August 23, 2008 only…

In case any of you reading this are in the vicinity of Hamel, Minnesota this evening.. drop on by the Church of St. Anne for their outdoor “Parish Festival”.  The band “Unbridled” (I’m the male lead singer and play MORE COWBELL than you’ll ever need) is playing from 7:00pm-to-whenever they shut us down.

When: September 24, 2008.  12:00pm-1:00pm EST, 9:00am-10:00am PST

What: “Springboard Series Virtual Roundtable – Under the Hood: Windows Vista Performance… Need Answers?”

Why: Because we’d all like to get the straight story about Windows Vista performance.  And, if there’s anything I can do to make it even better, I certainly want to know about it!

Here’s the official session description:

“Join Mark Russinovich and a panel of industry experts for a LIVE virtual roundtable to explore your top of mind performance issues, common misconfigurations, and tips on how to fix them.
From boot times and applets to disk performance and battery life, find out how to optimize Windows Vista and what you can do to improve overall system performance.”

Go HERE to get the details.

Click HERE to add it to your calendar.

And e-mail HERE (vrtable@microsoft.com) to submit your questions in advance if you’d like.

“If I can’t make it to the live roundtable, can I view it later?”

Absolutely.  Watch the Springboard Series site for the availability of the recording. 

As a digital photography nut, and the de-facto family photographer/videographer, I think this is pretty big news.

Recently I blogged about PhotoZoom, plus a cute example of what it can do. 

And now I hear that the Photosynth site is now live and ready for you to use!

“What is it?”

Basically, it’s the idea that if you (or many people) have many pictures of a particular thing, or of a certain location, then somehow we should be able to compile those photos into a new kind of navigation that represents all the different viewpoints of that thing or location.  So you can think of it as a new way to view photos that were taking in-and-around a certain spot.  And the photos might come from many different sources, too.. so it can become a community effort as well.

Here’s the description from the Photosynth site:

Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience.

“Can I create my own ‘synth’?”

Yes, you can!  Check out this video download describing the process.

“How much does it cost?”

Free.  No money.  Enjoy!  Use the Search to look for synths that may have already been shared, or add yours to the community.  Fun stuff!

RTW = Released to Web

Internet Explorer 8 is taking browsing to a whole new level!  ..and the release cycle has also reached a new level, with the release of Beta 2. 

My friend and coworker Matt “Mongo” Hester has been doing some excellent work on creating screencasts all about what’s new, cool, useful, and secure, etc.

Check out his blog post, with links to his screencasts, here.

Are you an IT Pro?  You would be very interested in seeing this video interview with James Pratt (up on TechNet Edge) around how IE 8 will impact you and your business users.

And finally – GET IE 8 Beta 2 HERE!

---

UPDATE – I’ve installed it.  Wow.. I’m loving the search providers and accelerators. 
Have you installed it yet?  What do you think?

“Second Life?  Isn’t that that online social web networking alter-ego persona thingy?”

Yep, that’s the one.  Second Life is “virtual worlds, avatars, 3D chat, online meetings”.  Many people use it just for socializing, but it’s also become a pretty interesting way to hold big meetings.  Some of you may recall that we actually held a virtual Heroes Happen { here } Launch Event on Second Life.

Now, for those of you interested in learning PowerShell, we’re going to be holding a 3-part series on PowerShell on Microsoft’s own Island in Second Life.

The group meetings take place at this address in Second Life:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/141/129/77

And when it’s time for the meeting, we use Office Live Meeting.  Here is the address for group meetings on the island:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=R86B9D&role=attend&pw=PN6.%3CQ%5Drb

Just a few minutes ago I sent the following e-mail to the members of the Boy Scout Troop that my two boys belong to.  My eldest just completed the work-portion of his Eagle Scout project last weekend…

The photographers, or even the more “geeky” among you will appreciate this…

Today I took a set of photos of the final result of Joe Remde’s Eagle project.  (Thanks again to all of you who came and helped!)  I uploaded the photos into a new photo-navigation invention that Microsoft Live Labs recently made available called “Photosynth”.  In a nutshell, the software on this site is able to take multiple photos, and based on the common content it discovers in them, it is able to create a composite 3-D world that you can zoom in, out, and through, in order to see the location from all angles.

Here’s the link to the “synth” of the completed Hamel Fire Station landscaping:

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=1b4ed451-1db2-4f1a-8c64-035efb0aae3e&i=0:0:1&z=469.3803515136633&g=0&p=1.31101e-006:-1.1945e-006&m=false&c=0.261285:0.254201:0.165337&d=-1.94512:0.951776:0.534687

It works best with a good Internet connection and a mouse with a wheel that can help you zoom back and forth with – but clicking on the arrows on the screen works well, too.

