Restoring a virtual machine from the backups stored in recovery services vault can be achieved by a simple two-step wizard:

Select point in time: Select a recovery point corresponding to the point in time to which you want to restore the virtual machine.

Specify restore VM configuration: Specify the configuration of the virtual machine you want to create.

PowerShell for recovery services vault provides an ability to restore disks from point in time to a storage account and ability to attach those disks to any choice of configuration for additional flexible choices in VM creation.

PS C:\> $restorejob = Restore-AzureRMRecoveryServicesBackupItem -RecoveryPoint $recoverypointlist[0] -StorageAccountName DestAccount -StorageAccountResourceGroupName DestRG

Resources to get started

Guided walk through of the VM backup experience

Step-by-step guide of documentation on VM backup

Issues? Post in Azure Backup forum.

Suggestions or improvements? Visit the Azure Backup feedback forum.

Follow us on Twitter @AzureBackup

 ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/05/26/deep-dive-on-backup-protection-for-iaas-vms/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>1</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Announcing the general availability of the Recovery Services Vault</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/05/23/announcing-the-general-availability-of-the-recovery-services-vault/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2016 16:00:22 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Announcements]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Azure Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Microsoft Operations Management Suite]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Operations Management]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Recovery Services Vault]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8305</guid> <description><![CDATA[In our earlier blog posts, we talked about a couple key scenarios for Backup in Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS): Cloud as Tape Replacement and Remote Office backup. Today we are announcing Recovery Services Vault in Microsoft Azure, which brings OMS Backup and OMS Site Recovery under a common management umbrella. Both these scenarios can... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
In our earlier blog posts, we talked about a couple key scenarios for Backup in Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS): Cloud as Tape Replacement and Remote Office backup.

Today we are announcing Recovery Services Vault in Microsoft Azure, which brings OMS Backup and OMS Site Recovery under a common management umbrella. Both these scenarios can now be managed from Recovery Services Vault, a single Azure resource that lets you manage Backup or enable replication for Site Recovery. This not only gives you consistency as you work with either solution, but also paves the way for tighter integration of backup and disaster recovery capabilities. For backup scenarios, the Recovery Services Vault brings Azure IaaS VM protection as well as hybrid data protection under a single management entity. Recovery Services Vault is not just a storage vault, but also a management entity that provides a single pane of glass for managing all backup assets across your organization.

Getting started with Recovery Services Vault is quite simple:

Look for Backup or Site Recovery in the Azure Marketplace in the Azure portal.

Create a Recovery Services Vault in a region closest to your datacenter or where the Azure IaaS VMs are deployed.

For a guided experience, select Getting Started, then Backup in the settings page.

For on-premises backup to cloud choose the type of workload you plan to backup and the necessary components, either Azure Backup Server or Azure Backup Agent, are automatically selected for download.

Once the Azure Backup Server or Agent is installed, you can register the server to the Recovery Services Vault using the vault credentials and enable backup. For more information, refer to the documentation.

Options for Cloud Solution Providers or CSP Partners

The Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program (CSP) enables partners to directly manage their entire Microsoft cloud customer lifecycle. Partners in this program utilize dedicated in-product tools to directly provision, manage, and support their customer subscriptions. Partners can easily package their own tools, products and services, and combine them into one monthly or annual customer bill. With the release of Recovery Services Vault, OMS Backup is fully CSP enabled. Partners can be the first point of contact for end customers and manage their backup solutions or enable self-service experiences for their customers through the following interfaces:

Azure portal

PowerShell

Benefits of moving to Recovery Services Vault include:

ARM VM Backup

The new Recovery Services Vault enables backup of ARM IaaS virtual machines as well as classic virtual machines. These backups are application consistent backup for Windows Azure VMs and File-system consistent backup for Linux Azure VMs without the need to shutdown VM. It is simple to configure and there is no infrastructure to manage.

