Innovative Technology Weblog

Hi there,

Yesterday TechED EMEA 2008 started with the keynote by Brad Anderson (general manager of the Management and Solutions Division at Microsoft Corp.) Unfortunatly this is the last TechED in Barcelona, but next year we will be in Berlin, so bye Tapas and Hello Bratwurst

The keynote was all about Dynamic IT, this was also the topic @ MMS 2008, so it is something Microsoft is realy into these days. Microsoft started with some trends/priorities they see in the current market:
Virtualization
Green IT
Anywhere Access
Business Intelligence
Compliance
Cloud Computing

For your convienience I’ve put the slidedeck on our fotolog, so you can have a look.
Keynote slidedeck

During the keynote the following announcements were made:
Windows Server 2008R2 M3 is ready and will support Live Migration in Hyper-V
Microsoft Hyper-V is RTW and can be downloaded for free (this was allready announced last month)
SC Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is RTM
APP-V 4.5 (formaly known as Softgrid) is RTM and available for MDOP customers.
Microsoft Assesment & Planning toolkit 3.2 is RTM
SC Opperations Manager 2007R2 beta is available and will support SLA dashboards (see the great screenshot in the slidedeck)
Identity Lifecycle Manager 2 is RC
Intelligent Application Gateway 2007 SP2 is available.

Besides the announcements Microsoft also gave a demo of Server 2008R2 branche caching, witch was realy impressive. Using Branch Caching it is possible to have a great user experience using files and sites at HQ while working at a branche office. The first user that opens a file will have to download that file from HQ to the branche office, but the 2nd user that opens that file will open it from the cache that resides in the branche office.

Well it’s time now to have some other great sessions, so TTYL

Erik Luppes

Last month me and some collegues went to MMS2008 in Las Vegas were I saw a cool demo of Group Police Preferences. The name Group Policy Preferences did ring a bell with me and suddenly I remembered. A few weeks before MMS I saw a Windows Update that was called Group Policy Preferences Client Side Extensions, but I did’nt know what it was.

So now that I’m a few weeks back home I finaly had some time to play with it on my Demo Domain that I setup last week using CoreConfigurator. To use Group Policy Preferences you must have a few things in place:

• A Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista SP1 machine (only needed for managing Group Policy Preferences)
• RSAT Installed on the management machine
• Deployed the Group Policy Preferences Client Side Extensions to your Desktops/Servers (XP SP2 or higher)
• Active Directory

Note : You don’t need a 2008 DC or Windows Vista SP1 client to use Group Policy Preferences !!

On the left screenshot you can see all the different options that can be managed using Group Policy Preferences. There ar too much settings to show them all on this blog, but I realy like to show you some nice things. I made some screenshots of some common things you normaly do in loginscripts or kix scripts, but that are now possible in Group Policy. (click on the images to see it full size)

With Group Policy Preferences it is easy to map networkdrives. Not only you can map a drive for all users in a generic user policy, but it is also  possible to target this mapping to no more then 27 targeting rules. (Image on the right)

Most common is to map a network share based on group membership or IP subnet. This way way it is possible to map a share witf for example application data to a server that is on the same geographical location as the user without the need of using DFS or site loginscripts.

An other example is setting up how users (or administrators) see their files in Windows Explorer. In this screenshot I set it up so that the user will see the file extentions for known files and also shows hidden & system files, this is a setting that most admins will set if they logon to a new machine. This is also the power of Group Policy Preferences, the most settings an administrator will have to manualy do if he is building a new image for deployment can be managed by Group Policy Preferences.

As you can imagine there are hundreds or maybe thousends of possibilities that you use in solving those anoying problems you usely have to solve using scripts or other tools.

Next thing I have to do is migrating my loginscript at home to Group Policy Preferences.

Have fun with it.

Erik Luppes

2 Years after we’ve put Buit.org online, it was needed that we do a complete makeover.
In the 2 years we have upgraded Buit.org to the most current version of WordPress, but never updated our look and feel of the site.

