A tale of 4 beta’s – Vale refresh, Hyper-V Server R2 SP1 v178 beta, Fabulatech USB over network beta, MS ISCSI Target 3.3 beta

24 August 2010 at 09:44 · Filed under Hyper-V, Media Center, Microsoft, Tech, Virtualisation, Windows Home Server, Windows Server 2008 R2 ·Tagged , ,

A tale of 4 beta’s – am I mad!?!?  well maybe, but here goes..

But first to cut to the chase..  As I said on IM with a colleague only today – the Vail refresh ROCKS!!, it needs Silverlight 4 for the integrated media controls to make video, music, photos, etc. super sexy and prompts to install if you haven’t got it – Silverlight’s awesome also! :-)

 

Microsoft Windows Home Sever codenamed Vail – TP refresh install

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So it is R2 after all (I always thought it would be but quite a lot of folks who should know better referred to it as Windows Server 2008 – fundamentally different that Windows Server 2008 R2!)

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A lovely Vail splash screen, configure a few tasks:

Shutdown with 28 updates later..

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A new (media center) PC test – the Tranquil ixL i5 Power PC…

23 July 2010 at 15:58 · Filed under Green IT, Media Center, Microsoft, Tech, Windows 7 ·Tagged ,

Something we rarely talk about on the blog but enthuse and evangilise to many is Windows Media Center. I’ve been building and using Media Center for our primary entertainment system since the days of Window XP Media Center Edition beta’s c.2002-03.

I’ve built several systems for various friends and family over the years, but when our main home media center based on a Shuttle SG36M died due to a PSU failure (also took out the motherboard – a bummer!), it was time to be looking for a new machine (the brightside to the failure I guess! ;-) )

As a long time listener of Ian Dixon’s podcast at http://thedigitallifestyle.com I’d heard of Tranquil (http://www.tranquilpc.co.uk) who are based in Manchester. Tranquil produce fanless pieces of highend exotica covering Media Centers, Home Servers, and powerful new Intel i5 based PC’s…

Now Tranquil don’t produce ‘cheap’ kit and fortunately I’m a believer in ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ so £459 + VAT later I’d ordered the ixL i5 Power PC with an Intel i5-650 (and a CD/DVD optical drive).

I got my order in late on Tuesday, and this morning a very nice looking box arrived..

..with a complimentary Boost bar! – how they knew my hangover needed a sugar fix I don’t know, but the experience certainly started great! :-)

Over the weekend I’m looking forward to getting a couple of gigs of 1066Mhz RAM, a Corsair 128GB SSD, and my Hauppauge dual DVB-T in there and seeing how she flys with some test builds.. likely Win7 32-bit and Windows Server 2008 R2 (for testing as a Hyper-V platform plus 64-bit driver support), but first work and clients to see… :-(

Returning at the weekend for my first test built I grabbed a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit) which installed painlessly enough, but did list the following as needy of drivers:

Display adapter driver – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3144&DwnldID=19099&lang=eng
Ethernet (network) driver – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/download.aspx?url=/19059/a08/PROWin32.exe&DwnldId=19059&lang=eng
PCI Serial Port -
PCI Simple Communications Controller (read IR RX) -

With no documentation or driver media in the box, if you’ve ordered anything but a pre-built system you will need to go and find driver support from the web, however as the sytem is based on a current Intel desktop motherboard, the Intel® Desktop Board DH57JG, this is a fairly trivial task.

A visit to http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/dh57jg/dh57jg-overview.htm will get you covered with 32 & 64-bit drivers for Windows 7, Vista, XP Pro, plus 32-bit for XP Home, and even Windows XP Media Center Edition (one day I might restore an image of XPMCE as I still have the Compaq D510 SSF PC I used in the first builds back in 2002-3!).

Going for the lazy option I grabbed the network driver first so I could let Windows Update do its worst on the rest – 35 updates later, inc. Intel HD Graphics (Intel listed 15.17.4.2119 as , Microsoft Update provided 8.15.10.2119 – the last digits being significant, the same) and a restart resulted in still needing the PCI Serial Port & Communications Controller (likely the same driver)

At the same time, I’d recommend:

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/dsktpboards/dh57jg - which includes a link to Automatically detect and update drivers and software
http://www.intel.com/support/detect.htm (the really lazy option – but it works really well, after I’d been struggling getting the audio outputs to work, bar SPDIF)

http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/software/dolby/index.htm

Chipset: Intel® Chipset Device Software for Intel® Desktop Boards – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=10884&lang=eng
(this one may also address the PCI Simple Communications Controller / IR reciever, but I’m having no luck just yet…)

Intel® Desktop Utilities for 4 & 5 Series Desktop Boards – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18934&lang=eng

Intel® HD Graphics Driver for Windows* Vista and Windows* 7 15.17.7.2141 – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3144&DwnldID=19099&lang=eng

Audio: Realtek* ALC Audio Driver - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=19018

I mentioned performance updates coming soon, on Windows 7 32-bit with the above drivers the Performance Information and Tools (Windows Experience Index) gave a rating of 4.8, comprised of:

Processor: 6.9
Memory: 5.5
Graphics: 4.8
Gaming graphics: 5.3
Primary hard disk: 5.9

Thermal performance and other hardware monitors curtousy of the Intel Hardware Monitor application:

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Hyper-V R2 SP1 Beta testing & Dynamic Memory

22 July 2010 at 07:51 · Filed under Hyper-V, Tech, Virtualisation, Windows Server 2008 R2 ·Tagged , ,

So this week Microsoft released the beta code of SP1, this was one of the many anticipated announcements at the Worldwide Partner Conference this week.

