Hello,

After reading so many other blogs, I figured that it was about time for me to start one of my own.    Since I'm undertaking this, I should probably introduce myself.

I joined Microsoft as a full-time employee in March 2004 as a Rapid Response Engineer (RRE) as part of the ROSS Team.   The ROSS Team provides Rapid OnSite Support to customers.    We later merged with the SIE (Solutions Integration Engineering) team and became Engineering Services, but I was still a Rapid Response Engineer.    Last year, we merged with the Alliance Team and became Premier Field Engineering and I became a Premier Field Engineer (aka PFE).    Same job, different title.    Though I am a Seattle native, my wife & I were relocated to Cincinnati, OH in order to take the job as an RRE.  Our son was born a few months after we moved to Ohio.   We finally moved back to the Seattle area in December 2006, right after the wind storm hit and took out power for most of the area.

Before becoming an FTE at Microsoft, I spent a year working as an "A-" (contingent staffer) on the Directory Services team in PSS providing phone support to customers and supported Active Directory and a few other technologies.    Before that, I was a Systems/Network administrator for a company based out of Bellevue, WA and managed their AD Domain, the network infrastructure, the Exchange servers, and other aspects of the IT infrastructure.    I've also been the Systems Administrator for a different company in Bellevue and managed both UNIX (Digital UNIX & Solaris) and Windows machines (NT4 & W2K) and was a developer at that company as well.     Originally, I was supposed to be a high school math teacher, but graduated the one summer when no districts were looking for math teachers.

So, back to being a PFE...We are the onsite arm of Microsoft's Customer Support Services.   I do onsite visits ranging from CritSits through AD RAPs, and many things in between.    A CritSit is a "Critical Situation" case opened by a Premier Customer with CSS that is a Sev-A (Severity A) case and a server is down.    If the case isn't resolved, someone from my team may end up being dispatched to go onsite and assist with resolution.    These are last-minute requests that cause my cellphone to ring at all hours of the day & night that would require me to get onto the next airplane to head onsite.    We also can be requested by a customer's Technical Account Manager to help with other reactive issues that aren't a CritSit as well as to assist with proactive sorts of things.   One of the proactive visits that I do is an AD RAP (AD Risk Assessment Program), where we run some tools to help customers identify potential issues with their AD environment, help teach them about AD, and help to make their AD environment as resilient and redundant as possible.

While I tend to do a lot of traveling for work, I am usually at home about 2.5-3.5 days per week.  

More ramblings to come...

John

OK, so while I've mentioned a bit of what I do, I should mention the sorts of technologies that I help customers with.   First and foremost, I work with the Windows operating systems and Active Directory.   Much of my focus is Active Directory and all the things it depends on (networking, name resolution, etc.).   I also do work with other core OS components and look at things like memory and such.    Aside from that, I enjoy helping customers with virus infections, WSUS, and Virtual Server.    

I'm really looking forward to Forefront Client Security, WSUS 3.0, and multiple things coming up in Longhorn Server.    Things I'm looking forward to in LH Server include TS Gateway, Windows Virtualization, Read Only DCs, Server Core, and a few other AD related improvements.

Other future blog postings will likely discuss some of the following:   Travel tips, specifics on these tech topics, interesting things I run into while onsite, Thomas the Tank Engine (my son's favorite), life in Bonney Lake, or whatever else comes to mind.   If you have any suggestions, please post a comment.

I almost titled this “My 4th of July was better than you’re 4th of July” but thought better of it.

So I realize that it has been awhile since I last posted on this blog…OK, ‘awhile’ is an understatement, the first two posts were in April 2007 and there has been nothing since then.  But I figured I’d try a making a new post and see if maybe this helps drive traffic.   Using keywords like “fireworks”, “ordinance”, “explosives”, & “Benihana” should help me in the Bing search results.  

