Words and Software

You might notice in the management pack guide library that some guides are quite extensive (like Active Directory) and some are a single webpage with "ReadMe" in the name (like FRS). You might also notice in the installation folder for some management packs that there are two documents: a guide and another that has MPAdd or ReadMe in the name.

What's going on with those? Last year and early this year, a number of MOM 2005 management packs were converted for Operations Manager 2007. When we released the converted management packs, we included the original documentation for the MOM 2005 management pack and added a supplementary document to provide any information that was unique to the converted management pack. Not rewriting the guides was primarily a resource decision, so we could make more management packs available more quickly.

What that means is if the supplementary document (which is specific to the Ops Mgr 2007 MP) says one thing and the guide (which was written for the original MP) says another, the supplementary document is correct. We just didn't explain that clearly enough in the supplementary documents.

I'm clearing out some of the blog posts I've clipped over the years and came across one that I saved when I was working on DPM. Jonathan Schwartz's article on how long it takes to move a petabyte of data caught my attention because it related to the DPM issue of when you might prefer tape storage to disk storage.

A petabyte is awfully huge, of course. As he explains, "A petabyte is a thousand terabytes, which is a million gigabytes, or a billion megabytes. Or 8 billion megabits." But thinking it over...my own little PC at home has 500 GB now. And 2000 workstations could be a decent size company. Not that all those workstations would fill up their 500 GB hard drives, but it made the data size not so inconceivable to me. Lots of servers, lots of data to maintain and archive - the numbers could get pretty big.

Then he does the math:

"So if you had a half megabit per second internet connection, which is relatively high in the US (relatively low compared to residential bandwidth available in, say, Korea), it'd take you 16 billion seconds, or 266 million minutes, or 507 years to transmit the data."

Thus supporting his contention that it is "faster to send a petabyte of data from San Francisco to Hong Kong by sailboat, than by the internet." Cool, huh?

This is a question about the root page for the two management pack guide libraries (operating system guides and server guides). All of the guides are listed in the left navigation pane, beneath the parent page:

In addition, when you click the parent page itself, the guides are listed and linked on that page:

The question is: does the list on the parent page ("Guides available in this section"), which mirrors the navigation pane, add any value for you? If we removed the links from the parent page and you had to use the navigation pane instead, would you care?

I'd really appreciate your opinions, either by leaving a comment here or emailing mpgfeed AT microsoft.com.

Catching up on my Microsoft-related blog feeds this morning, I counted at least a dozen blogs announcing the new Windows 7 blog -- some rah-rah posts, some just passing it on, some speculating as to how much information the blog will actually provide, plus some conversations on the pros and cons of transparency.

Coincidentally, last night I came across an example that illustrates when transparency is the best solution for a situation.

You see, the town of Hickman, Nebraska has made national news because they want to evict an old horse from city limits. I'm guessing that they've been inundated with queries, complaints, and accusations as a result. So, they turned their city's homepage into a timeline of events to explain the situation to all of us who probably couldn't find Hickman on a map and have no intention of moving there but feel it's our business whether the horse stays or goes. (You can probably tell that my sympathy has shifted toward the town's side...)

In my aspect as a customer, I'd be fascinated by similar disclosure about a product in development. But I can also imagine reading "Discussed flippeting the gibbet. Decided it wasn't feasible in this timeline." and being disappointed, because although I'd never had cause to flippet a gibbet before, now that it had been suggested and taken away, I wanted that feature back!

Thanks to a sharp-eyed customer, an error in the resolution procedure for alert "SDK SPN Registration" has been identified. The resolution is below, with the error and change in bold:

Current: 

You can use SetSPN.exe to register the SPNs for the SDK service. Here are the commands that you need to execute using an account which has domain administrator rights:

• Setspn.exe –A MSOMSDK/[RMS FQDN] domain\username (this is the SDK service account name)
• Setspn.exe –A MSOMSDK/[RMS NETBIOS] domain\username

Corrected: 

You can use SetSPN.exe to register the SPNs for the SDK service. Here are the commands that you need to execute using an account which has domain administrator rights:

• Setspn.exe –A MSOMSdkSvc/[RMS FQDN] domain\username (this is the SDK service account name)
• Setspn.exe –A MSOMSdkSvc/[RMS NETBIOS] domain\username

Update: edited the commands to replace the less-than and more-than signs with brackets, because they caused the commands to display incorrectly in html - sorry!

The next revision of the Operations Guide for Ops Manager will include an expanded section on management packs. We've added some procedures (both GUI and script) and some conceptual information. Here's a preview from the management pack lifecycle topic:

Best Practices for Change Control

The following are some best practices to follow when managing Operations Manager management packs:

• Maintain an archive of management pack versions to enable you to roll back changes when necessary. An efficient method for maintaining the archive is by using version control software, such as Microsoft SourceSafe or Windows SharePoint Services. Another method is to use a file share on the network with individual folders for each management pack version.
• When you set overrides for a management pack, save them to a management pack that is named ManagementPack_Override, where ManagementPack is the name of the sealed management pack to which the overrides apply. For example, overrides to the management pack Microsoft.InformationWorker.Office.XP.mp would be saved to Microsoft.InformationWorker.Office.XP_Overrides.xml.
• When a management pack is updated, update the corresponding _Overrides.xml file with the new version number. You must use an XML editor to update the version number of the _Overrides.xml file. If you make changes to an _Overrides.xml file but do not change the version attribute, you can import the file but the settings in the file will not be applied.
• Document the overrides that you make to management packs. When you set an override, add an explanation of the action you are taking and the reason for it to the description field by clicking Edit in the Details pane of the Override Properties dialog box. You may also want to maintain a spreadsheet or other form to document changes that you make to management packs.

