TechNet Blogs

TechNet Presents: MCS Talks Enterprise Architecture – session 2, Core Infrastructure

Georgina M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:54:58 GMT

21 August 2008 17:00-18:00 GMT

Webcast Overview
This session will look at core infrastructure services, focussing on the decisions commonly faced by enterprises when deploying Active Directory. We’ll look at how the improvements in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 can help rationalize the Active Directory infrastructure while still supporting complex and disperse environments. We will cover the design process for an Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) upgrade and consolidation project, considering the key decisions which must be made and how these will benefit an enterprise environment. New features such as read-only domain controllers (RODCs) and fine-grained password policies will be covered as well as more general design principles and considerations for remote workers. Finally we will cover how it is possible to take advantage of new virtualisation technologies in supporting Active Directory.

End-to-End Content Deployment Walkthrough with SharePoint

John Westworth — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:39:03 GMT

This paper provides an overview of the content deployment feature in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for the IT pro audience, and describes an end-to-end scenario for how to create and successfully perform a content deployment between two site collections. To view this document, click here: End-to-End Content Deployment Walkthrough (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=120537&clcid=0x409) del.icio.us tags: MOSS , SHAREPOINT , MICROSOFT , OFFICE , ECM Technorati tags: MOSS , SHAREPOINT...(read more)

Which Virtualization Solution is Right for Me? (continued) -- Virtual Server 2005 R2

danwoodman — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:06:21 GMT

In yesterday's post, I talked about Virtual PC. While this product absolutely has a place in most organizations, it's not always the ideal choice for your virtual machine needs. It is, as I said, a great end-user tool. It's good for demos, training, and a better solution for running multiple OSes than dual-booting. But if you wanted to virtualize some of your production servers, it is not the product that you want to turn to. Today, we're going to talk about just such a product -- Virtual Server 2005 R2. (As an aside, Hyper-V, which will be covered in the next post, is almost certainly a better solution for your organization. But, in the event you don't yet have access to Server 2008 (which is what you need to get your hands on Hyper-V), I'll discuss the second-best option, Virtual Server.)

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 has the ability to function as a virtualization solution for the following OSes:

Windows Server 2003 Web/Standard/Enterprise Editions

Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard/Platinum Editions

Windows 2000 Server/Advanced

Windows NT Server 4.0 with Service Pack 6a

Windows XP SP2

Windows Vista Ultimate/Business/Enterprise

OS/2 4.5

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 (update 7)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 (update 8)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 (update 4)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.0/10.0

Red Hat Linux 9.0

SuSE Linux 9.3/10.0/10.1/10.2

It will run on a number of host OSes as well, including:

Most editions of Windows Server 2003, 2008

XP Professional and non-home versions of Vista (not supported in a production environment)

You can find the complete list here.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 (hereafter referred to simply as Virtual Server) offers some major advantages over Virtual PC. This tool is intended as a solution for virtualizing in your data center and accordingly, has enterprise-class features. Before we get into those, let's take a look at what Virtual Server can do for your organization. I was part of the Heroes Happen Here launch, introducing Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008. During that launch, one of the things we focused heavily on was Infrastructure Optimization, or Core I/O. The basic premise of the Core I/O model is that basic systems (largely manually-based processes, management, etc.) cost significantly more to maintain than their dynamic (automated processes, self-managing systems, etc.) counterparts. Virtualization using Virtual Server and/or Hyper-V can help your organization move from a basic environment to a dynamic environment in several key areas, reducing overall cost to maintain, time to implement new solutions, and increasing your IT organization's agility. (You can expect future posts dedicated to the subject of optimization!)

To get a good idea of how virtualization can save your organization money, let's take a look at a typical IT infrastructure. A new solution is being rolled out to increase employee productivity. This is a server-based application and a request has been made from a project team to requisition a server with specific requirements. In many organizations, this is a manual process that kicks off another manual process -- procuring a server. This process could be as basic as Jane, an IT server admin, going to purchasing to get a new physical machine ordered, then waiting for that machine to arrive, then installing Windows Server on it, configuring the machine, putting it into the datacenter, configuring any networking requirements, installing the new application on it, then communicating its availability to the requesting party. This whole process could take days or even weeks to complete.

