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September 2008 - Posts
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After one of our events last year I got an email from Paul Gartner in Montreal. During the event I indicated that if you or anyone you knew was looking to deploy some of our newer technologies I may be able to get some additional resources to help through the IT Pro Momentum Program and to send me an email at damirb@microsoft.com or through the Email link at the top of the blog. Paul shared with me that he was about to undertake a project to migrate his organization to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and was also looking at Windows Server 2008.
The Exchange 2007 migration is completed and Paul has agreed to share his journey. Here it is in his own words.
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Last year, due to corporate restructuring and downsizing, we inherited our division’s IT role. This is in addition to the IT support and installations we perform for our clients. The transition was rough, basically we were give the servers and the passwords, no documentation on the network, no training on the specialized applications, and very little knowledge transfer. The network was in even worse shape! We spent the better part of 6 months figuring out how things were setup and worked together and making it work better. Proper backups, WSUS, firewalls and a managed anti-virus were all taken care of and updated.
The POP3 mail system that we were using was slow, unreliable, poorly supported, and had an expensive annual licensing for a mediocre anti-spam filter. With the renewal coming due, we convinced our management that this would be a great moment to migrate to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. We got the OK and I started to hit the web to figure out how to deal with some of particularity of our environment. I already had a few Exchange 2007 installs under my belt, but nothing as complex or as grandeur as our division’s, so the basic deployment and migration was not that big of a task, and a quick lab with virtual server showed that we are on the right track for some of the more complex issues.
Our environment is different then what you might typically find in the SMBs that we normally work with. Our incoming email is handled by our head office in New York (they even outsource the edge connection) and forwarded to us on a secondary email address. There are some good, easy to follow, articles on TechNet that helped us configure this. We are not part of their Active Directory, so any changes to the email address had to handle by the corporate helpdesk who would issue a ticket to the correct IT group, how would in turn notify the outsourced edge provider. Our division is also multi-site, so VPNs were required. And we have lots of people working from outside the office. Outlook Anywhere solved those problems. And like everybody, including my mother, email is mission critical. No errors, no delays, no downtime. Just for added pressure.
Our network consisted of a Windows 2000 level domain, so deployment started with a new Windows Server 2008 domain controller, followed by a Windows Server 2008 & Exchange Server 2007 SP1 machine. Alpha testing revealed a few teething problems, mostly related to the differences in IIS with Outlook Web Access. It was harder to find forum posts about issues that we were experiencing. An SSL certificate was obtained and the beta testing lasted 2 weeks. Since we also decided to standardize our office platform to Microsoft Office 2007, we choose some of our stronger knowledge workers for the pilot. This was key that they figure out the new interface in the office applications, so that they can assist the general users with the migration learning curve, as there was no budget for end user training. General deployment was slow moving due to the fact that we are multi-site and we had to do multiple follow ups with our corporate helpdesk to get them to correct issues. To maintain proper mail flow, we forwarded emails from the old server to the new Exchange 2007 server. We preformed several test to ensure that email was not being routed via the old mail server. When we unplugged the old server, and low and behold, the head office AD still had a few emails addressed to the old server, sigh....
I’m a PC, and I make sure your email works!
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Technorati Tags: techDays_CA Hello Everyone!
While we don’t have all the speakers listed as there are over 60 across the country (most should be there for the end of the week), we do have the sessions and you can sign up for the early bird price right now. We are going out to the masses later this week and given we’ve limited attendance to 5000 across the country…please take advantage of this as soon as you can. As you participate in our community connection blogs, I feel it’s important that we give you an advance heads up in order to miss the rush. Again, Thanks for all your comments and keep them coming. My hope is that this type of subsided conference is one that is worthwhile to each of you and you vote with your feet to attend. 
I look forward to seeing you there! take care, John 
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The Toronto stop of TechDays Canada 2008 is just a month away!! Things are heating up and we are getting together a great roster of speakers for the Data Management Track across all 7 cities. Starting with Toronto, you will be able to hear from folks such as SQL Server MVPs Tom Moreau and Val Matison, as well as SharePoint MVP Reza Alirezaei.
Tom will be talking about how to effectively use Policy-Based Management and other techniques to take control of your SQL Server infrastructure across the organization as well as how to extend Policy-Based Management in SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2000 and 2005, and what works and doesn't work. Tom also has a second session on the top 10 things a SQL Server DBA needs to know and do to effectively maintain their databases and instance.
Val will provide his insights and some really great tips on how to use unstructured data (XML, pictures, videos, text searches) effectively in SQL Server and some of the new features of SQL Server 2008 - like the FILESTREAM data type - that help to make the job easier. Reza, on the other hand, will take you through the marriage of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and SharePoint technologies in SQL Server 2008 and 2005.
We also have sessions on SQL Server security from the application to the database, how to make database performance predictable through resource management techniques within Windows and SQL Server, performance monitoring and tuning best practices and much more. I'll be delivering a session myself as well, just in case you were wondering!!
The speaker list for other cities also looks quite amazing, but is not quite final yet. I'll provide additional updates in the next few days on Montreal and a couple of other cities.
If you have not yet registered for TechDays, or want to check out the sessions and abstracts for the Data Management Track (as well as the other 4 tracks) in your city, check out http://www.techdays.ca for all the info and registration details.
I'm really excited!!
Damir
Technorati Tags: TechDays_CA
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I'm sure many of you have seen the I'm a PC ad campaign that we have ben running over the last little while. The most recent ad starts out with a what looks like the PC guy from the Apple Mac/PC ads saying "Hello, I'm a PC and I've been made into a stereotype". Those words are not uttered by an actor, as is the case with the Apple ads, but by an actual Microsoft employee named Sean Siler.
