David Ziembicki on Infrastructure Architecture : Microsoft News

TechReady9 Day 3 Wrap-up

davidzi — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:22:11 GMT

Day 3 kicked off with a keynote by Ray Ozzie and several very cool demos on UI futures, what’s coming across some of the Bing features, and some stuff MSR is working on. There was also a good discussion of how concepts move from MSR, to Labs, then into the product groups.

Next up was a very entertaining session with Jeff Woolsey, the Hyper-V program manager and president of the “virtualization nation”. This session dealt point by point with the FUD put out there by the competition. Aside from the entertainment, it was actually quite valuable because we get hit with some of these outlandish claims by customers all the time who’ve drank the cool-aid of the other guys.

Next up was a session on Terminal Services, which is being re-branded as Remote Desktop Services (RDS). Most of the new features in R2 were discussed (RDP 7, multi-monitor support, VDI) with some cool demos. One showed a six monitor setup over RDP with full multi-monitor support (I use three at home…)

After lunch was a session on the next version of OCS. Voice and PBX replacement are the key themes of this release, beyond that I can’t say much about the content.

In the afternoon I attended a session on VDI using the Microsoft and Citrix solution. This was an intro session to the deep dive that I’m doing today with the RDS PM and some Citrix colleagues. Good session, some good demos of the combined functionality that the two companies provide and how the solution is more fully featured and less expensive than the competition.

The day wrapped up in the evening with “Ask the Experts” which is an event where all the presenters and product group folks are stationed at tables in main dining area and the Techready attendees can come in and ask questions, network, etc. It’s a great opportunity to meet folks from the product groups as well as others you may not have seen in a while. Every year I bump into people I haven’t seen in years or who have recently joined Microsoft that I worked with before. This year was no different.

Day 4 should be action packed, I present during the 10:15 timeslot on VDI.

TechReady9 Day 2 Wrap-up

davidzi — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:02:13 GMT

Day 2 at TechReady was packed with technical sessions, no keynotes. In the morning I attended a session on model driven development. Not yet an infrastructure architecture related technology but as I mentioned yesterday regarding System Center, Microsoft is investing in a big way in modeling. The “Oslo” set of technologies is the foundation for developers and architects.

My next session was a special, invite only, session with a very senior Microsoft executive. It was an NDA session so I can’t discuss the content but in general the session was a very frank Q&A where the senior folks invited to the session were able to ask any question on any topic. I think people would be surprised how down to earth and still very technical some of the Microsoft senior execs are. Additionally, I don’t think most people realize the scope, scale, and challenge of managing the huge engineering teams for the big products.

Next up was a session with my Server Virtualization with Advanced Management (SVAM) colleagues. SVAM is a service offering from Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) and partners focusing on several virtualization scenarios such as server consolidation, dynamic management, VDI, etc. This session provided an overview of the next version of the offering which adds several new content modules including the VDI module I worked on earlier this year around the Microsoft+Citrix VDI solution.

The final two sessions I attended were with the Microsoft Online group (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, etc). The first was with the operations team of MS Online and the second was with the engineering team. Lots of info about their current offerings and even more about where they were going. The general theme is leveraging the new versions of the underlying products and bringing to the cloud a greater percentage of the features of the on-premise versions.

That’s it for Day 2. Day 3 will bring a keynote from Ray Ozzie, more technical sessions through the day, then Ask the Experts tonight.

New Microsoft Security Site for Governments

davidzi — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:44:41 GMT

A new Security section has been added to the government site on Microsoft.com. The site consolidates a number of relevant tools, solutions, case studies, and links relevant to Public Sector organizations. Several of the solutions call for specific mentions here:

Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC)

Federal Server Core Configuration (FSCC)

Infrastructure Optimization (IO)

Server Virtualization

The site also includes a brief interview with a colleague of mine in the Federal practice, Bill Billings, the Chief Security Officer of Microsoft Federal. In the video Bill discusses some of the cyber security priorities of the Obama administration and the areas Microsoft is working with the administration.

Free OCS 2007 R2 eBooks!

davidzi — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:53:19 GMT

I’m liking this MS Press monthly free ebook program. Especially with my new Kindle DX! Last month it was the Terminal Services Resource Kit, this month it is two for OCS:

Be sure to download these now, the offer only lasts for a short time (as in I waited too long to download last months and missed it!)

Windows Server 2008 R2 to RTM in July!

davidzi — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:09:14 GMT

The Windows Server Division blog announced that Windows Server 2008 R2 is tracking with Windows 7 and both are planned to RTM in the second half of July with General Availability on Oct 22! That RTM date is earlier than I thought it would be, I was thinking late August. The more I dig into R2 the more impressed I am with how many new features (Hyper-V R2, lots of RDS improvements, DirectAccess, etc, etc) were added in what the product group calls a minor release!

