Hello, Claus here again. By now, you have probably seen some of my blogs and demos on Storage Spaces Direct performance. One of Storage Spaces Direct’s advantages is RDMA networking support that lowers latency and reduces CPU consumption. I often get the question “Is RDMA required for Storage Spaces Direct”. The answer to this question is: no. We support plain-old Ethernet as long as it’s 10GbE or better. But let’s look a bit deeper.

Recently we did a performance investigation on new hardware, comparing it with an in-market offering (more about that in another post). We ran the tests with RDMA enabled and RDMA disabled (Ethernet mode), which provided the data for this post. For this investigation, we used DISKSPD with the following configuration:

• DISKSPD version 2.0.17
  • 4K IO
  • 70:30 read/write mix
  • 10 threads, each thread at queue depth 4 (40 total)
  • A 10GiB file per thread (“a modest VHDX”) for a total of 100GiB

We used the following hardware configuration: 

• 4 node cluster
  • Intel S2600WT Platform
  • 2x E5-2699v4 CPU (22c44t 2.2Ghz)
  • 128GiB DDR4 DRAM
  • 4x Intel P3700 NVMe per node
  • Mellanox CX3 Pro 40Gb, dual port connected, RoCE v2
  • C States disabled, OS High Performance, BIOS Performance Plan, Turbo/HT on
• Software configuration
  • Windows Server 2016 with January roll-up package
  • No cache drive configuration
  • 3-copy mirror volume

 We are by no means driving this system hard, which is on purpose since we want to show the delta between RDMA and non-RDMA under a reasonable workload and not at the edge of what the system can do.

I think there are two key take-away’s from this data: 

1. Use RDMA if you want the absolute best performance. RDMA significantly boosts performance. In this test, it shows 28% more IOPS. This is realized by the reduced IO latency provided by RDMA. It also shows that RDMA is more CPU efficient (27%), leaving CPU to run more VMs.
2. TCP/IP is no slouch, and absolutely a viable deployment option. While not quite as fast and efficient as RDMA, TCP/IP provides solid performance and is well suited for organizations without the expertise needed for RDMA.

Let me know what you think.

Until next time

Claus

Disaster recovery is not only about replicating your virtual machines but also about end to end application recovery that is tested multiple times, error free, and stress free when disaster strikes, which are the Azure Site Recovery promises. If you have never seen your application run in Microsoft Azure, chances are that when a real disaster happens, the virtual machines may just boot, but your business may remain down. The importance and complexity involved in recovering applications was described in the previous blog of this series - Disaster recovery for applications, not just virtual machines using Azure Site Recovery. This blog covers how you can use the Azure Site Recovery construct of recovery plans to failover or migrate applications to Microsoft Azure in the most tested and deterministic way, using an example of recovering a real-world application to the public cloud.  

Why use Azure Site Recovery “recovery plans”?

Recovery plans help you plan for a systematic recovery process by creating small independent units that you can manage. These units will typically represent an application in your environment. Recovery plan not only allows you to define the sequence in which the virtual machines start, but also helps you automate common tasks during recovery.

Essentially, one way to check that you are prepared for disaster recovery is by ensuring that every application of yours is part of a recovery plan and each of the recovery plans is tested for recovery to Microsoft Azure. With this preparedness, you can confidently migrate or failover your complete datacenter to Microsoft Azure.
 
Let us look at the three key value propositions of a recovery plan:

• Model an application to capture dependencies
• Automate most recovery tasks to reduce RTO
• Test failover to be ready for a disaster

Model an application to capture dependencies

A recovery plan is a group of virtual machines generally comprising an application that failover together. Using the recovery plan constructs, you can enhance this group to capture your application-specific properties.
 
Let us take the example of a typical three tier application with

• one SQL backend
• one middleware
• one web frontend

The recovery plan can be customized to ensure that the virtual machines come up in the right order post a failover. The SQL backend should come up first, the middleware should come up next, and the web frontend should come up last. This order makes certain that the application is working by the time the last virtual machine comes up. For example, when the middleware comes up, it will try to connect to the SQL tier, and the recovery plan has ensured that the SQL tier is already running. Frontend servers coming up last also ensures that end users do not connect to the application URL by mistake until all the components are up are running and the application is ready to accept requests. To build these dependencies, you can customize the recovery plan to add groups. Then select a virtual machine and change its group to move it between groups.

Once you complete the customization, you can visualize the exact steps of the recovery. Here is the order of steps executed during the failover of a recovery plan:

• First there is a shutdown step that attempts to turn off the virtual machines on-premises (except in test failover where the primary site needs to continue to be running)
• Next it triggers failover of all the virtual machines of the recovery plan in parallel. The failover step prepares the virtual machines’ disks from replicated data.
• Finally the startup groups execute in their order, starting the virtual machines in each group - Group 1 first, then Group 2, and finally Group 3. If there are more than one virtual machines in any group (for example, a load-balanced web frontend) all of them are booted up in parallel.

Sequencing across groups ensures that dependencies between various application tiers are honored and parallelism where appropriate improves the RTO of application recovery.

Automate most recovery tasks to reduce RTO

Recovering large applications can be a complex task. It is also difficult to remember the exact customization steps post failover. Sometimes, it is not you, but someone else who is unaware of the application intricacies, who needs to trigger the failover. Remembering too many manual steps in times of chaos is difficult and error prone. A recovery plan gives you a way to automate the required actions you need to take at every step, by using Microsoft Azure Automation runbooks. With runbooks, you can automate common recovery tasks like the examples given below. For those tasks that cannot be automated, recovery plans also provide you the ability to insert manual actions.

• Tasks on the Azure virtual machine post failover – these are required typically so that you can connect to the virtual machine, for example: 

1. • Create a public IP on the virtual machine post failover
   • Assign an NSG to the failed over virtual machine’s NIC
   • Add a load balancer to an availability set

• Tasks inside the virtual machine post failover – these reconfigure the application so that it continues to work correctly in the new environment, for example:
  • Modify the database connection string inside the virtual machine
  • Change web server configuration/rules

For many common tasks, you can use a single runbook and pass parameters to it for each recovery plan so that one runbook can serve all your applications. To deploy these scripts yourself and try them out, click the button below and import popular scripts into your Microsoft Azure Automation account.

 
With a complete recovery plan that automates the post recovery tasks using automation runbooks, you can achieve one-click failover and optimize the RTO. 

Test failover to be ready for a disaster

A recovery plan can be used to trigger both a failover or a test failover. You should always complete a test failover on the application before doing a failover. Test failover helps you to check whether the application will come up on the recovery site.  If you have missed something, you can easily trigger cleanup and redo the test failover. Do the test failover multiple times until you know with certainty that the application recovers smoothly.

Each application is different and you need to build recovery plans that are customized for each. Also, in this dynamic datacenter world, the applications and their dependencies keep changing. Test failover your applications once a quarter to check that the recovery plan is current.

Real-world example - WordPress disaster recovery solution

Watch a quick video of a two-tier WordPress application failover to Microsoft Azure and see the recovery plan with automation scripts, and its test failover in action using Azure Site Recovery.

• The WordPress deployment consists of one MySQL virtual machine and one frontend virtual machine with Apache web server, listening on port 80.
• WordPress deployed on the Apache web server is configured to communicate with MySQL via the IP address 10.150.1.40.
• Upon test failover, the WordPress configuration needs to be changed to communicate with MySQL on the failover IP address 10.1.6.4. To ensure that MySQL acquires the same IP address every time on failover, we will configure the virtual machine properties to have a preferred IP address set to 10.1.6.4.