Sean is actually the Program Manager responsible for IPv6. He is also the person responsible for the IPv6 blog, a great place to find out about this version of the Internet Protocol that will become more and more important over the next few years as networks worldwide start to take advantage of it. Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes of RunAsRadio interviewed Sean just before TechEd 2008. In the interview, which is Show # 53 on RunAsRadio Sean shares his thoughts on the importance of IPv6 and clarifies some of the misconceptions about the latest version of the IP protocol. Check out the show.
Going back to the I'm a PC campaign, it is nice to know that like all of the other folks declaring "I'm a PC" in the most recent commercial, Sean is one of us.
I'm a PC and I'm bald....
Cheers....Damir 
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If you read part 1 of this blog post you are aware that a SBS 2003 R2 Server was deployed and the next step was to deploy a terminal server to host the Jonas Construction Software. While Synergenics did design a very suitable server to run terminal services there was room for improvement. During initial conversations with Jeff he had mentioned that he might like to expand employee usage of Blackberry, he is currently the only user with a mobile device, as well as a few other ideas. I also suggested that even in an SBS environment a second DC is always a good idea and since they have SBS 2003 R2 Premium, once they upgrade to SBS 2008 Premium they will be licensed for another server as well.
With all this in mind I suggested that they upgrade the server designed to be the terminal server to a dual Quad-Core (from a single) and upgrade to 16GB of RAM (from 4GB) and install Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition rather than Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition. This would still allow for a virtual 2003 terminal server, as well as support the other ideas floated by Jeff and myself. With Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, Allerion would be licensed for an additional 4 virtual machines running on the host. That is enough to provide the terminal server, the BES server, and a secondary domain controller while leaving one more virtual license for another use if required plus the additional SBS 2008 Premium license once they perform that upgrade.
They now had the resources both licensing wise as well as physical resources wide to implement all the suggestions over time without additional purchases. It also gave Synergenics the required resources to support the migration to SBS 2008. SBS 2008 is x64 only and because of this there is no in-place upgrade from SBS 2003. In a nutshell you need to a) install a new x64 server and use the migration tools to move to the new server or b) do a swing migration to a virtual SBS 2003 server and then repurpose the original physical server for SBS 2008 and use the migration tools to migrate from the virtual SBS 2003 server to the new SBS 2008 physical server. With the server spec’d as is it has the resources to do so.
So after Synergenics built the server and installed Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition it was time to design the virtual infrastructure, install a virtual machine and take some of the staff at Synergenics on a Hyper-V crash course.
The specs of the Hyper-V server are as follows
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Intel Quad-Core Xeon 2.4GHZ
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16GB ECC DDR2 RAM
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4 Western Digital 146GB 10K hard disks
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3Ware 9650SE PCI-X SATA Raid controller
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RAID 10 array (292GB)
The basic install of the server went very smoothly AFTER they found an issue with the 3Ware card. It was easy enough to resolve but it was a deployment blocker for the first try. There is a firmware update for the 9650SE if you are installing it in an x64 OS. You need to upgrade to firmware release 9.5.1 as well as use the latest driver for Windows Server 2008 x64 based systems. With that complete the initial configuration tasks are completed and the machine is joined to the domain the system setup can begin. Hyper-V RTM is provided via a hot fix that appears when you update the server for the first time. You will see an update for KB 950050 under optional updates and this is Hyper-V. After getting the system up to date I had the crew from Synergenics go through the Add Role wizard and install the Hyper-V role. One more reboot and they were ready to go!
There wasn’t a lot of configuration to do on the Hyper-V portion. Since all virtual machines will be on the Allerion internal network they created an External Network within Hyper-V and bound it to the physical machines NIC. All virtual machines will be connected to that network and get connectivity that way.
They redirected the location of the virtual hard disk directory and the virtual machine directory. The drive array was split into a 60GB partition for the OS and services and the rest was partitioned with the remaining drive space. Both the virtual hard disk and virtual machine directories were place on the data partition. This was done as an additional disaster recovery option. If something were to happen to the OS installed on the C: partition, that partition could be formatted and reinstalled without worry of affecting the data on the D: partition.
At that point they were able to install the first virtual machine but first another road block. Before we started setting up the first virtual machine I gave the two Synergenics IT pros a quick run through of Hyper-V. How to create a virtual machine, a virtual hard disk, how to inspect and edit the disks, manage virtual machine system settings, mount ISOs, CD drives etc… They have used Virtual Server 2005 in the past and were quite familiar with it and the terminology and got the hang of things quickly. During this process however we noticed some strangeness.
Virtual machines would start and then error out. We could create VMs, but they wouldn’t delete properly. Errors would appear when exporting a VM, and when we tried to apply changes to virtual machine settings sometimes it would work and sometimes it would error out or revert back to the original settings. All very odd and I was scratching my head. The culprit? Trend Micro Server Anti-virus. Now there is nothing wrong with the product and I have had plenty of success with it in my years before joining Microsoft (and even afterwards until I got a free copy of OneCare) but all these issues occurred after the automated group policy install. Then it dawned on me, exclusions.
Virtual machines consist of a number of files. VHD for the virtual hard disk, VSV for a running VMs state, XML configuration files etc… They are all files and when you open a file the AV’s real time scan kicks in. That is how AV applications work and the same would happen with any AV. The cure was to exclude the two directories we created to hold the VHD and VM config files. Once those exclusions were added, the weird behaviour was gone and we could continue with the deployment of the virtual terminal server.
After creating a virtual machine (dual core, 4GB with a 60GB dynamically expanding disk) we mounted the ISO and started the Windows Server 2003 install. At this point I left Allerion in the capable hands of Synergenics who are now managing their first Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V host. It has been a week so far and neither Jeff nor Synergenics has emailed or called. The deployment continues, Jeff is happy to see his needs being met and the crew at Synergenics is doing what they do, serving their customers needs while learning a little on the job.