At this point, maybe you're saying to yourself, "Come on, Dan. We're not that basic. We have servers in-house waiting to be deployed. We have a master image we use to automate the configuration process. We could have a new server up and running with that application installed in a matter of a day or two." To that, I would respond, "Great! You are clearly not in the Basic category of the I/O model, but rather the Standardized or even Rationalized, depending on how much of the process is automated. But, what if I told you that using virtualization, you could have that solution rolled out in an hour or two instead of a day or two? You're listening, right? (well, reading, anyway?) What if I told you that you could automate most of the process so that IT involvement was minimal? And what if I kept going to explain that you could do it without spending money on more physical hardware (the cost of which really starts to add up over time as you have more and more under-utilized servers in your datacenter)? I most certainly have your attention now, right?

That's exactly what virtualization can do for you. You can use it to automate server deployments. Instead of Jane, the IT worker from the previous example, gets the request for a new server. Rather than going to purchasing to obtain a new physical machine, she simply looks at the current server pool, finds an appropriate place to house the Virtual Machine (VM), and launches the deployment process. (Which can be automated to meet your requirements.) Virtual Server creates a new guest machine, installs the OS image on it, and the machine is ready to go. Jane installs the new application on it and communicates to the requesting party that the server is now available for their use.

You can also decrease the amount of physical hardware you are using by taking advantage of physical hardware you currently have in place that is not being fully utilized. Take, for instance, a server that is running a Line of Business (LOB) application. This server, at its peak, is only hitting 30% utilization. But, you've been hesitant to install other applications on this machine, because you know at some future time, that LOB app is going to be more heavily utilized, causing a problem if there are other applications on that machine as well. This is where virtualization really shines! Using Virtual Server to create a new virtual machine on that under-utilized LOB server allows you to take advantage of that power that is going to waste right now. In the future, if that LOB app does become more heavily utilized, requiring more power on that server, you can simply shut down the virtual machine, move the Virtual Hard Disk file (VHD -- this is the file that comprises the virtual machine) to a different server which is being under-utilized, and start it back up. That's it. It really is that simple. Imagine trying to do that with a physical machine.

While the examples I used above focus on new server deployments, that is not a requirement. Think about your current organization. Do you have servers that are being under-utilized that are already in place? You can use Virtual Server to consolidate these machines in order to free up otherwise unavailable hardware.

Let's look at another feature in Virtual Server -- the ability to support clustered servers (clustered servers are identical servers configured to provide continuous uptime. In the event that one of the servers goes down, the other server will take its place with little/no disruption). What happens now when it is time to do maintenance on one of your LOB app servers? If you are like most organizations, you probably communicate to your users that Application X will be unavailable from Y to Z due to scheduled maintenance. Using the clustering features in Windows Server 2003, you can create a clustered solution which allows you to run identical VMs on separate physical servers. If one of them goes down (planned or unplanned), the other machine begins servicing the customers so that they see no downtime. Obviously, you can do this with physical machines as well, but imagine the possibilities when you can run more than one virtual machine per physical machine -- now you can use the same servers to create multiple VM clusters. (Clustering in Server 2008 becomes even easier and allows greater flexibility!)

Even if you don't use clustered servers, you now know that you can move a Virtual Machine from one server to another quite quickly. So, rather than communicating to your users that LOB Application X will be down from Y to Z due to maintenance, you can communicate that it will be down for <30 minutes while it is moved from Host Server A to Host Server B, drastically reducing employee downtime and ensuring that server maintenance can take place during normal business hours, rather than forcing IT people to come in at 3am on Saturday to perform server maintenance!!

The Virtual Server interface is necessarily more complex than the Virtual PC interface (as one is designed for end users to run multiple OSes on their desktop and the other is designed for enterprise-class server solutions). An administrative website is used to manage the servers running on the host machine. Here's a snapshot of one of my co-worker's Virtual Server admin window:

You can see it lists the virtual machines, shows a snapshot of their current state, and even shows important messages about the virtual machines. On the left, you can see all of the configuration options for using Virtual Server.

It is worth noting, too, that Virtual Server will run on a 64-bit host machine, but does not support 64-bit guest machines. It is intended to virtualize 32-bit machines, and does so quite well. If you do not yet have Server 2008, Virtual Server is a great way to get started with virtualization in your organization. Once you get Hyper-V installed, you can follow the instructions here to migrate your virtual machines from Virtual Server to Hyper-V.

