Will Craddock's Technology Adventure in Ireland : Windows Server 2008 R2

Upcoming Microsoft Ireland TechNet Tour

will.craddock — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:52:52 GMT

Event Description:
‘Tech Days’ are a collaborative effort between Microsoft and the IT Pro community to re-deliver the highlights of Tech Ed Conference to IT Pros across Ireland. Most of the sessions will be delivered by a combination of Microsoft and Community technical presenters and will involve as much time spent demo the technology, as possible. The content delivered will be technical level 300. March will see the four-city tour stop for evening events in Galway and Cork, with full day events in Dublin and Belfast.
Don’t miss this amazing opportunity to get up-to speed on the latest Microsoft technology at no cost! We hope to see you there.
Enda, Dave and Will.

Microsoft Community Tech Days for IT Professionals
Galway, 10th March (Days Hotel Galway, Dublin Road, Galway City East, Map and directions)
7pm-9.30pm
Cost: Free
Register Here

Agenda

1. An Introduction to Windows 7 and Quick Overview of Client Deployment Tools

2. The Accidental DBA

3. SQL Server Reporting Services

Microsoft Community Tech Days for IT Professionals
Cork, 12th March (Rochestown Park Hotel, Rochestown Road, Cork, Map and Directions)
7pm-9.30pm
Cost: Free
Register Here

Agenda

1. Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 working Great Together and WS 2008 R2 Virtualisation (Live Migration is here!)

2. SharePoint - The Implementation Journey..from WSS to MOSS

3. Unified Communications - Using it Today and Preparing for the Future

Microsoft Community Tech Days for IT Professionals
Dublin, 24th March (Venue tbc)
Cost: Free
Infrastructure Morning (9.30am – 1pm)
Register Here

Agenda

1. Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 working Great Together and WS 2008 R2 Virtualisation (Live Migration is here!)

2. An Introduction to Windows 7 and Quick Overview of Client Deployment Tools

3. Virtualising Windows Essential Server Solutions (SBS &EBS)

Unified Communications and Collaboration Afternoon (2.30pm – 6pm)
Register Here
Agenda

1. SharePoint - The Implementation Journey..from WSS to MOSS

2. Unified Communications - Using it Today and Preparing for the Future

Microsoft Community Tech Days for IT Professionals
Belfast, 26th March (Venue tbc)
Cost: Free
Infrastructure Morning (9.30am – 1pm)
Register Here

Agenda

1. Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 working Great Together and WS 2008 R2 Virtualisation (Live Migration is here!)

2. An Introduction to Windows 7 and Quick Overview of Client Deployment Tools

3. Virtualising Windows Essential Server Solutions (SBS &EBS)

Database and Business Intelligence Afternoon (2.30pm – 6pm)
Register Here

Agenda

1. The Accidental DBA

2. SQL Server Reporting Services

3. Integrated BI Solutions with SQL Server 2008, SharePoint Server 2007 (including scorecarding, dashboarding and analytics) & Excel 2007

(including scorecarding, dashboarding and analytics) & Excel 2007

MS @ Home Evenings Event Description:
Placeholder for content

Microsoft @ Home Evening, for IT Professionals
Event Description:

This session will be an overview of the connected technologies of Windows 7, Windows Home Server and Xbox to provide a secure, shared and media rich home computing experience. We will demonstrate parental controls, media tagging, shared media, centralized backup and the extensibility of Home Server and the community that surrounds this product. We will also look at how the web plays a part in this experience through remote web access and a personalized website address for sharing photos and home videos in home server.
Dublin, 23rd March, 7pm-9.30pm (Venue tbc). Register Here
Belfast, 25th March, 7pm-9.30pm (Venue tbc).Register Here
Cost: Free

Agenda

1. Digital Photography

2. Home Server & Media Extender

3. Securing Your Home Network

Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta Available too!

will.craddock — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:55:42 GMT

With all the news about the release of the first public look at Windows 7 something might have slipped past you and that was the release of Windows Server 2008 R2. As you might imagine there are quite a few upgrades and improvements and there is a great four page document that covers the Top 10 IT Pro Tasks Made Easier with Server 2008 R2 as well as a PowerPoint that gives a Windows Server 2008 R2 Overview and finally a Windows Server 2008 R2 Reviewers Guide that covers off everything new and different.