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You’ve used them. www.technet.com, www.msdn.microsoft.com, www.codeplex.com, and maybe even expression.microsoft.com. You may have visited the forums, downloaded software but what else is there? Turns out quite a bit. Years ago when I got my first TechNet Plus subscription it was only by accident. I had started a new job and the Director of IT would drop a box on my desk each month. When I asked what it was he shrugged and said some DVDs :) It wasn’t until a slow day that I realized it was trial versions of all the software we were testing or was about to be released but soon began to look forward to that box.
Skip ahead a year and I was awarded an MVP for Directory Services and I had a choice, MSDN or TechNet as a gift. I choose TechNet and by that time things had changed. The time limits were gone, but I also discovered e-learning tools. Today TechNet (as well as the other sites) continue to grow. You may have heard about some of these new features but Rick and I had a chat with John Martin, the Director of Server and Tools Online to talk about what is new, and what is coming.
If you want to check these out for yourself follow these URLs for more info. I’ve started using the bookmarks again since the beta test ended and I know Rick has as well. If you are using them, be sure to share the link to your bookmarks in the comments!
TechNet Social
Rodney’s Bookmarks
Rick’s Bookmarks
Download Podcast (MP3)
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John Oxley’s 2nd post on TechDays has raised a couple of questions in his personal email (yes, that email is his personal email). I thought it best if they came in the form of a quick Monday morning post – the week the registration site goes live. Here they are.. 1) “To that point we are committed to supporting you and your development/skills growth.....So, please take advantage of the early bird price as soon as you can.” Where is the url to register so I can take advantage of this price? a. URL coming early next week......just putting the finishing touches on it this weekend. – Keep your eyes on the blog as it will go up there first 2) At HHH Toronto they had many screens so people at the back could see and hear. a. We’re trying to make the rooms more intimate with enough screens and there won’t be a big keynote room like there was a HHH....I think the biggest room holds just about 450.... this is really about technical content 3) I need to wake up early and drive to Toronto so having energy drinks like Bawls guarana and full throttle would be great a. I’m not sure about the energy drinks....yet I will look into it (NOTE: Rodney and Rick are known to have Energy Drinks. Track down the shoes or Hat) 4) A breakfast would also be great because I usually don’t have time if I need to rush to Toronto to be there on time a. We will have a breakfast on both days, morning snacks and coffee at breaks, lunch and afternoon snacks and coffee at breaks Any more questions? you can keep them coming here in the comments section or use the email link. It drops into 4 mailboxes directly – not just John Oxley’s… Be sure to include your real email address if you wish a direct reply.  IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn My Shared Bookmarks
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Hello Everyone! Your feedback on TechDays has been great and I really want to thank you so much for taking the time to share your comments with me. I thought, as there has been three major themes in all the questions, I’d share my answers both broadly and individually via direct email. Firstly, thanks for all the positive comments on bringing the technical conference series to Canada. It is an exciting time. The team is pretty jazzed about doing what we can to support your development and passionate about being a positive contributor to the ICT industry. We can’t wait until you attend and experience the event, so we can get your feedback to make it better….for next year. Secondly, I’ve had some comments on if there is a discount for students and user groups. Short answer is no as this is an already subsidized conference. Long answer: It costs a lot to bring this level of technical conference to Canada and since we wanted this type of training to be accessible to all, we’ve invested quite a bit to make the early bird price as low as it is. Our cost to deliver this conference series on a per per person level is well over the full costs of $499.99 (2 Day event) and $249.99 (1 day event). To that point we are committed to supporting you and your development/skills growth.....So, please take advantage of the early bird price as soon as you can. Thirdly, While I’m sorry that the Toronto date is the same time as the professional developers conference we did have to think about the broad audience. We tried to get a different date and were limited in the availability due to our short booking time (I guess you need about a years notice). On a positive note, for those not able to go to PDC, now they have the opportunity to attend a technical conference with similar depth of content in Canada. Again, Thanks for all your comments and keep them coming. Personally this is an important challenge and a needed conference that I’m excited about being a part in bringing to Canada. Your support has been wonderful and I’m going to make it a point to be at most if not all the cities to do a listening tour in order to gain more of your feedback to make this even better next year. So when you come, hunt me down and share your thoughts. The team also reminded me that…….It’s all about the BLING and if you what to show your excitement, please check out the the “badge / bling” page use it as you like to share your passion and download/use the TechDays Countdown gadget if you’re a real geek like me. As always, please get engaged, enjoy your journey and reach out to share your experiences. You can connect directly to me or my team via our blogs or please don’t hesitate to email me at john.oxley@microsoft.com. John John Oxley Director Audience Marketing and Community Evangelism Microsoft Canada | Direct (905) 363- 8589|Messenger joxley@microsoft.com 
Technorati Tags: TechDays_CA
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With all the announcements, release of new products and technologies and changing business needs it is hard to keep up. VMWare releases a free version of ESX, Hyper-V is released, Hyper-V Server is announced and will be available shortly, Small Business Server 2008 hits the RTM stage etc... How does one keep up? How does one decide? Deploy now or wait? How does one get the skills to deploy and manage? All tough questions that recently faced by Allerion Oilfield Services located in Guelph, Ontario. Allerion recently moved to a new building in Guelph and at the same time decided an infrastructure update was in order. No time like construction time to ensure all the required components were in place to support the planned infrastructure. If you have ever run CAT5 you know how much easier it is to do BEFORE the drywall goes up :) Jeff Heath, the owner of Allerion, realized the upside that a proper IT infrastructure could provide but Jeff is a business guy who has spent his career managing businesses and while he is a gadget guy when it comes to the systems required to run his business more efficiently he knows it is time to call in the professionals. Jeff knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted a secure, reliable infrastructure that would provide the services required to host his business critical applications that are used in the office, on the road and at a remote site in Sarnia. He also knew that he wanted to use Jonas Construction Software as his line of business tool. What he didn’t know was Small Business Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Terminal Services, Hyper-V or how that would equate to what he wanted. Enter the professionals, namely Synergenics. Synergenics is a Guelph based solution provider that faces the same challenges as any other. How to keep up to date on the latest technologies while still providing service to its clients. Sure they could send people to training course after training course to keep up, but as anyone who has worked, or is working for a solution provider you make your money out in the field, not the classroom. They keep up as best as they can, taking a training course when they can, updating certifications when necessary all while keeping their customers up and running. This situation looked like an ideal one for me to help. By combining our efforts; Jeff, Bob from Synergenics and myself were able to design a solution that met the needs of the business, that was ready to support future technologies and even included some of the latest and greatest technology available along with some on the job training to get a few of the guys at Synergenics familiar with Hyper-V. This is a quick graphic of what we designed. 