In the next post, I'll discuss the features and advantages of using Hyper-V over Virtual Server. (It's a big list!)

Technorati Tags: virtualization, Hyper-V, Virtual Server, Microsoft, Infrastructure Optimization

Diversão - Show da Alanis Morissette no MSN

Marcos Rodrigues — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:38:41 GMT

Amanhã , Às 3 horas da tarde ... Divirtam-se Marcos

http://music.msn.com/alanismorissette

Digital WPC

bernardc — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:34:26 GMT

Soon we will have all the WPC sessions online @ www.microsoft.com/digitalwpc The two BPI breakouts are "The Chemical Synapse" and "Sales Execution Packages - New Ways to Promote Cross-Capability and Integrated Business Productivity Platform Solutions". For now it's definitely worth viewing Chris Capossela's keynote. Not only does Chris give an excellent summary of BPI and BPIO but he also gives some focus to the market opportunity for BI and UC. Included is a great demo from Kirk...(read more)

TechNet Belux Books of the Summer Months

Tom Mertens — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:20:14 GMT

This summer TechNet offers you 40% discount on four different Microsoft Press books : MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit: Configuring Windows Server® 2008 Active Directory® MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit: Configuring Windows Server® 2008 Network Infrastructure MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit: Configuring Windows Server® 2008 Applications Infrastructure MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit: Configuring Windows Vista™ Client The offer is valid in Belgium and Luxembourg in selected specialized book stores, and only for...(read more)

Windows Home Server – Power Pack 1 released

nmercer — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:12:28 GMT

The Windows Home Server team has just recently released the much anticipated Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 and is now available on the Microsoft Download Centre!

Additional details can be found on the Windows Home Server team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/archive/2008/07/21/power-pack-1-come-and-get-it.aspx

Power Pack 1 provides a range of improvements. These include the following:

• Support for home computers that are running Windows Vista x64 editions

• Backup of Home Server shared folders

• Improvements to remote access

• More efficient power consumption

• Improved performance

Additionally, this update resolves the data corruption issue described here

Additional resources:

Windows Home Server Community Forums

Windows Home Server Release Documentation

Power Pack 1 KB Article (KB944289)

Windows Home Server Home Page

La Familia en la Empresa 2.0

cencinao — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:40:23 GMT

Primero que todo, pido disculpas por un largo tiempo sin escribir... Las últimas 2 semanas estuve fuera en una serie de reuniones de inicio de año de la compañía, viendo las principales tendencias y novedades. Fue un gran gusto escuchar y ver de nuestra estrategia 2.0 y de interesantes avances que vienen.

Pero antes de entrar en eso, quise compartir contigo un fenómeno que me llamó mucho la atención, y que creo que tiene que ver con la Generación 2.0 entrando y apoderándose de las empresas.

Durante una presentación con mis pares de Latinoamérica se nos pidió hacer una presentación personal, sin esquema predefinido, que no durara más de 10 minutos. Lo que me llamó mucho la atención es que, aún sin formato pre-establecido, el 90% de mis pares mencionó como primer punto, y con prominente fotografía a su familia. Parte importante de los 10 minutos de cada uno estuvieron destinados a hablar de cómo la familia importaba en su equilibrio personal, etc.

Si la misma sesión hubiera ocurrido hace 10 años, cuando trabajaba en la banca, hubiera sido un desfile de credenciales, grados académicos y logros profesionales. Me gustó mucho que el mayor orgullo de mis pares eran sus familias.

Claramente una tendencia 2.0.

Lessons you’ve learned in life

Eileen_Brown — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:51:18 GMT

Paul has made some interesting observations about lessons he’s learned in his life.

The 80/20 rule.
Parkinson’s Law.
Batching.
First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.
Be proactive. Not reactive.
Mistakes and failures are good.
Don’t beat yourself up.
Your attitude changes your reality.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
80-90% of what you fear will never really come into reality.
Don’t take things too seriously.
Write everything down.
There are opportunities in just about every experience.

In addition to his 13 ideas and the fact that I’m uneasy about having 13 on the list, here are 2 of mine: that I try to use every day.

14: Smiles are infectious. Spread them. When you’re happy, you smile, and when you smile, you are happy. (nod to Anand here)

15: Believe in yourself – because if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.

