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December 2007 - Posts
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I was talking with Dana Epp when Rodney and I were out in Vancouver for the MySecurity tour a couple of months back. He was telling me about when he was trying to get a straight answer on how he license System Centre Virtual Machine Manger in his office and the software reseller he was talking to didn't quite understand the licensing as of yet. To be fair - the product had only just released to the public and as he states below, it's something that will be sorted out in the new year.
I'm impressed with what he's done with it since then. He's running Server 2008 as the host with Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 as the virtualization solution. That's right - VS2005 R2 SP1, NOT Hyper-V and he's managing it with SC-VMM! Way cool - existing technology meeting the needs and getting ready for future of Hyper-V when he's ready to switch over. Have a Read...
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Dana Epp (Chilliwack, British Columbia, IT Pro & MVP) |
I’m a real fan of virtualization. For years I have used virtualization to test out software we write here at Scorpion Software and continue to create test lab deployments of complex environments that we simply don’t run here. We aren’t an enterprise shop, and don’t have the capacity to try everything an enterprise might normally see or have to act upon, making virtualization a great asset for testing.
In the last couple of years though the virtualization we use in development and in test labs has creeped into our production environment. We have transitioned from a shop that was running 12 different machines in the office down to three servers running Microsoft’s Virtual Server technology. This move alone has resulted in huge benefits to us. We have seen our power bill slashed in half. The server room is way quieter and nowhere near the sauna it used to be. And less hardware means less potential hardware failure over time as things age. Interestingly enough, with the use of some of Microsoft’s latest technology we have even reduced the reliance on hardware and can now easily move virtual machine guests across to new hardware hosts in the matter of minutes if and when things go wrong. Yes, that’s right... you read that correctly. We can easily move a virtual machine from one host to another in no time at all without caring about the underlying hardware.
This is all thanks to Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager, or SCVMM for short. SCVMM is quite a powerful tool; and one I almost lost out on and ignored. As a small business owner when Microsoft talks about anything that starts with “System Center”, my eyes usually gloss over. For the longest time I thought the technology seemed to be targeted for enterprises that were managing huge corporate IT infrastructures that required major scalability and reliability resources. I was wrong. Solutions like SCVMM and System Center Essentials are perfect for many small businesses.
I’ve been running SCVMM in our lab since some of the early betas and really like it. Recently though we moved it into our production environment and it’s been a nice addition to our existing Virtual Server infrastructure. No scratch that. Its introduction has become a great asset to how we run things here. And I wanted to pass on some of the experiences we recently had as we transitioned to fully run SCVMM in a production environment.
First some background. We have three Windows Server 2008 x64 systems running Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 as the hosts. Our first one is called CORPVS and drives our corporate line of business systems like SQL Server 2005, MSCRM and even our Quickbooks accounting system. Our second system is called RDVS and serves all the machines that our research and development department uses, such as our automated build system, defect tracking system and even our Linux based source control server. Our third box is called QAVS and provides our automated testing system, and various QA test systems we use when reproducing customer issues.
We keep the primary partitions on the hosts pretty small, and install NOTHING on them except for the parts needed to run Virtual Server 2005. All the virtual machine guests are stored on a secondary RAID array, making it easy to blow away the primary OS and read the virtual machines back in as needed. We then run SCVMM in a virtual machine itself and wire everything up to our Small Business Server 2003 domain. Nice tiny little package that fits on half a rack.
We used to manage each server individually by RDPing into it and using an unsupported product from Microsoft called VMRC Plus (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=80ADC08C-BFC6-4C3A-B4F1-772F550AE791&displaylang=en). It’s a great tool that really makes working with Virtual Server much easier. This worked ok, but didn’t give us visualization of all the systems across the network. In comes SCVMM to the rescue. It lets us see all machines across all hosts in a single centralized console.
It shows us CPU utilization and hardware load while letting us peer into the configuration of each system very quickly. We can easily start, stop and pause machines in an instant, and directly connect to any VM as we need to. And then there is my favourite feature, the “checkpoints”. This is a feature missing in Virtual Server that has saved my butt a few times now. A checkpoint is similar to having an undo disk, but with the power to let you restore multiple versions at different points in time. This is great news if you are like me and HATE rolling out untested patches or new software updates to the production systems. Now I just go and create a checkpoint just before the update/installation, and can IMMEDIATELY snap back to a previous working checkpoint in a couple of clicks if something goes wrong.
I could go on and rave about many of the other powerful features like how it can convert physical machines to virtual machines with the P2V wizard or how quickly you can deploy new servers with the built in provisioning with the Virtual Machine Library. But I just can’t do it justice. You have to see it for yourself. And you can. Microsoft has a FREE 120 day trial DVD you can order on TechNet here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scvmm/bb679927.aspx). You can even download a preconfigured VHD that you can drop right into your existing Virtual Server or Virtual PC environment.