With relentless focus on ensuring that you succeed with full application recovery, Azure Site Recovery is the one-stop shop for all your disaster recovery needs. Our mission is to democratize disaster recovery with the power of Microsoft Azure, to enable not just the elite tier-1 applications to have a business continuity plan, but offer a compelling solution that empowers you to set up a working end to end disaster recovery plan for 100% of your organization's IT applications.

You can check out additional product information and start replicating your workloads to Microsoft Azure using Azure Site Recovery today. You can use the powerful replication capabilities of Azure Site Recovery for 31 days at no charge for every new physical server or virtual machine that you replicate, whether it is running on VMware or Hyper-V. To learn more about Azure Site Recovery, check out our How-To Videos. Visit the Azure Site Recovery forum on MSDN for additional information and to engage with other customers, or use the Azure Site Recovery User Voice to let us know what features you want us to enable next.

Frustrated with ever-changing customer expectations? Yesterday’s investments losing steam as the market turns to the next shiny thing? How do you scale across cloud and mobile, stay on top of data and security, and ultimately sell successfully in a rapidly transforming landscape?

Microsoft App Accelerate targets exactly these issues for application creators and ISVs (independent software vendors). Whatever type of solution your company delivers, the program provides the resources to help you plan, deploy, launch, and grow your applications.

Learn more by reading Build intelligent applications with help from Microsoft App Accelerate.

The Microsoft System Center Management Pack for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2017 (what a name!) has been available for about a month now. One important change to note in this version of the management pack is that it no longer supports monitoring of build resources. But don’t worry – you can still easily monitor these resources using other capabilities of System Center.

Team Foundation Server Management Packs for System Center have handled build resources (XAML controllers and agents; Build/Release agents) in various ways over the years.

Early versions discovered build resources by starting from TFS deployments, enumerating build resources for those deployments, and then reaching out to them. This had some advantages, in that it was easy to get all build machines monitored without having to explicitly enumerate them. It also had some disadvantages, however, in that all build machines had to be monitored in order for any monitoring to work.

Later, we moved to an approach where build resources were discovered and monitored independently by System Center agents running on the machines where the build resources lived. This made it possible to monitor a subset of build resources by not installing management agents on the machines that did not need monitoring. Discovering build resources locally required using things like registry keys, however, which then had to be created by our various agents/controllers. This conflicted with our progress toward extremely lightweight agent installation/configuration, and the TFS 2015 management pack couldn’t discover agents running interactively. (Or agents on non-Windows machines, for that matter.)

The registry keys used to discover TFS 2015 build agents were versioned as well, which was going to create a problem moving forward with monitoring TFS deployments across multiple versions from the same System Center deployment.

In TFS 2017, we decided to go a different route with the management pack and abandon our attempts to monitor build resources. Partly this was because of the effort involved in properly monitoring all the different build resource types we support from TFS 2017 (which include XAML controllers and agents from 2010, 2013, and 2015; as well as our new agents from 2015 and 2017, which can run on Windows, OSX, and various Linux OSes). And partly this was because our build monitoring has never added any real value beyond the existing monitoring capabilities available within System Center.

System Center has built-in capabilities to monitor machine availability, processes and Windows Services on Windows computers, and processes on Linux computers. Our recommendation moving forward, for teams who wish to monitor their build resources in addition to their TFS deployments, is to do the following:

1. Add all the machines where your critical build resources are running to the list of machines monitored by your System Center deployment. This will ensure that you notice when the machines themselves get into trouble, go offline, etc.
2. For your critical XAML build resources, create a Windows Service monitor for the appropriate service name – TFSBuildServiceHost.2013, for example. Windows Service monitors are nice in that they only monitor those services that are set to start automatically when Windows starts, meaning that you can choose to apply this monitor to all machines in your System Center deployment without worrying that it will start generating alerts on machines that are not TFS XAML build machines.
3. For your critical Build/Release resources, create process monitors for the appropriate OSes and agent versions – Agent.Listener.exe, for example, for TFS 2017 Windows agents. Process monitors are a bit trickier than Windows Service monitors in that they will apply to every machine in the group you select. As such, your best bet for these monitors is to create a group that includes all and only your critical Build/Release machines. This can be done either by explicitly specifying these machines, or by using naming conventions for your build resources in combination with dynamic rules in your System Center group definition.

We believe this combination of monitors will do as good a job or better of monitoring your TFS build resources for TFS 2017 deployments. Using this approach, you can monitor agents running interactively, agents running on Linux machines, etc. You can even get alerts if CPU or Memory consumption by the agent process or service exceeds a custom threshold. None of this has ever been supported by the TFS management pack monitoring.

Please let us know if you have feedback or encounter issues using this approach to monitor your TFS 2017 build resources.

Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team.

Office 365 provides the broadest and deepest toolkit for collaboration between individuals, teams and entire organizations. Updates this month make the experience even better with co-authoring in Excel, the general availability of Microsoft Teams and more. We’ll also be announcing the latest roadmap for SharePoint and OneDrive at the SharePoint Virtual Summit on May 16th. Read on for the details.

Co-authoring is coming to Excel

We’re taking a significant step in completing the co-authoring story across Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Today, we’re enabling co-authoring in Excel on Windows desktops for Office Insiders Fast. This allows you to know who else is working with you in a spreadsheet, see where they’re working and view changes automatically within seconds. We’ll continue using feedback from Insiders to improve the experience before making it available more broadly. Co-authoring is already available in Excel Online, Excel on Android, Windows Mobile and iOS (for Office Insiders). We’re also working on co-authoring in Excel for the Mac—stay tuned for more!

Co-authoring in Excel on Windows desktops allows you to see where others are editing at the same time as you in a spreadsheet.

We’re also bringing AutoSave to Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Windows desktops, for files stored in SharePoint Online, OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. With AutoSave, you can stop worrying about hitting the Save button, whether you’re working alone or with others.

Microsoft Teams is now generally available

Earlier this month, we announced that Microsoft Teams—the chat-based workspace in Office 365—is now generally available in 181 markets and in 19 languages. Last week, we also made Teams available in Office 365 Education, free for faculty, staff and students. We’ve introduced over 100 new features and addressed top requests from over 50,000 organizations who have started using Teams since the preview began in November. The updates span all four of the core Teams promises: chat for today’s teams, a hub for teamwork, customizable for every team and security that teams trust. Notably, over 150 integrations with other apps, services and bots are either already available or coming soon. We are thrilled by the enthusiasm for Teams and look forward to seeing how customers build Teams into the way they collaborate every day. We’ll also continue updating Teams—along with our other Office 365 apps and services. Learn more about Microsoft Teams and start using Microsoft Teams today.

Microsoft Bookings is rolling out worldwide

Last week, we announced the worldwide rollout of Microsoft Bookings to Office 365 Business Premium subscribers. Bookings makes it easy for small businesses to schedule and manage appointments with their customers, and we’ve introduced several new capabilities based on feedback from last year’s initial release to customers in the U.S. and Canada. Now you can connect your Office 365 calendar to Bookings, add buffer time between appointments, customize your Bookings page, and stay connected on the go with iOS and Android apps. Read more about Microsoft Bookings.

Your Bookings page can be accessed on desktop or mobile.

OneNote inking and accessibility updates

We’ve made a number of improvements to OneNote this month, making inking more powerful and available in the browser, as well as helping you create more accessible notes.