What’s your best lesson you’ve learned?…

Technorati Tags: lessons in life

PowerShell for OCS 2007

toml-lcskid — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:30:51 GMT

I found this posting from Dmitry with an OCS 2007 PowerShell solution and thought I would pass it on - if you have other solutions please comment with links. Since Dmitry's post does a really good job of showing the UI, I won't repeat it here.

PowerGUI

OCS PowerPack for PowerGUI

TomL LCSKid

Vacation is a priority

hdonald — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:08:24 GMT

Sorry for the lack of content. I have been on vacation and have some additional vacation this week and next. You won't see another post from me until August 7.

Hunter

Tu estilo de vida digital

TechnetMexico — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:55:35 GMT

El estilo de vida actual, ha cambiado en los ultimos años, evolucionando en un concepto de estilo de vida digital. Este video muestra un ejemplo de este nuevo estilo. Eduardo Rivadeneira...(read more)

Publishing Microsoft CRM 4.0 through ISA Server 2006

isablog — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:52:00 GMT

1. Introduction

Last February I collaborated with Henning Petersen from the CRM Team on CRM 3 through ISA Server 2006. After this post, we received a lot of requests for an article on publishing CRM 4 using the Internet Facing Deployment option (IFD). This post is going to answer those requests. For this post we chose to let ISA handle the SSL Certificates as this is the common scenario for ISA deployments although other methods can be used.

We chose to focus this blog on letting CRM handle the authentication while letting ISA handle the SSL session. The main reason for using IFD despite ISA’s ability to provide forms based authentication was that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Clients for Outlook would run into authentication problems if prompted with an ISA login. In order to get CRM running with IFD a good starting point is to study the IFD guide called How to configure an Internet-Facing Deployment for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 it can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. The deployment guide will allow you to better understand the CRM 4 IFD concepts before you create any publishing rules on ISA Server.

2. Adjusting the CRM Server for External Publishing

To deploy this scenario the following topology was used:

Figure 1 – Topology using CRM IFD with ISA Server 2006.

We broke it down the IFD configuration in two parts. Let’s see them:

Part 1 – General Considerations

We created an Organization in CRM 4.0 named “CRM”. to avoid the complication of split DNS, we decided to define the internal domain as .local and the external domain as contoso.com, therefore our first action item was to ensure that the External URL could resolve to the CRM server on the inside of the network. The external URL was defined as crm.contoso.com. CRM 4.0 IFD does a redirect to the External URL thus making it crucial to have name resolution to the external URL from the Inside of the network. The DNS infrastructure for this lab allows the external name (crm.contoso.com) resolves to the internal CRM Server.

Important Notes:

If you are using Multi-tenancy in CRM and you are planning on exposing multiple CRM Organizations to the outside world you will need to ensure that you can resolve all names such as crmorg2.contoso.com and crmorg3.contoso.com. (If you are exposing multiple CRM Organizations we recommend that you purchase a wildcard certificate (*.contoso.com) or an individual certificate for each organization.
The DNS setup and best practices are not covered in this blog.
After we established name resolution for crm.contoso.com on the inside we needed to activate IFD

Part 2 – IFD Configuration

CRM 4.0 IFD can be activated during the install of CRM 4.0 if you are using a configuration file. Clint Warriner (Escalation Engineer, Microsoft CRM Team) has developed a tool that will allow you to configure CRM 4.0 with IFD after a normal GUI Install of CRM 4.0. For this blog we utilized Clint’s tool in order to enable IFD. The tool can be downloaded from the document named “How to use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Internet Facing Deployment Configuration tool” In order to run the tool, you should read this document first and also review “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Internet Facing Deployment Scenarios”. Once you have the tool downloaded, place the executable in the tools folder under the Microsoft CRM folders. (i.e. c:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Tools). Here it is the screenshot of the currently released tool:

Figure 2 – IFD Tool.

When setting CRM up with IFD Auth we used HTTP on both IFD Domain Scheme (IFD Auth-External) and AD Domain Scheme (AD Auth-Internal). One important feature build into the tool is a DNS check – the check will ensure that the Orgname IFD App Root Domain and IFD SDK Root Domain resolve to the external name (in our example crm.contoso.com).