The core of the system is based around Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2. This is a tried and tested system that was a perfect choice for Allerion. It provided the SQL database for the Jonas software, as well as email services, centralized management and security. After speaking with Jeff and Bob we also decided to purchase Software Assurance with SBS 2003 R2 as SBS 2008 was around the corner. This gave them the option to upgrade to SBS 2008 when the time was right whether that is next month or next year. Bob and the staff at Allerion are well versed in SBS 2003 R2 and were quick to design, build and deploy the SBS sever into the new Allerion offices. The Jonas Construction Software is a construction management solution that utilizes a SQL back end. Users access the application via a remote terminal session. This naturally led to the implementation of a Windows Terminal Server. Given the requirement to access the application from with the office in Guelph, the remote office in Sarnia, a hotel in UAE or an oilfield in Northern Alberta this made sense and was a no brainer decision. Again Bob and the Synergenics staff was on top of things designing a server to run Terminal Services. But it didn’t end there. You probably noticed that one of the servers was running Hyper-V. We’ll go into that in part 2 of this blog post! 
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- Do you work in a small IT shop or are you the only IT resource that your company has?
- Are you the "go to" guy/gal for anything to do with technology?
- Do you (or others) consider yourself a "jack of all trades"?
- Do you work in a small company with less than 250 PCs?
- do you spend most of your day reactively fixing and addressing issues that come up and feel like you can't proactively plan to get ahead?
If you answered yes to any of these questions this blog post and series is for you. This is the first post in a series of blog articles aimed at sharing solutions to issues facing IT Professionals working in this type of environment. We’re taking articles from YOU on how you’ve overcome issues in the past with innovative solutions to get the job done. Maybe it’s using Microsoft technology – maybe it is not – what matters is that it addresses a problem, allowing you to get on with your day. Let me introduce you to Stephen Switzer, a recent graduate of the Algonquin College 2 year Computer Systems Technician program. It combines labs, lecture and classroom time with co-op terms in all sizes of businesses. When I reached out to the blog readers as well as some of my contacts from over the years looking for people to share their solutions in this series – Stephen’s post made it’s way to my inbox. I thought it was bang on the money for a solution that addresses one of the issues A LOT of IT professionals are faced with – and it’s FREE TO BOOT! Stephen is not a blog writer of many words in this post, but he gets right down to the point. You have to have a method of routinely patching systems and applications across your organization, regardless of size. Have a read to hear what he’s talking about.
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn p.s: Are YOU up for the challenge of contributing your thoughts, ideas and solutions to “The IT Guy / IT Gal” series? Contact me directly or use the email link at the top of the blog with draft stories AND/OR suggested topics. Let's ramp up the noise and start giving back!!! -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- I had an experience during one of my co-op terms. Shortly before being sent out on our first co-op placements we had a guest speaker come in and talk to us about his day to day work and some of the software that he uses. One of those pieces of software was windows SUS server. He explained briefly how it worked and went on talking about other things and taking questions. Fast forward to my placement. I am working in a large hotel as the only other IT person. One of the problems that has been nagging them is a single update to windows that breaks one of their programs. As a result the IT manager had disabled automatic updates on all the computer and would regularly go around and update each PC manually then remove the offending update so that the software would work correctly Seeing how this was terribly inefficient and how it quickly became MY job to do these updates I remembered back to the guest speaker's talk about the SUS server. After a bit of research and a quick proposal to my manager I had a server up and running and the computer updating from the SUS server for all updates except the one that was causing problems. Now I had a much higher level of security and as an added bonus this system used a significantly smaller amount of Internet bandwidth by having to only download each update once for the network instead of once per computer. But best of all I didn't have to spend hours and hours updating computer. After moving on from that position have have installed SUS then WSUS several times at different positions helping to speed updating and save on resources. Stephen Switzer
Service Engineer
Nova Networks www.novanetworks.com personal blog - www.quantis.ca -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- You can get more information on Windows Software Update Services and what it can do for you from this link on our TechNet Site. It includes all documentation, system requirements, deployment guides and details on how to setup WSUS in a distributed environment. A step by step guide for deployment can be found here. Here’s a Direct download link to get the English WSUS bits. 
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With all the talk about TechDays going on recently there is another conference coming up shortly. I attended SecTor 2007 and I`ll admit it was the best con I attended last year and that includes the internal Microsoft ones I was able to attend. I was pretty happy when they asked me to participate as an advisor and have some input on the speakers. And what a group of speakers confirmed to speak! There is also a day full of pre-conference training also taking place again being delivered by some of the top security professionals in the industry. | Look who is flying up to deliver exceptional training (before the conference): | | > | No-Tech Hacking with Johnny Long – GO | | > | Bluetooth and Wireless Hacking with Dino Covotsos – GO | | > | Cutting Edge Hacking Techniques with SANS Institute's John Strand – GO | | > | Powersploiting: Leveraging the Metasploit Framework with H D Moore – GO | Johnny Long put on a great session last year and I am happy to see he is back with a keynote and a training session. Dino Covotsos session on Bluetooth hacking taught me to leave Bluetooth off and forget about using it :) and H.D. Moore, of Metasploit fame, is sure to deliver some great information as well. I am again looking forward to attending SecTor as a participant and learning what the possibilities are and how to protect against them! I hope to see some of you there and if you are coming let me know so we can connect! I`d love to hear your thoughts on security and what you learned at the event! 