As our business (The Full Circle – www.thefullcircle.com) is a Microsoft Gold Partner that has been involved in Microsoft virtualization since the beginning I thought it was time we were testing Hyper-V with Dynamic Memory!  Microsoft’s answer to VMware’s memory over commit allows Hyper-V to dynamically allocated memory to a guest machine from a pool of available memory.  This doesn’t allow you to over specify what physically isn’t available (a safer option than over-commit), but it does allow a group of VM’s to more efficiently use memory resource where it is needed – just what is needed for Microsoft to get serious in the VDI space.

From Microsoft’s own words:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V introduces a new feature, called Dynamic Memory, in the Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta releases.  It allows customers to achieve increased density when they’re consolidating physical servers into a virtual realm, providing them with predictable performance and linear scalability.  With Dynamic Memory, IT administrators are able to pool available memory on a physical host and then dynamically dole that memory out to virtual machines running on the host, based on current workload needs.
For a technical overview of the new Dynamic Memory feature, download the Dynamic Memory Technical Overview whitepaper.

So a quick 1.2GB download later (to support Win7 x86 & WS2008R2 IA64 & x64) and you’ve got an ISO to unpack or burn.

1st hurdle on my test install of Hyper-V Server R2 is.. a language blocking issue with the installer reporting ‘Hyper-V Service Pack 1 install has detected unsupported language files’ reporting that Chinese (Traditional) is not supported..

Did I install Chinese?  I don’t think so.. well, not intentionally anyway! but checking both our test and live Hyper-V cluster systems revealed that the ‘Chinese (Traditional)’ display language was installed (by default) per:

Fortunately this is a simple fix, as shown in the picture - at a command line (or Task Manager Run) you can access the Region and Language settings control panel by executing  ’intl.cpl’, goto Keyboards and Languages, hit the Install/uninstall languages button, and finally select Chinese (Traditional), Next.  After a few moments the progress should report ‘Uninstall complete’ and you can close and OK out of the Control Panel app.

Once the language support (or lack of if you wanted Chinese!), re-running setup should run through as below:

And eventually, after the mandatory reboot checking out the Windows version (Task Manager, About, no more winver from the command line in Hyper-V Server or Server Core) should report – Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Build 7601: Service Pack 1, v.178 – yikes that’s a lowish version, and the Build number is significant up from 7600 (more accurately version 6.1.7600), anyway we are only on test system at the minute! (and without EAP support I think that’s about as far as it should go! ;-) )
(more on EAP’s and The Full Circle’s involvment in the development of Hyper-V 2008 R2 at http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2009/11/05/the-full-circle-secures-ascom-network-testing-for-windows-server-2008-r2-early-adopter-program/)

next on to the changes within Hyper-V and hopefully dynamic memory!

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 beta adds Dynamic Memory host memory management and RemoteFX to enhance VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) implementations. The beta release of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 introduces new ways to manage virtual machine memory, graphics and peripheral devices that add new dimensions to the usefulness of Hyper-V.

These features, including Dynamic Memory, RemoteFX and improvements to USB redirection, will require IT manager attention as plans are made for server and remote desktop implementations over the next several years. IT managers who are considering data center virtualization projects should put the Windows Server 2008 R2 service pack beta on their immediate evaluation shortlist. The beta is stable enough for use in a test environment.The SP1 beta became available in July and is offered as a no-charge download from Microsoft. I tested the SP1 beta on our test rig HP ProLiant ML110 G5 with a single dual core Intel 2.33Ghz cpu, 8GB of memory, and 2 mirrored arrarys (2x250GB system, 2x1TB data), it does not have a sufficiently powerful graphics card to test RemoteFX but I’ll be sourcing one!

This system, and all the virtual server instances that I created in my test environment, were running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 beta version 178.

It’s clear that with SP1, Microsoft is signaling that the server hardware of tomorrow will need to be equipped much differently than it is today if certain workloads, including those that vary significantly in memory usage or desktop graphics support, are destined for the data center.
Buyers that are accustomed to buying server hardware with only minimal graphics capabilities will need to become much more savvy in the ins and outs of specifying high-end graphics cards for data center servers that are destined to host sophisticated virtual desktop implementations. This is on top of the growing RAM requirements of dense virtual environments.

Dynamic Memory

The SP1 beta includes Microsoft’s answer to VMware’s memory management system. In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 this feature is called Dynamic Memory. I used the Dynamic Memory feature to balance the memory automatically between my VMs based on preset limits. As with most management systems, Dynamic Memory uses policy set in a period of calm to determine how scarce resources (in this case RAM) will be divvied up when in times of tumult and contention.

When I created my VMs, I specified several RAM memory parameters including Startup, Maximum, Buffer and Priority. These parameters make sense in that they specify the minimum amount of RAM needed to start a system, the maximum I would ever want it to consume, a buffer measured as a percentage and the priority of this workload in the overall scheme of business operations.

