chris e. avis - blogstrocity

Have you heard about "Mojave" OS?

You probably have read some stories on the "Mojave" experiment. For those that have not, Microsoft invited people to come see a preview of a new Microsoft Operating system codenamed "Mojave". The people invited with Vista naysayers. At the end of the presentation it was revealed that what they were really looking at was actually Vista. This was after many of the naysayers stated they liked what they saw in "Mojave"

Check out the Mojave Experiment site on July 29th for more info.....

Cheers!

PowerShell 2.0.....

I have been playing around with PowerShell more and more lately. I have even loaded up the PowerShell 2.0 CTP. Today at out IT Evangelist meeting I discovered a new community site for PowerShell at http://powershellcommunity.org that looks interesting. Word is this will be the premier PowerShell scripting community site.

Cheers!

Downtime......weak postage.....fun...

I guess I did those a little out of order. Should have started with the "weak postage" first since that is what this blog post is.

No cool tech info to talk about....No interesting tidbits of news that I think may not be posted anywhere else easily discoverable Just me making sure I get my post in for the day. I suspect that out of 365 posts that some will end up like this. However, today, I have a semi-good reason. Which brings me to then downtime....

A couple of days ago, "wallofvoodoo" (WOV)- my firewall server, had a few patches to install which I did. I rebooted the machine, went up stairs to make a sandwich, came back to the dungeon, and WOV was in a reboot loop (For the curious, it was ISA 2006 SP1 that made me reboot).

WOV has been my faithful firewall server for the past 7 years. Same hardware - just updating the software. When the machine started out, I had 4 Seagate 8 gig SCSI hard drives in a RAID 5 array running that system. Over the years the drives have begun failing until I was down to the final drive.

Final Config - Dual 400mhz CPUS, 768 megs of RAM, single 8 gig SCSI drive running ISA 2006 Enterprise

The final drive went south on me after 7+ years of near 24x7 operation so I decided to retire the hardware and build a new ISA box. I actually had a server running Win2003 R2 sitting idle so I patched it up, tossed on ISA 2006 +SP1 and then spent a significant amount of time importing config info from the original server and making tweaks to tighten things up. Funny thing is that this server has a relatively new 2.4ghz CPU/MoBo combo but the drives are pretty old in the grand scheme of things. It has a 60 gig and an 80 gig drive in it. I am using the 60 gig drive as then ISA cache drive since the cache tops out at 64 gigs. I expect these drives to go south relatively quickly so I am backing the machine up a little more frequently than normal.

Anyway....

After the downtime was resolved, my home LAN re-configured, a dozen devices re-IP'd, and some other misc cleanup, I realized I had not posted for the day. Only there wasn't time because of....

Fun.

My wife and I went over to the Chateau St. Michelle winery tonight and saw Chris Isaak in concert. We had never seen him before but I had heard from people who had that it was a great show. He did not disappoint. I especially liked his mirrored suit he wore for the encore.

So here I am, barely making it under the deadline wire to get my weak post in for the day about nothing particularly helpful or exciting.

What did you do today/tonight?

Cheers!

Grrrrrr.....

Have you ever spent hours and hours and hours trying to resolve something and ultimately it could have been resolved in just a few minutes?  That is the experience I had over the past couple of days. I was working with a couple of virtual machines that were created with Virtual PC only I was using them in Hyper-V. The issue I had was getting the new Integration Services for Hyper-V (sort of the equivalent of VM Additions for Virtual PC) working with these VM's.

I removed the VM additions, rebooted, installed the IS components, rebooted, and....

...no change.

I tried many, many iterations of going into safe mode and trying to track down registry info, and, blah, blah, blah.....

Ultimately the fix came down to a check box.   

I finally broke down and posted to an internal alias about the issue and received a response instructing me to run MSCONFIG.EXE, choose the BOOT tab, Advanced, then check the box for Detect HAL, then reboot the VM.

Once that was complete, the IS stuff worked.

Damnable check boxes.....

Cheers!

Revenge of the Nerd Dinners....

Tonight I am going to my first Nerd Dinner. My wife would argue that she has been living Nerd Dinners for the past 8 years, but that is a story for another time. Scott Hanselman organized this for tonight over at the Food Court at the Crossroads Bellevue Mall (note....the link to directions on the invite site was dead as of this posting. I sent a corrected link to Scott).

I have never been to a nerd dinner.

I have no idea who will be there or what to expect. But just the thought of nerds/geeks/dweebs/dorks meeting at "the mall" revives memories of playing D&D at the mall back in the early 80's. A bunch of gangly, cumbersome, pimply faced kids with shirts buttoned up to the top button, scores of well sharpened #2 pencils (critical for D&D!), graph paper, and 20-sided dice. The ultimate party foul was to spill a Coke on the playing field.

