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August 2008 - Posts
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I was speaking with the SBS/EBS product manager the other day and she asked my opinion on the upcoming SBS/EBS Launch she is planning. I said why not ask the potential attendees and she agreed. She wrote up this post for our blog. Got some ideas, comments, concerns you want to share? Well here is your chance!
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 So now that SBS 2008 has RTM’ed - What do you want to see as part of the Canadian SBS & EBS 2008 launch plans?
So here I am, writing my first blog posting. And before I start – I just want to say thank you Rodney for allowing me to try out this whole “blogging thing” on his space. I hope I make you proud. :)
Whether it was at SMB Nation in Toronto, our “First Looks at SBS and EBS 2008” sessions as the SBSC Tour, Energize IT 2008 or at User Groups across the country, I had the opportunity to meet many of you “SBSers” and “potential EBSers” out there in May and June when we went out to the community to introduce these 2 upcoming technologies.
For those of you I have not met yet – please allow me to introduce myself. I’m the Product Manager for SBS and EBS here in Canada. I’ve been at Microsoft for 4 years now, spending my first 2.5 years within the Partner Marketing team where I found my passion for the SMB community. I’ve always had a real admiration for the entrepreneurial spirit – and it’s in the SMB space where I have met so many of you out there that get up every morning and say “I want to change something. I want to create something. I’m going to take a risk and do something different”.
Which leads me to why I’m writing this post -- which is – that I want to “change something, create something, do something different” for the SBS/EBS Launch. So I’m keen to understand what exactly you guys need from us. How do we make the arrival of this next version of SBS and the entrance of this new midmarket server (EBS) into Canada, something that you (or your customers) get excited about?! How do we help you (or your customers) adopt it?! What are your challenges? How do we help you succeed?
As we figure out the Canadian SBS/EBS launch plans for the October/November timeframe, it would be really helpful to hear from you on what you need from us. So give me a shout. Email me: czalba@microsoft.com. Call me: 905-363-8683. Whatever works. But let me know what you'd like to see in Canada for SBS/EBS. I really do want to hear from you. 
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Like most IT pro you need to maintain the web farm for your company. Well I'm sorry to say you've got work to do... Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 came out yesterday and you'll soon see it pop out on desktops out there in the wild. But we'll get to the work part later... first the cool stuff... Personally, I love it... It's fast, it has not died on me yet, (touch wood) and I can use some of the new features easily and I'm a HUGE fan of conviviality. As an example, when renting ice for a games of pickup hockey, I often go to www.rayfriel.com my local rink. Well, the first time I tried the rendering was all wrong. So I clicked on the "Compatibility View" ![clip_image001[6]](http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/canitpro/WindowsLiveWriter/InternetExp.whatdoesitmeantoyouasanITPro_144D7/clip_image001%5B6%5D_thumb.jpg) button and the rendering fixed itself and I was able to book ice. Now to let the guys know where we were playing I highlighted the address on the main page, clicked the Accelerator button  and selected "Map with Live Maps". it gave me the map I needed to email my team. no copying and pasting.... just 2 clicks... 
I am even able to go to my online banking site and perform any operations without any issues. (which was an unexpected surprise). Following a friend's suggestion, I started looking for sites that may not render properly in IE8. I tried CBC.CA, CANADA.GC.CA, of course I also tried TSN.CA and since hockey season is just around the corner, I just had to check out CANADIENS.COM.... Funny enough, they all rendered properly without switching to the IE7 compatibility mode. I did find a few examples of sites that did not render properly. such as readwriteweb.com but none so far that would not fix themselves just by switching to "Compatibility View". However I did test some sites that did not work with Internet Explorer 7 and i found that they worked just fine under IE8. This is the case for www.skitch.com it does not render well in IE7 but looks great in IE8. aaahhhh!!! Web standards interoperability, what a wonderful thing.... 
