The first Groovy Tuesday post

I’d like to take this Tuesday opportunity to talk about some interesting cloud, Disaster Recovery, and just plain wild news. All that’s required of you is to be curious and interested enough to read on. You bring the coffee and we’ll supply the news.

Of course, I’m going to start with the Disaster Recovery portion as anyone who knows my past utterings knows I have a soft spot that’s highly redundant and always resilient for DR events. Looks like Amazon has taken notice of Azure’s success and growing DR/BC business known as Azure Site Recovery. So much so that they’re rumored to buy an Israeli company, Cloud Endure, for $200 Million. I believe this also indicates Amazon’s interest in a hybrid solution for cloud migrations coupled with on-prem operations. Another tip of the hat to Microsoft who have made a great success out of hybrid infrastructure solutions.

Get more than my executive summary here: Here’s why Amazon would buy an obscure Israeli company that specializes in disaster recovery

Have you ever needed a solution that required 10k VM’s in Azure? Yeah, me neither. However, I’m not an international bank or a highly geographically diverse corporation. Here’s a mind-blowing blog post on how to do that just in case you are one of those entities or have a need for 10k VM’s in Azure. It’s an amazing feat of dev ops and worth a read even if your interest in strictly academic.

To infinity and beyond: The definitive guide to scaling 10k VMs on Azure

In the (relatively) bad news department – Server 2008 is being retired next year. End of support is scheduled for 1/14/2020. Those of you not reliant on Server 2008 are wiping your brow and muttering thanks to your foresight and Admins who migrated those apps prior to or advocated for the latest and greatest server operating system to be used. Those of you still on Server 2008 is not thinking “What next?!” Here’s your answer: Time to upgrade: How to prepare for Windows Server 2008 end of support. The encapsulated response is In-place upgrade, Migrate (to the cloud of course), or Modernize. You could also buy extended support but you’re really only prolonging the inevitable. Remember, once extended support ends you’re no longer getting security patches or reliability patches. Take the bull by the horns and retire that ten-year-old operating system.

My software to highlight today is a bit of kit I’ve been using for eons. I use it at home, on the job, just about everywhere. No, it’s not robocopy. I mean I use that every time I can and it *could* be robocopy but it’s actually Beyond Compare. Here’s one of their marketing blurbs I picked because it’s good and describes the software as I perceive it. “Compare files and folders using simple, powerful commands that focus on the differences you're interested in and ignore those you're not. Merge changes, synchronize files, and generate reports.”

The interface is good and it does an excellent job of comparing files and data between two locations. I’ve used it to sync various data locations and it does the job quickly and in such a way that I feel comfortable, no data is left behind during a migration. Download the trial and then throw Scooter Software some bones for being great a dev.