Create your teams 

Teams are designed to be a virtual place where people can come together, with all the tools they need, to share information or collaborate on a common workstream. You can have as many teams as you need, and individuals can be on multiple teams.  

Properly choosing and organizing your teams are key. Our goal was to shift from communicating through email threads – which can be hard to find or easily broken – to Microsoft Teams in order to streamline and simplify communication. Having well-structured teams keeps all related information in one place.  

At CCB, while we have a few company-focused teams for general announcements, most of our teams are department-based, since those are the people we collaborate with most. In marketing, we have teams like Email, Blogs, and Website, since they are things we frequently work on together. However, we also have a Podcast team that crosses departments.  

Pro tip: To avoid teams sprawl, you can set policies in your Teams administration to only allow certain people to create and manage teams. 

Add channels 

Your teams are meant to be broken down by channels – these are the specific projects or conversations you’re having around a topic. For example, under our Blog team, I created a channel for this specific article called Onboarding Microsoft Teams. Within that channel I shared my drafts, got feedback from my team, and dropped in images to include. Having everything in one place simplifies the creation process and allows others to see progress and comment as they like.  

It’s simple to add a channel to your team by clicking the three dots to the right of your team name and choosing “Add channel.” You can also set policies for who to include in a channel in case it doesn’t pertain to the entire team.  

Pro tip: The default “General” channel is included in all teams and cannot be deleted or renamed. It’s used for non-channel-specific announcements and common chat among that team.   

Make the most of your channels 

Within each channel is everything you need to work with your team and get your job done. 

Add a tab 

At the top of each channel, you can create tabs for quick access to information that you frequently use. It’s similar to bookmarks on your web browser, but these tabs take you to your files and other team assets. Default tabs are built-in, but you can add others as needed, such as a website you frequent often, YouTube videos, and most document types. When you click on the tab, the content loads right there in Microsoft Teams.  

Share, store and edit files

Within your channels you can collaborate on documents with your entire team in real-time – just like you would in-person. When you add a file to your channel, it saves to your file tab at the top. You can also create new files from there as well right within your team.  

Your team can access these files together within the channel, chat about changes and edit them right away. This provides greatly enhanced efficiency and productivity. If you want the full experience of the native file apps, you can open in Word, Excel, OneNote, etc. and it will update in Teams. 

Your teams’ files are automatically saved on a SharePoint site, giving you all of the security of Microsoft 365.  

Microsoft Teams Wiki 

This has become one of our favorite features since onboarding Microsoft Teams. We use it to share specific procedures, policies, and best practices related to each team. There are many reasons why this is such a handy tool.  

You can save details about important processes, which allows others to know how to correctly perform a specific task or helps with training new employees. That stops information from walking out the door when a person leaves. 

Some of the things our marketing team uses wiki for are instructions on how to update WordPress, our branding guidelines and image specs, frequently used html codes, and design program processes – to name a few! 

Pro tip: Every single channel has a wiki, but you might not want to use them all as it could get confusing. We often use the wiki under  the “General” channel for the entire team. 

Posts and Chat 

We have teams, we have channels, we have tools – let the communication begin! There are two ways to message people within Microsoft Teams: posts and chats. They’re fairly similar but location sets them apart. Posts are the chat conversations that happen within a channel, and chats take place outside of your teams. 

Chats are great for quick questions to one or more people, Monday morning memes, or communicating with people not in your teams.  

Posts are the conversations that take place around the topic of your channel. It’s important to share those messages in the channel so that all details are clearly communicated to team members. If you put it in a chat instead, it becomes unrelated to a specific channel topic and might get lost, slowing your progress and frustrating team members.   

What sets posts apart from chats, is that you can have threaded conversations where you can create topics for easier navigation. Back to my blog example: within the channel I might create topics called “First draft ready for review” and “Images needed,” where I can work on each item separately with the team members involved. This helps to quickly catch up on conversation topics without having to read posts that are irrelevant to you. 

Pro tip: When you create a new post within your channel, give it a headline so it’s easy to keep related details on the same thread. If you’re replying to a conversation, be sure to hit “reply” instead of starting a new conversation – it’s easy to miss.  

Messaging features in posts and chats: 

Formatting

Just like you can do in Microsoft Outlook, in Teams you can add formatting to your messages to highlight important details and make it easier to read. Options include normal styles like bolding and highlighting, to adding tables, links, quotes and more. You can also make announcements in posts to really get your team’s attention. 

Mentions

With channel posts, you can easily and quickly alert a person or group to your new message by using the “@” symbol. @name reaches a person, @team reaches the whole team, or @channel notifies just those in that specific channel. This comes in handy when you have many teams and communications happening at the same time.   

Mark as unread and bookmarking

Just like email, you can save a message to come back to them later or mark them as “unread” so you don’t forget to respond. These little features help you keep track of what you need to do.  

Emojis, gifs, stickers and read receipts

This mostly sounds fun – which it is – but it also can keep things tidy and be a huge time saver. Within both posts and chats, you can use one of six emojis to show how you feel about a message, with the thumbs up being the frequent go-to. If you need to express your feelings further, you can respond with any number of emojis, gifs, stickers or memes. 

If someone hasn’t used one of these simple methods to acknowledge your message, you can at least tell if they read it by the little eye icon that appears next to it. These features keep conversations efficient and fun while eliminating back and forth emails to say, “got it” “thanks” “will do.” 

Pro tip: We have enough noise and distraction at work, and Microsoft Teams notification settings make it easy to see what’s important and ignore the rest until you have time to review it.  

Virtual meetings and calls 

If messaging just isn’t cutting it and you want to talk it out, you can start a meeting with a team by clicking “meet now” in the top right corner. If you have video enabled, you will see the participants tiled in the window. You can also share your screen to show others what you’re working on.  