Back to the work part.... In order to promote further interoperability across the Web, Internet Explorer 8 will display content in its most standards compliant way by default. Browsing with this default setting may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended. This is where your work starts. This is where your work starts. In order to maintain backwards compatibility with Internet Explorer 7, we have provided a compatibility meta-tag usable on a per-page or per-site level. Adding this tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to display content like it did in Internet Explorer 7, without requiring any additional changes. For Step by Step Instructions for Meta Tag placement refer to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=120024 . We are encouraging site administrators to get their sites ready now for broad adoption of Internet Explorer 8. This will ensure your content will continue to display seamlessly in Internet Explorer 8. Giving top priority to Web standards interoperability allows us to: - Help web developers and designers drive toward the ideal of “write once, run anywhere”, freeing up more time to innovate vs. modify content for different browsers.
- Address several major development and design pain points from previous Internet Explorer releases.
- Partner closely with Web standards working groups to be a key contributor in Web standards evolution.
For more information on IE8 and everything you need to knows as a site owner, please refer to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm or see one of the following resources. - Rodney Buike's IE8: What an IT Pro Should Know post: http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro/archive/2008/08/08/ie8-what-an-it-pro-should-know.aspx
- Internet Explorer MSDN Compatibility Center: http://msdn.com/iecompat
- Internet Explorer 8 main site: http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8
- Internet Explorer Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie
- Internet Explorer Developer Center: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/default.aspx
- "How to” videos (four currently available, another six to follow in coming weeks)
- High-level scenario videos showing how IE8 & partner apps can help with everyday situations (e.g., “Music & Entertainment”, “Staying Connected with your friends”, “Election 2008 Coverage” and “Personal Finance”)
- Buzz viral videos, the ‘Critic’ and ‘History of Slicing’, can be viewed here
- Microsoft Interoperability Principles: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx
- Mary-Jo Foley on IE8 compatibility: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1441
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is publicly available for download here. IE8 Beta 2 is currently available in English, Simplified Chinese, German, and Japanese ... and will soon be followed by 21 additional languages to be available on September 16th So... Go to it. get your sites ready. Cheers! Pierre Roman 
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Energize IT 2008 has come and gone. I had a great time talking, rocking, and connecting with the GTA community. Ruth shared this interview she did with Cameron McKay from McKesson Canada about their total network rebuild around Hyper-V, SQL 2008, OCS and more.... You can count on hearing more about this over the next few months.
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So I was off last week and just went through my email and my RSS feeds and found three things related to SBS 2008 that might be of interest. First off, SBS 2008 has been released to manufacture. Now there is a lot that is different in SBS 2008 but a lot that is the same. I'm working on getting this information together to fill you in on the details but you can find out more at the SBS 2008 portal now. Now if you are about to buy and/or sell SBS 2003 R2 there is an offer you should know about. First off be sure you are buying SBS 2003 R2 (either edition) with Software Assurance (aka SA) as this will give you the upgrade rights to the same edition of SBS 2008 when it becomes available through the regular channels. This is going to cost roughly $100-200 more but to offset this there is a $100-200 rebate (again depending which version you purchase) that is available to cover that additional cost. You can find out more here https://sbsrebate.com/home.aspx It should be noted that there will be a price increase for SBS 2008 so you might want to take advantage of this before the October 31st 2008 deadline. Lastly I was catching up on Philip Elder's blog (one of my favourite Candian SBS bloggers) and saw that there is a free beta exam offer on for the 71-653: TS Windows Small Business Server 2008 Configuring going on. You can get the code in his post on the subject here http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2008/08/sbs-2008-free-beta-exam-71-653-until.html 
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Being the guy who told his team mates and manager that we had to get into blogging 4 years ago, I guess you can say that I am a "bleek". You can see my twitter links, facebook and LinkedIN information as well. I'm a big fan of social media in an online world - its a natural extension of what I do (and love to do) - connecting with IT Professionals across Canada - regardless of their technology passions. I am glad to see that Graham decided to extend his boundaries to look into what's taking place in the Bleekosphere. I am constantly searching out different ways to connect and share stories with people. I took in a PodCasting conference (Podcasters Across Boarders 2008) over the summer and regularly participate in meetUps and *camps. Heck, one of the organizers of PAB recently had a very poignant post about the importance of getting involved in some capacity with social media and moving beyond your local stomping ground in order to encourage growth. Get connected! Start Communicating! Start Sharing! 