In my tests, the VMs performed as expected. When I beefed up operations on a high priority VM, the other VMs were starved in order to keep my priority system running at top performance. When RAM requirements on my priority system fell, this resource was reallocated among the other VMs on the test system.

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Training: 44CO175 – SharePoint 2010 Administrator Bootcamp

8 July 2010 at 08:39 · Filed under Microsoft, SQL Server, SharePoint, Tech, Training ·Tagged , ,

44CO175 – SharePoint 2010 Administrator Bootcamp (BPIO)

Summary
Step-by-step understanding is key to successfully implementing and deploying SharePoint 2010. This 15-module course will guide you through each critical stage, giving you exactly the skills you need to leverage full value from the latest SharePoint technology.


Agenda
Module 0 – Getting Ready for a SharePoint 2010 Implementation: Why Governance and Business Requirements are Essential for a Successful Implementation.
Module 1 – Understanding the Architecture of SharePoint Server 2010
Module 2 – Installing SharePoint Server 2010.
Module 3 – Administrating and Configuring Farm Settings in SharePoint Server 2010
Module 4 – Understanding and Administrating Web applications
Module 5 – Managing Web Applications
Module 6 – Introduction to Site Collections
Module 7 – Creating Site Collections
Module 8 – Managing Site Collections
Module 9 – Working with SharePoint Server 2010 Portals
Module 10 – Governance and Information Assurance
Module 11 – Enterprise Content Types & Managed Metadata
Module 12 – Managing Documents and Records
Module 13 – Workflow
Module 14 – Implementing and Managing Search
Module 15 – People & Social Networking
Module 16 – Disaster Recovery

A handful of notes from the week..

Installation Preparation for Service & Install Accounts 

The SharePoint Installation Account

While I’ve become used to installing applications on servers with either the local or domain admin account, SharePoint 2010 really really really needs to have its own account created for the installation process. If you don’t you’ll have to correct the various service and app pool accounts later and that’s a pain.

Key points about the account used to install with -

  • It will become the application pool account used in IIS for the Central Admin
  • If you do plan to let SharePoint create your databases (content DBs’ etc…) this account needs rights to the SQL database to create DB’s (DBCreator and DBAdmin)
  • If DB’s are already created then it only needs DBAdmin
  • It only needs Local Admin permissions on the installation machine
  • Not to be used in day-to-day admin
  • Imagine this account to be “enterprise admin” of SharePoint.
  • It should never be used again after the initial install, obviously that doesn’t mean disable or delete it.

Example User Account – spinstall

The Farm Admin Account

 The farm admin account is an account that should be used by as few people as possible.

  • It either needs to be a local admin on the SharePoint front end or create a new supper user or login as spinstall(logging in as spinstall is not recommended)
  • The farm admin account change services running on the machine hence the need for local admin rights, farm admin right in SharePoint central admin isn’t enough

Example User Account - spfarmadmin

During the SharePoint 2010 install

 Make sure you move index location during install off from the C:\…\14\data location

 This index file is a flat file used in search and can grow very large in next to no time.

After the install – the Configuration Wizard

Do not use it, it doesn’t follow best practice.

 Performance Tip for SharePoint databases 

Turn off Auto Growth

While it’s been mentioned a thousand times and shouldn’t need to be mentioned…

To prevent it happening in existing installations for any new databases:

SQL Management  Studio > Database > Model. Under the file groups section  change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Fixing it for existing databases:

Open the properties of each database and under the file groups section, change the properties for .mdf to grow by 50MB at a time

Note: Why 50MB? Because it’s just right for SharePoint since it aligns with the default maximum upload file size.

Registering Managed Service Accounts for SharePoint 2010

  • Best practice is to add them here first then start to use them to run services
  • All are generally fine  as just domain user accounts without elevated privileges

Application Pool Accounts in IIS for SharePoint 2010

 Never change the app pool account from inside IIS as the config DB will not know about the change, web apps will not know about the change and new servers added to the farm will not know which account to use.

One of the few things you can and do need to configure in IIS is SSL certificates and also needs to be done on each and every web front end.

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Training – SQL Server MasterClass (Kim Tripp & Paul Randal – www.SQLskills.com)

17 June 2010 at 13:11 · Filed under Microsoft, SQL Server, Training ·Tagged , , ,

As posted many times before, continous professional development through training and education is absolutely core of our IT consulting business, The Full Circle (www.thefullcircle.com).

Today is a good day for that mantra as we are attending an excellent training seminar by SQL MVP’s and founders of www.SQLskills.com - SQL Server MasterClass

My scribbles from the day.. and the formal agenda, speaker bio’s, etc. at the end

Bridging the gap between Development & Production..

DBA’s & Developers not communicating and the reluctant/involentary DBA..

The dilema of development, change control, production scheduling, and customer demands for new features

4 features that break an Enterprise to Standard restore – Partitioning, data compression, …, …

How Design Affects Production
Design considerations such as capacity planning up front to scale databases correctly, try to avoid autogrowth! & Log file fragmentation (LVF’s etc.)

