Here are the resources noted in the webcast from earlier today....

Microsoft Virtualization Home Page - This is our main resource site for all things virtualized.

Virtualization Calculators - Use these calculators to help determine your hardware needs when consolidating servers

Technet Windows 2008 Virtualization Site - Most of the information here is beat or refers to betas. Expect this to get deeper as we get closer to the Windows 2008 Server Launch date.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager Site - The Main landing page for SCVMM

Virtual Server Site - Virtual Server is the add-on application for Windows 2003 that allows us to virtualize servers and workloads

Virtual PC Site - Virtual PC is great for testing, labs, demonstrations and lower end virtualization efforts.

SoftGrid Home Page - If all you need to do is virtualize a specific application, SoftGrid is the answer

Cheers!

See Jason Buffington's announcement over on the DPM Blog.

I played around with DPM a bit for protecting server data, but I am really excited about protecting my Exchange and SQL servers. I am going to install DPM sometime in the next couple of weeks to my home server network and will post some of my traisl and tribulations here.

Cheers!

I have been using virtualization products for the past 7 or 8 years. I started with VMWare and used it when I was on the SBS Support team. I virtualized a couple common common configurations of SBS and it allowed me to do some basic testing and reproduction of customer issues. I moved on to Virtual PC and Virtual Server soon after and recently have started working with Windows Server virtualization in Windows Server 2008.

There are many aspects of virtualization that make it a cool technology. The one that appeals the most to me is being able to "start over" if mistakes are made. I make mistakes all the time and being able to start with a configuration, make tweaks, test it out, and if it fails, shut it down and start over.

But Virtualization promises a lot more than what I like it for. For Enterprises there are a definitive cost savings from consolidating machines and virtualizing them. The dollar savings on power alone is worth it. There is also the efficiency of standardizing the "hardware" for virtualized machines. Every machine has the same driver set so driver management is greatly simplified. They are also very portable. Imagine moving a physical server across the country after you have provisioned it. It is a lot simpler and safer to just download the server.

We have a Virtualization Webcast series coming up that dives a lot deeper into the benefits of virtualization. You can register for it here --

Virtualization Webcast Series

The individual sessions and a few extra that are on demand are:

Virtualization and Windows Server 2008

An overview of the virtualization role, the scenarios, and the features that make server virtualization an important pillar of Windows Server 2008. We also cover the longer-term strategy and road map for Microsoft virtualization technologies.

Examining Virtualization with Windows Server 2008

In this session, we examine Microsoft virtualization and how to implement it with Windows Server 2008. We cover topics including: presentation, application, and server virtualization scenarios and technologies.

A 360 View Inside the Virtual World

Gain insight into the overall Microsoft virtualization strategy. Learn about the Microsoft road map for virtualization and examine what workloads make good candidates for virtualization and why you would consider moving these workloads into a virtual world.

Windows Server Virtualization Under the Hood

This session covers the new hypervisor-based architecture. We look at the integrated management for virtual and physical resources, including the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), the new virtual machine creation wizard, the conversion tools, the performance enhancements, and the integration into Group Policy.

Virtualization of Test and Development Environments, and the Impact on Existing Applications

We look at virtualization solutions starting with moving existing applications and infrastructure servers into a virtualized environment. We also look at the impact of virtualizing test and development environments, and some of the tools available that make this process easily manageable.

Virtualization of Production Workloads Including Active Directory, SQL Server, and Others

We cover some of the best practices and tips for virtualization of infrastructure workloads, such as the Active Directory directory service, file and print, and Web servers, and the benefits of mixed workload virtualization.

Optimized and Dynamic Branch Offices with Virtualized Branch Office Servers

Learn about what you should consider before, during, and after a server consolidation in a branch office, and the role virtualization can play. We provide a view of how and where virtualization fits in a branch office, and how it helps simplify administration and creates a self-managing branch infrastructure.

Managing a Virtual Solution with System Center

Creating Business Continuity Solutions Using Windows Virtualization

Learn how Windows Server virtualization and clustering can be used to create business continuity solutions for Microsoft SQL Server and infrastructure workloads. See how to use the new features in Windows Server virtualization, such as live backup, health monitoring, quick migration, and guest clustering.

Introducing SoftGrid to the World

Cheers!

You will notice some missing graphics on my blog today. I host the images on my home servers and Tanner Electric, our local electric provider has a scheduled outage from 8a-4p Pacific. They are replacing some equipment and trimming trees in the area to prep for the winter weather.

But! I am in Boise, ID today and won't be back home until later this evening. You should see images come back after about 8pm Pacific when I can press power buttons.

Cheers!