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Technorati Tags: TechDays_CA Hello Everyone!
While I guess the surprise is out. TechDays is real and no longer just a dream. We’ve been working hard over the last year to bring a similar experience as TechED across Canada. Yes, not just in Toronto …..our pilot experience is also in six other cities across the country. This was not easy, we had many challenges and while we not 100% there…. It will happen! We are passionate about this conference series, as you’ve told us that this type of experience is very important. From the many focus groups, your comments in our surveys and direct conversations, you’ve made it clear….. less marketing and more focus on your skills growth. Our technical events and programs should be about learning, connecting and supporting you! Oh yeah…. and it has to be local. We had hoped to do this conference series in more cities and with your help in making this year’s pilot successful, sharing your ideas then perhaps next year we can. TechDays 2008 is our largest technical education conference series for IT Professionals and Developers in Canada ever. It focuses on providing you with skills development through deep technical training, a place to connect with your peers and the opportunity to learn and evaluate across a wide range of technical sessions. The broad technical education at TechDays is delivered by Microsoft, Partners, and industry experts. You can get an great overview and perspective at Darcys and Miguel blogs. I think they have expressed the overall experience in their words very well. I’m excited about this as our hope is for the technical sessions and onsite experiences combined with the TechDays learning kit to help you grow your skills, share best practices and build connections. We also want to see if we can support you with more learning tools as continue your learning journey after the conference. I know that there is so much to learn, so little time and given that we made the commitment to take on this big challenge to increase supporting your development…..  I’m really glad that with your support and the teams passion to announce that TechDays 2008 is real! Over the course of the next few days the team will be sharing many more details on this experience here and at our other blogs as I’m sure (and hope) you have lots of questions. The registration site will be up soon and watch for some early birds specials….:-) Please get engaged, enjoy your journey and reach out to share your experiences. You can connect directly to me or my team via our blogs or please don’t hesitate to email me at john.oxley@microsoft.com. John 
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Since I started in this role I have heard a lot about the Imagine Cup. Not knowing anything about it, I started looking into it.  Well it turns out it’s a wonderful competition where students from around the world are using their minds, their know-how, their passion, their creativity and – of course... – their imagination to compete and develop innovative technologies. And it’s been happening for seven years... WOW!!
Normally we talk a lot more about technology and solutions for people who are already established in the IT community and workplace. One of the things that makes the Imagine cup special is that it is targeted at students form colleges and universities. The future IT pros. This is an audience that we are paying attention to more and more. To that end I'd like to remind all post secondary students out there that if you want to learn more about the Microsoft technology, out of schools, we have a great vehicle called Dreamspark to get you the tools at no cost. All you need is an ISIC card number and then you can download the software. Anyway... where was I? Ah! Yes. The Imagine Cup... Last year’s theme was "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment." And you can see the winners here. You may notice something fantastic.... There’s an IT challenge division... "Cool!” This year's theme is "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today." The United Nations has identified some of the hardest challenges in the world today in its Millennium Goals. Learn more about the eight Millennium Goals here. The Imagine Cup will use these ambitious challenges as a guiding light to inspire change all over the world. Hmmmm!!! Using technology to solve problems... isn’t it what IT Pros do all the time?? Are ready to meet the challenge? I know that I can wait to see what IT Pros in the world will come up with. It will be interesting to see what kind of innovation will take place. And above all, I can’t wait to see folks do things that are inspiring. The Imagine Cup encourages people to develop innovations that can make a difference in the world today. That reminds me of something Simon Sinek, a graduate level strategic communications professor at Columbia University, once told me... "If you inspire people to do the things that inspire them, you can change the world". So, go ahead... check it out here. The registration site is open. Who knows, you could be the next winner. - And maybe... You can change the world... "I wish there had been an Imagine Cup when I was growing up. It gets people involved in seeing that software is changing the world." -Bill Gates
Chairman, Microsoft Corp. Imagine the possibilities.... Cheers! 
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Well you go away for two short days and come back to a flurry of activity on the virtualization front! In case, as was mine, you were too busy getting ready for Monday Night Football you might have missed the Hyper-V launch that happened on Monday where Microsoft announced.... - Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V live migration (I am looking for the demo video to post)
- Microsoft Application Virtualization (aka SoftGrid) v4.5 was released and will be included in MDOP 2008 R2
- the availability of System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008 which will allow you to manage Virtual Server 2005 R2, Hyper-V and ESX virtual hosts. SCVMM 2008 will be available within 30 days! (Well 28 days because I am two days late in posting this)
- the availability of Hyper-V Server in 30 days which will be available at NO COST!
Now you might be asking "What the heck is Hyper-V server?" so let's dig into this a bit. Hyper-V Server, is a new hypervisor based virtualization offering. It does one thing, run virtual machines, and not much else. It was built to allow for a simple, reliable virtualization solution that has been optimized for the single task of running virtual machines. Think Server Core, further stripped of the bits not needed for virtualizing machines. It does integrate with all existing tools allowing it to be patched, monitored and managed with the same tools you use in your Windows environment. Now you might have noticed that I called it Hyper-V Server and not Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Server or Windows Hyper-V Server. That is because it is not really Windows. Sure it shares some of the core architecture of Windows but it differs in a few ways and a few of these ways will save you money. Since it is not Windows you don't need any CALs, in fact Hyper-V server will be completely free. Download, install and away you go with your server consolidation project. You can use the Hyper-V MMC (32bit or 64bit)to manage the server and it's VMs or leverage the System Centre suite of tools to manage and monitor it as well. So back to this launch thing, don't worry, you didn't miss a thing. You'll be able to learn a lot more about Hyper-V, SCVMM 2008 and Microsoft Application Virtualization in the virtualization track taking place at TechDays which you will here more about very soon. 
