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Rick ClausIT Pro AdvisorConnect with RickRodney BuikeIT Pro AdvisorConnect with RodneyDamir BersinicSenior Technology AdvisorConnect with Damir
The last Friday of July is “officially” Sysadmin Appreciation Day. The day to pat your self on the back and receive the accolades you all deserve for keeping things running and maintaining sanity while dealing with complaints such as “The Internet is down”.
It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it! So take some time, enjoy the day, laugh at one of my favourite videos from DeadTroll.com and take off a little early and have a beer. You deserve it!
Over the last few weeks I have been getting more and more emails from individuals wondering when the abstracts for the 50+ sessions available at TechDays 2010 will be posted. The wait is over! You can view all of the sessions and their abstracts at www.techdays.ca/sessions - remember to click on each track to see the sessions that are available in that track.
I am really excited about this year’s content. We have sessions on how to develop applications in Silverlight for both the PC as well as Windows Phone 7. We have an entire track with great sessions where you will learn the tips and tricks of deploying Windows 7, Office 2010, Office Web Apps, and more in your organization, as well as how to troubleshoot when things go awry. The Collaboration: The Next Generation track has sessions on migrating to SharePoint 2010 as well as Exchange 2010, and how to protect the content in these critical business applications, and more. You will also learn how to take advantage of Microsoft-based development tools and good development practices and procedures to optimize the development and testing of applications whether developing as a group or individually. Finally, you will learn how to effectively use virtualization in a variety of scenarios, protect your infrastructure, and tricks on how to make Active Directory work for you.
The best part is that you don’t have to pick sessions from only a single track. You can make your own customized agenda of TechDays 2010 sessions allowing you to grow the skills you need in your job. If you have not yet registered for TechDays 2010, register now at www.techdays.ca and then click on the “My Schedule” link in the top right to build your agenda; if you have already registered, go to www.techdays.ca and sign in with your Windows LiveID to start building your schedule.
One more thing…there are six tracks at TechDays 2010 but you will notice that www.techdays.ca/sessions only lists sessions in 5 of them. The Local Flavours track and its content is up to you and your peers! We are looking for passionate individuals (developers, IT professionals, designers, IT architects, etc.) who have an idea for a great session to let us know and submit their session for possible inclusion at TechDays 2010 in your city. The submission form and information on the process can be found at http://www.techdays.ca/sessions?Track=Local+Flavours. Please download both documents, fill out the submission form with your great session idea and email to us at td_can@microsoft.com.
TechDays 2010 is shaping up to be the best yet. Please visit www.techdays.ca for more information or to register and take advantage of the Early Bird rate of $349.99 plus tax - (about 50% off the full conference fee of $699.99).
If you have a question about TechDays, send me an email at td_can@microsoft.com and I’ll get you an answer. I REALLY do love getting your emails.
Damir Bersinic
TechDays 2010 Program & Skills Manager
Microsoft Canada
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:
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 bulletin will take place: Wednesday, July 14th - 11:00 a.m. PST (UTC -8). (Registration link):
Bulletins discussed for July 13th, 2010:
Podcast Participants: Rick Claus and Pierre Roman
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
I’ve opened a can of worms with a post a couple of months back (ok – a LOT of months back – was it REALLY February?) about should IT Professionals care about Cloud Services yet and what type of cloud service would have a direct impact on IT Pros daily lives. That post had over 22 comments (albeit a big number from “mike”) prodding for more information about Privacy and Security (two very different things when it comes to cloud) and impact on things like Patriot act and other legislation here in Canada and around the world.
This is not “the special post on security and privacy and all that S#&t” .
That one comes later THIS WEEK.
Yes “mike”, it’s finally almost here - months after you brought it up. The team has been busy, we’ve been planning and I’ve been talking with people inside and outside Microsoft about privacy, legislation, regulation, patriot act, security, ISO standards and the like. I’ve even been polling people on Twitter, facebook and Linked’in asking if they could give me their thoughts on their concerns on Cloud Services.
Take a moment and fill out your response to this simple question: What concerns you about using “The Cloud” and hosted services?