Backup management

Customers view backup artifacts registered to Recovery Services Vault such as the following too quickly:

Backup items such as Azure IaaS VMs

Recovery points for each backup item in order to restore

Production servers, such as Windows Servers that are backed up

Backup management servers such as Azure Backup Servers and System Center Data Protection Manager servers

Backup jobs for IaaS VMs

Overtime, customers can expect more functionality added to the Recovery Services Vault to manage all aspects of backup from a single pane of glass.

CSP enablement

As mentioned above, Recovery Services Vault is the only way for CSP partners to manage backup and enjoy the benefits of Microsoft CSP program.

To learn more about OMS Backup, check out the Learning Path.
 ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title>A cloud-first backup approach for remote and branch office protection</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/05/19/a-cloud-first-backup-approach-for-remote-and-branch-office-protection/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 19 May 2016 19:00:36 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Azure Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Best Practices]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Microsoft Operations Management Suite]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Operations Management]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Operations Management Suite]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8315</guid> <description><![CDATA[In our earlier blog post, we delved into how the cloud-first backup architecture, powered by Operations Management Suite and System Center, makes for a compelling solution for offsite backups and long term retention of on-premises data. In this post, we will focus on data protection in the remote and branch offices (ROBO) of an enterprise.... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
In our earlier blog post, we delved into how the cloud-first backup architecture, powered by Operations Management Suite and System Center, makes for a compelling solution for offsite backups and long term retention of on-premises data. In this post, we will focus on data protection in the remote and branch offices (ROBO) of an enterprise. We will explore how a cloud-first backup approach can overcome challenges associated with backup at these remote sites.

Most organizations centrally manage remote data and backups. Such a setup requires sending backup data over an intranet, which is typically made up of expensive dedicated leased lines, to the primary datacenter. Such backup data, which is often voluminous, overloads a network infrastructure primarily provisioned for business applications. Furthermore, in this model remote backups from multiple locations must be transported to the central location and then vaulted for long-term retention.

While decentralized backup solves some of these problems, it is expensive both in terms of provisioning remote infrastructure and maintaining it. Decentralizing backups requires you to procure and provision storage hardware and licenses for backup software, as well as hiring or training skilled IT personnel at remote and branch office locations.

Cloud-first backup of remote and branch office data

The backup solution powered by Operations Management Suite operates on the common sense premise that internet bandwidth is more plentiful in remote and branch offices than intranet bandwidth. Leveraging the cloud for remote and branch office backups means eliminating backup-related infrastructure at those sites and freeing up IT for value-added activities.

Operations Management Suite caters to the specific requirements of remote and branch offices with the following solutions:

Azure Backup Agent

Some of the data in remote and branch offices has flexible restore requirements. In such cases there is no need to maintain a copy for operational recovery on-premises. Such data is usually made up of files and folders. This type of data can be protected using the Azure Backup Agent offering in a direct-to-cloud model. A direct-to-cloud approach to file-folder backup eliminates the need for any backup infrastructure.

Azure Backup Server

Remote and branch offices often also have line of business applications that need protection. These workloads frequently have operational recovery requirements. An example of such a requirement would be "line of business application can be restored to a point in the last 30 days with less than two hours' downtime." In such scenarios, it might make sense to keep the restore points or backup data related to the operational recovery on-premises and offload the rest to the cloud.

The Azure Backup Server offering is capable of backing up enterprise-grade business applications to disk. It also has first-class integration with Azure Backup to tier backups to the cloud, thus enabling a local-copy to disk to cloud strategy. This not only enables rapid restores from the disk, but also enables a massive reduction in the infrastructure requirements in remote and branch offices.

Both Azure Backup Server and Azure Backup Agent are Operations Management Suite offerings that make for a best-in-class remote or branch office backup solution due to the following unique advantages:

Cost effective solution for a large number of remote and branch offices

A cloud-first backup solution greatly reduces the cost of backing up applications at remote and branch offices. In one Microsoft case study, PCL constructions, a construction company which runs hundreds of active job sites at any point in time, reduced their backup costs by a whopping 73% by adopting a local copy to disk to cloud backup strategy.

