Not everyone can make it to TechEd each year and not everyone can go to the North America show. This year it was held in Orlando, Florida from June 10-13, 2008. I was fortunate to be there and I took the TechNet Spotlight camera crew with me to record a selection of sessions.

Hope you enjoy them….

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TechEd IT Professionals 2008- Available Videos

TechEd IT  Professionals 2008 Event Page: http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/event.aspx?id=104

Links to Session Videos:

Ø Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Susan Sauls

Ø Intro to SQL Server Data Services,  Soumitra Sengupta

Ø The Spy Who Hacked Me! , Alex Smolen, Rudolph Araujo

Ø How Microsoft SQL Server Helps You to Lower Your Cost of Storage, Torsten Grabs

Ø Microsoft System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008: Overview, Edwin Yeun

Ø A Hackers Diary: How I Can Hack Your Vulnerable Services and How You Can Stop Me, Marcus Murray

Ø Advances Microsoft SQL Server PowerShell Tips and Tricks, Dan Jones

Ø Technical Introduction to Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, Jason Buffington

Ø Introduction to Microsoft Forefront Code Name "Stirling", Brad Wright

Ø Hyper-V Architecture, Scenarios and Networking, Jeff Woolsey, Mike Sterling

Ø Windows, PowerShell, and Windows Management Instrumentation: Unveiling Microsoft's Best Kept Secret,  Ben Pearce

Ø Windows Logins Revealed, Mark Minasi

Ø Virtualization and Security: What Does it Mean For Me? Steve Riley

Ø Windows Security Boundaries Mark Russinovich

Ø How to Build Your next Generation IT Infrastructure Using Windows Server 2008, Corey Hynes

Ø Deploying Windows Server 2008 Hyper V and System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Best Practices Edwin Yeun, Alan Stewart

Ø Deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Ryan Casey

Ø Microsoft System Centre Service Manager Paul Ross, Travis Wright

Ø Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: Scripting & Programmatic Management for Fun & Profit (VBS & PowerShell), John Kelbley, Alexander Lash

The SQL Server 2008 event series is now available from TechNet. Consisting of 6 initial sessions listed below, you can access video and audio version of each sessions, along with links to additional resources and training.

SQL-300 What's New In Microsoft SQL 2008
In this session, we will go through an overview tour of the new features of SQL Server 2008, split into four core areas, Enterprise Data Platform, Beyond Relational, Dynamic Development, and Pervasive Insight.
WMA | Zune | MP3

SQL-301 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Database Engine Overview and Data Compression
In this session, we will explore the new features in SQL Server 2008. The topics that will be covered are enhancements to the SQL Server database engine and improvements to the T-SQL programming language.
WMA | Zune | MP3

SQL-302 Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Data Warehousing Enhancements
In this session, we will cover the many enhancements made to data warehousing including the database engine, Integration Services, and Analysis Services.
WMA | Zune | MP3

SQL-306 SQL Server 2008: Performance Monitoring using Management Studio
The main objective of the session is to introduce you to Performance Studio.
WMA | Zune | MP3

SQL-308 Reporting Services with SQL Server 2008 - Architecture drill down
This session will discuss the SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Architecture and how this redesigned architecture makes SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services modular and scalable.
WMA | Zune | MP3

SQL-309 What's New In Business Intelligence
In this session, we will be primarily focused on SQL Server Business Intelligence. More specifically, we will focus on Reporting Services and Analysis Services.
WMA | Zune | MP3

The TechNet Events and Webcasts pages and Event Presentation Library provide many hours of content on Microsoft Technologies. Each Page in the presentation library contains an RSS link to stay up to date with additions, links to watch the content online or download it for viewing later as well as links to many other resources to help you further.

A bold quote, and one I have to say I can’t claim it as mine.