Note: IIS on the CRM Server is not handling the SSL Cert.

3. Configuring the ISA Server 2006 Web publishing rule

After preparing CRM 4, IFD follow the steps below to configure ISA Server 2006:

1. Right-click on the Firewall Policy, select the option New, and then click Web Site Publishing Rule.

2. Type the name of the rule, and then click Next.

3. On the Select Rule Action window, select the option Allow, and then click Next.

4. On the Publishing Type window, select the option to Publish a single Web Site or load balancer, and then click Next.

5. On the Server Connection Security window, select the option Use SSL to connect to the published web server or server farm, and then click Next.

6. On the Internal Publishing Details page, in the Internal site name box, type the name of the internal site. Select the Use a computer name or IP address to connect to the published server check box, and then, in the Computer name or IP address box, type the server name. If you do not know the name of the server, click Browse to navigate to its location.

7. On the Internal Publishing Details window, in the Path (optional) box, type /*, and then click Next.

8. On the Public Name Details window, from the Accept requests for dropdown list, select This domain name (type below), and then, in the Public name box, type the public name that matches the certificate that was issued for this URL. Click Next.

9. On the Select Web Listener window, click New, type the name for this Web listener, and then click Next.

10. On the Client Connection Security window, select the option Require SSL secured connection with clients, and then click Next.

11. Click to highlight the External interface, and then click in Select IP Address.

12. In the External Network Listener IP Selection dialog box, select the option Specified IP addresses on the ISA Server computer in the selected network. In the Available IP address field, select the IP address, click Add, and then click OK. In the Web Listener IP Addresses window, click Next.

13. On the Listener SSL Certificates window, select Use a single certificate for this Web Listener, and then click Select Certificate. Select the certificate that was installed on this ISA Server 2006 computer, and then click Select.

Note: If you are running ISA Server 2006 Enterprise with multiple nodes in the array, you need to have this certificate installed on all ISA Servers for it to be considered valid; or you must select “Certificate per IP address”. For more information about SSL Certificate on ISA Server, see “Troubleshooting SSL Certificates” in ISA Server Publishing at Microsoft Technet.

14. In the Authentication Settings window, select No Authentication and click Next.

15. On the Single Sign On Settings window disable the checkbox, click Next, and then click Finish.

16. In the Web Publishing Rule wizard, click Next.

17. In the Authentication Delegation window, select the option No delegation, but client may authenticate directly and then click Next.

18. On the User Set window, make sure that All Users is selected, click Next, and then click Finish.

Since the purpose of this post is to use CRM 4 IFD is an Internet facing mechanism we will not authenticate on the ISA Server. This is the reason why authentication was disabled on the listener and on the delegation tab.

Now that we have everything set up, we can access the site from outside. The logon page that will be presented to the end user comes from the CRM 4 IFD itself and will look like the one below:

Figure 3 – CRM 4 Logon Page.

4. Troubleshooting Tips

Most issues you are going to run into is either DNS or authentication related. Most commonly you will be able to trouble shoot authentication from the inside of your network using the external URL. Once the FQDNs resolve, the ISA setup should be straight forward. Most of the authentication issues we have seen can be solved with the bullets listed below.

We recommend that you setup an SPN HTTP/ entry under the CRMAppPool account for each orgname you need to access. Ie. HTTP/crm.contoso.com (See “How to use SPNs when you configure Web applications that are hosted on IIS 6.0” “Scenario 2: Access a Web application by using a host header” for additional details. If you are unsure of this action please consult your networking/AD administrators.)
Also look into adding host headers for each Org that you will be accessing.

I.e. If you have an org name crm and an org named crm2 you’re your domain name is contoso.com. The following URL’s need’s to resolve properly; crm.contoso.com and crm2.contoso.com. In this case you should add both these hostheaders to your CRM website through IIS manager and add the proper DNS records. (See “Using Host Header Names to Host Multiple Web Sites (IIS 6.0)” for more details.)