As for services that will impact IT Pros daily lives – have you checked out Windows InTune beta? It’s targeted at small and medium sized businesses for giving them a cloud based solution for anti-malware and antivirus, centralized reporting and control, software and hardware inventory and it’s independent of domain membership / workgroup membership / physical location. It’s in Beta now and was open (now closed) to the first 10,000 signups. As of Yesterday (July 12th) it opened again (still open) for another 10,000 participants – I signed up and am using it on a dozen different PC’s and laptops I look after as the “friends and family” IT Consultant we all are. I’ll have a more detailed post on the overall experience and my thoughts on it – but I wanted to let you know it’s open once again for signups – go try it out!
Over at the Windows team blog – Stephen Rose wrote about the new RTM update of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 to what’s known as Update 1. For those of you familiar with MDT already – this shouldn’t be a surprise to you – it’s an incremental update that has been in the works for a while. For those of you who are NOT familiar with MDT – it’s our FREE (as in beer) solution accelerator that anyone can use working for any company (including independent consultants) of any size (yup – a few PCs to 100’s of thousands) to make their lives SO MUCH EASIER when undertaking the task of deploying and maintaining “builds / images” of workstations.
Newbies note below: the basic flow of using MDT for Light Touch and Zero Touch. (more info at Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Home)
You can use MDT to create and manage your deployment medium: anything from a simple bootable USB stick all the way up to an integrated mass deployment System Center Configuration Manager or PXE boot process. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Update 1 supports deployment of Windows 7, Office 2010, and Windows Server 2008 R2 in addition to deployment of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP.
Existing MDT users note: you will need to update your deployment shares. Make sure they are not currently in use or the upgrade will fail. Earlier reports of wrong files for download links have been resolved. You will need to uninstall Beta Update 1 before installing the final RTM of update 1. Check out Michael Neihaus’s blog for details and READ RELEASE NOTES.
If you use MDT with SCCM -
If you are a Light Touch user (USB stick, DVD or other)
Common for Both SCCM and Light Touch users of MDT 2010
If MDT is new to you or if you are about to start looking into deployment of new desktops / managed desktops – you really owe it to yourself to refresh your skills with deployment tools. MDT is LIGHTYEARS ahead of what I used to do as an administrator rolling out Sysprep’ed images of Windows 2000 Pro way back when. I’d give my right arm to be able to have MDT available when I was in charge of that customer rollout.
Are you a developer looking to launch your new web application? Or perhaps you are an IT Pro or IT Architect trying to understand what “the Cloud” means to you. Or maybe you have a need for some compute time to run some computations.
Regardless of who you are, or why you are thinking about the cloud, Microsoft is making it easy for you try out Windows Azure as well as SQL Azure and AppFabric.
If you visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/ and select the introductory special you will be able to try a limited amount of the Windows Azure platform at no charge.
This offer is available through October 31, 2010 and is limited to one per customer. For full details and disclosure take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/popup.aspx?lang=en&locale=en-US&offer=MS-AZR-0001P
If you are in Canada and have question about Windows Azure, my team and I are here to help and can answer your questions. We would love to hear what you are using Azure for. Please feel free to email us at cdnazure@microsoft.com.
(photo by Neil McIntyre http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilmcintyre/4711178904/)
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of months – you probably know that the G20 summit is taking place in Downtown Toronto this weekend. As an IT guy – I can only imagine the amount of work and planning the IT staff had to do for all the Business Continuity plans that had to be activated for all the businesses directly affected by the security perimeter, checkpoints, travel and restrictions for one of the most densely packed areas of urban businesses.
From what I’ve been hearing – a good chunk of people are just being asked to take vacation / not show up for work today and over the weekend. The remainder will either brave the barricades to work as normal or will work remotely at alternate sites or from home. Of those that are crossing the barricades – I wonder how many of them are IT folks who are supporting the remote connectivity systems and keeping the lights on for the servers.
This massive displacement of the workforce has gotten me to think more about what technologies I take for granted being a “remote worker” on my team. Thankfully – I am writing this blog post sipping my coffee in my 3rd story home office over 500 KM away in Ottawa. I’ll be able to hear about all the G20 activities remotely via Twitter and from my contacts who are closer to the action downtown.
While it is a little late now to revisit your mobile working policy / technologies in time for this disruption it does bring up an opportunity to table them for discussion at the next IT review meeting. If you are looking for more information about these suggestions and even access to trials / online trials – check out www.microsoft.ca/uc.
