travis' brain dump

Ok, so you’ve put in a lot of time spinning up some Azure VM’s and services using your free account or MSDN account and want to move it to another subscription. Should be easy right?

Evidently not really. 🙂

So I did my due diligence here to find out the best model and there was a lot of suggestions out there. Microsoft even has some instructions up there, which are slightly incorrect. No surprise right?

The original post by MSDN is here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn736051.aspx, however it does have a few minor inconsistencies.

1. Go to the Azure Support web site and click Get Support. You can also submit an incident from the Microsoft Azure Management Portal or from the Azure Accounts Center.
2. To submit support ticket from the Azure Management Portal, click your account name, and then click Contact Microsoft Support.
3. In the Create Support Ticket window, select the subscription for which you want to migrate data and services.
4. For Support Type, choose Billing.
5. Select your region and language, and then click Create Ticket
6. On the next page, for Problem Type, select Account, Subscription and Account Portal Assistance.
7. For Category, select Transfer my account, subscription or data, and then click Continue.
8. Confirm your contact information, provide a telephone number at which you can be reached, and then click Continue.
9. On the next page, provide the following information:
   1. For Problem Details, provide an incident title for your request and then use the text boxes provide required information and to include any additional information about your request.
   2. For Determine Severity, choose an option that represents the severity of your request. For more information about the severity types, refer to the Microsoft Azure Incident Severity Table.
   3. Use the File Upload tool to attach related documentation to your request. (not usually necessary)
   4. If you accept the Agreement for Microsoft Services, click Submit.You will be contacted by an Azure Support representative in accordance with the terms of the agreement.

Once you’ve completed this, support will email you or call you (whichever choice you picked) and confirm information with you as well as let you know of any limitations of the move (depends greatly on what you’ve deployed) and usually wrap this up within a day or so.

Ok, so you just updated recently to the latest version of chrome… notice you’ve got some plugins missing that you’re used to having? Yeah, me too. Ya know, things we take for granted until they’re gone… java, quicktime, citrix, etc. to name a few. Well, this is due to Google’s move to disable NPAPI plugins by default as they phase out support for them altogether. For the time being, however, you can re-enable these plugins by conducting the following operation:

• Open Chrome and enter the following address : chrome://flags/#enable-npapi
• At the top of the list you should now see ‘Enable NPAPI’ highlighted. Click ‘Enable’ on the link below it.
• Restart Chrome completely and upon re-opening, enter the following address : chrome://plugins/
• Review your plugins listed and make sure they’re all back

So what next? With Google phasing out NPAPI plugins, it’s advisable to start finding alternatives and/or look into what your favorite plugin developers plans are to move forward to more secure supported platforms.

Have you ever gone through the process of deploying a one-off Windows server only to discover you’ve gone and deployed Standard Edition as opposed to Data Center?

Ok, so it’s maybe not that common in these days of scripted installs and images, but I figured I’d toss this out there just because sometimes it happens, especially when you’ve got someone who had a product deployed on a single box then decide later they’d like to cluster it. Whatever your reasons are, I’ve had this happen before and it’s always good to keep it handy somewhere, so feel free to bookmark this.

Upgrading a server edition is actually pretty trivial, provided you have a Retail Key, a MAK or are operating with a KMS server onsite (volume licensing). The key is a critical component of being able to upgrade to the target edition you’d like to. For the default KMS Client Setup Keys, please reference the following link from Microsoft which lists all the keys you could need in that deployment type:  KMS Client Setup Keys

Now, please take note of the following rules:

• You can only upgrade editions, you *CANNOT* downgrade.
• This works on Standard & Enterprise Edition of Windows, on either core or full deployments.
• The target you upgrade cannot be a DC (domain controller). If you really need to update a DC, demote it, upgrade it, promote it.

What are my options for upgrade?
Well, that’s easy, run the following command on a box and it’ll show you your options:

‘dism /online /get-target-editions’

Your output should look something like this:

PS C:\Windows\system32> dism /online /get-targeteditions

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 6.2.9200.16384

Image Version: 6.2.9200.16384
Editions that can be upgraded to:

Target Edition : ServerDatacenter

The operation completed successfully.

(Windows 2008 would give you options like ServerDataCenter & ServerEnterprise)

Ok, so, you decide you want to upgrade to ServerDataCenter. Great.
To do so, you simply enter in the following:

‘dism /online /set-edition:ServerDataCenter /ProductKey: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX /AcceptEula’

The system will prompt you to reboot and you’ll be on your way.