General Availability of Azure RemoteApp

Today (11 December 2014) sees the General Availability of Microsoft Azure RemoteApp. This service delivers Windows applications from the Azure cloud and is licensed with a choice of two USLs – Basic for lightweight LOB applications (data entry, for example) or Standard for productivity applications (Office, for example). 40 hours are included in the starting price ($10 and $15) and any overage is billed hourly up to a capped price of 80 hours ($17 and $23) and after that there are no more charges.

See this Microsoft page for full details and some very useful FAQs: http://bit.ly/1slel6c.

Simplification comes to Office 365 Activation

As of 17 November 2014, it’s easier to activate Office 365 subscriptions purchased via Open and Open Value programs.

Firstly, there’s a new streamlined activation method which means that you don’t even have to go into VLSC and the product keys are populated automatically for you – download a user guide for this process here: http://bit.ly/1yOOUQr.

Alternatively, if you prefer to initiate processes like this from VLSC then that’s still possible and you get the benefit of the simplified no-copying-and-pasting-of-product-keys improvements too.

Here’s the user guide explaining this process: http://bit.ly/1wciZbu.

See the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/1yOLoWd.

Day 10 – 74-678 Top Tips

Tip 10 for a successful 74-678 Christmas. Are you confident when you should use the PUR, Product List or OST? Make sure you can recommend the right document in different situations for the exam.

Day 9 – 74-678 Top Tips

Tip 9 for a successful 74-678 Christmas. Don’t waste time revising for things that aren’t in the exam – you don’t need to know anything about Visual Studio or MSDN licensing, for example.

MSDN Subscription Administrators’ Guide

If managing MSDN Subscriptions is part of your life, then this Subscription Administrator’s Guide is worth a read.

It’s a comprehensive (45 pages) overview of the all tasks that you’ll need to know how to tackle, with some useful tips and best practice recommendations too.

Get this August 2014 guide here: http://bit.ly/1ucJ3hm

Day 8 – 74-678 Top Tips

Tip 8 for a successful 74-678 Christmas. The new exam includes MPSA so make sure you’re familiar with the key elements of this program. The Get Licensing Ready site has a dedicated track on this topic to get you started: https://GetLicensingReady.com

Day 7 – 74-678 Top Tips

Tip 7 for a successful 74-678 Christmas. Make sure you’re up-to-date with your product licensing knowledge – so External Connector type licences are no more for Lync, SharePoint and Exchange, for example.

Get to all the Microsoft Licensing Guides in one place here: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

Day 6 – 74-678 Top Tips

Tip 6 for a successful 74-678 Christmas. Make sure you know if you’re being asked how many SQL Server Core LICENCES are required or how many SQL Server Core 2-PACKS you would order.

The answer to yesterday’s question is 48 licences.

Day 5 – 74-678 Top Tips

Tip 5 for a successful 74-678 Christmas. Make sure you can work out how many SQL Core licences are required for a given set of servers. Here’s one for you to have a go at:

A customer has three servers, each with four quad-core processors – how many licences do they need to run SQL Standard in the physical environment on each server?

Watch for the answer and another tip tomorrow!

Day 4 – 74-678 Top Tips

Tip 4 for a successful 74-678 Christmas. Get 15% off your exam fee if you schedule and take your exam before 31 December 2014. You just need to use the voucher code 15OFF. See the full terms and conditions here: http://bit.ly/1CI9tSs.