Alex Marin Gasga

HMC 4.5 is available now!!! deploy deploy deploy

2008-06-16T12:04:00Z

This weekend the most expected version of HMC was released for service providers to deploy it. With this version, service providers can offer OCS (IM, Collaboration, PC-toPC VoIP) services as part of their online services. At the same time support to Windows 2008 and WSS 3.0 SP1 is included in this solution.

You can have access to the bits of the solution from the following location:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C9CBBC69-4AE4-450D-AF5E-F49E7C701CF4&displaylang=en

Or for those who are interested in developing on top of MPS (i.e. self-service portal, namespaces, increase the business logic of the current APIs, etc.) there is a SDK available as well for developers to consume:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CE3FC537-86AE-4802-9A05-43E2A27A4B45&displaylang=en

The documentation to migrate from previous versions is still pending, but it will be released soon. If you have HMC 4.0, you shouldn't expect too much of impact in your APIs or portals already implemented. If what you have is HMC 3.5 or earlier, you should consider a similar migration path like to HMC 4.0 with the addition of migrating LCS to OCS 2007. Don't forget to consider these migrations paths while deploying the solution.

Windows 2008 - online sessions (Videos)

2008-03-06T17:26:00Z

I'm excited with the new changes and functionalities that Windows 2008 will provide to the enterprise and hosters. To mention some of these features, Windows 2008 provides a minimal version of the OS (Server Core - the most efficient Windows version ever), expansion in the capabilities of powershell and how the server can be administered (you'll be able to obtain a script for almost any correspondant UI control or task), additional HA features are incorporated/enhanced into Windows Server (failover clusters, Network Load Balancing, dynamic hardware partitioning, robust storage options, and advanced machine-check architecture), enhanced OS-virtualization mechanism to consolidate and optimize the resources in the DataCenters (Hyper-V), let's don't forget IIS 7.0 and its additional features (PHP integration, security enhancements, larger no. of web-sites supported per server).

If you want to know more about these features, check out the following set of online videos which presents the capabilities of Windows 2008:

Windows Server 2008 Deployment Overview - Michael Niehaus, Tim Mintner
The 10 Most Important Things About Failover Clustering - Jim Teague
Power Management: Windows Server - Stephen Berard
Dynamic Partition: Windows Server - Davis Walker
Windows Server Longhorn - Iain McDonald
Windows Server virtualisation - solution scenarios - David Hitchen
Windows Server 2008 Kernel Advances - Mark Russinovich
Active Directory Domain Services in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 - Stephanie Cheung
Virtualization in Windows Server - Mike Neil
Managing Windows Server 2008 with Server Manager - Dan Harman
Using Group Policy with Windows and Windows Server 2008 - Mazhar Mohammed, Derek Melber
Microsoft.com: Employing Windows Server 2008 and Internet Information Services 7 - Paul Wright, Brad LeRoss
Living the Longhorn Life: What's Up With Windows Server 2008 - Mark Minasi

Feel free to share with me your views and comments.

Enterprise Search in Microsoft? What's that?

2008-02-28T14:53:00Z

If you haven’t heard about MS Enterprise Search solutions, let me summarize the relevant points and what are the options available in Microsoft to address this space.

The people in the organizations are hard at work making things happen. When they need publicly available information to get the job done, they know how to search on the Internet to find it. But when they need information in their business, they need Enterprise Search.

In the world of business, Search isn’t just about finding information. That’s the starting point. To be valuable to an organization, a search has to result in the ability to do something meaningful and profitable with the information you find. It has to be an integral part of a business productivity infrastructure. Microsoft is changing the Enterprise Search landscape by delivering a solid solution that fills the gap left by current offerings.