Some things to consider for your Remote Worker plans:
Did you notice that none of these recommendations require a VPN solution to use? Why? VPNs are costly to maintain, cumbersome to manage and really are outdated in technology nowadays with applications that are more REMOTE AWARE then previous generations. Open up that VPN bottleneck / chokepoint with some newer investments in technology to enable a more flexible workforce. Heck – you can even dramatically IMRPOVE your overall security with Direct Access technologies – but that’s for another blog post on another day.
While we’re on the topic of remote meetings and how they can save time and money – when done right… Here are some Tips for making that LiveMeeting more useful for everyone involved (both local to the meeting and remote):
In case you are interested in trialing some of these options (Exchange, Office Communication Server, LiveMeeting or even the full monty of Business Productivity Online Suite [think hosted Exchange / OCS / LiveMeeting and Sharepoint]) you can check out the Canadian details at www.microsoft.ca/uc
It’s amazing how time flies. I remember writing one of the first in a series of books talking about Active Directory, one of the big enhancements to Windows 2000, and can’t believe that I was doing that more than 10 years ago! But, time marches on and I have written many more books on Windows since then, better versions of Windows have since shipped, and Active Directory has changed a lot from its early days in Windows 2000 Server.
I know that many of you have been upgrading to newer releases of Windows and have been trying to keep current as best as you can. Maybe you still have some Windows 2000 machines in your network. Maybe you have some Windows XP SP2 machines connecting to those networks and have not had a chance to upgrade them to Windows 7 (or at least Windows XP SP3). If you see yourself in that situation, you should initiate an action plan to move your machines to the newer Windows versions sooner rather than later because support will end for Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Workstation, and Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 2 on July 13th, 2010.
So with that said, here is a short Q&A to help answer some questions you may have:
What does “End of Support” mean?
What are my options?
Where can I find more information?
Remember that one of the best places to learn from local experts on how to migrate from Windows XP and deploy Windows 7 is TechDays, so register now for an event in your city. You can also visit the Springboard site on help how to migrate to Windows 7. For migration help to Windows Server 2008 R2, check out the End of Life Solution Center for Windows 2000.
Damir
One of my favourite parts of being the “face of TechDays” in all communications is that I also get the opportunity to reply to every email that is sent to the td_can@microsoft.com email alias. I get lots of emails – over 1000 at last count – and I reply to each one. Keep them coming – I really love reading them and having the conversation.
The fact that developers and IT Pros across Canada are passionate about growing their skills at TechDays is of special importance to me. Many of the emails I get talk about how you are looking to come to TechDays for a second or third time – thank you for your continued support, or maybe for the first time – we look forward to meeting you.
Some of the emails I get provide great suggestions on how TechDays can be improved, and we take all ideas into consideration and make changes based on your feedback such as adding a Local Flavours track to TechDays this year to allow individuals to submit sessions that they want to deliver reflecting the topics of importance to each geography we visit.
Finally, there are some emails that have a common theme and question that I get to respond to repeatedly. That’s the idea behind this blog post – to share those common questions (and answers) with all of you whether or not you sent me an email. Here they are, in no particular order of importance or frequency.
Question: When will you be announcing the list of sessions for each track at TechDays?
This question is usually accompanied by the need to provide a manager more info to get approval to attend TechDays, or a desire to plan your personalized agenda for when you attend TechDays.
Answer: We will be announcing the final list of sessions in early July. In fact, the team is currently working on the final session list for the five TechDays tracks that will be the same in all cities, with the exception of the Local Flavours track. We are narrowing down the choices to 10 sessions per track and are very close to the final agenda. Stay tuned to this blog and the www.techdays.ca site for an announcement when this process is completed – early in July.
Once the final list of sessions is published we will also open up the Schedule Builder functionality so that you can create your customized agenda for attending TechDays.
Question: I am interested in submitting a session for consideration in the Local Flavours track. What is the process for doing so?
Answer: At the same time as we are defining the final session list for TechDays 2010, we are also finalizing the submission process and criteria for the Local Flavours track. We will be announcing the process at the same time as the session abstracts for the other tracks – in early July. We are really looking forward to your submissions and hope that many of you will want to share your expertise and experience with your peers.