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If you remember from a couple (1) (2) of previous guest blog posts, Graham out in Vancouver was talking with Ron about using WHS as a very small office solution for centralized and easily expandable storage, centralized backup and remote access. This post came in with him musing on what the expansion possibilities could be for WHS and it's continued use as a quick and simple solution for SOHO business when SBS is overkill. Remember - WHS is targeted at home users and has a current limitation of being non domain joined as well as a limit of 10 users. He does bring up some good points. What about you? do you think that WHS fits the smallest of small business? IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn My Shared Bookmarks 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) | Today I opened up the RSS folder in my Outlook and under the Windows Home Server team blog I found an article entitled “10 Computers & 10 Users”. Basically the article was inviting feedback about the 10 user limit for WHS, no doubt now that some future planning for the product is underway. PP1 is now released and the hopefully the “corruption bug” is becoming a faint memory. Seeing this request prompted me to respond. Having responded it occurred to me to reproduce some of it here since it reflects what are admittedly some of my personal “business oriented” views about the future of the product. I do have other thought about WHS as a media device. The reason that I titled this blog “WHS and the victim of your own success” is because the demands for how some people would like to use the product in the future, I believe, have to some degree transcended some of the original thinking. It is good problem to have but a problem none the less when it comes to planning how to evolve and position WHS in the future. Although 10 user accounts is enough for me personally right now I can see circumstances where this is inadequate. For example, where you wish to allocate remote user accounts to people who don’t have local user accounts. One workaround that has been suggested is that you create a generic account for remote users. This might be Ok for the home user but perhaps not for small business where you want to assign individual folder access rights. It is important to draw a distinction between PC's and users. This is already done via the CAL system as applied to SBS and Server 2003/2008 for example. Telling people that they can solve the 10 user limit by having more than one WHS doesn't fly for most people. To the target audience (home user or even small business [more on this later]) this represents a significant additional investment and complication. Microsoft must get their "head" into the appropriate "domain" space. Terminology can be a problem and Microsoft often gets caught up in their own language. As part of Microsoft’s consultation with users about extending the 10 user limit they used the term “CAL” (not wishing to make the same mistake, CAL stands for Client Access License for those who may not know). CAL's don't mean a thing to the average person or small business owner. Why should it? So don't use it. Remember, get into the appropriate "domain" space before opening your mouth! It isn't difficult to come up with some other way/term to describe what you are permitted to do or not do. If it is largely a "consumer" product why not ask the consumer what terminology they understand and not bombard them with your own!!!!? In this case it can be made very simple. Microsoft have become too used to dealing with the complexities of "business" licensing. They absolutely must change their thinking now that they are in a different arena. I see nothing wrong with the equivalent of a CAL's system (with different terminology) where additional users are purchased in blocks up to some stated maximum limit. This provides the maximum flexibility versus having different product SKU's with different user limits (one suggestion from Microsoft). Reality is that people often start out with certain expectations in mind only to find that they change for a whole variety of reasons. Why should this be different in this case compared to the same issues in the "business" domain? The real debate is "what is a 'sensible' maximum limit for WHS?". My personal opinion is that 25 should be the absolute maximum with purchase beyond 10 in either blocks of 5 or a onetime block of 15. I fully understand that WHS started out as a consumer product that has now found a very useful "home" with some small business people. That is testimony to the unique features and benefits that it brings at a very affordable cost. I believe that this "area" has great potential to grow and that Microsoft should put specific effort into it rather than just perhaps accept "organic" growth. I know that the people in the Partner Program would be delighted to assist which is why many are very unhappy about WHS not being provided via an MSDN subscription or the Microsoft Action Pack! Yes, I know that it can be obtained by people in the Partner Program by contacting the appropriate person in Microsoft but I believe that it is viewed by some as an effort that shouldn’t be necessary and a failure by Microsoft to be totally supportive of the opportunities for WHS in the business environment. Telling them “but it is a consumer product” doesn’t cut much ice when people are looking for ways to expand their business and make a living. I understand that Microsoft has a range of products and that there is a need to position them relative to each other. However, to simply state that SBS is where you should go "when you grow up" doesn't fly for most small business people. SBS is often total overkill in terms of the features and the management requirements that it entails for the vast majority of very small business owners and definitely for home users who would like more user accounts. If Microsoft insists on this approach it will only be seen as a "money grab" (we are talking significantly different $'s) or a refusal to accept that things have changed by the introduction of a product like WHS. It is always difficult to adjust to the perhaps somewhat unexpected outcomes of your own success. Although nobody wants to come right out and say it, it seems that to some extent Microsoft fears that WHS might become a very cheap way to buy most of Server 2003. Let's face it the "enthusiast" community will take this to its limits and maybe even a little beyond. These people represent a very, very small fraction of the potential customer base and most potential WHS purchasers in the longer term aren't the least bit interested or even know its origins. Besides the "enthusiasts" help to come up with ways that enhance the appeal of the product for everyone and you don't really want to suppress that. Witness the very active "add-ins" generation, both free and commercial. Including an SDK was a very smart decision. Adding a "wrapper" around the SDK to make it even easier to use (ie. lower programming knowledge requirements – yes, there is some personal desire here) would make it even better. I did manage to create a “very simple” test add-in but nearly broke my brain in trying to get my past developer experience from VB6/ASP to C#/.NET. Basically, instead of sometimes appearing to be looking for a rational for "fighting" change, Microsoft needs to embrace it and use it to their advantage. By "opening up" WHS I believe that they stand to gain far more than they fear that they might lose. For those small business people who don't initially see the "SBS light" but later realize the need (not so much number of users per se but features, eg. RWW [Remote Web Workplace, which is a great feature], etc.), an easy upgrade path from WHS would be a very useful option. I have just been through an exercise something like this with my daughter-in-law because her law practice business has grown (again not so much in users) but in sophistication. She has moved her business to her home (office cost cutting) and all of her employees are now remote. Although she wasn't using WHS the circumstances are similar. I had to persuade her (and my