Is SharePoint On-Premises Really a Cloud?

Let me relate a quick story to you. We had two separate IT security incidents last week. One individual had ransomware that encrypted a good number of documents. Another individual had a crash related to windows updates with continual, unfixable reboots. These machines eventually were reloaded to fix the problems.

How does this relate to SharePoint though?

Both of these stories had varying degrees of heartache and pain associated with getting the machines functional again. One saving grace of the process though was that most of the daily work and critical files were stored in different cloud providers.

Why does this matter to SharePoint? “Cloud” solutions makes it easier to segregate your security into parts that do not have to be reloaded or compromised when an incident occurs on a local machine. With enough standardization of employee machines, moving to another laptop could make be as simple as logging on with your own username.

SharePoint is a cloud product. It always has been and always will be. A service doesn’t have to be on the internet to be a cloud solution. It simply has to be remote from the user’s local machine. SharePoint on premise is still a cloud solution, it’s just a private cloud.

I’m not going to argue whether Office 365 or SharePoint on-prem is the right choice for you. You’ve most likely already made that decision. What I’m here to urge is to seriously consider SharePoint as a central platform for your Information Technology solutions as a cloud provider. Through extranet solutions, your internal cloud can be just as accessible as internet based solutions. We do it every day here at PremierPoint Solutions.

It’s too easy to save your files locally. It just makes sense. But when catastrophe happens, that simplicity will be a liability. SharePoint, or any cloud service, plays an important role in removing local liability and putting your critical data into a safer location.

by noreply@blogger.com (Robert Schley) via SharePoint Solutions Blog

ChangeBot Challenge at SPTechCon in Austin!

PremierPoint Solutions is at SPTechCon in Austin this week!

Come see us at Booth 601 if you're there too. Come take the ChangeBot Challenge to enter for a chance to win a BB8. We'll show you the droid you ARE looking for.

by noreply@blogger.com (Robert Schley) via SharePoint Solutions Blog

Future of InfoPath 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 in 2016

Is this finally a real future of InfoPath and SharePoint Designer? 

In an announcement for SharePoint 2016 Release Candidate, the future of InfoPath and SharePoint Designer was briefly addressed in the FAQ towards the bottom of the post.

Key Points:

• "InfoPath 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 will be the last versions of those products." (still)
• "Support for InfoPath 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 will match the support lifecycle for SharePoint Server 2016, running until 2026."
• InfoPath Forms Services is still solidly supported through SharePoint 2016 lifecycle

Interestingly enough, questions about how long Office 365 will support these products immediately came up. No specific answer was given though. I honestly don't think that Microsoft has a full plan at the moment.

Given that in 2013 Microsoft was rumored to be moving away from SharePoint Designer and attempting to throw InfoPath over the closest cliff, I'm very happy to see both of these tools recognized as part of the core value inherent in SharePoint.

Apps may be touted as the next great thing but the products that have supported productivity for years aren't fading any time soon. I wouldn't be surprised to have solid replacements for these products released by Microsoft in the next two years.

by noreply@blogger.com (Robert Schley) via SharePoint Solutions Blog

Cloud Warning! The risk of online services

I ran across a dark underbelly of cloud services

picture taken by cjohnson7

this week. It was fairly unexpected but I think that it emphasizes one of the key problems when looking at cloud services.

Who really owns the data?

This is the question when we start looking at cloud services. The immediate answer from cloud providers is most likely "you do!" but is that really the case?

Just this week, I have a situation that refutes cloud service congeniality. To set the scenario I must confess that I  have possibly "lost" the raw material files that were used to create some online education packages. This was due to system malfunction and data loss. My need of backups is only a side-note in this narrative though.

The stormy weather of cloud services is revealed when our online learning host was approached about downloading copies of the materials that we had uploaded. We were given a solid "that is not available" response.

I am honestly stymied by this response. I created the content. My company owns copyright. I uploaded it to their service, yes, but I am very confident that I never signed an agreement to hand over rights to my digital files. This greatly concerns me when I look at the technology world crying "cloud, cloud, cloud". Is this really the way of the future with possession of bytes the nine-tenths of the law that matters?

This particular episode has once again soured my belief in cloud services. If you want to retain your data securely with a guarantee of access not confirmed only by your monthly bill, I would highly recommend to think twice before jumping to your cloud panacea.

Do you have any cloud horror stories?  Please feel free to drop them in the comments.  Best Wishes.

by noreply@blogger.com (Robert Schley) via SharePoint Solutions Blog

How do you train students?

I set out on a mission a few weeks back to discover a

better way to make our materials available to students.  This was prompted by a student in one class remarking that if we're "..going to use digital materials, then you need to go all the way".  I'm probably paraphrasing but that's what keeps ringing in my head! (thanks kate)

I've done a lot of searching, talking with software reps, and even attempted to modify some technical documentation software to fit what I want. After all that, the final solution wound up being SharePoint.

For various reasons, none of the previous items fit the bill.  We're not even going with SCORM based training.  It's going to come down to using pages, Office Web Apps, hosted media, and a tiny bit of scripting added to a Master Page to get the Quicklaunch I want.

