Month: March 2009

Half Way Through TechDays

I did 800 miles of driving last week, most of that related to TechDays for IT Pros 2009 in Ireland.  I’d a small part in the Galway event and I was more involved in the Cork event, presenting with Dave Northey from MS Ireland on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and the new version of Hyper-V.

Note: We can only do so much in the given time slots so we’re following up TechDays with user group events, e.g. the Windows User Group event that will be a deep dive on the new version of Hyper-V.

After each TechDays event we’ve spent a good deal of time talking to attendees, answering questions, etc.  I’ve found Hyper-V, branch office solutions and Terminal Services to be popular subjects.

It’s back to a “normal” work week for the coming week.  We’re on the road again on the 23rd.  I’ll be doing the “IT Pro @ Home” sessions, speaking about Windows 7 for digital photographers.  That’ll be repeated in Belfast.  We’ll also be repeating the sessions from both Galway and Cork.  I think I’ll do the train this time to relax.

Windows User Group Ireland: Hyper-V Deep Dive Event

I’ll be speaking about Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 at a Windows User Group (Ireland) event next month.  This will be a follow up to the session we’re doing at the IT Pro TechDays events around Ireland.

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At TechDays for IT Pro’s 2009 there will be some sessions on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This will include some information and demonstrations on the new version of Hyper-V. However, due to time constraints, we won’t have time to get into the deep details of how and why things work.

Aidan Finn (C Infinity – http://www.cinfinity.ie ) will be talking about the new technologies that will be included as part of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. This includes new functionality and improvements in performance thanks to cooperation between Microsoft and their hardware partners.

Dave Northey (Microsoft Ireland) will be doing some demonstrations of the technology in action, including the much anticipated Live Migration.

When?

30th April, 7.30am-10am. We’re going to try a morning session to give people an alternative time for the Windows User Group events.

Who’s Speaking?

– Aidan Finn – http://joeelway.spaces.live.com and C Infinity http://www.cinfinity.ie
– Dave Northey – http://blogs.technet.com/ieitpro/

Registration

Join the user group (for free) and we’ll send you an invitation to the event.  Membership and registration are free.

Talking about Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Deep Dive

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Deep Dive

Hosted by:
Aidan Finn & Dave Northey

Date and time:
30 April 2009 from 07:30 to 10:00

Location:
Swift Suite 2, Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Golden Lane, Dublin 8, Ireland

View this event on Windows Live

TechDays Has Kicked Off

Yesterday saw the first event of TechDays Ireland in Galway.  There was a good turnout and they got to see sessions from 3 speakers including Rhonda Layfield (deployment MVP from the USA) and Niall Flanagan (SQL MVP from Ireland).  Niall had a particularly tough challenge – how to talk about the basics of managing SQL to non-DBA’s in 40 minutes.  He did a cracking job.  There were a few nerves as laptops started acting up before the event but all fell into place in the last 10 minutes. 

I didn’t blog – I don’t want to give away the material while the sessions are ongoing.  Instead, I’ll be twittering little bits here and there with a #TechDays flag.

Afterwards a good deal of people hung around in the bar and we chatted until the wee hours.  We missed the last opportunity to order food so Enda from MS ordered in pizzas to the hotel from Domino’s.  Sweet!

I’m off to Cork today for tomorrows event – I’ve a detour to make a stop along the way.  I’ll check in and do some work from the hotel tonight.  Then it’s on to TechDays in Cork.  The agenda is different than last night with more of a focus on pure IT pro material.  Myself and Dave Northey from MS will be doing a “Windows 7 & Windows 2008 R2 Better Together and Hyper-V R2” session.  I’ll do the death-by-powerpoint while Dave does the demos.  We rehearsed yesterday – the demo’s look very cool.

So if you’re in the south and the agenda sounds like you’re cup of tea, register (for free) and come along.  There’s a draw for an X-Box Elite and 2 TechNet Plus subscriptions for those who attend, fill in their feedback forms and stick around for 5 minutes for the draw (the latter does help!)

Understanding W2008 DFS

Jose Barreto of MS has written a long article on the basics of Windows Server 2008 Distributed File System.  I’m amazed how many people don’t know anything about DFS Namespace or DFS Replication (DFS-R).  I was using DFS back in Windows 2003 for the namespace.  It meant our logon scripts only had to map one drive even if we had shares all over the place.  It also made it easy to move file shares around or even fail over to a DR file server without users even knowing.  We also used DFS-R’s predecessor, FRS (File Replication Service) for replicating static data like RIS images and MSI packages.  It was flaky!  DFS-R is a complete re-write and gives block level replication.  It can even do some de-duplication if you throw a single Enterprise edition server into the mix via cross-file replication.

What’s New in Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

“This document describes changes in Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services) functionality that are available in this Beta release of Windows Server 2008 R2, including changes to the names of role services and management tools. Remote Desktop Services provides technologies that enable users to access session-based desktops, virtual machine-based desktops, or applications in the datacenter from within a corporate network or from the Internet”.

EDIT #1

It’s a quick read and worth looking at if you’re interested in either Terminal Services or VDI.

Two Hyper-V KB Articles

MS publsihed two Hyper-V KB articles:
 
 
When you start a restored Virtual Machine (VM) that was backed up using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) the VM generates the following message:
Event ID 6008, "The previous system shutdown at time on <date> was unexpected"
 
 
This article describes the Microsoft Support Policy for Network Adapter Teaming when used in conjunction with Hyper-V.
Network Adapter Teaming is a 3rd party Technology that provides fault tolerance for multiple Network Adapters.

Comparing Hyper-V Performance with ESX and XenServer

Taylor Brown (Microsoft) linked to and quoted from a review done by Virtualization Review.  Here’s the important bit:

”Hyper-V was the first product compared, and it performed quite differently from expectations. Hyper-V has been a focus of Microsoft dev efforts, and it shows. Overall, Hyper-V did well in this comparison and proved itself a worthy product.”

“In our tests, Hyper-V did well in all categories-it’s a real, viable competitor for the competition. Table 2 shows Hyper-V’s comparative performance.”

“After doing these comparisons of ESX to Hyper-V and XenServer, it’s clear that at the hypervisor level, ESX is optimized for a large number of less-intensive workload VMs. For intensive workloads that may not be optimized for memory overcommit apps, Hyper-V and XenServer should definitely be considered-even if that means adding another hypervisor into the data center.”

They go on to say it’s horses for courses:

“For CPU- and memory-intensive applications, XenServer and Hyper-V are attractive and have proven their mettle. For a large number of light to moderate workloads-or if you decide that memory overcommit, for example, is important-ESX may be the answer”.

Microsoft Partner Program Changing in 2011

I just read this article.  I don’t know if it’s yet another rebranding by the renaming department or if it’s a real change.  Hopefully whoever is doing this will look beyond the 50 states/star bangled banner and notice there’s an entire world out there where highly qualified partners (often better than the big-boys to be honest) exist and cannot move up the food chain.