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March 2010 - Posts
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Hi Everyone, I’ve been looking forward to this post for a long time and while I wish it would have been earlier, it was paramount to us to take the time to review your feedback and insights before we thought about moving ahead for 2010. Techdays 2009 was very successful with over 87% of the guests surveyed being very satisfied with the overall event and over 90% also indicated their intention to attend this year. Halifax was a new addition and it sold out weeks before the actual event and we had over 86% of our guests submit their feedback to help with TechDays 2010 planning. Thank you so much for your support, we couldn’t have delivered the content, experience and sessions without your help, guidance and participation. TechDays is back in 2010! So enough with the background…… I’m excited to share the news that TechDays is coming back for a third year and we’ve put a lot of effort into ensuring that TechDays 2010 is even better. Each year we want to improve and based upon your feedback it is our goal this year to be more inclusive of the local community and improve the overall experience from registration, to event and after with the post event online experience.  As well we heard loud and clear from the phenomenal IT community of Developers and IT Pros in Edmonton that there is support and a need to bring TechDays to that city. As such, we are happy to announce that we will be extending TechDays 2010 to include Edmonton. 
Dates and Venues Below are the dates and locations for TechDays 2010. The tour kicks off in Vancouver on September 14 and finishes in Calgary on December 15. I know it’s early and while you can’t register yet we heard from your feedback that you want to know this this information as early as we can. As an FYI, early bird (about 50% off the regular price) registration will be available at the TechDays website in early May. - Vancouver – September 14/15 at the Vancouver Convention Centre
- Edmonton – October 5/6 at the Shaw Conference Centre
- Toronto – October 27/28 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre
- Halifax – November 2/3 at the World Trade & Convention Centre
- Ottawa – November 9/10 at the Hampton Inn & Conference Centre
- Montreal – November 23/24 at the Palais de Congres
- Winnipeg – December 7/8 at the Winnipeg Convention Centre
- Calgary – December 14/15 at the Calgary Stampede
What’s New for 2010 - Increased Content - We are increasing the content and each city will now have a minimum of 50 sessions.
- Local Community Track - Each city will include a community track where local speakers will have the opportunity to submit sessions for delivery. We will be working with a local community leader in each city to ensure the right sessions are delivered. We’ve learned that every city is unique with their skills needs/expertise and our goal with this track is to nurture the strengths and needs of the Devs and IT pros in each city. (More to come on this in May)
- Increased support of local initiatives and activities - Building on last year’s inclusive approach we want to increase our support of local initiatives and events. Last year in the evening of day one across many of the cities we supported delivery of variety of events which included Career Demo camp, Failcamp, and Demo Night in Canada to name a few. This year we want to expand this opportunity to include all cities. The team will be working with the local communities to increase our participation. If you are interested to learn more about this opportunity and aren’t already connected to one of our team members, please contact us at td_can@microsoft.com
- Local Community group support – While we did have some local community support last year, it’s clear that we can do more. Many guests brought up the fact that we have open the space in the evening of Day One of each event and that we should use it to support to the local IT groups. Well, we thought this was a great idea to increase our community support and as such we will open the space to use from 6:30 to 9:00 PM on the first day of the event. If you are interested and want to learn more about this opportunity contact us at td_can@microsoft.com
We have had a lot of customer inquiries about when are we coming back and in response this our save the dates heads up! Our team is actively driving for registration to be available in early May. The best way to be the first to know when registration is live and the latest TechDays news, is to sign up for the MSDN Newsletter (for developers) or the TechNet Newsletter (for IT pros). You make the positive difference! Driving a technology conference that crosses such a huge country like ours is a big task and without your support it just couldn’t happen. We have taken some major steps in our plan for TechDays 2010 and with your help we will continue improving the experience. This is a really exciting time as this is the first time we have been able to deliver such an event for three years running! This year marks our first steps to make it more inclusive and I know with your help we can learn and grow to make it better for the years ahead! Thanks again for your support and I’m really looking forward to see and meeting you in person at the event. As always please do not hesitate to reach out and contact me directly or be part of the conversation on twitter by following the hashtag #techdays_ca. All the best, 
John Oxley Director Technical Evangelism Microsoft Canada | Direct (905) 363- 8589|Messenger joxley@microsoft.com | Twitter:joxley 
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Over pints Pierre Roman, Bruce Cowper and Rick Claus decided they would put together a concise and timely podcast each “Update Tuesday”. The object is to keep it simple by letting you know in plain non technical language what the updates are, what they resolve and why you should care. Have a listen directly from the embedded Silverlight player OR subscribe to the feed and download it to your iTunes / Zune software.  As always - if you have suggestions on making it better - please pass on your comments. Mail Rick directly – rick.claus@microsoft.com Direct Download: 
Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)   
Disclaimer: This podcast was produced with the best information available to us at the time of recording. Your primary source for all things Security Bulletin related should always be the Microsoft Security Response Center blog. In Depth Webcast on this OOB bulletin will take place: Tuesday, March 30 - 1:00 p.m. PST (UTC -8). (Registration link): Bulletins discussed for March 30th, 2010: Podcast Participants: Pierre Roman, Bruce Cowper and Rick Claus. Additional Technical Show Notes: - Recorded at the BridgeHead coffee house on Bank street in Ottawa.