Team Blog | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
--------------------------------------------------------------  | | Graham Jones (Surrey, BC) | Recently I got an email from my neighbour/friend (Mike Nielsen) inviting me to an evening event on blogging using Wordpress (partially sponsored by them). It turns out that Mike’s employer Express Computers was also one of the sponsors. I thought that it might be interesting so I went along. Mike was our chauffer and our first port of call was to pick up another of Mike’s friends and a couple of teenagers. As we travelled to the event I was conscious of the fact that Mike’s friend and the two teenagers were having a conversation about blogging in the back seat. I was equally conscious of the fact that they were using a “language” that I barely understood; clearly the lingua franca of the “Bleek”. This made me wonder what was in store at the event. As it turned out we were to be “treated” to a series of talks about using Wordpress and the benefits of blogging. I was expecting the audience (~100) to consist entirely of “bleeks” but it turned out that there were people everywhere from extreme “bleeks”, who clearly don’t have a life, to people who were there to find out “what is this blogging thing about?”. The talks that stuck in my mind were as follows: 1. The business benefits of blogging. This was given by the owner of an ISP called BlueFur (no clue about the name) who claimed that it had made a huge difference to his business. He said that he spends about 2 hours per day blogging which has led to a “connect” with his customers that he never had before and a steady stream of new business. It had also led him to provide managed blog hosting, ie. host the blog plus provide expert help on such things as “theme” customization, etc.. BlueFur was also an event sponsor. They provided the draw prize which as an eeeASUS notebook, which as per normal I didn’t win! 2. A talk on Wordpress blog site customization using PHP. The point of the talk was to illustrate the benefit of making yourself looking a little less “me too” (ie. not using out of the box themes) and that you don’t need to be a PHP/CSS expert to make simple but effective changes. The talk was given by Miss604 who is quite well known locally. I chatted with her at the “comfort break” and she told me that she had very recently made blogging her full time employment. I suggested that was a very “brave” move on her part! 3. Having just mentioned making a living from blogging the most interesting talk of the evening was by John Chow. John runs a blog/website which helps people learn how to make money out of blogging and, of course, in turn makes money for him. Around October 2006 he said to his friends that he thought that he could find ways to make money out of blogging which resulted in a large amount of skepticism, and a challenge to prove it. In his first month he made ~$300 (typical Google ads stuff). Last month he reached $40K (yes, that is $40,000) for the first time. He well surpassed the value of simple Google ads a long time ago. Some of the schemes that he has devised are very ingenious; some might say slightly unethical. He even admitted that he is definitely not on the Google Xmas Card list!! All in all it was quite an interesting evening. What did I learn? First and foremost I am definitely not smart or energetic enough to make money out of blogging J. I am very happy to have the privilege of blogging here as a guest as and when the spirit moves me to discuss something that interests me and hopefully is of value to others. I still don’t have a clue what the “bleeks” are talking about most of the time and probably never will. I am equally sure that life will go on without that knowledge. Like most things that achieve a large measure of popularity a sub-culture with its own social structure and language has developed around blogging. When you see people in the room from ages 10 to 70 you know that there must be an appeal somewhere. What is hard to picture, such as with online social networking, is how it will evolve. Sites like Twitter are something of a combination of the two. Graham Jones 
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The coolest thing to hit the "cloud" in recent history is now available to Canada, without wait list. You can now use the power of Live Mesh and have all your devices work together. Live Mesh puts you at the center of your digital world it seamlessly connects you to the people, devices, programs, and information you care about—available wherever you or your device happens to be. Take it for a test drive and see for yourself. Live Mesh allows you to link (or Mesh) all your devices together so they can be aware of each other and share the same data. This is a great example of the power of Software as a Service (SaaS). find out more about it here (http://www.mesh.com). You can see the official announcement by Amit Mital for more details. You can also see the introduction of the technology by Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, in a recorded interview here. Add your devices and stop looking for that file you forgot on your home machine. Cheers! Pierre Roman 
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So you might have read in Damir's post that SQL Server 2008 RTM'd last week. What you might not have remembered though was that if you attended the Heroes Happen {Here} launch events in Canada this past Spring that included with the event bag is a copy of SQL Server 2008. So how does an attendee get their copy now that it has RTM'd? Good question and here is how! Well after the launch event you hopefully went to www.sqlserverheroes.com and registered your PIN listed on the Appreciation Voucher for Microsoft SQL Server 2008. If you did, hang tight! It will be shipped to the address you registered "4-6 weeks after the product is released to the public". Now it did RTM but you will have to wait until it is publicly available but don't worry, you'll get an email notification once it has been shipped. For more answers to questions you might have check the FAQ at www.sqlserverheroes.com or shoot us an email. 