Use of correct data types e.g. Use of bigint for small numbers, datetime when you only really need date, etc. – why use 16-bytes when you can use 4!

Disk maybe cheap, but memory overhead across a system is not.

Indexing – design them, not ad-hoc!

Resouce Governer – limit ad-hoc SQL query users

Naming conventions – obvious in any system (or should be!), makes long term management easier

Design choices affecting maintenance e.g. Fixed vs. Variable length impacting the ability to perform online index rebuilds or not!

Even some some MS apps break this such as SharePoint!

Nested Transactions – avoid!  ..they are evil!  (nested begins, only free resource at end of first transaction)

Instant File Initialisation (IFI) – restores create the file the full with zeros unless IFI is enabled.

Parameterization – trying to get your plan in cache, optimize at dB level.

Phyical dB layout – as dB’s become larger partioning into multiple filegroups is necessary – what’s a large dB? over 100GB you need to consider, TB absolutely!

Measuring your restores to check against your SLA’s – restores take longer than backup, ballpark 25% more, you can break your maintenance window (& SLA’s) by underestimating the restore time.

Primary Key Choice – obvious but not always followed.

Indexing Strategies – difficult!

Database Maintenance – lack of causes problems!

Real Testing!!! – developers need access to similar environment to live otherwise

Myth Buster – top 10 myths debunked, taken from Paul’s Myth a day posts in April at SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul/Misconceptions

e.g. Failover Clustering is best HA for SQL..? It depends!
Read more at “Proven SQL Server Architectures for High Availability and Disaster Recovery – http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/D/5BD13FFA-5E34-4AE1-9AA0-C6E6951B8FC8/SQL%20Server%202008%20R2%20High%20Availability%20Architecture%20White%20Paper.docx”

Tempdb or transaction log should be x% of the size of the largest dB – it depends! If you had a 10TB dB would you have 25% allocated for the log? e.g. 2.5TB wasted on logs.. NO!

use of single user mode, and admin connections.. the :m. and :a. startup switches

DR handbook should be written  by the most experienced member of the team, but tested by the most junior – who’d going to be holding the pager when the system goes bang at 02:00 on a Sunday…?  likely not the architect!

GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward
Dilema of GUIDs everywere, great for uniqueness, not so great if used for non-clustered indexes and used as a primary key (due to it’s uniqueness) – back to using the correct data types, why use a 64-byte key when a 4-byte key will suffice – for a 10,000 row table this can mean an internal system index of 400Mb, a 64-byte key will be nearer 5GB – just for the system!

Massive performance and storage gains to be had from correct use of GUIDs – see Kimberly’s blog post on this for more info at http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/GUIDs-as-PRIMARY-KEYs-andor-the-clustering-key.aspx

The Top-Ten List…

10) Data File Management – you can have up to 32768 files per database, and a minimum of two being the MDF & LDF, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should!  However, careful placement of physical files on different storage types can add huge value to your SQL environment..

9) Transaction Log file management – only one log file is necessary, try and isolate from the data files to avoid disk head contention, use appropriate RAID (not RAID 5 as has high overheads for write & logs are write intensive)

8) Tempdb – tempdb is a special case as it is very susceptible to contention issues because only 1 per instance and 1 tempdb file per processor core, you can now create multiple files to spread the contention. KB328551 maybe suitable in your environment.
Guideline for number of tempdb files, .25-.5 the number of cores.

7) Indexing Best Practice – dont’t go crazy with indexes, as with data files, just because you can.. doesn’t mean you should!  if anything try to reduce your indexes!  Good workload analysis to determine characteristics and query priority as over-indexing can be worse than under indexing.  Poorly maintained indexes can be more trouble in the long term – be sure to automate index maintenance.  A narrow index has very few issues, a wide one has the potential for many more!

6) Statistics

5) Index Fragmentation – Fragmentation Defined.. two broad types: internal (wasted space on data/indexes aka physical defragmentation) & logical (..)
Main causes.. GUID as high-order key, updates to variable length columns, badly configured FILLFACTOR, wide schemas that only fit a small number of rows per page
Keys to success.. how to read the data
How to correct.. create index with drop_existing, rebuild the index, defrag the index
Most folks rebuild or reorganise but their are tradeoffs.. how much disk space have you got? ;-)  

4)

3) I/O errors – 823/824 errors have already been retried 4 times before you find out that the I/O subsystem has transient problems.  monitor for error 825 – read errors

2) DBCC CHECKDB – see the blog post http://sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/category/CHECKDB-From-Every-Angle.aspx
How often should you run CHECKDB – at least once per week – yikes!, how long will it take? – it depends!   but if it starts to take longer it normally means a problem.

1) Recovering Using Backups – best way to avoid data loss but not necessarily the best way to avoid downtime so consider other mechanisms to full backups such as log shipping, mirroring, etc.  Recommend at least Full & Log backups but frequently e.g. full weekly, logs as often as every 5 minutes… however Differentials are better – redundancy in the backups

Q&A – I asked about placement of tempdb in a failover cluster and if there is a downside to putting it on non-cluster shared storage e.g. a local SSD drive or RAMdisk – no, this is fine as long as the same drive letter is available on each node as the tempdb is flushed and recreated everytime SQL starts anyway & got yet another geek polo shirt – my wife will love that… ;-)

more info at.. www.SQLskills.com

www.SQLskills.com/webcasts.asp - over 50hrs of free online training resources

Formal Event notes, background, agenda, speaker bio’s, etc.

www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql
This special one-day event will focus on some of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. Very often there is no dedicated DBA and so the IT managers struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unaware of how application design choices affect database performance.

