I have recently been introduced to Uber Conference along with many others that could be named but this is a great way to join up with people on browsers or people I know in the US. One of the features that made me giggle is a particular music on hold you can choose which is Rick Astley so you get to #RickRoll people whilst they wait for you.
The only downside is there is no free UK dial in number but I found this service that allows me to use my inclusive minutes to dial US numbers https://www.freecallstousa.co.uk
I know that I like to have many of my conference bridges to auto dial if I don’t have access to the app or weak data or even if I am driving. With this method I can ask Siri to start UberConference and it adds me as the host automatically and enters my PIN
What you need to do is enter the following into a contact card
You can get the details from your settings page within your account.
If it take ages to connect you can play with the , as each carrier adds different delays and find the sweet spot for yourself. Below is a demo of this working
DISCLAIMER:- I have not tested the security of either service and I am not liable for any loses or charges. Also please check with your telephony provider this number is included as again I am not liable for any charges
So this week I have been performing an Office 365 migration and part way through federating my domains and getting ADFS up and running I came across this error below
First thing I did was go have a quick look at what was going on within the Event log and there was a rather odd error. This can be down to your service account losing its groups or the DCOM components losing their permissions too but mine seemed to be ok
Scheduler::SchedulerThreadMain : An error occured and scheduler run failed to perform all operation.
System.Management.Automation.CmdletInvocationException: Run profile ‘Full Import’ does not have run steps. —> System.InvalidOperationException: Run profile ‘Full Import’ does not have run steps.
at Microsoft.DirectoryServices.MetadirectoryServices.UI.WebServices.MMSWebService.InvokeRunProfile(String connectorName, String runProfileName)
Firstly do try a repair of the install and ensure you are at the latest version, as I said before this may be permissions related but if not after much head scratching for some very very odd reason all my rules had been dropped in the Synchronization Service Manager. To be honest I never got to the bottom of quite why they vanished during switching over the federation but to get things working again launch the application and goto the connectors tab
You should see you main AD and any others you wanted to sync in your forest. select your local AD Domain Services and then select configure run profiles on the right hand side
Within this window it will probably now look rather bare and this is what the cryptic error is going on about. It basically doesn’t know what to do!
Repopulate all the option including the export which is pretty much simply select the matching type to the profile and ensuring your base DN/partition is correct
Do make sure your Export one is populated as I found my password sync stopped working and had to do this and then use the Wizard to remove ADFS and flip back to password hash and then re-integrate. If you don’t do this you will see errors in the 365 Portal stating Password sync hasn’t occurred and get this error in your event log despite things now looking like they are syncing
Scheduler::SchedulerThreadMain : An error occured and scheduler run failed to perform all operation.
System.Management.Automation.CmdletInvocationException: Run profile ‘Export’ does not have run steps. —> System.InvalidOperationException: Run profile ‘Export’ does not have run steps.
at Microsoft.DirectoryServices.MetadirectoryServices.UI.WebServices.MMSWebService.InvokeRunProfile(String connectorName, String runProfileName)
at Microsoft.IdentityManagement.PowerShell.Cmdlet.InvokeADSyncRunProfileCmdlet.ProcessRecord()
— End of inner exception stack trace —
at System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.PipelineBase.Invoke(IEnumerable input)
at System.Management.Automation.PowerShell.Worker.ConstructPipelineAndDoWork(Runspace rs, Boolean performSyncInvoke)
The final thing to do now is run the sync by right clicking the AD connector, selecting run and then the relevant task. I did select full first just to make things are working.
Hopefully you will now see nice informal messages in your event log like below and your 365 portal should update within the hour to say its all back in sync
So I have been working on parts of this post for a while but I though I should really break this what was a massive post into some smaller chunks and relevant areas as a few people have asked me about this but in this post I am going to cover how to post your Podcast with WordPress but have this on the Apple Podcast channel. I will cover off recording & editing, video types and also submitting to other stores in other posts.
Also skip to the end for once if you are integrating with a current blog as this can ensure media is not picked up by accident.
Before you start go sign up here as sometime Apple require the address to be approved with of course a subsequent approval after. https://podcastsconnect.apple.com/
Firstly head over to your WordPress admin page and select add new plugin
From the plugin screen search for BluBrry and install and active the plugin
Hit the setting button to be taken to the main screen for the plugin. Fill in your Podcast name, the subtitle and any other required fields. I also suggest doing the image at this point but it must be 3000×3000 or you will get an error later
On your WordPress menu select PowerPress and then Audio Player, Select the player that best suits your style
Perform the same for Video by selecting the PowerPress Menu and then Video Player
We now need to collect a few details from the advanced tab so that we can submit this to Apple for approval
Within here select iTunes and scroll down to find your feed info and make a note of this for later
Head back to and select the + icon at the top
Enter the feed address you noted previously
Press validate and then assuming there are no errors below press submit. The most common is the artwork is the wrong size or format
You will now get the below screen and you have to wait for the approval email from Apple, at this point if you have one recorded lets get your first podcast there ready for go live
First add a new post just like usual
The above text is embed in the Podcast description and title but scroll down and you will see this windows for the podcast episode, I host mine on my server but this can be a content server or AWS or Azure just as long as its served by HTTP/HTTPS. If this is a video Podcast I usually upload a low-res (sub 480p) version here and then upload a high res version to YouTube as you don’t want to send over 1GB file to the users phone or device.
