Private Clouds are increasingly important to the efficient operations of your business. The System Center 2012 products provide everything you need to build, secure, maintain and manage your Private Cloud. You can get all of the latest Betas, Release Candidates and Evaluations by clicking one button!
I am now covering NorCal and I will be in the area at least once a month going forward. For my first trip out, I will be heading to the Pacific IT Pros User Group that meets at the Microsoft sales Office. they will be meeting on Tuesday, August 7th at 6:30pm. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP here so they can get a count of folks and plan accordingly. The address is listed below -
San Francisco, CA Microsoft Office 835 Market Street, Suite 700 San Francisco, CA 94103
I would really enjoy meeting with you at the PacITPros meeting and talk about what Microsoft is doing and more importantly, what you are doing! I am also very interested in know what events (User Groups, MeetUps, etc) to get involved with to get a feel for the area. if you have any suggestions, please comment below!
( Note - To be clear, I am still covering PacWest area as I always have. NorCal was just added to the plate for this fiscal year.)
-Cheers!
I apologize for the short notice on these events folks, but I have some cool hands-on meetups that I am organizing for a few locations in my coverage area. If you are in Boise, Portland, Seattle (primarily Eastside), or San Francisco…read on!
Do you have a need to use more than one operating system on the same machine? Would you like to be able to check out an operating system before permanently installing it to a system? Would you like to provide better portability, better isolation, and tremendous ease of use to your existing dual or multi-boot environment? Would you just like to experience how to install a Windows operating system from scratch? Well.....This event is for you!
Chris Avis, Technical Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation is hosting a Bootfest/Installfest at local Microsoft offices over the next couple of months!
Depending on the location, the events will consist of a Bootfest + Installfest, or just an Installfest.
BootFest - (10a - 12noon) - We will introduce you to as well as walk you through the process of doing a "Boot to VHD" of a Microsoft operating system. This process allows us to take an operating system that was created with a virtualized environment (ie; Windows Server 2008 R2 running as a guest virtual machine on a Windows Hyper-V server) and boot that VHD file natively! The booted operating system has access to all of the native hardware and can actually be moved from machine to machine for portability. Since the resulting operating system and all installed applications as well as user data is stored in a single file, it is isolated from any other operating system(s) you have installed.
Installfest - (1p - 4pm) - For the Installfest, we will be providing the bits to install Windows Server 2012 natively or via "Boot to VHD" to hardware you provide (see hardware requirements below). We will also have a brief presentation introducing Windows Server 2012 and new features. There will also be plenty of time for Q&A if you have questions about Windows Server 2012 or anything else Microsoft related
For our Bootfest, we will provide Boot to VHD files to allow booting to one of the following Microsoft Operating Systems
Please note - These are TRIAL versions and will expire after approximately 120 - 180 depending on the operating system. We do not recommend using these in production. Please use only for learning and training.
System Requirements for BootFest (Boot to VHD) -
***Other VERY IMPORTANT qualifiers*** -
System Requirements for InstallFest -
If you would like to attend, please register with one of the links below -
Cheers!
Abstract:
In today’s episode J. Seymour, Jim Clark and Chris Avis discuss the new certification exams that are available for Windows Server 2012. Tune in as they discuss what each exam covers as well as how the server infrastructure and private cloud exams differ and how each can help advance your IT skills.
Download Windows Server 2012 RC
If you're interested in learning more about the products or solutions discussed in this episode, click on any of the below links for free, in-depth information:
Resources:
Blogs
Virtual Labs:
Follow @technetradio Become a Fan @ facebook.com/MicrosoftTechNetRadio Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, Zune, Stitcher, or RSS
Download
Good Day Folks!
I recently did a series of Bootfests and Installfests in the Western US. At these events, we talked about and then performed installs to customer machines for a variety of Microsoft Operating Systems. We had several options to work with and I want to provide more information here on what I did to build the USB memory sticks that we used and the different install methods we used.
The USB Stick We Used
For the workshops, I provided a loaner 32gig USB Memory stick that was bootable. I configured it with the bits for Windows 8 and Windows 2012 so that we could move some files around and boot to install either operating system.