Have you heard of Windows Connections? or Office Connections? Or SharePoint Connections? What about Exchange Connections?

The "Connections" events are a semi-annual event hosted by Penton Media, a division of Windows IT Pro magazine/ community. It is an event for IT Pros and Developers, much in the same fashion as TechEd:

- Microsoft & HP keynote (Steve Guggenheimer, Steve Riley, Scott Guthrie, Mark Minasi, etc.)

- 400+ breakout sessions, including Microsoft Day (hear it directly from Microsoft – Pure MS content and speakers)

- Great parties and networking opportunities (including jam sessions)

- Partner Pavilion

- Hands On Labs

- Expo hall with product booths

- Harley Davidson raffle (!!!)

- $200 discount - with promo code MSVIP

I will be there along with Harold Wong, John Weston, John Baker and Matt Hester to deliver about 24 one hour sessions for "Microsoft Day" over the course of the event. If you would like to get more information, click the graphic below.

Cheers!

Larry Larsen over at on10.net has posted some details regarding the new Zune 2.0 players. You can also head over to the Zune Marketplace for some more information as well.

The Cool Features -- Over the air sync (don't need to dock!),  WMA Lossless Support, and a Glass screen instead of the easily scratched plastic ones on the Zune 1.0.

But the nest feature of all is support for Media Center. You can now sync recordings from your Windows Media Center to the Zune and take your favorite shows with you.

That alone is worth the price of admission!

 ***Updated*** Engadget has posted some specs...

Cheers!

I have been joking around this quarter during my System Center presentations that I don't need a System Management solution on my home network because my wife alerts me of any and all issues. Exchange Server down? My phone rings with my wife on the other end letting me know. Proxy Server down? My phone rings and she lets me know that she can't get to eBay. The only piece missing is the automated actions that System Center can take to resolve the issues without human intervention. I suppose I should relinquish some control and show her how to do some basic troubleshooting on the services she uses the most frequently. Or deploy System Center at home.

But I digress.....how did Exchange Edge and Forefront save my marriage? Well.....a little history is necessary.....

I have been running my own Exchange server at home for about 10 years now. I started with Exchange 4.0 back in 1997 connected to a dedicated dual channel ISDN line at a whopping 128k. I registered and used a domain name for about two years before registering a different domain name which I am still using 8 years later.

Ten years ago, spam was more of a nuisance than a hazard. The occasional chain letter claiming that if I didn't forward the email to at least 6 people I would suffer from bad luck. (Really. You will have bad luck. Trust Me.) Someone sending an email to everyone they know to go look at a "Mr. T ate my ....." web site. The point being that we didn't get much spam back then and what we did get was relatively harmless.

Fast forward a decade and spam now makes up more than 50% of the inbound mail to most mail servers and carry nasty payloads or phishing scams and that makes spam more than just a nuisance. Spam chews up bandwidth that could otherwise go toward higher bandwidth applications like HD video streaming and all of the other cool Web 2.0 activities. Mail servers are spending more and more CPU cycles processing spam reducing overall performance which impacts end users. Spam payloads contain malicious software and links to phishing sites aimed at collection personal account information or links to sites that have embedded code designed exploit un-patched vulnerabilities.

The long and the short.....spam is bad. Mmmmkay?

Stay with me..... 

About 6 months ago I was still running Exchange 2003 Enterprise and the Intelligent Message Filter with Real Time block lists and blocked domains configured and I was at about the same level as I was 10 years earlier. About 10 or so spam messages would make it through. Not bad for a domain that has been around for 8 years and is probably on every spammers list in existence today. I didn't have any idea how much spam was being filtered out because I had been running this config reliably for several years.

But I was about to find out.....

I longed to upgrade to Exchange 2007 which gave me an excuse to also jump into the 64bit world. I sprung this on my wife one day promising that her email experience would be better and I could eliminate virtually all spam with the new hardware and Exchange 2007. The wife spends a fair amount of time using email so I thought this to be the perfect attack vector to persuade her that more computers in the basement would be justifiable. Much to my surprise, she agreed!

She had a few conditions though.....

Request: She wanted to access her email from work

Resolution: Outlook Web Access

Request: She wanted to access her email from her cell phone (she has a Blackjack)

Resolution: Get her connected using Exchange ActiveSync

Request: If you get two new servers, I get a new car (I felt this was unrelated but she felt otherwise...)

Resolution: Get her a new car

I agreed to her conditions, and picked up two AMD 64bit machines with the intention of deploying a two server Exchange 2007 configuration. Server1 would be my Exchange Hub, Mailbox, and Client Access Server and Server2 would be my Exchange Edge role and also Forefront Security for Exchange.