SESSIONS SNAPSHOT
During the day Kimberly and Paul will:
Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server’s behaviour
Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company’s life-blood – the data
Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database
Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a wellperforming and available data tier

SESSIONS ABSTRACTS
KEYNOTE: Bridging the Gap Between Development and Production
Applications are commonly developed with little regard for how design choices will affect performance in production. This is often because developers don’t realize the implications of their design on how SQL Server will be able to handle a high workload (e.g. blocking, fragmentation) and/or because there’s no full-time trained DBA that can recognize production problems and help educate developers. The keynote sets the stage for the rest of the day. Discussing some of the issues that can arise, explaining how some can be avoided and highlighting some of the features in SQL 2008 that can help developers and DBAs make better use of SQL Server, and troubleshoot when things go wrong.

SESSION ONE: SQL Server Mythbusters
It’s amazing how many myths and misconceptions have sprung up and persisted over the years about SQL Server - after many years helping people out on forums, newsgroups, and customer engagements, Paul and Kimberly have heard it all. Are there really non-logged operations? Can interrupting shrinks or rebuilds cause corruption?
Can you override the server’s MAXDOP setting? Will the server always do a table-scan to get a row count? Many myths lead to poor design choices and inappropriate maintenance practices so these are just a few of many, many myths that Paul and Kimberly will debunk in this fast-paced session on how SQL Server operates and should be managed and maintained.

SESSION TWO: Database Recovery Techniques Demo-Fest
Even if a company has a disaster recovery strategy in place, they need to practice to make sure that the plan will work when a disaster does strike. In this fast-paced demo session Paul and Kimberly will repeatedly do nasty things to databases and then show how they are recovered – demonstrating many techniques that can be used in production for disaster recovery. Not for the faint-hearted!

SESSION THREE: GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward
Since the addition of the GUID (Microsoft’s implementation of the UUID), my life as a consultant and “tuner” has been busy. I’ve seen databases designed with GUID keys run fairly well with small workloads but completely fall over and fail because they just cannot scale. And, I know why GUIDs are chosen – it simplifies the handling of parent/child rows in your batches so you can reduce round-trips or avoid dealing with identity values. And, yes, sometimes it’s even for distributed databases and/or security that GUIDs are chosen. I’m not entirely against ever using a GUID but overusing and abusing GUIDs just has to be stopped! Please, please, please let me give you better solutions and explanations on how to deal with your parent/child rows, round-trips and clustering keys!

SESSION 4: Essential Database Maintenance
In this session, Paul and Kimberly will run you through their top-ten database maintenance recommendations, with a lot of tips and tricks along the way. These are distilled from almost 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server customers and are geared towards making your databases more performant, more available, and more easily managed (to save you time!). Everything in this session will be practical and applicable to a wide variety of
databases. Topics covered include: backups, shrinks, fragmentation, statistics, and much more! Focus will be on 2005 but we’ll explain some of the key differences for 2000 and 2008 as well.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Paul and Kimberly are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company.
They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server. Paul worked on the SQL Server team for nine years in development and management roles, writing many of the DBCC commands, and ultimately with responsibility for core Storage Engine for SQL Server 2008. Paul writes extensively on his blog
(SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul) and for TechNet Magazine, for which he is also a Contributing
Editor. Kimberly worked on the SQL Server team in the early 1990s as a tester and writer before leaving to found SQLskills and embrace her passion for teaching and consulting. Kimberly has been a staple at worldwide conferences since she first presented at TechEd in 1996, and she blogs at SQLskills.com/blogs/Kimberly. They have written Microsoft whitepapers and books for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and are regular, top-rated
presenters worldwide on database maintenance, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, and SQL Server internals. Together they teach the SQL MCM certification and throughout Microsoft.
In their spare time, they like to find frogfish in remote corners of the world.

SPEAKER TESTIMONIALS
“To call them good trainers is an epic understatement. They know how to deliver
technical material in ways that illustrate it well. I had to stop Paul at one point and
ask him how long it took to build a particular slide because the animations were so
good at conveying a hard-to-describe process.”
“These are not beginner presenters, and they put an extreme amount of
preparation and attention to detail into everything that they do. Completely,
utterly professional.”
“When it comes to the instructors themselves, Kimberly and Paul simply have no
equal. Not only are they both ultimate authorities, but they have endless
enthusiasm about the material, and spot on delivery. If either ever got tired they
never showed it, even after going all day and all week. We witnessed countless
demos over the course of the week, some extremely involved, multi-step
processes, and I can’t recall one that didn’t go the way it was supposed to.”
“You might think that with this extreme level of skill comes extreme levels of
egotism and lack of patience. Nothing could be further from the truth. … They
simply know how to teach, and are approachable, humble, and patient.”
“The experience Paul and Kimberly have had with real live customers yields a lot
more information and things to watch out for than you’d ever get from
documentation alone.”
“Kimberly, I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how awesome you
are! I have applied some of your indexing strategies to our website’s homegrown
CMS and we are experiencing a significant performance increase. WOW….amazing
tips delivered in an exciting way! Thanks again”
Kimberley L. Tripp
Paul S.Randal