This comes from Sams Publishing, it relates to their new publication of the same name and I have to say, the book does do exactly what it says on the cover (the back cover that is)

“In just 24 lessons of one hour or less, you will be able to install and configure Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and its various services for any size network. Using a straightforward, step-by-step approach, each lesson builds on the previous ones, enabling you to learn the essentials of Windows Server® 2008 from the ground up.”

The book cover the basics of Windows Server 2008, using Standard edition as it’s core for the step-by-steps, it walks through the key components to get anyone up and running. Aimed at anyone moving to Windows from an earlier version or new to Windows Server 2008, the lessons progress in the order you would go through. The 24 individual chapters are broken down into 4 main parts. These cover Installation and Configuration of a server up to the point where you have you server running. The next two parts cover Networking and Resources, these together set you on the road allowing access to your server. All the usual suspects are here, file and share permissions, TCP/IP, DNS, printing as well as Group Policy and NAP. The advanced part covers the network services, WINS, Routing, Remote Access and Terminal Services.

Once you’ve made it through these 3 parts you’ve completed 20 of the 24 hours and the finishing line is in sight. The last 4 hours cover security, IIS 7.0 and monitoring and tuning, so a nice gentle finish.

The 24 hour series are good for the audience they aim at. This is a good training guide for people coming in who need to get familiar with the main concepts. Given a DVD with the software and Virtual PC, they can easily do the exercises within that controlled environment.

If you are looking for a reference book for Windows Server 2008 however, this will not meet your needs. Look at the Administrator Companion from MS Press, or the Complete Reference from Pearson Technology Group

Catch the latest UGTV episodes recorded at TechEd Orlando.

We spend a week with the Ineta and the developer community talking, listening and doing what they do best, so check out part one http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jeangray/UGTV-Orlando-unleashed.

Following Developer week at TechEd, we spend the week with Culminis and the IT Pro community, the results of this week have been edited into this episode http://edge.technet.com/Media/Welcome-to-the-wonderful-world-of-UGTV-Live-from-Orlando/

There was so much packed into those two weeks we couldn’t get it all into these two shows, so watch out in August. There’s more!!!!

When SharePoint works everyone on my team is happy. I’m happy too because all I have to worry about are permissions and the odd configuration change. However, when things go wrong they go wrong. My week was has consisted of trying to recover from a failure. No idea why, but I do know what. The server that host the Site and SQL server failed either shutting down or starting up. I don’t know and neither do the operations team who are closest to the server. (I’m in the UK they are in the Seattle area). Anyone, blank screen dead box. Only thing to do is power the machine down and up again.

The good news was the Security patch applied, the bad news the SharePoint Configuration and Content Databases when offline. They refused to come back and seemed to indicate that the SQL instance was SQL 2000 trying to attach a 2005 database. Well as it turned out, SharePoint had used the MSDE version of SQL on the machine not the full 2005, but the databases appeared in the 2000 listing.

Only way back? That was to attached the two DBs in the full SQL and try and move the SharePoint config over. The fun starts here, the documentation in different areas talks about STSADM as the command to use, while the TechNet library indicates usign PSCONFIG. I used PSCONFIG and while this did 75% of the job, I was still having some issues, but not that kept my team from working.

After a couple of days, the team reported that the Project Server site was not working. I looked into it, and found that the services were not running. Attempting to start them just refreshed the admin page. When I attempted to re-install Project Server, it decided to delete all the SharePoint virtual web folders, and pretty much made the server look like MOSS 2007 was not installed.

The only recourse was to re-install MOSS 2007 and start again. First advice, bear in mind this KB article, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927156. If you remove MOSS the key used to decrypt the passwords is deleted. You then have to discard you config database and start again.

Second advice, before you even start this process, document everything. The site, the web application names, the database names and their locations, the access path names, the works.

The third and final piece of advice I have is check you databases are backup, either via SQL or your backup software and practice a SharePoint recovery when there is no pressure on. I’ve done it now and next time – hopefully never – I have a much better idea of what the commands are, how they work and the procedure needed.

And that is my reason for not blogging for a week your honour.