• Ink math assistant improvements—OneNote can now graph handwritten equations and even let you manipulate variables to see the visual effect of changes. It can also teach you the steps to solve systems of equations. This expanded built-in intelligence within OneNote makes it an even more powerful math coach to help you learn in context. Learn more in this blog, and give it a try today!

OneNote can now graph handwritten equations, in addition to teaching you how to solve them.

• Accessibility Checker now in OneNote—The Accessibility Checker, now available in OneNote for Windows 10, helps ensure your notes can be consumed without barriers by people with visual impairments. It analyzes your material and provides recommendations alongside your notes, which helps you understand how to fix errors and create more accessible notes over time. Simply select Check Accessibility under the View tab to get started. 

The Accessibility Checker helps you find and fix issues that might make your content difficult for people with visual impairments to consume.

• Inking in OneNote Online—We’re bringing inking and the Draw tab to OneNote Online, so you can make your mark with ink or highlighter while taking, reviewing, or editing your notes in the browser.

OneNote works the way you do, with new inking capabilities in the browser.

Visio integrates with Excel and PowerPoint in new ways

Visio, Excel and PowerPoint work better together than ever, helping you seamlessly generate flowcharts automatically from data then share them effortlessly as presentations. Create a flowchart directly from Excel in a few clicks using the new Data Visualizer templates. Then, use the new Slide Snippets pane to select specific diagrams or snippets, title them and export as slides in a new PowerPoint presentation. The Morph transition is even applied automatically to create cinematic transitions between overlapping snippets on different slides. Get started with Visio Data Visualizer templates and creating a PowerPoint presentation from Visio.

Visio, Excel and PowerPoint work better together to help you seamlessly create flowcharts from Excel data and export diagram snippets to share as PowerPoint slides.

Other Office 365 updates this month

We also have a few additional updates this month. See the links below for more details:

• Learning Tools for Word Online and OneNote Online now available, plus new languages
• Office apps have improved support with JAWS 18 screen reading software
• Office 365 is now available in 181 markets
• Visio Online is now generally available for Office 365 commercial customers
• Registration is open for the SharePoint Virtual Summit on May 16

Learn more about what’s new for Office 365 subscribers this month at: Office 2016 | Office for Mac | Office Mobile for Windows | Office for iPhone and iPad | Office on Android. If you’re an Office 365 Home or Personal customer, be sure to sign up for Office Insider to be the first to use the latest and greatest in Office productivity. Commercial customers on both Current Channel and Deferred Channel can also get early access to a fully supported build through First Release. This site explains more about when you can expect to receive the features announced today.

—Kirk Koenigsbauer

The post New to Office 365 in March—co-authoring in Excel and more appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s exec is rudely awakened daily to ever-changing customer expectations. Last year’s huge investments were popular for a few months, but suddenly the “next big thing” is turning attention—and attracting budgets—elsewhere. How do you stay competitive with data and security? How do you ensure your applications scale across cloud and mobile?

Microsoft unveiled a new program, Microsoft App Accelerate, that targets such issues for application creators and ISVs (independent software vendors). Whatever cutting-edge commercial solution your company delivers, the program will provide product and technical resources to help you plan, deploy, launch, and grow your applications.

Still imagining your application? Find strategic planning resources to help you determine what investments can make the most impact. Utilize e-books and analyst reports to assess the technical and data opportunities driving the market, financial tools to help you determine ROI, and real-world examples of other app innovators and the steps they took to succeed.

Beginning to build, test, and deploy? You can connect directly with engineers and design experts who’ll bring the skills to match your vision. You’ll even have access to exclusive offers to help jump-start your development cycles.

For example:

• Technical guidance from expert engineers across Microsoft’s flagship cloud and data solutions, including Azure, SQL Server, and Power BI.
• Access to design sessions and deployment programs, such as the Data Accelerator and Power BI Embedded Accelerator offers.
• Testing and certification services to drive accelerated app innovation and deployment.

Ready to launch your application? Here’s where Microsoft’s enterprise scale and global reach really deliver. Distribution channels like AppSource and Azure Marketplace help you find your customers. Co-selling and co-marketing opportunities from Microsoft’s go-to-market (GTM) services extend your impact. In-depth resources on marketing and sales strategy help you keep momentum and repeat success.

Visit Microsoft App Accelerate to learn more; but if you’re ready to jump right in, register today.

Frustrated with ever-changing customer expectations? Yesterdays investments losing steam as the market turns to the next shiny thing? How do you scale across cloud and mobile, stay on top of data and security, and ultimately sell successfully in a rapidly transforming landscape?

Microsoft App Accelerate targets exactly these issues for application creators and ISVs (independent software vendors). Whatever type of solution your company delivers, the program provides the resources to help you plan, deploy, launch, and grow your applications.

Learn more about Microsoft App Accelerate by reading Build intelligent applications with help from Microsoft App Accelerate.

The Windows Management Framework (WMF) 5.1 is now available in the Microsoft Update catalog for Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, and Windows 8.1. These updates are listed in the catalog as KB3191564 and KB3191565.  Those who use WSUS to manage updates for their systems are now able to install WMF 5.1 for most of the WMF-supported Windows versions.

The packages for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are only available via the Download Center at this time.

As previously announced, WMF 5.1 is a required update for WMF 5.0, and may be installed directly over WMF 5.0. As of June 1, 2017, users with WMF 5.0 must upgrade to WMF 5.1 to receive support. At that time, WMF 5.0 will be removed from the Download Center and from the WSUS catalog.

As always, we welcome your feedback on PowerShell and WMF via our UserVoice site.

Thank you –

The PowerShell Team

Previous posts:

• Happy birthday .NET with Mads Torgersen, Coypu
• On .NET with Scott Hunter, On .NET with Matt Watson, MessagePack
• Visual Studio 2017, .NET Core SDK, F# 4.1, On .NET with Phillip Carter, Happy Birthday from John Shewchuk, FNA, Pyre

On .NET

Last week, we spoke with Sidharth Gupta from Samsung about Tizen. Tizen is Samsung’s open-source OS that runs on TVs, watches, phones, and other devices. The development platform for Tizen is built on .NET Core and Xamarin Forms.

This week, we’ll talk about SonarLint with Tamás Vajk. We’ll take questions on Gitter, on the dotnet/home channel and on Twitter. Please use the #onnet tag. It’s OK to start sending us questions in advance if you can’t do it live during the show.

Happy birthday .NET!

Bertrand Le Roy started using .NET with the first public betas, then proceeded to write a CMS with it. That’s when he moved to the US and joined the ASP.NET team that was working on ASP.NET 2.0 at the time. He’s worked on ASP.NET Ajax (including UpdatePanel, yes), co-founded the Orchard CMS project, and is now working as a Program Manager on .NET Core. He sometimes speaks of himself in the third person.

Package of the week: JSON.NET 10

I’ve featured JSON.NET before, and it’s the #1 package on NuGet with more than 50 million downloads. Version 10 is out, with new features that make it a particularly exciting release. Specifically, the library now has full async support.

Download JSON.NET 10 on NuGet.org.

Blogger of the week: Gunnar Peipman

Gunnar Peipman has had at least one post a week featured here for quite a while, and this week is no exception, as you’ll find three of his posts in the ASP.NET, C#, and Azure sections. His posts are always very focused and immediately useful. Check out his blog!

