Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Microsoft has released an evaluation edition of Vista in a preconfigured VHD that you can load into Virtual PC or Virtual Server.

It’s probably been about a month since I was regularly updating this blog.  It’s been hectic.  I had an intense 2 week job right before heading over to the USA to present at Minasi Forum 2007.  I had to prepare my demos and presentations on "Windows 2003 R2 and Branch Office Infrastructure" and "Configuration Manager 2007".  Those presentations went fairly well.  The conference itself was good craic, as it was last year.

I was pretty drained after coming back.  I had plenty of late nights preparing before hand and a few while I was over there 🙂 so I did almost nothing when I returned home.

Anyway … here’s a quick snapshot of what I missed:

• Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn) beta 3 is out.
• A whole bunch of documents for OM 2007 have been released.
• A system center essentials pre configured VHD has been released.
• Service Pack 3 for SMS 2003 has been released (Asset Management improvements and full Vista support) along with a management pack for OM 2007.
• There’s a whole tonne of Windows Server 2008 docs now available.
• We can expect XP SP3 later this year.

Well, that’s a condensed snapshot!  I’m trying to get back in the swing of things.  It looks like my schedule is getting back to the way it was before 2 months ago so there should be more frequent updates on the way.

I’m primarily a contractor but I do keep an eye on the permanent scene.  My ideal job is a senior role, with or migrating to a modern infrastructure, lots of hands on and a position with an influence on strategy.  I’ve worked a job like this before and it is completely intoxicating. 

Last month I interviewed with a company who offered such a role.  On the face of it, the companies and the role seemed perfect for me.  But I never count chickens before they are hatched or judge a book by it’s covers.  Put simply, I am interviewing the interviewer.  They have to sell that company and that job for me to consider leaving contracting.

Company A was an American company that was moving lock, stock and barrel to Ireland, including a growing server farm that includes 400+ Windows servers.  The role was for a "principle engineer/architect".  Interviews 1,2 and 3 went well.  The job was described to me in interview #1.  The interviewers in the following two interviews went over the jobs again.  After interview #2 it was clear they wanted me.  Then they brought in their "senior" technical person for interview #4.  It went downhill from there.

This guy never bothered to shake my hand and had a serious attitude problem.  His attitude stank … it was clear he didn’t want to be talking to me.  He was a Penguin Lover (A Linux person who hates all things Microsoft).  He knocked everything I had ever worked with and clearly displayed a lack of understanding of how those products worked … that might have explained why they didn’t work for him in the past 🙂  He then asked me to describe the job being offered.  I did.  His eyes opened up wide.  This was the first time it appeared he was paying attention to me.  Uh uh … he described the job for me … a intermediate level break/fix engineer … which is not what I am.  I told him that if this was the case then we might as well save his and my time and end things right there.  We did … he muttered something under his breath and went off to his office, leaving me standing outside the meeting room.  He didn’t bother to shake my hand or walk me to the elevator or door.

My feedback to the recruitment agency was not exactly positive.  The "principle engineer/architect" role turned out to be a mid level engineer role.  I had wasted two trips to their office, both at very short notice.  Word is, the guy from interview #4 might have a history of screwing interviews up.  Oh … his strategy for managing and monitoring the 400+ Windows servers?  Scripts.  I’m a fan of scripts but there is a time and a place.  This is not one of those … this is 100% a situation where an enterprise management solution is the solution.

Lessons to be learned? 

• Don’t let people with no personality out from under the stairs to interview people.
• If you are interviewing someone who has more knowledge than your staff, you might want to listen to their ideas.
• Advertise the job that is actually open.
• There is a shortage of high end technical people in Ireland at the moment.  Those that are on the market are in the contracting game like myself.  It takes a lot for us to be convinced to go permanent.  This is a sales job.  Don’t send in someone whose attitude stinks worse than 12 month old French cheese.
• If your company is developing a reputation in the jobs market, it takes a lot to change that.  It’s even worse if your company is relatively new.

It is now official, after a leak on an MS subsidiary website, that Windows Longhorn will be marketed and sold as Windows Server 2008.  It was announced today by Bill himself.

Credit: Dennis Olidis.

I’m going to be taking my WWW and Mail out of service for a while.  I’m installing SMS 2003 R2 on my phyiscal server to replace my VM’s.  It’s just going to simplify things and optimise the usage of RAM on that machine, maybe enabling me to run ISA.  We’ll see.

Backups are complete and mail exports are done.  Here goes nothing ….

I’ve just gotten back in from Virginia Beach (USA) where I did a few presentations (Configuration Manager 2007 and Branch Office Infrastructure using Windows Server 2003 R2) at Minasi Forum 2007.  It was great meeting up with everyone and we had great presentations from the likes of Mark Minasi, Rhonda Layfield, Steve Riley, Todd Lammle and Darren Mar-Elia.  I’m looking forward to the 2008 get together 🙂

Also, I’ve gotten my personal website and my mail server back online.  I’d suspected it was my DSL line but it was in fact a DNS issue.  I have a dynamic address which I regularly update on my DNS service provider using an automated agent.  This agent threw a wobbly last Tuesday, sometime after I left for the States.  It looks like everything is OK now so my document downloads should be working again.

I’m going to get some sleep after 24 hours of traveling.  I’ll try to catch up with things starting next week.

I will be available for work from the 15th of May.  I’ve just wrapped up a MOM 2005 project followed by a short SMS 2003 R2 project.  I’m going to be attending the Minasi Forum 2007 Meetup and then follow that up with a little time off.

Please check out my CV/Resume, the content of this blog and my whitepapers if you are interested.  You can contact me via email (Website<AT>highwaycsl.com).  I won’t be responding to work mail while I am at the Forum meetup.

The USMT toolkit enable you to capture a user state (profile, settings, files e.g. documents) from a PC during a migration and then restore it onto the user’s new PC.  Microsoft has released a new version of this kit.

A great example of how you can use this kit in an automated way is with Operating System Deployment (OSD) in SMS 2003 (via a free feature pack) or with Configuration Manager 2007.  You can create a task sequence that includes a step to identify and store the user state on a dedicated file share.  The user’s PC can be rebuilt with a new OS build and then the user state is restored.  If all goes well, the user won’t be missing any files or data!

MS have released a document on how they deployed OM 2007 to manage their network.  I’d suggest you give it a read.