For the last 8 or more years I have maintained my technical blog at http://csi-windows.com. My career focus has shifted a lot since starting that site and it was time to acknowledge this in the focus of my blogging.

The new location is https://cloudywindows.io. As in the past, some some of this content will be posted to Linkedin as well.

The focus of the new blog is cloudifying Windows. This means focusing on insights and code that help Windows be a better cloud player. It also means focusing on the technologies of Microsoft's Server 2016 release as it is a significant milestone in readying Windows to be better fit to cloud environments.

I hope you'll keep up to date with Cloud Windows by either following me on twitter or subscribing to the feed or email list at: https://cloudywindows.io.

The new location was also an exploration in deploying a blog with modern cloud and DevOps technologies.

The blog is generated by the static site generator "Hugo" and it is hosted on AWS CloudFront. Static sites have no back end computing - a limitation which means there is not much to hack as the entire site is static files. Static sites can be checked into source control - giving a whole host of "site as code" benefits.

In this case, it also means the shutdown of a dedicated server that was costing over $100/month - to be replaced by about $3/month (after the AWS free trial period). The new site utilizes CloudFront's free SSL to boost trust for Google and other search engines.

It has been the leanest site deployment I've ever pulled off - consuming about 80 hours of weekend time from discovery through deployment.

I started teaching DevOps around the year 1999.  All together now: "Darwin, are you insane? The term, 'DevOps', is a lot newer than that!"  That's absolutely true, but a concept always exists long before it is recognized and labelled...

In 1999 I was a newly hired Principal Consultant and I clearly remember getting a call from my manager.  He was at a Microsoft partner event that demonstrated Microsoft's soon-to-be released technologies.  One of hottest demos for Windows 2000 showcased the life-saving capabilities of a new software deployment automation technology that was code named "Darwin"  It tickled him that it was named after the newest member of his team and he was calling to have a chuckle about it with me.  That technology became Windows Installer or MSI.

So I get the question about the free upgrade to Windows 10 a lot.  I am going to share with you the criteria I use for my own machines in hopes it might help you make your decision.  If you think my criteria is a little overdone, just credit one year of hard experience to each point in the evaluation process ;)

For one of my clients I created a PowerShell automation framework that could work stand alone (great for testing) or under SCCM - with no coding changes to switch.  I was excited to wire up it's error reporting system to SCCM custom status MIFs.  Somehow in the age of the API the SCCM development team decided to drop this very helpful feature - but only from "Applications" because the are so much "better"...

When I create cover letters and resumes, it is always a challenge to convey that although I don't code in a compiled language like C#, I understand and enjoy applying serious structured coding and testing techniques to the PowerShell code I write.

I believe this is not a small distinction when looking for DevOps professionals.  Many of us from the Infrastructure side of the house cut our teeth on coding by hacking together useful scripts in languages whose capabilities were Neanderthal.  A good portion of time was spent working around the limitations of the language, rather than being empowered by it's capabilities.

When I was a toddler my dad caught me repeatedly stepping on the cat's tail.  Rather than react to my childishness with a reprimand, he simply asked "What are you doing?"  I proceeded to explain to him what is now commonly called a "four square" matrix.  

Wow - sometimes you don't know how easy you've got it until you step off the cliff!  That cliff for me was attempting to replace VMware Workstation with Windows 8 Hyper-V.  Hey Microsoft, you really should do something about this since I see it cited ad nauseam as a primary reason many IT Pros retreat from their attempt to adopt Win 8 Hyper-V and go back to VMware.  But in the meantime, I have some steps to make this as easy as possible.

With Office 2013 Microsoft created a new deployment and installation mechanism known as "Click To Run (CTR)".  This is the method used to deploy office from the web in a near instant fashion and it includes a type of "Runtime App-V" under the covers.  The same mechanism is used to deploy the Click To Run edition in corporations. Up until now you could only install the entire suite of Office applications when using Click To Run (MSI based installs have always retained full selective product install capabilities).

I have been working on a project to deploy Office 365 to the enterprise for over 6 months now.  Office 365 SP1 is a significant boost to the ability to deploy an on-premise source approach to Office 365...