Meetups of the week: game development with Unity for Windows 10 in NYC

Tonight at 6PM at the Microsoft Reactor in NYC, the Microsoft makers and app developers group holds a meeting where you’ll learn about game development on Windows 10 using Unity.

.NET

• A Hitchhikers Guide to the CoreCLR Source Code by Matt Warren.
• Command Line: Using dotnet watch test for continuous testing with .NET Core 1.0 and XUnit.net by Scott Hanselman.
• Visual Studio 2017 can automatically recommend NuGet packages for unknown types by Scott Hanselman.
• Fast Dictionary and struct generic arguments by Ayende Rahien.
• ClrMD Part 2 – From ClrRuntime to ClrHeap or how to traverse the managed heap by CriteoLabs.
• NuGet Versioning Hell by Ivan Gavryliuk.
• Dynamically generating classes in runtime by Nikola Lukovic.
• dotnet new Feature Selection by Muhammad Rehan Saeed.
• Happy LibYear! by Steve Desmond.
• Introductie van .NET Core, .NET Standard, and Developer experience – deel 1 van 2 (Dutch) by Sander Molenkamp and Edwin van Wijk.

ASP.NET

• Real-time chart using ASP.NET Core and WebSocket by Gunnar Peipman.
• Preventing mass assignment or over posting in ASP.NET Core by Andrew Lock.
• Step by step: Running ASP.NET Core on Raspberry Pi, and Raspberry Pi: Run ASP.NET Core on Startup by Carlos Mendible.
• MVC 5 encrypt parameters by Andrei Ignat.

C#

• Why .NET Core Made C# Your Next Programming Language to Learn by Matt Watson.
• Exploring C# 7 by David Pine.
• Deconstructors for non-tuple types in C# 7.0 by Andrew Lock.
• C# 7.0: Out variables by Gunnar Peipman.
• How to build a simple object graph delta comparer in C# using Structurizer by Daniel Wertheim.

F#

• Exploring StackOverflow Data, by Evalina Gabasova
• Visualizing Olympic Medals with F# and Fable, by Tomas Petricek
• Building a MUD with F# and Akka.NET – Part One, by Joe Clay
• Why OO Matters (in F#), by Eirik Tsarpalis
• Answering “What’s for lunch?” using Azure Functions, F# and Slack, by Martin Andersen
• Examining the F# Programming Language, by David Bolton
• Visual F# Attributions

New F# Language Suggestions:

• New type: constrained type
• Flow based null check analysis for [] types and alike

Check out F# Weekly for more great content from the F# community.

Xamarin

• Xamarin Beta Release: 15.1 Beta Preview 1 by Bri Brothers.
• Xamarin Stable Release: Xamarin Workbooks & Inspector 1.2.0 by Bri Brothers.
• Xamarin Technical Bulletin: Updating Xamarin Visual Studio 2017 & Side-by-Side by Dominic Nahous.
• Introducing the Kimono Designer for SkiaSharp by Kevin Mullins.
• Xamarin University Webinar Recording | Building Your First Android App with Xamarin for Visual Studio by Courtney Witmer.
• Play Audio and Video with the MediaManager Plugin for Xamarin by Martijn van Dijk.
• Organize a Xamarin Dev Days! by Jayme Singleton.
• Catch Up on Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio for Mac with Channel 9 by James Montemagno.
• Introduction to Game Development with MonoGame by Xamarin.
• New HockeySDK releases for Xamarin and Unity by HockeyApp.
• Behind the Scenes: How Chefs for Seniors uses Xamarin, HockeyApp & Azure App Service to Power its Daily Operations by DevRadio.
• Episode 19: MonoGame – Write Once, Play Everywhere with Dean Ellis by The Xamarin Show.
• Cleaning Up Space on Your Xamarin Development Machine by James Montemagno.
• Xamarin.Forms Layout Challenges – Great Places by Kym Phillpotts.
• Connecting To A Remote Database in Xamarin Forms by Adam Pedley.
• UISleuth – Visually Inspect Your Xamarin Forms Application by Adam Pedley.
• Xamarin Forms Binding by Adam Pedley.
• Xamarin.Tips – Xamarin.Forms Android Custom TableView Section Titles by Alex Dunn.
• Xamarin.Tips – Xamarin.Forms iOS Custom TableView Section Titles by Alex Dunn.
• Xamarin.Tips – Android Shadows on Transparent Views by Alex Dunn.
• Xamarin.Tips – Changing a TableView’s Separator Color by Alex Dunn.
• Xamarin.Forms: Grouping data with Tabbed page by Almir Vuk.
• Xamarin.Forms — Caching for the ListView by Wallace McClure.

Azure

• Service Fabric .NET SDK goes open source by the Service Fabric team.
• Using Azure AD with ASP.NET Core by Gunnar Peipman.
• How to deploy an ASP.NET Core 1.1 application to an Azure App Services Web App using Visual Studio 2017 by Benjamin Perkins.

UWP

• New Year, New Dev – Windows IoT Core By Windows Apps Team.
• Project Rome for Android Update: Now with App Services Support By Carmen Forsmann.
• How the UWP Community Toolkit helps Windows developers easily create well-designed and user-friendly apps By Windows Apps Team.
• Dialing an Etch-a-Sketch By Greg Duncan.
• Setting a custom User-Agent in the UWP WebView control by Pedro Lamas.

Data

• Quick Start EF Core Videos on Channel 9, EF Core Quick Starts: ASP.NET Core in Visual Studio 2017 (video) and EF Core Quick Starts: Full .NET in Visual Studio 2015 (video) by Julie Lerman.
• Using Resilient Entity Framework Core Sql Connections and Transactions: Retries with Exponential Backoff by Cesar de la Torre.
• Entity Framework Query Caching by Deepak Malik.
• Checking Up on Your Entity Framework Objects with DbEntityEntry by Peter Vogel.

Game Development

• Inventory and Store System – Part 4.2 (Populating the Data) by Stacey Haffner.
• Implementing robust AI for SecondHand: Enemy Positioning by Radu S. Cristea.
• SadConsole – Engine Revision Completed by Andy De George.
• Is Early Access Worth It? by James Buckle.
• [Unity 5.5] Tutorial: How to create a Mirror by Gamad.
• Hex Map 15: Distances by Catlike Coding.
• Unity 5: Fade Between Scenes by Dual Core Studio.
• Curated #UnityTips No. 38 by Devdog March 2017.
• http://www.usgamer.net/articles/hajime-tabata-talks-about-the-transformation-of-versus-xiii-to-final-fantasy-xv by Jeremy Parish.

And this is it for this week!

Contribute to the week in .NET

As always, this weekly post couldn’t exist without community contributions, and I’d like to thank all those who sent links and tips. The F# section is provided by Phillip Carter, the gaming section by Stacey Haffner, and the Xamarin section by Dan Rigby, and the UWP section by Michael Crump.

You can participate too. Did you write a great blog post, or just read one? Do you want everyone to know about an amazing new contribution or a useful library? Did you make or play a great game built on .NET?
We’d love to hear from you, and feature your contributions on future posts:

• Send an email to beleroy at Microsoft,
• comment on this gist
• Leave us a pointer in the comments section below.
• Send Stacey (@yecats131) tips on Twitter about .NET games.

This week’s post (and future posts) also contains news I first read on The ASP.NET Community Standup, on Weekly Xamarin, on F# weekly, and on Chris Alcock’s The Morning Brew.