I installed Server1 easily enough, migrated my mail databases over, configured OWA and Outlook Anywhere. Mail was flowing and after a little wrangling with getting my wife's cell phone to connect to Exchange, life seemed great.

Until Day 2...

The next day, the wife asks me "why am I getting all of this spam? I thought you said Exchange 2007 would be even better at filtering out spam???". I explained to her that I had not yet configured any of the spam filtering options so we would be getting "a little more spam than usual" until I did. This prompted me to check my own mailbox which has been in constant use for 8 years (hers has been used regularly for about 4 years).

Wow.

In about a 36 hour time span I had received over 1000 spam emails. An amazing increase over the 10-15 I received with NO spam filtering just 10 years earlier. My wife was receiving about a 10th of what I was but that meant 100+ spams a day in her inbox when she was accustomed to getting 3-5 in her junk mail folder. I knew my mail server was dealing with tens of thousands more than just what we were seeing because the spammers are sending email to non-existent mailboxes too. I plan on firing up PerfMon next week and getting a count of what my server processes in a week. I will report those results in a later post.

Stay with me....

The plan was to make sure that Server1 (Hub, Mailbox, Client Access) was stable before proceeding with the provisioning of Server2 (Edge and Forefront). I was also delaying configuring any spam filtering until I installed the Edge server. I also have to admit that I was in awe of how much spam was coming in and I was curious to see just how bad it was. I cleaned my mailbox out on Day 3, asked my wife to do the same and just move spam to the Junk Mail folder as needed using Outlook and start building out her blocked senders list. I left everything alone for a week. On Day 10 I logged back in and an unbelievable 10,000+ emails were in my inbox! My wife had graciously started moving mail to her Junk Mail folder but gave up after day 5. She started just highlighting and deleting it all. She ended up with about ~800 spams after that week long test.

Here is where things start to go south.....

A series of events occurred which prevented me from finishing the Edge server installation in a timely manner. My travel schedule went a little nuts, we had a series of house guests over the summer (I blame Matt!), I worked several other honey-do list items and then I just got plain lazy about fixing the spam issue. I fell into the routine of logging into my mailbox every 2-3 days doing a CTRL-A, DEL and then filtering through the Deleted items to find any real email and create a rule for it.

This didn't work for the wife though....

For almost 6 months she suffered through hundreds of spams a week that she patiently deleted and gently reminded me of every few days. She finally broke down and gave me an ultimatum -

Fix the spam issue or I am getting a GMail account!

What?!?!?! Get a GMail account? I believe in this day and age I could actually use that as grounds for a divorce, but I wisely opted to save my marriage by fixing the spam issue.

I stayed up late one night determined to accomplish two goals - 1) Reduce spam on my server and 2) Save my marriage!

I had never actually built out an Edge server myself much less configured Forefront Security for Exchange. I have demoed both to live audiences but that was using a canned demo environment provided by the corporate content team. I decided to check out the Technet Virtual Labs to see what was out there for learning. Sure enough I found the following Virtual Labs -

Configuring an Exchange 2007 Edge Server

Implementing AntiVirus Defenses on Exchange 2007 with Microsoft Forefront Security

There is another Lab I want to take but it isn't going to be available until October 24th

Forefront Security for Exchange Server 2007

I did the first two labs while I had Remote Desktop sessions to my Exchange servers and configured my servers while I was walking through the labs. I also took the time to configure Exchange 2007 Real Time Block Lists and some of the other filtering items. It took about 2 hours to complete the labs and the configuration of my own servers.

After I made the final tweaks for publishing my Edge server to the web in place of my Mailbox server, I tested mail flow successfully and packed it in for the night. I decided to wait 48 hours to see how much spam came in. Two days later I checked my inbox and amazingly I was back down to my 1997 levels of spam. I am receiving about 5 spams a day to my actual Inbox and 2-3 to my Junk Mail folder right now. My wife is getting that much in a week which is even better than when we were using Exchange 2003 and the IMF. I will be tweaking things more over the next week or so to see if I can get it down to zero.

The primary goal was to reduce the amount of incoming spam (and thus save my marriage!). Using the native Exchange features alone would have accomplished this. But spam today is more than an email hawking a product that claims to make some part of your body larger or smaller. Much of the spam today carries malicious software or links out to phishing sites. I want to keep that stuff from ever making it into the database if I can help it. So I took things a step further by implementing Forefront for Exchange to address the malicious payloads that are common today.

Forefront for Exchange can leverage up to 5 antivirus engines to scan for and eliminate malicious payloads in spam. In addition it can also do content, keyword, and file filtering. I have not configured things to that level yet but i plan to and will post some entries on those results at a later date.