With 2003 SP1 additional security was introduced. Given that the CRM website may be accessed using aliases or cnames you will most likely need to apply a regkey called disableloopbackcheck (See “Error message when you try to access a server locally by using its FQDN or its CNAME alias after you install Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1: "Access denied" or "No network provider accepted the given network path")

Authors

Henning Petersen

Support Escalation Engineer - Microsoft CRM Team

Microsoft – ND

Yuri Diogenes

Security Support Engineer – ISA/IAG Team

Microsoft – TX

Technical Reviewers

Corey Hanson

Technical Readiness Engineer – Microsoft CRM Team

Jim Harrison

Microsoft Forefront (ISA/TMG) Sustained Engineering Team

UC Product Manager gets his own PA

markdea — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:45:08 GMT

As the product manager for UC in the UK I attend a lot of conference call which I need to follow up in some form. Luckily for me, I now have my own PA

The guys and girls at POST CTI have a lot of telecoms experience and noticed that one of the things that was missing from OCS 2007 was the ability to record a call, so they set to work putting something together Live-PA, a bot you can add into an existing call to record it!. If you can drag and drop (which most people can) then you can record the meeting :-).

A few people have already started to blog about it (http://unified-communications.blogspot.com/2008/07/postcti-live-pa-intelligent-call.html) but if you would like to know more information then feel free to contact John Maguire, Project Manager at PostCTI. His IM and email address is john.maguire@postcti.com.

Vídeo Vista Deployment

Priscila Silva — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:14:00 GMT

Como parte da Springboard Series, este vídeo apresenta uma discussão sobre a implementação do Windows Vista pelo especialista Stephen Rose, com dicas baseadas em sua experiência em TI. Ainda, ele trata do BitLocker e outras ferramentas, o deployment securo, melhorias no SP1, e seus comentários sobre o Vista em comparação ao Windows XP.

Mais informações
"Video: Windows Vista Deployment with the Springboard Series" > http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9240626
Duração aprox. 17min

The FBI Celebrates it’s 100th Anniversary!

kai axford — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:56:00 GMT

I had the distinct honor this week, of attending the Bureau’s 100th Anniversary celebration event here at the Dallas FBI Field Office. (I’m the one that’s not blurry in the picture on the left) The event itself was very well done and the speeches by both Special Agent in Charge Casey and by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas), were absolutely greatness. Sen Hutchinson (full disclosure….I’m a big supporter of hers!) did a wonderful job talking about the wonderful work these agents are doing to protect America and how they truly embody their mantra of “Fidelity. Bravery. Integrity.”

After the speeches, the FBI had setup up some static displays that illustrated some of their case work and capabilities throughout their history. Of course, I spent most of my time hanging out with my buddy on the FBI SWAT team. Got to see all the new gear. It was like “Old Home Week” for me. <sniff>

Again, a huge thanks to the FBI for the work they do both day and night to provide security for this country. It’s a privilege and an honor to work with these fine gentlemen.

Here’s some more video of the festivities at the event:

Dallas Morning News - http://www.dallasnews.com/video/index.html?nvid=265346&shu=1

(Yes, it was a bit hot…almost hit 100 degrees…that explains all the fans and the short speeches!)

Dual boot með Bitlocker !

isitpro — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:42:00 GMT

Það getur oft verið erfitt að prófa allar nýjustu lausnirnar á sama tíma s.s. nýjasta netþjóninn, Windows Server 2008 og nýjasta stýrikerfið, Windows Vista. En hér má finna leið til þess að hafa dual boot á ferðavélinni og í leiðinni tryggja gögnin með Bitlocker. Hafa skal þó í huga að gera allar nauðsynlegar ráðstafanir áður en ráðist er í þetta þ.e. taka afrit af öllum mikilvægum gögnum, finna til alla helstu reklana (e.drivers) fyrir vélina sem og nýjustu uppfærsluna af BIOS-num. Þetta er aðeins ábendingum um möguleika og því er ábyrgðin öll ykkar ef eitthvað klikkar !