Within chats you can also place a video or audio call. The nice thing about both options is that with one click, you can invite several people to a call at one time. 

Pro tip: There’s so much more! You can view your Outlook calendar right within Teams or add a Microsoft Planner tab to your channel to make it easy for your team to stay organized by assigning tasks and tracking progress – everything is at your fingertips. 

Have you tried Microsoft Teams yet? 

It has transformed our work experience for the better here at CCB. It truly brings together Skype, SharePoint, and Office into an easy and efficient way of communicating. Microsoft continues to update the tool and add new features.

Setting it up properly was key to successfully onboarding Microsoft Teams. If you’re not sure how to make it work for your organization or don’t have the time to get started, our engineers can help you implement and manage Teams effectively with our Microsoft 365 Support. It even includes consulting and end user training. Let us know if we can help! 

The post What We Learned Onboarding Microsoft Teams appeared first on CCB Technology.

1. Start simple

Chat functions can be an excellent way to get people communicating and active in Microsoft Teams. Show employees how to like comments, add emojis, gifs, and bookmark messages. It’s also a good time to teach the functionalities of calling, video, and screen sharing.

If you want your organization to get used to communicating within teams and channels, you may need to provide motivation. We found a creative way to do this by introducing “The Daily Thread” channel as a part of our company team. Each day we present a question and ask everyone to respond with their answer. Here’s one on “What’s your favorite sandwich?” that led to some interesting responses.

Be sure to add a subject title to your group post so it’s easy to keep track of. Using Teams in a fun way first can become a quick way for people to learn to respond to the appropriate threads and get used to chatting and posting in Teams.

2. Download the mobile app

Encourage the download of the Microsoft Teams mobile app to enable teamwork from anywhere on your phone while on the go. Don’t worry – the app allows you to set boundaries on your work time by setting quiet hours.

3. Think fewer teams and more channels

Be careful about starting too many small teams. Creating large teams with dedicated channels to collaborate on specific topics, projects, disciplines, or whatever you like, is the way to go. Don’t confuse teams with channels and the role they each play. It’s best to have a few large teams with several channels than many small teams with few channels.

4. Customize channels

Channels are where the real action happens – it’s the most efficient way to pull together all related content into one location. There is a learning curve here, but start by uploading files to a channel and pinning frequently used files to make it easy for everyone to find and start using for their resources.

5. Add apps to channels

You can integrate Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Power BI, Planner, SurveyMonkey, Hootsuite, and more with team chats and meetings. There are also fun ones, like Praise for recognizing accomplishments. It allows you to choose a badge and then add a personal note of thanks, congratulations, or whatever fits.

6. Manage ‘need to know’ content

Conversations can get messy and confusing quickly if users aren’t careful, so use OneNote or Wiki features to spotlight important content, meeting notes, best practices, and goals without cluttering conversations.

7. Highlight key resources

You can add essential websites used to track news, performance, live site monitoring or metric tracking. Simply add them as a tab at the top of a channel by highlighting the “+” and selecting “tab.” This keeps frequently used content easily accessible.

You can also pin your most frequently used channels or chats. To pin them, select the three dots next to the group, then select  Pin. This keeps your most important chats and channels at the top for easy access.

8. Forward email conversations

You can forward an email to a Teams channel for faster feedback within a threaded chat – attachments will upload automatically too. From Teams right-click on the ellipsis menu and select “Get Email  Address.” Next, click “Copy” to add the email address to your clipboard. Open Outlook and paste the email address into the “To” field of any email you wish to forward to your Teams channel.

9. Keep channels active

It will take some discipline but be sure you are using the appropriate channel for the related content. Stay active in channels and use @team to highlight posts for the whole group to help others keep content and conversations where they belong.

10. Have fun!

Microsoft Teams provides everything you need to effectively collaborate with your co-workers and what we like best is the ability to also have some fun. We’ve done virtual happy hours, enjoy communicating through emojis, YouTube and gifs, and add background images during calls – just to name a few.

Here’s an occasion where we congratulated our department employee of the month:

The possibilities are endless – both for getting work done and connecting in general. Onboarding Microsoft Teams throughout your organization doesn’t have to be a challenge and CCB is here to help support you. Let us know how we can make Teams happen for you.

The post The First 10 Things to do in Microsoft Teams appeared first on CCB Technology.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to send employees home to work remotely. How can your team maintain a collaborative environment while maintaining clear communication and project efficiency? If you find your team struggling with this and you’re looking for a solution – Microsoft Teams could be your answer. 

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a communication platform intended to enhance productivity by combining chat, video meetings, apps, documents and more into one interface where teams can collaborate on projects or topics. Chats are a natural way for teams to communicate, providing threaded, ongoing conversations so everyone can easily stay current. 

It’s free with all Microsoft 365 licenses

If you learn nothing else in this Microsoft Teams introduction, remember this: Microsoft Teams is available to all Microsoft 365 customers with business, enterprise, government, education and nonprofit licenses. It just needs to be turned on by your network administrator. Here’s how.

It’s fully integrated with Microsoft 365 apps

In Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 becomes a true hub for teamwork. All the tools you need are at your fingertips including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneNote, Planner and Power BI. 

For example, if someone schedules a meeting, they can include pertinent Word and Excel documents, OneNote notes – whatever applies – so all those resources are available at the fingertips of everyone involved. You can even use connectors to bring in things like Twitter and Bing News. It all works through threaded chats which is a convenient way to organize content. The application here is vast, but as this is a Microsoft Teams introduction, we’ll move on. 

It’s secure

Microsoft Teams provides enterprise-level security with key compliance standards including ISO 27001, ISO 27018, SSAE16 SOC 1 and SOC 2, HIPAA, and EU Model Clauses (EUMC). It also enforces two-factor authentication, single sign on through Active Directory, and encryption of data in both transit and at rest.