I've really enjoyed the blog WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier which posts Harry Lamin's letters during WWI, each exactly 90 years from when they were written. The blog format, parcelling out the letters in real time + 90, makes the reading experience seem more genuine than the same letters packaged all at once in a book would (IMHO).

So I'm really looking foward to The Orwell Prize blog which will be taking the same approach by publishing George Orwell's diaries, each entry 70 years from the date it was written. The diary entries will begin appearing Aug 9 - mark your calendar!

I know many of you have been waiting anxiously eagerly for management packs for Windows Server 2008. The support statement has been released and now we can start publishing them to the Catalog. Be sure to read Clive's post carefully, he calls out some important information that you'll want to be aware of.

I'm not a hardcore gadget junkie, although I've bought plenty that I never really use...maybe a semi-junkie. Most of my gadgets are from Woot because at 10 p.m. pacific time when I refresh their site, it's really easy to convince myself that I have to have that (whatever it is). My most recent impulse was the Pinnacle Video Transfer. I have several old home movies on VHS that I've been worrying about losing, and the last gadget for VHS-to-PC transfer that I got failed miserably.

So I decided to try this. And I'm blogging about it because so many of the comments on the Woot blog wondered if it worked with Zune.

The answer is, not directly. However, I transferred the VHS tapes to a USB drive, then attached the drive to my computer and copied the resulting videos over to a folder monitored by Zune. Zune found them instantly and synced them to my device, where they played with no problem. Very easy and satisfying! And now I can sleep better, knowing my daughter's high school graduation is safely reproduced in digital form in multiple locations. (Also, back in the 80s, there was a chain of "Be a Star!" stores, where pre-adolescents could get makeovers, costumes, and then lip-synch in their own personal music video. I also salvaged that tape, to my daughter's chagrin!)

Most everyone has heard some of the stories about the frustrations of providing tech support. Here's a fun one that Help writers will appreciate:

My friend Duane was on duty in the main lab on a quiet afternoon. He noticed a patron sitting in front of one of the workstations with his arms across his chest as he stared at the screen. When my friend asked if the guy needed help, he replied, "It's about time! I pushed the F1 button over 20 minutes ago!"

So it's understandable that an admin might get fed up at times. But holding the password to the city's network hostage is...extreme, no? (I can see it as grounds for being fired, but I'm really curious which law they charged him for violating.) Although there are probably many admins who would sympathize with the lawyer's explanation:

"Mr. Childs had good reason to be protective of the password," Crane said. "His co-workers and supervisors had in the past maliciously damaged the system themselves, hindered his ability to maintain it ... and shown complete indifference to maintaining it themselves.

"He was the only person in that department capable of running that system," Crane said. "There have been no established policies in place to even dictate who would be the appropriate person to hand over the password to."

Part of me had been dreading this day. Once I had thought my 30 GB hard drive was spacious; then I acknowledged a bit of crowding by adding an external USB drive; but finally I had to admit that C: was just too small - I kept running out of sufficient free space to run Neverwinter Nights, which uses a lot of temp space on C: even though the program runs off the external drive. So I ordered a new drive (500 GB, it should be big enough for awhile) and waited for my first day of vacation to deal with it.

In my experience, when getting inside the box, it's more likely that something on this scale will go wrong and need troubleshooting than that it will just work. Knowing that, I first reviewed the basic procedure (found a wonderful primer on cloning XP at PCstats). I made a backup. I upgraded Acronis True Image, which I planned to use for the cloning.

Step one, install the new drive as a secondary drive. Minor fumble here, because the primer recommended booting to the BIOS to make sure it was recognized (it wasn't) but on the next attempt I missed the window for the boot menu and when XP started, it found the disk and offered to initialize it. Cool.

Step two, clone C: to the secondary drive. I used the manual option so I could make the future C: use the full space. (Yes, I know there are performance and security arguments for multiple partitions, but over the years I've learned that I'm most satisfied with one large space.) Cloning the 30 GB to the 500 GB took almost exactly three hours. I read a book.

Step three, swap the cables from the 30 GB to the 500 GB, change the jumper setting on the 500 GB, remove the 30 GB, boot.

Flawless. And faster. It doesn't get much better.

Last month, I announced that we'd started adding Ops Manager 2007 management pack guides to our online TechCenter. I'm relieved happy to let you know that the guides for Windows operating systems and technologies and the guides for server products are all online now.

If there's a 2007 management pack (from Microsoft) that is missing, please let me know at mpgfeed@microsoft.com so I can fix it!

I know the direction of the ceiling fan is supposed to make a difference -- one way in cool weather to circulate the heat, and the other way in hot weather to provide cooling. But each spring and fall, I have to look it up because I am never certain if I remembered to set the direction properly the previous season.

Now that we're going into summer (in the northern hemisphere), you want the fan rotating clockwise.

The Management Pack Guide library is now live on TechNet. About half (23) of the Operations Manager 2007 guides are available in the library now, with the rest to be added over the next few weeks. The guides are organized into Operating Systems & Technologies and Server Products for easier browsing.

I almost forgot to add...we've included the Community Content widget on all of the online guides, which means you can add tags and submit your own content to enhance the information in the guides.

I posted last month about the "missing" management pack guides for the management packs that were included with SP1, and finally have progress to report. As I stated, our goals were to:

1. Make the guides available online - and I hope to have an update post on that goal very soon!
2. Update the guides with any changes made when the management packs were shipped with Operations Manager SP1 - done!
3. Post the SP1 management packs with their updated guides on the download center.

We've packaged the individual management packs with their updated guides, and the first batch has appeared on the Operations Manager 2007 Catalog:

• Information Worker
• Client operating system
• IIS
• SharePoint Portal Server 2003
• SharePoint Services 2.0
• Terminal Services

More should be added to the catalog shortly!