Question: As an attendee of TechDays 2009 I received a one-year TechNet Plus subscription. Are you offering the same benefit again this year?
Answer: Since we started TechDays two years ago our focus has been to provide a great learning experience for attendees both during and, through the Learning Kit, after the event. We work with many organizations to help make the overall experience the best possible. Over the last couple of years, we were fortunate that Microsoft Corporate has provided a promotional and complimentary TechNet Plus subscription exclusively to all TechDays attendees. Sadly, this complimentary promotional offering is no longer available.
We are working hard to provide additional value to all attendees through special offers from our Partners and other organizations, but our key focus is always to ensure that you have the best technical learning experience possible at the event and walk away with knowledge you can use today. That has always been, and will continue to be our focus – helping you grow your technical skills. Stay tuned over the next little while as we announce more details on session content, but also on what will be available to help you to continue to grow your skills after the event.
Update: While we will not have a TechNet Plus subscription available to all attendees at TechDays 2010, we are close to finalizing some great offers both from Microsoft as well as our key partners that we will be announcing later in July. I am sure that you will find these compelling and additional value to the great learning you will get at TechDays 2010.
Question: I need to get approval to attend TechDays and also want to take advantage of the Early Bird Price of $349.99 (50% off the full conference price of $699.99). How long will the Early Bird price be available?
Answer: The Early Bird pricing at $349.99 will be in effect until 6 weeks before the TechDays 2010 event in each city. For Vancouver this means that you will be able to purchase a ticket at the Early Bird price until July 31st, after which time the price will be $699.99. While there is plenty of time to ensure you get a great price, but you may want to act now as TechDays has a tendency to sell out in some cities, like it did last year.
Question: I registered for TechDays 2010 but have not yet received a email confirmation that I am indeed registered or a receipt for my credit card payment. Can you help?
Answer: If you have not received an email confirmation of your registration within 2-4 business days after you registered, please send an email to td_can@microsoft.com and I will look into it. Please note that the registration confirmation email will not come from Microsoft but from Starshot, our event management vendor, as indicated on the TechDays web site when you registered:
Credit card transactions will appear on your monthly statement as Tech Days care of Starshot. Once you click submit, please allow up to one minute for the transaction to process. An email receipt will be sent to the email address listed above. To ensure you receive our email communications, please add techdays@starshot.com to your safe senders list.
You should also check your Junk Mail folder in case the confirmation was routed their by your email client.
Question: I would like to register a group of individuals from my organization to attend TechDays. The TechDays website does not take group registrations. How can I do this and what payment methods are available?
The answer to this question also applies if you would like to register someone to attend and will be paying with a credit card in a different name than the individual being registered.
Answer: We would be happy to process your registration as a group to help with the admin side of things. To register a group to attend TechDays, please call 1 (888) 361-3343 and speak to one of our representatives. Our call centre is open from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Please note that the only payment method accepted for TechDays registrations is a major credit card. We do not accept company purchase orders or other payment methods.
So there you have it. These are the most common questions that I have been asked through your emails to td_can@microsoft.com. If you have a question about TechDays, send me an email at td_can@microsoft.com and I’ll get you an answer. I REALLY do love getting your emails.
With Office 2010 out the door more and more people are adding it to their deployment plans. Sean Kearney, aka the Energized Tech, put together this post on how to customize a silent install of Office 2010. Check it out and bookmark the page for when you are tasked with this job :)
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I Learned a neat trick I’d like to share with you all. It’s called “How to do a basic silent install of Office 2010”
This works on Project 2010, Visio 2010 and Office Professional 2010. But the technique is not unique to them. Just the particular commands.
In truth, this is nothing new. You could ALWAYS automate the install of Microsoft Office. If you had a Volume license version, you could setup a copy of the Network (Administrative Install). Your other choice was the Office Customization Utility.
But again, those were targeted to the Volume licenses.
YOU can take advantage of those same techniques, if only to simply the install for your technicians and Customers. Make life simpler.
Shhhhhh… don’t tell. It’s actually quite easy.
First off, if you have the installer that is a Single file executable you’re going to need to produce the Install folder we all know and love. It’s an easy task to pull off.
I cheated.