It’s customizable for each team

Workspaces can be adapted based on the needs of a team to be able to access the content and features they need every day. You can add tabs to provide easy access to frequently used documents and there are bots to help with quick actions. You can also use connectors to pull in updates from third-party vendors that are relevant to your team. 

It’s easy to get started with Microsoft Teams

This collaboration tool works on all major platforms. There are apps for Windows 10, Mac, iOS, Android, and Windows Phones, including browser-based clients, which make it useable on almost any device. Once it is enabled, it’s fairly intuitive to get going. Here are some tips we learned from onboarding Microsoft Teams. 

Are you ready to unlock Teams?
Hopefully this Microsoft Teams introduction has given you more context into how this tool could keep your team connected and working collaboratively without compromising efficiencies. When it comes to deploying and managing Microsoft Teams, you don’t have to do it alone.

Let’s talk about how CCB can get you started.

The post Microsoft Teams Introduction: Is it Right for You? appeared first on CCB Technology.

In this blog, I’ll answer these questions and show you the value with four concrete ways Azure can be used by your business and the real benefits you can gain today.

What is Azure?

At its core, Azure is a public cloud computing platform—with solutions including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) that can be used for services such as analytics, virtual computing, storage, networking, and much more. It can be used to replace or supplement your on-premise servers.

Here are some quick facts about Azure.

Azure is a fast, flexible, and affordable platform, and its pricing and capabilities make it the best public cloud offering on the market. Now let’s take a look at how to put it to work for you.

1. Enhance and Implement Backup and Disaster Recovery

Azure is a backup and disaster recovery dream tool. Why? Because of its flexibility, advanced site recovery, and built-in integration.

As a cloud-based solution, Azure is innately flexible – it can back up your data in almost any language, on any OS, and from any location. Plus, you define the frequency and extent of your backup schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).

Tape backup has a time and place, but it has limited abilities as a stand-alone backup and disaster recovery solution. Azure site recovery can enhance your tape backup with offsite replication, minimal onsite maintenance, up to ninety-nine years of data retention, minimal or no capital investment, and minimal operational costs. Azure backup stores three copies of your data in three different locations in the data center, and then another three copies in a remote Azure data center, so you never have to worry about losing data.

If you’re in a Windows virtual environment, Azure’s built-in integration for additional backup will be a quick and painless solution. Azure site recovery integrates with System Center and HyperV architectures, creating a robust and seamless cohesion between Azure, System Center, and HyperV.

2. Host and Develop Web and Mobile Apps

Whether you’re looking for a platform for hosting, developing, or managing a web or mobile app, Azure makes those apps autonomous and adaptive with patch management, AutoScale, and integration for on-premise apps.

With Automatic patch management for your virtual machines, you can spend less time managing your infrastructure and focus on improving your apps. Azure also comes with continuous deployment support, which allows you to streamline ongoing code updates.

AutoScale is a feature built into Azure Web Apps that adjusts your resources automatically based on customer web traffic so you have the resources you need when traffic is high, and save money when you’re not in peak times.

Through Azure, you can seamlessly link your web app to an on-premise app. Connecting apps in both locations lets both employees and partners securely access resources inside your firewall—resources that would otherwise be difficult to access externally.

3. Distribute and Supplement Active Directory

Azure can integrate with your Active Directory to supplement your identity and access capabilities—this gives your DNS a global reach, centralized management, and robust security.

With Azure, you can globally distribute an Active Directory environment that is direct connect enabled. No other cloud provider has the ability to extend the reach of your domain controller and consolidate AD management like Azure.

If you have multiple locations or use on-premise apps or cloud apps like Microsoft 365, Active Directory integration with Azure will be the central tool for managing and maintaining access to all of these tools.

Azure also enables you to utilize multi-factor authentication, adding a new layer of security to your data and applications with zero hassle for your users. You can also easily implement single sign-on for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS cloud apps.

4. Innovate with IoT Industry Solutions

The scalability, flexibility, and security of Microsoft Azure makes it the perfect resource for companies moving toward IoT solutions. You can connect your devices to the cloud using solutions that integrate with your existing infrastructure and start collecting new data about your company.

Within the Azure IoT Hub, you can monitor and manage billions of devices and gain insights to help you make better business decisions, improve customer experiences, reduce complexity, lower costs, and speed up development.

The enhanced security of Azure is a huge asset for IoT solutions, which traditionally have security gaps that hackers can take advantage of. Other benefits include remote monitoring and predictive maintenance and analytics.

Getting started is easy with Azure IoT solution accelerators, preconfigured templates that are customizable to your needs.

How will you use Azure?

These four services are just a glimpse of what Azure can do for your environment. Besides Microsoft’s defined services, it is full of cloud-computing potential that you can utilize in almost any way imaginable.

If you’re ready to try out one of these services, you can get your feet wet with a trial and $200 in Azure credits. You can also get an idea of cost by using the pricing calculator. If you have questions about other ways you could use Azure or need help implementing a service, talk to one of our sales engineers and we’ll help you plan and implement the right tools to meet your needs.

The post Microsoft Azure Explained: What It Is and Why It Matters appeared first on CCB Technology.

If you’re just getting started with PowerShell, first start with the basics – what it is, what it’s used for, and why it’s a formidable tool for administrators in today’s IT landscape.

Using Cmdlets

Cmdlets make up the core of how PowerShell is used. If you are not familiar with what they are, head over to our PowerShell Primer article to take a look. One commonly demonstrated Cmdlet is Get-Process. The Get-Process command gets the processes on a local or remote computer. Without parameters, this cmdlet gets all of the processes on the local computer. You can also specify a particular process by process name or process ID (PID) or pass a process object through the pipeline to this cmdlet.

