The interwebs quote “studies” that claim we humans have ~70K thoughts a day. That’s about .81 thoughts per second if you are awake every second of the 24 hour day (86400 seconds per day/70,000 thoughts). I can’t seem to find the underlying “studies” to determine if they are using an 18 or 12 hour “work-day” for the calc, but, hey, we’ll go with it for this exercise. 70K is also just over the threshold the industry sets as a benchmark for the number of words in a novel. How many words/characters in

John Kelbley’s blog has a recent series of posts (including helpful screenies) explaining everything you need to do a Hyper-V backup is included in Windows Server. Highly recommended. Best Part of Hyper-V Backup and Recovery Is Windows! The Wonder of Volume Shadow Copy and Hyper-V   DiskShadow / Xcopy BACKUP of Hyper-V DiskShadow / Xcopy RESTORE of Hyper-V Backup and Recovery of Non-Windows VMs on Hyper-V – IT JUST WORKS!  

The newly released (and free-as-in-beer) Core Configurator 2.0 , helps with config tasks including: Product Licensing Networking Features DCPromo Tool ISCSI Settings Server Roles and Features User and Group Permissions Share Creation and Deletion Dynamic Firewall settings Display | Screensaver Settings Add & Remove Drivers Proxy settings Windows Updates (Including WSUS) Multipath I/O Hyper-V including virtual machine thumbnails JoinDomain and Computer rename Add/remove programs Services WinRM

There is an interesting IT Pro content development over  in KBs. When I go to a KB that does not apply to my current OS, I get this: This is frequent scenario for IT Pros because security best practice is to NOT browse the web from your server. So, if there is a problem on a server, many IT Pros research what to do about it from their client machine. This also helps consumers find the right content even though a search engine may have returned a KB with some vague matching keywords. Wouldn’t

Customers often ask “Given a hardware load-out X, how many Ys can I get/run/host?” The frustrating answer always starts with “…it depends…”. We caveat this way not because we want to frustrate, but because it is true. Many teams will go on to say “We have tested the following in our labs and gotten the displayed results…” 1 X = thingy 2 X = more thingies 3X = many more thingies While accurate, not super-helpful. The truth is that to do good perf planning for Hyper-V you have to run some tests. Run

There’s an interesting experiment in community just started over at TechNet/MSDN called the Community Machine Translation Pilot . The first member of the community is the machine translation (MT) service (thanks Microsoft research!). The MT service (not HAL 9000, I just like the image as a referent to a non_human team member)  takes an article, for example Hyper-V: Using Live Migration with Cluster Shared Volumes in Windows Server 2008 R2 , runs MT on the text, and then displays it side-by-side

Update 11_20_09: Not everyone will need to reinstall the Guest OS, if you are confident the OS in your VM is supported (probably most of you) , skip to install integration services .  Also, because we have more than 1 releases version of Hyper-V now, it is possible for the integration services on the VM to be out of sync with the Hyper-V version. This article on TechNet discusses the various combinations and outlines what the support story is for each. OP: Some customers seem to be having trouble

My team is investigating the use of video as a content type for IT Pros. We are compiling best practices and tips/tricks for creating this kind of content, but we need your feedback. Thoughts/comments? DO Have some lighting. It should be good enough to distinguish what’s important (for example, a person’s face if they are talking), but no more. Help the viewer understand whether or not the content is for them. Start with an intro, some text around the video, or both, that helps the user decide if

Aaron Czechowski’s blog: ConfigMgr Software Updates on an Isolated Network Jeff Gilbert’s blog: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jgilbert/archive/2008/10/19/synchronizing-non-internet-connected-software-update-points.aspx http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jgilbert/archive/2008/10/28/getting-required-updates-on-non-internet-connected-sups-part-1.aspx http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jgilbert/archive/2008/10/29/getting-required-updates-on-non-internet-connected-sups-part-2.aspx

Like I said in Magnificent Desolation , I would not want the job of selecting the Bing homepage image each day, because it the decision is fraught . Whoever you are, keep up the good work!   Here’s how to set the Bing image as your desktop wallpaper .

Twitter. IT Pros. Seems like vinegar and oil? Perhaps not. We’ve started a twitter feed to notify you when new stuff publishes into the IT Pro Library on TechNet for Windows Server . Come check it out at http://twitter.com/WinSrv Tell them Professor Windows sent you. “Friend” us or “Follow” us or subscribe to the RSS feed – whatever the “social” thing to do is. Let us know by leaving comments here how we can make it most useful to you.

We’ve published a new topic in the TN Library that lists new Hyper-V videos in LIFO order. Check it out at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee731912(WS.10).aspx If you are interested in sorting these by number of views as of today: Hyper-V Architecture Demonstration Video Getting to Know Hyper-V with Felipe Ayora Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Bare Metal to Live Migration in about an hour! Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Installation Virtual Machine Migration Test Wizard Hypervisor

The Appliance Test Drive — VHD Test Drive Program page has some updates: Including a link to the free Microsoft Windows 7 90-Day Eval VHD and the Run IT on a Virtual Hard Disk – Test Drive Program , where you can download Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise This download lets you evaluate Windows 7. Windows 7 has many new features and file management enhancements -- like Jump Lists and improved taskbar previews -- all to help speed you through everyday tasks. Windows 7 is designed for faster and more

CodePlex has a nifty free-as-in-beer app that sets your desktop wallpaper with the Bing daily image. Salty goodness. And Free-as-in-beer.

The good folks at Codeplex, the folks who bring you the free-as-in-beer Hyper-V PowerShell SnapIn also bring you the PowerShell PowerBoots . “ PowerBoots makes it easier for scripters to create graphical user interfaces in PowerShell, exposing much of the power of WPF to PowerShell in a simple syntax which supports events, threading, and much, much, more. PowerBoots is written as a script module which dynamically generates functions into static script files for each WPF control, combined with a compiled

The Security Compliance Management Toolkit Series provides organizations with an end-to-end solution to help them plan, deploy, and monitor security baselines of Windows operating systems and 2007 Microsoft Office applications. Recent updates include new security baselines for Windows® 7, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and Windows Internet Explorer 8. Did I mention, free-as-in-beer? Includes: Windows 7 Security Compliance Management Toolkit . Windows Vista Security Compliance Management Toolkit . Windows

Josh Barnard on the High Performance Computing team at Microsoft has a new video out explaining Job Templates in HPC. Click the image to watch the video on msn video . You can read the white paper at Windows HPC Server 2008 Job Templates .

In Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V R2, when a running or a saved state virtual machine is migrated to another virtualization server (also called “host”), the destination server may have a processor with a different set of features. An operating system or application that attempts to execute CPU features discovered when the virtual machine was started on a "source" machine, but not present on the destination (called "destination") machine, will cause a virtual machine migration

There’s a new video showing How to Deploy Windows XP Mode . Requisite see alsos: Others who downloaded Window XP Mode IT Pro Deployment Video also downloaded: Deploying Windows XP Mode white paper and scripts Windows XP Mode IT Professional Deployment Overview Installation instructions and Release Notes for Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode Building a Standard Image of Windows 7 Step-by-Step Guide

Ben’s blog post lays out all the background and details on import/export of VMs in Windows Server 2008 R2 . Soumya’s blog post gives a couple of scripts showing how to do a config-only export,a nd a script for importing it.