With summer starting soon (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), work slows down as folks head out for vacation.  What better time to kick back and watch a TON of technical content from some of the smartest folks at Microsoft? I’m not sure when Channel 9 got so awesome, but they have a killer platform...

If you haven’t made it to a TechEd , you are really missing out.  Hundreds of super-smart speakers giving great presentations on all sorts of Microsoft technologies.  If if you have attended, you likely ended up with the problem that 4 can’t-miss sessions were all taking place at the same time...

It just does not get any easier than this.  Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell (Sysinternals gurus extraordinaire) have just published another amazingly useful (and free!) tool: Disk2vhd, which uses the power of Volume Shadow Copy Service(VSS) to turn your running version of Windows into a .vhd...

The Solution Accelerators team is at it again, releasing the IT Infrastructure Threat Modeling Guide , which provides an easy-to-understand method for developing threat models that can help prioritize investments in IT infrastructure security. This guide describes and considers the extensive methodology...

The Service Level Dashboard is an application built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It is designed to work with an existing Operations Manager 2007 R2 infrastructure configured to monitor business-critical applications. The dashboard evaluates an application or group over a time period that the administrator...

Internet Explorer: What’s New in Internet Explorer 8 Everyone expects something different from their browser. Some users are most concerned with security and privacy while others are more focused on customizability. Some want full standards compatibility, and others just desire ease of use. Explore the...

It looks like the Threats and Countermeasures guide has been updated for Windows Vista. This guide is a reference to security settings that provide countermeasures for specific threats against current versions of the Windows® operating systems. This guide is a companion for two other publications that...

It looks like this month’s TechNet Magazine is going buck-wild on Virtualization. October 2008 An Introduction to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 The introduction of Hyper-V makes virtualization an even more compelling solution for IT environments. Get an overview of today’s virtualization market and...

With the SQL Server 2008 release coming next quarter, now is a good time to start ramping up on the skills that you will need to deploy and take advantage of the new features of SQL Server 2008 . I see over on the Data Platform Insider blog that there are now 24 hours of recorded webcast sessions on...

It looks like the Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008 document has been updated to include information on Performance Tuning for Virtualization Servers.  As the Hyper-V RTM release is getting closer, this is good information to start reading now. What's New: •Added "Power...

WOW. This is an AWESOME resource.  So much so that I capitalized, bolded, italicized, AND underlined AWESOME.  I just found a page on Technet with TONS of Visio diagrams for every type of SharePoint Deployment/Topology/Project. Head on over here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb310619...

Download the eBook here . There is nothing particularly fundamental about this book, unless you are a CCNP or otherwise live and breathe packets. Surprisingly (to me) however, the book remains quite readable. Written by Joseph Davies (aka The Cable Guy in TechNet Magazine )... he even has an entry on...

Download it here . "But Sean" you may ask yourself.... "didn't you just post that version 4 had been released? What's the deal?" Yes, Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0 was just released. A representation of the two models (version 3.0 and 4.0) are as follows (3.0 is the first one) Besides the obvious...

If you were at MMS 2008 , or if you read executive keynotes in your spare time, you heard Bob Muglia mention that we are running MSDN and TechNet virtualized, in production on Hyper-V . MSDN and TechNet are full virtualized right now with Hyper-V, and we had a dramatic cost savings when we went and did...

In case you are curious what it is like to be in charge of Security for IT at Microsoft, you get to deal with an environment where there are: Approximately 100,000 intrusion attempts each month. Approximately 1 million infected or malicious e-mail messages received each month. Over 5,000 PCs rebuilt...

One of the best parts of working at Microsoft is the amazing discussions and debates that take place on our internal Discussion Lists. A few months ago, the greatest security minds at Microsoft were undergoing a hot and heavy debate on Security by Obscurity . Does it make sense to rename the Administrator...

I have been agonizing over this post for the last week and a half. I do my best in this blog to not post entries designed just to make me look smarter... I hope that you can use these posts to make your life easier, do your job better, and maybe have some more time to spend with the kiddoes. This particular...

...and awesome as always!  Check it out here . Windows Administration: Active Directory Backup and Restore in Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 and the new Windows Server Backup utility bring many changes and welcome enhancements to backing up. Here is an in-depth guide to backing up and restoring...

Great Stuff from SysInternals (and Mark Russinovich): Inside Windows Server 2008 Kernal Changes : Mark goes deep inside the Server 2008 kernel to describe enhancements to memory management and I/O processing, as well as how Server 2008 implements new features like Hyper-V, self-healing NTFS, SMB2, and...

Woohoo! Just saw it pop up on the Microsoft Download Center , an heard the announcement at the SharePoint Conference . It looks like the Extranet Collaboration Toolkit has hit the big One-Oh. Main Site: http://www.microsoft.com/collabkit Why should you care? The External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint...

Ever wondered what kind of sessions go on at TechEd, Microsoft Management Summit (MMS), OCS Ignite, IT Forum, WinHEC, etc? The following site has a ton of videos from these events: http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/default.aspx Watch Mark Russinovich , Steve Riley , Iain McDonald , and some other...

New goody from Mark Russinovich and the Sysinternals team! ShellRunas v1.0 The command-line Runas utility is handy for launching programs under different accounts, but it’s not convenient if you’re a heavy Explorer user. ShellRunas provides functionality similar to that of Runas to launch...

The TechNet Events Team has been hard at work recording "How-To" videos covering a wide variety of Microsoft Technologies, and they are now available in a single location up on TechNet. Click here for the main repository of TechNet How-to Videos . Here, you'll find informative "how-to" content aimed...

Good stuff! I recently attended some training with the Consultants that are featured in the videos below, and they really know their stuff. Not to mention the Sean Approved Price™ of free J Link to the TechNet Source here: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/f27b1c10-aa0f-421b-8c8f...

And it is all about SharePoint and OCS baby! http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/ Sharepoint A Smart Approach to Gathering Data in the Enterprise Information is one of the most important assets in an enterprise. But it can be a challenge to manage the mountain of data being gathered through e...