Finally submit and publish the post
Now hopefully if you have been approved in the time you have been getting all this ready go back to https://podcastsconnect.apple.com/ and click on your podcast picture
On this screen select refresh feed to pull through any new episodes, it does do this every 24 hours if you are happy to wait.
Now sit back and wait for it to appear in the Apple Podcast app, if all has worked you should see the below
Integrating with a current blog
If you already have a blog and wish to integrate this I suggest turning on category podcasting and when you select the category follow the steps as if you were creating a main podcast just don’t set this at the top level or it may miss interpret media from your normal post, just remember to tag them when you publish. This can be enabled in the advanced menu at the bottom of the main screen by selecting category podcasting and pressing save
This then enabled the menu on the left so select this
Finally select your category such as podcast and then add podcast settings to category feed, you will see I had already added one and this is where you get your feed URL from. Some people also find its best to tick the Podcast only feeds to keep things even more clear.
So in preparation for Ravello Bloggers Day #2 tomorrow I thought I would write up a quick blog post and its crazy to think I can do this 11,582m up in the clouds, ironically what tomorrow is all about. There is good reason why I selected the picture for my post and that is the clouds and landscape are amazing on our planet (as I glanced out the window writing this) and the same can be said out the technology too but as engineers,architects & even humans do we even stop to marvel in either of their beauties?
Before I waffle I have to thank John, Kat & Amy along with the rest of their team for letting be be a delegate and having this great opportunity! I feel rather honoured to be able to do this and to be in a room full of great minds!
We are all now so used to be connected 24/7 and able to communicate worldwide (or even in the sky) within the blink of an eye do but we ever consider how all of this is possible and even what about all the legacy systems that may well be holding up this amazing platform
I know first-hand from this week I have already experienced in my new role asking different questions than I usually would. How does this scale, can I do this as code or even infrastructure as code even down to how can I back that state up or even its residing data. Much like my last point we expect data everywhere now and we want easy access no VPNs or multiple credentials and let’s be fair AD domains are still the easiest single sign on for users but how do we extend all our traditional services to our users.
My one prime example is a file server as this seems to have come up several times, yes we could implement things like Microsoft Teams/OneDrive or Citrix ShareFile but you will still get users that will want their home folder and their drive letters no matter how hard you try to escape this for at least a few years yet. I know some of this is business process but then what about our apps some of these just aren’t going to change overnight and use storage such as S3.
I think even if I wanted to deploy this in the cloud even somewhat traditionally I would certainly have more than one cloud and then have them connected in some form. Then the question is how well are my apps going to run up there or does this cause a licensing nightmare. Again, I am still speaking with some vendors now and they still have a server client approach with HTML or web based on the way. Does that then mean I need to push my clients to the cloud or just an element and deliver this as a seamless remote application with RDS, Citrix or VMware Horizon.
I know myself along with the company want to adopt a cloud first approach but are we able to tackle all of our day to day challenges yet or do we just have to think cleverly.
I can only speak for myself, but I am truly excited to see what the team have achieved over the last year of somethings I may have missed. I know I will certainly be digging more into the lift and shift as this is a great way to cuddle our legacy apps and maybe even edge cases like SAP or JAVA apps. It would also be great to get a better understanding of how we can now back up their bare metal offerings and if any further hypervisors may be officially support. I know have seen some great VMware and Nutanix posts out there but it would be great to see what they think of this. A great DIY custom albeit not officially supported VMware cloud maybe?
So after the below happening this week I thought it would be best if I get a study guide/tips up to try and help others. I also have to put out a massive thanks to James Brown who helped with my studies and put me on the right track
The first biggest tip I can give is forget anything 5.5! I went in the first time and after reflection speaking with James I put down way to many answers as 5.5 and not 5.0. Remember this is a 5.0 exam at the time of writing and not 5.5.
The next bit of advise I can give is play with the system and do a few things outside of the norm or what you may only do once but a few times as this will help. The other bit is read plenty of Nutanix blogs as this goes into some of the detail you may need. A few to note are below that I used
Also Josh Odgers blog has a wealth of information that’s great to study over
Finally the Nutanix corporate blog posts are great one example I used studying was here and the support portal on your account oh and don’t forget Nu.School
A few of my thoughts on the exam and courseware though for a second is I think it’s great especially for people like me trying to move from technical to architecture. The depth of which it covers the hypervisor such as Zeus and Medusa so you have a true understanding on how things talk and what they are protecting when you are building your system is outstanding.
It also provides some real work example you may not touch day to day such as migration from VMware to AHV
If this isn’t enough I can only say get more day to day exposure and why not by using the CE version in your lab or even in the cloud, failing that reach out to the community! I am glad I did and you will find people are more than happy to mentor
So what does that mean next for me… Well its a blog post in its own right but after a chat with James and am certainly thinking of trying to set a goal of passing my NPX. Once I get on this journey I know this will spawn a whole series of posts not just one but that’s for another day so watch out!