My July actually started out in mid-June when as a combined Birthday & Father’s Day gift, my wife & Son got me the “You Be The Chef” experience from Benihana.   In my travels as a Premier Field Engineer, I’ve somehow managed to dine at nearly every Benihana that has been near any of the customer sites I’ve visited.   I nearly always get the same thing:   an Ala-Carte Hibachi Chicken, an Ala-Carte Hibachi Chateaubriand, and 2 orders of the Chicken Fried Rice.   I’m not a fan of veggies, shrimp, or the soup (I’m told they are great at Benihana, I just avoid those things in general), so ordering ala-carte allows me to only get what I want, avoid wasting food that I won’t eat, and saves quite a bit on the bill.    For the “You Be The Chef” everyone at the table received “Land ‘N Sea” and we added the Chicken Fried Rice.    On the afternoon of June 30th, I arrived at my local Benihana for my training.   I spent about 90 minutes with my chef who helped me learn the finer points of providing The Benihana Experience to my guests, this included the right way for preparing the shrimp appetizers, the steak, the scallops, the fried rice, as well as proper use of the spatula, fork, and knife.   I also was able to practice flipping the shrimp tales into my hat.   This is not only much harder than it looks, but at 6’3”, I was a bit taller than the bottom of the range hood and had to work extra hard to get the shrimp tale all the way to the top of the hat.    I returned the following evening (July 1st) with my wife, my son, and my mother so that I could cook the dinner for the 4 of us.   Everyone said that I did a great job with the presentation and the cooking, though to be honest, with the high quality of the ingredients that they use, it would be extremely difficult to have had it taste anything but fabulous.    Pictures of the event are posted at my SkyDrive.

My July continued being great because of this blog post that I ran across in May.   I was able to assist with the setup of the 4th of July Fireworks Show at the Des Moines marina, which is about 30-minutes from my house.    We worked for about a half-day on July 3rd getting the pier prepared for the fireworks by setting up the mortars and such, and then all day on July 4th loading the ordinance into the mortars and wiring the mortars and the other fireworks up to the firing board so that Greg could shoot the show.    We had many mortars as well as boxes called “cakes” which are pre-configured with various types of explosives similar to those little multi-shot boxes you’d find at a fireworks stand, only these are much larger with many more rounds.   Once we had finished testing all of the connections, we patiently waited until it became dark and the show could start a little after 10PM.    I’ve posted my still pictures of the event here, and the two videos I took are here (two of the three videos are mine, the third is one that Greg took) and embedded below.

Here is my tour of the Fireworks Pier after we finished setup:

My video from the shore during the fireworks show:

And what has to be one of the most amazing camera angles was this one that Greg took with a camera that was next to the 3” mortars and looking skyward as the fireworks went off all around it:

So while I can’t say “My 4th of July was better than your 4th of July” and have it be true 100% of the time, my July has definitely stated off with a bang.   My July will conclude with me attending a week-long class on Microsoft Forefront Protection Suite (FPS) (formerly known as Microsoft Forefront Code Name “Stirling”) in Redmond, WA, and delivering a Windows Server 2008 Directory Services workshop in Portland, OR.   I will endeavor to post a bit more frequently, especially as things like Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 reach RTM.

And for anyone wondering…YES, I still have all 10 fingers attached where they belong.   There were zero injuries sustained at either Benihana or the 4th of July show.   The chef was good about teaching me the proper way to prepare the meal safely and Greg was the consummate professional when it comes to the safe setup, handling, and discharge of fireworks.

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 reached RTM today.   More info on that at the Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 Team Blogs.   So what does this mean for me?   Well, I’m thrilled about the new version of Hyper-V, the new version of Media Center, and especially Direct Access.   What else does it mean to me?   Over the next few weeks I’ll be spending some time at home doing some new OS Installs.   I’ve got 2 virtualization hosts that will now need Windows Server 2008 R2 so that I can setup Live Migration with Hyper-V, my Media Center PC needs to be rebuilt with Windows 7 so that I can take full advantage of the new HDHomeRun digital TV tuners that arrived today, my work laptop and old work tablet need to be reinstalled at Windows 7, and my wife has decided that the 7+ year old computer she is running has finally gotten too slow, so I’m going to be ordering her something and installing Windows 7 on it as well (once it hits the Company Store).