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SharePoint 2007 / WSS3.0 broken by AllItems.aspx overwrite

5 June 2010 at 08:19 · Filed under Microsoft, SharePoint, Tech ·Tagged , , ,

Yesterday I managed to seriously break our production SharePoint 2007 site (WSS3.0 on SBS2008) site by inadvertently saving a word document over the AllItems.aspx file.
This is an incredibly easy thing to do by pasting the URL of a SharePoint folder location from the browser, there is the is the mistake (if taken from a Windows Explorer would be okay) into the Save As control e.g.

Copying https://sharepoint.fqdn.com:PortNNN/General%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fGeneral%20Documents%2fFoldrer1%2fFolde2%2fFolder3 out of the IE address bar to paste into the Save As File name entry in hope that it would then enumerate the target folder..

Anyway, clearly its the wrong thing to do and in this case replaced the Allitems.aspx with a word document, this broke the browser view of all SharePoint pages on the site collection although using Windows Explorer to access SharePoint folders continued to work okay.

Our resident SharePoint expert and Development Director (Chris Hermon) used SPD 2007 to try and replace/restore the Allitems.apsx but whilst this initially appeared to resolve the issue, the basic SharePoint object controls were still broken such as not having the drop down available e.g.

We took a view on this and decided to perform an stsadm restore from the last content dB backup. This was a relatively straightforward decision for us as we knew and had made copies of documents changed since the last backup (daily), however in a busier enviornment this would not be so easy.

Restoring the stsadm backup resolved the issue it’s a rather drastic resolution for a incredibly easy issue to create (and no, I was not using an Admin account or the collection administrator, just a normal author).

I’ll try the same on SP2010 and see if Microsoft have fixed this rather obvious gap in system integrity protection!

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Best of Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) UK 2010: Manage the Future – Desktop to Cloud

18 May 2010 at 07:38 · Filed under Hyper-V, Microsoft, Systems Management, Tech, Virtualisation, Windows Server 2008 R2 ·Tagged , , ,

Location: 100 Victoria Street London SW1 5JL United Kingdom
Start Time: 18 May 2010 09:30 GMT, London
End Time: 18 May 2010 17:30 GMT, London
Language(s): English.
Product(s): Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager,Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager,Microsoft System Center Essentials,Microsoft System Center Operations Manager,Other.
Audience(s): Infrastructure Specialist,IT Decision Maker,IT Implementer,IT Manager.
Event Overview
Best of MMS UK 2010 will provide the best possible opportunity to learn about the latest IT Management products, solutions and technologies from Microsoft and how to apply them in your organisation. With a number of significant management product releases and announcements planned from Microsoft in the coming year, including some early Beta releases, this is an opportunity you won’t want to miss!

This 1-day event will provide you with an understanding of the latest technical updates on Desktop, Datacenter and Cloud management features and solutions from Microsoft. The event will share more expert knowledge and information than ever, covering current System Center products as well as Windows platform management solutions for virtualization of servers, desktops and applications.

Please mark your calendar for Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) UK 2010 on Tuesday 18 May 2010 in London.

Join us and interact live with Microsoft, key partnerships and early adopter customers in this informative event near you. (Twitter – #mmsuk2010)

TIME AGENDA
08.30 Registration
09.30 Session 1 (Keynote): Virtualization 360: Microsoft Virtualization Strategy, Products, and Management Solutions for the New Economy
10.30 Session 2: Configuration Manager v.Next: Overview
11.30 Break
12.00 Session 3: What’s New Since the Release of Operations Manager 2007 R2
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Session 4(A): Opalis IT Process Automation: Introduction & Technical Overview Session 4(B): Introduction to Systems Management in Midsized Organizations with System Center Essentials 2010
15.00 Break
15.30 Session 5: Technical Introduction to Data Protection Manager 2010
16:30 Session 6: Service Manager Integration with System Center
17.30 Networking & Close

Abstracts:

Session 1:

Learn about the Microsoft virtualization strategy from the datacenter, to the desktop, to the cloud, and how it will help you cut costs and build value. In this session we review and demonstrate Microsoft virtualization products and discuss how you can use them to solve today’s IT issues (cost cutting, consolidation, business continuity, green IT), develop new computing solutions (VDI) and build a foundation for a more dynamic IT environment, including cloud computing. The session reviews all of the latest Microsoft virtualization products, including Application Virtualization (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server, as well as the System Center management platform (including Virtual Machine Manager 2008). Learn about the innovative pricing and licensing structure that allows further savings to lower both acquisition and on-going ownership costs. Learn how you can enable IT to become a cost cutting mechanism with Microsoft virtualization and management technologies.

Session 2:

The next release of Configuration Manager is coming! For over a decade, Systems Management Server and Configuration Manager have been used by thousands of customers and partners to deliver classic management capabilities to clients and servers. As we enter a new era for IT Administration, the System Center flagship product is evolving. In this session we present our vision for user-centric client management, and demonstrate improvements from Configuration Manager 2007. This session promises to be very interesting. We demonstrate a functioning product to showcase some of these major improvements, so you know you can’t miss it!