So you went and hosed up SQL Reporting Services by Removing OpsMgr Reporting...

kevinsul — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:39:39 GMT

So maybe I am the only one that has done this, but I have been dumb enough to now have done this twice so maybe there is someone else out there that is as 'smart' as I am! In my demo environment, I have an OpsMgr 2007 SP1 RMS on a W03 SP2 server with the Operations DB, Report DB, and ACS DB located on a remote W08 server with SQL 2005 SP2. SQL 2005 Report Services is also located on the W08 server as well. The problem? Well, I have found that if you suffer some type of corruption in your OperationsDW (I suffered a power outage in my environment which somehow put the OperationsDW in a Suspect state. And no, of course I did not have a backup of the DB!!!) DB and/or have a reason to re-install OpsMgr Reporting, the act of uninstalling OpsMgr Reporting renders the instance of SRS unusable - you will continually get errors if you try to re-configure/reset SRS back to a usable state and therefore are SOL if you wish to re-install OpsMgr Reporting on this instance. The following are some of the symptoms I have observed:

After uninstalling OpsMgr Reporting, you will get errors when trying to navigate to http://server/reports or http://server/reportserver
The Application Event Log on the SRS server may have entries with event id 18456 saying that "login failed for user...".

Basically, the fix for me was the following:

Stop the SRS service
Stop the IIS service
Delete the OperationsDW, Reports, and other associated TEMP DB's
Delete the Reports and ReportServer virtual directories via the IIS Manager
Start SRS
Start IIS
Fire up the Reporting Services Configuration Tool
Connect to the SRS Instance
Click Web Service Identity Select 'Classic .NET AppPool' for both Reports and ReportServer (you will have to re-create these as you blew them away in the previous step).
Create a new Report DB
***This is what screwed me up - seems that somehow the Rsreportserver.config file gets corrupted somehow. Go to \program files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSSQL.X\Reporting Services\ReportServer and restore one of the previous versions of this file (should have a .0 or .1 appended to it).
Proceed and follow all instructions in KB938245 in the section titled "How to configure the Report Web Service or Report Manager to use an application pool that runs under a domain account"
***For me, one of the registry keys that they tell you to modify did not exist - I simply created it and modified to use my domain account and this seemed to work

You should then be able to go to http://server/reports or http://reportserver without error now... Therefore, you should ten be able to re-install OpsMgr Reporting.

Oh yeah - I found out that technically we do not support running OpsMgr Reporting on W08 just yet - thus explains why I had to run through a lot of hoops above. However, it seems to work for me with the exception of having to reset SRS if you ever have to reinstall...

Náðu í magnaðar viðbætur við Internet Explorer

isitpro — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:10:00 GMT

Hver hefur ekki gaman af nýjum viðbótum (e. add-ins) fyrir vafrann ? Mæli með því að áhugasamir kíki á þessar viðbætur.

Sumarið er tíminn

isitpro — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:52:00 GMT

Yfirleitt er sumartíminn rólegheita tími hjá mörgum tæknimönnum. Sumarfrí starfsmanna og stjórnenda o.s.frv. En fyrir okkur hin sem ekki erum í fríi er sumarið ágætis tími til að kynna sér nýjar og spennandi lausnir. Eitt mest aðkallandi málefni okkar tæknimanna eru öryggismál og vilja allir hafa tölvukerfin sín vel varin fyrir hinum ýmsu tegundum árása s.s. DoS, trójuhestar, vírus og annað "hack". Án efa eru gögn fyrirtækja sem geymd eru á tölvutækuformi þau mikilvægurstu í rekstri fyrirtækjanna.

Öryggislausnir frá Microsoft hafa tekið stakkaskiptum undanfarin ár og í dag er Forefront ein öflugasta vörnin sem um getur á markaðnum. Lausnin er í senn ætluð netþjónum s.s. Windows Server, SharePoint Server, sem og útstöðvum s.s. vírusvörn, spamvörn og fleira.

Hafir þú áhuga á nánari upplýsingum um Forefront öryggislausnirnar getur þú kynnt þér þær hér.

Hafir þú áhuga á að skoða umfjallanir varðandi öryggismál almennt þá mælum við með bloggsíðu Forefront teymisins.

Poslovna inteligenca - študija primera podjetja Studi Moderna

Slovenski TechNet Blog — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:43:42 GMT

Če vas zanima poslovna inteligenca si poglejte kako so pri Studiu Moderna nadgradili obstoječo BI rešitev s PerformancePoint Serverjem 2007. Tudio primera si lahko ogledate na http://www.microsoft.com/slovenija/resitve/stranke/studio_moderna.mspx.

Studio Moderna - Visoka učinkovitost načrtovanja poslovanja

Studio Moderna že več kot 16 let izvaja in vodi celovite trženjske akcije v 20 državah srednje in vzhodne Evrope. Holding, kjer je zaposlenih že več kot 1200 ljudi, združuje specializirana podjetja za zagotavljanje storitev s področij oglaševanja, prodaje, klicnih centrov, transporta in poprodajne podpore.