Join us for next episode of Modern Workplace, “The Future of Work: Build, attract, connect,” airing April 11, 2017 at 8 a.m. PDT / 4 p.m. BST. In this episode, learn how your organization can adopt cutting edge methods to better communicate, collaborate, and stay ahead of the curve in the future of work.

Featured guests:

• Angela Oguntala, speaker and United Nations “future innovator” will share how you can see fast results for your organization by breaking down growth opportunities into small, actionable steps.
• Jacob Morgan, speaker, futurist and author of the new book “The Employee Experience Advantage,” will reveal why experiential companies are poised for the greatest future success, and what that could mean for your organization.

Plus, learn how you can elevate your team’s productivity using the new chat-based workspace, Microsoft Teams.

Register now!

Related content

• Register for a demo of Microsoft Teams.
• Get “The Ultimate Guide to Chat-Based Tools.”
• Download the eBook, “Psychology of Workplace Collaboration.”

The post Learn how to stay ahead of the curve in the future of work appeared first on Office Blogs.

A couple of months ago I blogged about open sourcing the VS Test platform.  In that post, I talked about the numerous test frameworks that it supports, on of the most popular ones being MSTest.  I also foreshadowed our plan to also open source MSTest V2.  Today I’m happy to announce that we have open sourced MSTest V2 under the MIT license.  This open source announcement means that the community now has a fully supported, fully open source, fully cross-platform implementation of the MSTest test framework with which to write tests targeting .NET Framework, .NET Core and ASP.NET Core on Windows, Linux, and Mac. 

Here are the public repositories on GitHub where the project is hosted: 

• https://github.com/Microsoft/testfx 
• https://github.com/Microsoft/testfx-docs 

The repos include the complete implementation of the test framework and its adapter, the templates, and the Create Unit Tests and Create IntelliTest wizard extensions.  These are fully open and ready to accept contributions.  Over the next several weeks and months we will continue to transfer more source and documentation into the repositories and likewise make it open for contributions. 

The “MSTest V2” journey

We began the MSTest V2 journey with the intent of providing users of the MSTest test framework a viable path going forward, and the post MSTest V2 – Now and Ahead summarizes the rationale and the investments made thus far.  Thank you for all the issues you reported and your feedback; we have addressed them as fast as we can, refreshing the bits on NuGet at a feverish pace. 

One prominent piece of feedback that emerged along the way was to make MSTest framework open source.  With this announcement we have addressed that request. 

Our commitment to the MSTest test framework community is unwavering.  Going forward, we will engage in transparent development.  Towards that, we will share, make visible, and collaborate on issues, implementation and our roadmap.  We look forward to your continued support and participation.

Thank you,

Brian

In today’s security landscape, there are more threats to data than ever before. Beyond corruption caused by hardware or human failure, malware and cyberattacks can put data in serious danger.  That’s why it’s imperative for enterprises, small-and-medium businesses, and individuals to back up data. It must be implemented systematically, not just on World Backup Day, but regularly.

One of the biggest threats to data is ransomware. Organizations, hospitals, and businesses have succumbed to paying attackers – a testament to the importance of key data to business continuity. Unfortunately, these incidents can indicate the absence of effective backup strategies in these organizations, which can make ransomware attacks more lucrative for attackers.

We have observed a decline in ransomware encounters in recent months. In part, we believe this downward trend is a result of enhanced detection of ransomware downloaders by Windows Defender AV via heuristics and improved cloud protection, which are powered by precise machine learning models. The blocking of ransomware downloaders significantly decreased the volume of ransomware that reaches the endpoint. Those that do reach the computer can be detected and removed by generic heuristic-based ransomware detections.

But that doesn’t mean that the threat of ransomware is going away any time soon. If anything, we’re seeing a lot of innovation in malware code in ransomware families like Cerber and Locky, as well as in cybercriminal operations that distribute them. They will continue to be a big threat to companies, especially as they are observed to take on characteristics of targeted attacks. The sad truth is, cybercriminals know they can get significantly better returns from companies.

The other threat to data is data-wiping malware, which delete or replace all files on the computer. These threats are being used in high-profile targeted attacks against large organizations. Given the extent of their damage, they can halt business operations or take services offline.

One such malware is Depriz (aka Shamoon), which has been used in multiple targeted attacks in the Middle East since 2016. Attacks that use Depriz are destructive in nature, so there is barely any chance of restoring damaged files.

In a very curious development, a new version of Depriz was spotted sporting a ransomware component. This combination pointedly emphasizes how much attackers want to go after company data, whether to encrypt them for extortion money as ransomware would, or to delete them for sabotage as data-wipers would.

Ransomware and data-wipers pile on to already existing threats to data: theft, hardware breakdown, natural disasters, or even human mistakes. The general advice is to assume compromise. It takes only one employee falling prey to a social engineering lure to start a chain of infection that will lead to data loss.

The impact of ransomware and data-wiping malware can be minimized by making sound backup plans a critical component of any disaster recovery plan.

The 3-2-1 rule is a generally accepted practice for backing up. By creating three backup copies in at least two different storage media formats, with at least one copy in offline storage, you can have better safeguards to making sure your data is protected against these types of attacks. The 3-2-1 technique increases your chances of recovering from incidents.

Windows 10 has built-in technologies that can help you back up files systematically. You can turn on File History to regularly and automatically save copies of important files in a drive you specify. The best practice is to use an external drive as the backup drive, and to do a periodic offline backup by disconnecting the backup drive. This is because ransomware can encrypt file history backups just like any other files in the computer, including backup drives that are connected at the time of infection. File History can gracefully handle backup drives as they are connected and disconnected. You can then restore files from backup in the event your files are lost or damaged.

Microsoft OneDrive and Microsoft OneDrive for Business, which allow you to store, access, and share files from anywhere using any device, is integrated into Windows 10. On top of being a great collaboration and organization tool, OneDrive can help protect from ransomware and other threats using Version History, which automatically saves the previous version of your Office documents when you save or change them. You can then use your OneDrive backup to restore files.

Needless to say, endpoints and networks should be protected from ransomware and cyberattacks. Windows Defender Antivirus, for instance, uses a combination of heuristic and machine-learning technologies to deliver cloud-based protection against the latest threats. On the other hand, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection alerts security operations teams about suspicious activities associated with ransomware, zero-day exploits, targeted attacks, and other threats.

Even with security solutions in place, however, your data may still be exposed to other risks, such as the aforementioned natural disasters, media failure, and human error. Everything must be done to make sure critical data is safe. Backing up is not option – it should be a vital part of any cybersecurity strategy.

Tanmay Ganacharya
Principal Security GM, Windows Defender Research
Follow on Twitter: @tanmayg

It has been a while since we blogged about the ability to control the behavior of Sent Items for shared mailboxes when users either send as or on behalf of shared mailboxes. Today, we are glad to share with you that this feature is currently rolling out for User mailboxes also! What does that mean in real life?

Let’s say you have the following scenario:

• Mary is a delegator / manager on the team
• Rob is a delegate on Mary’s mailbox; Rob has “Send As” or “Send on behalf of” rights on Mary’s mailbox
• When Rob sends an email as Mary, the email will be only in Rob’s Sent Items folder

With this feature enabled on Mary’s mailbox, the message that Rob sends as Mary will be copied (by Exchange) to Mary’s mailbox also. In other words – both Rob and Mary will have the email in their Sent Items folders.