These days I am not so gangly and I only endure the occasional zit (come on...I am 42! go away already!). I stopped playing D&D loooong ago (I would enjoy playing again if there is a group on the East Side) but I still have most of my gear. In fact I still have my original D&D manuals from the 70's. I wonder how much those might be worth.

Anyway....I am looking forward to hanging out with some fellow geeks tonight and meeting some new people. If you happen to be free tonight, come on out!

Nerd Dinner!   Tonight!      Be there and Be Square!

Cheers!

Post #1 of 365... (some BitLocker stuff)....

And so it begins.....this is the first post of the 1 year test that I am doing to make at least one post a day for the next 365 days. At first I thought I would shoot for just business days but I figure I can get the other 104 posts in as well.

I don't want to just post fluff to make it through though. I want the posts to be useful, relevant and of value.

Here we go.....

We are about to start our live event deliveries again and I have been working on one particular piece of content that we will be delivering. I put together a session called "Why to Deploy Vista with SP1". Pretty easy session really. Why would you deploy without SP1 unless you have 1) a serious application compatibility problem or 2) you just don't care about the stability and security of your Vista systems? Of course there is quite a bit to SP1 but in the session I am focusing on some of the performance enhancements for networking and file copies as well as improvements in BitLocker, Group Policy and Diagnostics.

Did you know that once you have Vista SP1 in place you can use BitLocker on driver other than the C: drive? You can even use BitLocker on removable drives (as long as they are formatted NTFS). One of the first BitLocker questions I hear is "What about the performance impact of encrypting/decrypting on the fly?".

There really isn't any.

Sure, if you fire up some PerfMon type tools you will see charts and lines that show a performance hit and depending on the scale you may think it is a huge hit, but I challenge the average human being to even notice it. Hardware is just so fast these days that us humans don't feel the hit. In fact, my demo environment is setup like this -

Lenovo T61p laptop

100gig 7200 RPM SATA Primary Drive (C:)

100gig 7200 RPM SATA Secondary Drive (H:)

Windows 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V

I have BitLocked the C: and H: drives (C: is the O/S drive and H: is where I store all the Hyper-V .VHD files) and run Hyper-V VM's on the machine for demos. Both drives are fully encrypted and I don't have any complaints about performance on this machine.

I repeat....I am running a Server O/S and virtualizing additonal OSes along with it on fully encrypted drives and I am happy with the system.

That is pretty darn cool....

I think where people get tripped up is that they turn on BitLocker, go about their business and start complaining about performance while the drive is actively being encrypted/decrypted. In that case you can suffer a significant performance hit because the system is trying to encrypt/decrypt the entire drive and there is a tremendous amount of disk I/O going on. Once the drive is full encrypted/decrypted, the performance hit is in the low single digits (I have heard 1-3% and 3-6% separately....my personal experience seems to support the 1-3% range)

My Recommendation....

Just before bedtime (or quitting time), enable BitLocker, perform the required reboot, then turn it on for the drives in question. Let it run overnight. In the morning, confirm BitLocker is enabled by checking in the BitLocker Control Panel and then go about your business.

You won't even know it is there....

Cheers!

TMSAM02 gets you 15% of NEW TechNet Subscription....

When you sign up for a NEW TechNet Subscription over at the TechNet site, at some point you will get prompted for a discount/promotional code. Use TMSAM02 and it will net you 15% off. This only applies to NEW subscriptions at the moment and it it should work for you regardless of where you are on the planet. This is a brand new promo and I expect a few speed bumps so please let me know if you have difficulties with it.

Cheers!

The Darkness....

Not that I should have to point this out, but I have not been very active since my screencast posting on FTP(S) about a month ago. If you read my post on June 16th you will get a feel for why. It has been and continues to be a busy time for me. Add in that it is review time, and things are pretty active even though I am not on the road. I am still slowly converting the home network and I am still working on some additional IIS related screencasts. I had a specific request for one on User Isolation which I believe I will get posted by the end of next week.

However, starting Monday, July 21st, I am going to push for a goal of posting at least one post every day for the next year. I have a secondary goal of one screen cast every week. These are my own goals and I am posting about them here because I want to be held accountable for those goals. I would like the 18 people (up from 11 last year!) who read my blog to help keep me accountable.  :)

It is also a part of my master plan to overtake my buddy Keith Combs. Keith has established himself as a well respected blogger both inside and outside of Microsoft. This is reflected in his hit count. I challenged him last year and told him I would beat him out (I may have even said double his hits) by the end of this fiscal year.

That didn't happen.

But I have to confess that I didn't make a very concerted effort toward beating him out. This year I want to see if I can make it happen.