hyper-critical, very computer savvy son who has no particular Microsoft allegiance – he even eventually said he thought SBS was a good product once he got to play with it and eventually did a lot of the install work. It was a good job that I was sitting at the time!) that SBS was now right for her (she had started using GoToMyPC with an XP Pro PC on her home based LAN for every remote user - not exactly very scalable and she wanted to go on growing her business!!) but she, and her employees, are delighted with the outcome, ie. new much more powerful ASUS server (good value), virtualization (sorry Microsoft but it was VMWare – a nice cheap solution is XP64 as the base OS to give the flat address space beyond 4GB and VMWare workstation), terminal services, collaboration via exchange, etc.. This all represented a considerable financial investment and in her case quite a bit of disruption because of her starting point. Microsoft needs to let people "go through this 'growing' and 'learning' process" and in the meantime support/gently educate them. The upfront “hard sell” for something which appears to the small business client to be too expensive and unnecessarily complex/feature rich simply doesn’t work. They might simply go with a different “cheap and potentially nasty” option only to regret it later. I believe that, properly positioned, WHS is a great opportunity to avoid that and at least get them partially Microsoft server “pregnant” with the hope that you can up sell them later when their business needs have changed! Graham Jones 
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Ahhh! September is here, the nights are getting cooler, the sun is going down earlier and we are starting to get into the swing of things. With the team prepping for the AlignIT Tour and TechDays we'll be coming to a city near you. I really love getting out on the road, talking with like minded IT folks, sharing stories, experiences, knowledge and the odd pint ;) So when my travel calendar came out and it said I was stuck in the GTA until I head to Montreal early November for TechDays I figured I needed to do something to get out on the road sooner. Luckily I found out Stuart Crawford and SAMUC are holding a loadfest on September 27th and when I made arrangements to be there for his event I pinged a few user groups and arranged for some additional visits along the way!
If you are near any of the following cities, I'd love to see you come out to the user group meetings, join the conversations and have a pint. You can find out about the events at the following URLs...
September 23rd - Winnipeg IT Pro User Group - Windows Server Fail Over Clustering - This session is a preview session for one of the sessions in the IT Pro track at TechDays. The really cool part about this is at the end of the session you'll be able to go home and perform all the demos yourself (NO I am NOT giving all attendees a 2 node cluster to take home :) ) Sound interesting? Well then register for this event already!
September 24th - Regina IT Pro User Group - Windows Server Fail Over Clustering - This is the same session as I will be delivering in Winnipeg. You can get the details on the Regina meeting at www.regitpro.ca
September 25th - Edmonton Microsoft User Group - Windows Small Business Server 2008 - Small Business Server 2008 has been released and there are some big changes in the versions, user experience, security, well actually almost every aspect so I am not going to list them all. I've also recruited an Edmonton based SBS expert, Philip Elder, to join me and drive the demos and offer some real world advice on SBS and his experience so far with SBS 2008. Information and registration is available at www.emug.ca
September 27th - Souther Alberta Microsoft User Community - LoadFest 2008 - This is a full day session where you can get the inside scoop on new technologies like Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V, Small Business Server 2008, SharePoint Server and Response Point. There are a variety of speakers each covering off different portions of the day and I'll be handling the Hyper-V and SBS 2008 portions. Should be a great day and if you want to come out you can register here.
I also have a few extra things lined up along the way and you'll be able to follow my travels on my Twitter feed so start following me! 
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With Hyper-V now in the RTM stage and available for download I thought I'd share this interview with Sean and Rick from Around the Clock IT. They implemented Hyper-V when it was still in the RC stages and have been running some production servers in a virtual state since. Take a listen as they share their reasons and experiences.
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A couple of questions for ya... - Do you work in a small IT shop or are you the only IT resource that your company has?
- Are you the "go to" guy/gal for anything to do with technology and you consider yourself a "jack of all trades"?
- Do you work in a small company with less than 250 PCs?
- do you spend most of your day reactively fixing and addressing issues that come up and feel like you can't proactively plan to get ahead?
If you answered yes to any of these questions - you might think that I am going to tell you about Small Business Server or how you can use System Centre Essentials to get the most out of your IT Budget. Actually, I'm not. Don't get me wrong - those are GREAT products and you should check them out - what I wanted to say was "what can we do to help?". Our team is committed to your success, no matter what size of organization you work for or what solutions you are using - ours or our competitors. We need to get you the info and share ideas we've heard as we travel the country. You see, most of the time, the information that we have up here on the blog tends to be targeted at large scale IT environments or specialists in certain areas of technologies. We get the comment when we're out and about during road shows / launch activities that we're not giving enough contextual information to people that work in smaller shops - or worse, if we do - it's only about specific solutions that are aimed at the smaller companies. I used to work in this type of environment - it was a long time ago. I ended up moving from various jobs here and there and ended up being an enterprise consultant at a niche consulting firm specializing in Active Directory migrations and Exchange coexistence / migration projects. I ended up losing some of my edge in being that "jack of all trades" on a day to day basis and have lost some of my perspective on what it's like to work and support people in that kind of environment. That being said - one thing has definitely stuck with me - you have to be resourceful in finding information and solutions to your pain points and daily IT woes. I learned from what others had done and I relied on the connections I made to peers in similar work environments to mine. This kind of got me thinking. Why don't we have a regular feature on the blog specifically addressing the pain points of in these situations and environments? Why not make it easier to share these gems of information, tailored to the size of shops where "the IT Guy/IT Gal" work? If you can identify with what I've laid out - I've already got a couple of posts saved up from guest bloggers about topics that matter to you. Heck - it matters to all of us and we all can contribute to this category of posts. I'll commit to contributing as well - but what about YOU contributing? Contact me directly or use the email link at the top of the blog with suggested topics AND/OR draft stories with solutions. Let's ramp up the noise and start giving back!!! First post in "The IT Guy/Gal" category is slated to go live on the 16th of September and will continue to come out at least once a month on the 3rd Tuesday of every month. I figured you are busy on the 2nd Tuesday with other things. :) If the volume of suggestions/submissions allows for a more frequent timeline, I can adjust to suit the demand. I really think you will enjoy this series - please continue to give us feedback on how to make it better!