I typed on the command prompt
en_office_professional_plus_2010_x86_515486.exe /?
and it produced this lovely bit of info!
So I created a little folder on C: called “Office” (Did I mention I’m not very creative with my folder names?) and ran
en_office_professional_plus_2010_x86_515486.exe /extract:C:\Office
Giving me after a few seconds of a progress bar my familiar old friend the install folder. Please note, if you have the DVD, you can just go ahead and copy the Files but presently we Technet/MSDN users have a giant executable
Next you need to create a file at the root of that folder called “Custom.XML”. Now you can get a SAMPLE of it online at Technet’s Config.XML Technical Reference . It’s right near the bottom. But if you look in the mail folder under the root ending .WW like this picture here
You’ll find there is copy sitting right inside there. Just to save you some time I found a few things about that file (and why It didn’t work for me the first time)
Lines beginning with “<! -–“ and ending with “ ––>” are comments. Everything in between is just eye Candy until you get rid of the comments.
Don’t just uncomment everything. Doesn’t work. You’ll have a silent install launching and caching data and doing nothing. Well nothing except eat up CPU cycles.
Simplicity is best. Start with some SMALL automating (like the Company Name / User Name) and work your way up. Makes troubleshooting the first time easier.
But here’s what I found, I only needed about 6 lines to make it all work. Best of all? It’s takes NOTHING (I mean NOTHING) to carry that Config.XML file to another Office Product and change it for that Product.
All you need are two pieces of info, The Product Name and the Product Key. One is easy to find, it’s stuck on the box or with the OEM pack. The other is found by looking into that magic .WW folder. Inside there is another .XML file called “SETUP.XML”. Open that with Notepad or your choice of editor for Text Based file and look for the line marked <Setup Id=”ProPlusr” Type (yadda yadda yadda doo dah)
That part between the quotes is your ProductID (Professional Plus Retail, Visio etc)
So with THIS simple XML file (Yes, I’m going to save you the nasty work)
------- Begin Custom.XML ------
<Configuration Product="VisioR"> <Display Level="Basic" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes" AcceptEula="yes" /> <USERNAME Value="MyUserName" /> <COMPANYNAME Value="MyCompanyName" /> <OptionState Id="ProductFiles" State="local" Children="force" /> <PIDKEY Value="AAAAABBBBBCCCCCDDDDDEEEEE" /> </Configuration>
-------- End Custom.XML -------
This is for Visio (as can be seen by the first line
“<Configuration Product=”VisioR”>
This is the line you need to edit for whichever Office Product you are installing
The line marked
<Display Level="Basic" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes" AcceptEula="yes" />
Controls just how much information gets thrown at the user. In this case it’s Basic (Status Bar), No completion Notice with the EULA Accepted and Errors hidden away
These Two fields are pretty self explanatory and no, you don’t need to have them in.
<USERNAME Value="MyUserName" /> <COMPANYNAME Value="MyCompanyName" />
This line marked “OptionState”
<OptionState Id="ProductFiles" State="local" Children="force" />
Will identify the options you’re going to install. You can find several examples of these “OptionID” inside SETUP.XML But I found this one (the Root) the most useful. In a nutshell I have selected “Install ALL of it”. I like to keep this simple.
Of course this is the most important line, the Product Key.
<PIDKEY Value="AAAAABBBBBCCCCCDDDDDEEEEE" />
Replace the part between the quotes with your 25 digit product key WITHOUT the “-“ (Hyphens)
If you choose to NOT have the Product key entered, I recommend changing the “Basic” to “Full” under <Display Level="Basic"
It won’t be a true “silent install” but it’s only Two clicks of a mouse which isn’t bad.
If you’re running an OEM or RETAIL key on the install and WANT a silent install you’ll have to delete the subkeys BELOW this registry key on each workstation to prompt the user for the Key upon startup
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Registration\
That should prompt for a new Key upon startup of Office
But honestly? Look into a Volume License copy of Office and Windows anyhow. There are some great advantages with it (Like the ability to just have ONE deploy point and image and the Office 2010 Customization tool. That Tool can take your Silent deploys to a whole Nudda level!)
But there you have it. Office 2010. East to deploy with just one file.
The Power is in YOU
Sean The Energized Tech