Now that WordPress has a complete new engine using AJAX and other Web 2.0 technology it was needed that we upgraded the ’skin’ of Buit.org so we can use those new technologies. One of the biggest improvements for me as the site admin is that we now finaly kan use capcha in the comments forms. This is used for unregistred users that want to leave comments. If they want to leave a comment they have to read an image that is hard (but not impossible) to read by a spambot.

It looks that this works well, cause yesterday we had 120 spam comments within the hour and after enabling captcha (18 hours ago) we did’nt receive a single spam message

An other great thing is that we have better stats so we can track our favorite articles and anticipate on this by writing more articles on the subjects you like.

Please leave your toughts on this new look in our comments and if you are reading this in a RSS reader, please click visit our site to see what we have accomplished.

Grtz,

Erik

A few months ago I’ve wrote a post about Exchange SP1 for the lazy Admin. Now I found something on the web for the same admins but that is usefull in setting up Windows Server 2008 Core.

As you should know by now in Server Core there is no GUI (well there are exeptions like notepad and time settings) so Administrators have to know the CLI commands to setup their servers. The last 2 years I have worked on my Linux skills and can say that finaly I can remember the commands that I use on a daily/weekly basis. But how many times a day or week do you setup a new Domain Controller ? I say not offtenly enough to remember the commands without mistakes.

Last week I was looking on the web for the commandlines to setup a DC but found a tool that was called “CoreConfigurator”

As you can see you can do the basic tasks that you normaly would do if you setup a new server, but still using a GUI. For example if you want to setup the Windows Firewall (only the basic stuff) you normaly have to use the netsh command and that command alone has hundreds of options that you have to know.

Using this tool I was able to setup my Demo domain within 5 minutes with only one CLI Command : C:\Program Files\CoreConfigurator\CoreConfigurator.exe

So the rest of the evening I have spend on drinking beer and eating some chips while watching the 5th season of 24 (the terrorists have stolen some Sentox-nervegas, but I think that Jack Bauer will save the day within 24 hours )

To download CoreConfigurator Click Here

On MMS Day 1 the keynote was opened by Bob Muglia (VP Server & Tools Business)

This keynote was all about Dynamic IT, the 10 year vision of Microsoft in how to operate dynamic datacenters. Currently Microsoft is in year 5 of this vision and realy showed some cool stuff in the keynote compared to how we managed our environments 5 years ago. I realy like the vision Microsoft is having on a Dynamic Datacenter using virtualisation, not only on the OS layer but also on the application layer.

In a Dynamic Datacenter all services are devided in 4 layers:

• Hardware
• Hardware Virtualisation
• Application Virtualisation
• Models

The hardware layer can be managed with System Center Configuration Manager, during the keynote Microsoft did a demo on how Dynamic IT is working for server deployment. Just by using Server 2008 Server Roles en Features, a Configuration Manager Task Sequencer and a special plugin from Dell in this sequencer Microsoft was able to install a domain controller unattende on a Dell server. During this unattende installation it was possible to do the RAID settings, BIOS settings and other hardware based setting needed to roll-out the server to be compliant with the rest of the infrastructure. This way there is no need for an administrator to be present in a datacenter and still you will be able to roll out servers.

On the Hardware Virtualisation Layer, Microsoft did a demo of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 beta that was anounced during the keynote. A cool feature of VMM2008 is that it is able to manage VMware ESX servers, so in the near future it will be possible to manage your Virtual environment from 1 tool. This tool also supports Live migration of VMware machines. Like other Microsoft tooling VMM2008 also gives the output of the tasks you perform as an PowerShell script, so administrators that do not master PowerShell still have the abbility to automate repeating tasks.

Microsoft also announced the beta of SCOM Cross Platform Monitoring, that Walter described in last post.

So if you are interested in the slides of the Keynote on day 1 you can watch the here :

Slidedeck Keynote Day 1

Hi there folks,

Just want to let you know that last friday my Chumby finaly arrived.
After seeing Jeroen’s Chumby I realy needed to have one too.

But the difference between Jeroen & me is that I can be realy freaky.

