SYN; SYN-ACK; ACK; It's that simple. : TechNet

Sunny days and disasters - get prepared!

chriskil — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:35:00 GMT

The sun is shining here in the Seattle area today, and for some reason, it got me thinking about disaster recovery. I guess I'm weird that way, but then I have dreams about command lines from time to time.

Anyway, thinking about how to recover from a major disaster and getting that documented into a plan can be a career differentiator for you. If you already have a disaster recovery plan, periodically reviewing and updating it is a best practice, and there's no day like a sunny day to re-evaluate what to do when the fecal matter impacts the rotating blades.

The online TechNet Library is a great place to find disaster recovery information for many of our products like Exchange, SQL Server, and Windows Server.

More individualized resources can be had in the TechNet Forums, where there are dedicated forums and threads to disaster recovery and high availability for things like SQL Server, clustering, and Windows Server.

Don't see the answer to your question? Just ask a question in the forums, and you'll be able to tap into the wisdom and advice of other IT professionals, including MVPs and Microsoft employees.

Don't forget that disaster recovery also includes your people and physical plant.

The United States government, courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security, has a web site all about being prepared, with a special section just for businesses. While it's what you might expect from the federal government, there are some handy tips around awareness and communication that are worth a look.

Of course, for any disaster recovery plan, you need to start by assessing what your potential risks are, from environmental to political.

Get knowledgeable about your physical environment first, as you're more likely to have a natural disaster than armed insurgents attacking your data center. Here in the Seattle area, our largest risks are earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, high wind, heavy snow and drought, not necessarily in that order. You might be wondering why drought is on that list. Much of the energy generated in the Pacific Northwest is hydroelectric, and extended drought could cause a significant drop in generated power to run servers and HVAC systems.

But each area of the world has its own risks, so get familiar with yours. Running IT in Canberra is very, very different than running IT in Calcutta and is different again from Caracas to Cracow.

Vitamin D deficiency is now pulling me outside, where I'll be able to gaze at Mt. Rainier, and think about where I can source dust masks for when it finally decides to erupt again. ;-)

Chris

FIN

Happy Earth Day from TechNet Magazine

chriskil — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:23:00 GMT

In honor of Earth Day, TechNet magazine has released an online-only edition, with articles around reducing energy consumption in the data center and other ways you can do more with less.

Check it out at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/default.aspx.

Chris

FIN

SQL Server 2008 SP1 is Now Available

chriskil — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:52:00 GMT

Good coverage at the Data Platform Insider and PSS SQL Server Engineers blogs, and as always, product documentation is in the TechNet Library.

Chris

FIN

Featured TechNet Books

chriskil — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:01:00 GMT

With the geometric explosion of ever briefer (hello, Twitter!) electronic resource materials the past few years, you might think the need for long-form books is declining.

Think again.

From ancient history's clay tablets to today's print on demand, books still fill a vital niche in our ability to store and transmit information. Especially when the system is down and you don't quite remember (or haven't yet learned) the keyboard incantations to make things right again.

To that end, TechNet is happy to present a Featured Books page, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/dd644554.aspx, organized by product and technology, that we feel will help you solve problems and gain new skills to keep your career headed in the right direction. We'll be expanding the lists in the next few weeks down into the TechCenters themselves and the product and technologies we cover, so consider this page just a start, and let us know if you think we've overlooked the best books for the category.

Happy reading!

Chris

FIN

Videos, videos and more videos on TechNet

chriskil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:27:00 GMT

Reading white papers, product documentation, blogs, forums or any other textual information can only go so far when you're trying to learn how to do something or get up to speed on a new technology.

That's why we've been adding more and more video content on TechNet over the past few months. In case you've missed it because you're using your bookmarks to just drop in to your favorite page, here's a handy link to TechNet's all-up video page. From here, you can see all the Videos available on TechNet grouped by product, along with links that take you to product-specific video pages.

Most videos are just a few minutes long and provide some great information on topics as diverse as the Microsoft Security Assessment Tool 4.0 to Windows Server 2008 Read Only Domain Controllers - Password Replication Policies to How Do I: Add a Perimeter Virtual Machine Host to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008?

Take a peek and let me know if there are videos on topics you'd like to see.

Chris

FIN

Refreshed Windows Server TechCenter

chriskil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:07:00 GMT

Spring cleaning continues on TechNet with a refreshed Windows Server TechCenter!

Our big changes here include:

A vertical left navigation strip that appears on every page of the site, exposing the most requested downloads and tasks
We changed the tabs across the top of the page to reflect the product versions
On the home page, a big, beautiful Silverlight video scroller that we'll be updating with new videos on a regular basis
Removed or migrated to the Library hundreds of pages - this should increase discoverability and make search results much better
Content cleanup and refreshes across the Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server landing pages

More to come here, but this are some big changes for this TechCenter, so please let me know what you think.

Chris

FIN

Refreshed Windows Client TechCenter

chriskil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:02:00 GMT

It's Spring, (well, here in the Seattle area, it was snowing this morning, so Winter isn't quite ready to release it's icy grip...) so it's time for Spring cleaning on TechNet!

We've started with the Windows Client TechCenter.

Notable changes:

More featured videos
Removal of sub-navigation elements (underneath the tabs) to pull the content up on the page and de-clutter your choices
For the Springboard pages, we introduced a new navigation element with buttons that takes up less space and just looks nicer than the text links we had before
We removed useless, bandwidth hogging-graphics :-)
Standardized icon application to allow for content type identification at a glance
Implemented OMPL feeds in some places for fresher content
Standardized the look and feel of the pages across the different product version pages for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7

Let me know what you think.

