The Latest

QR Codes in a SharePoint List

On May 15, 2013, in 2010, Microsoft, SharePoint, by Ashley Feldon-Lawrence
0

Bridge-to-the-futureConnecting the physical and digital world with SharePoint 2010 and QR codes.

 

I’m on-site in Vietnam with a customer who is starting their SharePoint journey as well the wider journey to becoming a data driven business.  We’ve been running through business and technical discovery sessions for over a week now and something came out of one of the meetings which was begging to have SharePoint step in and save the day.

The business problem

In this furniture design and manufacturing company, the product development team produce CAD drawing of parts and assembled components which then get issued to the production team.  These hardcopy drawings are used to build the components to specification.

What happens from time to time is a breakdown in communication where a drawing gets revised, but the production team don’t get informed quickly enough and items continue to get made from out of date drawings wasting time, money and therefore profit.

(more…)

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Adding a second WordPress site to Windows Azure

On March 1, 2013, in Azure, Blogging, WordPress, by Ashley Feldon-Lawrence
1

cloneWe needed to deploy a development instance of WordPress for our soon-to-be built new public site so I looked at adding a second instance to our existing Azure subscription. Going through the portal reports that you’ve reached your MYSQL limit when you try to add another – nice.

There is mention of adding a second WordPress instance and using the same DB although I’m not willing to entertain that, Prod is Prod & hallowed be that principle.

Azure is still "preview" so this could change any day but here is the process for adding that second MySQL DB to use for a second WordPress instance.

Stage 1. Create a new MySQL DB with ClearDB

  1. Go through Azure’s Portal > New > Store and add the free ClearDB MySQL Add on.
  2. Ensure that your DB region will match your web-site region. I chose Northern Europe for ours, it’s apparently the newest and most powerful DC in Europe.

image

 

Stage 2. Create a new WordPress site on Azure with new DB

  1. Follow the normal process for creating a WordPress site on Azure: New > Compute > Web Site > WordPress
  2. Select the new DB you created in Stage 1.
  3. Visit the site URL and complete the WordPress setup.

The downside of this wizard is that if you have may DB’s in the same region, you wouldn’t be able to identify it since during the Azure Store purchase you don’t see the database name, only the connection name. You’ll have to go an document your DB names before doing this.

image

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Edition downgrade for SharePoint Search Server Express 2010 from SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise to SQL 2012 Express

On February 22, 2013, in 2010, SharePoint, SQL Server, Systems Management, by Ashley Feldon-Lawrence
0

DowngradeThis is just a quick post to highlight issues with two SharePoint Search Server Express 2010 databases when downgrading from SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise to SQL 2012 Express (although applies to any Express version, 2008 R2 or higher).

The customer needed to swap out an Enterprise trial version of SQL and replace it with Express since the investment for Enterprise wasn’t forthcoming and neither was the investment for further immediate work in SharePoint.

They were however getting great value from Search within Search Server Express 2010 so didn’t want that to go anywhere, it was the entire companies home page!

When moving the databases from Enterprise to Express two errors were encountered during the database restore, one with the search Property database and one with the Web Analytics Report database.

After some research, I opted to correct the issue with the Property database but recreate the Web Analytics Report database.

Fix for the Property database

Follow the steps here –

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-NZ/tfsadmin/thread/9365b0da-f5e9-4219-b8b2-498df11d921b

In Management Studio create a new query with the property DB selected and run this script –

SELECT

SCHEMA_NAME(sys.objects.schema_id) AS [SchemaName]

,OBJECT_NAME(sys.objects.object_id) AS [ObjectName]

,[rows]

,[data_compression_desc]

,[index_id] as [IndexID_on_Table]

FROM sys.partitions

INNER JOIN sys.objects

ON sys.partitions.object_id = sys.objects.object_id

WHERE data_compression > 0

AND SCHEMA_NAME(sys.objects.schema_id) <> ‘SYS’

ORDER BY SchemaName, ObjectName

 

For me is listed out the following tables using the data compression and vardecimal storage format –

  • MSSAlertDocHistory
  • MSSDefinitions
  • MSSDefinitions
  • MSSDocProps
  • MSSDocProps
  • MSSDocProps
  • MSSDocResults
  • MSSDocSdids

As per the fix, then run this script against these tables –

ALTER INDEX ALL ON <TABLE NAME>

REBUILD WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = None);

Backup the database and then restore it over to the SQL Express instance and it worked.