I can’t stress enough how much of an asset SCVMM is to a small business like ours. And Microsoft realizes that this is a great tool for small business. Next month they are releasing a “Workgroup Edition” that will be generally available to the SMB, allowing you to centrally manage up to 5 hosts and as many guests as you like in SCVMM for around $500. Depending on your environment you will probably see an ROI in the first few months. A worthwhile investment that I think many small businesses should really consider.
Dana Epp [Microsoft Security MVP]
http://www.scorpionsoft.com/
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 Poor old Santa Claus. Another year has come up and he is having SO much trouble dealing with managing the elves.
Production problems left right and centre. Suppliers are backed up because they can't communicate properly with poor Santa. Simple difficulties in production and questions are causing major backlogs. Some elves needed to book some time off too and most of them booked the same day off. Mrs. Claus lost her schedule book and did a big boo-boo. And with world population going through the roof, the "Naughty nice" list just got too large to carry about. Poor Mr. Claus. He's just banging his head against the table. How could this all be solved? It was December 17th, too many toys to make. And so he goes online to www.live.ca on his "Ho-ho-holett Packard" laptop and does a search. "Solution Unified Scheduling Information" Or something like that, I mean what else does an 800 year old elf type in? He finds it. "Microsoft providing solutions to all your needs." Santa picks up his Nortel Rotary phone and dials. "Hello Microsoft Support, how can we help you?" "Hello. This is Santa Claus..." Immediately, recognizing who this was, it was IMMEDIATELY escalated to top Top TOP level tech support. That's right. The "B" guy. "Hello Microsoft Ultra Senior Top Level Primo Support, Bill Gates speaking." Santa was impressed. "Hello Mr. Bill. I would check to see if you were on my 'Naughty Nice' list but things have just gotten SO out of hand." "No problem Mr. Claus. Here at Microsoft, we provide solutions. So what types of problems are you having?" And so Mr. Claus goes into details explaining the communications and scheduling problems at the North Pole. "Santa! Have I got the solution for you. I think you need to have a little technology up there to fix it all. And here at Microsoft, we have what is needed!" So Bill goes into some details explaining Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint Server and Office Communicator 2007. Santa sits there eagerly taking in all the information, chomping upon tray and tray of Christmas cookies. Mrs. Claus hadn't seen him so happy in ages. Santa agrees and has Microsoft call in some Partners and MVPs to fire up his new network. When they were done the elves all were all wired up with Office Communicator on their desktops. Calendar appointments were posted into a common SharePoint Calendar. Suppliers kept directly in contact with Santa via email. Faxes ended up on Santa's phone CC'd to Mrs. Claus. The Naughty Nice list was uploaded into an amazing SQL Server 2008 database. The developers from Microsoft write him up nice tidy little app using Visual Studio 2008 to get that NaughtyNice2008 list onto his Mobile 6 SmartPhone. (That a REALLY mean game of 'Elf Bowling') And of course to tie it all up neatly, Mr. Gates sent up a few excellent volunteers from Microsoft Canada since they were already used to the sub zero temperatures of the North Pole. And so with only 24 hours to spare, Santa managed to get production back up to par, sort of the elves scheduling issues. He even managed to get a little off time to play Guitar Hero III on the Xbox360. Man THAT old guy could play! So Christmas day came and went and the holiday was saved all because of a bunch of nerds who loved creating solutions and an uber nerd who led them to the cause. From the Friday Funny Guy and the Canadian Community Advisor team have a safe and happy holiday season! 