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Comme Damir l'a mentionné dans le blog. FutureShop a mis sur pied un forum pour la communauté. Et jeudi le 14 aout 2008 a 19:00 il y aura événement auquel j’aurais le plaisir de participer. Une conférence vidéo sur le futur de l'informatique ou je serai un paneliste avec Joseph Dresdner (HP) et Mathieu Whelan (D-Link). Nous discuterons des nouveaux produits ainsi que de ce que l’avenir réserve pour les technologies informatiques. Denis Talbot (animateur et producteur de M.Net) agira à titre de modérateur. Pour vous inscrire ou pour plus d’information veuillez vous referez a la page du forum de FutureShop. A Bientôt ! Pierre Roman 
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Later today at 7pm EST, I get the participate in the FutureShop Community Forum on The Future of Computing. I will be one of three people on the panel to talk about where computing is headed. The other folks I will be having this discussion with are Jeff Cates from HP and Mathieu Whelan from D-Link. The forum will be hosted by Joel Cohen, a co-executive producer and writer for The Simpsons. This should be a lot of fun and I hope that many of you can join in and ask a few questions and let us know what you think the future of computing is. To register for the event, and to get more details, go to The Future of Computing registration page. Cheers....Damir 
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If you're like me you probably looked at the IE8 Beta and the "what's new" and saw things like Web Slices, Adaptive Zoom, Rendering Modes and Web Standards Support. All interesting things but really focused on the developer. What about the IT Pro? What do you need to know? Believe it or not there are some changes that will make your life easier. Security is always a hot topic and let's be honest for a minute. IE6 had a lot of issues with security and while IE7 has made some big strides with Protected Mode, ActiveX restrictions and the Phishing Filter, IE8 adds to this with some further security improvements including Per User / Per Site ActiveX controls. With more and more of our apps becoming web enabled or moving completely to web based services application compatibility becomes an issue. The same types of issues that happen when you move from one OS to another can appear when moving from IE7 to IE8. This is primarily due to the support for Web standards but thankfully the same tools you use to manage this transition, test your apps and build workarounds (namely the Application Compatibility Toolkit) are being upgraded so you can use them to test those apps and ensure they are working with IE8. There is also a new set of Group Policy objects that will for much finer grained controls including settings around app compat. Slipstreaming. Yes. Finally. I've been there, trying to get my images updated with the latest SP, the latest apps and it is never fun. Thankfully the IE team has heard the feedback and will support slipstreaming of IE8 into Windows Vista/2008. You might ask why not XP/2003 and it has to do with the way they support updating components, err the way they don't. For newer deployments it should save quite a bit of time compared to rebuilding an image. So there you have it! Some love for the IT Pro from the IE8 team. To find out more you can check the IE Blog and of course you can download the latest beta of IE8 here. 
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A couple of weeks ago I wrote this blog post on our annual trip to the mothership for implant upgrades technical training. It is always a great time meeting with the rest of the world wide team and we had fun sharing ideas and experiences with Jeff Alexander (Australia), James O'Neill (UK) and Steve Lamb (UK) to name a few. If you follow my Twitter you probably saw a few comments regarding the "commonwealth team" and that was us :)
Now asides from some technical training sessions and the odd party (thanks to the Unified Communications team and the Forefront and System Centre teams) I did manage to get some certification exams taken care of. You are probably aware of the changes made to the Microsoft certifications last year (if not you might want to check this webcast) and may have had some questions. For people just starting out their career or looking at certifications for the first time I think the changes were for the positive. I find they allow for a more focused path while still offering some of the broader certifications, albeit with a different name.
For those of you like me who are already an MCSE on Windows 2003 things look a little more complicated but I am going to try and clear them up. If you have your MCSE on Windows Server 2003 you have two upgrade choices, MCITP Server Administrator or MCITP Enterprise Administrator. The official definitions are below and I'll leave it to you to decide what is best for your career and certification goals.