PowerShell has an impressive way of helping users work more productively as well as assisting in remembering the larger number of Cmdlets contained within the system – Tab Complete. From a PowerShell console, simply start typing the command. After a few characters, you can press the tab key to have PowerShell complete the Cmdlet for you.

Tab complete is a lifesaver when it comes to working with PowerShell, especially when what has been typed into the console is ambiguous and the options need to be cycled through. You can either continue pressing tab to move through the list or in newer versions of PowerShell, you can press Ctrl + Space to bring up a full list of available commands.

Two of my favorite Cmdlets

Combining one’s knowledge with what’s available using PowerShell’s built-in documentation can prove to be a powerful asset. Two of my favorite Cmdlets are Get-Help and Get-Member. In this next section, I’ll break down what these Cmdlets do and how I use them to support my workflow.

Get-Help

The description for what the Get-Process cmdlet does was mentioned above. That information can be attained online or directly from the PowerShell console. Having the information directly available is one of the significant advantages of PowerShell compared to other scripting languages. Information about the cmdlets, the correct syntax, list of parameters, and even examples can all be reached without leaving the console or having to involve an outside resource. There are, of course, lots of great resources online with detailed examples and explanations – but those aren’t always readily available or accessible on a machine that may not have an internet connection or even more constraining, a machine with no graphical user interface (GUI).

Here is the example of what it looks like to the help documentation for the Get-Process cmdlet:

Note the first time you run Get-Help, you may be prompted to download updated help files. This requires an active internet connection and will take some time. This process pulls the latest help information down locally to your machine. If you are not able to run the update you can still view the help information – it just may not be the latest version. In many cases, this can still help you work through running the command, but it may not have any updated documentation.

Let’s break down this output.

The first two sections provide the name of the cmdlet and a synopsis of what the command does. A detailed description can be found just below the syntax. The syntax section explains how the cmdlet can be run. It shows the parameters that can be passed to the cmdlet, what type of objects they need to be, and whether or not a parameter is required. You can find more information on PowerShell syntax here and here.

In the remarks section, there are a few additional parameters you can pass to the Get-Help Get-Process command to view more information. Most notable is the -examples switch parameter. This provides a list of examples for how the command works. A few things for you to try out:
Get-Help Get-Process -examples
Get-Help Get-Process -detailed

This provides you with a more detailed version of the information shown above.

And you can even run Get-Help against itself to view all the ways that you can discover information about how PowerShell works. So, if you’re in the mood for some “light lunchtime reading” check out Get-Help Get-Help -full for some riveting information (ok maybe that’s just an engineer thing).

Get-Member

Get-Member is one of the other commands that I often use when working in PowerShell. PowerShell is an object-orientated language. This means that we can reference different parts or attributes of an object as we are working in the console or with a script. An object also contains different methods (or functions) that it can perform. The Get-Member command provides a view of what the object looks like. Try it yourself with the Get-Process command:

Get-Process | Get-Member

For those that aren’t aware, the vertical bar character in the middle is called a pipe. It’s located above the enter key.

When you are running Get-Member, you are looking at the members (or properties) of an object. In the example above, you are looking at the parts of the Process object (System.Diagnostics.Process). The output of the above command allows you to see what you can do with the process object, how you can interact with it, and other attributes. Some of the methods worth mentioning are start (which will start a system process) and close (which does the same thing as its name implies). The complete output is a bit long to include here, but feel free to run the above command and see for yourself.

By using a combination of Get-Help and Get-Member, you can get a better understanding of how cmdlets interact with each other and objects. In a future article, we’ll investigate starting to harness the capabilities of PowerShell and how it can help save you time and effort when it comes to managing an environment.

The post PowerShell Documentation Cmdlets – The Built-in Hidden Secrets appeared first on CCB Technology.

A Microsoft Azure migration does not have to be difficult, but it does require careful planning to be successful while limiting the impact on business. What parts of the network will be migrated? What’s the timing? Will it be done all at once or will there be multiple phases? Then, what is the process you will follow to accomplish the migration?

As with Lego sets, you need to follow a process. A strategic plan is required so that each piece of the migration fits together into an optimal solution. Businesses need to set clear priorities, decide the migration order, and determine the necessary resources.

Pre-Migration Considerations

While the concept of a Microsoft Azure migration is intriguing, there are considerations to be aware of before the planning phase begins.

• Compliance requirements can throw up a roadblock if you have sensitive data that that needs to be migrated.
• Proprietary technology, which some businesses use, may not be able to be deployed to Azure for legal reasons.
• Platform-specific applications can be hindered by platform lock-in, making it challenging to move between platforms.
• Insufficient bandwidth is an often-overlooked consideration that can result in frustration and lost productivity. As part of your assessment, perform an analysis of all network traffic to create a baseline that will help determine the amount of bandwidth needed to meet demand.
• System downtime is inevitable in the migration process, so plan accordingly by carefully estimating how much downtime each step of the migration may require.
•  Application and system compatibility can be an issue when running older versions of software. The key here is testing by creating a test environment and documenting as you test.
• Research management systems to determine the best option for your situation so it’s ready to go before you migrate.
• Analyze security requirements. Although the cloud is most often more secure than a traditional infrastructure, you may have additional security needs. Here are insights into what Microsoft has in place for Azure security.

Assessing On-Premise Resources

To build the Lego set correctly, you need to inventory what’s in the box and read the instructions to have an idea of how everything fits together. A Microsoft Azure migration starts with a solid knowledge of your infrastructure and how the all the parts work together. Performing a comprehensive infrastructure assessment is the best place to start.