Like I love to host websites (also this one) so why not turn my Chumby into a webserver.
To do this I had to login with SSH on my Chumby and had to compile the webserver on this little Linux machine. The fun thing about that is you had to enable the SSH Daemon. To enable it I had to go to the about screen of the Chumby, on this screen there is al little PI symbol, what reminded me of a movie with Sandra Bullock “The Net”

After having the Chumby serving webpages I also had to hook it up to the Internet on a safely manner, so I configured my ISA 2006 server to publish my Chumby. I wonder if there are things you buy in the store that you cant publish with an ISA server

If you like to pay my Chumby a visit please go to :

My Chumby

My Chumby is pleased to serve you

Helping to propel large-scale mobile phone deployments by businesses, Microsoft announced at CTIA Wireless 2008 the immediate availability of System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 and plans for a Microsoft Mobile Services Plan (MMSP) to be available from mobile operators worldwide. Together with Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1, the software and services provide the best solution for midsize and large businesses to manage and help protect Windows Mobile phones.

“With Microsoft’s mobile solutions, businesses now have the power, control and flexibility over how they deliver information to their employees on the go,” said John O’Rourke, general manager, Mobile Communications Business, Microsoft. “Together with our partners, we’re helping enterprises extend their reach like never before.”

Microsoft saw positive response to early trial programs for Mobile Device Manager. Companies across the financial, manufacturing and professional services industries also requested that mobile operators deliver a core set of software and services to help businesses meet their management needs.

A study conducted by Microsoft with large and midsize organizations showed businesses would like to move beyond their current mobile solutions to offer more sophisticated services. Mobile Device Manager meets their needs by offering the following benefits:

• Features to manage phones with the same ease and flexibility as Windows-based PCs, addressing IT priorities for saving resources and protecting information

• Capability to help protect sensitive business files and e-mails, contacts and other information through file and storage card encryption on the phone should it be lost or stolen

• Ability to access more of the information mobile workers need for staying on top of their jobs via a mobile virtual private network, which provides security-enhanced access to company data and application updates over the air

Mobile Services Plan Enriches End-to-End Experience

Today leading operators AT&T, O2, Orange, TaTa Teleservices Ltd. and Verizon Wireless announced they are in discussions with Microsoft to deliver the Microsoft Mobile Services Plan. MMSP is a set of core software and services that provides a uniform experience across Windows Mobile 6.1 phones, whether working with one or more operators, saving time and resources so companies can focus on other areas of mobility. Beginning later in 2008, operators plan to offer a subscription plan that will bring businesses the following:

• A corporate-grade network and data plan to support enterprise applications and services to help people get work done with the responsiveness they expect from the network and the efficient use of battery power they want on their phones

• A package from mobile operators, including access rights to Mobile Device Manager as well as the advanced mobile management features of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1), Microsoft Services Premier Support and Software Assurance for Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Office Mobile running on Windows Mobile 6.1-based phones.

Fast-Growing Network of Partners Open for Business

Responding to the opportunity created by Mobile Device Manager and complementing the MMSP, a large network of global partners are ready to integrate and deploy into existing systems as well as create custom solutions for businesses. Among the first companies that worked with Microsoft to support early trial programs are AT&T Inc., EDS, Enterprise Mobile, HP, O2, Orange, SAT Corp. and Verizon Wireless.

“Given AT&T’s leadership in the Windows Mobile space, AT&T is excited that Mobile Device Manager is now a reality for our enterprise customers,” said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president, Marketing and Operations for AT&T’s wireless unit. “Every day, mobile devices become more ubiquitous throughout the enterprise, and the need to securely manage those devices, data and applications is critical for IT organizations. Through our early adopter trials, our customers are responding positively to AT&T’s deployment and optimization plans for Mobile Device Manager and are eager to adopt the first end-to-end wireless-focused enterprise solution that can maximize their investments in Microsoft technology.”

A wave of Windows Mobile 6.1 phones and operator networks supporting Mobile Device Manager is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2008 from Alltel Wireless, ASUS, AT&T, HP, HTC Corp., i-mate, Intermec Inc., Motorola, O2, Orange, Palm Inc., Pantech, Samsung, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, Sprint, Tata Teleservices Ltd., TELUS, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless.