MCITP: Server Administrator - Server administrators are recognized among their peers and managers as leaders in the day-to-day operations management of Windows Server 2008.
If this is for you the upgrade path consists of two exams, 70-646:Windows Server 2008, Server Administrator and 70-649:TS: Upgrading Your MCSE on Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008, Technology Specialist
(Click on the images for the full roadmap PDF)
The other option is.....
MCITP: Enterprise Administrator - Enterprise administrators are recognized among their peers and managers as leaders in Windows infrastructure design. I would go on to add that you would also be a leader in the day to day operations and management as well :)
If this is the path you choose your upgrade will consist of three exams 70-649:TS: Upgrading Your MCSE on Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008, Technology Specialist, 70-647:PRO: Windows Server 2008, Enterprise Administrator and a client exam, either 70-620 (Configuring Vista) or 70-624 (Deploying Vista and Office 2007)
As you can see along the way you also obtain a whole bunch of other specialist certifications that you can expand on as well. So what (and how) did I do? Well I managed to write and pass three exams, 70-620, 70-646 and 70-649 effectively upgrading my certifications to MCITP: Server Administrator and leaving one left for MCITP: Enterprise Administrator (you can have both certifications). I'll admit it felt pretty good to pass those exams. I hadn't written an exam since 2003 and I knew the exams had changed so I wasn't sure what to expect.
So what is your certification plan? Got any questions on the other certifications or the process if you are an MCSA? Post a comment or use that every handy Email link at the top left of the page and drop me a line! 
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Technorati Tags: SQL Server 2008
Today is a very exciting day for me - SQL Server 2008 is released to manufacturing and ready for you to use in your organizations!! While Rick and Rodney, and even Pierre, may get excited about Hyper-V, as many of you know I've been a database guy for a long time. Now it's not that I was not excited when I learned that Hyper-V had RTMed - I really was. I saw Hyper-V as a great way to run SQL Server 2008 in a virtual environment in order to take full advantage of the plentiful hardware resources on today's powerful computers. In fact, I think that Hyper-V is a great solution to virtualize any server workload and for server consolidation. There is a lot of things that SQL Server 2008 brings to the table besides the ability to run virtualized under Hyper-V. SQL Server 2008 provides the trusted, productive and intelligent Data Platform for business-critical applications. This version of SQL Server provides powerful new management capabilities such as support for policy-based management allowing you to enforce corporate policies (and good coding and database practices) across the organization, performance monitoring tools and more. To enhance security and compliance you have transparent database encryption and encrypted backups ensuring your data can't be easily read or used by those who should not have access, and auditing and change data capture so you can track who's been looking or changing what data. There are also improvements for large-scale data warehousing , support for new data types such as geospatial and enhancements to unstructured and XML data support, as well as advanced reporting and analysis services. To learn more about the new features of SQL Server 2008 check out the free eLearning Clinic that takes you through three self-paced online courses so you can experience SQL Server 2008 yourself and find out how it fits in to your organization. You can also download and read through the SQL Server 2008 Books Online - the documentation for the product. Finally, there is also the SQL Server 2008 Learning Resources page with a wealth of podcasts, webcasts, and other resources to help you get up to speed. Personally I like to play with products to get a real feel for how to use them as well as test them out on real data in the organization. If you are a TechNet Plus subscriber, you can download your fully functional software from the TechNet Plus Subscriber Downloads area. If you don't yet have a TechNet Plus subscription, you can start checking out SQL Server 2008 today by downloading the 120-day trial. Don't forget to also visit the SQL Server 2008 TechCenter on TechNet for even more resources, tips, tricks, and great links! BTW, if you have a project that you think SQL Server 2008 would be great for, or are in the process of using it in your organization today, contact me through the email link on the top left corner of the blog or send me an email directly. I may be able to get you some additional help and resources in case you run across any issues along the way. Cheers.....Damir 
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The Team and I got back from Seattle this past weekend. We were there soaking up the internal Kool-Aide on new and existing technologies. Unfortunately - most of them we can't share with you just yet, you will have to be a little patient. One thing that I can share is my enthusiasm for our latest virtualization technology (Hyper-V) and how it is changing the virtualization space. I attended numerous sessions around our entire virtualization stack and will be pooling resources with the other team members to whip up some really Amazing sessions for the upcoming year - targeting readers in BOTH Enterprise and Smaller/Mid-market sized shops. If you are a "Jack/Jane of all Trades" and you haven't had the chance to try out Hyper-V yourselves, you'd be surprised at the low level of entry for hardware. I forget that a lot of people have not tried Hyper-V as of yet. This guest post came in last week from Graham out west sums up his experiences with using some re-purposed hardware to setup a lab machine to hone his skills. If you have hardware you've picked up in the last year or so - it's worth flashing the BIOS and checking it's Hyper-V hosting potentials. To his credit - I only had to chat with Graham a couple of times via email to answer his questions. As always - I like his post for it's frankness and to the point remarks. Keep 'em coming Graham! As for "the Idiots guide to Hyper-V"..... hummm... maybe you are on to something there. Any publishers listening?
