Buy it now!
Click to See List of IT Pro User Groups in MI, OH, KY, and TN
The Microsoft Solution Accelerators team is pleased to announce that the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack is now available for download.
The System Center Cloud Services Process Pack is Microsoft’s Infrastructure as a Service solution built on the System Center platform. With the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack, enterprises can realize the benefits of Infrastructure as a Service while simultaneously leveraging their existing investments in the Service Manager, Orchestrator, Virtual Machine Manager, and Operations Manager platforms.
Corporate datacenters are in transition. The recent shift from physical to virtual environments is now being replaced by an interest in moving to the cloud—specifically both private and public cloud infrastructures. Private cloud management assets are being delivered with System Center 2012 and a key part of this solution is the self-service experience. This experience is now significantly enhanced by the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack.
The benefits offered by System Center Cloud Services Process Pack for the enterprise include:
The benefits offered by System Center Cloud Services Process Pack for consumers of IT within the enterprise include:
The System Center Cloud Services Process Pack offers a self-service experience to facilitate private cloud capacity requests from your business unit IT application owners and end users, including the flexibility to request additional capacity as business demands increase.
After MMS Veeam made a great announcement for FREE 10 sockets of Veeam Management Pack
The Veeam Management Pack 10-Pack - a free VMware monitoring solution exclusively for new Veeam MP customers worldwide who are using Microsoft System Center 2012.
The Veeam Management Pack 10-Pack includes. A free 10-socket license of the Veeam Management Pack for deep VMware monitoring in System Center 2012 and One full year of maintenance and support
The Veeam Management Pack provides scalable, fault-tolerant and agentless VMware infrastructure monitoring and management directly in Microsoft System Center.
Veeam MP enables you to:
Click here for requirements and details: http://www.veeam.com/sc2012?ad=home
MMS that is. If you were like me you may not have been able to make MMS, but wanted to see the sessions. Well guess what you can! Check out
DIGITAL MMS!
If you missed a session or were you unable to register for MMS before the record-breaking sell out this year? No problem, join us virtually!
Watch Keynotes and Sessions On Demand, MMS offers over 160 breakout sessions across 5 technical tracks.
Click here to start: http://www.mms-2012.com/digitalmms
The Kinect sensor is a pretty amazing device allowing you to be the controller and has potential even beyond some of our wildest imaginations. Steve Clayton posted a recent TED Talk from Marco Tempest who used his magic and Xbox Kinect. It is pretty amazing technolody and even more equally amazing story. Let me know what you think:
Here is how he did it, pretty amazing:
Magic and Storytelling / A magical tale (with augmented reality) – Documentation from onformative on Vimeo.
So who is with me just got the email today:
Registration Confirmation for: 2013 Walt Disney World Marathon Dear Matthew, Congratulations! You are now registered for 2013 Walt Disney World Marathon. Please check the event's official website for updates: http://www.runDisney.com This is for the 2013 Walt Disney World Marathon on Sunday, January 13, 2013.
See you there!
Make a difference and vote for your favorite today: VOTE NOW
Register now @ http://www.mecisback.com/register.aspx.
So I have been quiet for a long time since I have been somewhat quiet over the past few months. Well it has been a whirlwind, so if your interested read on.
Business Tale:
So my career side I have decide to take a bit of change inside of Microsoft and step away from technical evangelism for a while. After 8 years I have met some tremendous folks in the community but it was time for my career to take new path. I started a new role as a Datacenter Solution Specialist (DCSSP). I focus on driving System Center and Windows Server technologies for our customers. The role is more as trusted advisor to the accounts I support and will require me to learn about licensing. Now I know most of you are probably laughing at this point. After I have spent most of my time at Microsoft avoiding the licensing conversation, it is now a core part of my job. It will help me to grow and understand the underlying business value of our technologies. You know I firmly believe our technology is fantastic and now I will be able to show the business value alongside the technical value. What I have seen so far has been great and look forward to sharing. Especially with all new versions on the horizon this is going to be an exciting role.
Another major factor driving the decision was a family desire to get back to home, in TX. As many of you know we were relocated a few years back to Ohio, but it was time to head back to TX,. This is where all my kids were born and where we were for 12 years. I was blessed enough to have an opportunity to get back to TX and while I will miss golf with my dad, I am absolutely certain this is the right decision.
