G'ay Cloud Gurus, welcome to Windows Vista This Week. I'm Wayne Hoggett and I'll be taking you
through what's new and interesting in the world of Windows Vista, including the latest Windows
era. Ah, interesting. What? I can't rename the show? But Microsoft renames things all the time.
Apparently, I can't just rename the show whenever I want. The producer says it's confusing. Let's
stick with this. Welcome to Azure This Week. Let's take a look at what's been happening in the world
of Azure. In this episode, we'll take a look at a new and interesting Microsoft platform blog,
important changes to extended security updates on Azure and a new Visual Studio Code extension for
Azure Automation Runbooks. Let's jump in. While Windows
Vista might have had a mixed reception, its server-based sibling Windows Server 2008
included one of the most important Windows Server features ever. Which feature do you
think I'm referring to? Hyper-V of course! Hyper-V is Microsoft's virtualization platform,
more commonly referred to as a hypervisor. For anyone that isn't familiar, a hypervisor allows
you to run multiple virtual machines on a single physical server. Microsoft recently confirmed that
all Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service services including Virtual Machines,
Web Apps, Azure Functions and more, all run on Hyper-V in a blog post on their new Windows
Platform OS Blog. In the post, they detail the Azure Host Operating System, named Cloud Host,
which is based on Windows and Hyper-V, but purpose built to be really good at running
Virtual Machines. Which is kind of important for a public cloud. It's an interesting read, and there
is even a screenshot of a Cloud Host running on an Azure physical server with 16 processors.
Imagine how much serverless code you could run on that server. Check it out in the links below.
If your company like far too many still have workloads running on older versions of Windows
Server, it's probably important for you to know that Microsoft will let you run older versions
of Windows Server on Azure or Azure Stack and receive extended security updates for free.
For anyone still thinking, surely no one still runs Windows Server 2008, think again. Windows 7
market share is still estimated to be at least 11%. There is servers hidden away everywhere
running older versions of Windows. For Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2, and Window 7 on Azure,
extended security updates ended on January 10. If you don't want your company making headlines
for all the wrong reasons, it's now past time to migrate those workloads to something more
modern. There are plenty of options. You can migrate to a newer version of Windows Server,
or maybe there's a Software as a Service solution that you can use to replace your aging app.
Or maybe the functionality can be replicated in a Platform as a Service offering like Azure
App Service. Now, I know it can be hard to migrate or upgrade those workloads.
See what you can do and good luck getting those workloads migrated or decommissioned.
Everything you do to help maintain the security of your customer's data is worth the effort.
All right, and now for something a little newer. All right, and now for something...teleprompter
wakey, wakey, wakey. All right, and now for something a little newer. Microsoft has announced
the release of the Azure Automation Visual Studio Code extension in preview. For anyone that isn't
aware, Azure Automation is an underrated Azure service that lets you, among other things,
automate your hybrid computing woes away through Runbooks. I went into some detail about why I
love Azure Automation in a recent ACG blog post. Check that out in the links below.
The Visual Studio Code extension for Azure Automation allows you to not only create,
test, debug and manage Azure Automation runbooks, but it also lets you manage all
of the associated assets that make Runbooks so useful like schedules, variables,
and credentials right from Visual Studio Code. Now, if you are an ACG subscriber and
you are interested in learning more about Azure Automation, which is one of my favorite services,
in case you missed that, we have a couple of brand new hands-on labs where you can learn how
to automate hybrid processes or configure update management using Azure Automation.
Well, that's all we have time for in this episode of Azure This Week. If you like this
episode and wanna see more, make sure you like and subscribe for all the latest Azure
news. Thanks for being with me and until next time, keep being awesome Cloud Gurus.