- Beverage of choice for this edition: An extra-large Vanilla Latte, a large latte, and a tea. (Guess which one got the tea? The Frenchmen, the maritimer or the brit ???)
- As always. You REALLY should check out the Microsoft Security Response Center blog - lots of very good information
Internet Explorer Lifecycle policy Internet Explorer is considered a component of the OS for which it was released. That means that support timelines for IE are inherited from its appropriate OS/SP . Basically, this means that the versions of Internet Explorer that shipped for a specific OS or service pack will be supported with the support lifecycle of that OS or service pack. As per the policy, we will not end support previous versions of Internet Explorer on supported operating system versions. You can read more about it here. But what is really needed is for a matrix that includes all IE and OS combos so you can check if you’re in a supported state. Well there is one here. PodSafe music from PodSafe Music Network @ http://music.podshow.com/. Artist: Derek K Miller, song - “You’re the Big Sky - rock guitar instrumental” 
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
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A month shy of a year, we’re heading back to Coffee Matters in St. John’s, Newfoundland for a Coffee and Code “workshifting” stint in this great coffee joint on Water Street. Man – I still remember those radical Lattes – Vanilla Berry Bliss was my favorite – but I digress.  
(I dug up a snap of the boys from last year) Last time we had up to a dozen IT guys come on out for a chat (and coffee obviously) about everything under the sun. Are you a Technical Professional working on “the rock” and can make it downtown this Thursday morning (March 25th – around 9:30 Newfoundland time)? Come on out and say hi – Coffee is on us. Heck – bring your laptop and join us in the coffee shop to work if you can – great to have company as we’re in town. Based on the weather reports – it sounds like it will be a tad bit wet, but heck – rain never hurt anyone. Start Time: informally around 9:30 ish until possibly noonish
Location: 320 Water Street, St.John’s NL Other Things in St. John’s we’re doing as part of the East Coast Swing of #EnergizeIT: - We’ve got to head out after coffee to College of the North Atlantic for a presentation to students about careers in IT.
- Followed by the evening Event at MUN for #EnergizeIT – Client to the Cloud. You can still register to attend FOR FREE here. (286 Elizabeth Ave., Inco Centre, Rm. IIC-2001)
Looking forward to seein’ ya out there.  Rick Claus | Senior IT Pro Advisor | Microsoft Canada
phone 613.795.9216 | Live messenger rick.claus@hotmail.com
IT Pro blog | IT Manager blog | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn I’m a PC 
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It’s obvious by the number of comments to Rick’s post, and my last post on Azure, that there are a lot of questions still on your mind in regards to cloud computing. IT Pro Technical Evangelist Joey Snow and Senior Architect Evangelist Brian Prince are back at it again! This time Brian gives the white board a workout as he describes the Windows Azure architecture and answers questions about the IT Pro’s role. With Windows Azure, IT Pros have to deploy applications and manage their health, predict and manage demand for applications, and make sure data is backed up and secure. Brian describes the Windows Azure Platform Application Fabric and touches on SQL Azure, storage elements, blobs, queues and tables. 
