Rich Swier has just published a book, in which he posits hitchhiking as the only experience that encompasses the same elements of starting your own business: fear, ambition, blind-trust, risk and true self-exploration.
His blog has an interesting story from Adobe. According to him Adobe set out to build the wrong thing - a combination computer/printer sold as a solution for self-publishing.
Though both Apple and DEC wanted to buy the printing software, Adobe had raised $2.5MM in funding to sell the computer/printer combo. The board chairman told them to to ditch the plan and listen to the customers.
“You guys are nuts. Throw out your business plan. Your customers - or potential customers - are telling you what your business should be. The business plan was only used to get you the money. Why don’t you rewrite a business plan that is focused just on providing what your customers want?”
I've got an interesting meeting tomorrow. Watch this space for more details.
Our local NPR radio station yesterday ran a call-in about charitable giving. One interesting factoid: the Puget Sound area has 8-10X the number of charity auctions as any other region in the country.
In 2006, employees at Microsoft (more than 60% of them anyway) gave to their communities through donations of over $72.4 million, including Microsoft’s match. These donations served over 13,000 organizations around the world.
Why do you give? Do you give a fixed amount? Percentage? Does it float around based on circumstances? Do you favor giving "a mile wide and an inch deep" - spreading you giving around to different organizations?
Personally, I try to put all the wood behind the head of the arrow. I support German Shepherd Search Dogs of Washington State (GSSD).
Related Links:'Americans Set Record with Gifts to Charity,' The Seattle Times
'Absence of Major Disaster in '06 Affected Charitable Giving,' The New York Times
Cascadia ScoreCard The Sightline Institute
Hats off to our own Microsoft security "grunts". According to the July 2007 issuePopular Science magazine they have the 6th worst job in science!
"Like wearing a big sign that reads “Hack Me”
The article says: "The people manning secure@microsoft .com receive approximately 100,000 dings a year, each one a message that something in the Microsoft empire may have gone terribly wrong. Teams of Microsoft Security Response Center employees toil 365 days a year to fix the kinks in Windows, Internet Explorer, Office and all the behemoth’s other products. It’s tedious work. Each product can have multiple versions in multiple languages, and each needs its own repairs (by one estimate, Explorer alone has 300 different configurations). Plus, to most hackers, crippling Microsoft is the geek equivalent of taking down the Death Star, so the assault is relentless. According to the SANS Institute, a security research group, Microsoft products are among the top five targets of online attack."
Without you, this company would be pwned in minutes. Let no one say they don't see the "value add". Thanks for your service.
A beta customer recently asked about the default refresh interval for VMM - after what amount of time should he see changes he's made on the host reflected in the VMM administrator console? By default the beta 2 interval for this is 30 minutes, but you can run the PS commands below to force a refresh and ensure the changes you made are "sticking":
$c = get-vmmserver <scvmmservername>$h = get-vmhost <name>$h | refresh-vmhost
A VMM beta customer recently asked about consolidating 3 physical SQL servers that are not fully using server resources as VMs onto one host to save rack space and up the resource use efficiency.
Microsoft has a March 2007 white paper on virtualizing SQL Server with some good guidance on virtualizing your SQL servers at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/virtenviron.mspx, inlcuding advice on licensing costs - which sometimes gets overlooked in the planning stage by the data center guys.
You should read the entire paper (only 7 pages) because the conlusions are based on the assumptions laid out there, but, for those of you - like me- who are time-challenged, here's the Conclusion:
"ConclusionRunning SQL Server 2005 in a virtual environment has numerous benefits. Virtual environments can effectively consolidate servers so that the number of total servers needed by an organization is minimized. Virtualization also enables legacy applications and databases to run in a technologically current environment and can save floor space and power expenses.If your organization is considering virtualizing SQL Server 2005, Enterprise Edition has licensing advantages over the Standard and Workgroup editions when you license all available physical processors. If all available physical processors are licensed, Enterprise Edition does not require additional SQL Server 2005 licenses for virtual machines.While virtualization has many benefits, it is not the right solution for every case. For very high throughput applications and database applications that must be highly scalable, virtualization may not be the best choice. In these scenarios, running multiple instances of SQL Server 2005 would be a better choice."
A beta VMM user noticed when looking at VM properties on the command line that some parameters are bracketed with "{}" and some are not.
This is because VMM usually uses {} when the property is an array of items. For example, VirtualCOMPorts is an array of COM ports attached to a VM. It will show up in the get-vm listing like thisVirtualCOMPorts : {COM1, COM2}].
On another note, they wondered which ID tag they should use for identifying VMs: "ID" or VMId"?
"ID" is the unique identifier used by VMM to identify the VM. It is maintained even when the VM is stored in the library. "VmId" is the unique identifier for the VM used by Virtual Server, and comes from the .VMC file.
We recommend you use the "ID" field to uniquely identify your VMs in VMM.
The *free-as-in-beer* Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 1.0 is a tool you can run to find computers on your network (detailed WMI inventory) and tell you whether the computers can run Windows Vista, where to find drivers for devices on the computers, and lists hardware upgrade recommendations. "The Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool does not require the deployment of agent software on the computers being inventoried and assessed. It provides a secure, quick, and easy way to determine which computers, in a networked environment, are Windows Vista ready."