Reduced Time to Value

Provisioning a cloud-first backup solution with Operations Management Suite for remote and branch office protection only involves a few clicks to download and install the Azure Backup Server or the Azure Backup Agent. The on-premises investment is limited to the storage required for operational recovery using Azure Backup Server.

Nearly eliminate backup infrastructure

With the backup solution powered by Operations Management Suite, storage – which is the significant driver of cost in any backup solution – is delivered as-a-service directly from Azure and is paid-as-you-go. The only infrastructure that needs to be provisioned is storage for operational recovery. This not only reduces costs, but also frees up IT for more strategic activities.

Leverage direct-to-cloud model

Internet bandwidth is often significantly cheaper than intranet to corporate datacenters in most remote and branch offices. Adopting direct to cloud model for backups not only reduces costs but also frees up valuable intranet bandwidth for business applications.

Find out more about Azure Backup Server and Azure Backup Agent to begin leveraging the cloud to back up your remote and branch offices.
 ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title>Cloud as offsite backup for the enterprise</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/05/18/cloud-as-offsite-backup-for-the-enterprise/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 18 May 2016 17:00:33 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Azure Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Best Practices]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Microsoft Operations Management Suite]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Operations Management]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Operations Management Suite]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8295</guid> <description><![CDATA[In a previous blog post, we talked about why architecture matters and how a cloud-first enterprise backup solution can bring customers the real benefits of cloud in a data protection solution. In this blog, we will explore how this cloud-first model brings the benefits of the cloud to offsite backups and long term retention. The need... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
In a previous blog post, we talked about why architecture matters and how a cloud-first enterprise backup solution can bring customers the real benefits of cloud in a data protection solution. In this blog, we will explore how this cloud-first model brings the benefits of the cloud to offsite backups and long term retention.

The need for a cloud-first offsite backup solution

Most organizations find that up to 90% of the restores they do when dealing with data corruption or retrieving lost data are from short term stores that are typically less than 30 days old. Such operational recovery often necessitates disk backups for restore performance. Additionally, business compliance, legal or regulatory reasons require organizations to retain backups over long periods of time. These backups typically need to be stored offsite.

Tapes have been the traditional target for such offsite backups. The tapes themselves are not expensive, but that low-cost starting point obscures the much higher operational and management costs of using them for long term retention. Tape backups often require manual intervention for management, orchestration and removal offsite. Although most companies use managed vendors for tape storage, the level of manual intervention remains a drain on IT personnel who are kept from performing activities that drive value to the business. The reliability of tapes that could potentially stay in an archive for multiple decades has also been called into question. Restoration from a tape typically involves several steps in a process that could potentially run into days, especially when a tape that is vaulted offsite needs to be retrieved. This process is ill-suited to satisfying business owners who demand agility or the modern apps that were built on the premise of data being always available. Finally, relying on existing offsite backup solutions adds to the sprawl of infrastructure on-premises.

Cloud as the enterprise offsite

The backup offering in Operations Management Suite and System Center is designed to offer a superior alternative to the existing long term retention and offsite backup solutions by taking a cloud-first approach to the problem. There are several unique advantages to leveraging a cloud-first offsite backup solution:

Reduces burden on IT

Perhaps the biggest advantage of adopting a cloud-first offsite backup is that IT professionals are freed up to do tasks that add value to the business as opposed to maintaining, managing and troubleshooting an existing on-premises offsite backup process. One customer, Stephane Budo, a Solutions Architect at Vigilant.IT, found that they went from spending 35 days out of 18 months on backup issues to spending no more than 10 minutes in two and a half months.

Cost-effective long term retention

The OMS Backup solution is designed to be extremely cost effective for long term retention. License fees are computed on front end storage, which means that it is not linked to the necessary growth in backend storage for backups. The backend storage is at cost with pay-as-you-go Azure Blob Storage. There are no egress charges associated with restores.

Reliability and ease of restores

With the OMS Backup solution customers can leverage geo-redundant storage on Azure, dramatically increasing reliability compared to existing solutions. Moreover, the restore experience is simplified as it makes full use of the intelligence of the cloud. For instance, customers are able to retrieve single items from the backup as opposed to having to bring an entire library back.