Probably the biggest changes, or at least the most important ones in my mind being a virtualization guy, are those related to Hyper-V 2.0. I get asked every week about QuickMigration vs. VMotion and the associated downtime with with a Quick Migration vs. a VMotion migration. Well Hyper-V 2.0 now supports Live Migration which provides seemless migration of VMs between hosts in a cluster with no loss of connectivity, no downtime! Finally I can answer that question, now all I need is the hardware to demo it!

There is also some great new features for the mobile worker and those in the branch office. With Windows Server 2008 R2 we will be introducing Branch Side Caching, BranchCache reduces the bandwidth consumed by users for intranet based HTTP and SMB traffic and improves end user experience by serving frequently accessed content from within the branch office network. BranchCache is a part of the Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 Client and works with security technology such as SSL and IPSEC.

DirectAccess is a new feature in Windows® 7 and Windows Server® 2008 R2 that gives users the experience of being seamlessly connected to their corporate network any time they have Internet access. Think RPC over HTTPS for Outlook for all corporate applications. This is truly moving towards the fully connected mobile user, securely working from anywhere with an internet connection.

Oh I almost forgot, for those of you using Microsoft Hyper-V Server, there is an R2 version of that as well that adds the same support and new features as above but also adds Windows Server Failover Clustering to the mix allowing you to add high availability and Live Migration capabilities to your free Hyper-V Server deployments!

You can grad the Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta here and be sure to also check out the Virtualization Team Blog for more.

Credit to my friend Rodney Buike, IT Pro Advisor in Canada for some of the info in this post.

Windows 7 Available through TechNet and MSDN

will.craddock — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:02:47 GMT

Interest in Windows 7 is high to say the least. Since PDC when the first public pre-beta views of the new Windows OS were released there has been endless blog postings and screenshots of the product. Well now you too can participate in the lead up to one of the most highly anticipated releases in Microsoft’s history.

Over the last few moths I have been evangelizing the value of a TechNet subscription (or MSDN is you are a developer). Well, the value has again been proven as you can download the Beta release of Windows 7 today!

I will say it again, a TechNet Plus subscription provides amazing value in being able to evaluate MS software without any time restrictions. Plus, you also get a couple of free support incidents worth the price of the subscription.

Windows 7 is available on Subscriber Downloads right now!! Not only that, you can also download Windows Server 2008 R2 beta as well so that you can test out both the client and server piece of the next version of Windows. In case you're wondering, yes, it is downloading to my machine as I write this post.

I'll keep you informed on more details and links on Windows 7 as they become available. In the meantime, if you are a TechNet Plus subscriber, download it, install it on a test machine (don't use it in production, please) and let me know what you think by posting a comment on the blog or sending me an email at wilbour.craddock@microsoft.com.

EVENT: Microsoft Management Summit 2009: April 27-May 1, 2009, Las Vegas ,NV

will.craddock — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 02:11:59 GMT

I wanted alert you of an upcoming technical conference Microsoft is presenting to factor in to your training and travel plans for mid 2009. The Microsoft Management Summit is a must attend for system administrators and senior technical staff as it brings together the technical minds within Microsoft and our Partner and Customer communities to learn and share experiences specific to the management of complex IT networks.

Come join us at the Microsoft Management Summit 2009 and learn about the latest IT Management Solutions from Microsoft

The Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) is the premier event of the year for IT Professionals, offering deep technical information and training on the latest IT management solutions from Microsoft.

In this tenth-anniversary year, MMS 2009 will be bigger and better than ever. In addition to executive keynotes, Microsoft experts and industry leaders will present more than 100 technical sessions, all packed with demos. MMS 2009 will feature more than 9,000 Hands-on Lab places during the week, most led by experts providing a guided tour of the latest technologies.

Registration for MMS 2009 is now open!

Early-bird Rates Currently Available

There's no time like the present to come learn how the latest IT management products, solutions and technologies from Microsoft can help reduce costs and maximize availability for your organization.
This year's content will focus on how integrated management solutions can help minimize the cost of planning, deploying and operating IT Services while maximizing their availability within your organization. IT Professionals and Technical Decision Makers—like you—can take advantage of the increased number of Hands-on Labs and breakout sessions at MMS 2009, with extended session and lab hours during the week.

Register today for MMS 2009 and get ready to:

•	Learn about the latest IT management solutions from Microsoft and Partners in more than 120 breakout sessions.
•	Test-drive new products and technologies in the Hands-on Labs, offering over 9,000 lab places, most led by expert instructors!
•	Meet face-to-face with Microsoft and Industry experts, and your peers—in the Expo Hall and at networking events throughout the week.