Team Blog | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn P.S. feel like letting your writing side show a little? Drop the team a note with the EMAIL contact button (top left) to let the team know - we're ALWAYS looking for Canadian IT Professionals who want to connect and share their stories here on the blog. -------------------------------------------------------------- | | Graham Jones (Surrey, British Columbia) | Before I start I would like to thank Rick Claus and Danielle and Nelson Ruest (MVP’s) for getting me to first base so that this “rookie” no longer feels like a complete Hyper-V virtualization idiot. I should point out that I started down the Hyper-V road with very limited virtualization experience in general. Hitherto I had “played” with Virtual Server and Virtual PC to a very limited extent. So what was my purpose? It was quite simply that I felt that I ought to learn more about it so that I would at least be able to converse with those people who clearly know way more than I. Besides my daughter-in-law has just given me some spare PC’s from her business (my son and I just re-architected her systems to use SBS and TS on a new server) and a spare PC is something like an itch that has to be scratched. It turned out that one of the PC’s had a half decent ASUS mobo [M2A-VM which at ~$65 is great value] for the purpose (up to 8GB DDR2 RAM and 4 SATA sots). So with the purchase of 4GB RAM, the use of 3 spare drives and my MSDN subscription I was all set to go. The PC came with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU which I anticipated would be perfectly adequate for “playing” purposes and so far has proven to be the case. *** begin edit - missing paragraph added below *** The other question regarding the processor is, “will it run Hyper-V”. In the case of AMD there is a feature called AMD-V which is supported in the Athlon 64 X2 series of processors (and others but not all). Intel has a similar feature (VT) and you will have to check to see which processors are supported. There is an AMD utility which checks to see if your system will support Hyper-V. When I first ran it I got a very disappointing “No”. However, a BIOS upgrade to the latest release soon solved the problem. There is also something called DEP (hardware data protection) which is a feature of 64bit processors but I won’t confuse matters by getting into that. *** end edit *** Having installed WS08 x64 Enterprise and turned on Hyper-V I was all excited with anticipation to create my first VM. I decided to choose WS03 x64 R2 Enterprise. Being the IT guy I pressed ahead on instinct. Why the heck would I need to read any instructions? I had heard that this was easier than falling of a log! Creating the actual VM is pretty straightforward and I remembered not to put it on the system drive (default location). I had planned to put the VM’s (more on which later) on the 2 non-system drives. Installing the OS was straightforward, ie. just like a regular machine, once I figured out how to re-boot the VM with the media in the DVD drive. The first time through I suddenly realized that I might be installing on the host machine and quit. Once installed one of the “pains” of VM’s came flooding back to me – capturing the keyboard and mouse to move between the guest OS window and the Virtual Machine Connection window. I will say that the whole interface is significantly better and more intuitive than with Virtual Server. Let’s face it, it had to be! OK, so now I had a working VM but it couldn’t “talk” to anything which is kind of useless. So my next excursion was into Virtual Networks. It turns out that there are 3 different types (External, Internal and Private) of which the External is of most interest to me at the moment, ie. connecting to the LAN/internet. So I proceeded to create an External VN with a binding to the single physical NIC on the machine (Realtek). Confident that I could now add the WS03 VM to the VN and all would be well I pressed on. But opening IE was a big non-event. I had no connectivity. Rick suggested that I needed to add the Integration Services via the Action menu (Insert Integration Services Setup Disk) on the Virtual Machine Connection. What the he… are the Integration Services (IS). You mean that this thing simply doesn’t work out of the box? Besides I don’t have a Setup Disk! Just for the hell of it I clicked on the menu item and big surprise – nothing happened. Having done some internet hunting I found a reference to a file called vmguest.iso in the System32 directory of the host OS. I duly made a CD and popped it into the drive. It ran and declared that the services were now