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On behalf of the Canadian IT Pro team I'd like to wish everyone the best in this holiday season and best of luck in 2008! It has been an exciting year for our team with Ruth and I passing the one year anniversary at Microsoft and on this team. We've all enjoyed coming out and meeting you at a number of events, interacting with you through our blogs, your local community groups and are looking forward to doing all we can to help you succeed in 2008! We are all taking a break over the next week and you'll see us blogging again next year :) 
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In my previous guest blog entry I touched on some “MVP Program Basics”. I received a few notes from people who read it and thought they are a good match. I look forward to receiving more and possibly getting a few new MVPs out of all those contacts I made. In this guest blog entry I will try to answer the question every blog reader looks for in a blog entry - “what’s in it for me?”. Speaking to such a wide range of IT Pros who read this blog, it’s difficult to answer this question. The answer that I can offer is what’s in it for MVPs who are already part of the program.... I promised to cover some of the MVP Program ‘benefits’ and Microsoft product group (PG) interaction in my last entry. Well, these two are kind of tied together. The ability to talk to a developer who developed a specific feature on i.e. SQL Server or Exchange Server is generally seen as a great benefit by MVPs. When answering IT Pro questions, on forums or on stage, it is useful to have a connection to the right people. If an immediate answer is not available, we can generally connect the MVPs and the product group to help find a correct answer. We do this through private newsgroups, monthly live meetings, conference calls and chats – whatever is best suited for particular MVP / PG combo, which is kind of neat. However, according to most of the MVPs I talk to, the biggest benefit is the ability to connect to other MVPs. The MVP Program facilitates this in a number of ways, both online (private newsgroups, Live meetings) and offline (i.e. Local, country specific MVP Open Days, MVP Summit). MVP Summit is the highlight of the year for me. Last year we had a 5-day MVP Summit in Redmond. Some 1600 MVPs from all over the world came and collaborated with the Product Group. I already mentioned MVPs are sometimes our biggest critics – and this really comes out during these face-to-face meetings. A lot, if not all, of MVPs have new ideas on how to make the products better. During the summit we get a chance to discuss many of those ideas. This could potentially be your chance to make a change in the next Microsoft product. On that same note, the MVP summit is not the only place MVPs get to influence Microsoft products. MVPs are involved in pre-alpha, alpha and beta/CTP releases (depending on how much free time they have J). So, throughout the year they give us feedback on what they think needs to be changed. As MVPs spend a lot of time in the community, they know very well what the community thinks about certain features of the ‘current release’ and they are the main voice of the community back to the product group. There are many other ‘benefits’ which I think, and I am sure many of my MVPs would agree, are nice to have but not a reason why they are MVPs – i.e. MSDN / TechNet subscriptions, etc. These subscriptions are worth a few hundred dollars and if you are spending hundreds of hours in the community just to get a technical subscription, then I’m not sure that’s the best use of your time. I said it in my previous blog entry, and I will say it again – they are in this for the good of the technical community without expecting to get anything back for it. Some MVPs say having a dedicated person – MVP Lead - handling the relationship between them and Microsoft is a pretty big benefit as well. On that note, and if you are more of a “podcast type”, here are the Channel 9 podcasts from my peers in the US (Part 2 & Part 3), discussing where MVPs can be found and what are some of the other benefits of MVP Program (website, public profile, award kit, etc). You are also welcome to check out IT Pro MVP Canada Insider here at the TechNet blog, or to check out a Channel 9 podcast with our Canadian MVP Charlie Russel or Lee Benjamin who is chairman of the largest Exchange User Group in the world. This entry concludes my 2-blog series on MVP Program. If there is anything else you would like to hear about, feel free to drop me a line. Sasha Krsmanovic Canadian MVP Lead 
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In case you didn't know another RC1 build of Server 2008 was released late last week which includes the Hyper-V beta. You can download the beta here! Hyper-V is the hypervisor based virtualization technology that can be included in x64 versions of Windows Server 2008. Server Core will be the recommended OS to run as the parent partition. I thought I'd share a quick video on how to install the Microsoft Hyper-V role on a server core box.
Just a reminder that you can double click on the video to go full screen and press ESC to return back here! 
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Sorry to Mr. Townsend and Mr. Daltry of the Who. Their version was WAAAAAY better.
My Replication
Sql servers going d-down (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
Data's droppin' on the ground (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
Stripe set in there's gettin' old (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
Stupid tech was pretty bold (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
I need my replication
I need my replication dummy
I think I'm gonna ph-phreak out (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
My b-boss caught me cheapin a-a-away (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
Trying to avoid file, re-re-recreation (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
I'm just tryin' to setup re-re-replication (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
Gimme replication
Gimme replication or shoot me
My email systems goin' down (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
A little more uptime's all I n-n-need (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
Mail queues can't handle this log g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
I need to enable my re-re-replication (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
That damn replication
That damn replication could save me
The IIS and AD are blown away (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
Mirror them, dupe them, save my day (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
My boss looks at me so c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
I think the company will probably fold (Talkin' 'bout my replication)
I should've used replication
I didn't and now I fired. 
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Nominations close for the 2007 IT Pro Innovation Awards. If you or someone you know is doing something innovative with technology be sure to get the nomination in by November 15th.
IT Pro Innovation is an interesting thing. Not only because it makes things that weren't possible, possible, but because it highlights the creativity and technical expertise of those doing the planning and implementation. It shows that being an IT professional takes a heck of lot more skill than just clicking Next in a wizard. That is why Microsoft Canada and the TechNet team celebrate the innovative IT professionals in our country with the annual Innovation Awards.