We have heard this request more than once, and now – we are rolling it out to the Exchange Online mailbox near you! The configuration and behavior of the feature is the same as for the shared mailbox:

To enable:

• For emails Sent As the delegator mailbox: set-mailbox -MessageCopyForSentAsEnabled $True
• For emails Sent On Behalf of the delegator mailbox: set-mailbox -MessageCopyForSendOnBehalfEnabled $True

To disable:

• For emails Sent As the delegator mailbox: set-mailbox -MessageCopyForSentAsEnabled $False
• For emails Sent On Behalf of the delegator mailbox: set-mailbox -MessageCopyForSendOnBehalfEnabled $False

Currently, the only way to configure this is by using PowerShell. While the configuration of this feature is now in the O365 Portal for shared mailboxes, it is not there yet for user mailboxes (would like to hear if you feel like it should be in the Portal too!) For various other details of behavior please see the original shared mailbox post as it applies.

Next question that some might have is: what about on-premises? We know you want to use this on premises also, and will update when we have more details!

Enjoy!

The Calendaring Team

This blog post was written by Mark Empson, who is a Premier Field Engineer based in the UK.

Back in 2013, I started to uncover some challenges around upgrading ADMX/L files in the policy definitions folder (be it Local or in the central store) and the ramifications of some of the changes that can occur, with later revisions of the files.  I initially put together a spreadsheet at the time, that looked at how the physical files changed between builds by using MD5 hashes of each released file and a direct comparison between only two builds of ADMX releases, to visualize the differences.  This work was built upon by Kai Ohnesorge, as he took that work to the next stage, by documented all aspects of the content changes between all versions of the files (as can been seen on this blog site, via this link https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/grouppolicy/2016/10/12/admx-version-history/ ).

Today, marks the release of a new knowledge base article that explains the known issues that could be experienced, while upgrading the PolicyDefinitions folder from a Windows Server 2012R2 build, with later version of ADMX files and it also explains how to mitigate those known issues.  This document is also important while using the Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) server, as the same issues will also be visible.

This KB article 4015786 can be found on any of the links below:

Direct Link:   https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4015786/known-issues-managing-a-windows-10-group-policy-client-from-a-windows-

FWLINK: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=845418

AKA :  https://aka.ms/admxupgrade

Special thanks to Ajay Sarkaria, who is the Supportability PM for Group Policy and Kai Ohnesorge, who is also a PFE.

Hi, Mark Rowe here, and I am the creator of Augmented Living, a Developer/Architect for Microsoft’s Modern Applications Solution Center as a senior consultant, and a long-time Microsoft fanboy and blogger.

One of the most hit aspects of security is RDP on the default ports with poor password governance.
People are busy, we all are.
As previously seen on the web, open VNC and RDP ports are not, shall we say, uncommon. For example, ‘VNC Roulette‘ last year was a real eye opener.

So, lock it down, right? We all know a username of “admin” and a password of “password” can only keep your kids and the neighbors from getting into your router (maybe). It doesn’t do much good against attacks on RDP sessions with actual hackers doing the attacks.

So, what do we do? We do more. Time is, as they say, ‘a wastin’, so Let’s get it started.

Note: In this post, we assume you have already setup a virtual machine in ARM in Azure with Remote Desktop Protocol already working on the default IP and port (3389).

Part 1: Create Load Balancer

-“Ok Done! We are with you but what is with all the tomfoolery! What is this magic you speak of?”

The magic comes in with the Load Balancer. First things first, let’s create that.

Add New Load Balancer.

Give the Load balancer a public IP. This will allow it to be seen on the “interwebs”.

Name the IP address and make it static. (Unless you want Dynamic, but you will need to get your Load Balancers IP when it changes.)

We then make sure everything is properly assigned and set the Resource Group to the same one as the Virtual Machine.

Open the Load Balancer you just created.

Add New Inbound Nat Rule to the Load balancer.

-“Hey this isn’t magic or gnomes! I set this up in my router in the 90’s, you know back when IRC was cool and my email address ended in compuserve”.

You got me, this is just like that.

Figure out the Port you want to connect to on the external Load Balancer

Forward that to 3389 internally.

Then set a NAT Rule you can point to an availability set, or just a single VM.

This should make it so you can reach the Load balancers IP:PORT and get into RDP.

*Port would be something like 4000 or 10001. If your IP were 169.0.0.1. Then your RDP line would read 169.0.0.1:4000 or 169.0.0.1: 10001. Those would translate to the 3389 port internally and still connect you to the VM via RDP.

– For all you kids raising your hands out there. Yes 169. addresses usually mean no DHCP could be contacted and that IP should never happen. – Overachievers!

Any other ports that need to make it through here you can also set up 1 rule per. HTTP, HTTPS etc. You can keep the PORTS the same if you just want a pass through. You can keep them or NAT translate them.

Part 2: Removing the Public IP from VM.

Hold my ‘coffee’. We’ve got this, and if not, there is always support. Right?

“Wait, are you selling support hours? ”

You will never know, or maybe you will in 5.

Go to your Virtual machine, click network interfaces. Then double-click on the record with NAME -PUBLIC IP ADDRESS

Click on IPCONFIGURATION then double-click the appropriate Name for the configuration.

Now disable the public IP.

Click save.

Your traffic will now be forced to go through load balancer where you can change IP’s etc and the default 3389 port should no longer be accessible externally.

NOTE: Your Network Security Group will not change, it will still need access to ALL on 3389 if you wish to connect from everywhere.

Part 3: Don’t like only having an IP address?

• “My phone keeps all my numbers in it, if I can’t remember those… How about a name for this monstrosity?”

Easy Peasy, well easy as a few UI clicks. Back to the Portal!

Select your Virtual machines from the Virtual machine menu.

Double-click under Public IP Address/DNS name label

Set the DNS Name in the Textbox. This will give the Load Balancer Endpoint that DNS location.

You should now be able to get to your VM through the LB DNS Name!

NOTE: Security groups are still required on your VM or your subnet in order for data to pass through.

Thanks again for all the work Matt Garing and Sumeet Kumar in helping hash this out.

Questions? (About this article)

Mark Rowe Mark.Rowe@Microsoft.com

Last October we released the preview of Azure Analysis Services, which is built on the proven analytics engine in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services. With Azure Analysis Services you can host semantic data models in the cloud. Users in your organization can then connect to your data models using tools like Excel, Power BI, and many others to create reports and perform ad-hoc data analysis.

We are excited to share with you that the preview of Azure Analysis Services is now available in 2 additional regions: Japan East and UK South. This means that Azure Analysis Services is now available in the following regions: Australia Southeast, Canada Central, Brazil South, Southeast Asia, North Europe, West Europe, West US, South Central US, North Central US, East US 2, West Central US, Japan East, and UK South.

New to Azure Analysis Services? Find out how you can try Azure Analysis Services or learn how to create your first data model.

Deep learning is impacting everything from healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, and more. Companies are turning to deep learning to solve hard problems like image classification, speech recognition, object recognition, and machine translation. In this blog post, Intel’s BigDL team and Azure HDInsight team collaborate to provide the basic steps to use BigDL on Azure HDInsight.  

What is Intel’s BigDL library?

In 2016, Intel released its BigDL distributed Deep Learning project into the open-source community, BigDL Github. It natively integrates into Spark, supports popular neural net topologies, and achieves feature parity with other open-source deep learning frameworks. BigDL also provides 100+ basic neural networks building blocks allowing users to create novel topologies to suit their unique applications. Thus, with Intel’s BigDL, the users are able to leverage their existing Spark infrastructure to enable Deep Learning applications without having to invest into bringing up separate frameworks to take advantage of neural networks capabilities.