For the Web analytics db, simply recreate the Web Analytics Service Application in Central Administration.

 

Errors during the SQL Express DB Restore

TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

——————————

Restore of database ‘Search_Service_Application_PropertyStoreDB’ failed. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.RelationalEngineTasks)

——————————

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.SmoExtended)

——————————

Database ‘Search_Service_Application_PropertyStoreDB’ cannot be started in this edition of SQL Server because part or all of object ‘MSSDocSdids’ is enabled with data compression or vardecimal storage format. Data compression and vardecimal storage format are only supported on SQL Server Enterprise Edition.

Database ‘Search_Service_Application_PropertyStoreDB’ cannot be started because some of the database functionality is not available in the current edition of SQL Server. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 909)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft%20SQL%20Server&EvtSrc=MSSQLServer&EvtID=909&LinkId=20476

——————————

BUTTONS:

OK

——————————

 

and

TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

——————————

Restore of database ‘WebAnalyticsReport’ failed. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.RelationalEngineTasks)

——————————

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.SmoExtended)

——————————

Database ‘WebAnalyticsReport’ cannot be started in this edition of SQL Server because it contains a partition function ‘DateIdPF’. Only Enterprise edition of SQL Server supports partitioning.

Database ‘WebAnalyticsReport’ cannot be started because some of the database functionality is not available in the current edition of SQL Server. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 905)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft%20SQL%20Server&EvtSrc=MSSQLServer&EvtID=905&LinkId=20476

——————————

BUTTONS:

OK

——————————

Moral of the story

SQL Enterprise automatically enables features in tables and rows so downgrading editions can always be a pain.

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Create a SharePoint group with permissions and add an AD group to it

On February 14, 2013, in 2010, Powershell, Script, SharePoint, Systems Management, by Ashley Feldon-Lawrence
3

group_add

Requirement

  • Create a SharePoint group in a site collection
  • Assign that group an existing permission for Site Permissions list
  • Add an Active Directory group to that SharePoint group
  • Read the values from a CSV file
  • Repeat for 1000 groups spread across multiple site collections
  • The Site Collection Admin will run the script and be added as owner automatically

 

Solution

function global:New-SPGroup {
#Parameters that the script offers out to use,
# e.g. New-SPGroup -SiteCollection “http://intranet/sitecollection” -ADGroupName “domain\ADgroup” -SPGroupName “SharePoint Group 1″ -SPGroupDescription “Group Description” -SPGroupPermission “Permission”
[CmdletBinding()]
Param(
[Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPWebPipeBind]
[string]$SiteCollection,
[string]$ADGroupName,
[string]$SPGroupName,
[string]$SPGroupDescription,
[string]$SPGroupPermission
)

#Required variabales for dev or single item runs, remove # and highlight from here down to above CSV section in Powershell ISE
#$SiteCollection = “http://site/sitecollection”
#$ADGroupName = “domain\adgroup”
#$SPGroupName = “My Test Group A1″
#$SPGroupDescription = “Test Group A1′s Description” #Note: do not use” – ” in description, i.e. space hyphen space
#$SPGroupPermission = “Read”

#Start of script
$site = Get-SPWeb $SiteCollection

#Check if the group already exists
if ($site.SiteGroups["SPGroupName"] -eq $null)
{

#Ensure Group/User is part of site collection users beforehand and add them if needed
$site.EnsureUser(“$ADGroupName”)

# Get the AD Group/User in a format that PowerShell can use otherwise there will be a string error
$ADGroupSPFriendly = $site | Get-SPUser $ADGroupName

#Create the SharePoint Group – Group Name, Group Owner, Group Member, Group Description. Can’t add AD group yet…
$NewSPGroup = $site.SiteGroups.Add($SPGroupName, $site.CurrentUser, $site.CurrentUser, $SPGroupDescription)
$site.AssociatedGroups.Add($site.SiteGroups["$SPGroupName"]);
$NewSPAccount = $site.SiteGroups["$SPGroupName"]

#Assign the Group permission
$GroupAssignment = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPRoleAssignment($NewSPAccount)
$GroupRole = $site.RoleDefinitions["$SPGroupPermission"]
$GroupAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings.Add($GroupRole)
$site.RoleAssignments.Add($GroupAssignment)