Those of you more interested in Photosynth specifically can find out more here:  http://www.photosynth.net

There are some great examples of famous photographed landmarks that you can zoom around and view photos of, too.

Kevin Remde
Proud parent of Joe “Almost Eagle” Remde

UPDATE: check it out - I can embed the Photosynth right in the blog post:

If you’re into troubleshooting network traffic, and are a real “packet-head”, then this news is for you..

On Monday the team that creates and updates the NETMON (Network Monitor) tool announced that the new version 3.2 is now available.

Check out this blog announcement for the details on what’s new and improved.  And you can download it from HERE.

“But Kevin.. What’s your favorite new feature?”

Well.. as I said, a good list of features is found at that blog announcement.  But of those, I think the ability to track traffic coming from a specific process is very nice.  Also being able to easily track just the traffic that is a part of a specific conversation is pretty cool.

When asked, my friend and coworker (and the guy who hired me to Microsoft) John Weston jumped at the chance to help out. 

One of the things our MSAM (Microsoft Across America) team manages are these big “Mobile Event Experience” trucks that are outfitted with all of the latest/greatest Microsoft technologies.  But another nice thing these trucks have is A) mobility, and B) internet access. 

You may recall that after hurricane Katrina, we sent two of those trucks into the disaster relief area to assist the Red Cross in helping people get online to let loved ones know that they were okay, or to go online adn sign up for relief assistance.  And when hurricane Gustav hit earlier this year, we again sent a truck down.  But we needed someone to go down and help out.  John answered the call immediately.

Recently, at a team meeting, John gave an overview of his experience to all of us.  I ran his video camera, so that we could also share this presentation to the world.

I’m proud to know you, John! 

Here’s the video:

And here’s a link to John’s blog post about this.

This is just way too clever.  No guarantees on how long this will be up and running, because I can’t imagine that it’s NOT spreading like wildfire right now.. but it’s worth a look.

http://www.tsgnet.com/pres.php?id=46832&altf=Lfwjo&altl=Sfnef

I appreciate your vote!  (Tattoo is optional)

It’s amazing the things you can find on the Internet.  Like when a Kurdish artist makes a music video containing my family name…

Dear Video Diary,

Another busy day.  I was pleased to be a part of the TechNet Springboard Series panel discussion on Vista Deployment.  We had some tough-but-fair questions around Vista thrown our way, and it was fun!  After that I did one video interview as well.  I had another scheduled for the afternoon, but the interviewee wasn't able to make it, so we had to cancel.  But I did record a podcast with Kim Shek about Microsoft Dynamics. 

What happened in the evening?  Well... WOW!  Thursday night is the traditional "Attendee Party".  And as we have in years past, Microsoft rented out an entire theme park for our enjoyment.  This year it was Universal Studios.  Lots of food and fun.  My personal favorite (and judging from John and the rest of my teammates, their's as well) was "The Simpson's" ride.  The ride and everything around it were designed as if it were a theme-park unto itself... "Krustyland".  Afterwards a few of us enjoyed some more live music at Margaritaville, and then called it a night.

A few of my teammates are also shown briefly during the video:

• John Baker
• Harold Wong
• Bryan von Axelson
• and Dan "the new guy" Stolts

"Show us the video!"

You got it!

Sure, you can watch it in this small window.  But I'd double-click if I were you.

Cool!  Just noticed that one of my webcast recordings is listed in the current “Top 10 Webcasts” again.  This time it was the one I did about Network Access Protection (part 18 of our 24 hours of Windows Server 2008 series).

Click HERE for the webcast recording.

And HERE for my webcast resources page.

And finally, HERE for the best of the Q&A from the webcast.

Dear Video Diary,

Yeah.. I know I said that the last one was the LAST one.. but I decided to take my entire 16 minutes of wandering around the Exhibit Hall and speed it up to fit in just over 3.5 minutes.  Maybe I'm alone in this (let me know), but I think it's fun to watch it all go by quickly.. get a glimpse of all the vendors and people there.  And if you were also at TechEd, maybe you'll see yourself!

Here's the video:

"Hey Kevin.. what was that music?"