USB Stick Configuration
To make the USB stick bootable, I performed the following steps -
Have available the installation media for your operation system (in this example I used Windows 8). If this is in .ISO form, extract everything from the .ISO and place into an easy to find folder. More specifically, you need to ensure you have access to the \boot folder. In this folder you will have the bootsect.exe application which we will use later in the prep
Insert Stick in available port Open an Admin level CMD prompt > diskpart > list disk (to identify the disk number of the USB stick. In my example below, it is Disk 6)
Insert Stick in available port
Open an Admin level CMD prompt
> diskpart
> list disk (to identify the disk number of the USB stick. In my example below, it is Disk 6)
> sel disk # (where # is the Disk # of your USB stick.) > list disk (to confirm we selected the correct disk #)
> sel disk # (where # is the Disk # of your USB stick.)
> list disk (to confirm we selected the correct disk #)
*Warning* This next command will wipe out a disk without confirmation! Do not execute without ensuring you have selected the correct disk! > clean > cre par pri (creates a primary partition on the selected disk) > sel part 1 (selects partition 1 on the selected disk)
*Warning* This next command will wipe out a disk without confirmation! Do not execute without ensuring you have selected the correct disk!
> clean
> cre par pri (creates a primary partition on the selected disk)
> sel part 1 (selects partition 1 on the selected disk)
> active (sets selected partition to be the active partition)
> format fs=ntfs quick (performs a quick format of the active partition) > assign (assigns a drive letter) > exit Leave your CMD prompt open Open My Computer or Disk Management and identify the drive letter of the USB stick Remember the installation media and the /boot folder above? At the CMD prompt, execute the following - > <path>\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 <drive letter of USB stick:> (where <path> is the directory you dropped your installation media in)
> format fs=ntfs quick (performs a quick format of the active partition)
> assign (assigns a drive letter)
> exit
Leave your CMD prompt open
Open My Computer or Disk Management and identify the drive letter of the USB stick
Remember the installation media and the /boot folder above? At the CMD prompt, execute the following -
> <path>\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 <drive letter of USB stick:> (where <path> is the directory you dropped your installation media in)
Once the bootcode is updated on the USB stick, you can now copy all of the installation media files to the USB stick. It is then a simple matter of rebooting your machine, pressing whatever magic buttons are required by your particular computer so you can boot to USB and then proceed with installation as normal!
In our classes, some people noted that I had some extra folders on my USB stick. Here is what the root of our USB sticks looked like -
You will notice a folder called \NOMOVE in the root. This was just a reminder to me not to delete or move this directory when changing operating systems on the USB stick. In this folder I create additional folders for each operating system I would want to install from USB. I then copy all of the installation files from an .ISO or CD/DVD to the appropriately name OS folder. When I want to install a different OS from USB, I simply move all the files from the root (excluding NOMOVE) back to it’s OS folder. I then move all of the files from the OS folder I want to install over to the root.
If you have a 16gig stick, you can get at least 3 different OS installs on the same stick.
Our monthly User Group meeting will be held at the Lincoln Square Center in Bellevue, across from the Bellevue Square Mall at 6:00pm. The meeting will be held in Room 15104, (15th floor, room 104) at the Microsoft's office in Lincoln Square Center.
Due to the security requirements, non-Microsoft employees must be escorted to the building by a Microsoft employee. We will have a sign on the 2nd floor elevator with instructions and/or contact phone number.
Our guest speaker in September will be Steve Schwartz. The topic of his presentation is "Roadmap to the Cloud for Messaging, Collaboration, and Communications."
Steve is one of the leading industry experts in the cloud technologies. He started his cloud services business way before most of us ever heard the term “cloud computing”, over a decade ago. He is considered a pioneer in the Hosted Exchange business, having worked with Microsoft in 1999 on the very first project to document how to deliver Hosted Exchange 2000. In 2006, Steve started Chinook Communications to provide hosted Messaging, Collaboration, and Communications services utilizing the Microsoft cloud services platform.
In his presentation Steve will discuss the typical pain points companies are faced within IT and Telecommunications. These include issues around security, disaster recovery, reliability, leveraging new technology, and reducing costs. The session will then detail how leveraging the cloud for messaging, collaboration, and communications on a Microsoft platform can help address some of these common issues. Finally, the session will present a common roadmap for how to migrate to the cloud in a phased approach that minimizes user disruption. An approach that gradually phases in changes while having an immediate positive impact on the business by providing more effective communications at reduced costs.
Steve’s bio is available here.
Agenda:
6:00pm-6:30pm: Welcome!
6:30pm-7:45pm: Roadmap to the Cloud for Messaging, Collaboration, and Communications
7:45pm-8:00pm: Wrap-up