It is with great sadness that I share the news of the passing of David Houston. Dave was the first person I made contact with in Dublin when I made the decision to move over from Canada. We had a link in our support of SBS and that lead to a mutual respect. I ran a user group back in Canada and I respect the time and dedication it tales to run a group like SBS Ireland as Dave had for a number of years.He was a fun and interesting guy with a deep desire to be involved in the technical community here in Dublin and make others better. I was fortunate enough to attend TechEd EMEA with Dave in 2009 and had a chance to spend time with Dave and get to know him and as a result will greatly miss him in the community and in general.
David Houston cheers
David Houston
cheers
Details are here.
Enjoy explaining to your boss why you think VMware is better!
The Windows Upgrade Offer went live on Saturday 2nd June. Here’s how it works:
More details and FAQ available from www.windowsupgradeoffer.com.
Win an Xbox 360 Elite. We, the TechNet team in Ireland would like to know how they’re doing and what we should be doing differently. Please, answer our online survey and be put in a draw to win an Xbox 360 Elite!
Only one catch – you must live in Ireland (North or South).
Thanks
Dave
Before you all say “Me” – there’s a catch or two:
I have accidentally ordered too many memory sticks – and now they need a home to go to!
I do have a finite number (more than three) – so I’ll give them away on a first come – first served basis.
Email me if you’re interested & I’ll let you know what I need in return.
Windows Server 2012 Datacenter and Standard are technically identical – there is absolutely no difference between them with regard technical capabilities.
The only difference is the virtualisation rights included with the license (two VMs for Standard and as many as you like for Datacenter). So if you’re virtualising you should be using Datacentre – that’s the only decision you have to make. As a rule of thumb, once you get to around five VMs you should have gone with Datacentre.
You can download Windows Server 2012 form here. And read all about it here.
Windows Server 2012 Essentials has not released to manufacture (RTM) yet, it is still in a Release Candidate stage. It is targeted at Small and Medium businesses with less than 25 PCs. It is an ideal first server that works seamlessly with Office 365. You can download the RC here and learn all about it here.
Windows Server 2012 Foundation is only available pre-installed onto a new server from an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). It is designed for organisations with up to 15 users who need a great general purpose (and economical) server.
Licensing and pricing info for all editions is here.
And it’s on a YouTube video!
scroll to the YouTube video at 3:12
“VMware Cloud Infrastructure Suite is really more of a marketing term. Those of you know our products deeply know that they don’t fit this well together as they need to. Some of them have multiple databases, some don’t look the same, some install differently, and what I can’t stand that is Site Recovery Manager doesn’t currently work with vCloud Director. So, what we are basically able to say is that we created and acquired companies that led to a lot of individual products that don’t work well enough together yet.”
Enjoy
Oh, and if you’re in the market for a “real” Private cloud – here’s your solution:
As you know, my job is to “learn stuff & talk to people” – I get paid to learn!
My problem is that there’s just too much content available nowadays – where do I start? We all know that you eat an elephant one bite at a time, but can we be bothered?
As a Microsoft employee I have to complete certain internal training activities as part of my job – they’re all relatively short online videos with a document or two that needs reading. We all have to pass a short test to prove that we have learnt the material. We can “cheat” and take the exam without doing the learning if we think we already know it. Most of us do the training on (or close to) the deadline, as there is little motivation for us to bother (don’t tell my boss that I said that)!
We launched the Microsoft Virtual Academy a while ago now. It has been getting better and better over the months, with more and more free training being added all the time. It is very similar to our internal training; online videos, a document or two to read followed by a short test to demonstrate understanding. The training is very good and covers loads of topics (from virtualisation to public and private clouds), but it’s still hard to find the motivation to bother..
I honestly think that we’d all benefit from taking all the training that’s available on the Microsoft Virtual Academy – but I also know that we won’t (we never prioritise training – there’s always something more important to do).
So, I’m introducing incentives to encourage you, free prizes to motivate you - along with a bit of recognition amongst your peers.
Unfortunately I can’t open this up to the world – you’ll have to give me an Irish address to claim your prize (North or South).
Interested?
Interested in availing of some great online training?
Interested in the chance to win stuff?
Then register for the Microsoft Virtual Academy and start learning!
We’ll start at the bottom of the stack (virtualisation), so take this exam and email me a screenshot similar to this:
I’m looking for your name (top right), the course title and the fact that you’re 100% complete.
Seeing as this is the first one, I’ll draw out a number of winners at random at 9:00 on Monday 27th February.
I’ll announce the winners and the challenge for the following week, here on the blog and on twitter (I’m @ieitpro).
Here’s to the start of something great!
If you’ve experienced this error message: “The following feature couldn’t be installed: .NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0)
Then this is your solution (at the moment):
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /Source:g:\sources\sxs
from an administrative CMD. “g” is the drive where you have your win8 installation files.
There has been many rumours in the past few weeks around the release date for Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate). Last night the Windows Team made an announcement on their blog that should be good news to everyone who has been testing Windows 7 .
“I’m pleased to share that the RC is on track for April 30th for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Broader, public availability will begin on May 5th.”
One of the new features that will be part of the Release Candidate review process is Windows XP Mode. Windows XP Mode is specifically designed to help small businesses move to Windows 7. Windows XP Mode provides you with the flexibility to run many older productivity applications on a Windows 7 based PC.
All you need to do is to install suitable applications directly in Windows XP Mode which is a virtual Windows XP environment running under Windows Virtual PC. The applications will be published to the Windows 7 desktop and then you can run them directly from Windows 7. Microsoft will be soon releasing the beta of Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate.
I had the opportunity to see this in action recently and it is absolutely amazing. On one of my past sites we were limited by the browser that could be installed on desktops due to compatibility issues with the JD Edwards. With Windows 7 and Windows XP Mode we would have been able to have an IE6 Icon on the desktop for the JDE client while still taking advantage of Windows 7 and IE8 for daily computing needs. This will help remove most of the application compatibility issues that limited the adoption of Windows Vista in small, medium and enterprise environments.
One interesting addition for VirtualPC under Windows 7 is the ability to control interaction between the parent and child host and USB devices. Anyone who has used virtual technology of any kind has struggled with using USB key drives, USB hard drives, etc. With this release you can select which running OS (VM) has control over the USB device, and change these allocations on the fly. Additionally, you are able to see the hard drives attached to the parent from within the VM, and just interact with them directly.
XP Mode consists of the Virtual PC-based virtual environment and a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3). It will be made available, for free, to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions via a download from the Microsoft web site. (That is, it will not be included in the box with Windows 7). XPM works much like today's Virtual PC products, but with one important exception: As with the enterprise-based MED-V (Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization) product, XPM does not require you to run the virtual environment as a separate Windows desktop. Instead, as you install applications inside the virtual XP environment, they are published to the host (Windows 7) OS as well. (With shortcuts placed in the Start Menu.) That way, users can run Windows XP-based applications (like IE 6) alongside Windows 7 applications under a single desktop.
If you have a TechNet subscription, next week the FUN will begin. If not, then consider one as it truly is an IT Pro’s best friend for testing or wait for the public release on May 5th.
Let the RC testing begin!