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Yesterday the Windows team disclosed some information on what you can expect for Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2. While there are no new features set for Windows 7 SP1 there is a change to XP Mode available for Windows 7 Professional and up. Until now your computer needed to support hardware assisted virtualization for XP Mode to run but that has changed. XP Mode will now run on all CPUs! This is great for those people with 2+ year old computers that have the horsepower to run Windows 7 but don’t have the CPU extensions, or the BIOS support to enable hardware assisted virtualization. You can get the bits here.. The more exciting news (to me anyway) were the announcements around Server 2008 R2 SP1. There are two big new features that will be released with this service pack… RemoteFX is a technology (from the Calista acquisition in 2008) that give remote workers using Remote Desktop Services (aka Terminal Services) the full Windows Aero desktop environment, support for full motion video, Silverlight apps and 3D applications. You’ll be able to extend the same experience to users with thin clients accessing a VM on Hyper-V R2 as they would get on a full featured PC. Dynamic Memory is a technology that will allow you to dynamically allocate memory to VMs running on a Hyper-V R2 host. Now those of you with experience with ESX might think this is like memory overcommit but it is different. In a nutshell both technologies allow you to assign more memory to your VMs than the host has. For example I can start 5 VMs each with 4GB of RAM eventhough the host only has 16GB of RAM. Memory Overcommit is different in that it uses paging files for that extra address space. As you are aware paging has a negative impact on performance. I am simplifying but that’s basically it. Today, on a Hyper-V host when you assign a VM 4GB of memory and start it, it locks out the 4GB of address space on the host for that VM. Now that VM might only be utilizing 1GB meaning that the other 3GB is essentially idle until the VM requires it. With Dynamic Memory we will still assign the VM 4GB of RAM however it will only lock the address space the VM is utilizing leaving the rest available for other VMs. When a VMs memory utilization increases, it will draw from that pool and when memory utilization decreases it will release it back into the pool. Again I am simplifying things but that is how it works in a nutshell. What this means is that you’ll be able to use the physical memory in your Hyper-V hosts more efficiently without impacting performance in your production environments. You can see a demo of RemoteFX and find out more about these changes at http://www.desktopvirtualizationhour.com 
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With the recent Windows 7 Deployment Deep Dive tour wrapping up tomorrow night in Saskatoon one of the most common question topics was desktop virtualization. From XP Mode to MED-V, App-V to VDI there are plenty of choice to fit the needs of the particular situation. What is the best migration path to Windows 7? What’s the best desktop management strategy for my company? Which virtualization solutions can save us time and money? On March 18th at 9am Pacific (noon Eastern) a virtual event is being hosted where you can how Microsoft can help you discover choices, preserve & extend your existing investments and learn how Microsoft’s virtualization vision and technologies can help you: · Build a desktop virtualization management strategy that helps you manage your applications, data, mobile workers and multiple physical and virtual form factors · Reduce desktop costs · Enable flexible and agile IT through virtualization · Increase desktop security and compliance · Improve business continuity and end user productivity · Increase end user productivity and streamline your IT management with Windows 7 I’ll be listening in and I hope you can join us for Desktop Virtualization Hour! 
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As part of EnergizeIT 2010 we have partnered with RunAs Radio to produce some podcasts on Office 2010. The first podcast of this 4 part series was posted yesterday. If you don’t already subscribe to RunAs Radio I encourage you to do so. It is a great podcast aimed directly at IT professionals. ------------------------- In this episode Richard and Greg talk to Robert Crane from the Computer Information Agency in Sydney Australia about SharePoint 2010. The show digs into the issues that companies face when using SharePoint without careful governance to manage their data well. Check out Microsoft's Sharepoint Governance Resource Center for more information.
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In a couple of weeks, Microsoft’s Technical Evangelism Team will embark on the EnergizeIT 2010 Tour, a cross-country set of presentation showing what’s possible with Microsoft tools and technology. If you want to know how Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and other Microsoft tools and tech can cut your costs and help your business and organization, you should catch an EnergizeIT event near you. They’re free, and they’re happening in the next few weeks! Depending on the city, there will be different “flavours” of EnergizeIT events. I’ve written some descriptions below, and if you want the full set of details, check out the EnergizeIT page. The “From the Client to the Cloud” Full-Day Events (Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal) 
In Canada’s six largest cities, we’ll hold our EnergizeIT From the Client to the Cloud full-day events, where we’ll cover the Microsoft-based platform in detail. And yes, even though it’s full-day, it’ll still be free! Please note: The Toronto session is currently booked. You can register, but you’ll end up on the first-come, first served waiting list. In the morning, we’ll talk about the big picture. We’ll show you a scenario featuring the Microsoft-based platform as seen from different points of view: the customer, the information worker, the developer and the IT professional. You’ll see our latest and greatest as well as our up-and-coming developer goodies: Silverlight, .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. We’ll show you Windows 7 and Azure in action, talk about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, and tell you how all of Microsoft’s stuff works together. Just as the morning session answers the question “What’s the latest technology?”, the afternoon sessions answer the question “How do I get to the latest technology from where I am now?” These sessions, split into two tracks – one on infrastructure management and deployment, one on the development process – will cover what you can do with our tools and technology in a little more depth. They’ll show you what you need to implement what you saw in the morning session and provide a roadmap you can follow to learn more and take action. For more details about From the Client to the Cloud events or to register (it’s free!), visit the EnergizeIT From the Client to the Cloud page. The “Community Connection” Evening Events (Many Cities Across Canada) 
We’ll also hold Community Connection events in the evening in many cities across Canada,where we’ll do the “big picture” session (the morning session) of our From the Client to the Cloudevents. The Community Connection evening events will take place in the following cities: - British Columbia: Vancouver, Kelowna and Victoria
- Alberta: Edmonton and Calgary
- Saskatchewan: Regina and Saskatoon
- Manitoba: Winnipeg
- Ontario: Ottawa, London, Kitchener and Mississauga
- Quebec: Montreal, Quebec City and Trois-Rivières
- Atlantic Canada: Halifax, St. John’s, Moncton and Fredericton
For more details about Community Connection or to register (it’s free!), visit the EnergizeITCommunity Connection page. Office 2010 Installfests (Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Montreal, Mississauga)  I’ve been using the beta and release candidate versions of Office 2010 in my day-to-day work for the past few months – PowerPoint for my public speaking stuff, Outlook for email, scheduling and get-things-done stuff and OneNote for my copious note-taking. We’d like you to take it for a spin!