The TechNet Canada Innovation Award is awarded to an individual or team of Canadian IT Professionals who are bright stars in the IT community. The award recognizes individuals or teams who have used Microsoft-based technology to make a positive impact in their work or community. The individual or team is recognized as outstanding IT professionals by their peers and colleagues, but don’t necessarily have to be on the front line. Often times those who stand behind have paved the way for others.
So do you know an individual or team of IT Professionals in Canada who have…
· Used Microsoft-based technology to make a positive impact in their work place, home or community?
· Solved technology problems and implemented solutions that improved productivity, created a competitive advantage, or saved time and resources?
· Went above and beyond the ordinary call of an IT professional?
· Helped make the world a better place to live through technology innovations?
If you know someone, are that someone, or are a part of a team that has done just that give yourself a pat on the back and then head over to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/innovationawards/default.aspx and nominate an individual or a team today for the third annual Microsoft TechNet Canada Innovation Award. Why?
The Individual winner will be awarded: one Crystal Trophy, a cheque for $2000, and a $1000 cheque rewarded to a charity of the winner’s choice as well as hotel and flight to attend EnergizeIT 2008 in Toronto.
The Team will be awarded (awarding up to 5 members): one Crystal Trophy, a cheque for $4000, and a $1000 cheque rewarded to a charity of the winner’s choice as well as hotel and flight for 2 of the team members to attend EnergizeIT 2008. 
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This is the last podcast in the series from my time at SecTor. Kevin Coleman was the Chief Strategist at Netscape before becoming a Senior Fellow and Strategic Management Consultant with the Technolytics Institute – an executive think-tank. When Kevin talks security he is talking high level and on a global scale. He has testified before Congress on security matters including cyber warfare.
We had a great conversation on social engineering, the Storm worm and how a botnet could be used to conduct a cyber war on a country (it already happened earlier this year) and why security awareness for everyone is a crucial task that must be taken on. Take a listen and check out his session from SecTor, it will both frighten and enlighten (PDF and WMV available)
http://www.canitpro.ca/podcasts/kevincoleman-security.mp3 
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I know a lot of people who are running Vista and disabling UAC. I'll admit UAC can make for a frustrating install and setup experience with the repeated prompts with every application you install and every MMC console you launch. Turing it off, while it may allow you to get things done faster, is not really a good idea for a number of reasons. First it leaves your machine open to comprimise because any malicous code that runs on your machine will run with full admin privileges and it turns off IE7 Protected Mode, which is the nice secure sandbox environment that IE7 runs it. So how do you leave it enabled and at the same time maintain your productivity and sanity levels? Watch and learn as I share my little system setup tip! (Note: double click the Silverlight player to go full screen, then press ESC to return)
By the way, leave a comment and let us know if you like this sort of content and the SilverLight player :) 
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About a week ago Damir gave me a Palm Treo 750w to try out. I recently switched to Rogers so I'd have the freedom of switching SIM cards between devices. I am a bit of a gadget guy and love to try new mobile devices and SIM cards make this easy. My own personal device is an HTC Touch which I love, but as with every device it has some shortcomings, most notable the lack of a keyboard. This is mitigated with a software based keyboard which works great for general day to day use when I triage email on the go and send short responses to the urgent messages. When I am on the road I long for a device with a "real" keyboard so I can reply to more mail without booting my notebook. The Treo 750w runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional Edition which offers PDA like functionality due to the touchscreen on the device. Most devices in this form factor run the Standard Edition for smartphone (aka non-touchscreen) but I like the fact that Palm added a this feature. I love touchscreen's because sometimes it is just faster to navigate by touching the screen. The size of the device is much bigger than the Touch, but not overly so, it is still smaller than my wallet. 