I think this is really a testament in some ways to the effort that Microsoft has been putting into SharePoint as a platform.  Don't get me wrong! I'm very cross at MS for the patches I spent 3 hours this morning backing off my machine so I could talk on Lync and post to SharePoint from Word again.  They don't do everything right.  I'm also still fighting with using the web services from Python.  Those are completely different projects though. In the end SharePoint is exactly what we need.  Here's a preview of what our training will look like in the near future.

 

 

There's a lot of work in the background that isn't very evident from the screenshot. Not the least of which is Extranet Collaboration Manager which is making all of this possible.  I can't wait to get students into it.  What platforms do you use for training?  external or internal?

by noreply@blogger.com (Robert Schley) via SharePoint Solutions Blog

PowerShell Direct - Simplified SharePoint Management Shell?

One particular feature of Server 2016 that is announced is PowerShell Direct.  Take a look at this article from the Microsoft Virtualization blog.  The short version is that it will allow the Hyper-V host to PowerShell directly to the guest operating systems. This could lead to some very interesting scenarios.


The first possible use, given by Microsoft themselves, is to use the shell to configure guest servers from the host using scripts. This should allow you to have a fairly standard set of features or roles defined in a PowerShell script.  The script can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you rather than having to copy scripts over or run them from mapped drives.  I could potentially see this as scripting an entire build for custom server environments.  Admittedly, most smaller IT shops won't have a need for it. But for anyone that has had to build multiple similar servers (like say for classes?) then this will be invaluable.

A second scenario would be to automate admin tasks. I'm investigating the possibility but if you were to have a web front end that could possibly kick off a PowerShell as one action of a standardized process, then suddenly a lot of tasks could be automated through a web front end rather than manually setting off a script.  Depending on the scenario, users could even initiate these scripts; with a pause for admin approval of course.

Lastly, how much SharePoint Management Shell do you work with as a SharePoint administrator?  Rather than having to jump from server to server, in large implementations, you could conceivably work with any guest management shell from the host OS.  The session will be interpreted on the guest so any modules available on the guest OS will be available through Direct PowerShell. With the connections to different guests handled by PowerShell, you could coordinate action on multiple servers through one script.

Some things from the Microsoft article that make this not quite an all-in-one solution are that right now this only works on server 2016 and Win 10 hosts/guests. There is a call to action in the Microsoft article asking for suggestions on OS and scenarios that admins would like to see. The author of that article, I believe, is one of the presenters at the Microsoft Ignite conference. If it's who I think it is, then she's on the team for the project and any suggestions will (hopefully) be validly considered.
Another issue is whether a guest system can "talk" to the host PowerShell.  While making configuration changes to the host is not my primary consideration, being able to talk guest OS to guest OS would go a long way to making my web interface for PowerShell tasks a reality. We'll see how that turns out.  For now, I'm installing the Technical Preview 2 and looking forward to this next generation of OS.

by noreply@blogger.com (Robert Schley) via SharePoint Solutions Blog

Nano Server and Hyper-V goodies

Along with the scoop on SharePoint 2016 from yesterday, I got a load of information on two related technologies. While not directly integrated with SharePoint there is a good chance that as a SharePoint Administrator you work with Hyper-V or servers in general. I got to take a look at the Nano Server and the new Hyper-V goodies that are in the pipe to be released. If you want to play with them now, look up Technical Preview 2 from Microsoft.

Nano Server

• Nano Server is a stripped to bare bones server.  This edition literally has no local interface; no GUI, no RDP, and no 32 bit support. Some of the advantages of this is reduced footprint in resource consumption all around, smaller attack surface for those malicious individuals roaming the internet, and extreme reduction of patching requirements. The results of all the reductions is a complete server load of under 500 MB!
• Currently, there are two primary roles available; Hyper-V and Clustering. There are more to come (currently apps and System Center agents in the works) and Microsoft is looking for feedback on what else to include.
• The demo servers booted in about 5 seconds and were running off of usb hard drives. The only regret is that they had to strip out the full .NET libraries to get to this size. I don't think we'll see SharePoint running directly off of this server anytime soon, but I will most definitely be exporing running SharePoint in Hyper-V from this little beast.

There are more technical details about Nano out there but those are the main pieces; it's been reduced to almost no overhead.

 

Hyper-V

• Clusters will self heal. If your clustered storage disappears for more than 60 seconds then all VMs will be paused until the clustered storage comes back. At that time, your VMs will continue as normal.
• Microsoft is working on having backups of the individual VMs that are independent of backing up the host filing system. I'm assuming that this is related to Nano Server no having a backup role at this time.
• There are promised tools to see how much memory each guest is utilizing. This flows into being able to change memory, dynamic and static, without shutting the virtual machine down! Network cards will also be able to be added or removed while the guest is running.
• You will be able to PowerShell from the host to the guest operating system. This will also allow you to copy files from the host to the guest operating system and vice versa. This opens up amazing opportunities for management by scripting. I'm very interested in the opportunities this could have with our ChangeBot product for administration automation.

There are many more pieces on both these topics, but I found these to be the most pertinent to our own Microsoft environment. Best wishes on your future SharePoint success!

by noreply@blogger.com (Robert Schley) via SharePoint Solutions Blog