For now though......the wife is happy about her email. She has withdrawn her threat of getting a GMail account. I don't have to leave her now! Marriage saved!

Save your marriage! Implement Exchange 2007 Edge services and Forefront for Exchange!

Cheers!

***Updated*** My original post of this was actually a draft. I have updated the post and corrected some spelling and grammatical issues.

I just read Scott Hanselman's post about his first 3 weeks with the company. I found it humorous because I have been remote for 5+ years now. In fact I just broke the 10 year mark with the company and some of the things Scott points out seem to have been pretty par for the course during this past decade. Here is my take on his points --

TLAs - If it were as simple as just "three" letter acronyms. The acronyms will reach the 4 and 5 letter stage now and then. Every 2-3 years the entire org name changes and that of course gets TLA'd as well. Every large company suffers from TLA syndrome though. I worked for Frito-Lay for many years and they had an unbelievable collection of TLAs. LBCSS - Large Batch Corn Soak System - if that gives you a clue. When we have to start worrying is when we have had a TLA for so long no one remembers the definition. It is going to happen one day.

Email - Outlook/Exchange is my life at the company. I have ceased trying to remember all of the phone calls, meetings, places I have to be. I rely on Outlook and Exchange to remember for me. As long as I can access my Exchange server my life is pretty smooth. IM gets used a lot (at least I do) but it is really funny to watch Messenger or Office Communicator come to life when a mail server goes offline. Con Calls are another IM generator. We have all gotten in the habit of muting our machines during con calls.  Groove? What's that? :)

HR/Onboarding - I believe most people go through an MS101 course when they hire on. I also believe this usually takes places at the Redmond campus. I am guessing because I never attended MS101. When I came on in 1997 I was in Texas and I was in support. I don't believe the support people are sent to MS101 (at least they weren't back then) so I didn't experience MS101 until about 3 years ago when I came up to campus for a project and sat in on some of the sessions. My onboarding was pretty straight forward back then. They took my picture, printed on my badge (I still have that badge!) and I received a piece of paper with some facilities information. I came in as a part of an inaugural program called Service Academy. We went through 10 weeks of light bootcamp training and became MCSE's so it wasn't a typical onboarding process. At the end of the 10 weeks I was introduced to my manager who showed me my desk and my PC. I installed NT4 Workstation and my support apps and started taking calls a few hours later. That is when the real firehose was turned on (see below)!

Your Machine - Scott is absolutely correct - we are on our own. The exception being that if you receive a company issued laptop in which case it usually arrives with a Microsoft IT standard image on it. I suspect most people promptly flatten that image and start over. I don't care for Scott's lumping of BitTorrent and P2P software in the "evil" category. If you have never used a BitTorrent Client to pull down a service pack then you have never pulled down a Service Pack in 3-5 minutes vs 10-20. BitTorrent has a place in the real world.

Hardware - I am currently on a Lenovo T61p but that machine will be getting turned in soon and my primary machine will be an HP 6910p on which I plan to run 64bit Vista. I will also be receiving a Lenovo T61p in a couple of weeks which I will do most of my Windows Server 2008 testing on. It will be nice to have a machine with 4 gigs of RAM in it that can actually see and use all 4 gigs of RAM! All other machines are my personal machines that I run my home network and lab on. I will post about those later.

Security - Scott's assessment on the importance of the badge/card key is dead on. Last week I decided to head into the office for the first time in a while only to find out the proximity sensor emitter in my 5 year old badge was dead. This meant no building access. The card was on it's last legs anyway - the smart chip was perforated around the edges and ready to pop out completely. It was time for a replacement. So I took a shuttle over to the building where card keys are made where they took my picture (finally! the 10 yr old one was......10 years old!), printed a new badge and had me reset my PIN (it was time for that too) and I was back in action. Someone remind me to post about the time I lost my badge....

Insiders - There is so much cool going on in this company it is impossible for one person to stay abreast of everything. Microsoft has a phrase for new people - "Getting fed with a firehose". Of course that phrase has been applicable to long term employees for as long as I have been with the company. The firehose never gets turned off....ever.

Blogging - Some have embraced blogging and thrived. Others struggle. I struggle with it regularly. But that is also for another post. The only guidance for blogging we have at Microsoft is "Blog Smart". I like that as a concept but of course that isn't always the way things work out. I am actually far less concerned about all the legal, marketing, PR issues that are ever present in today's blogging world. I am more concerned with how management (mostly non-bloggers) treats the concept of blogging by their reports. I am a firm believer that blogging should be a choice (unless you are hiring a blogger to blog and that is stated up front in the interview). Making blogging a required activity is counterproductive in my opinion. Blogging should absolutely be something that positively impacts a review if it is done well and has a positive impact on the team/product/company, but should absolutely not have any negative impact if no blogging is performed at all. Bloggers blog because they have something they want to say. They are passionate about something and they want to share that passion with others. When blogging turns into something where a blogger has to say something because they have to have X number of posts in a specific time period then the posts are going to suffer.