So what else does the Treo 750w offer???? - Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well as a PDF Reader
- Handsfree Speakerphone
- Outlook Mobile with support for Exchange ActiveSync
- 128MB RAM
- Mini-SD Expansion slot
- 300MHz Processor
- Bluetooth
- Camera
- HSDPA network support
Mmmmmm, I am getting to love that last feature. Rogers has started rolling out its HSDPA network a while ago and is available to about 60% of the Canadian population. What is it? HSDPA stands for High Speed Downlink Packet Access and is also known as 3G and allows for speeds between 1.8 and 14.4 Mbit/s. In a nutshell it is roughly as fast as the average home high speed connection. Syncing my contacts and mailbox took seconds and surfing the web from the device, or when tethered to my notebook, it is hard to tell the difference between this and my home "extreme" connection. Now at $65 for 1GB I won't be downloading a lot but the speed is nice especially when you are sitting in the airport for a half an hour with nothing to do. The keyboard is just right and I have no problems typing on it and I prefer it over the Moto Q I used to have. The keys are spaced far enough apart that I don't press the wrong one. Along with the touchscreen functionality there is also two hardware buttons which perform different tasks depending on what screen you are on. There is also a switch on the top that makes it nice and easy to switch between ringer and silent/vibrate. That alone gets big points from me as I hate having to unlock my device to switch it to silent when I go to bed. The stylus is also a decent length making it easy to poke around the menus. Battery life is decent but one thing to be aware of, HSDPA is power hungry. I get about 8-10 hours out of the battery and I've been told by Rogers that this is due to the HSDPA network. They are working on a resolution, most likely giving you the option of switching back to regular GSM, but Palm does supply a car charger with the kit to keep you charged on the road. As far as software, besides the standard Office Mobile apps there are some other nice add-ons. The device includes Live Search for Mobile, Remote Desktop Mobile, Windows Media Player and of course Solitaire. There are updates for the Live Search app as well as for Office Mobile which gives you support for the 2007 Office file formats. All in all I really like this device but I'll be sticking with my HTC Touch when I am close to home. It is just too small to give up and I have found a software keyboard I like. That said I will definitely be taking this on the road as it will make me much more productive without having to haul out the notebook! Over the last year I've used a Starcom PPC 6700, Motorola Q, HTC Touch, Palm Treo 700W, Palm Treo 750w and a QTek 8500 and it is very close between the 750w and the Touch as my favourite device. It really depends on my mood, my travel plans and my needs for that day. I love them both and love my portable SIM card! 
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It has been a while since I posted an update on the Kid's Help Phone project. It is not because we've been slacking but I've been away with little time to catch up with Ted and Neil. Well I am back and met with them a week or so ago and things are humming along nicely. I left off with the server specs for the new Exchange 2007 Server but since then.... Exchange 2007 has been deployed (in fact SP1 planning is underway). It was a pretty smooth process overall with the configuration and deployment being pretty straight-forward (no existing Exchange infrastructure to deal with). After discussing the options regarding Storage Groups and databases as well as new features such as Local Continuous Replication we decided on the following disk layout. We started with 1 TB or disk space in a RAID 10 array. RAID 10 usually provides the best performance on an Exchange server and since we only had enough room for one array that was the choice we went with. We broke that down into the following rough partition sizes..... - C:\ 25GB for the OS and applications
- D:\ 10GB for transaction logs
- E:\ 465GB for the databases
- F:\ 10GB for LCR transaction logs
- G:\ 465GB for LCR databases
Now in a perfect world we would have the LCR databases and transaction logs on a separate drive array but again we were limited to the space we have. This allows us to take advantage of some of the features of LCR while relying on traditional backups for the rest or the DR plan. With this in place and Exchange installed the next step was to sort out the users into a few groups so that we could minimize downtime for critical email users in case of disaster. We did this by splitting the users into four groups (logically) and placed the users mailbox into the appropriate Storage Group. By doing this, in the event of a disaster, we can restore a smaller Storage Group with a 20GB database that contains all the critical users faster than we could restore a 200GB database with all the users. Once the critical users are online we can go down the priority list and get everyone else back online in a staged manner. There is a really good article that a friend of mine and Exchange MVP wrote on disaster recovery in Exchange 2007 if you are interested. (Hint: It is better to read it now, then when the disaster has happened and you are trying to fix it :) ) The last step was migrating all the users to the new system. The previous email system was a mix of ISP provided POP3 services and a 3rd party web based email tool. For the users on the POP3 based system it was pretty straight-forward, export to PST, reconfigure the mail settings and import the PST. For the users on the webmail system it was still straight-forward but a little more time consuming. Because they had no Outlook profile set up, and they accessed everything through a web interface, migrating the mail was a bit more difficult. The first step was to configure the webmail server to accept IMAP connections. From there they configured Outlook profiles for all the webmail users (around 75) and connected to the old mail system. From there they could export to PST, reconfigure the profile to connect to Exchange and then import the PST. Time consuming? Yes. Boring, I assume so but I was on the road :) But it worked and again they were able to stage it to roll out OWA to the more critical users before moving down to the less critical users. So now it has been a few months and the users love the new system. The favourite feature among the users? The calendaring improvements and scheduling assistant which allows them to schedule a meeting in a few minutes. Something that used to take hours and non-stop emails to do previously. Up next, SharePoint and Office 2007! 
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Most of you know I moved to the GTA from Winnipeg when I took this job. There are a lot of things I like about living here but traffic is not one of them. Now traffic is no treat in Winnipeg, but in the GTA it is a little different. Most traffic in Winnipeg can be blamed on two things, construction and weather. In the summer you know there is going to be construction and you try and avoid it, in the Winter snow is the problem. But the GTA is a little different...
