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Digital Media Forum and Microsoft Ireland are delighted to bring you the Microsoft BizSpark Innovation Accelerator Event – an event designed to help accelerate the Start-up community in Ireland and Northern Ireland. This day-long conference will run on Tuesday, February 24th in the Radisson SAS Royal...

I was given the task of introducing Windows 7 to a crowd of IT Professionals last week – easy enough, but not so in just 20 minutes.  Searching around inside Microsoft for the elevator pitch PowerPoint deck proved to be impossible (there’s decks for each audience type, and they all had way too many...

I got to talk at the IPv6 Summit last week in Dublin Castle – Agenda, Slides and Videos of all the sessions are here. My talk was on Finding the Business Case for IPv6. The video of my session is now online and can be viewed here .  And my slides are here. I’m still working on finding the questions...

To mount a VHD file onto your file system, you either ran some very complicated VB (or PowerShell) Script or you used VHDMount.exe that came with Virtual Server.  If you’re running Windows 7 (or Windows Server 2008 R2), you can now use Diskpart. So, from an elevated command prompt, run Diskpart...

In this post I’ll talk you through how I have created a Hyper-V Failover Cluster on my single laptop. To build a Failover Cluster you need a SAN.  I use the Microsoft iSCSI target software that ships with Windows Storage Server.  Being a Microsoft employee I have access to the bits, so I have...

There’s been a “small” issue with licensing around Hyper-V for a while and because of all the complaints we’ve received we have actually changed our licensing. The issue was this: I’m a Windows Server 2003 shop and want to virtualise onto Hyper-V.  Because Hyper-V is a role of Windows Server 2008...

***There's been a change to the timing of this event. It now runs from 9:30-13:00 with registration starting at 9:00*** Free training on Thursday 22nd January on SQL for Oracle DBAs! It is a half day of training taking place in Dublin the afternoon of January 22nd. See here for details and how...

So my demo environment needs to be self contained (everything on the one laptop), needs to be as quick as it can and be able to demo as much of the Microsoft virtualisation stuff as technically possible.  My laptop itself will obviously be the Hyper-V host – which needs to be in a domain, if I’m...

It turns out that how I built my demo laptop is generating a bit of interest.  These posts have become the “how to” pointers for creating a Proof of Concept for Microsoft Virtualisation and Management solutions. So to start.  My laptop is a dual core, 64-bit device with 8GB of memory. ...

This post is an introduction to how I have configured my demo laptop.  I can comfortably run eleven VMs on the one laptop, including a two node Hyper-V cluster, App-V and the four main System Center products (Virtual Machine Manager, Data Protection Manager, Operations Manager and Configuration...

I had an interesting question posed to me the other day: How would you know if your PC was affected by the IE7 flaw? My first answer was: Hmm.. It is very possible that you won't know. Then I did some digging..  The answers I found were: Desktop firewall program alerting that a foreign application...

This post describes the best/easiest method to configure and manage Server Core. There are numerous posts and articles explaining how to enable a particular feature on Server Core and there are even more on how to configure Server Core so that it can be managed remotely.  Well, this is the best...

Microsoft is testing a new exam format and needs your help. The New Virtual Lab based Exam 70-113: TS: Windows® Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring tests candidate’s abilities to actually perform tasks and solve problems in virtual lab environment like they would do it normally in a...

Windows Vista with SP1 (and some tweaks) is faster than Windows Server 2008. Since my last post on this topic , I've been doing my homework. On my laptop Vista was always quicker than Server, but I have found some very useful information (most of which has already been or will be covered on the Springboard...

The second session, in our invite only SQL Server 2008 training series is happening in Dublin next Tuesday (14 th October 2008 from 14.00-17.00 *Registration from 1pm).  We have a few spare seats available - so if you're interested in some free training on SQL Server 2008, click here and express...

Today I had a go at dispelling the myth that the words Microsoft and Security don't go together.  I certainly had "fun" with the projector!  Turns out it was a pin in the VGA cable - my Vista laptop was getting well and truly confused as to whether it was connected to a projector...

What are you doing this Thursday evening? To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner, TechNet Ireland are running a special COMPLIMENTARY screening of ‘ Blade Runner: The Final Cut’ .  Spectacularly restored and re-mastered from original elements and scanned at...

I've been talking to a few people recently who are using Windows Server 2008 as a workstation. Some of their comments are along the lines of: "Server 2008 has the same code base as Vista SP1, how come it feels quicker?". Interestingly there doesn't seem to be a good answer (yet). I've been shown a...

Thanks to all those who attended Tuesday night's user group meeting . Apologies for going on a bit (I was only supposed to take half an hour or so - not the whole hour)! Aidan has posted the slides we used here . Some of my demos are here . Well - just the clustering Hyper-V ones. The hotfix...

The Windows Server 2008 User Group - Ireland will be running an event on Microsoft Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 on the 2nd of September at 7pm in the evening (beer might follow).  The location is Buswells hotel in the city centre.  The event is free to all User Group Members. You...

There's been a lot of talk recently about our new "Windows Server 2008 Workstation" (Windows Server 2008 with the Desktop Experience features switched on - plus a bunch of hacks). There's been suggestions that it out-performs Vista - I'm not going to enter that can of worms, but I can see a need to run...

Larry Doyle from Netforce in Dublin has been deploying Hyper-V. This is worth sharing: "Windows Server 2008 is an awesome product and I am super excited about it! I have been testing Windows Server 2008 since beta release and implemented the eagerly anticipated Hyper-V on our test network as...

Anytime I do a demo that requires a SAN, I use the Microsoft iSCSI Target software.  I'm lucky, I get to install it onto my demo machines.  If you want it, you need to ask your OEM (the one that sold you your Windows Storage Server) - it's just an add-on. I'm frequently asked how I use it and...

Once a month for the last six months or so, I've been getting seven emails in my inbox entitled: Technical Rollup Mail - SQL Technical Rollup Mail - Security Technical Rollup Mail - Manageability Technical Rollup Mail - Unified Communications Technical Rollup Mail - Internet Technical Rollup Mail - Platforms...

Eduardo Shanahan from Customer Minds Ltd has deployed his new application on Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V. "Our application was developed from the start with Visual Studio 2008, and the sole existence of LINQ saved me months of work. Now that the first version is ready, we went in production...