#Add the AD Group/User to the group, can’t be done during group creation when using Powershell otherwise errors so is done now.
Set-SPUser -Identity $ADGroupSPFriendly -Web $SiteCollection -Group $SPGroupName
}
$site.Dispose()
}

#Read from the CSV input file
#CSV file must have header row – SiteColl, AdSecGroup, SPSecGroupName, SPGroupDesc, SPGroupPerm
#No “” around any items in the CSV file are needed
$csv = Import-csv -path D:\DEVGroupNameCSVFile2.csv
if ($csv -ne $null) {
foreach($line in $csv)
{
[string]$SiteCollection = $line.SiteColl;
[string]$ADGroupName = $line.AdSecGroup;
[string]$SPGroupName = $line.SPSecGroupName;
[string]$SPGroupDescription = $line.SPGroupDesc;
[string]$SPGroupPermission = $line.SPGroupPerm

New-SPGroup -Site $SiteCollection -ADGroupName $ADGroupName -SPGroupName $SPGroupName -SPGroupDescription $SPGroupDescription -SPGroupPermission $SPGroupPermission;
}
}

 

I hope someone else finds this script useful since all I found on the web were partial answers at best, and with a few solutions that didn’t match the requirement.

Errors encountered along the way and running the script

“You cannot add a domain group to a group.” – You can however add your AD group to the SharePoint group after is it created, just not while you are creating it. Resolved by the last part of the function.

Exception calling “Add” with “4″ argument(s): “The specified name is already in use. Please try again with a new name.” – As it implies, this is a duplicate item in your CSV file.

References

Basis for script -

http://sharepointryan.com/2011/07/20/create-sharepoint-groups-using-powershell/

http://addictedtosharepoint.com/2011/07/23/adding-a-security-group-to-a-sharepoint-site-via-powershell/

http://www.iotap.com/Blog/tabid/673/entryid/154/Powershell-script-for-Adding-Active-Directory-Users-to-Sharepoint-2010-Groups.aspx

http://get-spscripts.com/2011/02/add-sharepoint-or-ad-groupuser-to-all.html

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4512548/how-to-add-ad-group-to-sharepoint-2010-spgroup-programmatically

http://shpstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/create-groups-in-site-collection-using.html

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3713497/how-to-get-spuser-object-using-user-id-domain-name-userid

Additional information that you might find useful -

http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/20739/add-users-to-sp-group

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/eu/sharepointdevelopment/thread/2df1f82b-ba04-4378-9df8-6fb0bf8eeaa3

http://www.learningsharepoint.com/forum/sharepoint-2010-programming/add-user-with-powershell-in-sharepoint-2010-site/

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-GB/sharepointadminprevious/thread/c9e11537-6b1a-46f6-b030-395f8ed1fbf7

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-ZA/sharepointgeneralprevious/thread/0632b071-617f-4e93-bd06-ed85ab7ef4a6

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Stop Excel documents opening in the browser on SharePoint

On January 23, 2013, in 2010, Microsoft, SharePoint, by Ashley Feldon-Lawrence
0

image

I had to spend a little time today stopping Excel documents opening in the browser. Following the advice on the web didn’t really help and I was sure I had done the steps required. I was starting to doubt my sanity…

The error message

The client doesn’t want or need Excel Calculation Services (certainly not right now away) so it isn’t setup or configured but documents were still trying to open in the browser for all site collections on a single web application, yielding this error message:

image“Unable to process the request. Wait a few minutes and try performing this operation again.”

Clearly this was never going to work in a few minutes…

 

 

 

Two levels of settings are always mentioned for this issue – the site collection level and, if necessary, at the document library level.

Neither of these resolved the issue for me.

The Fix

1. Go to Central Administration. Click on Site Actions > Site Settings. Under Site Collection administration, click on Site Collection Features and activate “Open Documents in Client Applications by Default”. (mentioned here, and yes… it doesn’t make sense as to why this should be the case)

image

2. Go to the Site Collection in question, Click on Site Actions > Site Settings. Under Site Collection administration, click on Site Collection Features and activate “Open Documents in Client Applications by Default”. (covered here in detail)

3. Go to the Document Library in question, Click on Library Settings, Advanced Settings and select either “Use the server default” or “Open in client application”.

imageFrom here on, Chrome will download the file and IE will prompt to open it – Read Only or Edit.