I have received a lot of email questions in the past few months from people asking about Windows 2008 features or how to diagnose or troubleshoot specific issues. Those requests will be some of what fuels my daily postings. Keep them coming. I also have my own topics I like to post about that will get tossed in as well. I am a big fan of Media Center, ISA (did you know that ISA 2006 SP1 is available?), and SBS. With the new deal with NetFlix announced, I am now more interested in what my Xbox 360 adds to my media mix as well.

Of course there is also all of the social networking stuff. Particularly in the virtual world arena. There are some interesting things to look at regarding places like Second Life and Google's Lively.

For now though I have to take a break and talk to the guy who is going to tell me how much money it is going to cost to fix the underground leak in the swimming pool that I only get to use 2, maybe 3 months out of the year. Depending on the cost I may just have to drain it and buy a skateboard....

Updated - 7/18/2008 -- Corrected my FTP(S) reference (Thanks Alun!)

Cheers!

How to reach me....

You will notice on the left side of my blog, I now have links to a variety of services I frequent. I am paying particular attention to Friend Feed these days because it seems to track comments and conversations better. I can't seem to find a way to link directly to me in Second Life thought so that icon just links to the main page. If you know how to link to a profile or other direct info in SL, please let me know so I can update.

There are a few more things I am going to link to as well that I am trying to find small icons for. Failing that I will just create my own small icons for them :)

So many services, so little time!

Cheers!

No TV service for a year.....

I canceled my cable TV service today. Later this afternoon I am going to drop off the HD DVR and since I have consistently overpaid my bill for the last year they actually owe me money when all is said and done. People that know me real well might think I have lost my mind. Partly because they know how much TV and how many movies I watch and partly because......they know how much TV and how many movies I watch.

I love TV. I have grown up in the TV generation. My generation started watching TV when the bulk of it was still in black and white. We lived through the transition to color. We lived through the transition from an antenna on top of everyone's house to having cable. We lived through the added competition and cheaper pricing that satellite services have brought us. We lived through early adopters putting antennas back on top of the house to get HDTV signals over the air. If I wanted to hold on for another 8 months I would experience the cut off of analog signals when we go digital.

But I decided to cancel my cable service for several reasons --

Cost - I was spending roughly $100 a month on cable TV service. It wasn't anything fancy, a basic package upgraded with all of the HD channels they offered and an HD DVR. No premium movie channels and no sports packages. That's $100 a month for something that up until the 70's was 100% free. Sure, cable introduced a bunch of cool stuff but 30 years down the road, there are really only a small number of channels and shows worth watching on the 100's of channels offered (IMO) and $100 a month just isn't worth it. So that is $1200 a year I get to keep and in these troubling financial times, the more money in my pocket, the better.

Selection - My cable company offered 25 HD channels (not including the premium HBO type HD channels). But they do not offer and have no plans to offer SciFi HD, or Monsters HD which I would love to have. When compared against DirectTV's HD lineup, they just can't match it. And since they are the only cable company in town, it seems to me they have no desire to add additional services to make it worth my money to stay with them. Problem is, I can't get DirectTV because of all the tall tress on my property and I don't want to add a huge mast on the property to mount a dish on just to make it happen.

Time - There just isn't enough of it. I watch a LOT of TV and movies. It is an incredible time suck and I want some of the time back to accomplish other things in my life. I am not getting any younger and neither are my wife and kids. The fence needs mending, the south 40 needs some work, and I have camping to do.

It's still going to be out there - The major networks place most of the shows I would be interested in watching on their web sites within 24-48 hours of the original air date. Failing that, everyone releases DVD compilations just before the new season begins. So I can rent what I REALLY want to watch and play catch up when I need to. Nothing like spending a rainy day in your pajamas watching episode after episode of Battlestar Galactica..... I also believe most movies are worth watching on the big screen in the theater, opening weekend when the crowd gets into it.

I also truly believe that the broadcasters and Hollywood have lost the war against P2P and file sharing sites. They will never be able to prevent content from being distributed digitally over the Internet. It only takes a BitTorrent client and decent Internet connection and 30 minutes to locate, download and start watching a compressed HD version of most TV shows and movies (....or so I've heard....).  They are going to figure this out sooner or later and digital distribution will become the standard means of getting content in the next 5-10 years. I have mentioned in several seminars that I am far less impressed with the 100's of CD's and DVD's people have on display at their houses and far more impressed with people that have Home Theater PC's that allow them to call up what they want to consume within seconds without having to dig a CD or a DVD out of a case, watch all the previews and THEN get to the movie. Long ago I ripped down my entire music and DVD collections and put it all in crates in the basement. There will come a day, and a lot sooner than many think, where we don't own any physical media at all except for a big RAID array where it is all stored. So call me an early, early adopter.

Thus begins my one year long experiment with no TV services (officially starts July 1st). I will consume what I can from the content providers web sites and supplement the rest with DVD rentals, and going to the movies. I know where the bars are that show my favorite sports teams live and I have season tickets for the Seattle Thunderbirds. I haven't watched live news broadcasts regularly in years (does anyone anymore?) and I know enough people with DVR's that I can capture anything else I may want to see through them.