- It took me two hours to get from the office to North York which should be 45 minutes in normal conditions. This day it just took longer due to volume.
- The 401 is 8 lanes in either direction at some points yet a flat tire on the complete opposite side of the freeway will cause traffic to come to a stop as people look to see what's going on
I am sure anyone who drives has stories to share about how bad traffic is where they live, I know for a fact Montreal and Vancouver are terrible as well, but there is some help!
The Live team here in Canada has been hard at work incorporating new features into some of the services they build. Maps.Live.Ca has a great new feature that highlights traffic conditions and construction information. I did a quick search for a route I take to get from the office to downtown Toronto to see what information it shows (click to enlarge).
You can see the green and yellow marking on the route indicating traffic flow and construction information. I did end up buying a GPS for my car to help me get around but it doesn't do traffic or construction. With this information now in Live Maps (currently in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto) I think I'll be getting around a bit easier from now on! 
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At the recent SecTor event I had a chance to sit down with Kai Axford, who is part of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing team, and Warren Bulmer from the Toronto Police Service after their session on Computer Forensics (PPT and WMV available). What do you do when you think a machine has been exploited or you find inappropriate or illegal materials on your network? How do you investigate it? Who do you call? (No it is not Ghostbusters). Take a listen as Kai and Warren talk about what to do, who to call and when to call them while they also discuss some of the tools (even free ones) you can use to gather evidence for internal investigations.
http://www.canitpro.ca/podcasts/kaiaxford-forensics.mp3 
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 Garth is the Chief Architect with Enhansoft in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He has over 18 years of IT experience, 11 of which have been dedicated to SMS, He started working with Systems Management Server when it was a v1.1. He can be found in Microsoft newsgroups, forums on both FAQshop.com and myITForum.com and on the mailing list of myITforum.com.
Some of Garth's greatest contributions to the community have been in the creation of the Ottawa Windows Server User Group www.OWSUG.ca and his numerous articles on www.myITforum.com. What does being an MVP mean to you? It is an honor to be recognized for things you have done in the community. If you could ask Steve Ballmer one question about Microsoft, what would it be? How can I arrange to add user group / technical community support as one of the partner program criteria in getting partner status of registered, gold, etc. What do you think the best software ever written was? Web reporting for SMS 2.0 If you were the manager of Windows Server System - Configuation Manager, what would you change? For ConfigMgr 2007, I would drop the MMC 3.0 console and create a Web based console and/or create a standalone console! What are the best features/improvements of Windows Server System? The best improvement to Windows was adding MOM / SCOM into the suite of tools. What was the last book you read? I’m currently reading for two study groups, “SQL Server 2005 Implementation and Maintenance” (70-431 exam) and “Configuring Windows Vista Client” (70-620 Exam), however the last non-technical book was “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” What music CD do you recommend? I’m still stuck in the 80’s so almost anything from the 80’s is good like Lover Boy, April Wine, Trooper, Meat Loaf, Van Halen, etc. For that matter I only just bought an Ipod player J and started ripping my CDs to M4a format! What makes you a great MVP? Being passionate about technology and a willingness to help the community by answering questions in newsgroups, mailing lists, & forums, posting technical blog posts, presenting to user groups, etc. What is in your computer bag? My life! Currently before I clean it up, it has. · HP Laptop
· Wireless mouse
· Wired mouse
· Two study group books
· Pamphlets
· 2 – 1GB USB keys
· 1 – 4GB USB key
· User group business cards
· My business cards
· A few pens
· A few highlighters
· Passport
What is missing from it is my VHD HDDs!
What is the best thing that has happened since you have become an MVP? Just being recognized for my efforts within the community. What is your motto? Enjoy life. Who is your hero? Hero is a strong word and as such I don’t have hero but there are many people that I respect and in my way try to be like them. What does success mean to you? Happiness. Without happiness what is the point? 