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Plugins fail to update on Azure hosted WordPress

On January 22, 2013, in Azure, Blogging, Microsoft, by Ashley Feldon-Lawrence
0

Ever since we moved our WordPress blog to Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud hosting platform (see post), plugins have failed to update rendering them broken – this can quickly become a pain if it’s critical such as your SPAM comment plug-in!
The issue is mentioned ad nauseum here but I’m able to delete the plugin to get around the problem that some others seem unable to do, hence sharing our solution:

Steps to workaround the problem

1. Follow the post here on getting your FTP username and password if you haven’t already got it, then setup your connection in FileZilla.

2. Browse to the ftp path -  /site/wwwroot/wp-content/plugins, make a note of what appears there and compare it to your list of plugins installed on WordPress (wp-admin/plugins.php)

3. In Filezilla, delete the folders that refer to the failed updates.

image

4. In WordPress (wp-admin/plugins.php) re-add the plugins, then activate and configure them.

 

image

 

Hope this helps you. You’ll need to do this each time a plugin needs updating – dull!
However, from the thread mentioned above, it looks like a fix will be deployed pretty soon…

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Office 2013 Preview & Windows 8: OneNote on Office 365 (SharePoint) won’t open in OneNote client and won’t sync

On November 21, 2012, in 2010, Microsoft, Office365, SharePoint, by Ashley Feldon-Lawrence
3

So the last few days, in some stolen moments between projects I’ve been setting up a collaboration portal for our customers and us to share information, e.g. meeting notes, invoices and various other sundry documents and the obvious choice was Office 365/SharePoint online. As a reseller for Office 365 we get entitlement to a large number of licences and it seems logical to make the most of that and to bring us closer to our customers while improving service, transparency and reducing email clutter.

Previously we’d looked at moving exclusively to SharePoint online but due to our Reporting Services integration we couldn’t but I had already seen OneNotes happily syncing there to local clients from previous tests so I knew it worked.

Office 2013 Preview OneNote however, it hasn’t worked for me without making some tweaks to the registry. Your mileage may vary.

Tested combinations

Windows 8, Office 2013 (clean install), IE 10: Failed

Windows 8, Office 2013 (upgrade), IE 10: Failed

Windows 8, Office 2010, IE 10: Worked

Windows 7, Office 2013, IE 9: Worked

The obvious common part is Office 2013 Preview on Windows 8 Sad smile

The Error Message

We need a password to sync this notebook. (Error code: 0xE0000024).

Other reports

Several other people have reported that they had this error and several fixes under different contexts. Sadly though, none paned out and most referred to SkyDrive so were a no go anyway.

However, there was mention of registry keys and Forms Based Authentication so it got me thinking.

https://plus.google.com/116023016216120558685/posts/5YAK73L3idv

http://mundoepm.com.br/2012/08/02/onenote-we-need-the-password-to-sync-this-notebook-error-code-0xe0000024/

http://errorspotting.com/?p=51

http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-onenote/archive/2011/11/08/free-update-for-onenote-2010-improves-skydrive-and-sync-features.aspx

Deeper Dive into the traffic

On the failing Windows 8 machine I got fiddler going and had a look at what was going on when OneNote was trying to sync. In the header I saw the 403 response “Access Denied”. Well, at least this is something… Of course I tried logging into the site as well as microsoftonline.com for good measure too, no luck.

HTTP/1.1 403 FORBIDDEN
Content-Length: 13
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
X-SharePointHealthScore: 0
SPRequestGuid: 125fe39b-3155-0007-4d62-8cb2bb1fee0f
request-id: 125fe39b-3155-0007-4d62-8cb2bb1fee0f
X-Forms_Based_Auth_Required: https://thefullcircle.sharepoint.com/_forms/default.aspx?ReturnUrl=/_layouts/error.aspx
X-Forms_Based_Auth_Return_Url: https://thefullcircle.sharepoint.com/_layouts/error.aspx
X-MSDAVEXT_Error: 917656; Access denied. Before opening files in this location, you must first browse to the web site and select the option to login automatically.
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices: 15.0.0.4433
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-MS-InvokeApp: 1; RequireReadOnly
P3P: CP="ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo CNT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI"
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:19:25 GMT

All of this led me onto looking into the Sign in Assistant which was already installed but I went ahead and ran a repair. Still no change after a reboot.