Free eBook: Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit

davidzi — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:29:55 GMT

The Terminal Services (now called Remote Desktop Virtualization) team has announced that the Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit eBook is available for free download for a limited time. You can register (LiveID required) here and download the eBook (~30MB). The 2008 resource kit books have been very good. I use them routinely for reference. I’ve also loaded them on my Kindle (blog post coming soon on why I like the Kindle so much) and am looking forward to the big screen Kindle for better readability and native pdf support. Enjoy!

Microsoft SDL: Get it to go

davidzi — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:02:09 GMT

Today Microsoft made available the Microsoft SDL Process Template. This was announced over on the SDL Blog. Roger has some comments on it as well.

The SDL Process Template is a free downloadable template for Visual Studio Team System that integrates the SDL directly into a customer’s software development environment. The template helps:

Installs SDL requirements as work items
Includes SDL-based check-in policies
Customizes security bugs and queries
Includes extensive SDL how-to and guidance documentation
Generates auditable Final Security Review report
Accommodates third-party tool integration, e.g. the SDL Threat Modeling Tool
Includes project plans and security risk assessment templates

Social Bookmarking: How to know where to go…

davidzi — Sat, 16 May 2009 19:15:47 GMT

Continuing the foray into social networking I started on a couple weeks ago, today’s topic is social bookmarking. For those who are even later to the game than I am, social bookmarking is basically a site or service that lets you tag and store your website bookmarks in a central location that is accessible from any browser while also publishing your bookmarks for others to see. Advanced services let you publish your bookmarks as an RSS feed so that others can subscribe and be notified when you bookmark something. Delicious.com is the most well know of these and provides even more features like being able to subscribe to feeds based on tags so that you get a stream of all new bookmarks using one or more tags. An example would be creating a subscription for the tag “Hyper-V” where you would then see a list of all bookmarks created where someone added the Hyper-V tag. You can also use these services to see and follow what others are bookmarking, a good way to see what influentials in your area find interesting.

Lesser known than Delicious but utilized by nearly two million people are the TechNet and MSDN social bookmarking sites. Like nearly all Microsoft web properties, after an initial burst of coverage when launched, there is usually minimal follow-up coverage (hopefully that changes this summer…) so unless you caught the original announcements you may not be aware of these sites.

For a thorough introduction and steps to get started, check out this post over on Technically Speaking.

For my purposes, I will be using both Delicious and TechNet for social bookmarking. I’ll keep the TechNet list focused on the deeper, more informational bookmarks on technical topics. As with everything else I’m doing online, I will be bringing these bookmark feeds into Friendfeed which I’m using as a hub for all of my online activities.

For the bookmarks only, you can find me at these locations (RSS feeds available there as well):

TechNet Social Bookmarks: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Profile/en-US/?user=davidzi

Delicious: http://delicious.com/davidzi

Hyper-V and VMM: Scale Up, Out, and to the Cloud

davidzi — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:44:32 GMT

Between MMS and TechEd there have been a lot of announcements on the virtualization and cloud computing front. First, over on the Virtualization Team Blog, Jeff provided the announcement and details around some new capabilities coming in Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 R2:

64 logical processor support. A 4x improvement over Hyper-V R1 and means that Hyper-V can take advantage of larger scale-up systems with greater amount of compute resources.

Support for up to 384 Concurrently Running Virtual Machines & 512 Virtual Processors PER SERVER. We are increasing the maximum number of concurrently running virtual machines to 384 per server and the maximum number of virtual processors to 512 for the highest virtual machine density on the market.

Processor Compatibility. Processor compatibility allows you to move a virtual machine up and down multiple processor generations from the same vendor. This does not mean you can live migrate between Intel and AMD nodes, just between different generations from the same vendor.

Not to be outdone, the VMM team announced a bunch of new features that will be in their Release Candidate coming out in a few weeks:

Storage Migration
Queuing of Live migrations
Rapid Provisioning
Host compatibility checks
Support for 3rd party CFS
Support for Veritas Volume Manager

Combined, these new features from both teams enable some key scenarios at both the entry level and high end of the spectrum. One of the major advantages of our stack is that it is very approachable from an entry level since it leverages so much of what your administrators already know and beginning with Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SKU, will be available with all of the high end features (Clustering, Live Migration, etc) for free. Within a couple hours a Windows admin can become proficient with the basics of Hyper-V and be up and running (for free!). Within a few days at most, the ability to implement basic clustering, HA, and Quick/Live migration can be achieved. At the high end, very advanced architectures can be implemented including VMM, OpsMgr, deep SAN integration, etc. This is where our technical guidance, solution accelerators, and service offerings come into play.