Since BigDL is an integral part of Spark, a user does not need to explicitly manage distributed computations. While providing a high-level control “knobs” such as number of compute nodes, cores, and batch size, a BigDL application leverages stable Spark infrastructure for node communications and resource management during its execution. BigDL applications can be written in either Python or Scala and achieve high performance through both algorithm optimization and taking advantage of intimate integration with Intel’s Math Kernel Library (MKL). Check out Intel’s BigDL portal for more details.  

Azure HDInsight

Azure HDInsight is the only fully-managed cloud Hadoop offering that provides optimized open source analytic clusters for Spark, Hive, MapReduce, HBase, Storm, Kafka, and R Server backed by a 99.9% SLA. Other than that, HDInsight is an open platform for 3^rd party big data applications such as ISVs, as well as custom applications such as BigDL.  

Through this blog post, BigDL team and Azure HDInsight team will give a high-level view on how to use BigDL with Apache Spark for Azure HDInsight. You can find a more detailed step to use BigDL to analyze MNIST dataset in the engineering blog post.  

Getting BigDL to work on Apache Spark for Azure HDInsight

BigDL is very easy to build and integrate. There are two major steps:

• Get BigDL source code and build it to get the required jar file
• Use Jupyter Notebook to write your first BigDL application in Scala 

Step 1: Build BigDL libraries

The first step is to build the BigDL libraries and get the required jar file. You can simply ssh into the cluster head node, and follow the build instructions in BigDL Documentation. Please be noted that you need to install maven in headnode to build BigDL, and put the jar file (dist/lib/bigdl-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar) to the default storage account of your HDInsight cluster. Please refer to the engineering blog for more details.  

Step 2: Use Jupyter Notebook to write your first application

HDInsight cluster comes with Jupyter Notebook, which provides a nice notebook-like experience to author Spark jobs. Here is a snapshot of a Jupyter Notebook running BigDL on Azure Spark for Apache HDInsight. For detailed step-by-step example of implementing a popular MNIST dataset training using LeNet model, please refer to this Microsoft’s engineering blog post. For more details on how to use Jupyter Notebooks on HDInsight, please refer to the documentation.

BigDL workflow and major components

Below is a general workflow of how BigDL trains a deep learning model on Apache Spark: As shown in the figure, BigDL jobs are standard Spark jobs. In a distributed training process, BigDL will launch spark tasks in executor (each task leverages Intel MKL to speed up training process).

A BigDL program starts with import com.intel.analytics.bigdl._ and then initializes theEngine, including the number of executor nodes and the number of physical cores on each executor.

If the program runs on Spark, Engine.init() will return a SparkConf with proper configurations populated, which can then be used to create the SparkContext. For this particular case, the Jupyter Notebook will automatically set up a default spark context so you don’t need to do the above configuration, but you do need to configure a few other Spark related configuration which will be explained in the sample Jupyter Notebook.  

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have demonstrated the basic steps to set up a BigDL environment on Apache Spark for Azure HDInsight, and you can find a more detailed step to use BigDL to analyze MNIST dataset in the engineering blog post “How to use BigDL on Apache Spark for Azure HDInsight.” Leveraging BigDL Spark library, a user can easily write scalable distributed Deep Learning applications within familiar Spark infrastructure without an intimate knowledge of the configuration of the underlying compute cluster. BigDL and Azure HDInsight team have been collaborating closely to enable BigDL in Apache Spark for Azure HDInsight environment.

If you have any feedback for HDInsight, feel free to drop an email to hdifeedback@microsoft.com. If you have any questions for BigDL, you can raise your questions in BigDL Google Group.

Resources

• Learn more about Azure HDInsight
• Aritificial Intelligence Software and Hardware at Intel
• BigDL introductory video

Creativity has led the inspiration of our world’s greatest inventors, architects, educators, entrepreneurs, developers, and students, delivering advancements that move our world forward. Today, people value creativity more than ever, placing us on the cusp of a new wave of exploration, advancement, and impact.

We designed Windows 10 to empower the creator in all of us. To us, that means that everyone has the power to dream big, whether that involves starting a company, developing a lesson plan, inventing a product, developing or broadcasting games, or imagining a whole new world in Minecraft or mixed reality. And we want Windows to be the place you love to create and play, with the tools to help you make your mark on the world.

Windows 10 Creators Update coming April 11

Today, I’m excited to share our latest update to Windows 10, the Creators Update, will begin to roll out on April 11. The Creators Update is designed to spark and unleash creativity, bringing 3D and mixed reality to everyone and enabling every gamer to be a broadcaster. Beyond creativity, it brings new features to Microsoft Edge, additional security capabilities and privacy tools, and so much more.

Whether you’re already a Windows 10 customer or looking for a new Windows 10 device from Surface or our partners, here are just a few of the new features coming in the Windows 10 Creators Update.

3D for Everyone and enabling mixed reality

With the new Paint 3D app in the Creators Update, it’s simple to create 3D objects from scratch, easily changing colors, stamping textures, or turning a 2D picture into a 3D work of art.

The 3D industry is estimated to grow by over 62% by 2020, and we want to empower everyone to experience, create and share in 3D with the Creators Update.

Most of us have been limited to a two-dimensional canvas with existing tools, yet we live in a multi-dimensional world. With 3D, we can communicate ideas and express ourselves better, and learn faster because it’s much more representative of the world we live in. The 3D industry is estimated to grow by over 62% by 2020, and we want to empower everyone to experience, create and share in 3D with the Creators Update.

Windows has long been home to creation, with the original Paint seeing over 100 million monthly users as one of the most popular creation tools. With the new Paint 3D app in the Creators Update, it’s simple to create 3D objects from scratch, easily changing colors, stamping textures, or turning a 2D picture into a 3D work of art. Remix3D.com offers pre-made 3D art in a growing online library for your use or you can share your own creation with this creative community.

From 3D to mixed reality, the Windows 10 Creators Update enables immersive experiences that blur the lines between the physical and virtual worlds. Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo will ship the world’s first Windows Mixed Reality-enabled headsets with the Creators Update, starting at just $299 USD later this year. These headsets will contain built-in sensors to enable inside-out, six-degrees of freedom, allowing for easy setup and free movement without the need for external markers or sensors in the wall. These devices will light up with new, immersive Windows Mixed Reality apps and experiences, which developers are creating on the recently available Windows Mixed Reality dev kits.

Watch, participate, chat and interact in real-time with Beam

Built-in game broadcasting on Windows 10. Now you can effortlessly stream your gameplay using the Game Bar—just hit Windows + G, click Broadcast, and start streaming on Beam—all without the need for additional log-ins.

We’re committed to making Xbox the best place to create and play games across Windows 10 and Xbox One. As part of that, we are unifying players across Xbox console and PC with Xbox Live and through programs like Xbox Play Anywhere, which enables you to buy a game once and play it on both your Xbox One and Windows 10 PC.

With the Creators Update, we are delivering more ways to play, interact, share and enjoy across Windows 10 and Xbox One. With Beam, we’re inviting Creators on Windows 10 PC and Xbox One to stream gameplay and interact with community in real-time using Beam’s ultra low-latency – no extra hardware or software required. With Beam, you don’t just watch your favorite game streams, you can chat, interact and participate with streamers and community in entirely new ways.

