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but obviously not! Hat tip to Sean at one of our Partners, Computer2000, who, at a recent event, told me about a Management Pack that had been developed by one of our Gold Certified Partners in Denmark which, wait for it, monitors the health of a coffee pot. I didn’t believe it either, but it’s true...

I’ve just received notification that the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Service Manager 2010 has just been published, and anyone who’s weighing up a deployment, or simply wants to know more about it, should find this free guide very useful.  As a quick refresher, here’s what an IPD...

That image won’t make much sense at this stage, but work with me here! On Friday 5th November, one of our key System Center Partners, Inframon, are hosting an event in London focused purely on System Center, and the range of technologies which exist as part of the brand. Whether you’re a...

Hat tip to Jonathan Almquist for this one – it’s something I’ll be installing ASAP! For those of you who have rolled out, or are planning to roll out, a combination of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, and System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, this free Management Pack could be of use to...

So the budget cuts have arrived – and it appears that for the moment, the biggest cuts are in schools’ capital budgets. Firstly we saw the Harnessing Technology Grant cut by £50M, then the BSF programme was cancelled, and on the same day another £50M was cut from the Harnessing Technology Grant – the...

Vizioncore, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest ( the vWorkspace guys! ), have released a free Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 which enables the monitoring of VMware virtual infrastructures.  Now, before I get into the features and capabilities of what the MP gives you...

Way back in March, I blogged about the 1st beta release of the MAP Toolkit 5.0.  Well, we’ve been through a second beta since then, and finally, a couple of days back, shipped the product, which I’m pleased to say, is available to download here . For those of you not in the know, what does MAP actually...

Downloading as we speak! Just over a month ago, straight from TechEd North America, we announced SP1 for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 , and stated, at the time, the beta would be available before the end of July.  Well, it’s available now, from here . What’s in there? Well, Dynamic...

Short notice I know, but a number of places have come available on this VDI course which may be of interest to some of you in the UK. 44CO181 - Desktop Optimisation: Implementing a VDI Infrastructure with Microsoft & Citrix Summary: Join us for this 2 Day VDI Instructor led course with supporting...

Firstly, apologies for the short notice on some of these sessions – the email with their details literally landed in my inbox this morning!  Here’s everything you need in terms of information, and don’t forget, if you can’t make the session, register anyway, and you’ll be made aware of when the...

As hardware increases in scale, and new capabilities, such as Dynamic Memory, are introduced into Hyper-V R2 SP1, more and more customers are going to start to encroach on the supported limits of Hyper-V cluster nodes.  As of May 2010, those supported limits stood at 64 VMs per cluster node, up...

If you’re a Microsoft Partner, and you’re interested in learning more about the recently released System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, or System Center Essentials 2010, here’s a couple of webcasts that you may want to check out: MGT77PAL: Technical Introduction to System Center Data Protection...

For those of you, like me, who aren’t lucky enough to travel over to New Orleans for TechEd, you’re pretty much restricted to catching up on the gossip via blogs, and news feeds.  Whilst this is fine for some, there’s nothing quite like seeing the technology for yourself.  It’s good news therefore...

If you know, or have heard of App-V, chances are, you’ll know it exists as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack, usually abbreviated to MDOP.  If this is the first time you’ve heard of MDOP, it’s a Software Assurance benefit, and is effectively suite of technologies designed to help you...

Love reading?  Love technology?  Like money? If the answer to those questions is Yes, then these eBook links are for you.  Covering a wide spectrum of technologies, from Office through to Virtualisation, and Windows Phone through to Visual Studio, this array of free eBooks should keep...

Straight from the keynote at TechEd North America (I’m not there!) comes this press release… http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/jun10/06-07TechEd2010PR.mspx “Public beta of service pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 coming by end of July. The new virtualization tools in...

I’ve had the pleasure to know the Orinoko chaps for some time now.  Heck, we’ve even chatted virtualisation over Peri-Peri chicken!  One thing I’ve learnt about these guys very quickly, is how well they know the desktop.  Whether it’s upgrading or deploying it, with technologies like System...

Hot on the heels of Thursday’s post on the virtualising of SharePoint 2010 , I thought I’d share with you, some useful resources around the virtualising of SQL 2008 R2, on Hyper-V R2, and the kind of performance you can expect from this combination of technologies. High Performance SQL Server Workloads...

If you’re thinking about virtualising SharePoint 2010, whether it’s on Hyper-V, or otherwise, Microsoft have released a number of useful pieces of documentation to aid you through the process.  Whether it’s support and licensing information you need, or more technical planning of the virtualisation...

I’ve been a big fan of NetApp technologies for ages, and I’ve worked closely with people like Steve Winfield, and Pete Mason, to produce a number of videos showcasing some of the collaborative work that’s gone on between Microsoft and NetApp, resulting in products like SnapManager for Hyper-V, SnapDrive...

For those of you using System Center Operations Manager to monitor your environment, you’ll understand the concept of management packs, and the value they bring.  Fundamentally, OpsMgr wouldn’t be the product it is today, without the management pack framework.  These management packs contain...

You and I both know, typically, training isn’t cheap.  It’s not just the course fees that can be expensive, but it’s the time out of the office that in fact, can be more costly.  It’s a pretty simple relationship – when your sales team are out of the office, they aren’t selling, and if they...

If you’re a Microsoft Partner, and you currently sell/deploy, or are thinking about selling/deploying either System Center Essentials 2010, or Data Protection Manager 2010 into mid-size businesses, then Redmond Channel Partner Magazine have published a very useful 8-page document that may just be up...

If you’ve had chance to watch the Quest vWorkspace 7.0 videos that myself and Matt Evans recorded a couple of months back, showcasing the installation and configuration of Quest vWorkspace with a Microsoft infrastructure, you’ll know that it’s a pretty compelling combination of technologies, that’s easy...

Earlier today, I had the pleasure of sitting down and having a chat, via webcam, live from the man-cave , with Mike Laverick, who, among other things, has a successful blog , is a VMware vExpert , and has written a number of books, including the VMware vSphere 4 Implementation .  If you’ve not seen...