Microsoft provides a search experience that is at the same time richly innovative and comfortably familiar. Office SharePoint Server 2007 as part of an Enterprise Search solution provides the following features:

· Deploy Search as an Integrated Service

o Integrate Search into Important Business Applications

o Integrate with Desktop Search

o Integrate into Tools and Applications with Rich, Actionable Interfaces

· Deploy a Secure and Managed Solution

o Control Access to Information With Permissions

o Manage Your Search Solutions

o Scale Your Deployment

· Unlock Unstructured and Structured Information

o Find Information in Unstructured Repositories

o Use Search as an Interface for Line-Of-Business Systems

o Refine Results and Save Important Queries

· Find People and Expertise

o Build Rich Personal Profiles

o Publish Personal Profiles Using SharePoint My Sites

o Identify People Who Can Help

Our vision for the future of Enterprise Search is people-centric. It builds on the strengths of key technologies like Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to provide a platform that not only helps people find what they need, but also helps them do something meaningful with what they’ve found. After all, Enterprise Search isn’t simply about finding information. It’s about real people and real problems, and the tools that help them get their jobs done.

As you read above our main player in this space is MOSS 2007, however for those SMB customers or hosters who want to leverage Searching capabilities Search Server 2008 is an option which relies on Windows Sharepoint Services.

The following table summarizes the features of each available option:

Product Features click each to learn more	Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express **	Microsoft Search Server 2008 **	Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007*
Search Center	X	X	X
No Pre-Set Document Limits	X	X	X
Extensible Search Experience	X	X	X
Relevance Tuning	X	X	X
Continuous Propagation Indexing	X	X	X
Federated Search Connectors	X	X	X
Indexing Connectors	X	X	X
Security-Trimmed Results	X	X	X
Unified Administration Dashboard	X	X	X
Query and Results Reporting	X	X	X
Streamlined Installation	X	X
High Availability and Load Balancing		X	X
People and Expertise Searching			X
Business Data Catalog			X
SharePoint Productivity Infrastructure			X

*This list represents features included with the Enterprise Client Access License version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

** Microsoft Search Server 2008 relies on Windows SharePoint Services to provide its functionality

For more details:

http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/default.aspx (Enterprise Search Overview)

http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/products.aspx (Products: Search Server 2008, Search Server 2008 Express, MOSS 2007)

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000000149 (Case Study: TV Guide Online)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb871550.aspx (MS Search Server 2008 - Technet)

http://www.fastsearch.com (Microsoft announces offer to acquire FAST – Jan 17^th, 2008)

Are you an MPS developer or have an MPS-portal? there are some news you should be aware of...

2008-01-30T14:52:00Z

For those of you (ISVs, Hosters) who develop applications for MPS (multi-tenant applications, provisioning), it's important for you to know that there is an MPS SDK update available for you to review and consider in your development. As an example of these changes, the following namespaces were updated (specific procedures):

Exchange 2007 Provider
Hosted Email 2007 Namespace
Hosted SharePoint 2007 Namespace
Managed Email 2007 Namespace
Managed SharePoint 2007 Namespace
SharePoint 2007 Provider

You can download the SDK with the details of the changes from the following reference:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CE3FC537-86AE-4802-9A05-43E2A27A4B45&displaylang=en

If you already have a MPS-based portal (custom or 3rd party), ensure that your solution has a roadmap to integrate these updates. Most of the times, these updates have no impact in current deployments, however as for any other change in your environment: TEST IT FIRST!!! This will help you to minimize headaches later.

Feel free to contact if you need have any question.

Activesync Policies in E2k7 SP1

2008-01-23T14:02:00Z

After Exchange 2007 SP1 got released, additional mobility features were included along with extra policies settings to restrict their usage. Following you'll find a comprehensive matrix of these policies comparing the different versions of messaging platform available:

Settings	Ex2003 SP2	Ex2007 RTM	Ex2007 SP1 STD CAL	Ex2007 SP1 ENT CAL
EAS Protocol Version	2.5	12	12.1	12.1
Corresponding WM Client	WM 5 MSFP	WM 6	WM 6.1	WM 6.1
Password Required	X	X	X	X
Min Password Length	X	X	X	X
Alphanumeric pwd	X	X	X	X
Inactivity Timeout	X	X	X	X
Max Failed Password Attempts	X	X	X	X
Policy Refresh Interval	X	X	X	X
Allow non-provisionable devices	X	X	X	X
Attachments Enabled		X	X	X
Storage Card Encryption		X	X	X
Password Recovery Enabled		X	X	X
Allow Simple Device Password		X	X	X
Max Attachment Size		X	X	X
WSS Access Enabled		X	X	X
UNC Access Enabled		X	X	X
Password Expiration		X	X	X
Password History		X	X	X
Require Manual Sync When Roaming			X	X
Min Device Pwd Complex Characters			X	X
Max Calendar Age Filter			X	X
Allow HTML Email			X	X
Max Email Age Filter			X	X
Max Email Body Truncation Size			X	X
Max Email HTML Body Truncation Size			X	X
Require Signed SMIME Messages			X	X
Require Encrypted SMIME Messages			X	X
Require Signed SMIME Algorithm			X	X
Require Encryption SMIME Algorithm			X	X
Allow SMIME Encryption Algorithm Negotiation			X	X
Allow SMIME Soft Certs			X	X
Require Device Encryption			X	X
Allow Storage Card				X
Allow Camera				X
Allow Unsigned Applications				X
Allow Unsigned Installation Packages				X
Allow Wi-Fi				X
Allow Text Messaging				X
Allow POP/IMAP Email				X
Allow Bluetooth				X
Allow IrDA				X
Allow Desktop Sync				X
Allow Browser				X
Allow Consumer Email				X
Allow Remote Desktop				X
Allow Internet Sharing				X
Unapproved InROM Application List				X
Approved Application List				X

Something to consider is that not all the features are supported by the current wave of high-tech mobiles, still we'll have to wait for some time for mobile operators to consider all these policies in their HW.

The original matrix and extended note can be found in Exchange Team blog's site:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/11/19/447551.aspx

For details on how these policies can be administered via Exchange 2007 and a brief description of them, the following articles provide this information:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123783.aspx (how to manage them)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123484.aspx (description)

More downloads on CRM 4.0 are available

2007-12-29T18:14:00Z

If you are you planning to deploy CRM 4.0, the following downloads might be of interest to you:

Server generic page (CRM 4.0 bits for testing purposes): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=99CB3A7A-EBA9-4DE9-B0F1-2EBF11C3D756&displaylang=en
Email router: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E1358499-3FDB-45B8-ADF0-7585F758277E&displaylang=en
Outlook client: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=60C4A6CC-59D7-416E-9F44-0AE8FF249768&displaylang=en
Data Migration Wizard: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6766880A-DA8F-4336-A278-9A5367EB79CA&displaylang=en

MS Dynamics product team has put lot of effort to make these releases available to our customers; if you haven’t, try CRM 4.0, you’ll be surprised with the improvements and additional features this product offers, don’t forget to interact with the system through your mobile devices as well.

Feel free to share with me your questions or comments.

Offer WSS as part of your hosted solutions

2007-12-26T07:01:00Z

Currently there are a couple of ways to offer WSS to customers in a shared configuration:

WSS as a single offer: Lately a guide to prepare WSS for hosted configurations was published. This document explains what are the different aspects to consider to enable an infrastructure for multitenancy. The following matrix summarizes pros/cons of this configuration:

Pros

Cons

Simplified no. of servers are required focused on a single service

Can be offered for dedicated customers as well

To provision workspaces, it has to be a manual process or scripts are required for automation (there are some scripts available which can be integrated with an existing control panel)

As the no. of customers increases the administration of the service becomes more tedious and challenging to manage

Configuration of AD/environment to support multiple tenancy is applied manually

The guide can be obtained in the following location: http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=AM102157711033

WSS as part of HMC 4.0: If you already have HMC (Hosted Messaging and Collaboration), the core infrastructure can be used to leverage Sharepoint Services to the existing & new customers. Next you'll find a brief list of pros & cons.

Pros

Cons

There is a provisioning engine available for creation of workspaces

Supports large scale of customers

There is a tool to automate the configuration of the environment in order to support multiple tenancy

Large no. of servers is required to leverage all the features of the solution

All the resources are shared

For additional details on HMC & WSS, you can consult the following references:

http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/hostedmessaging.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/hostedmessaging4sharepoint.mspx

CRM 4.0 (Titan) multitenant planning/deployment guide is available

2007-12-26T06:48:00Z

Recently the guide to deploy the latest CRM 4.0 got released. For those hosters who are planning to deploy CRM as part of their offering, this is a good guide to follow during the implementation. Compared to the previous versions where each customer needed to have a separate instance in order to provide multitenancy (this was a headache for operations team), the current version doesn't have this constraint.