Admins - They make your life smooth as butter on a hot knife. I don't know how difficult they can make things because I have always stayed on their good sides. I can only imagine what life would be like if I really pissed one off though. Ya know....I don't even want to think about it!

Working Remote - Scott - I come down to Portland a half-dozen or more times a year. I will start pinging you for lunch! Join Facebook! Hell, get a MySpace account! I have recently started catching up with some old time BBS people from 10 plus years ago on MySpace.

Remote Education - Microsoft does make a lot of information available for on-demand viewing. One area we come up short is on big key-notes or announcements. In many cases those items can't be streamed over VPN/RAS connections. Kind of a bummer if you can't make it to a local sales office or the main campus if only for the reason that everyone else will be talking about it on the internal DL's before you get a chance to see the on-demand recording.

Working from Home - I love working from home. The flexibility it offers can't compare to anything at all. The lines do blur quite often and I have had many, many of the days Scott mentions that seem to go on for ever. Getting in the mode of not checking email after a certain of day is nearly impossible to make happen. Especially when my phone is tied to Exchange. I bet if I didn't use my dining room table as my office I could separate myself a little more easily.

Work/Life Balance - Hahahahahaha!  What is that??!?!?!?!  :)

Cheers!

Based on the email I receive, I sometimes wonder if people know about all of the excellent Technet offerings we have. I took some time today to link out to some cool Technet properties. Some you will know very well. Others might be new to you. Check them out!

Technet Webcasts -- Many of you watch the webcasts I deliver and I truly appreciate your attendance and feedback. Did you know that we archive all of our webcasts for on-demand viewing? In most cases you can even download a WMV file and watch offline at your convenience. You can search for archived, on-demand webcasts at the Technet Webcasts site.

Technet Virtual Labs -- I recently set up Forefront Security for Exchange on an Exchange 2007 Edge Server at home. I had never built out an Exchange Edge server or configured Edge subscriptions so instead of fumbling through it in a lab I would have had to build at home, instead I used the Technet Virtual lab on configuring Edge services to test things first, Afterwards, my own implementation at home went smooth as silk! It saved me a tremendous amount of time. Not to mention the effort of having to build out test machines. The Technet Virtual labs are perfect for this kind of learning and testing.

Technet Events -- One of the primary functions of my role is to speak to live audiences about the cool products and technologies that Microsoft has. With our recent re-alignment there are now 6-7 of us that cover the entire United States. You will some new faces in your part of the world and I will be one of them. I still cover the Pacific Northwest as my primary area but I am also about to make a whirlwind tour of the western United States. I will be in Boise, Spokane, Portland, New York (for InterOp), Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Las Vegas (For Windows/Exchange Connections), Irvine, Riverside, Albuquerque, and Phoenix all before the end of the year. You can register at any of those links or search for events in your area at the main Technet Site.

Technet Flash -- The Technet Flash is a customizable bi-weekly newsletter with gobs of information for IT Pros. It only takes a couple of minutes to sign up and customize. You can even view the current and archived Flashes so you don't have to wait for the next one to hit your Inbox. The Scripting Guys are regular contributors. The most recent Microsoft KB articles are previewed in the flash. Lots of good stuff!

Technet Plus Subscriptions -- With a Technet Plus subscription, IT Pros get access to manage Support Newsgroups, two complimentary support incedents, early access to beta releases and other software, full version *non-time-bombed* products to install for testing and evaluation, and of course all of the other support tools and technical information that IT Pros need.

Technet Script Center -- Scripting allows administrators to automate tedious day-to-day tasks providing for hands-off administration of their increasingly complex networks. I have used some of the scripts for the Script Center on my home network with much success. Build your own repository from the sample scripts provided.

Cheers!

If you have never read any of Rory's blog posts, then you have missed out on some of Rory's most personal moments. It is all archived over at his blog. Check it out when you have a spare week to kill. It takes about that long to get through some of his posts.

One of his recent posts states he is leaving Microsoft. If this is true......bummer. I think Rory is a breathe of fresh air. Well....sometimes he is like garlic or curry breath but a breathe of "different" air anyway you look at it.

Go read some of his blog. It is a love/hate relationship. He talks about those too now and then.

Cheers!