Personal Tale:
So while the relocation has been a major factor in the timing of my blogging and fitness. I had one other aspect that has kept me busy for a while in October of last year I had surgery to fix my foot. I had been dealing with a bad hammer toe and bunion for the last 3 years (even during my Goofy Runs) IT was time to get it fixed. 2 screws and pin later and close to 4 months of down time. I am in the slow process of getting back into shape. However I do have a goal, on January 13, 2013 my buddy Jim and I will be running the 20th Anniversary of the Walt Disney World® Marathon Weekend . Who is with us?
So the relocation has been a lot of work, but I do have one funny story to share. So the first day in our new house we get all of our boxes and furniture moved into our house and it was late when the movers where done. We decided as a family to spend the night in my little apartment. Before we left I got my refrigerator hooked up and water connection working. I reached inside the freezer and turned on the ice maker. We left. The next morning I was in the house to get our TV’s hooked up. When I walked in I smelled burnt plastic. Do you know what smells like burnt plastic in the morning? The inside of the freezer smells like burnt plastic. There must have been a tremendous short as you can see from the pictures, so I am very blessed we did not burn the house down and the we got a new refrigerator. So all good in the end.
So What’s Next?
I will still be trying to blog a little here and there. While I learn my new role and transition into the new role. One question I do have, do you have interest in my talking about the licensing with System Center 2012? In fact some of you reading this post may already own the next generation of our System Center Products. There are some interesting ways to get our latest technologies and I would love to make sure you aware of them. So if your interested just drop me a line.
In the month of March Ed Wilson is going to be running a PowerShell Webcast series and if you are at all interested you should sign up. Ed is truly a PowerShell ninja master and this will be a great series.
Click on the links to Register today!
Take a look at the first session sounds great and looks like there will be a lot of practical demonstrations!:
In this session, Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson discusses the fact that in addition to being the management future for Microsoft products, Windows PowerShell offers a number of compelling reasons for learning it. These reasons include the following:
Register Today!
Well this year was not nearly as good as last, and is really a bummer year for my predictions. I am getting a better understanding of what is the trends are, so look for some better predictions next year! On the bright side I did pull a Chuck Woolery with my results this year:
Total 2.2
As always:
Go Browns!
I just learned about a great event coming up in March! The very first "PowerShell Saturday"! This is an all-day event that will provide registered attendees with the following:
There are only 100 spots available so register soon!
Meeting Date: Saturday, March 10, 2012 - 08:30 - 16:00
Quiz #6 (the last quiz, your last chance to get into the challenge!) opens today at 8:01 p.m. EST (7:01 p.m. CST, 6:01 p.m MST, 5:01 p.m. PST
Are you up for the Challenge?
If you answered yes, and if you are you a student, do you know a student or are you going back to school and can you answer a question like this then your ready for Round 1 of the Imagine Cup 2012 IT Challenge:
You are the administrator for the company network. You are bringing a new remote office online. The office has a domain controller that also runs DNS and WINS. It also has a file server that runs DHCP. DHCP enabled workstations are not getting DHCP addresses as expected. What should you do? Move the DHCP service to the domain controller Disable WINS since it interferes with DHCP on the same network Authorize the DHCP server in Active Directory Enable DHCP forwarding on the workstations
You are the administrator for the company network. You are bringing a new remote office online. The office has a domain controller that also runs DNS and WINS. It also has a file server that runs DHCP. DHCP enabled workstations are not getting DHCP addresses as expected. What should you do?
Well if you can answer that (btw this is from the practice test) then you may be ready to take the test to pass round 1, Until October 20th, go take the practice exam here:
Imagine Cup 2012 IT Challenge
To learn more about the challenge take a look at my post here : Students Are You Up for a Challenge? Enter the Imagine Cup 2012 IT Challenge NOW!
Here are the quiz dates
On February 21 & 22 there is a 2-day virtual training event to learn about the upcoming enhancements with the Creating & Managing a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 Jump Start.
It is 100% free and open to the public register now!
Sign up today at: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=298
Adopting this exciting new computing paradigm provides a whole new landscape of technology and career direction for IT professionals. Microsoft Learning and the Microsoft System Center 2012 team have partnered to bring you an exciting opportunity to learn what you need to know to deploy, manage and maintain Microsoft’s private cloud solution. Leveraging the popular Jump Start virtual classroom approach, the industry’s most gifted cloud experts will show attendees why this new private cloud solution, based on System Center 2012 and Windows Server, has garnered so much attention. Presenters include Symon Perriman, Sean Christensen, Adam Hall, Kenon Owens, Prabu Rambadran & Chris Van Wesep and there will be a live Q&A during the event.