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn 
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Virtualization technologies are being adopted at a rapid pace. One concern that I often hear about relates to support of the operating systems and applications running in the virtual environment. Microsoft has supported Microsoft operating systems in Microsoft virtualization platforms from the start and the list of supported applications are continually growing. Knowledge Base Article 897615 details Microsoft's support policy around running Microsoft operating systems and applications in non-Microsoft virtualization platforms and here is where things have changed! Additionally, for vendors with whom Microsoft has established a support relationship that covers virtualization solutions, or for vendors who have Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) validated solutions, Microsoft will support server operating systems subject to the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy for its customers who have support agreements when the operating system runs virtualized on non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. This support will include coordinating with the vendor to jointly investigate support issues. Novell has been a part of SVVP for a while now and the other day VMWare, arguably the current leader in virtualization, announced that they have joined the SVVP program. The (SVVP)program enables vendors to validate various configurations so that customers of Windows Server can receive technical support in virtualized environments. Customers with validated solutions will benefit from the support provided by Microsoft as a part of the regular Windows Server technical support framework. So with Novell and VMWare now being part of the SVVP program you can rest easy knowing that Microsoft will support Microsoft operating systems and applications no matter what virtual platform they are running on. Along with these two vendors, there are a number of other virtualization vendors who have entered the program and are being validated including Cisco, Cytrix, Sun, Unisys, and Virtual Iron. Along with this there is also expanded support for Microsoft applications running in a virtual environment. A total of 31 new applications have been certified to run on Virtual Serve, Hyper-V and SVVP certified virtual platforms including Exchange Server 2007 SP1, SQL Server 2008, Dynamics, SharePoint and System Centre tools. You can see the complete list in Knowledge Base Article 957006 Personally I think this is great news. Now no matter what your virtual platform, Microsoft will be there to support you. 
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A short while ago, I meet with a friend who is responsible for the management of a testing lab. The federal department he works for, setup a lab to allow each business unit owners to come and test their Line of Business applications against the standard desktop configuration. I thought to myself, "This is cool." It's a great way of dealing with a problem that is in a lot of cases been ignored until an application fails... At which point the Business Unit owner always ends up in your office asking you why your OS broke his application. Am I right? I know in my days as an IT Pro I saw all kinds of setups for managing labs like that. It came down to 2 major methods. First, the drive imaging way and second the automated deployment way. Of course today we have a third. Virtual labs where once your done your testing you can just discard the changes and still have a pristine workstation OS configuration... But that's for another blog post. So, as I was saying, the 2 major ways of managing test workstations have been drive imaging or automated deployment. Both have pros and cons. For example, the drive imaging is fast to restore, but it could requires more management of the number of images. The automated deployment can minimize the number of images to 1, thus a lot less management activities But on the other hand it's a little slower to re-image a workstation. My absolute favorite... You don't have to go through the reboot dance. Install Vista, reboot, Install IE8 reboot, and so on.... . Anyway, since IE8 beta 2 was released on Wednesday August 27th 2008 (get your copy here), I suggested in my previous post that you should go out and "get your sites ready". I then started to think "what do you need to do in a lab setting to automate the deployment of IE8 with Vista SP1". You got it, I am taking about Slipstreaming IE8 in a Vista SP1 image. Unfortunately for those looking to slipstream IE8 into Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, I'm sorry it's not supported. IT Pros have been asking for Internet Explorer Slipstreaming for a long time and now it's possible. All you need are a few tools that are freely accessible such as: - Windows Automated Install Kit. The WAIK is a tool designed to help IT professionals customize and deploy Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 family of operation systems. By using Windows AIK, you can perform unattended Windows installations, capture Windows images with ImageX, and create Windows PE images.
- The appropriate Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 bits. Go here to select and download the bits
- And the Windows Vista CD/DVD.
- Some spare HDD space
- And a little time.
What you get in return is control and the certainty that all your machines are deployed the same way, every time, all the time. Your next decision you need to take is how to deploy that customized image.... How about CD\DVD? No problem. How about System Center Configuration Manager or SMS? absolutely. MDT? (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit), WDS? (Windows Deployment services) ..... It does not matter. "One image to deploy with whatever tool you want even our competitor's products." :) YOU have the control! I could go on an on about the detailed steps to perform the slipstreaming but I'd rather share a screencast created by a colleague of mine who did a great job, Matt Hester Double click the video above to make it full Screen. There you go. You have the know-how and the tools to start simplifying your deployments and managing images. The next step would be to decide what to do with this image. We will look at how we further automate, customize and deploy the image we just built in future posts. Better yet, if you want more in depth technical training, check us out at TechDays '08. I don't know if you noticed but I'm passionate about operations, and with years of work in services and support, I have seen a lot of great, and not so great practices. I'd love to know how you're operating your environment. If you have "best practices" you'd like to share, contact me. I'd love to learn about them. Cheers! 
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