Session 3:

Join us to learn about developments which have taken place since the R2 release of Operations Manager 2007, including cumulative updates for SP1 and R2, new tools for diagnosis and troubleshooting, and new support for monitoring in the cloud.

Session 4A:

This session will walk you through the Opalis workflow designer demonstrating along the way how to integrate System Center products with other IT tools to create automated processes. You will also see how Opalis customers have automated best practices for incident management, provisioning and change management.

Session 4B:

For organisations up to 500 PCs and 50 servers, Microsoft is releasing System Center Essentials 2010 (SCE) to provide service monitoring, software deployments and updates, and management of physical and virtual machines. This single product is designed for midsized organizations, so this session will be full of demonstrations as we look at each of the major aspects of SCE 2010, including server and client monitoring, software deployment and patching, virtualization management and migration, and how to get started with easy setup and configuration. Come see it here first.

Session 5:

Data is core to a Service Management solution. Learn how to architect and extend the CMDB schema, how to set up and extend connectors, create new connectors, and lastly how the data moves to the Data Warehouse to deliver IT business intelligence.

Session 6:

The release of DPM 2010 is just a few weeks after MMS 2010 in Las Vegas, so this session will cover installing a new DPM 2010 server, and then provide an overview of the core capabilities and enhanced protection/recovery scenarios.

notes from the day..

OpsMgr 2007 R3 – a first R3 release for Microsoft

ConfigMgr 2007 -> ConfigMgr v.Next – embracing user centric targeting

SCE 2010 notes to follow..

DPM 2010, Anthony Tyler, Storage Strategy Architect (aka Foggy, and an old team mate of mine from PSS some 12 years ago!)

Backup to pretty much anything inc. “SAN in a can” but nothing seen as a removable device (so no USB unless you use iSCSI or a.n.other mapping technology)

tactical deployment in line with MS application deployment

i365 EDPM appliance – supports hetrogenius environments via eVault

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SCE 2010 RTM install with SQL 2008 R2 on Hyper-V

13 May 2010 at 13:01 · Filed under Microsoft, SCE 2010, System Center, Tech, Virtualisation ·Tagged , , , ,

 

First things first.. the pre-reqs:

A database! – SQL 2008 R2, but which version..? – this should help, SQL 2008 R2 Features and Comparisons http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993(SQL.105).aspx

Arrrggggghhhhh!

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SBS 2008 R2 release date..

3 May 2010 at 07:49 · Filed under Microsoft, SBS 2008, SBS 2008 R2 ·Tagged , ,

The much touted and anticipated R2 version of Microsoft’s much loved Small Business Server 2008 package is now looking likely to be released 3rd-4th calendar quarter this year.
I was recently at a Microsoft event in the UK (http://wp.me/pcs3j-7G) and speaking with a very well respected Microsoft guy who knows a thing or two about SBS.. The educated feeling is that SBS 2008 R2 will be announced at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC 2010) in Washington D.C. on July 11-15, 2010.
It is likely to be scheduled for Released to Manufacturer (RTM) a few months later, possibly in time for the European leg of Tech-Ed (back in Berlin for the next couple of years) around October-November.

So, a disapointment for those that thought (like I did) that the R2 release would be around 120 days post Windows Server 2008 R2 which was launched October 22nd along with Windows 7, but at least it is coming!, unlike EBS 2008 R2 which was shelved along with discontinuation of development of EBS see www.microsoft.com/ebs/en/us/faq.aspx#dis for more..

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Microsoft Techdays: Virtualization Summit – From the Desktop to the Datacenter

12 April 2010 at 09:06 · Filed under Hyper-V, Microsoft, Systems Management, Virtualisation, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 ·Tagged , , , ,

Full agenda below, but key points for me:

VDI & App-V – still virtualise your apps when using VDI to leverage further coat savings & ROI

Win2008 R2 SP1 – Hyper-V gets ‘Dynamic Memory’ not same as memory over-commit but shares a pool of real server memory across VDI VM’s
‘Remote-FX’ – graphics rich across TS/RDP/VDI using server graphics capabilities – putting high-end GPU’s in the server!

‘Private Cloud’ & ‘Partner Cloud’ – enabling cloud based computing without the budget of Azure or Amazon Web Services!

Using optimised desktop for on-demand application provisioning & apparent coexistance of non-compatible apps

One image per major hardware type – more emphasis on process for application delivery & customisation/personalisation of the desktop.

Deploying Personal Virtual Desktops by using Remote Desktop Services Web Access step-by-step guide

VDI using Dynamic (“Non-Persistent”) Virtual Desktops
- master VDI image then pesonalisation & customisation streamed to image delta – discarded at logoff, roaming profile intact

Pooled VDI experience vs. RDS architecture (Shared Session Virtualisation)

giving a video interview with Stuart Leddy for TechNet Flash :-)

Having an insightful chat with David Overton (SBS Guy) around the prospective launch date of SBS2008 R2.. we think that the announcement won’t be until WPC in July, and then tabled for release in the last calendar quarter of 2010 and very likley post Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1… hmmm!