Chris

FIN

More Frequent TechNet Home Page Updates

chriskil — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:32:00 GMT

Regular visitors to the TechNet home page might have noticed that we've been making more changes around the content we feature.

Previously, we were featuring a variety of blogs at the top of the page, but we realized that the chance of a blog post intersecting with your needs today wasn't as large as we would have liked. So, we've changed that area to be more topical and up-to-date with today's concerns.

Top-of-mind right now is Security and Windows 7 - keep an eye on the space and let us know if the links we put there are useful for you.

Chris

FIN

Refreshed Sysinternals TechCenter

chriskil — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:11:00 GMT

The Sysinternals TechCenter is one of the most popular TechCenters we have on TechNet, so I'm sure that many of you have seen this already, but this week we refreshed its look and feel.

If you've never visited, take a look. There are some great, free tools available there like Process Explorer, Autoruns, and Process Monitor, all great tools for troubleshooting complex or almost invisible problems.

Chris

FIN

Blue Skies

chriskil — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:59:00 GMT

The Seattle area is notorious for its darkness during the winter due to the combination of latitude and weather. (A little-known fact is that Seattle is farther north than the majority of the Canadian population - check the map!)

Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn't rain every day, but It has been a dark, cloudy, grey, damp winter here in the Pacific Northwest and when we're not skiing (at night), reading, working, playing music in our garages or planning trips to sunny climes, we think about the sun and blue skies.

This morning the fog burned off, and a gorgeous day is blossoming. With it comes an additional spring to step and thought, and dreams hatched in dark caves of clouds come into the light and fledge.

If you're a frequent visitor to TechNet over the past year or so, you may havee noticed that we've been doing some repainting and moving the furniture around, and hopefully these changes have made your TechNet web experience better.

Last week, we kicked off planning for TechNet 2.0, and instead of approaching it from taking what we have today and adding a new paint and furniture, we're going to build a new house.

We have a blue sky, where everything will be considered and nothing yet seems impossible or crazy.

What would you like to have TechNet 2.0 be for you?

Chris

FIN

Speaking of security, make sure you've patched/scanned for the Conficker Worm

chriskil — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:53:00 GMT

Just in case you had not heard, Microsoft is offering a $250,000 USD reward for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet.

We have a resource-packed page on the Security TechCenter about the Conficker Worm to help you stay safe or get your machines clean.

Chris

FIN

Knowledge Base articles move to TechNet and MSDN

chriskil — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:44:00 GMT

Microsoft is moving its Developer & IT Professional primary support content (also known as Knowledge Base – or KB - articles) from http://support.microsoft.com Web site to MSDN and TechNet, respectively. This move is to ensure that Developers and IT Professionals will see support information in the places they would most likely to be looking for it – and so that other, relevant or associated information can be more easily exposed alongside it.

With this shift, you’ll see a number of changes:

· All http://support.microsoft.com Web sites that provide support for IT Professionals and Developers will now be directed to MSDN or TechNet.

· The initial implementation begins on February 17, 2009 with the pilot launch of 20 support articles (KBs) in English and Japanese. When the team is satisfied that major search engines are picking up these changes in search results (which should be no later than February 28, 2009), we will than add more than 55,000 articles in Chinese-Traditional, Chinese-Simplified, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian and Spanish.

· Security/hotfix articles will not move to MSDN and TechNet immediately, although all IT Professional and Developer content will eventually move to MSDN or TechNet.

The ability to search Premier Online, the MVP portal or PartnerSource/ CustomerSource does not change as a result of this change.

Announcing the Redesigned Security TechCenter

chriskil — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:39:00 GMT

Microsoft takes security seriously.

So seriously in fact, that we provide a broad range of security resources, including the Security TechCenter, which is focused on supporting IT Pros and their unique security needs.

Things like:

That's why I'm very happy to announce that we have redesigned the Security TechCenter in order to make the information you are looking for easier to find and showcase information you might not have previously been aware of and connect you with security community resources.

As we've been doing on many other TechCenters, we have removed stale pages generally cleaned house, making for a much more focused search experience.

What do you think? How did we do? What do you think we could do better?

Chris

FIN

IE8 RC1 and Refreshed Internet Explorer TechCenter

chriskil — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:16:00 GMT

This week Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 RC1 and Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8 RC1, and to celebrate, we've significantly revamped the Internet Explorer TechCenter.

As part of our ongoing work to reduce the number of pages all across TechNet, the IE TechCenter has been slimmed down to under ten pages! This should make it much easier to find the information you need to support IE in your shop.

What do you think - how did we do in the redesign?

Chris

FIN

TechNet Home Page Changes and Smaller Web Sites

chriskil — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:31:00 GMT

One of the things I love about the web is the fact that it is in constant motion and that we're all still making it up as we go along.

Here at Microsoft, change is constant, and my team has been doing some great work recently around slimming down our TechCenters by removing junk pages, ongoing 404 (bad link) fixing, and other look and feel work that we hope adds up to a better web experience for you. I'll do a roundup post later this week to highlight the work we've done, but I want to thank my team for all their hard work - you folks are great!

As part of that larger project, I have been tweaking the U.S. TechNet home page to remove extraneous content, purge redundant links and prune graphical elements that only added page weight.

I am not quite done yet, but it has changed enough over the past couple of weeks that I wanted to call it out and solicit your feedback.

Do you think it's better? Did you even notice that things had changed? :-)

Let me know what you think!

Chris

FIN