With Windows 10 Game Mode our goal is to offer the best and most consistent gaming experience on your Windows 10 PC by dedicating more system resources to your PC games. Once you’ve enabled Game Mode, you can apply it to any game. Learn more about the corresponding Xbox One update and new features here.

Microsoft Edge is faster and safer with better browsing and entertainment

Set your tabs aside for easy access; Microsoft Edge is the default reader for books in Windows Store.

Because so much time is spent online, we’ve designed Microsoft Edge to be the best browser for Windows 10. People are choosing Microsoft Edge because it is safer and faster than Chrome, with better battery life. With all the dangerous security threats online today, Microsoft Edge blocks 9% more phishing sites and 13% more malware than Chrome* – helping protect your identity and information; speed matters on the Web and according to Google’s own benchmarks, Microsoft Edge is faster than Chrome**. Finally, Microsoft Edge makes your battery last longer so you can stream up to 1.5 hours of video longer than Chrome***.

But that’s not all. With the Creators Update, we’ve added new features like advanced tab management to help you find, organize and open tabs you’ve set aside without leaving the page you’re on. You can now discover and get your favorite e-books in Windows Store and read them in Microsoft Edge across all of your Windows 10 devices. And, it is the only browser that can play Netflix movies and TV shows in 4K Ultra HD resolution ****.

From sleeping better to easily managing your children’s screen time

Sometimes it’s the little things that delight the most. And with the Windows 10 Creators Update, there are many delightful updates and features based on your feedback.

By reducing the blue light emitted by your screen, the night light feature helps you sleep better. With night light, when you’re working late your brain is more ready to power down for a good night’s sleep. Smartphone users love this feature and now, it’s coming to Windows 10 with the Creators Update.

The mini view feature lets you keep an ever-present small window on top of what you’re doing. This means you can do things like binge-watch your favorite show, carry on a Skype conversation or control your music, regardless of what else you’re working on.

With the Windows 10 Creators Update, parents familiar with screen time limits for Windows 10 will now find a similar set of controls for Xbox One. With screen time limits parents can manage how much time their children play games across the console and PC, giving you an extra hand, say, when your younger family member has played enough Forza Horizon 3 for the day. With screen time limits, parents can set a daily time allowance for each child and your Xbox One or Windows 10 PC will automatically sign them out when time is up. For Windows 10, you can even get a report telling you what your child played each week. To set up screen time limits, head over to account.microsoft.com/family, sign in with your parent account, and select “Screen time” for your child’s account.

Windows Hello can use any paired iPhone, Android or Windows Phone to detect when you step away from your PC or tablet, automatically locking it behind you for an extra measure of security and privacy. This remote lock feature works with smartphones, fitness bands or any device that’s paired to your PC or tablet.

Additional security and privacy protection

The new Windows Defender Security Center dashboard coming with the Windows 10 Creators Update gives you visibility of your device security, health, and online safety.

Customers like MARS, Adventist Health Systems, and the Australian Department of Human Services are choosing Windows 10 because it is the most secure enterprise platform. Businesses and people at home need advanced protection because security experts are seeing increased efforts to make common malware and ransomware more prevalent and difficult to track and defend against, putting everyone at greater risk. With Windows 10, we’ve built the most robust security protection into Windows to protect you from these threats whether you are visiting a website, sending an email or storing files in the cloud.

With the Creators Update, we offer a new service to help you monitor your security, the Windows Defender Security Center. It offers a single dashboard display so you can control your security options from one place – everything from anti-virus, network and firewall protection; to assessing your device performance and health; to security controls for your apps and browser; to family safety options. And there’s more: The Device Health Advisor gives you information on the vital signs of your device, and new settings give you more control over app installation. For our business customers, the Creators Update will continue to bring new tools and capabilities that help simplify IT– making it easier to better deploy, manage and support Windows 10 devices – and to help stomp security threats.

Your privacy deeply matters to us and to you, and the Creators Update makes it easier than ever to manage your privacy with Windows 10 and other Microsoft services with a new set up experience that lets you choose the settings that are right for you. A new Microsoft privacy dashboard lets you see and manage your activity data across multiple Microsoft services.

The Creators Update will start to roll out via Windows Update on April 11. We will be rolling it out in a measured way to ensure the best possible customer experience.

Surface Book and Surface Studio coming to more markets

Surface Studio turns your desk into a creative studio. It is a new class of device that transforms from a desktop PC into a powerful digital canvas, unlocking a more natural and immersive way to create.

Since we introduced Surface Studio, Surface Dial, and Surface Book with Performance Base last fall, we’ve heard amazing feedback on how these devices are transforming the way people bring ideas to life. Surface Studio has captured people’s imagination with a completely new way to create at your desk. And Surface Book with Performance Base has delivered an unprecedented combination of performance, battery life, and portability. We’ve heard from engineers, developers, Silicon Valley startups, designers, and photographers about how Surface devices not only help them get more done but to interact with their work in new ways. To help meet the demand for Surface devices as part of the modern office setting we are investing in partnerships with companies like Steelcase to help businesses unlock the full creative potential of their employees. With Surface and Windows 10 we are helping people realize their full creative potential and we are excited to bring that experience to more people around the world today.

Surface Book with Performance base is available for pre-order today in Austria, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and will be available for purchase on April 20th. And, Surface Studio and Surface Dial are available for pre-order today in Australia, Canada and New Zealand and will be available for purchase starting April 20th.

Windows 10 Creators Update for Surface Hub

Last but definitely not least, Surface Hub customers worldwide will receive the Windows 10 Creators Update for Surface Hub. The update delivers some of the top requested features to make Surface Hub an even more powerful collaboration device. The updates include an improved new start screen that allows you to sign on with your credentials and access your Office 365 apps and OneDrive materials as well as new manageability tools to simplify large-scale deployments. Apps like Skype for Business are being improved to help you connect better and the Whiteboard app will now easily enable real-time collaboration between Surface Hubs. Expect a more detailed update on the great Surface Hub improvements coming in Creators Update before April 11th.

Stay tuned right here on the Windows Blog for more information soon about how to get the Windows 10 Creators Update. We are so excited to deliver the Creators Update to you and for more of you around the world to experience the amazing Surface devices that bring creativity to life.

Thanks,

Yusuf

*Based on NSS Labs report.
**More information on benchmark here.
***Windows data found here.
****Exclusive DRM privilege to allow 4K stream for Microsoft Edge and Netflix app on Windows 10 on compatible Windows PCs.

The post Windows 10 Creators Update coming April 11, Surface expands to more markets appeared first on Windows Experience Blog.

With the introduction of the Bing iMessage Extension, people can express themselves with GIFs, search and easily share places, movies, and more from the web, without leaving the conversation. To get started, simply get the Bing app for iPhone and enable the Bing iMessage Extension through iMessage.

Express Yourself with Hilarious GIFs

Share What You’ve Previously Found or Find Something New

Make Plans for a Group Movie and Meal Out

While sharing a Bing link was a good way to pass along content that users had common interest in, surfing back and forth between messaging friends and sifting through a multitude of movies or restaurants is a hassle. The Bing iMessage Extension allows you to share a restaurant or movie card directly so it’s easier and quicker to make plans.

Easily check out what’s in theaters with a group before committing.

Search and then share multiple restaurants with a group of friends to help make a decision.

To make sure you have access to the new Bing iMessage Extension, download the Bing app.

- The Bing Team