An assessment will:

• Assess on-premises servers and applications: Understanding current server configurations, how they’re being used and what type they are, helps to determine the current capacity.
• Identify application and server dependencies: It is critical to understand which servers are supporting which applications and how they affect each other.
• Analyze Configurations: This will determine which workloads will migrate without modifications and those that won’t. It will also provide guidelines to remediate potential issues and identify possible configuration changes.
• Cost Planning: Now that you’ve collected resource data, such as memory, storage, and CPU usage, it’s time to estimate your costs using the Azure Calculator.

Building a Proof of Concept

Creating a proof of concept is an excellent idea before migrating the entire infrastructure to Azure. You can’t anticipate all possible issues during a proof of concept, but you can get a better understanding of the challenges you may face.

Microsoft offers a 30-day account that allows for $200 in credit to explore Azures capabilities, plus over 25 services that are free. You can deploy and test and get insight into the data capabilities available.

If you need help in planning how to set up your test environment, give CCB a call. We can connect you with a sales engineer to talk through what your objectives and goals are before you start.

Microsoft Azure Migration Approaches

The four most common strategies for migrating to Azure are:

• Rehost: Often referred to as a “lift and shift” migration, this allows existing applications to migrate to Azure quickly, by substituting the cloud infrastructure for yours with no modifications to your architecture. The downside is that this type of migration doesn’t take advantage of the elasticity of the cloud platform, which diminishes your cost savings.
• Refactor: This cloud migration approach requires small application code changes that allow you to benefit from auto-scaling. This approach can save money over time by using only the resources needed at a given moment.
• Rearchitect: Some applications may require more extensive modification of the code to benefit from running in the cloud. Rearchitecting takes time and is more expensive initially but will save money over time.
• Replace: Some applications are just too old and monolithic to make migrating them to the cloud worthwhile. Consider SaaS (software-as-a-service) alternatives designed for the cloud.

Little did my son realize all the considerations and planning needed to successfully build his Lego set, but the logical aspect overshadowed the excitement of what he was going to accomplish. He was thrilled by what he created in the end.

Careful planning, testing, and execution are a necessary part of the process, but enjoy the journey, knowing that the result will be a well-performing and cost-saving Microsoft Azure migration.

Ready to take the next step in your Microsoft Azure migration? From assessing your resources to choosing a migration approach and getting started, CCB can help.

The post Microsoft Azure Migration: Getting Ready to Move to the Cloud appeared first on CCB Technology.

As I listened to him share his vision, I was intrigued by the concept since we were considering opening a new remote office. There were questions that I struggled with though… Was it possible to not have servers on-site? What happens if the connection between the central and remote locations goes down? When that happens, how are business-critical resources accessed? I put Azure vs traditional infrastructure side by side to find out. 

Traditional Infrastructure

Traditional infrastructures offer a sense of control and security over relevant business data, applications, and infrastructure and that control is why many stay with a traditional infrastructure instead of moving to a cloud-based platform. Owning the physical equipment and software and having it on-premises, allows control of physical access and if implemented well, can yield many benefits.

However, some limitations hinder their potential:

• Traditional infrastructures can be complex and rigid, preventing them from adapting to changes necessitated by business situations.

• Traditional infrastructures require comprehensive planning from the start to prevent ad hoc infrastructures that can jeopardize business goals.

• Traditional infrastructures can be challenging to scale to meet changing business requirements outside of virtualization, which requires in-depth knowledge of the virtualization platform and the physical hardware to support it.

• One of the biggest limiters of traditional infrastructure is that businesses must continue to purchase updated hardware and software.

Introducing Microsoft Azure 

Today, we can take the whole concept of centralizing the core servers, etc., one step further and place the core infrastructure in Microsoft Azure, keeping only switches and vendor-provided devices such as modems and firewalls onsite. All critical infrastructure services like Active Directory, print and file servers, business-critical applications and more would move into the cloud utilizing one or several of the cloud solutions models.

Just as virtualization transformed the scalability and efficiency of traditional on-premises infrastructure and reduced the overall total cost of ownership (TCO), cloud providers have changed how IT professionals strategize when planning their networks.

Microsoft joined Amazon (AWS) in the cloud by creating the Azure platform, first as an internal initiative codenamed Project Red Dog, then released to developers in 2008 at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference. Now they are the world-leading enterprise-cloud provider, used by 90% of Fortune 500 companies.

Microsoft offers an extensive portfolio of cloud services ranging from compute to storage to IoT and more. The Azure platform provides businesses with the following benefits over traditional infrastructures.

• Elasticity and Resilience: Traditional infrastructures are susceptible to downtime, have limited capacity and cannot guarantee a consistently high level of server performance. Azure excels in providing elasticity and resilience enabling you to build a structure that can add or reduce compute power or storage as needed.

• Flexibility and Scalability: There are two ways to scale a traditional infrastructure: purchase physical hardware or virtualize. Whereas Azure provides the ability to quickly build, deploy and manage applications or systems as it best serves the business.

• Deployment: Adding new servers and/or applications within a traditional infrastructure requires IT staff taking time to procure new hardware/software, set it up, then test and implement it. In Azure, businesses can deploy mission-critical applications often without upfront costs and with minimal provisioning time, allowing IT staff to focus on more pressing activities and objectives.

• Reliability: For reliability, traditional infrastructures need to have redundancy requiring dual firewalls, ISP providers, power sources, etc., which gets expensive in time and money. With Azure, Microsoft provides the hardware and dedicated teams for implementation and maintenance. They’ve built in redundancy, from failover hardware to datacenters located worldwide. 

• Automation: A conventional infrastructure requires in-house IT personnel to monitor all systems and handle the day to day duties like patch management and maintaining threat protection. In Azure, this is all handled by Microsoft ensuring the infrastructure continues to run smoothly, and that required security measures are in place.

You can find a full list of Azure services on Microsoft’s site. 