Security and compliance

OMS Backup offers security by encrypting the backup on the wire and at rest. Additionally, OMS Backup complies with global standards like ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2, as well as country-specific standards like Australia IRAP, UK G-Cloud, and Singapore MTCS. These measures ensure that data is safe and that organizations have complete control of access to their data.

Come back soon for technical tips on how to leverage cloud backup.

Find out more about Azure Backup Server and how you can replace tape with a cloud-based backup solution.
 ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title>Cloud-first enterprise backup: Why architecture matters</title> <link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/05/12/cloud-first-enterprise-backup-why-architecture-matters/</link> <comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/05/12/cloud-first-enterprise-backup-why-architecture-matters/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2016 15:00:49 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team]]></dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Azure Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Best Practices]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Microsoft Operations Management Suite]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Operations Management]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS]]></category> <category><![CDATA[OMS Backup]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Operations Management Suite]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/?p=8225</guid> <description><![CDATA[In the previous blog post, A tour of Operations Management Suite: Backup, we discussed how more and more organizations are turning to the cloud to address the rising demands facing modern IT and how it is increasingly clear that new paradigms for data protection will be required for hybrid environments. Cloud has been the key... Read more]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[
In the previous blog post, A tour of Operations Management Suite: Backup, we discussed how more and more organizations are turning to the cloud to address the rising demands facing modern IT and how it is increasingly clear that new paradigms for data protection will be required for hybrid environments.

Cloud has been the key enabler in the transformation of modern IT, delivering powerful tools to empower agile and rapid innovation while providing a solid foundation for security and reliability. As organizations plan to transform their data protection solutions to take advantage of cloud, many existing solutions in the data protection domain have been positioned as possible options. However, due to their origins, most existing data protection solutions, whether traditional or modern, approach cloud in one of two ways:

Cloud as a storage target OR
Cloud as another data center

Neither of these approaches is designed from the cloud up, and as a result present a variety of potential challenges. In the first approach, treating cloud resources as a dumb storage target does a disservice to the vast potential of the data in the cloud. In spite of the power of the cloud, restores are often complex in such scenarios, hindered not only by the egress costs most public clouds levy on data leaving the cloud, but also by the lack of any intelligence in the cloud. Although this approach adds cloud to the mix, it does nothing to prevent infrastructure and solution sprawl on-premises. The simplicity and efficiency of the cloud model don't translate to the solution.

The second approach, treating cloud as another data center for data protection is equally fraught with problems. In this scenario, customers often have to run existing backup software on a cloud IaaS layer. Needless to say, this must be run almost continuously. Doing so not only uses additional compute IaaS resources, but also adds management complexity by giving customers yet another VM to manage, patch and keep up to date. Furthermore, customers often have to deal with limitations imposed on the cloud IaaS itself. For instance, Azure allows a maximum of 32TB per VM which may not meet the needs of large backup software. In order to solve this, customers often have to run multiple VMs, effectively nullifying most advantages they sought to derive by moving to the cloud.

How can you get the real benefits of cloud in a data protection solution? The answer is to design from the cloud up, rethinking the old models. The backup technologies in System Center and Operations Management suite are built from the cloud up to deliver the value that you expect from the cloud: a sharp reduction in costs and complexity while improving agility, reliability and security.

The following diagram illustrates architecture for OMS Backup solution at a high level:

There are several unique advantages to a cloud-first enterprise backup solution:

Reduced time to value

Existing System Center customers will find that leveraging OMS Backup requires just a few clicks. Customers who are new to System Center may need to set up operational recovery infrastructure on-premises using System Center Data Protection Manager. They will still find that OMS Backup offers superior time to value compared to most other solutions. This stems from the fact that a major portion of the solution is delivered as a service from the cloud.