Time to start working on the honey-do list.....

Cheers!

What I am working on....

Normally this time of year is slow and I enjoy the downtime by doing summery stuff. I will still get that fun and leisure in, but I am working on a few projects right now.

I am writing a session for our Q1 content tentatively called "Why Vista?".

I am writing two sessions for delivery in Second Life on June 28th

I am working on some screencasts to discuss more in depth some of the new FTP services in FTP 7 for Windows 2008

The work on the screencasts and encoding the work has raised my interest in the variety of encoding formats and codecs used in the audio/video world so you might see some sessions on that in the future.

And I am still, very slowly, migrating my home network over to Windows 2008 AD. I am documenting this as well.

Keep your eyes peeled!

Cheers!

How to configure FTP over SSL (Secure FTP) on Windows 2008 in less than 10 minutes....

Lots of reasons why I like this post! 

1) I like the content I am delivering in this one. Short, Sweet, to the point. This is the kind of stuff I want to do!

2) How many people even know when have a Secure FTP server service in Windows now?

3) This is my first SilverLight embedded post!  I have been chomping at the bits to do some of these and just have not taken the time. Over the past 2 days I have been working off of a document that my buddy Keith Combs put together for our team that was tremendously helpful in getting me going.

4) This is going to push me to leverage my new Quad Core/8 Gig of RAM boxes. Rendering videos down has always been painful and these two boxes should alleviate a lot of the time wasted watching progress bars crawl across the screen.

Now for the real post content. As noted above, not too many people even know that we have a Secure FTP service for Windows now. We haven't exactly gone out of our way to let the world know, so I want to do my part. As usual, I am using my home servers so you won't see all the Contoso stuff for the demos.

An excellent source of information on the new FTP services and EVERYTHING IIS related  is at the IIS.net web site.

btw....you can go full screen by double-clicking on the video during playback or using the button on the far left of the player toolbar.

Cheers!

BitLocker Interview is finally online.....

BUT!

You won't be accessing it directly from my blog. Instead, I have posted it through the Technet EDGE portal. Why?  Because the file is 325 megs in size and hosting it at home really isn't an option. Also, I am limited on storage space for where our blogs.technet.com blogs reside. I am working on getting that resolved so that I can host some things directly through the blog and others on EDGE.

"Hey Chris! Why the hell did it take so long for you to get this online?!?!?!"

1) I am not a video editing guy (yet) and the tool set to do all of this is a little convoluted to work with. I had stuff to learn.

2) I really wanted to post things like this to my blog instead of another property. But when push comes to shove I really just need to get the content out there. I am working on some other blogging things that will let me host it all myself.

3) I am a horrible procrastinator....(working on that too)....

Now that I have run through the initial toolset, my next project will be to do some significantly smaller videos and screencasts to stream via SilverLight. I am actually working on that today so you may see some samples later today or early tomorrow. Not guaranteeing it, just working on that as my goal.

Oh yeah....I guess I should provide the link for the BitLocker Interview!!

Cheers!

Get the fact about Vista from Technology Wizards.....

Technology Wizards is a group of independent IT consultants with a strong focus on small business. I have delivered some Windows and SBS sessions for their group in the past. Ken Shafer leads the group and he let me know about an independent "Get The Facts" seminar they are delivering on Vista. You can get more information and register for the event here. Here is a summary of what the event is about....

"Are you an IT Pro, Reseller or Consultant considering whether or not to deploy or recommend deploying Windows Vista for business use? Are you trying to figure out how to recommend to technical or business decisions makers whether to upgrade or not, and why?  Are you frustrated with all the opinions and hype and want the real facts?

This FREE educational event will be conducted by a group of independent IT Professionals and is not about marketing spin or opinion-based rhetoric. It is about getting the facts you need to make a decision regarding deployment of Windows Vista.

We will cover many of the features and benefits of Windows Vista, but we will do it with a real-world approach. You will also hear about some of the challenges and solutions, including deployment and features of Service Pack 1.

In addition, a panel discussion will give you an opportunity to get questions answered that may be lingering.

If you are an IT Decision Maker, IT Professional or a Technology Reseller/Consultant, this is the Windows Vista event you've been waiting for."

If you happen to be in the Portland, OR area on June 17th, check them out!

Cheers!

TechNet Radio - How MSIT uses Application Virtualization (SoftGrid)...

Last week I recorded a Technet Radio session with Michael Gallegos on how Microsoft IT uses Application Virtualization/Softgrid for virtualizing applications with the Microsoft corporate network. As usual, I learned a few things and my interest level went way up for this technology.

Once you get to the page you can pull down the file in WMA and MP3 formats for offline replay.

Cheers!