Azure vs Traditional Infrastructure

The advantages of moving part or all of your company’s infrastructure to the cloud include increased flexibility, scalability, ease of management and cost savings. Successful infrastructure migrations to Azure require a lot of planning. If you’re looking to move to Azure, I outline all of the things you need to consider in this article. If you’d like to learn more or want help getting started, our engineers can help you throughout the process.

The post Microsoft Azure vs Traditional Infrastructure appeared first on CCB Technology.

The most logical next step might be to see if the user has OneDrive installed locally on their machine, allowing for synchronization between their machine and Microsoft 365. However, you see that has not yet been set up since the organization is still new to Microsoft 365 and the user was most likely unaware they could do that.

So, with no on-premises copy of the document available, you turn to the 24×7 Microsoft 365 Microsoft support that is a part of your subscription. While working with Microsoft, you discover that the document was deleted more than 30 days ago. Unfortunately, that means that even though you changed the default for Recoverable Items > Deletions within your Microsoft 365 tenant from 14 days to the maximum of 30 days, Microsoft has no way to retrieve it since the document was deleted more than 30 days ago. This document is gone. Period.

This scenario happens more often than people realize – showing estimates close to 32% of organizations experiencing a data loss similar to this, with 75% of those losses due to people deleting content, most often accidentally.

What does this mean? EVERY organization should consider an Microsoft 365 backup strategy for data stored in the cloud. Here are some tips for finding the best Microsoft 365 backup solution to meet your needs as well as some possible solutions and how they compare to what Microsoft offers natively.

Evaluate your needs

Start by taking an honest assessment of your organizational needs because a good fit depends upon your organization’s requirements. With so many good solutions available, it will be overwhelming if you don’t do this evaluation first. Here are a few questions – by no means exhaustive – to ask as you go through the evaluation process:

Are you looking for a turnkey solution or something more robust?

We often find that turnkey solutions might not provide the flexibility and functionality organizations need. However, for organizations with minimal IT staff or with a need to simply get their data backed up, a turnkey solution can be the right fit.

Do you have compliance regulations that you need to meet?

Many organizations have compliance requirements, such as HIPAA, that they need to accommodate. Be sure the solutions that you are considering enable you to meet and maintain those requirements.

Do you need some data stored on premises?

Some organizations require that if your primary services, such as email, are running in the cloud that data must also be stored locally. There are solutions that automatically pull data down onto a local repository.

Do you need any additional services?

Consolidating multiple services can be a huge advantage for IT staff by offering ease of implementation and ongoing management. If your organization could benefit from archiving, data loss prevention, encryption, or SPAM protection along with a backup solution, then consider offerings that can be managed from a single pane of glass.

Are you planning to have someone else manage the solution?

If you are currently working with a managed service provider (MSP), include them in these discussions to ensure that they can support whatever solution you are considering. Don’t invest in a backup solution that you want to have managed without first consulting your partner. Your MSP should be a resource for advice and guidance on potential solutions that meet your requirements and can also be managed by them.

Compare Microsoft 365 backup solutions

Now that you know the priorities for your organization, you can start your search for the best Microsoft 365 backup solution. To help you get started, let’s look at what Microsoft offers compared to what a few of our top backup partners offer.

Microsoft’s backup solution

If a user accidentally deletes data and discovers it within 30 days, Microsoft is a great solution. However, if the incident exceeds 30 days, Microsoft’s resolution will depend on whether it involves data for which you’ve set up compliance policies.

Microsoft 365 contains features to help retain data longer but strongly recommends that for data governance, retention policies be used because a retention policy is the only feature that can both retain and delete content across the platform. However, many of these offerings are only available in the Microsoft 365 E3 Plan or higher.

Synology Microsoft 365 backup

Synology offers a great on-prem solution for ease of implementation, ongoing management and overall affordability. Their NAS device is easy to set up, receive notifications, and restore files, folders, etc. Synology covers Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive. It also protects your Microsoft Teams data if it’s stored in the online versions.

Synology NAS is license-free, without limits on the maximum number of allowed accounts. They also offer a cost-effective plan to NAS users for data availability in the cloud through Synology C2.

Barracuda Microsoft 365 backup

For organizations wanting services beyond simple backup, Barracuda Cloud essentials might be the right fit. It provides a solution that, in addition to Microsoft 365 Backup & Recovery, also includes Advanced Threat Protection, Inbound/Outbound filtering, Archiving, Compliance and eDiscovery.

Veeam Microsoft 365 backup

If you, like many of our clients, are already using Veeam to back up your physical and virtual servers or if you need to back up data to an on-prem location, Veeam might be the right fit for you.

The bottom line: Microsoft 365 has a feature-rich infrastructure for organizations wanting access anywhere at any time, but a comprehensive backup for your Microsoft 365 data is not included. It’s your data and you need to have active and successful backups occurring so that the next time a user accidentally deletes their data, you can restore it.

We can help make the process easier! CCB can make your search for the best Microsoft 365 backup solution simple and effective – from demo to trial to purchase. Let’s have a conversation.

The post How to find the best Microsoft 365 backup solution – and why you need it appeared first on CCB Technology.

In order to understand why there has been a shift back towards the command line one must first understand some of the basic necessities when administering computer systems on a large scale. The ability to complete repetitive tasks quickly and accurately is crucial when managing a large number of systems. Furthermore, the capability to ensure that these tasks are done in the same manor each and every time becomes paramount as it ensures that the intended results are attained.

To meet these needs, a common CLI method used today is Microsoft Windows PowerShell. Find out the basics of PowerShell, how it can be used and why it’s becoming more popular for system administrators.

PowerShell… so what is it?