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Work / Life Balance is something that is important to everyone - regardless of what career or profession you are currently involved with. My personal philosophy is that you only have ONE life - regardless of how you work it out - you only have 24 hours in a day, of which you must sleep and eat as well as fit in all your work, play, family and personal time. It's the balance of what makes the most sense for you that creates the proper mix - heck, my ratios might not be correct for you and vice versa. Out of all the topics for our 5 part series on Igniting your Career - this is the one that I am the most looking forward to discussing. I am very interested to hear what IT Professionals have to say has worked for them to achieve a balance as well as things that have not worked. I'm very excited about our speakers for this one - I believe we have a nice mix. - Mishelle Graney, Manager of Product Support, Clarity Systems
- Paul Gossen, Senior Trainer and Founder, Business Transformed
- John Currie, CEO of Currie & Wiltshire
Are you registered to listen in and more importantly - ASK YOUR QUESTIONS? Sign up on our landing page and participate - this is a two way conversation with our panelists and the audience. Missed out on the other shows? Not to worry - you can get them from our Resource Page here on the blog. Rick Claus
IT Pro Advisor 
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A few weeks ago I had the chance to take in SecTor. Normally when I go to an event like this I hang out in the Community Zone or am presenting or doing some other work. This time I showed up as an attendee, went to a load of sessions, networked, and hung out with like minded security people. It was a nice departure from the norm but I did get a chance to record some interviews for podcasts to share with you!
Steve Riley is up first. Steve is a member of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing team in Redmond and is a very intelligent, exciting, engaging and entertaining speaker. He delivered a keynote session on social engineering which you check out but I sat down with him to talk about social engineering and what can be done to limit its effectiveness (Hint: Session 1 at My TechNet covered this)
http://www.canitpro.ca/podcasts/steveriley-social.mp3 - 7:27
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I am giving Sean the day off this week as I wanted to share some serions news with you all. It must be serious as it could not wait until Friday to post this "funny" news. There has been a lot of news flying around here and elsewhere about Windows Home Server and with the upcoming availability at Best Buy and Futureshop as well as other Canadian retailers I thought I should share these news clips with you. Home Server is already causing a stir and starting a few debates like "Are Home Servers Real Servers?" and "Home Server vs. Real Server?" Watch the videos and then decicde for yourself!
Video: Stay at Home Servers - Introduction
Video: Home Sweet Server?
For more information on this debate, please check out www.stayathomeserver.com 
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The other day Nelson Ruest sent me an email from a session he and his wife Danielle attended by Sean O'Driscoll on Web 2.0, social network sites and community. I asked him if I could post it here as it was an interesting discussion and they agreed. Afterall this is a community site and you all most likely participate in one or more social network sites or online communities.
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For the past few months, Sean O’Driscoll has been going around talking up Web 2.0. He does so through a presentation called Social Media and Online Communities: Business and Social Transformation. Sean is General Manager of Customer Support Services at Microsoft and by that fact, head of the MVP program, but many of you might remember him better as “the guy from Microsoft who complained against T-Mobile customer service” (see his blog posting Customer Service Hell!! T-Mobile…Hot Spot? NOT!!!).
What is most surprising about his discourse is the topic, which is about as far removed from Microsoft technology as you can get and still talk about information technology. His topic is Web 2.0. Many people have different definitions of Web 2.0 and as Sean points out, many of these involve lots of technological components, but Sean approaches it from a fresh perspective. In fact, his discussion doesn’t include any technology at all. Oh sure, he provides links and screen shots of Web pages that demonstrate what he is talking about, but that’s about as technical as the discussion gets. According to Sean, Web 2.0 is much more of a social revolution than anything else. Yes, it relies on new Web-based technologies—community sites, personal exposure through social Web pages, search aggregation technologies, and much more—but it is the effect these technologies have on humans as a species that impacts the way these technologies are changing the Web as a whole.
According to Sean, one of the first places we can see this change is in the way we buy things. Even just a few years ago, we would all focus on expert advice to figure out the best item to buy. If we wanted to buy a camera, we would look to photo magazines and Web sites to see which camera was the best rated on the market and which, of course, would fit into our pocket book. Today, you can go online and look up the item on a Web site like Amazon.com and just read user’s own comments and ratings for the product. This peer review has much more impact than any expert advice because according to Sean, the best selling tool in any marketplace is word of mouth. Customer opinion is now costing manufacturers millions, especially if they don’t get it right. Sean states that this means that manufacturers such as Microsoft will have to be more transparent in the way they do business. Now that will be a change. Microsoft is a massive organization. Getting everyone to agree to do the same thing is quite an undertaking. Just look at what happened to the Common Engineering Criteria. Does anyone even remember what that was? Does anyone even know where it stands today? Sean definitely has his work cut out for him.
But, what does this mean to you? Sean says that it means that times are changing and that you need to be careful how you ‘present’ yourself online. Join any social networking Web site, Facebook.com for example, and you’ll soon have a large community of ‘friends’. But who are these friends? In life, we have true friends but more often, we have acquaintances, people whom we know, but with whom we might not want to spend an entire evening. On the Web, social networking sites haven’t made this distinction yet. Friends are friends and that’s it.