Formal / published event information below..

Event Overview
Looking at virtualization but unsure about your options? Thinking about Windows 7 migration? Interested in VDI and server virtualization? Want to save on costs but wondering about ROI? Have more questions than answers on the topic?

This 1-day event will provide you with an understanding of the key products & technologies enabling seamless physical and virtual management, interoperable tools, and cost-savings & value. Microsoft Virtualization provides a completely virtualised infrastructure for your organisation, from the datacenter to desktop to the cloud. Please mark your calendar for Microsoft Virtualization Summit on Monday 12 April 2010 in London. Join us and interact live with Microsoft, key partnerships and early adopter customers in this informative event near you.

For all the latest agenda and speaker information, please visit our UK Techdays website: www.microsoft.com/uk/techdays

• Virtualization Summit -
From the Desktop to the Datacentre

Vue Cinema Shepherds Bush, Screen 9.

Looking at virtualization but unsure about your options? Thinking about Windows 7 migration? Interested in VDI and server virtualization? Want to save on costs but wondering about ROI? Have more questions than answers on the topic? This 1-day event will provide you with an understanding of the key products & technologies enabling seamless physical and virtual management, interoperable tools, and cost-savings & value. Microsoft Virtualization provides a completely virtualized infrastructure for your organisation, from the datacenter to desktop to the cloud. Please mark your calendar for Microsoft Virtualization Summit on Monday 12 April 2010 in London. Join us and interact live with Microsoft, key partnerships and early adopter customers in this informative event near you.
8.30am – 9.30am Registration
9.30am – 10.30am Virtualization 360 to End-To-End Virtualization
Dai Vu, Director, Microsoft Corp

Organisations today face many challenges and have certain priorities they must address. With Microsoft Virtualization they can address these challenges and concerns with the essential capabilities Microsoft delivers through the products they already own. When you couple Microsoft Virtualization solutions with integrated management to bring it all together you now have the visibility into your environment, while increasing your capability to respond to the ever changing business requirements. Also, learn how Microsoft Desktop Virtualization can help organisations with their access, data security, and compliance concerns while also providing anywhere access for their users. Learn how Microsoft Virtualization solutions in the datacenter help IT save money, increase availability and improve agility through the dynamic platform and management capabilities we provide to our customers. This allows IT to be more service-centric in how they provide to their customers. This vision of Virtualization will show that Microsoft today has the capabilities you need today with a path to the future.
10.30am – 11.30pm Next Generation Optimised Desktop
Keith Baker, Datacenter Technology Specialist

Many organisations are using Windows 7 migration as an opportunity to change how they provision and manage their desktops. The Windows Optimised Desktop is a vision for how organizations can bring down the costs of client computing while maximising flexibility, security, and manageability. Learn about the next generation of the Windows Optimised Desktop, which includes new technologies in Windows 7, Desktop Virtualization, Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack (MDOP) and System Center.
11.30pm – 12.00pm Break
12.00pm – 1.00pm Implementing a Comprehensive VDI Solution
Matt McSpirit, Partner Technology Advisor – Virtualisation & Management

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is one of the hottest topics in IT today and is an important cornerstone of the Microsoft’s Optimised Desktop strategy. Desktop Virtualization offers new and powerful opportunities for IT to deliver and manage corporate desktops and to respond to various user needs in a flexible way. For organisations to realise the full benefits of VDI, they need to ensure they choose a solution that addresses the key issues they face today. This session helps outlines the Microsoft VDI offering and benefits of an integrated and comprehensive approach toward desktop flexibility and manageability.
1.00pm – 2.00pm Extended Break – Time to grab a bite nearby
2.00pm – 3.00pm Physical to Virtual Management with System Center
Julius Davies & Clive Watson, Datacenter Technology Specialists

Virtualization has transformed how IT can deliver the applications and services to their customers in a very dynamic climate. But not all applications and machines are great candidates for virtualization, and it will take some time for IT to move all of the applications that can be converted to virtual machines. This session will discuss how an IT organisation can leverage System Center, a comprehensive set of integrated management tools, allowing you to keep complexity to a minimum and streamline operations. A common management environment reduces training, ensures uniform policy application and simplifies maintenance by leveraging your existing software, personnel, and most importantly, your existing IT management process.
3.00pm – 3.30pm Break
3.30pm – 4.30pm Deploying Business Critical Workloads and Applications
Dai Vu, Director Microsoft Corp

This session will cover how Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V provides an optimal platform for running your business critical workloads like Exchange, SQL and SharePoint as well as other various applications and workloads, including best practices, key concepts and other considerations.
4.30pm – 5.30pm Building a Foundation for Your Private Cloud
Sohbat Ali, Solution Architect

Windows Server 2008 R2 and the Microsoft System Center family of products are enabling customers to build the foundation for a private cloud infrastructure by using the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center (availability scheduled in the first half of 2010). This free, partner-extensible toolkit will provide you architectural roadmap, deployment guidance, best practices, and familiar tools to create agile, virtualized IT infrastructures. This session will provide more information on the toolkit components, and how you can improve your datacenter efficiency by lowering the overall costs of on-boarding, deployment, and management.

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