PowerShell is Microsoft’s scripting and automation platform. It is both a scripting language and an interactive command environment built on the .NET Framework. To better understand what PowerShell is, it helps to understand how it’s used. One of the authoritative resources on the subject, Ed Wilson, defines PowerShell as the following:

“Windows PowerShell is an interactive object-oriented command environment with scripting language features that utilizes small programs called cmdlets to simplify configuration, administration, and management of heterogeneous environments in both standalone and networked typologies by utilizing standards-based remoting protocols.”

There’s a lot to that definition so let’s unpack that a little more.

What is object-oriented?

An objected-orientated language can be defined as a form of logic – it’s a way to understand how the platform or language behaves. An object is something that has one or more attributes and one or more methods or functions. Here are some examples:

Think of a television remote control. Its attributes are the size, shape, color, number of buttons, and other things of that nature. Its functions include turning the television on and off and adjusting the volume.

A car is another good example. Its attributes are things like it’s current speed, license plate number or location. Its methods are moving, parking, accelerating or slowing down.

A final example of an object is a dog. Its attributes are mood, color, breed, and energy level and methods are playing, sleeping, barking or chasing a tail.

What are Cmdlets (or Command-lets)?

PowerShell is made up of a collection of commands that carry out particular functions or tasks. On the backside of the cmdlet there are a number of things happening: the command that is executed is working with classes, methods, multiple objects, possible API calls and many other things in order to carry out its job. The advantage of PowerShell is that you don’t have to understand all of these backend principles in depth since the cmdlets take care of those processes.

To assist in the use of cmdlets PowerShell follows a verb-noun naming pattern to help users understand the purpose of the commands. Example verbs include New, Set, Get, Add and Copy. Microsoft has a documented list of approved verbs and their intended uses to help maintain consistency throughout the platform. When placed together with nouns, you get cmdlets such as:

Get-Help
Get-Process
Get-Member

How is PowerShell used?

PowerShell has many uses and often is only limited by one’s creativity. As mentioned earlier, PowerShell functions both as an interactive language as well as a scripting tool. Both use cases allow for easier administration of systems as well as a great deal of flexibility for IT professionals.

When being used as a CLI to interact directly with a system, one of the major benefits of PowerShell is the ability to remotely connect to another system. An administrator can use a remote PowerShell session to connect to a server that’s not in the same physical location and run commands as if he or she were working directly on that server. A broad range of administrative tasks can be done remotely, saving IT professionals hours of time.

It also allows administrators to run the same commands against multiple servers at the same time, providing further time-saving benefits.

When it comes to creating PowerShell scripts, the ability to perform consistent tasks and steps repeatedly is a huge benefit for IT administrators. PowerShell automates many tasks, from the complete roll out of a new server in a virtual environment, to the configuration of new mailboxes in Microsoft 365 and a host of additional functions in-between.

In their simplest form, PowerShell scripts are a collection of PowerShell commands. This makes the transition from working with individual commands in the CLI to a fully automated script straight forward.

What can you do with PowerShell?

Now that you have some basic knowledge of what PowerShell is and how it’s used, let’s explore what you can do with it.

First, it’s important to note that PowerShell is not going away. Despite the move from the olden days of green screens and the CLI to graphical user interfaces for almost everything we do, there is a trend toward moving things back to the CLI. There are many reasons for this, but one centers around the development lifecycle.

GUIs are usually the form of a wrapper that ultimately is running code or commands on the backend when an action occurs like clicking a button. This means that the underlying code still needs to be written for the GUI to function. By cutting out the graphical piece and just using the PowerShell code, companies can more quickly roll out changes and updates without having to worry about also updating and testing a GUI in addition to the code, which is often time consuming.

PowerShell is tightly integrated into almost all of Microsoft’s products. In fact, there are certain actions in popular products like Microsoft 365 and Server 2016 that cannot be done with a GUI and can only be done with PowerShell. Along with being 100% necessary for certain tasks, the ability to automate with PowerShell makes understanding it a worthwhile skill for many IT professionals.

Second, once you start understanding all that can be done with PowerShell, it opens a whole new set of capabilities. From basic automation, to advanced scripting, PowerShell can provide an abundance of opportunities for simplifying tasks and saving time.

In future entries we will look at in-depth uses of PowerShell scripting and how it can be used to simplify many areas of an IT environment including: server configuration and deployment, user creation and auditing and administrative tasks in M365. In the meantime, these resources are a great launching point for learning more about PowerShell.

PowerShell Documentation:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/

PowerShell Scripts:
https://github.com/powershell
https://www.powershellgallery.com/

PowerShell Blogs:
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/
https://kevinmarquette.github.io/
https://www.planetpowershell.com/

Continue reading about PowerShell →

The post PowerShell: What is it & what can you do with it appeared first on CCB Technology.

In my former life as an IT manager, I had the same apprehensions and experienced firsthand the mixed emotions of considering a cloud-based solution. I was unsure about where our data would be residing or who might have access to it. There was something falsely reassuring thinking that if it was on-premise, it had to be secure!

Finally, like so many others, after years of staying on the ground with our infrastructure, we started to explore the benefits of cloud solutions and increased efficiencies they could provide our business. A huge impact that caused us to take a serious look at the cloud was realizing that if a disaster were to hit the office, all of our critical applications would still be functional with the right cloud solution in place.

As the number of cloud-based solutions grow every day, researching and comparing solutions can be time consuming, and in the IT world, time is a sacred commodity. Although I can’t make your final platform selections for you, I hope to provide you with insight into the advantages of cloud over on-prem options and the types of cloud solutions available to give you a foundation to work from.

Cloud vs. On-premise Infrastructures

Cloud solutions provide major benefits to both businesses and individuals over traditional infrastructure, including:

• Accessibility: With cloud solutions, users can access data anywhere on any device, providing collaboration across all aspects of a business. Writing this blog is a perfect example – I have my Microsoft Word file open on an iPad, MacBook Pro and Surface Book. All show progress in real time as I write, whereas without a Microsoft 365 subscription, I would have three different versions of my document between the devices.