To see an example both of how this stack is being leveraged by commercial providers as well as an example use case for enterprises wishing to use the cloud as reserve capacity, check out the video below demoing a future version of VMM and how it will integrate private and public cloud capacity seamlessly:

Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed in One Client with .NET!

davidzi — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:56:15 GMT

So I’ve been using Seesmic Desktop as a Twitter and Facebook client for the last week or two. Very cool app built on Adobe Air. Today via @EverythingMS I heard about sobees, a .NET app that aggregates Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed (yeah!), and many other sources. I’ve only just started using it in the last hour but it looks very slick. In addition to bringing in a bunch of networks, it really shows off .NET/WPF and what you can do with UI design. It supports full Aero transparency, the ability to zoom text sizes in and out, multi-monitor support and a bunch of other UI niceties. There are several color themes available and a wide range of layout options for arranging the services. As an FYI it seems to run fine so far on my Windows 7 RC installation.

I don’t know anything about the makers of the software yet so other than pointing out that it looks like a cool beta implementation your mileage may vary.

Below you can see a screenshot of three services (you can add in more) updating in real-time (Note: I blanked out some of the Facebook status on purpose). Definitely worth checking out. They also have a video up if you wan to see it in action.

Facebook for Windows Mobile

davidzi — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:33:13 GMT

Microsoft has released Facebook for Windows Mobile. The application provides the following features:

Send messages to any of the people in your Friends list.
Take pictures and videos on your phone, then upload them right to Facebook.
Send messages or call people in your Friends list.
Manage your profile and post anytime, anywhere.

MobilityMinded has a very detailed step-by-step guide to the applications with lots of screenshots:

Image Credit: MobilityMinded.com

NASA Launches Space Station and Rover Photosynths

davidzi — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:51:36 GMT

From the press release:

“NASA and Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., released an interactive, 3-D photographic collection of internal and external views of the International Space Station and a model of the next Mars rover on Thursday, May 7.

NASA and Microsoft's Live Labs team developed the online experience with hundreds of photographs and a photo imaging technology called Photosynth. Using a click-and-drag interface, viewers can zoom in to see details of the space station's modules and solar arrays or zoom out for a more global view of the complex.”

More info from the Silveright Team here.

You can check it out by clicking the picture below.

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 RC

davidzi — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:24:44 GMT

The Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) have been updated for the Windows 7 RC build. I’ve been using a combination of the RSAT and the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Beta console on my Windows 7 machine to manage my Hyper-V lab machines and its been working very well so far.

The main download page is here.

Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 RC (x86): http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/F/C/1FC27A82-15D9-4D93-B3BC-24204175F9DF/Windows6.1-KB958830-x86.msu

Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 RC (x64): http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/F/C/1FC27A82-15D9-4D93-B3BC-24204175F9DF/Windows6.1-KB958830-x64.msu

RSAT Client is available to all customers as part of the supplemental Microsoft Software License Terms to Windows 7 licenses.

Once you’ve installed the update, you can manage what tools you want enabled via the Control Panel under Programs and Features, Turn Windows Features on or off:

This is the list of Windows Server administration tools which are included in RSAT Client for Win7 RC:

Server Administration Tools:

Server Manager

Role Administration Tools:

Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools
Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools
DHCP Server Tools
DNS Server Tools
File Services Tools
Hyper-V Tools
Terminal Services Tools

Feature Administration Tools:

BitLocker Password Recovery Viewer
Failover Clustering Tools
Group Policy Management Tools
Network Load Balancing Tools
SMTP Server Tools
Storage Explorer Tools
Storage Manager for SANs Tools
Windows System Resource Manager Tools

Facebook via Silverlight and WPF

davidzi — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:43:29 GMT

There was a lot of buzz last week with Facebook’s Open Stream API announcement. There were many demos of applications leveraging the new API, one good one is Seesmic Desktop which I’ve been using as my Twitter client and now has Facebook integration. It's an Adobe AIR based application. On the home front, Microsoft took part in the Facebook event and showed off some very slick Silverlight and WPF clients leveraging the Facebook API. Both were technology demonstrations created in 72 hours by two teams of 3 developers. This post over on Team Silverlight has the details and a bunch of screenshots. In their Twitter stream they say that they will be publishing the source code for these very soon. Below is a TechCrunch video showing them in action.

Windows 7 RC Available: What a day for my MSDN to expire!

davidzi — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:33:45 GMT

By now you’ve probably heard that the Windows 7 RC is available for download for TechNet and MSDN subscribers. Unfortunately for me, my MSDN subscription expired in the last couple days #%$! and won’t be renewed for another day or two. Fortunately, with some help from a fellow subscriber, I will have a fresh ISO this afternoon. If you poke around the MSDN site some there is another RC in there you may be interested in as well… For those who aren’t MSDN or TechNet subscribers, the RC will be available on May 5 (see the link above).

I’ve been using the Beta on my primary laptop and my home desktop since it was released and have been really impressed. Can’t wait to upgrade both to the RC. I’m also interested in testing the Virtual PC and XP Mode betas. I’ll post thoughts on those once I’ve spent some time with them.