Join us at one of our Microsoft Office 2010 Installfests and we’ll hook you up with the latest build of Office, show you some of our favourite features and demonstrate how to get the most out of our productivity suite. For more details about the Office 2010 Installfests or to register (it’s free!), visit the EnergizeIT Office 2010 Installfest page. Academic Sessions We’ll also be passing through a number of colleges across Canada, talking to students about getting ready for the working world and showing them resources that they can use to fire up their careers. [This article also appears in Global Nerdy.] 
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The other day Rick posted an entry on cloud computing and asked “As IT Pros who save the world every day at work – what do you think about all this “cloud” stuff?” It led to a lot of comments and questions. Our colleagues over at TechNet Edge have started to answer the questions around cloud computing specifically aimed at the IT Pro. It is a four part series which will cover the IT Pro aspect of cloud computing. Part 1 is available and in it IT Pro Technical Evangelist Joey Snow invites Senior Architect Evangelist Brian Prince to Redmond to begin unravelling the mystery around Cloud Computing in this first video in the four part, Real World Azure series. Joey and Brian keep it light as they fill in the vocabulary for you. They describe what SaaS, Software plus Services and cloud computing are, and point out types of applications which are best-suited for the cloud. Brian is happy to reveal how IT professionals move up the value food chain and do more of what they aspire to as they begin to leverage cloud computing. The discussion rounds out with a white board chat about the spectrum of applications that might run on-premises, hosted, or in the cloud for an enterprise. Take a look, let us know what your thoughts are and stay tuned for the rest of the series. 
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Over pints Pierre Roman, Bruce Cowper and Rick Claus decided they would put together a concise and timely podcast each “Update Tuesday”. The object is to keep it simple by letting you know in plain non technical language what the updates are, what they resolve and why you should care.
Have a listen directly from the embedded Silverlight player OR subscribe to the feed and download it to your iTunes / Zune software.
As always - if you have suggestions on making it better - please pass on your comments. Mail Rick directly – rick.claus@microsoft.com
Direct Download:
Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)
Disclaimer: This podcast was produced with the best information available to us at the time of recording. Your primary source for all things Security Bulletin related should always be the Microsoft Security Response Center blog.
In Depth Webcast on this months bulletins will take place: Wednesday, March 10 - 11:00 a.m. PST (UTC -8). (Registration link):
Bulletins discussed for March 9th, 2010:
Podcast Participants: Pierre Roman, Bruce Cowper and Rick Claus.
Additional Technical Show Notes:
- Recorded outside World Exchange Plaza, 100 Queen Street – next to bus route.
- Beverage of choice for this edition: Two XL DoubleDouble TimHortons Coffee and one XL Steeped Tea.
PodSafe music from PodSafe Music Network @ http://music.podshow.com/. Artist: Derek K Miller, song - “You’re the Big Sky - rock guitar instrumental”
IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
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As we announced in 2008, support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) will end on July 13, 2010. Support for Windows 2000 will end on the same date. Support for Windows Vista Release to Manufacturing (RTM) will end on April 13, 2010. NOTE: There is no Service Pack 3 for the 64-bit version of Windows XP. If you are running the 64-bit version of Windows XP with Service Pack 2, you are on the latest service pack and will continue to be eligible for support and receive updates until April 8, 2014. To find out if you are running the 64-bit version of Windows XP, right-click My Computer, then click Properties. If you do not see "64-bit" listed, then you are running the 32-bit version and you need to install Service Pack 3 . If "64-bit" is listed under System, then you are running the 64-bit version. If you are running Windows Vista RTM then you need to download and install at least Service Pack 1 but I would recommend installing Service Pack 2. If you already have either of those installed you will continues to be eligible for support. If you are running Windows 2000 you will need to upgrade to XP SP3, Vista SP1 (or SP2) or Windows 7 to continue to receive support. You can find out more about what is supported and until when on the enterprise products support lifecycle page. 
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