• Cost Control: The cloud helps control costs through predictable subscriptions for enterprise-class infrastructure solutions, eliminating the heavy capital expenditure of an on-premise infrastructure. Additionally, pay-as-you-go models for some solutions mean you can add or subtract individual services and only pay for what you use.

• Scalability: Cloud solutions provide easy and often instantaneous scalability versus the cumbersome process of procuring hardware and software for a traditional infrastructure, which can take weeks or longer.

• Deployment: With cloud solutions, businesses can deploy mission-critical applications without any upfront costs and with minimal provisioning time, allowing IT staff to focus on more pressing activities and objectives. It can also help to reduce the time needed to get new applications and services to market.

• Reliability: Though a concern of most during the introduction of the cloud, technology advancements are making cloud solutions even more reliable and consistent than on-premise IT infrastructures. Most providers today offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) guaranteeing close to 95% and higher uptime, and 24/7/365 availability.

• Security: This is a central focus for any cloud provider. Cloud solutions today provide greater security than on-prem counterparts because data is stored throughout multiple highly secured locations yet can be accessed no matter what happens. A very simple example is a user who loses a laptop. If it’s managed using a cloud solution, the company can remotely wipe any sensitive information and protect its most important asset – it’s data.

Cloud Solution Models

Now that you know some key benefits of cloud infrastructures, let’s look at the three types of cloud solutions to find out what’s right for you:

Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS replaces traditional IT applications with a cloud model that is a software subscription provided by a third-party vendor. This is the most common cloud solution being utilized by businesses because it provides benefits to an organization such as the elimination of software updates, centralized management, and access through any device over the internet.

Examples of these services include Microsoft 365, Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Services, WatchGuard Cloud, Dropbox and Salesforce. When I was just entering the cloud, these were solutions that greatly reduced the time and energy I was spending on installing and upgrading software.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS provides the foundation for cloud IT infrastructures. This model is all about IT operations and typically provides access to network features, data storage space, and computers, while allowing the highest level of management control and flexibility.

Google, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure are third-party sources for IaaS, providing the ability to only pay for what you use – basically like renting the resource. That means if you’re coming into a slower season of business, you can power down three of the five web servers running and pay accordingly.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS allows organizations to build, run and manage customized applications without the need or worry associated with on-premise infrastructures, making it easier for developers to create efficiencies as a part of the application development process. Among the benefits of PaaS are a reduction in overhead and an increase in the speed of development and deployment. Microsoft Azure would fall into this category as well.

Here’s a good resource if you want a deeper dive into the types of cloud models.

Know What to Look For in a Cloud Solution

When considering a cloud solution for your organization, these are important factors you should know:

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

SLAs outline the service expectations and responsibilities between your company and a cloud supplier. It should state the metrics used for measurement and any penalties if the services don’t meet those expectations. These agreements are for both party’s protection and necessary to build a successful relationship.

High availability is important and is expressed as a percentage of uptime in a given year, or the “number of nines”. (Note that maintenance windows for patching, deploying new systems, etc. are not considered downtime.) I have seen a few providers that promise “five nines”, equating to downtime of only 5 minutes and 15 seconds per year, and fail to meet that goal. You will need to decide what is acceptable for your organization to continue to operate. Discuss this with a potential provider and then get it in writing.

Redundancy

Redundancy or high availability in cloud computing means that multiple copies of your data exist or systems that can be accessed if your cloud solution fails. When talking with a cloud solution provider about their redundancy or disaster recovery plan, make sure to ask:

• How redundant are your data centers regarding power, ISPs and other resources?
• What happens when server solution ‘A’ is installed or goes down?
• How are the backend systems set up (i.e.: web or SQL servers)? Are they clustered?
• What happens if the site where the solution is hosted goes down? Will the cloud solution still be available?
• What automation is in place to make sure my systems remain operational when a disaster happens at a primary site?

Hidden Costs

Even when a vendor provides a quote, there may be hidden costs you should look out for. I learned this the hard way in my previous role when I received the first invoice for our new cloud solution – something that was hard to explain to the executive team! Learn from my mistake and be sure to review the quote’s fine print carefully and ask thorough questions.

How I Learned to Love the Cloud

When I was an IT manager at my previous company, the data we worked with daily was very sensitive (containing PII) and securing it was the highest priority for me, my team, and the success of our company. Part of my hesitation to move to the cloud was due to the data breaches I seemed to be hearing about in the news every other day. It seemed impossible to decide which pieces we could migrate without compromising our security.

As the business grew, my direction and mindset needed to change regarding cloud solutions. We needed to be able to scale rapidly, collaborate efficiently and have access anywhere at any time. We finally chose to migrate to Microsoft 365 from an on-prem Exchange environment. I was initially blinded to its benefits because of my security fears and wanted to retain total control like I could with our on-premise servers.

However, as we began using Microsoft 365, I quickly started to see the organizational benefits: teams collaborating efficiently in groups, simultaneous sharing and editing of documents, and meetings that no longer required being in the same building. It’s as if my eyes had been opened to a whole new world.

Yes, we still needed to protect sensitive data, but the cloud allowed us to quickly expand our resources at a much lower cost than what we could implement in our on-premise infrastructure. Most importantly, it allowed me to sleep better at night knowing if a disaster hit, we’d still be functional for our clients. I learned to keep my feet on the ground and love the cloud.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CLOUD?

Want to know how your business can benefit from cloud solutions? We’d love to discuss your needs and help you roadmap your migration. Let us help.

The post How I Learned to Love the Cloud & Why You Should appeared first on CCB Technology.