That was Carl Remde (yes.. he's a relation.  He's my baby brother.)  As mentioned in an early blog post - he has an album called Explanation Point.  The track in the video is called "At the Club"

My teammate Matt “Mongo” Hester just posted a pretty cool demo screencast on the process of adding bits (in this case, the currently-in-beta next version of Internet Explorer) into an offline image of Windows Vista.   Yes.. “offline” because it’s an installation of Vista that exists in a .wim file.  So we’re applying IE 8 as “just another update” into the image.  (And although Matt is using the original Vista SP1 media, this could also just as easily have been applied to a sysprepped and ImageX captured image of a Vista SP1 system.)

His excellent screencast and additional resources can be found HERE.

Dear Video Diary,

This was a busy day.  I was originally scheduled to do three video interviews.  It turned into 4, and then 5!  So I spent a lot of time in a comfy chair, with a not-so-comfy microphone attached to my head.  Really enjoyed the conversations, though.  I hope you take a moment to check some of them out. 

The photo to the left is of the "bloke" (I can say that, because he's British) who engineered the video recordings.  I sure wish I could remember his name, as well as all the others who ran that room.  These are the same folks who do this same thing at many of the TechEds around the world.  They really know what they're doing.

Anyway, after all the hard work sitting in that comfy chair, I managed to get to a couple of parties.  The one recorded here is the Double-Take Software "ClusterFunk" (I believe that's the name of their band) party at Margaritaville on Universal's CityWalk.  Good music, but they didn't do a very good job of making food easily available.  I waited a half-hour in line just to end up with a few conch fritters and sushi.  I don't know why they didn't let Margaritaville put out the Cheeseburger buffet that I've had there in previous visits.  THAT is GOOD!  But all-in-all, it was a fun evening.  Thank you, Double-Take!

Okay.. here's the video evidence from the day.  Enjoy!

Do I have to tell you again?  Be sure to double-click to see all of the full-screen HD goodness.

In the MCP Flash e-mail I received at 1:39AM this morning, the top item is about three FREE webcasts devoted to helping people get ready for three different certification exams. 

"Which ones?"

Here is the text from the e-mail:

Walk in to your exam with confidence! Your Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) coach will provide pointers to study materials; share lessons learned about each particular exam; review the technical content covered in the exam; and give you a test-day checklist and tips all in a free, one-hour Live Meeting session.

Appropriate for first-time or experienced test takers with more than six months' experience on the technology. All sessions are offered at 7:30 A.M. Pacific Time.

• Cram for Exam 70-620: Windows Vista on May 20
• Cram for Exam 70-640: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory on May 21
• Cram for Exam 70-536: .NET Framework, Application Development on June 11

"What about you, Kevin?  Are you going to up your certification someday?"

I really should.  I'm an MCSA and MCSE on Windows Server 2003, and want to choose one or more of the upgrade paths to MCTS or MCITP.  I'll probably take one or two while I'm at TechEd this year.  I am fairly familiar with Active Directory in 2008 now, but I may attend that cram session on the 21st, just to see if there are some areas that I haven't worked with yet.

Also - if you're going to take an exam in the next month, don't forget that you only have until May 31st to get signed up for your Free Second Shot exam.

I'm certifiable.  Are you?

Those of you who have followed my blog for more than 12 months already know what a HUGE FAN I am of the TechEd conference.  Since it began in 1993, I have only missed three TechEds.  And during my 4+ years as a Microsoft employee, it's been a real treat to work at TechEd as well as attend.

"What will you be doing there this year, Kevin?"

This year I'm going on behalf of TechEd Online, during the TechEd IT Pro week (June 9-13, 2008) in Orlando, Florida.  Remember last year's "Virtual TechEd"?  Well.. this year the name has changed.. but the mission is pretty much the same.  We're bringing the TechEd experience to the world through online media - blogging, podcasting, and video interviews.  Again this year I will be one of the folks doing interviews; some audio and some video.

"What else will you be doing?"

As I mentioned yesterday, I hope to take a couple of certification exams while I'm there.  And I also plan on recording and sharing my own video diary creations again this year as well.  (This year in HD!  And using Silverlight streaming!)

So if you see me walking around with a camera or a microphone.. or perhaps a video crew following me around, please come up and say 'hi'.  And if I don't see you there, then I'll see you online!

Will you be there?

A friend and board member of a local user group pointed me to a recent article in BetaNews, talking about some cool new capabilities in the next version of Windows PowerShell. 

According to the CTP 2 download page (yes, you can download a Community Technology Preview version of 2.0), here are some of the main improvements and new abilities:

• PowerShell Remoting
• Graphical PowerShell
• ScriptCmdlets
• Modules
• Transactions
• Eventing
• Restricted Runspaces
• RunspacePools
• Background Jobs
• Data Language
• Script Internationalization
• Script Debugging
• 51 New Cmdlets
• Parser Tokenizer API
• New PowerShell Hosting APIs
• Metadata APIs for Command and Parameters

Bart De Smet has written some excellent "feature focus" blog posts all about some of these new capabilities in PowerShell 2.0.