Learn from the Experts

The sessions at MMS 2009 will again be presented by the top experts in Windows IT

Management. Staff from the Microsoft product teams representing the System Center, Windows Server, Windows Client, Security and Solution Accelerator teams will be covering the latest releases, updates and solutions available for IT Management.
In addition, many industry experts and consultants will be presenting the latest best practices and real-world tips and tricks they have developed on customer sites. This includes topics presented by the internal Microsoft IT team, who are typically the first to deploy and manage all Microsoft IT solutions in a live environment.
Finally, you will also be able to hear from your peers – other members of the IT community who have advice, real world lessons and powerful shortcuts to share. Customers actively using Microsoft products to manage their IT environment will be presenting real-world case studies based on their own experiences.

Hands-on Labs

Hands-on Labs, always one of the most popular offerings at MMS each year, return with even more topics in 2009. A wide range of both self-paced and instructor-led lab topics will be provided, allowing attendees to try out a variety of products, solutions and technologies live. Lab topics will cover scenarios such as deployment, upgrade, configuration and administration across a wide range of environments.
This year new lab topics are being added to demonstrate how to integrate multiple products to implement solution scenarios such as "Data Protection and Disaster Recovery" and "End-Point Security Management". In addition new labs topics will explain how to manage a variety of heterogeneous platforms and applications in your environment.

Bring Your Questions to MMS 2009!

Join us at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas for a week of deep technical information and tips on how to run your IT infrastructure at maximum efficiency—knowledge you'll get nowhere else!
Learn more about session content, Hands-on Lab topics, and Registration options at http://mms-2009.com/.

cheers

Wilbour

Free Microsoft Press “Understanding Microsoft Virtualization” eBook

will.craddock — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 01:56:48 GMT

Mitch Tullock provides a thorough look at the capabilities, features, and operations of Microsoft virtualization technologies from the desktop to the datacenter, and how to plan, implement, and manage virtual infrastructure solutions.

This is a 417 page Microsoft Press book and a 14.4MB PDF download. It covers everything soup to nuts, from:

An overview of the differing types of virtualization
Server Virtualization & Hyper-V in depth
Server Virtualization Management & Virtual Machine Manager 2008
Application Virtualization & App-V
Presentation Virtualization & Terminal Services from Windows Server 2008
Desktop Virtualization & the differences between Enterprise Desktop Virtualization & VDI
User State Virtualization
Designing & Planning a Virtualization Infrastructure

Be sure to grab it while you can!

DOWNLOAD:
https://www.getvirtualnow.com/usevents/education/download/693371eBook.pdf

DPM 2007 SP1 Released

will.craddock — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:25:00 GMT

<blatently ripped from the DPM blog>

Storage Solutions is very excited to announce the release of Service Pack 1 for DPM 2007.

What is new in Service Pack 1
http://www.microsoft.com/SystemCenter/
DataProtectionManager/en/us/WHATs-NEW.aspx
DPM 2007 sp1 x86
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=125991
DPM 2007 sp1 x64
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=125992
SP1 videos on TechNet Edge
http://edge.technet.com/tags/DPM
Upcoming Webcast on SP1
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032399151 on January 8^th.

Service Pack 1 for Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007 provides continuous data protection for Windows application and file servers using seamlessly integrated disk and tape media and includes the following expanded capabilities:

Protection of Hyper-V™ virtualization platforms, including both Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and the Microsoft Hyper-V Server, has been added to the existing set of protected workloads, building on the virtualization protection originally delivered for Virtual Server 2005.
Enhanced SQL Server 2008 protection, including the addition of new protection capabilities for mirrored databases, support for parallel backups of databases within a single instance, and the ability to move data from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 for migration scenarios.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 receive index protection, significant catalog optimization, and support for mirrored content databases.
Added protection for Exchange Server 2007 Standby Cluster Replication (SCR), enabling a complete disaster recovery solution that leverages SCR failover alongside DPM point-in-time restores.

In addition to enhancing the protection of each of the core Microsoft application workloads, additional capabilities have also been introduced with the release of DPM 2007 SP1, such as:

Local Data Source Protection enabling the DPM 2007 SP1 server to act as a branch office server offering self-protecting File Services and Virtualization hosting within one platform.
Cross-Forest Protection allowing large enterprise customers with multiple Active Directory® forests to now have even more flexibility in their DPM deployments.
Provision for a Client DPML answers customer demand for a more cost-effective way to protect Windows XP and Windows Vista clients using the same DPM 2007 infrastructure that protects their servers
Disaster Recovery capabilities within DPM 2007 SP1 now include the ability to leverage a third-party vaulting partner via the cloud (SaaS)

All of this new functionality builds on the features released in the DPM 2007 ‘Rollup Update’ in June 2008, which provided protection of Windows Server 2008, including Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 core, Windows Server 2008 System State and BitLocker™ support – as well as new tape media capabilities around tape sharing and media library sharing.