The guide can be downloaded from the following location:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6e211231-30fe-4df2-9b81-15cfb87adcf1&DisplayLang=en

There you'll find information on how to configure CRM for multiple tenancy, different CRM scenarios (only CRM, integration with HMC, etc.), tools which provide assistant during the deployment. Now it's much easier to integrate CRM as part of the current packages/offerings for customers, creating an additional revenue stream for hosters.

IIS 7.0 Labs available online!!!!

2007-12-06T13:21:00Z

Hi guys,

There are very good news!! IIS 7.0 labs are available online:

http://virtuallabs.iis.net/

You just have to register to respective lab and you'll have immediate access to this session for a period of 90 mins (per session). Once the times gets over you can re-register to create a new session. The guides for the labs can be downloaded for offline access.

The following labs are available online as well:

Title	Lab Links	Event Detail
TechNet Virtual Lab: Installation and the New Modular Architecture	http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7832113	http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7832122
TechNet Virtual Lab: Installing ASP, ASP.NET and PHP/FastCGI Applications on IIS 7	http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7832114	http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7832123
TechNet Virtual Lab: Using the new IIS 7 Configuration System featuring Delegated and Remote Administration	http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7832115	http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7832124

This is a very good opportunity to experiment some of the new features that IIS 7.0 (Windows 2008) has to offer to hosters and all of you working with web technologies (i.e. ASP, ASP .NET, PHP, etc.). Keep monitoring the web site for new releases.

Exchange 2007 on VS 2005

2007-12-06T11:18:00Z

If you are planning to run Exchange 2007 on a virtual environment, think twice before following that path:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232170.aspx

From the previous article, these are the messages that you have to consider:

Neither Exchange 2007 nor Exchange 2007 SP1 is supported in production in a virtual environment
Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2007 SP1 are supported in production environments using only the 64-bit version of Exchange 2007
Currently neither Microsoft Virtual Server nor Microsoft Virtual PC supports 64-bit guest systems
Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2007 SP1 are also not supported in production in a virtual environment using virtualization software that is not Microsoft software.

As an additional note, in future Hypervisor (add-in to WS2008) will support 64-bit guests systems, but still we’ll have to wait for a confirmation from the product team if it’s going to be supported on virtual environments.

For those who are implementing HMC 4.0, the same rules apply and moreover MPS is not supported in a virtual environment. That doesn't mean that the solution won't work, because it does, but later on, if you face any issue (i.e. SMTP queues growing, services hanging, etc.) MS support won't be able to warratee a solution, unless the issue can be replicated in a physical server.

Hope these considerations help you to take the right decision while deploying Exchange in a virtual environment

Architecture Principles

2007-10-19T03:21:00Z

After browsing in the web for a few hours looking for architectural principles. I found the following articles which i highly recommend you to read (they are not that long... 3-5 mins reading each article, unless you get hooked with reading and decided to read the rest of them :) )

Composite Applications: The New Paradigm
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266335.aspx
Mass-Hosting High-Availability Architectures
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491120.aspx
Conquering the Integration Dilemma
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491108.aspx
Web 2.0 in the Enterprise
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/bb735306.aspx
Efficient Software Delivery Through Service-Delivery Platforms
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735303.aspx

The focus of this reading is to understand how to enable an organization/business to react faster in this constantly changing business environment. Topics like SOA, Web 2.0, Service Delivery Platforms are discussed in a practical way and not only from academic point of view (i.e. a discussion on hosting based on what the problems are, and current challenges is discussed)

The web is not what is used to be a "couple" of years back. Technologies like Silverlight, Ajax are driving a different momentum, and "big" organizations have to be prepared to react more strategically and in a faster way, to avoid being left behind by competitors. This can be achieved if the infrastructure was thought to behave like that, I can give you an example, imagine having a service to send SMSs, another service to identify you current position and another service which takes care of managing your user profile -preferences, etc.- (currently all these services are in the environment), now let's think in a new service which sends you SMSs/Notifications with promotions on services/articles of your preference when you are close to certain area or shop... commonly the challenge is how to integrate all these pieces together and this could take long if the interfaces of your services/applications are not standardised, the concept of Composite Applications/Services address these difficulties. Make sense?