Read more at the System Center Mobile Device Manager Site :

Also Microsoft has posted a few tools to deploy and troubleshoot System Center Mobile Device Manager :
• MDM Self Service Portal
• MDM Server Tools
• MDM Client Tools
• MDM Best Practices Analyzer Tool

These tools can be found at Technet

For a Demo of System Center Mobile Device Manager please take a look at this video:
Mobile Device Manager Demo

This time (cause i’m lazy too) a post that is 99% pictures and 1% words.

As you all have read in Jeroen’s post SP1 is RTM today and downloadable from the Microsoft Exchange Website
In the SP1 overvieuw some of the new features are discribed, but how do they look like in the interface ?

Watch & Learn:

A Default Active Sync profile is created for Mobile use.
Now it’s possible to change the refresh interval.

Public Folder Management Console (need I say more ??

This is all for now, I realy like what I see in SP1 and for sure I’m gonna like what I did’nt see.

Have a nice 1,

Erik Luppes

P.S. The management console now works in Vista

Last Saturday I arrived in Barcelona for this years IT-Forum event.
Today @ 1400 the keynote started with a percussion session just to warm up the crowd, I and some colleagues where a little late ate the auditorium so the nice people of Microsoft directed us to the press boot so we had priority seating

The keynote was held by Bob Kelly, he is the Corporate Vice President Infrastructure Server Marketing and he started off with the trends Microsoft is seeing in the market:

• Hardware Performance
• Web 2.0 Explosion
• Software Breakthroughs
• Broadband/Wireless/Mobility Form Factors

After these trends Bob talked about Dynamic IT and its Core Innovative areas, these areas are:

• Unified & Virtualized
In this part Microsoft explained the need of virtualization and the need of standardized environments.

• Process-Led / Model driven
This area is all about being in control using processes in models. Nowadays processes are being more intelligent and to model these processes help us to reduce costs.
This is done in the full range of products from development to operating systems.

• Service enabled
Microsoft is shifting from SOA to SaaS, this allows companies to connect their services, but still is a challenging process to federate between different user bases. Also being compliance with for example SOX can be challenging.

• User-Focused
To enhance the user experience Microsoft is working on developer tools so the developers can build applications with this enhanced user experience.

During the keynote Bob also did some announcements:

• Windows Server 2008 / SQL2008 / Visual Studio 2008 will be launched on Feb. 27th next year. This is a joint launch with a phased product release. This launch will be the biggest launch event ever, split up in 300 events and will have a reach of 15.000.000 people.
• The new virtual server role in Server 2008 (Viridian) has lost its codename and will be called Hyper-V. The server running this role will be Hyper-V Server.
• Next t o Windows Server 2008 there will also be 2 servers for small businesses, called Windows Small Business Server 2008 (75 seats) & Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (300 seats)
• In the summer of 2008 Microsoft will release Microsoft Application Virtualization formally known as SoftGrid.
• Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) will be renamed to Windows Deployment and will be capable to deploy clients as well servers.

There also were a few demos about Windows Server 2008, Virtualization, SQL 2008 and Home Server. I was really impressed by the Virtualization Demo that showed us the ability to use Virtual Machine Manager to manage Virtual Server 2006, Hyper-V and also VMware ESX from one single console.

If you want to see the entire slidedeck please go to our fotolog :

http://fotolog.buit.org/thumbnails.php?album=6

Well I gonna trie to keep you guys posted, talk to you later

Erik Luppes
Viva Barcelona

Today Microsoft has resleased Windows Dreamscene to all Windows Ultimate customers. To install Dreamscene simply run Windows Update.

As most of you already know, Windows DreamScene transforms your desktop from a static wallpaper image into a full-motion video. In conjunction with Stardock, we’re pleased to also offer a number of cool, new animated DreamScene desktops, including “Aurora�. Additionally, you can use your own videos as DreamScene desktops or visit Stardock’s Dream.WinCustomize.com website to download Stardock’s DeskScapes (an add-on to DreamScene) as well as a collection of fabulous content created by Stardock and members of the Ultimate community.

More @ Source