I’m booked solid for 8 of the next 10 weeks.   The next 4 weeks in Portland Oregon, a week not currently dispatched, a week in Boise Idaho, a week not currently dispatched (with the Company Meeting this week and then a family camping trip the following weekend), 2 more weeks in Portland, then a week in Lima Peru.   I’m sure I’ll find time somehow to get all of those OS installs done somehow.   I’ll likely be doing installs while I’m home between trips, then configuring the machines remotely in the evenings from my hotel.

But before all that can start, I still have to finish out this week.    I’m attending a training class this week on Microsoft Forefront Protection Suite (formerly known as Microsoft Forefront Codename “Stirling”).   Since Forefront Client Security is one of the technologies that I support, this week on what is coming in the next version is a good thing for me.   But I’m not much of a morning person, and traffic between my house and the training room on the Redmond Campus has been horrible.   It has taken me an average of more than 90-minutes to get there in the mornings and about 90-minutes each evening to get home.   This might not be so bad, except that the class starts at 8AM.   Did I mention that I’m not a morning person???

In between everything else, I’ll also try to update this blog with more tech info on what I’m doing, what is new, and what you should be doing (or not doing, depending on the particular thing).  To start off that line of thinking…Remember, Windows Server 2008 R2 is 64-bit only, so only x64 and Itanium versions are available.   If you’re not already installing x64 editions of Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008, you need to be whenever possible.   x64 gives you much greater limits on Paged Pool memory, Non-Paged Pool memory, and System Page Table Entries.   If you’re running a DC, File Server, or pretty much anything else, you should be doing it on x64.   Exceptions to this would be things that do not run on x64 (Exchange 2000/2003, ISA 2006, SQL 2000, etc.), but for things that do (File Servers, DCs, SQL 2005, Exchange 2007, etc.) you should be giving x64 a shot and enjoy the benefits of x64.   For more about why you should be running x64 instead of x86:   http://blogs.technet.com/cotw/archive/2008/04/07/symptoms-lack-of-free-system-page-table-entries-ptes-system-wide-delays-i-o-request-failures-and-low-on-paged-pool-memory-and-or-non-paged-pool-memory-on-32-bit-windows.aspx

Since this blog is hosted on Technet, it is probably good to talk about technologies from time to time.    So I wanted to mention some things that I’ve come across recently.   While some of these are anything but new pieces of information, sometimes you don’t come across them until well after they’re available on the net.

The first thing I wanted to mention was WinRE, the Windows Recovery Environment.    While it is available to you by booting to a Vista/W2K8/Win7/W2K8R2 DVD, it is also possible to build and customize your own WinRE environment.   If you’ve tried searching for documentation on this, you’ve probably noticed that it seems a bit lean.    A friend pointed me towards one of the best WinRE resources I’ve seen so far on the net:   http://blogs.msdn.com/winre   I particularly like their post on how to make a bootable WinRE partition on the hard drive.   Granted, the post is a couple of years old already, but the steps are still great.

Within the e-mail distribution lists for our team, a topic that comes up about every 3-6 months is, “What are the recommendations for page files?”   Here are the resources that we usually pass around for understanding page files and determining the size you need to set them to:

• David Soloman – Understanding and Troubleshooting Memory Problems*
  http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/sessionh.aspx?videoid=64
  * Requires a Live ID login.
• http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx   (Scroll down to "How Big Should I Make the Paging File?")
• http://blogs.technet.com/perfguru/archive/2008/09/24/guidance-on-page-file-size-x64-and-x32-machines-windows-2003-servers.aspx
• How to determine the appropriate page file size for 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654

An important thing to remember about page files is that while Windows may not need to have a page file defined, the applications running on your system may require one.    Domain Controllers require a page file because the algorithm used to determine the memory available to allocate to caching the AD Database expects a page file because it uses the size of the page file as a variable in the calculation.   This is mentioned in the second paragraph in the Summary section of KB 889654.

One of the most overlooked capabilities made available when installing the Group Policy Management Console in Windows Server 2003 was the “Scripts” directory located within the installation location.   With Windows Server 2008, installing the GPMC does not install the scripts.   The GPMC scripts are available as a separate download.   You can find them here at download.microsoft.com and searching for “GPMC Sample Scripts”.   I was recently onsite with a customer evaluating their current GPOs and the scripts provided us with excellent information that was invaluable to our work.