Podjetje je iskalo rešitev, s katero bi lahko zagotovili integracijo finančnih podatkov iz različnih podružnic in poenostavilo načrtovanje in predvidevanje finančnih tokov. Pri tem je pomemben izziv predstavljala integracija podatkov iz različnih sistemov. Studio Moderna je poskusno vpeljala strežnik Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, ki služi za integracijo različnih podatkovnih virov in podpira postopek poslovnega načrtovanja.

Visoka učinkovitost načrtovanja poslovanja

Tomaž

Quarterly Customer Roundtable

gkatz — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:30:25 GMT

All – we had a very good call yesterday with our customers on Unified Communications. The goal of the UC & Mobility Roundtable Gathering is to build a forum where educators can share best practices with one another around Unified Communications and mobility:

The audience for the UC & Mobility Roundtable are educators, instructional leaders and IT Managers who have an interest in Unified Communications and Windows Mobile solutions where they can have a platform to share with other educators in a customer lead group.

Each meeting will have an update from Microsoft, a guest speaker then 30 minutes to share best practices and ideas on what is working in schools today. Meeting times are once per quarter by Live Meeting and once a year in person meeting at notable conference (NECC, Educause or Voice Con).

To participate please contact Bill Hagen @ bhagen@microsoft.com.

Maratón de 24 webcasts - Windows Server 2008 & SQL Server 2008

Guillermo Taylor — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:02:40 GMT

“24”, la serie de webcast con mayor contenido para incrementar tu nivel de conocimientos. Esta serie especial de webcast es una de las más aclamadas para tu crecimiento profesional. En esta tan esperada temporada, “24”, de los creadores de MVA, conserva el mismo impredecible y original formato. Cada webcast representa lo que quieren saber para estar al día con la tecnología Microsoft. Los webcast transcurren durante tres semanas los días lunes, martes, miércoles y jueves. Los participantes podrán estar en contacto y preguntarle a los presentadores en tiempo real.

Mayor información y registro para todos los webcasts o los que les interesen en http://www.microsoft.com/latam/technet/video/24webcasts.aspx. Recuerden que la hora que aparece ahí es para Colombia, Ecuador y Perú. Como siempre, pueden visitar http://www.timeanddate.com/ para saber qué hora es en su país.

Saludos.

Backup\Restore & Corruption – What is worth to know

beatrice — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:02:00 GMT

Just being discussing recently the Backup\Restore best practices (related to corruption) and wanted to share some information.

SQL Server Backup\Restore in SQL (when actually done directly from SQL, not from a 3rd party application - I come to that in a second) offers many options which are:

- Checking the backup consistency while performing the backup

- Checking the backup consistency after the restore (therefore by running DBCC CHECHDB on the restored Database)

- Checking the backup consistency with the restore command without actually performing a restore

Everything is very well explained in this article from (surprise surprise...) Paul Randal:

Oh no – my backup is corrupt too! Help!

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2007/03/05/oh-no-my-backup-is-corrupt-too-help.aspx

Now, with a 3rd party application things are a bit different as you need to stick with the options that it gives to you.

I've just checked Litespeed options (as an example) and all that I can find is a "Verify Backups" option in the restore wizard.

Now this means that

- you won't be able to check backups when actually creating a backup

- you don't have anything similiar to WITH VERIFYONLY, so you need actually to restore your database to check consistency of your data

This leaves you with the two options:

- Restore with the "Verify Backups" option provided from the Wizard

- Restore and then run DBCC CHECKBD

I am not sure which one would be more efficient. I would guess all that the "Verify Backups" option does is actually to automatically run DBCC CHECKDB but happy to be contraddicted.

Any case, rule of thumb is to ALWAYS DBCCC CHECK your databases (daily) and ALWAYS CHECK YOUR BACKUPS (daily would be best but I already know the opinions on this... say weekly). How- is up to you!

- Beatrice Nicolini -

Revista TechNet - Como a voz reforça o OCS 2007

Marcos Rodrigues — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:56:22 GMT

Veja a matéria clicando acima na edição de Julho de 2008 !!!

Abraço,

Marcos