Nifty tool for those shops not running SMS :-)
Others who downloaded Windows Vista Hardware Assessment also downloaded:
Version 2.0 Beta of this tool is available now on connect (requires Windows Live ID sign-in and program registration). Check it out.
The TechNet SoftGrid site is live, check it out at: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/default.mspx and learn about application virtualization including:
SoftGrid is a core component of the Desktop Optimization Pack – designed to increase desktop manageability and decrease application TCO.
Instantly gain all the benefits of application virtualization, on-demand delivery, and software self-service from within the SMS infrastructure.
Consolidate servers, increase utilization, eliminate compatibiltity testing and siloing, and dramatically improve your Terminal Services ROI.
I don't see a SoftGrid community listed there yet, but watch this space: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/en-us/management/default.mspx
I just picked up my first PS, the Nuvi 660. I am enjoying logging my favorite places in order to create and upload some POI files for others to use. One handy POI file to have is "where is the nearest coffee and wifi?". I found this great wiki listing more than 200 in Seattle. It is hooked into Virtual Earth - but what I need is the GPS coordinates for all of these to load into my GPS. Anyone out there got a code-based way to grab this informartion and pair it up with the address to output and Excel .csv POI file? I wonder why Local.live.com doesn't provide GPS for addresses you search?
Here are some of the "geeky" POIs I logged this weekend:
A reader sent me an e-mail asking how to copy/paste between VMs. It depends on how much material you are trying to copy/paste. Seems like most people connect the VM to a virtual network that has external access and establish a network mapping. Then copy the file to the shared network folder, and access it from the other VM. You can also install a MS Loopback adapter in the host, create a new virtual network, assign static addresses on both sides, then establish a network mapping that way. If it is a large number of files, or a small number of large files, you may want to create an ISO image from the files you want to copy and mount the ISO in the new VM (only works from host to guest.) Of course, if you are using VMM, you can save the ISO to the library, and then use it on as many VMs and templates for creating VMs as you like :-)
This will go in the VMM FAQ for RTM, but in the meantime here is a rollup of the KBs defining support and virtualization:
897613:Microsoft Virtual Server support policy
897615: Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software
923832: Support for server clustering between Windows Server 2003 and Virtual Server 2005 R2
888794: Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environments
Running Domain Controllers in Virtual Server 2005 whitepaper
- Some cool Add-Ins are already available: http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/whs-add-ins
- Try the contest http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/
How can the Free VHD program get better you ask? New free VHDs have been added (10 in all), such as:
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Beta 2 and Windows Vista
Enjoy.
System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 Beta 2 is now available for download! DPM 2007 Beta 2 is designed to provide a best-of-breed protection and the most robust, reliable recovery experience for Exchange Server, SQL Server, and SharePoint. Try out the new standard for Windows backup and recovery – DPM 2007 combines the best aspects of Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and traditional tape backup with a seamlessly integrated disk and tape platform. Learn how you can use DPM 2007 to perform better backups as well as rapid and reliable recoveries while significantly reducing the costs and complexities associated with data protection.
DPM 2007 is the first backup product engineered from the ground up with Longhorn server in mind. Leveraging the Windows VSS infrastructure as well as a brand new volume filter, DPM is able to efficiently track block level changes on a Longhorn server with significantly less disk or processor overhead than seen in previous solutions. It also includes support for advanced application configurations on Longhorn like Cluster Continuous and Local Continuous replication for Exchange.
New features include:
· Support for Microsoft Exchange (E2K3 and E2K7), including advanced configurations such as E2K7 Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) and Local Continuous Replication (LCR) clusters.
· Ability to restore Exchange at the Mailbox, Database or Storage Group level.
· Support for Microsoft SharePoint (WSS 3.0).
· Support for Microsoft SQL (2K and 2K5), including advanced configurations such as SQL 2005 mirrored clusters. DPM 2007 also supports shortened SQL backup windows without the need for costly compression solutions.
· Zero data loss recovery for Microsoft applications
· Shorter backup windows and smaller full backups thanks to patented Express Full technology
· Efficient use of existing infrastructure, including reduced space requirements for Backup to Disk thanks to innovative data De-Duplication technology.
· Enables end users to do their own recoveries and integrates the End User Recovery experience into windows. Recoveries are as simple a right mouse click!
· Archive/Tape Backup and Tape Data Encryption
· Server system state
· DPM Disaster Recovery (DPM Backing up DPM)
· Protection of Virtual Server 2005 R2 guest OS’s and Virtual Server host based backup support
· Files on workstations running Windows XP Professional SP2 and all Windows Vista Editions except the Home Edition
o Note DPM does not support file protection on laptops running Windows XP Professional SP2 and Windows Vista Editions
· Command Line Interface based on Power Shell – DPM V2 Beta 2 Windows PowerShell commands
o DPM V2 Beta 2 provides its own set of Windows PowerShell commands that can be used as an alternative to DPM Administrator Console.
· Pre/Post Back-up Scripts
· Network Bandwidth throttling Options
Get it here:
32bit Version: https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=205&DownloadID=6741
64bit Version: https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=205&DownloadID=6740
Important docs:
You may download the following important Beta 2 documents from Connect downloads (https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=205&DownloadID=6599):
· Getting Started Guide
· Planning Guide
· Operations Guide
· Upgrade Guide
· System Requirements
· Deployment Guide
· Known Issues/Release Notes
· Troubleshooting Guide
Check out the beta FAQ: (https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=3467&SiteID=205)