Between ‘Rollup Update’ and Service Pack 1, most of the core features of DPM 2007 have seen incremental capabilities or workload advancements which promises to keep Data Protection Manager on a trajectory toward improving how Microsoft customers protect and recover their Windows application and file servers with the Microsoft backup and recovery solution.

TRAINING: TechNet Plus Subscribers only – Windows Server 2008 Network & Admin Courses

will.craddock — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:23:32 GMT

I have blogged in the past about the benefits of having a TechNet subscription, here are a couple of more of the benefits. Currently the following courses are available to TechNet Plus Subscribers:

Course 6690: Exploring the Fundamentals of Network Infrastructure in Windows Server 2008
This 2-hour online course is a part of the eLearning Collection 6420: Fundamentals of a Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure and Application Platform. It provides you with an overview of network infrastructure in Windows Server 2008. Topics covered in the course include:

A conceptual introduction to the physical network infrastructure
Introduction to the organization of logical networks
Introduction to Active Directory
Introduction to server roles and features

Course 6694: Fundamentals of Administering Windows Server 2008
This 2-hour online course is a part of the eLearning Collection 6420: Fundamentals of a Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure and Application Platform. It provides you with the knowledge and skills required to administer Windows Server 2008. Topics covered in the course include:

Introduction to administrative tools in Windows Server 2008
Introduction to performance monitoring tools in Windows Server 2008
Procedures to perform server administration

Course 6698: Fundamentals of Implementing Network Load Balancing and Virtualization
This 2-hour online course is a part of the eLearning Collection 6420: Fundamentals of a Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure and Application Platform. It provides you with the knowledge and skills required to implement network load balancing and virtualization in Windows Server 2008. Topics covered in the course include:

Various methods to implement server scalability and availability
Implementation of Windows network load balancing
Introduction to server virtualization
Implementation of server virtualization
The courses above are all part of a Microsoft E-Learning course collection designed to help you build your knowledge to design, deploy & secure your environment.

Individuals with Microsoft Technet Plus Subscriptions may access these courses at:
http://technet.microsoft.com/subscriptions/manage

Windows Overview...today and future with some of the big names

will.craddock — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:32:13 GMT

If you are up for a late afternoon through the evening LiveMeeting (if you are based in Ireland!) on the Windows platform, the this is the session for you!

Event Overview

On December the 12^th (Friday) we are hosting a Windows FireStarter! If you are a Developer or an IT Pro you’d definitely not want to miss this event.

Just like all other FireStarter Events, we will be recording and making the entire content available for download post event. All the sessions in this event are presented to you by some Excellent Microsoft Speakers who are Subject Matter Experts.

Take a look at the agenda below:

Agenda:

	Session Name	Speaker
8:15 – 8:30	Kick off	Mithun Dhar
8:30 – 9:30	Keynote/Why Vista!	Chris Henley
9:30 – 10:45	The Case of the Unexplained	Mark Russinovich
10:45 – 11:00	Break
11:00 – 12:15	Building Differentiated UI Applications Using Composite WPF	Glenn Block, Bob Brumfield & David Hill
12:15 – 1:00	Lunch
1:00 – 2:00	Best Practices for Developing for Windows for Windows Standard User	Crispin Cowan
2:00 – 3:00	Windows Security and Bitlocker	Byron Hynes
3:00 – 3:15	Break
3:15 – 4:00	(Windows 7 + Windows Server 2008 R2) Teaser Session	Byron Hynes
4:00 – 5:00	Windows for everyone!	TBA

We are bummed that you cannot attend this meeting in person! We’ll strive to make sure that you have as good an experience when you attend Online.

To participate in this event via Live Meeting, here’s what you’ll need to do:

When: December 12^th 2008 8:30 AM- 5:00 PM PACIFIC

The Live Meeting Space won’t be active till 8:00 AM on December 12^th

Computer Audio
To use computer audio, you need speakers and microphone, or a headset. Questions can be asked via the Q&A panel in Live Meeting.