In addition, many of these sites just ask too much information about you. Sure, one site will ask for your birth date, others your sex, the color of your hair and eyes, and much more. No one site has all of the information that makes up who you are, but you must consider just how secure these information repositories are. If credit card holding companies can have their records stolen and they have a stake in security, then just how secure do you think your local radio station’s database containing information about you is? It is in fact, fairly easy for malicious users to break into these various repositories of information, then aggregate the information about you into something much more useful. Our advice to you: people just want too much personal information, be careful what you do share when you become involved in Web 2.0.
Having information about yourself on the ‘Net’ is not all bad. That’s how you build your Web reputation. The best way to see what your Web reputation looks like is to use your favorite search engine to look up your own name. If someone posted a video of how you behaved at the last MVP party, then you just might be in a spot of trouble the next time you’re looking for a job or if you’re a consultant, the next time you try to get a contract. Few hiring managers won’t take the time to look you up on the Web before they hire you and few contracting managers won’t do the same. Social networking is all well and fine, but you must maintain your aplomb and ensure your Web reputation is as clean as it should be. Good, sound advice from Sean.
In short, Sean’s approach is very stimulating. We’ve been to a lot of Microsoft talks and presentations as we’re sure you have too and we’ve never, ever seen a Microsoft executive talk about technology in such a non-Microsoft way. It is refreshing and provides a very inspiring look at what we will see in the future as the social aspect of Web 2.0 continues to evolve. Good points all, Sean, keep up the good work!
Danielle Ruest and Nelson Ruest 
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Tomorrow, Tuesday December 4, marks the last stop of the Unified Communications Launch Tour. If you have not yet registered to attend the event, although registration has closed we can still take a few more folks so come down to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre - South Building and learn about how to enable your organization to enhance productivity and enrich the experience of communicating (and save some money too) by taking advantage of presence, software-based VoIP, on-premise and hosted web-conferencing and more. During the four other stops of the tour we had a number of questions about the technology, how it works, and how to best implement it. I thought I'd share a few of the more common questions and their answers here: Q: Where can I find additional technical resources on the Unified Communications technologies to help me learn more quickly? A: Your best bet is to start with the Technical Resources page on the Unified Communications web site. There you will find webcasts, virtual labs, whitepapers, and some free e-learning to get you started. We will also have additional in-person events in the March/April timeframe in the cities where the Unified Communications Launch events took place. Q: Does Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 work in a Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 environment? A: You can install and configure OCS in a Small Business Server 2003 domain and it will provide all of the functionality of on-presence conferencing, software-based VoIP, and so on. Because SBS 2003 does not include Exchange Server 2007, not all of the unified communications elements, such as an integrated inbox for voicemail and email, will be available. When the next release of Small Business Server (codenamed Cougar) ships in 2008, because it will include Exchange Server 2007, you will have the full unified communications experience but will still need to install OCS on a separate server. Q: Is running any of the Unified Communications servers (Exchange Server 2007, Office Communications Server 2007) in a virtualized environment supported? A: We do not currently support running either Exchange Server 2007 or OCS 2007 using any virtualization technologies. Q: What clients and browsers are supported by the web conferencing (LiveMeeting) component of OCS? A: Web conferencing supports both a web-based and Windows-based installable client. The Windows web conferencing client software can be installed on Windows 2000 Professional with SP4, Windows XP SP1 or later, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003. The web-based conferencing client support IE 6 SP1 or later, Firefox 1.7 or 2.0, and Safari 1.7 or 2.0. The specific versions of Firefox and Safari supported depend on the Java runtimes and operating systems running. For full details on all supported clients, go to the OCS clients system requirements page. Q: Which instant messaging clients are supported/available for OCS? A: OCS instant messaging supports the Office Communicator 2007 client, which runs on a Windows platform, has a web-based version (Communicator Web Access), as well as a mobile version that runs on Windows Mobile 5 or 6 devices (Communicator Mobile). For those of you with an existing RIM/Blackberry infrastructure, there is talk of RIM releasing an updated client that will work with OCS 2007 in the near future. Q: With the Communicator Phone Edition device, can I simply plug it into any high-speed Internet connection and have my phone ring where I am? A: The Communicator Phone Edition devices allow you to take your organization's phone with you. Because it connects to the VoIP elements of Office Communications Server 2007, it can be used anywhere you have a high-speed Internet connection and connectivity to the OCS infrastructure in your organization. In fact, at the Unified Communications Launch events, our entire infrastructure is operating across a public Internet connection using DSL to connect back to our OCS infrastructure at Microsoft, so attending the Launch event is a great way to see this in action. Bottom line - the phone rings where you are located, and it even uses Power over Ethernet (PoE) if it is available. I know you probably have more questions so come to the Launch event tomorrow and get them answered. See you there!! Damir 
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