The articles above can help to identify those principles and get an understanding on how this works and can be implemented. Enjoy the reading

SCOM 2007 & HMC 4.0 just released!!!

2007-10-17T19:46:00Z

One of the most expected guides has been released, the guide to deploy SCOM 2007 in HMC 4.0. Be one of the first ones to update your MOM 2005 infrastructure in HMC 4.0 by following the details mentioned in this guide:

http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/hostedmessagingscomupdate.mspx

There you'll find:

A white paper that provides a feature overview and guidelines on deploying the Operations Manager 2007 update in an HMC 4.0 environment
An updated Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) management pack

In case you are new to HMC 4.0, you can get more information on the solution from the following site:

http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/hostedmessaging.mspx

I encourage you to share with me your comments and suggestions.

Here I go Again!!!

2007-10-17T19:29:00Z

Hi guys,

After a couple of years of absence in this blog (yes ... 2 years already)... not necessary off-blogging but not posting on this one... it's time for me to restart this interesting journey of sharing experiences with the rest of the community.

I want to start by sharing -in a few lines- what has happened to me in these years. First, I'm no longer part of MCS and for those of you who knew it, I'm not longer living in India. My career took me to a different team and geography: Communications and Media Sector, Singapore. In my new role I'm responsible of defining and validating solution architectures before they are shared with customers for South East Asia within CS. The role is technical, with the difference that my level of engagement with customers is at a different level, not from a delivery perspective but from a Technical Advisor angle; and before I forget to mention, as part of the responsibilities of this role is to provide support driving sales, by facing customers and backing up the sales team across SEA.

Though my expertise is mostly on HMC (due to my background in Exchange and previous deployments) from time to time I'll also post experience with other customers on CCF, CSF, ASA, BI (aka MEC), IMM, Portals which are part of the solutions offered by CS team. I'm exciting on my new role, and i hope to have more time to write on this space and share my experiences with these technologies.

Here I go Again!!! :)

How the kernel memory is managed in an Exchange 2003 server

2005-12-07T23:36:00Z

I got this information about how the kernel memory is managed in an Exchange 2003 server. Here you'll find a series of three articles, which i'll be posting as soon as I get them. Following there is an introduction to the complete series which you could access from the links at the bottom. Have a long read on it, check out how 32-bits works and be prepared for the next generation of Exchange. ;)

Kernel memory resource bottlenecks can drastically limit Exchange 2003 scalability. Kernel resource usage may vary greatly from one Exchange server to another. A hardware platform that can support 4000 heavy users in one organization may be limited to half that number in a different organization because of kernel memory exhaustion.

Large increases in kernel memory consumption can be triggered by changes that few would anticipate as problematic. This could cause sudden and widespread Exchange server outages throughout an organization.

ARTICLES
Article 1: This article applies specifically to Exchange Server 2003 running on Windows Server 2003. However, much of the information presented here applies generally to application scalability on a 32-bit computing architecture.

Article 2: In this article Windows 2003 kernel memory issues and Exchange 2003 will be reviewed. This article discusses important hardware issues that may affect Windows kernel memory and cause Exchange instability.

Do you want to have access to a useful resource on MIIS 2003 and its failover capabilities?

2005-12-07T22:34:00Z

Searching over the internet i found a very interesting resource which can take you through the installation, general configuration and failover of MIIS 2003 SP1 (~30 mins).
http://xpstream.winisp.net/alextch/miisha.wmv

The general steps followed in this material are:
1.         Installing the primary server running MIIS 2003
When you are setting up an environment with both a primary and standby server, you should configure the MIISAdmins group as a domain local group on both servers. If you configure the MIISAdmins group as a local group on the servers, members of the MIISAdmins group will be unable to start Identity Manager after the warm standby server has been activated.
2.         Stoping the miiserver service on the primary server
3.         Installing the standby server running MIIS 2003 using the same SQL Server 2000 database
4.         Restarting the miiserver service on the primary server

Almost at the middle of the video (17’ 04’’) there is a second session on PCNS (password synchronization) but only showing the failover capabilities not all the installation/configuration procedure. MIIS is a very powerful system that not too many people is aware of. Have a look at this ppt and make your own conclusions.