The Fix

In a wiki page that talks about manually installing the Office 365 components there is a mention of a registry key for Office 2010 and Office 365 to play nice –

Microsoft Office 2010 Update

(KB2435954)

Microsoft Office 2010 on Windows XP with Internet Explorer 7

Allows users to access Microsoft SharePoint Online from Microsoft Word 2010, Microsoft Excel 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, and Microsoft OneNote 2010.

Important   In addition to applying this update, you must add the following registry key for each user: [HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Internet\FormsBasedAuthSettings\AllowFBANoPatches – DWORD: 1]

Also, If you have Office 2010 SP1 Beta installed, you will first need to uninstall the SP1 Beta before installing this update.

http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/administration/manually-install-office-365-desktop-updates.aspx

Well, well, well. What have you here? A registry key for allowing forms authentication stuff for Office 365. This looked too good to pass by without having a go.

Clearly the “14.0” needed to change to “15.0” for Office 2013 Preview and I tested it with HKLM rather than HKCU.

I created the key and…pay dirt. Closed OneNote and reopened it and it synced straight away.

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Internet\FormsBasedAuthSettings]
"AllowFBANoPatches"=dword:00000001

 

Update 22/11/2012

After another reboot the next day it looks another issue has popped in with syncing. Will update this post when I’ve investigated and resolved it.

We’re sorry, something went wrong during sync. We’ll try again later. (Error code: 0x5B4)

Error 1460 – Error Code 0x5B4

Windows Error Code 1460: ‘ERROR_TIMEOUT’

Description of Error:This operation returned because the timeout period expired.

References:

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When cliconfg.exe didn’t work for changing the SharePoint DB

On October 7, 2012, in 2007, Microsoft, SharePoint, SQL Server, by Ashley Feldon-Lawrence
1

Everyone knows that using SQL connection alias’s are a pretty good idea, as are A records in DNS for when you want to be able swap around your SQL server when the fancy, need or emergency takes your fancy.

I recently was helping a customer trying to do just that but were implementing SQL Connection Alias’s for the first time in order to swap out an old, underpowered and overloaded SQL 2000 server with a more powerful SQL 2005 x64 machine running their MOSS 2007 farm.

As much as they tried, when the connection alias was put in place the servers came back with "Cannot connect to the configuration database". I got involved and even went as far as installing SQL Management Studio on the front end with the alias in place. Funny thing was – it worked. Despite the connection alias working properly the farm could not communicate with SQL.

After a lot of research, looking at logs and trying a few permutations on the cliconfg.exe tool I came across the answer. There were references to the SQL server by FQDN in the registry and the alias was only doing the host name.

This farm wasn’t well documented and even less well configured so finding this kind of inconsistency wasn’t surprising. Mike Hackers blog post mentioned the registry key as part of a post on another topic.

For my case I changed the 14.0 to 12.0 for this MOSS 2007 environment and edited the connection string.

My Computer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWARE
Microsoft
Shared Tools
Web Server Extensions
14.0
Secure
ConfigDB

I changed the DSN value from the FQDN of "server.domain.local" to "server" and Central Administration came up.

Nasty little inconsistency from when the farm was setup.

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Image is crucial, so where did they go?

On September 27, 2012, in Azure, Blogging, Cloud, How do I, by Ashley Feldon-Lawrence
0

The mysterious case of missing blog post images after migration.

 

Well, I wish it was mysterious. Actually, it was pretty obvious. The WordPress import tool isn’t exactly what you’d call robust.

Going into the wp-content/uploads folder on old hosting location (GoDaddy) and the new (Azure) showed that the WordPress import tool missed/failed to get the uploads folders from three years worth of blog posts.

 

image

So, all that was needed was to sync up the folders. No stress. Here we go.

Getting your FTP username and password for an Azure Web Site.

Thanks to Bertrand Le Roy’s blog post on where to find the user name because what you would consider to be the likely candidates for your login – the deployment user account shows as not set.

1. From your dashboard on Azure for the blog, download the publish profile -

image

2.  the XML file find your FTP user username and passwords -

SNAGHTML305975

Copy the missing files between the old and new location

1. Configure Filezilla with the connection to the FTP address listed on the dashboard.

2. Upload the missing years or months media from your old blog, either a local backup like the one I took or directly between the two FTP sites.

Why did it happen?