Minimal maintenance

With a cloud-first backup solution delivered as a service from the cloud, the backup infrastructure that customers need to maintain is vastly reduced. Furthermore, if customers choose to leverage cloud for most of the long term retention requirements, then they can begin to eliminate tape and related costs on-premises. This usually translates to IT working on higher value tasks as opposed to keeping legacy systems such as tape backups alive.

Minimal up-front costs

With the OMS backup solution, only license costs are paid up-front. Thus most of the long term retention costs that stem from storage are pay-as-you-go. Leveraging cloud-first enterprise backup also means eliminating or reducing a large amount of on-premises costs and leveraging them only for operational recovery.

Simplified licensing

Using cloud as either a storage target or as another data center usually means leveraging at least two vendors: one cloud vendor and one backup software vendor. Unlike such solutions, the OMS backup solution greatly simplifies licensing and use. It also reduces complexity by reducing the number of vendors that customers have to deal with.

Cost effective long-term retention

The OMS Backup solution is designed to be extremely cost effective for long term retention. License fee is computed on front end storage and backend storage is at pay-as-you-go on cost-effective Azure Blob Storage. There are no egress charges associated with restores.

Intelligent restores

A key advantage of the cloud-first approach is the ability to leverage the intelligence in the cloud when doing restores. For example, customers can retrieve individual items of interest when doing restores from the cloud as opposed to having to bring down an entire archive and then open it on-premises.

Consistent security

One of the traditional concerns with cloud-backups is the degree of security it provides for stored data, especially as this data is stored for long-term retention. By implementing the secure HTTPS protocol for any transmission of data over the network as well as encrypting the data at the source, and storing encryption-key at the source and only the encrypted data on the cloud, a cloud-first backup approach ensures the customer is in complete control of access of organizational data.

In the next week or so, we'll explore how enterprises can leverage these solutions to replace legacy backup solutions such as tape backups and how they can leverage cloud protection for their remote and branch offices. Check back soon.

To hear from our experts, register for the upcoming webinar, How a cloud-first approach can transform enterprise backup, on Tuesday, May 24 at 10:00 am PDT.
 ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/2016/05/12/cloud-first-enterprise-backup-why-architecture-matters/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>2</slash:comments> </item> </channel> </rss>


text:
This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.
October 13, 2010
Interior Department Approves First Solar Power Tower on U.S. Public Lands
The Ivanpah solar project will rely on solar power tower technology, which employs a field of flat mirrors to concentrate the sunlight on a receiver, mounted at the top of a central tower
The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) approved on October 7 the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the first large-scale solar energy project on U.S. public lands to use "power tower" technology. Proposed by BrightSource Energy, the project could produce up to 370 megawatts of clean energy, enough to power 111,000 to 277,500 American homes. Located in San Bernardino County, California, the project is expected to generate approximately 1,100 new jobs. The DOI decision authorizes Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to offer BrightSource a right-of-way grant to use the public lands for 30 years if all rents and other conditions are met. The site is in Southern California's Mojave Desert, near the Nevada border.
The Ivanpah project uses innovative technology that, when completed, will include three solar thermal power plants. The technology employs mirror fields to focus solar energy on power tower receivers near the center of each array. Steam from solar boilers in the towers drive a turbine that generates electricity for the transmission grid. Construction of all three project phases is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2013. To lessen its environmental impact, BLM reduced the size of the project by more than 15%, from 4,073 acres to 3,471 acres; it also reduced the number of heliostats (solar mirrors) from 214,000 to 173,500.
Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, renewable energy developers whose projects begin construction by the end of 2010 can apply for payments of up to 30 percent of the eligible costs of the project. Also under the Recovery Act, DOE awarded BrightSource $1.37 billion in conditional loan guarantees for this project. See the DOI press release and an fact sheet on Ivanpah.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
We will be having a league meeting on Wendsday Jan 9th, at Toads in CF, at 6pm.
Lots of ground to cover:
Snow Disc
Hickory Hills
Cedar Woods (new course at Big Woods)
Spring Training
Work Days - Course Repairs
Summer League
6 midgets a shoe horn and a 5# tub of Crisco
Spread the word!!!


text:
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