Day 1: Deployment & Configuration (Feb. 21)
Day 2: Management & Operations (Feb. 22)
This accelerated Jump Start sponsored by Microsoft Learning is tailored for IT professionals familiar with Windows Server technologies, Hyper-V virtualization, and the System Center management solutions. The course is designed to provide a fast-paced and technical understanding of how and why Microsoft’s approach to the private cloud delivers scalability, security, flexibility and control. Here are few unique benefits of this course:
Go get it @ http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9796988. Here’s some bedtime reading while you watch the download, download.
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A Microsoft private cloud dramatically changes the way your business produces and consumes IT services by creating a layer of abstraction over your pooled IT resources. This allows your datacenter to offer true infrastructure service capability as well as optimally managed application services. Microsoft private cloud solutions are built on System Center and Windows Server.
Please Note: Many Microsoft private cloud scenarios require Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. If you are using an older version, we highly recommend upgrading to experience the full Microsoft private cloud evaluation. Need more information? See the product details page. Register to access technical product resources at the Microsoft Private Cloud Evaluation Resource Page.
The Microsoft private cloud evaluation includes:
System Center 2012 Release Candidate Available in these languages: English
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (optional download) Available in these languages: Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish
Go get it @ http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9796988.
I was asked by Ed Wilson to talk about, what else PowerShell! In the article I talk briefly about how to automate the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit with PowerShell.
Check out the article: Learn How to Use PowerShell to Automate MDT Deployment
Yeah I know it is a bit late, but I have been a little busy lately.
Quiz #5 opens today at 8:01 p.m. EST (7:01 p.m. CST, 6:01 p.m MST, 5:01 p.m. PST
The Dayton IT Pro Camp is a FREE, daylong Camp for IT Pros featuring Microsoft Cloud Technologies. During the day, we will have presentations on Hyper-V, SharePoint, Office365 and Azure. In addition, we will have a cloud security presentation and presentations from the Vendors who have agreed to support the Dayton IT Pro Camp. For more information and to register click here:
Dayton IT Pro Camp Wed., Jan., 18, 2012
The Vendors currently include Microsoft, Dell, donet, StorageCraft, Systemax ... the list just keeps growing! The Vendors will be showcasing their software and equipment at their Vendor Booths and during presentations.
Everyone loves to get an early Christmas present well this year, Veeam has a great gift you can unwrap today. Today they announced a holiday gift for VMware vExperts, VMware Certified Professionals, VMware Certified Instructors, VMUG members, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, and Microsoft Certified Professionals. Last year they delivered a free gift and this year they are doing the same! You can go unwrap your free two-CPU socket Not for Resale (NFR) license for Veeam Backup & Replication™ v6 for evaluation and demonstration use, this free software for your home labs.
So if you are a VMware vExpert, VCP, VCI, VMUG member, Microsoft MVP or MCP go here to get your gift:
Free NFR license for Veeam Backup & Replication™ v6
This software was released a couple of weeks ago, and is version 6 of their Backup & Replication product. The best part is the tool now supports Windows Server Hyper-v!!!!!!!!! You can learn more here: Veeam Brings its Data Protection to Windows Server Hyper-V. Here is what Edwin Yuen, Director from Microsoft had to say about the new solution:
“Many organizations that rely on Windows Server Hyper-V also support other hypervisors. Veeam ‘s backup and replication solution for Windows Server Hyper-V, which includes innovations such as changed block tracking, gives customers a new option for managing their virtualized environments.”
If you are not familiar with Veeam’s Backup solution, it s a great tool that can help compliment your System Center DPM environment. Here are some of the highlights:
If Veeam seems familiar to you, they participated in the recent blog series The Cloud on Your Terms- 30 Days about the Cloud and they wrote The Cloud on Your Terms Part 12 of 30- One Big Happy Private Cloud. Veeam Software, innovative provider of data protection, disaster recovery and management solutions for virtual datacenter environments,
Quiz #4 opens today at 8:01 p.m. EST (7:01 p.m. CST, 6:01 p.m MST, 5:01 p.m. PST
System Center Operations Manager 2012: Infrastructure and Application Performance Monitoring
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9792430
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Building Your Cloud Infrastructure
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9792431
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Building a Service Template
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9792432
Introduction to System Center Configuration Manager 2012
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9789981
One of the things that can help provide a differentiator in your career is certification. Especially with all of the new technologies centered around today’s technology. You may be wondering where to start, well Brian provides some great and helpful tips for you get jumpstarted on certification.
Check out Brian’s post here: The Cloud on Your Terms Part 30 of 30: Certification Tips To Get Your Career Ready For The Cloud
As I mentioned in part 1 we are going to be posting the series across 4 blogs: Brian Lewis, John Weston, Kevin Remde and myself. Let us know what you think of the posts and if you think of topic let us know!