I’m sure a WordPress expert out there could reveal the mystery in detail, and migrating blogs isn’t exactly my day job - we’ll chalk this one down to “something went wrong but it was easy to fix”.

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Windows Server 2012 Technical Launch (with Inframon & others…)

On September 25, 2012, in Microsoft, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, by ReubenC
1

image2451.Sept12WindowsServer2012_Print_thumb_10509024

Today Ashley & I are in Hammersmith, West London for the Technical Launch of Windows Server 2012 which went General Availability on September 4th.

Windows Server 2012 (built from the Cloud up) is arguably the most exciting Windows Server release yet and it’s no surprise the event is packed, indeed standing room only!

IMG_1378

As usual for our posts, we’ll list the official agenda and then use it to structure our comment later, the agenda for the day was listed as:

Agenda: Windows Server 2012- Microsoft Launch Event

09.00   Welcome & Registration

10.00   Keynote & Kickoff

11.00   Beyond Virtualization

12.00   Lunch

13.15   Power of Many Servers Simplicity of One

14.15   Any App Any Cloud

15.15   Break

15.45   Anywhere Working

16.45   Closing Drinks & Networking

 

Delivered by Microsoft global executives in partnership with Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs), Partners and the Windows Server User Group, at this event you’ll get:

Technical sessions on Windows Server 2012

Opportunities to ask Microsoft your questions

Networking with Microsoft, Partners and MVPs

Information on resources to get certified

clip_image001

Windows Server 2012 Key Facts

Windows Server powers many of the worlds’ largest datacenters, enables small businesses around the world, and delivers value to organizations of all sizes in between. Building on this legacy, Windows Server 2012 delivers hundreds of new features and enhancements spanning virtualization, networking, storage, user experience, cloud computing, automation, and more.
Windows Server 2012 will help you transform your IT operations to reduce costs and deliver a whole new level of business value. This is quite possibly the most significant release of Windows Server ever.
Windows Server 2012 brings Microsoft’s experience from building and operating public clouds to deliver a highly dynamic, available, and cost-effective server platform for private and service provider clouds, offering a multi-tenant aware cloud infrastructure that helps organisations connect more securely across premises and allows IT to respond to business needs faster and more efficiently.
Windows Server 2012, together with System Center 2012, presents many opportunities that will enable you to solve fundamental business and IT challenges.

“Nothing from Microsoft, and I mean literally nothing has ever been this ambitious”, proclaims ZDNet.
“Takes your breath away” says Computerworld.

 

Our notes and observations on the day

Keynote Kickoff

Morris Martin

Morris opened the event, and set the scene of change with a story of how just 30 years ago he did a paper round which paid for his Oric Atmos memory upgrades… to just 8K!
Today, Virtual Machine memory support in Server 2012 is a whopping 1TB!!
(he’s obviously a little older than me.. as a boy I had use of a Sinclair ZX81 (1K), however my own first computer was a 1st generation Spectrum and that shipped with double Morris’s upgrade, a huge 16K!

 

Torri Widsteen
Marketing, Windows Server

Been in Windows Server for 7 years and 13 at Microsoft so has seen a lot of change, but this is a really big year for Microsoft with major releases in SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio, Windows Server, and Windows 8 coming up in October, plus continual improvements to Azure

BYOD – she brought 3 devices over on the plane, and of course IT do not expect security compromised with her desire and ability to use whatever device is to hand – corporate IT supplied or not.

Bing running on WS2012 since pre-launch serving 5.5B queries a month

Market is excited about this release, events have been standing room only, 1m website hits in a week and great critical reviews

Early Adopters – Paul Smith (no surprise there – what RDP have they not been involved in!?!? ;-) , Intel, Newham Council.  Supporting partners include Inframon, Intercept IT, OCSL, Trinity IT (but lets not mention the competition too much!)

Jeff Woolsey (@WSV_GUY) – Principal Program Manager, Windows Server

the numbers are bigger than ever before, and bigger pissing than VMware, even the latest announcements at VMworld

TechNet has been running on Hyper-V since the beta of WS2008

“If you want to use the other guys you’ll have to buy Enterprise Super Special Plus Edition” Winking smile

What is off bounds to virtualisation with Server 2012? Virtualise EVERYTHING!

Game changing technology – network virtualisation (true!)

VLAN sprawl, abused since 1995 – customers with 100’s or even 1000’s of VLANs (we helped audit a large UK based utility company with nearly a hundred and recommended they reduce!)

Cluster Aware Updates – up to 64 nodes & 8,000 VMs in a cluster can cause a patching headache – now automated (schedule or on demand)

Immersive Data Experience from e.g. Excel to SQL to Hadoop

Dynamic Access Control for information protection – link to auditing

Improvements to VDI – pooled vs personalised VDI (throw away and start clean vs. keep personal settings)

RemoteFX big improvements in WAN optimisation & touch

Demo using a Windows 8 tablet – allegedly his, however the logged in user was Ben Smith.  Got a laugh out of the audience mentioning its capabilities inc. support for Flash.. clearly using a mouse for the demo though

Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) – SAN compatibility to offload file/storage operations to the SAN.  Hyper-V supports and will improve operations such as live migrations, etc.

Dynamic Memory – Live changes!

QoS support in Hyper-V to allow resource management

SMB 3.0 improvements to File Services – 16Gbits/s (4x DVD’s per second!), block level storage for SQL, Exchange, etc. Storage Virtualisation to allow flexible change

Network Virtualisation – allows portability of VM’s across IP networks without downtime

Live server & Azure demo and it worked!

Back to Torri – MS Sales event in Redmond with 15,000 sellers – gave Server Tools demo the highest rating (a first, is usually X-Box and the sexier stuff.. slates, etc.)

Commitment to the market

 

Beyond Virtualization

Andrew Fryer & Aidan (MVP in Virtual Machine)

Business drivers for going Cloud – save money (licenses, time & effort, availability, scalability, performance)
Business concerns for going Cloud – security in multi-tenant, both from each other and the hoster from the clients
Ubuntu comes with ICS built in to kernel, rumour has it Red Hat coming too.. (Ashley confirm, we have contacts.. Smile)

Seriously Scary Scale-out stats – applies to all versions inc. free Hyper-V Server (slide needed – ask Sarah)

Live migration now prioritises idle memory pages, leaving the active pages to the end, reducing the number of iterations needed and improving the performance of Live Migrations

HA File Stores

Live Migration demo using a file share – worked

Hyper-V Replica – didn’t work, but Andrew asked to take it on faith it works… (we know it does as we saw it at the UK IT Camp event just a couple of weeks ago)

VHDX scales to 64TB (that’s 32x more than anyone else), 4K sector aligned and aware of native 4KB disks – can reduce write latency by a whole disk revolution!

Extending the Hyper-V Extensible Switch – can pretend to be a vendors switch – fully extensible, supports firewall capability, port mirroring, etc.

SRV-IO

Improvements to networking such as DHCP, Router Guard, Bandwidth management, NIC Teaming, port mirroring, etc.

 

Power of Many Servers Simplicity of One

Simon May & Thomas (MVP in PowerShell?.. ) – Server Management, PowerShell, Storage

PowerShell v3

can be compiled

can be scripted across reboots, e.g. installing forced restart features or roles

“Pervasive scalable scripting”

over 2,600 new cmdlets covering several Windows features previously none-scriptable such as DHCP, DNS, etc.

Support for Script-Sharing & snippets – commonly reusable code snippets

Intellisense – never forget a parameter again!

Storage improvements – Storage Pools, SMB v3, running application servers on file shares e.g. SQL

 

Any (Every), App Any Cloud

Steve Plank – “Planky” & Damian Flynn (MVP, System Center) – Public & Private Cloud Computing

How do I embrace the Cloud, both Public & Private

Repeatable Cloud Computing – ability to upload configuration files to define the environment

Scalable and Elastic
Scalability & Performance – NUMA aware, Application initialisation,
Increased isolation & Security – IIS CPU Throttling,  FTP Logon Attempt restrictions, Dynamic IP Restriction
Simplified Management of Multiple Sites – Centralised SSL support (point your IIS servers at a file share and say get on with it!), Server Name indication, IIS Configuration Editor

 

Anywhere Working – Modern Workstyle, Enabled

Simon May & Andrew Fryer

Swag…

Of course, swag is good and this event was no exception – bag, torch, pens, stickers and T-shirts – got a small and a double XL (great! – not! Winking smile)

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Closing Drinks & Networking

…which leads nicely onto our good friends at Inframon who were sponsoring the event and who we also partner with for all things System Center

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