**NOTE: If you want to start playing with the new PowerShell Remoting capabilities, you'll also need to be running a new version of WinRM (Windows Remote Management).  Here is the CTP download for it.

You may also want to keep up with the PowerShell Team Blog.  Guys like Jeffery Snover (PowerShell Architect) and others post up there quite frequently.  In fact, here's a good "Remoting with PowerShell Quick Start" (by Krishna Vutukuri) to help you get your feet wet in the new PowerShell Remoting.

From the ol' mail bag...

I just received this e-mail, and thought I'd share it plus my response here on my blog:

Hi Kevin,

I find your virtualization webcasts very good. I plan to investigate setting a DR solution using Hyper V with our systems in a different site Currently we have approx 12 physical boxes (mainly windows boxes) and I would like to setup some sort of failover mechanism which ideally would form as a DR solution or individual node failover.

I was wondering whether there are any limitations with using this new technology as to system incompatibilities or will it be pretty solid. I guess the answer is to test although for this we will have to purchase a 64 bit machine.

If you have any further info which could help me it would be great. We’re currently running a HP EVA SAN.

Many Thanks,

Stan the Bat**

(**Not his real name.. but you get extra credit if you can tell me in a comment here just where a "Stan the Bat" reference might come from.)

Well Stan (if that is your real name), I have to first remind you that, it is indeed a very new technology (as you say).. so new in fact that I can't officially recommend that you run it in production just yet.  It is still in RC0 (RC1 may be coming soon), and is on track to release "within 180 days of the release of Windows Server 2008", which was February 5th.  That said, I'm hearing GREAT THINGS about its stability.  Microsoft is indeed using it in production to host some very public customer facing applications (I don't know that I'm allowed to share with you specifically which ones they are, so I'll err on the side of keeping my job <grin>). 

As for resources, I definitely hope you took advantage of the resource links I created for that webcast.  Those can be found here.  You'll find links to related resources there. 

I would also add that a good blog to watch is the Windows Virtualization Team Blog.  In particular (with regard to your question on Disaster Recovery), here is a post entitled "Disaster Recovery - not a nightmare with virtualization"

Greetings!

Below are the best of the questions and answers that occurred during our TechNet Webcast entitled, "24 Hours of Windows Server 2008 (Part 18 of 24): Network Access Protection"

Thanks for attending!  ...and if you haven't seen the webcast yet, you can click on the link above (or the picture to the left) to get to the registration page.

PS - here are the RESOURCES I pulled together for this webcast

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Questions and Answers

“I am running XP SP3. how could find NAP client? I did look in the mmc and could not find the NAP Client snap-in.”

First of all – to those of you who heard me say on the webcast that you should be able to find it that way, I apologize. And I was correct in one sense.. that’s where it SHOULD be. But I hadn’t personally worked with XP SP3 yet (probably won’t ever, quite honestly). The reality of it is that you will need to configure the NAP Enforcement Client using NETSH. (Another reason to just go with Vista.)

To enable the NAP Client on XP SP3 you need to do the following three things:

1. Enable the Network Access Protection Agent service to start automatically (same as with Vista – either on the local machine or through Group Policy):
1. Start --> Run --> Services.msc
2. Change the Network Access Protection Agent service to start automatically
3. Start the Network Access Protection Agent service
2. Enable the proper NAP Enforcement Clients (no MMC snap-in option on XP SP3, so it’s different if you want to enable it on the client without using Group Policy):
1. Start --> Run --> CMD.exe
2. Type netsh nap client set enforcement ID = ##### Admin = "Enable"
3. Enable and start the Security Center service:
1. Run --> GPEdit.msc
2. Drill down to Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Security Center
3. Enable the Security Center
4. Start --> Run --> Services.msc
5. Start the Security Center service

You will need to replace the ##### with the ID based on whichever enforcement method you are using. You can use the following IDs for the various enforcement methods:

• DHCP = 79617
• RAS = 79618
• IPSec = 79619
• TS Gateway = 79621
• EAP = 79623

Credit where credit is due: BIG thanks to “The Lazy Admin” for the article I “borrowed” this answer from.

“Can NAP be used to prevent people from using computers on our network that are not joined to our domain (without breaking UNIX boxes, printers, etc. that cannot be domain members)?”

Great question!