If you happen to miss a part and want to get caught up. You can find all the parts of the series here: The Cloud on Your Terms: 30 Days about the Cloud
Quiz #3 opens today at 8:01 p.m. EST (7:01 p.m. CST, 6:01 p.m MST, 5:01 p.m. PST
In today’s post we have Net/IQ talk about how do you get to the cloud. Hopefully during this series you have wanted to hop on in and try virtualization. Maybe you are taking a look at comparing your existing virtualization environment with Hyper-V, but how do you get there? Well in today’s post Net/IQ gives you one possible answer to that question, with a tool called PlateSpin Migrate.
Check out NetIQ’s post here: The Cloud on Your Terms Part 29 of 30: How Do I Get to Hyper-V?
If anyone has a spare $650,000k laying around, I would like one. Full article here: http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/20/the-gadget-show-builds-an-fps-simulator-that-shoots-back-video/ Watch the video (about 17 minutes) amazing technology:.
Welcome to my personal favorite part of the series, part 28! Really the series would have been incomplete without a part of the series focused on PowerShell! As many of you may know PowerShell is one the great tools we can use as administrators for automation of repetitive tasks. IT Administrators have been saving time for years with PowerShell and on premise servers. Well you can continue to leverage your PowerShell skills as there is support for the worlds greatest shell in Office 365 and Windows Azure. In today’s post we will take a look at both ways to leverage the PowerShell in both technologies.
Windows Azure and PowerShell
The cmdlets are based on the the Windows Azure Management and Diagnostics APIs and the full source code is available through this CodePlex project so you can better understand the underlying APIs. Finally, the documentation included with the download package also shows how to use the cmdlets to perform a new Windows Azure deployment and retrieve information about a hosted service. You can download the cmdlets here: Windows Azure Platform PowerShell Cmdlets The Windows Azure Platform PowerShell Cmdlets enable you to browse, configure, and manage Windows Azure Compute and Storage services directly from PowerShell. These tools can be helpful when developing and testing applications that use Windows Azure Services. For instance, using these tools you can easily script the deployment and upgrade of Windows Azure applications, change the configuration for a role, and set and manage your diagnostic configuration. There is also some great documentation for the cmdlets here: To Learn more about the Azure cmdlets You can view a full list of the PowerShell Cmdlets here. Cerebrata also makes a 3rd part toolset for Windows Azure, you can learn more here: http://www.cerebrata.com/Products/AzureManagementCmdlets/
Office 365 and PowerShell
With Office 365 you can leverage PowerShell for Exchange Online as well as a couple of ways to work with the Office 365 service. Before you can begin to work with Office 365 in a PowerShell session you need to download the Microsoft Online Services Module for Windows PowerShell. This module for installs a set of Office 365 cmdlets that you can use to accomplish many administrative tasks, such as user management, domain management, and configuration of some of the service-level settings discussed on this page. You can learn more about the Microsoft Online Services Module for Windows PowerShell here: Use Windows PowerShell to manage Office 365 . After you have installed the PowerShell module you can import the module with the following PowerShell command or load the Microsoft Online Services Module for Windows PowerShell shortcut :
Import-Module MSonline
You can use these PowerShell cmdlets to change users passwords, add users, set user properties…etc. To see all the cmdlets for the module you can run the following:
Get-Command -module MSonline
One of the fantastic capabilities for is the ability is to manage Exchange Online with PowerShell. This is actually pretty easy to do after you have loaded the MSOnline module. The following PowerShell commands will allow you to manage your Exchange online environment:
#Get your Credentials (you will use your administrator account for your Office 365 account (i.e. admin@domain.onmicrosoft.com) $LiveCred = Get-Credential #Create a new Remote Powershell Session to Office 365 (the credential you stored in $LiveCred is used here to take you the specific Exchange online environment) $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection #Start the the Exchange Online session Import-PSSession $Session #Find the commands (when you start the session you will get a script with a tmp and long identifier) Get-Module Get-command -module #name of the tmp*
#Get your Credentials (you will use your administrator account for your Office 365 account (i.e. admin@domain.onmicrosoft.com) $LiveCred = Get-Credential #Create a new Remote Powershell Session to Office 365 (the credential you stored in $LiveCred is used here to take you the specific Exchange online environment) $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection #Start the the Exchange Online session Import-PSSession $Session
#Find the commands (when you start the session you will get a script with a tmp and long identifier) Get-Module Get-command -module #name of the tmp*
If you want to learn more about PowerShell here are two great resources for you: