Welcome to today’s post and my last official post in the series. For this post I chose a topic near and dear to my heart: Automation! Hopefully, this is near and dear to your heart as well! The more we can automate and provision allows to move away from some of the grind of day to day management...

Being able to protect your Private cloud is one of the more important things you can do. With so many moving parts how do you approach this. If you are leveraging System Center 2012 for the many other components of your infrastructure, than I would highly recommend you look at Data Protection Manager...

Kevin kicks off our next series for February.   In this month we are going to be talking about Migration and deployment.  Over the next 4 weeks of we are going to cover the following topics in regards to migration and deployment: Week #1 (February 4-8): Windows 8 Week #2 (February 11-15...

Good morning Everyone and Happy New Year. For the New Year all of my IT Pro teammates across the country wanted to get together and talk about 31 things we love about having Servers in the Cloud. Throughout this month we are going to be talking about Windows Azure IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)....

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 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...

In today’s post John takes another look at the hybrid cloud.  This time he takes a look at using the public cloud technologies with on premise tools and techniques.   He really takes a great look at the technology from an application development perspective to an Active directory perspective...

Today Kevin got to talk an interesting topic for an IT Pro: Windows Azure.  Now I know what your thinking, wait a second that topic is just for developers.  Well maybe in the early on stages of Azure it may have been.   However now you can access and work with Windows  Azure...

As cool as writing and working with this series has been.  I love to talk about technology, especially technology that can help save you time and money.  When you look at the System Center products and a tool like PowerShell how can you not enjoy saving time and money.  However one of...

In todays post, and for the next 4 posts we are going to share with you our experiences in building out our local datacenter in California.  Kevin does a great job of writing up a post on where to put the DC.  It all boils down with a little bit of planning, and know how you are going to handle...

Quiz #2 (sorry I missed quiz one I was OOF)  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...

If you have been running Windows Server 2008 R2 (W2K8R2) you may have upgraded to SP1.  You may have not know why you did, but just saw it as an update and installed it.  Or maybe you are one of many that waited to deploy W2K8R2 until SP1.  In either case you might not know what you don...

Yup you saw that right PowerShell can be used to manage and work with your VMware environment. Specifically you use the PowerCLI when you want to manage your VMware vSphere environments. PowerCLI is a very popular third-party implementation of PowerShell. PowerCLI is a snapin for Microsoft PowerShell...

In the last couple of posts we have taken a look at working with providers and using the registry provider .  In this post we are going to use a provider near and dear to networks everywhere, the Active Directory provider.  Working with the Active Directory provider is just one way to work...

You have probably heard the term MDOP before and wondered what it is and why it is important to you.  MDOP stands for the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, and it will help take your Windows 7 deployments to the next level.   MDOP provides value to your existing infrastructure, but...

My good friend Jason just let me know that everyone can: COME AND GET IT !  What are you getting?  The greatest data protection tool on the market, Data Protection Manager.  Well the product has hit a major mile stone and Jason just announced the Release Candidate for DPM 2010 is now available...

There is really one huge change that will impact us all as IT Pros. We are launching TechNet 2.0, and one of friends Keith Combs just recently blogged about it, including two 14 minute podcasts located here: TechNet 2.0 – Episode 1 – Core Scenarios and Branding TechNet 2.0 – Episode 2 – The New TechCenters...

Shanen Boettcher, General Manager of the Server Platform group for the U.S. subsidiary, is going to be the guest of Kevin Remde at Thrive Live and IT Manager Community Talks in September. Shanen is responsible for overseeing strategy for the Microsoft server line within the U.S. marketplace. Boettcher...

So what do you really think about Cloud Computing?  I know you all have an opinion.  Whether it is good, bad, or ugly we want to hear from you!  Tell us what you think via the online survey below. Click here, tell us more, and make your opinion heard: Tell Us What You Think About Cloud...

I was sad to find out today that Randy Pausch had passed forward into a better life. I was deeply moved by his speech and the way he lived. You can read the full article here: 'Last lecture' professor dies of cancer For those of you that have not scene the last lecture it is worth your time. ...

The next generation of Windows Desktop search is now available!  This release signifies a fantastic step forward with common code!  The version will be the same for Vista and XP.  I will have more information on another post on speed and reliability improvements.  Very exciting and...

  Windows Media Player Version: Challenge!!!!!!! Alright Las Vegas the Gauntlet has been thrown, Keith and I want to talk with you during breaks at the Windows Server 2008 launch.  The Launch is on April 3, 2008.  Stop by and chat with us! To register for the event go to:  Heroes...

If you have never scene this talk, I highly recommend it, it is about 10 minutes long and worth every second.  I guarantee it will touch you.  It is an shorter version of a full lecture that he gave, and you can click on his name to learn more and see the full lecture.  Thank you Randy...

This is the year of launch events!!!  We have another fantastic product set launching this year in addition to Windows Server 2008 .  We are also launching Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.  For those of you not familiar with Microsoft Dynamics, it is a line of integrated, adaptable business...

Okay so you have extra days of vacation and your wondering how to use them? Well I have a few suggestions for everyone on how to get the most out of your vacation time and locations. :-) September 7 - 10, Cleveland, OH --- Browns vs. Steelers What a better way to kick off the NFL football season then...