I believe you would need to define policies to make exceptions to the rules that block other non-domain members on behalf of those machines that you trust. For DHCP-based NAP, it’s easy. Just give ‘em static addresses (which they probably already have). For IPSec, manually configure the cert (provided the devices support it).. though it’s not often that you’ll need to protect a sensitive server from a printer.

“Does the usage of health certificates in ‘IPSec - mode of the NAP’ require an existing PKI structure and auto-enrollment configured?”

Yes, it does. Auto-Enrollment will be how your "NAP Exempt" machines (such as the protected servers and your policy servers) get their health cert.. and you'll also configure the security settings on the Cert Server to allow the machine that is your HRA (Health Registration Authority) to be able to enroll for certificates on behalf of the clients have requested access and were found to be healthy.

“NAP replaces ISA?”

Nope. Two different things. ISA = Internet Security and Acceleration Server, which is a great corporate firewall solution (among other things). When I talk “firewall” in the context of NAP, I’m referring to the “host firewall”; the firewall protecting an individual server or workstation. And don’t be confused when I say “IAS”. That’s the old Internet Acceleration Server that contained RADIUS and RRAS capability.. which has been superseded in Windows Server 2008 by NPS (Network Policy Server), to include those old functionalities, as well as the NAP supporting role services.

Multiply your power!  Today Microsoft announced newly available Public Previews, plus the pricing details, for Windows Essential Server Solutions.

"What is that?"

For those of you not aware of it - this is what we're calling the options such as Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008.  And today the company made previews available, as well as what the suggested retail pricing will be.

Here is the official announcement / press release.

"Okay.. I know what SBS is.. but what is EBS?"

This relatively new offering (formerly codename: "Centro") is kinda like Small Business Server... but for bigger businesses.  It's a long-neglected segment of the IT and business world.. companies that have more than 75 people... so Windows Small Business Server is not going to work for them.  But they aren't quite large enough to take advantage of some of the great large enterprise-sized offers from Microsoft.  These shops typically don't have a large team of IT folks; there's just one or two people heroically struggling to maintain the IT infrastructure.  These businesses need a good product suite that fits well in their mid-sized organizations.

Click on these links:

• For information on Windows Small Business Server 2008
• For information on Windows Essential Business Server 2008

"I'm not sure which one to choose!"

Here is a great chart to help you decide which solution will meet your needs the best.

Video diary from April 22, 2008. 

"Wow.. that was awhile ago, Kevin!"

I know.. but I finally have been home long enough to edit and render these for Silverlight.  Let me know what you think!

And remember to double-click to get full-screen.. to see the HiDef in all its beauty!

From April 24, 2008...

Didn't take a lot of video during this day - so it's a short diary entry.

Enjoy!

Double-click to get the full-screen view!

Jacob Thornberry of Brooks Stevens took a few minutes out of his busy day as their lone IT Pro to talk to me about his recent rollout of Office Communications Server 2007.  I thought this conversation would benefit anyone who is considering rolling out OCS, and so with Jacob's permission, we recorded our conversation for your benefit.

The recording is attached to this blog post, and will also be on TechNet Edge soon.

I recently gave some talks at the Office Connections conference in Orlando, and created a resource document for the attendees, full of OCS-related resources.  You can find those resources here.

And here is the book that Jacob mentions in the interview:

IMPORTANT UPDATE: This promotion and promotion code have expired.
Please CLICK HERE for the most current promotion.

"Who me?"

Yeah, I'm talking to you!  You're a bozo** if you don't already have a TechNet Subscription.  But here's your chance to fix that...

May 31st, 2008 is fast approaching, and that's the end of our current promotion on TechNet Subscriptions.

See this blog post for more details.. or go straight to http://www.microsoft.com/technet/subscription, sign up for a new subscription, and use promotion code TMSAM08 (That's zero-eight.  Not the letter O.  Think of 2008.) and get $100 off! 

NOTE: this is only good on new subscriptions, and only for residents of the U.S. and Canada.

** Okay.. perhaps I shouldn't call you a bozo.  That's a little strong.  I apologize.  If you don't want to have lots of non-timeout evaluation software and free training and support calls and TechNet Magazine and... well, that's your own business.  I'm sorry I called you a bozo.  Can we still be friends?  [hug]

---

So.. what about you?  Are you already a subscriber?  If you are - what do you like best about your TechNet Subscription?  Is it all the software?  The free eLearning courses?  Two free Microsoft support calls?  TechNet Magazine?  Special support forums for your use?  Early access to Betas, CTPs and Release Candidate software?