installed. I don’t know if there is another way to do this; hopefully there is a simpler way. Now did that mean on the host OS or on the VM? It didn’t make too much sense to have to go through this for every VM. Besides I still couldn’t access the LAN. So I thought that I would click on the Action menu item again (having sworn for the millionth time about having to press CTRL+ALT+LEFT ARROW to move out of the guest OS window) and low and behold things started to happen. I now had Integration Services on my VM and I had LAN/internet connectivity. A further bonus is that you can now move freely between the guest OS window and the Virtual Machine Connection window, sigh! Hold on, don’t get too excited. There are some limitations. IS is only supported on WS03 R2 and WS08. Gnashing of teeth! At this point I hadn’t realized this and proceeded to install XP x64 Pro. By now creating the VM and installing the OS was child’s play (no references to a 5 year old could do this, please). Grinding halt. I can’t connect to the LAN again. At this point I got my education extended on how Hyper-V and NIC’s work thanks to the Ruest’s. The following blog post is quite helpful: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/01/08/understanding-networking-with-hyper-v.aspx. Armed with my new found knowledge about Legacy Network Adapters (LNA’s) [the blog explains] I was sure that I would now have it solved. What, it still doesn’t connect! A little digging and I discover that XP x64 does not support LNA’s nor IS. Sigh! So be warned. It would seem that if you want to get outside the host machine with XP x64 you are screwed. My next adventure was with WHS. I already have WHS running on a separate PC but I also wanted a test machine. My first install attempt produced a BSOD. So I moved on to Vista x64 which by now went like clockwork because it supports LNA’s which incidentally appear as emulated Intel NIC’s. I wonder why Intel? J. However, you are still stuck with CTRL+ALT+LEFT ARROW to move around. Sigh! When I say like clockwork that was after I extended the IP range for the DHCP on my router (duh!). Where is that 5 year old when you need one? Not deterred by my first experience with WHS I gave it another go and low and behold it installed – go figure. The tide at the local beach must have come in! Since WHS is based on WS03 R2 I figured that IS would work and guess what; all I had to do was click on the Insert Integration Services Setup Disk menu item under Actions and the IS’s installed. I didn’t put a disk in which suggests that when I first ran vmguest the IS’s were somehow added to Hyper-V. Now I was on a role but didn’t have a copy of XP installed. I wanted Vista and XP to try with the WHS VM all within the host machine. So XP x86 was my next target. With my previous experience this was totally straightforward since it supports LNA’s. Next I installed the WHS Connector on the XP and Vista VM’s with the WHS VM as the target, having first installed WHS PP1 to get Vista x64 support. Everything went well and the following morning the XP and Vista VM’s had been backed up to the WHS VM. Of course, this is not a practical environment for WHS (test only) because WHS requires multiple separate physical disks on its own machine to work its “magic” correctly. I haven’t tried yet (nor figured out) how to add a second VD to WHS so that I can try folder duplication in a virtual environment. As I suggested at the beginning of the article the CPU hasn’t been a problem in this learning/test environment. So far I am using a total of 3.5GB RAM with all 4 VM’s running. I put 2 VM’s on each of the 2 non-system HD’s. My purpose in writing this article is hopefully to provide a little help to others with pretty much zero knowledge to get out of the starting gate with Hyper-V. It isn’t necessarily to promote Hyper-V versus its competitors since I don’t have the knowledge or experience to do that. What did occur to me along the way is that although there is a lot of info on the web and on the Microsoft site I didn’t come across what I would call the true “Idiots Guide to Hyper-V” for people like myself who started from absolute scratch and had to go through perhaps more learning pain than is really necessary. We all know that it isn’t possible to write the perfect guide. There will always be an element of “experimental” learning involved but let’s not make it harder than it need be. If we want people to adopt new technologies we must flatten the learning curve and in particular highlight the “gotchas” which are great time wasters and frustration generators. Graham Jones 
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